Free Other Resort Cities by Tod Goldberg Page A

hearings and to get Natalya legal for her arrival in the U.S. Her parents ended up giving her $10,000, told her it wasn’t a loan, that it was a gift, that they were so proud of her.
    Natalya lived with Tania for five years. Five good years, Tania thinks now, dropping off drinks in the slot aisles for nickel and quarter tips, though like everything else about the past, she’s sure that’s just the romantic version. She loved Natalya, though. This Tania is sure of. And if Natalya never really loved her, that’s okay, too. She’d given Natalya the chance and there was worth in that.
     
    After her shift ends at six, Tania walks down Palm Canyon Drive and looks into the shop windows, examining the silly T-shirts and bumper stickers (“What happens in Palm Springs, stays in Palm Springs . . . usually in a Time Share”),
the gaudy jewelry only a vacationer would find the impulse for, the fancy clothes she never sees inside the casino, but assumes someone must wear somewhere. She’s always reading about these gala charities and benefit balls held in Palm Springs but can’t imagine who the people are who attend such things or where they buy their clothes. Surely none of them pile into the Mercedes and come to the tourist traps to do their shopping.
    Tania pauses in front of Chico’s and peers inside at the shoppers, all of whom look to be around her age, but are infected with what she thinks of as Realtoritis: their hair about five years past the trend, their tans rubbed on, their heels inappropriately high. And yet they exude an air of success, as if by showing property they somehow glean personal value.
    She wonders, if she were a dental hygienist—if she somehow managed to finally pass chemistry, which she failed three times while she lived in Las Vegas, twice in the year she waited on the adoption, once in the six months after Natalya ran away (and really, she didn’t run away, she just left)—if people would be able to tell just by looking at her. Maybe she might be mistaken for a doctor occasionally. That wouldn’t be so awful. And maybe people would treat her with respect without understanding why they did it. Cocktailing was never her dream job, but then nothing else struck her as all that compelling, either. When she was young, if there was a chance to fuck up, Tania usually took it, just to see what it felt like. And the result was that she felt, after forty-seven years, that she’d lived, even if she didn’t really have much to show for it anymore.
    The idea of being a hygienist was a good one, and she really pursued it during that year of waiting, if nothing else because it looked good on all of her applications. She wasn’t
just a cocktail waitress, she was “studying to become a dental hygienist,” and people at the various agencies seemed to treat that with some dignity. But now, staring at the women trying on skirts too short by a decade, she thinks that it’s all the same in the end. Just a job. Just a way to afford the things you want. Tania doesn’t want anything anymore. She needs to find Natalya, if only to know that she’s alive, but even that has quelled some in the intervening years as she’s learned how frequently teenagers adopted out of Russia simply pick up and leave when they have a little money or the keys to the car or the PIN code to their parents’ATM card.
    Tania checks her watch. She agreed to meet Gordon at 6:30 in front of the statue of former Palm Springs Mayor Sonny Bono that graces a courtyard up the street from the casino. He asked if he could buy her a drink after work, and when she told him she didn’t drink anymore, which wasn’t strictly true, he didn’t flinch. “Then let me buy you a lamp. You must like lights, right? I know a great little lamp store. They even give you the shades and bulbs, too. It’s a real deal.”
    “You’re crazy,” she said, but agreed to meet him anyway and now was going to be late if she didn’t hustle. Sundays were always sad