Driven to Ink

no, no,” for each.

I personally liked a small black one that perched on the back of my head, with a netting over my forehead and eyes, like they wore in the forties and fifties. For a second, Joel was starting to agree but then pulled it off my head and said, “You look like a gangster’s moll.”

“And what’s wrong with that?”

“We’re trying to destroy the Mob stereotype here in Vegas.”

“We?”

“Me and Steve Wynn.”

“Oh, and you’re best buddies, are you?”

He chuckled and put the black hat back on its mannequin head. “I’ve seen him.”

“From a distance.”

“In the men’s room.”

“No.” I knew what he was saying.

“Close enough to touch him,” he added.

We fell laughing out of the store’s doorway, back into the mall. It was nice to think of something other than dead people and rats and blue cars for a little while.

“I worked up an appetite,” Joel said.

“I can’t have another burger. I’ll start mooing,” I said. “I’m sorry, Joel, but I need Chinese or even a hot dog.”

The minute I said Chinese, he started salivating. “Noodles?” he said.

“Opposite direction,” I said.

We turned and almost ran back toward the Shoppes at the Palazzo, which were announced overhead on a sign at the end of the Venetian Grand Canal Shoppes’s canal.

We were circling around the walkway, about parallel with the magnificent yet incredibly wasteful waterfall, when I thought I saw someone familiar up ahead.

I grabbed Joel’s arm and yanked him over to the edge of the walkway so I’d have a better view of the short elderly woman with a large cheetah-print tote bag hung over her shoulder. Her white hair was pulled up into something that looked like diamonds. A tiara, maybe. I was too far away to see exactly what it was.

But I wasn’t too far away to see the tattoos.

“That looks like Sylvia Coleman,” Joel said loudly.

The woman turned. And waved.

It was Sylvia Coleman.

Chapter 25

I was so stunned to see her that I couldn’t speak for a few minutes. She scurried over to us, her smile wide.

“Fancy meeting you here!” she exclaimed.

“My shop is just down there,” I said, pointing behind us.

“Oh, that’s right, dear.” She waved her hand through the air absently. “This place confuses me. All these stores and that silly river. What’s a river doing in the middle of a mall anyway?”

I totally agreed with her. But I didn’t have time to think about that. I wanted to know where she’d been and how she’d ended up here, now. I opened my mouth to ask, but she spoke first.

“I’m looking for a bathroom.”

I knew there was a ladies’ room downstairs and behind the escalator, near the Blue Man Group Theatre. It was tucked away in a corner that was fairly isolated when the Blue Man Group wasn’t performing, and there I’d be able to question her without anyone listening in. “I can take you,” I said, nodding at Joel. “Can you go get some take- out? I’ll meet you back at the shop.”

Joel didn’t want to go. He wanted to stay and find out what was up with Sylvia, too, but he couldn’t come to the ladies’ room with us, so he nodded reluctantly. “Sure. What do you want?”

“Anything but beef,” I said.

“He’s a big one,” Sylvia said as we watched Joel lumber away. “But it looks like he’s losing some weight.”

“He is,” I said.

Sylvia tucked her hand into the crook of my arm. Her cheetah-print bag hung on her other shoulder. “Now, dear, I really do need that toilet.”

Not wanting any sort of accident, I whisked her around and down the escalator, a little bit of the waterfall spray hitting our faces.

“That feels good,” Sylvia said, “but rather unnatural in a desert, don’t you think?”

Exactly.

“Cat got your tongue?” she asked.

“Where have you been? Jeff’s been all over looking for you. Your car was found at the Grand Canyon. We’ve been worried sick.” Once I started, I couldn’t stop. I hadn’t meant to say anything until we were alone.

Sylvia rolled her eyes, threw a hand up in the air and said, “Oh, that. That car finally broke down. I told Bernie we should’ve taken the Gremlin.”

“But how-”

“We hitched a ride.”

“Hitched?”

She stuck out her thumb. “You know. You’re not that young, are you? Hitching was the only way to travel once upon a time.”

And I could see her, too, throwing her thumb into the wind and seeing where it could get her.

“But how-”

“We got a ride on a bus. A bus full of old people. Can you imagine?” Sylvia chuckled. “They felt sorry for us. We took their tour to Sedona. We paid them,” she added quickly, as if she would be accused of being a moocher.

“So you’ve been in Sedona this whole time?”

“That’s right, dear.”

“And what are you doing here?”

She looked puzzled for a second, as if she didn’t quite know. Then, “We got here last night. This was the last stop on the tour. Since we paid, we got a room, like everyone else. Figured we might as well take advantage. Never stayed in one of these fancy-schmancy places before. Do you know how many pillows you get on the bed here? Unbelievable.”

Yes, it was unbelievable. “You’ve been in town since last night?” I asked. “Why didn’t you let Jeff know?”

Sylvia looked at me quizzically. “Am I supposed to check in with my son on my honeymoon?”

“No, I guess not,” I said. “How long do you have your room here?”

“Two nights. I’m starting to get a little antsy to get home, though. There are just so many pillows I can take after a while.”

She was dead serious. And she wasn’t done yet.

“Bernie did go out earlier to pick up the Gremlin, but he said something was wrong with it, so he ended up renting a car instead. Until we get the Buick back.”

I wasn’t surprised something was “wrong” with the Gremlin. The almost-forty-year-old car shouldn’t have even been on the road.

“Where’s Bernie now?” I asked.

“Bernie likes to gamble. A little, not a lot. He’s in the casino, trying his hand at the tables. But me-Well, I need that toilet.”

I didn’t want to point out that there were restrooms in the casino. How she ended up wandering around the Palazzo shops was a mystery. But then again, much about Sylvia didn’t make sense.

We had walked around the waterfall, and I led Sylvia to the ladies’ room. As I suspected, there was no one else there.