“We were feeling lucky.”
“That’s who’s paying it. Mister and Missus I was feeling lucky.”
“We found the fifty dollars on the car windshield. Turtle found it.” She looks back in the driving mirror and smiles.
Her face around her eyes is red and white. “It felt like maybe that money was charmed.” She laughs the way that means nothing is really funny: tssh, pushing out air, shaking her head. “I still can’t believe a person could put two hundred quarters in a slot machine one right after another and not win anything.”
Grandma laughs. “You’ve got a hair of your daddy in you.
Foster was a gambler.”
Turtle says, “Mama, do you have a daddy?” But they don’t hear, the words only walked inside her ears. The back-teeth door is still closed. When her six-year molars came in, they felt like a pocketful of small rocks squeaking and rubbing.
“A better one than me, I hope.”
“Lord, no, he wasn’t worth a toot as a gambler. If there was a storm coming in he’d bet you it was going to stay dry, just to put spice in his day. One time he bet a man he could outrun his dog.”
“What kind of a dog was it?”
“I don’t know, but it left Foster at the starting post. If the dog had lapped up as much Old Grand-Dad as Foster had, Foster might of had a chance.”
Turtle opens her mouth wide and says, “Mama, do you have an old granddad?” In the front seat they both laugh out loud. True laughing, not pushed air. They have heads on their bodies, laughing mouths, and hands; they look the right way again. Turtle has hands also. She lies down and hugs herself.
“Look at us. Three crazy girls in the city of lonely hearts.”
Taylor squeezes Alice’s hand on top of the table. The hotel is called the Delta Queen Casino, and the coffee shop is decorated in a con-artist theme: on the wall are large framed photos of Clark Gable as Rhett in Gone With the Wind, and Paul Newman in The Sting. The red plastic chairs look like someone got them in a bad trade. The background music is a chorus of high steady dings, the sound of coins in slot machines, which reach Taylor like repeated small slaps in the face. She can’t believe she was a fool just like every other fool. The one thing she’s always hoped for is to stand out of the crowd. She grits her teeth at the TV screen over the bar, which is blinking out colorful letters and numbers so that the people who don’t want to waste any time can play video Keno while they eat.
Alice is making conversation with Turtle. “Do you hate it when old ladies make a big fuss and tell you you’ve grown two feet?”
Turtle shakes her head.
“Well, you have.” She bends her gray head close to Turtle’s and speaks seriously, without condescension. “You’re a big long-legged girl now, not a baby anymore.” Taylor watches the cards of her own childhood played out at the table. Alice always knows what you need. Being near her mother makes Taylor aware of all her inside parts, cradled soft things like the livers in supermarket chickens.
“Taylor says you know how to write your name.” Alice fishes in her huge purse for a pen, and turns a napkin on the table in front of Turtle. “Can you show me?”
Turtle shakes her head again.
“Doesn’t matter. You still know how, right? If you need to sign a check or something, then we know we can count on you. No sense wasting a signature on a napkin.”
She leaves the pen on the table. From the casino someone’s voice shouts out “Ho-ly,” followed by the chattering rain of quarters into the jackpot bucket. Taylor is afraid she’s going to cry again and send Turtle into a tailspin, so she keeps her face behind the plastic menu. “What do you want for dinner, Turtle?” she asks. “A glass of milk and what else?”
Turtle shrugs. Taylor can see the gesture without even looking.
“Grilled cheese?”
“Okay.”
Taylor looks over the top of the daily special and tells Alice, “You get kind of hypnotized, sitting there listening to the quarters ding. Then you start thinking, ‘It’s been this long, my number’s got to be almost up.’ And then you put your hand in your pocket and pull out a gum wrapper.”
Alice holds on to her hand.
At a table nearby, a wife and husband are having a fight.
They have on matching outfits, jeans and fringed shirts that cowboys might wear, or people in a cowboy-related industry.
The woman has colorless flippy hair molded together with hairspray so that it all comes along when she turns her head.
The man looks very old. “Five hundred dollars,” he keeps saying, again and again, like the talking change machines out in the casino that will turn your paper cash into silver dollars. The woman says different things each time, including