Strangers

had tried to salvage the marriage by coercing Alan into a carefully planned three-week vacation. She believed that part of their problem was that they spent too little time together. He was a baccarat dealer in one hotel, and she was employed in another, and they frequently worked different shifts, slept on different schedules. Just the two of them - and Marcie - embarking upon an adventurous three-week car trip seemed a good way to repair their damaged relationship.
        Unfortunately but predictably, her scheme had not worked. After the vacation, upon their return to Vegas, Alan had been more promiscuous than before. He seemed determined - driven - to take a poke at anything in skirts. In fact, it was almost as if the car trip had somehow pushed him over the edge, for the number and intensity of his one-night stands developed a manic quality, a frightening desperation. Three months later, in October of that year, he walked out on her and Marcie.
        The only good thing about the car trip had been the brief encounter with that young woman doctor who had been driving cross-country from Stanford to Boston on, she'd said, her first vacation ever. Jorja still remembered the woman's name: Ginger Weiss. Although they had met only once, and then for little more than an hour, Ginger Weiss had quite unwittingly changed Jorja's life. The doctor had been so very young - so slender, pretty, feminine - it had been difficult to accept that she was really a doctor, yet she'd been uncommonly selfassured and competent. Deeply impressed by Ginger Weiss during that encounter, Jorja was later motivated by the doctor's example. She'd always thought of herself as a born cocktail waitress, incapable of anything more challenging, but when Alan walked out, she had remembered Dr. Weiss and decided to make more of herself than she had previously thought possible.
        During the past eleven months, Jorja had taken business management courses at UNLV, squeezing them into an already hectic schedule. When she finished paying the bills that Alan had left her, she would build a nest egg so she could eventually open her own business, a dress shop. She had worked out a very detailed plan, revising and honing it until it was realistic, and she knew she would stick with it.
        It was a shame that she would never have a chance to thank Ginger Weiss. Of course, it was not any favor that Dr. Weiss had performed that so deeply affected Jorja; it was not so much what the doctor had done as what she was. Anyway, at twenty-seven Jorja's prospects were more exciting than they had been previously.
        Now, she turned off Desert Inn Road onto Pawnee Drive, a street of comfortable homes behind the Boulevard Mall. She stopped in front of Kara Persaghian's house and got out of the car. The front door opened before she reached it, and Marcie rushed out, into her arms, shouting happily. "Mommy!
        Mommy!" And Jorja was at last able to forget about her job, the Texan, the argument with the pit boss, and the dilapidated condition of the Chevette. She squatted down and hugged her daughter. When all else failed to cheer her, she could count on Marcie for a lift.
        "Mommy," the girl said, "did you have a great day?"
        "Yes, honey, I did. You smell like peanut butter."
        "Cookies! Aunt Kara made peanut butter cookies! I had a great day, too. Mommy, do you know why elephants came… ummm, why they came all the way from Africa to live in this country?" Marcie giggled. " 'Cause we got orchestras here, and elephants just love to dance!" She giggled again. "Isn't that silly."
        Even allowing for maternal prejudice, Jorja knew that Marcie was an adorable child. The girl had her mother's hair, so dark brown that it was virtually black, and her mother's dusky complexion. Her eyes were a striking contrast to the rest of her, not brown like Jorja's but blue like her father's. She had an immensely appealing gamine quality.
        Marcie's huge eyes opened wide. "Hey, know what day it is?"
        "I sure do. Almost Christmas Eve."
        "Will be soon as it's dark. Aunt Kara's giving us cookies to take home. You know, Santa's already left the North Pole, and he's started going down chimleys already, but in other parts of the world, of course, where it's dark, not chimleys here. Aunt Kara says I been so bad all year I'll only get a necklace made out of coal, but she's just teasing. Isn't she just teasing,