Refund by Karen E. Bender Read Free Book Online Page A

cardigan that Ginger believed she had seen in the cruise gift shop and a strand of pearls. Her shoulders were thrust stiffly backward, giving her the posture of a rooster. The girl’s earnest quality shone through her outfit like the glow of a light-bulb through a lampshade.
    â€œWho are you?” asked Ginger.
    â€œI am his dream.”
    â€œNo,” said Ginger. “Don’t try so hard. Wear your usual and add an expensive piece of jewelry. Make him guess why.”
    Darlene shrugged off her cardigan and stepped forward too purposefully, like a salesgirl trying to close a deal.
    â€œI can buy you a Rolls-Royce,” she said, her voice too bright, to the air.
    â€œNo, no! Just hint that you went on a trip to—Paris. The four-star hotels have the best sheets. Nothing he can prove,” said Ginger.
    Darlene looked at the photos laid out.
    â€œSo who are these people?” asked Darlene.
    Ginger stood up and picked up a photo. “Here I am on New Year’s Eve, 1959,” said Ginger. “The presidential suite of the Beverly Hills Hotel.” She still could see the way the pink shrimp sat on the icebeds, as though crawling through clean snow. “I lit Frank Sinatra’s cigarette,” said Ginger. “I lent my lipstick to Marilyn Monroe.” She remembered the weight of the sequined dress against her skin, the raucous laughter. “Don’t I look happy?” she asked.
    â€œI would be happy,” said Darlene.
    Ginger’s mind moved in her skull, and she felt her legs crumble. She grabbed hold of a chair and clung to it.
    â€œWhoa! Are you okay?”
    She grasped Darlene’s hand and felt her body move thickly to the bed.
    â€œWhat happened? Should I call a doctor?”
    â€œNo,” said Ginger sharply. “No.”
    She let Darlene arrange her into a sitting position, her feet up on the bed. Her arms and legs fell open in the obedient posture of the ill. The girl got her a drink of water from the tap, and Ginger sipped it. It was sweet.
    â€œThank you,” Ginger said.
    They sat. Ginger picked up another photo. “This was when I met the vice president of MGM and had him convinced I was a duchess from Belgium—”
    Darlene frowned. Ginger realized that it was the same picture she had just described. “They were all at the party,” she said, quickly. “Sinatra and Marilyn and duchesses. It was in Miami. Brazil. The moon was so white it looked blue—”
    Darlene looked at her. “I wish I could have been there,” she said. She reached out and briefly touched Ginger’s hand.
    Ginger looked down at the sight of Darlene’s hand on her own. At first, the gesture was so startling she viewed it as though it were a sculpture. Then she could not look at the girl, for Ginger had tears in her eyes.
    W HEN E VELYN AND G INGER BEGAN TO LIE, THE WORLD BROKE apart, revealing unearthly, beautiful things. They began with extravagant tales of woe, deformed babies, murdered husbands, terminal illnesses. They constructed Hair-Ray caps for bald men, yarmulkes with thin metal inside so that in the sunlight their heads would get hot and they would think they were growing hair. They bought nun’s habits at a costume shop and said they were collecting for the construction of a new church.
    She remembered particularly one scam in which she wandered through the cavernous Los Angeles train station with a cardboard sign declaring: HELP. MUTE. HALF-BLIND . When strangers came up to her, she wrote on a chalkboard that had chalk attached to it on a string: HELP ME FIND MY SISTER OUTSIDE . She handed the stranger, usually an elderly lady, her purse, an open straw bag. She let the stranger guide her out the door and carefully fell forward, tilting the bag so that an envelope inside fell out. Ginger did not pick it up. Then there was Evelyn running inside, yelling, “Violet!”
    Evelyn looked in the purse and said,