Lady Luck's Map Of Vegas

Chapter One India The sun is setting over Pikes Peak when I get home Tuesday afternoon. The play of pink light is as delicate as a teacup, so beautiful that a muscle in my neck untwists. The mountain feels like a relative. I find myself checking in with it a thousand times a day, glancing over to see where the light is, whether the snowy cap is white or gray or pink, whether I can see a hidden valley. My passion for it surprises me. I grew up with it, after all, looked askance at the tourists crowding into town every summer, shooting endless, endless photos of it. It was, in those days, only a mountain. I didn't understand the appeal. Now its burly steadiness against the horizon is something I can count on, unlike life. I fit the key into my front door and take one last glance at the Peak before carrying my load inside. The canvas bag of supplies goes on the breakfast bar between the kitchen and the sparse living room that I've not decorated with much of anything because I'm not planning to stay. The mail I hold in my hand, because it is my policy to handle each piece of mail only once. The bills go in one pile, the junkmost of itin another, the business letters in a third pile. Two are from clients, and I take the time to open those first. They are checks. One is a retainer for a site I've agreed to design for a Denver photographer, the other a heftyyesfinal payment for an enormous, complicated site for an eccentric old writer. I smile, thinking of him. Paul David Walters, a grizzled adventurer with four ex-wives, led me on a merry chase for three months, changing his mind every ten minutes, but his wits were sharp and his insights into the function of the Web were brilliant. It's the best site I've designed in years and it is in my portfolio. The payment, too, is quite sweet. Solvency for another three months, four if I'm frugal. Tucked between the utility bill and a flyer for a new restaurant down the street is a postcard from my twin sister, Gypsy. I glance involuntarily at the bag of groceries on the counter, then pick up the card for a closer look. It's an index card with a miniaturized version of one of Gypsy's paintings on the blank side. She works mainly with descansos, the roadside crosses planted at the sites of accidents, and graveyards, and this is an abstract graveyard with a blur of pinks and yellows and stylized crosses, so odd and beautiful it draws the eye almost against one's will. Gypsy's paintings invite the viewer to come closer, lean in, hear a secret, a mystery. I stare at this one a long time, wishing I really could. On the back, where the lines are, is a message scribbled in Gypsy's pointed, spidery hand. Unfortunately, the only thing I can read is my name, India, and the date, which she's written in numbers at the top. Last week. That's a good sign. The rest is written in a language I wished I remembered, the one we created as babies and used between ourselves until we lost it at around eleven or twelvewhich is actually quite late; most twins stop using their secret languages by first or second gradeor rather, I lost it. Gypsy kept it, and when she is delusional, as she is now, it is the only language she uses to communicate with me. I stare at the words with great concentration, as I always do, sure that the veil between past and present will lift one of these days, and I will suddenly remember the code. I even went to a hypnotist once to see if she could help me. It hadn't worked. And no miracle occurs now, either. The only clue I can gather from the card is the postmark: Tucumcari, New Mexico. It's something. I put it down on the counter, take off my coat and hang it in the nearly empty coat closet,Samuel, Barbara is the author of 'Lady Luck's Map Of Vegas', published 2005 under ISBN 9780345469120 and ISBN 0345469127.