All the Beautiful Girls: An uplifting story of freedom, love and identity

THE GREYHOUND TERMINAL was located within the Stardust Casino, and even though it was the middle of the night, people swarmed all about her. Standing with a heavy suitcase on either side of her, Ruby stalled, overwhelmed.

Slot machines were tucked into every nook and cranny, and most of them were occupied. Women’s hips oozed from the backs of their chairs and flowed like slow, lugubrious lava over the edges of their stools. Their eyes were transfixed, glazed over, as they grabbed the levers. She heard raucous bells, the jangle of coins falling into metal trays, and she saw flashing lights. Men with cigarettes dangling from the corners of their mouths, neglected ashen tips grown long, rolled up their sleeves, inserted more coins, and waited for the spinning to stop and land on their futures.

Ruby thought she saw hope mixed with despair, longing brushing away reality’s faint protestations. Their faces held an intense desire for something better, something else. She saw homeward-bound bus passengers standing in line with their emptied pockets, the light gone from their eyes. She saw insomniacs who let habit carry them someplace, nowhere.

With sudden clarity, she also saw herself, and she panicked. Her plan was inadequate. She was in the wrong place. This was a mistake. She would be consumed here, disappear like flash paper in a magician’s hands. She’d been a fool to follow Mrs. Baumgarten’s advice.

Moving to a wall, Ruby leaned against it, tried to catch her breath and force the encroaching tunnel vision to retreat. Her heart shouted. She cupped her hands about her nose and mouth, breathed. I’m just tired, she tried to convince herself. That’s all. Just tired, unwashed. Too many hours on the bus to sustain hope and optimism. Don’t panic.

“Looks like you could use a drink.” A sinewy man, wearing a short-sleeved white T-shirt with a pack of cigarettes jammed into one rolled-up sleeve, started to reach for her arm. He had tight hills of biceps and his palms were suffused with blood, red hot.

Ruby pulled back. “No,” she said.

“C’mon. Beautiful newcomer like you. Let me carry your suitcases.” A rose tattoo lurked beneath the thick black fur of his forearm.

Ruby took hold of the handles of her bags, straightened herself. “Please go away.”

“Bet you could use a place to stay. I got room.” He grinned.

He was standing too close. She could smell grease and onions.

“Ruby!”

She heard the name, but it took a moment for her to realize that it was her name.

“Ruby Wilde!” Mason Maddox called again, stepping between her and the insistent creep. “Glad we found you.” He gave the other man a hardened stare, and the man walked away slowly, looked back once, shook his head as if it were Ruby’s loss, not his.

Ruby wished she ’d had something more sustaining than the milkshake, which now left her shaky and needful.

“Girl, this isn’t good. I knew it. Shouldna let you go off all alone.” Mason picked up one of her suitcases and added it to his own. “This settles things.” He turned, motioned to his daughter. “Rose? This here’s Ruby. Ruby, Rose. Now,” he said, nodding at his daughter, “you get her other bag.”

“But—” Ruby tried feebly.

“No ifs, ands, or buts. Rose’s got one of those teensy-weensy VW bugs. We’re gonna squeeze into it like a pack of sardines and give you a ride to wherever it is you’re going.”

Rose was elegant in tight jeans, with a bright red silk blouse, gold hoop earrings. She smelled good—something wistful, floral. Straight, golden-blonde hair was parted down the center and hung just past her shoulders. She had clear, grey-blue eyes that made Ruby think of rainbows and prisms.

“Daddy, hold on a minute. Let her talk.” Rose smiled a warm welcome. “Sometimes you can’t get a word in edgewise with Daddy. What do you want, Ruby?”

Ruby was tempted to say Rescue, or To get back on the bus, but she didn’t. Instead, she pulled from her purse the AAA guide the Aviator had given her, flipped to the page where he’d starred several entries with a ballpoint pen. “Do you know how I could get to one of these motels?” She handed Rose the directory.

Rose ran her finger down the page. “Bombay Motor Court is the decent one. It’s got kitchenettes and is close enough to let you walk or catch a bus between the casinos. While you look for work, I mean.” Rose handed the book back to Ruby. “Daddy says you’re a dancer. So cool. Why don’t we drive you there? You must be beat.”

“I’d be so grateful,” Ruby said with relief.

“Now, Daddy. Now we can help her.” Rose winked and picked up Ruby’s other scuffed thrift-store bag. “On the way, we ’ll show you a bit of Vegas.”

Outside the bus terminal, stupefying neon displays towered like mountain cliffs, and the superheated desert air burned her nostrils. The Stardust’s marquee featured a globe of blue-and-green neon, surrounded by pink-and-white rays; blue-and-pink stars twinkled off and on. Two times over it said Stardust in white lights, and planets whirled about the earth as if it were the center of the universe. Another brightly lit sign said, ’67 Lido of Paris—Grand Prix 67, and beneath that, a smaller sign read In the Lounge: Kim Sisters, Big Tiny Little, and Lou Styles. Ruby recognized Big Tiny Little as the piano player on Aunt Tate ’s dreadful Lawrence Welk Show, but he also played for Dinah Shore. His fingers flew across the piano as if the keys were electrified. She’d seen the Kim Sisters performing on The Ed Sullivan Show in their tight, satin cheongsam dresses. Maybe she’d seen them with Dean Martin, too. It was unreal. Ruby really was in the land of the famous.

Wedged into what passed for a backseat, her knees bumping the back of the bug’s front seats, she felt her flame reignite like a furnace’s pilot light bursting from a tiny blue maintenance flame to a full bar of fire. She could do this. She could and would dance on the same stage as Big Tiny Little and the Kim Sisters. Ruby smiled. She sounded like the children’s book—the little train. I think I can. I think I can. I think I can. Well, there were worse mottos.

Rose caught Ruby’s smile in the rearview mirror. “Feeling better?”

“One hundred percent better,” Ruby said, and looked for a handle so that she could roll down the window, stick her head out, and see more of the neon-filled sky. She found an ashtray but no handle—the VW’s backseat window didn’t open. She sat back, thought about how the neon kept night at bay.

“So, this is the Strip, obviously,” Rose began. “The Frontier and the Desert Inn are behind us. Coming up is the Flamingo, and then across from it, my place. Also known as Caesars Palace.”

The Flamingo had a marvelous bubbly champagne tower that lit up gradually, like neon effervescence. Ruby had never had champagne; it was one of the things she intended to do—to let bubbles tickle her nose, fizz and pop on her tongue. She started a mental list of neverhads: avocado, lobster, baked Alaska.

But it was Caesars Palace that took her breath away. “Oh my God,” she said.

“Pretty spectacular, isn’t it?” Rose turned to look at Ruby.

“It’s giant!” Ruby gasped. A series of huge fountains and marble statues led toward a magnificent semicircle of columns that enfolded patrons in a generous embrace.

“Over thirty acres,” Rose said, slowing down to give Ruby a better chance to gawk. “The theater-restaurant seats a thousand, and there are several dining rooms, two health clubs, even a beauty salon. See the trees? Well, if not, you will in the daylight. Anyway, they’re genuine Italian cypress trees, imported. Several theaters—the Circus Maximus, Nero’s Nook, the Roman Theatre.”

“Good grief.”

“I know.”

“It literally leaves me breathless.”

“That’s what it’s meant to do,” Mason said. “You’re in another world.”

“Beauty salons and health spas?” Ruby asked.

“You never have to leave.”

“Also on purpose,” Mason pronounced, and Ruby heard the disapproval in his voice.

“Daddy doesn’t like Vegas.” Rose paused. “But what he doesn’t seem to understand,” she said, “is that people come here to escape. To get away. To feel a bit of magic for a little while.”

“People come here to be robbed of their hard-earned wages.”

“Isn’t it the place of dreams?” Ruby asked.

“Oh, dear girl,” Mason said, and then let it rest.

“Don’t listen to him,” Rose said. “Sometimes, Daddy can be such a square.”

“Realist,” he countered.

“No imagination.”

“No delusions.”

Ruby sat back, halfheartedly listening to the father-daughter banter while she reveled in the fact that she’d done it. She’d escaped. And now here she was, in Las Vegas. Scallywag’s stubborn determination had paid off.