Perhaps it was the hoarse pitch of her voice, or the pity of the salesgirl toward the elderly, but the salesgirl let her buy the purse. In it, Ginger put her cash and also two bottles of sleeping pills. The Caribbean was sold out this time of year, so she spent most of her remaining money on a cruise to Alaska.
She woke up early the first morning of the cruise, restless, trying to remember everything she had ever known. The facts of her life flurried in her head: names of hotel restaurants, the taste of barbecue in Texas versus Georgia, the aqua chiffon dress she had worn at a cocktail party in 1975. She sat at the table, scribbling notes on a pad: Fake furs on Hollywood Blvd., 1956, cloudy, blue fur hats from the rare Blue Hyena from Alaska, lemon meringue pie at the cafeteria on W. 37th St., New York, 1960s, the seagulls flying on the empty Santa Monica beach at dawn, how much money I made a year, $37,000 from Dr. Chamron in 1987—
Magnolia in Los Angeles, she wrote. She remembered the scent of magnolia as she and Evelyn had stepped off the train in Los Angeles when she was fifteen years old. She remembered her sister Evelyn’s walk, Evelyn just seventeen then, her walk her first successful con; stepping hard onto her feet, shoulders lifted, she tricked Ginger into believing that she knew what to do. It was 1921 and they walked off the train into Los Angeles, two girls alone, armed with an address for an aunt whom they would never meet.
Finally, Ginger’s hand ached and she put down her pen. Scribbling her room number on a paper, she put it in her purse and walked to dinner. She went carefully around the naked ice sculptures of David or Venus that rose, melting, out of bowls of orange punch. Table Sixteen was empty so she sat down, and a silver domed plate floated down in front of her.
She began to eat her salmon when a young woman slid into the seat across from her. Her hair hung down in long, straight sheets, as though flattened by the heat of her own thoughts.
“Darlene Horwitz,” she said, holding out her hand for Ginger to shake. She was young, ridiculously young, with the glossy, unmarked skin of a baby. “This is my first cruise.”
“Ginger Klein.”
“My parents sent me here,” said Darlene. “They had enough of my moaning.” She looked at Ginger. “I was — well, it’s an old story. Pathetic. Have you ever been on a cruise? Is it fun?”
“In the past,” said Ginger.
The girl unfolded her napkin onto her lap. “Are you retired? What did you do?” asked the girl.
Ginger leaned across the table and whispered to Darlene, “This is what I do. People have dreams that you want to be part of. I say I can make them come true. One gentleman expressed a desire to sample gelato in Italy. Then I just did it for him, but on his dime. That man was in the field of advertising. I thought of him sitting behind his desk, eating a bag lunch, a little sweaty, and I thought he’d be grateful that I could taste that gelato for him.”
This was Evelyn’s philosophy, really; she had believed that swindling was generous, as it allowed the suckers a moment to dream. Ginger pushed her seat back slightly. She unfolded her napkin and spread it on her lap.
“I don’t understand,” said Darlene.
Ginger coughed. Then she said, slowly, “I’m a swindler.”
“Oh,” said Darlene. She rubbed her face with her hands. Then she laughed. “Should I be hiding my purse? Are you going to steal money from people?”
“No,” said Ginger. “I don’t need to anymore.”
Darlene seemed to want to steer the discussion back to more familiar territory. “What does your family think of your job?” she asked, carefully.
“I haven’t talked to them in sixty years,” Ginger said. They had lost their parents suddenly, their mother to illness, their father to lust — when their mother had died of tuberculosis, their father left Brooklyn to pursue a stripper in Louisiana. He left a note with some train fare and an address for an aunt in Orange Hills, Los Angeles.
They tried the first phone booth on the street. When the number didn’t work there, they tried another. By the fourth phone booth, they realized that there was no neighborhood Orange Hills and there was no aunt. At the time, the girls had between them forty-three dollars.
“You want to know why I’m here?” Darlene asked. She looked dazed, as though she’d just seen something explode. “His name was Warren. One minute we were finishing each other’s sentences. The next minute he packed his bags. Now I am twenty-two years old and afraid I will never find the one.”
Waiters came out carrying ignited baked Alaskas. Sparklers on the desserts fizzled, and a faint smoky odor filled the air.
“I went to my parents’ house,” said Darlene “Big mistake, they packed me off to the glaciers to have fun—”
Ginger did not want to spend one moment of this week comforting someone else. She folded her napkin, stood up. “Well,” said Ginger, “I hope you have a grand time.” Then she turned and walked across the room. The ship was approaching the first glaciers. Sliding down the mountains the ice was rushed and utterly still. The glacial ice was pale blue and huge pieces drifted by, like the ruined bones of a giant. She watched the pale bones of ice float by her and wondered when she would forget her name.
Her awareness had been her great gift: of the best hour to meet the lonely, of the hairstyle that would make her look most innocent, of the raised eyebrow that indicated a person’s longing, and of course, the moment when she knew that what a person owned would belong to her. Sitting on a train, she would feel the money, a roll wrapped around her hip, ride the click of the train along the tracks. She sometimes tried to imagine what freedom could feel like, for in its place was an immediate, dangerous urge to chain herself to another. She wanted to be the imposters she claimed to be: the lost cousin, the secret aunt, the high school classmate, the one who had loved from afar. When she acted as these people, she conjured up the feelings she believed she would have; she enjoyed her suckers’ gratitude. They saw some goodness in her, and as the night deepened, she sometimes believed she saw their reflections in the dark train windows, sad, unholy ghosts in the glass.
There was a knock on her door at ten A.M. It was the girl from dinner. “Remember me?” she said. “I’m your seatmate. I wanted to go to the chocolate buffet.” She clutched her own hands fiercely. “Who wants to gorge on chocolate alone?”
It was the tyranny of the normal, the attempts of regular people to energize their lives. It was ten in the morning and she could hear the rapid footsteps of the other passengers as they rushed to fill their mouths with sweetness. The girl was insistent and Ginger found herself in the long, winding line. All of the passengers appeared to have risen for this experience. To maintain order, a waiter walked through the crowd, doling out, with silver tongs, chunks of milk chocolate to eager hands. Another waiter, dressed as a Kodiak bear, was offering cups of hot chocolate spiked with rum. Many of the passengers had dressed up — in loose-fitting sweatsuits, draping shirts — to celebrate the impending gluttony. There was a radiant excitement in the air.
Darlene was chatty. “After this I go on a diet,” the girl said. “A major one. Celery and water for weeks—”
Ginger knew, suddenly, that she herself would never go on another diet. She pressed her hands to her cheeks, her lips, feeling a terrible fierce love for her body. She wanted all the chocolate, fiercely. All. She moved quickly, placing truffles, chocolate-dipped potato chips, macaroons, chocolate torte, mousse, fudge on her tray. She was so hungry she was in pain.
When they sat down, she looked at the girl and she wanted to convince her of something; she wanted to shout into Darlene’s ear.