How I Spent My Summer Vacation by Gillian Roberts

perform. It wouldn’t help Sasha’s mess or my pending romantic incompatibility, but I’d be doing something .
    Lucky shook his head and chewed away. “Plin.” He sounded like somebody talking through flannel.
    Eric translated. “She’s playing. He’s not allowed.” He wasn’t making sense. I imagined Lucky’s mother turning a jump rope, covering her eyes for hide and seek, tossing a ball. “Have to be twenty-one,” Eric said, “to get in.”
    “She’s in the casino?”
    The little boy nodded and finished off his hot dog. “I’m dyin’ of thirst,” he said.
    I wondered how long he’d been on his own while his mother gambled. I wondered if she’d understand if I tracked her down and gave her whatever piece of my mind I could spare. I wondered if she’d remember her kid if I reported her to Family Services.
    Oh, God, but I didn’t want to have further doings with the police just now. I handed Lucky a lemonade.
    “She said she’d only be a while,” Lucky said.
    “He was here last night, too,” Eric said. “I made him go back inside the casino. It was like dark .”
    The hot dog smelled delicious, but suddenly my stomach didn’t feel up to it. I offered it to the boy, but he declared himself full, so I held it like a small pennant. “Come on, Lucky.” It felt indescribably sad calling him that, and even sadder that he was so willing to go with me, to trust me, to be taken care of. “Let’s find your mom.”
    I wished I had never come to this city.

Seven
    “HEY!” IT WAS THE HOMELESS woman who lived under the boardwalk. Georgette. She raised her fingers in an almost military salute. “Who you got there?” She lounged on a bench by the stairs that led to the beach, her thin hair ruffling in the breeze. She wore a knee-length denim skirt with a ragged hemline over a long plaid skirt that touched the tops of her orange socks. A small and rumpled stack of newspapers was next to her, but she wasn’t reading them. I was glad of that, because the topmost page featured the portrait of Jesse Reese.
    There was no escaping the murder. There was no trying not to think about it.
    Georgette was reading a thick paperback that looked bloated, as if it had done time in a tub.
    “This is Lucky,” I said. The little boy stared at her gravely.
    “Yours?”
    “Borrowing him for a while.” I could see the faded but still legible title of her book. War and Peace. Her thumb held her place far into its depths. She followed the track of my eyes. “Saw this goin’ out to sea one day.”
    So that’s what other people did with their overly ambitious biodegradable summer reading lists.
    “Nearly done now,” she said. “It’s good, except those Russians have so many names it hurts the eyes. So hello, Lucky. Makes sense I’d meet you today. This is a lucky one for me, all right.” She leaned closer to the little boy. “I’ve been at war, but now I’m at peace,” she said in a stage whisper. “Get it?”
    Lucky shook his head.
    “Don’t have to.” She flashed her gap-toothed smile. Then almost immediately, her expression darkened. “I had my own kid, once.” She looked up at the clear blue sky, blinking hard.
    I watched her mood dip and wobble and was reminded of Sasha earlier today. I knew what had hit Sasha and sent her reeling, and I hoped it was short-term, and that she’d regain her equilibrium soon. I wondered what had slammed into Georgette with such hurricane force that it had permanently destabilized her emotions.
    She regained composure and sniffed deeply. “Good air here, ozone, they call it. Nice people, too.” She nodded in the direction of the hotels. “The chambermaids over there, they let me wash up in the rooms. Before they make it over for the next people. Who does it hurt? Nobody did that for me anywhere else. Better money than Philly, too. People are on vacation, in good moods, they share.”
    Speaking of which. “Want this?” I asked. She accepted the hot dog for which I