For Rainey, living in Boston and being near the ocean was never enough. Nor were the histories associated with the cradle of liberty in America. Even the closeness of New York City--that megalopolis of insanity--didn't satisfy her desire for something else, something more spiritual. It became a weather thing.

Her decision to move westward, while being a searching need, was also prompted by a great deal of her friends moving out of Boston. Why continue to live someplace where suddenly you don't know anyone? Why not go to a new place where you don't know anyone?

Rainey set her sights on Las Vegas: land of the endless slot machine; Store 24's of marriage; Hoover Dam; neon lights.

With her long, lean dancers' legs Rainey hoped to latch onto a show girl situation. That was a dream she'd carried since childhood when she saw a televised show from Las Vegas. The glitter and glitz displayed on the small screen filled her young mind with visions of chorus lines, kicking up her heels to some sappy Broadway pop tune from the likes of Gershwin, Porter, or Rodgers; of wearing some skimpy costume that showed off her legs.

She had danced. Not professionally, but Rainey had danced ballet in a number of amateur productions. From the time she could walk, until she graduated college, Rainey had danced all the classics, Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, even some modern dance in a Twyla Tharp revival in her home town in upstate New York. Joining a chorus line would be just the thing to do--now that she'd turned thirty--and move her in a new direction. At six feet tall she would certainly stand out in a chorus line, and maybe snag other, more lucrative or advanced positions.

She hadn't danced in years, had in fact kept in shape by smoking and drinking in moderation. She believed getting back to dancer's strength would be a snap.

"It's only Vegas," she'd once said to a co-worker when she decided to move. "How professional could they be? Elvis and Wayne Newton both worked there."

In the spring of '92, Rainey packed up her one-piece stereo, folded her futon sofa-bed, threw out all her corporate clothing, put her casual ones into a black bag, tossed them all into her beat up BMW and tore out of town. She left nothing behind, no boyfriend, no real close friends, no debts. She was free and easy as she cruised US 80 cross-country.

When she hit Vegas, Rainey discovered suitable housing in Desert Grove, a mobile home park that was neither desert nor grove, but unmanicured lawns and pot-holed asphalt. It was actually two miles outside of Vegas proper, an area that seemed to be one trailer park after another, all with suitably nonsensical names: Desert Oasis, Lush Cactus, Sand Creek. It was a quaint suburban area. She had driven around Las Vegas searching for a nice apartment like she had in Boston, in some brownstone. But Las Vegas being Las Vegas afforded no such luxury. She would take what she could get and hope the weather didn't pull a Dorothy & Toto on her.

"Does Nevada have tornadoes?" she asked the rental agent.

Faced with having no job and an active sense of adventure, Rainey lugged her life over to the Desert Grove and took up residence on North Orange Court. There was a 1980 Jetstream trailer sharing the cul-de-sac with five other similarly anchored mobile homes. Each had their own small lawns of scraggly grass, grass as brown as fur. This was the desert, afterall.

Desert Grove had its own recreation area, complete with a small pool and cracked tennis courts, a mini shopping plaza and a nine hole golf course. What children were around didn't run the streets in Rainey's section of Desert Grove. Her neighborhood in Boston, had been constantly filled with bikes, carts, wagons, skateboards, running and shouting. The relative calm of the street she now resided on felt desperately quiet.

The women she noticed around the park were grossly overweight, with large moles dotting their faces and arms. If they weren't large women they were sickly thin, with pale complexions, wearing tank tops and black jeans, and hair piled high on top of their heads. The children for the most part were unruly and dirty, and the men--who all sported beer bellies and bad haircuts as though it were a passage into manhood--were the most sexist men Rainey had ever come across. She heard the crude mumblings when she drove by or shopped in the area. The women were just as resentful of her. She was a tall, young woman, with a nice appearance; unburdened by children, a life of drudgery, a slob for a husband, or too much hair.

Rainey, at first, would often compare herself to the denizens of Desert Grove to see where differences resided. She knew she wasn't overweight, merely out of shape; she had no moles, but an occasional pimple; her hair was straight and luxurious. While she was still relatively slim, she'd let her dancers' physique lapse. Her once taut stomach had a slight paunch; her muscular legs tired easily; cigarette smoking made walking up a short set of steps more of a burden than ever.

But after a couple months, Rainey felt she'd actually acclimated herself well to the Desert Grove trailer park. With little effort she was part of the Desert Grove social scene, hanging out at the laundromat with the other dwellers, swapping relationship stories. Life in Desert Grove was simple: smoke; do laundry; bitch about life. She never went out searching for a dance job. She figured the effort to get in shape was more than she was willing to endure. Instead she sat around her yard and waited for unemployment checks to arrive in the mail. She'd become a well-oiled cog in the machinery of the trailer park.

Eventually she was making a decision regarding a tattoo. She noticed a lot of the other female residents sported butterflies or roses. For Rainey it was a choice between a red and gold cobra that would circle the upper part of her left arm or a black bear cub on her left shoulder. She finally chose the bear cub. The cobra would have been a bit showy. She could hide the cub if she felt self-conscious about it.

For Rainey another main activity soon became sitting around the pool with the divorcees who collected food stamps or child support checks. They were always complaining about the worthlessness of the state, or their ex-husbands, who would occasionally turn up to excite the neighborhood with shouting matches and random gunfire. Rainey thrilled to the stories and absorbed all she could about the various characters. It was a new world she moved in and the excitement associated with it drove her on to a deeper desire for involvement.

One women interested Rainey more than the others. Her name was Gert, a very large woman with the most ratted out hair Rainey'd ever seen. Gert's constant lament, Rainey discovered, was about her ex-husbands. There were three and the complaint was the same: sex only when they wanted it, they made too little money, they were all overweight.

Rainey became close pals with Gert, her next door neighbor; another unemployed, mother of three, resident of Desert Grove. The friendship deepened when Gert needed to get away from her no-good rat of a second husband. He had shown up one night, drunk, and started shooting up Gert's trailer with his new handgun.

Rainey was willing to help, remembering her own father's tirades directed towards her mother. Rainey was twelve the last time she saw her father. He'd come home late and drunk as usual, started screaming at Rainey's mother, calling the dinner warmed over trash before he began to smack her around. His voice rose to hysterical levels while Rainey sat on the top step outside her upstairs bedroom. She heard the loud slap of his palm against her mother's delicate face; the endless crying and pleading from her mother for him to stop. Eventually the police showed up, called by a concerned neighbor, and took Rainey's father away. By that time her father was completely out of control and Rainey heard the police discussing ways to handle him.

Over the years Rainey'd occasionally heard from her father. The times were usually right after birthdays had passed. A couple days after she'd graduated from college he called. Rainey knew Gert's pain and what the kids would go through, which is why she invited Gert in after the screaming next door had started.

Gert was able to help Rainey get over her initial shyness concerning the cub tattoo. "You should show it more," Gert was always telling her.

Rainey soon started asking everyone if they wanted to see it. It had become a badge of honor, a way for her to say, "I'm surviving while living in a mobile home park." The tattoo verified that, yes, she no longer lived a quiet, staid life.

On the few occasions Rainey did pull herself together enough to go out, she would motor over to the beauty salon and have her hair ratted and piled high on her head. At first she was worried about her rich, thick red hair being teased and tortured by a comb, but the finished product, spied in the window of a store, pleased her. With her baggy, black sweatshirt hanging loosely, a pair of skintight black jeans, ratty red hair shooting out in all directions, and a cigarette dangling from her heavily rouged lips, Rainey was the Queen of Desert Grove.

"Rainey, I love your hair," said Gert from her lawn chair. Rainey had just returned from her first hair appointment. Gert's own dirty blond hair was always piled high on her head. Gert wore her traditional patio shift, a large floral print dress that disguised each and every large curve of Gert's body. To say she was overweight would have been understating it, but Gert revelled in her rotund size. She told Rainey that men loved women with meat.

"Just had it done Gert. I think I love it too."

Gert had Rainey spin around on her little plot of front lawn so she could get a good look. "The men at the pool will just eat you up. I won't be able to hang out with you 'til you change it back."

"There's still plenty of men for you."

"That's true. Men love women with meat." Gert swept a strand of her hair out of her eyes and tried to toss it back up on top of her head. "Should we go out dancin' tonight and show off your hair?"

"Sounds good. About nine?"

"Perfect. Max should have come and gone by then." Max was Gert's third husband. Max had a rather sporadic way of showing up and turning Gert's life into a mess. He too had sudden violent outbursts that required police supervision. Other times he could be selfish and act like a spoiled child by stomping his feet and holding his breath until Gert would give in to his ridiculous demands for sex. But she still loved him in a "he's the father of my children" kind of way. She used him too, extracting money from him when he'd been drinking and getting him to feel guilty and foolish for abandoning his kids. "Tonight he said he'd come by and drop off some papers for me to sign. I hope it's something to do with the divorce. I want ta get it over with."

That night at the Blue Bayou Bar it was Raineys' tattoo, not her hair, that caught the eye of a certain guy. He was slightly shorter than her, and had his long black hair pulled back into a loose ponytail. He introduced himself as Nash Kominski and asked her to dance. She noticed he had a tattoo, a woman's face, with blue eyes and brown hair curled behind her ears, covering the meaty part of his left arm. While he danced he constantly pushed his t-shirt sleeve up to reveal it. Rainey couldn't tell if he did it unconsciously or was trying to show off.

"I love your bear," he said, dancing around behind her and coming up close to her ear.

"What?" Rainey could barely hear him. The country music pulsed and pounded in her ears with the singer wailing about lost love and drinking away the pain.

Nash padded her shoulder blade softly. He smiled. "The Bear. I like your bear."

"Oh thanks" she said. "Hey, that's quite a tattoo you've got," she shouted. "Looks just like the one Axl Rose has."

"Same artist."

"I thought so."

"Who did yours?" he asked.

"Some guy with a parlor in the front part of the bowling alley up in East Las Vegas." Rainey drank from her beer with one eye closed and the other fixed on Nash.

"I've heard he's good." Nash was now squeezing his upper arms using a nervous rhythm. "Well...I...thanks for the dance."

Rainey stared at Nashs' powerfully built upper torso as he headed towards the bar. It was enticing to her in an embarrassing sort of way. Usually she went for men who were slightly built and taller. Most of the time they were underdeveloped muscularly. With average build guys and "weaklings" she didn't feel self-conscious about having let her own physique lag. But watching Nash's bulk as he returned to the bar pinched her in a self-conscious way about how out of shape she was. She stood looking after him and lit a cigarette.

When Rainey returned to the table Gert was engaged in an animated conversation with a burly, furry looking biker.

"Well, if penis size were all it took then any man could do it," Gert said.

The biker looked up as Rainey sat.

"We were talking about giving hefty women orgasms." Gert pushed her hair out of her eyes and back on top of her head. "Butch here thinks all it takes is having a big dick."

"What I said," Butch said, "was that hefty women, as a rule, like a man with a big dick. I didn't say nothin' 'bout being able to give her an orgasm."

"Oh right." Gert opened her purse and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. "Like that's supposed ta make me want ta take ya home." She lit a cigarette and blew the smoke in Butch's face.

"You don't know what you're missin'." Butch stood up and strutted away.

"He probably has a penis the size of a squirrels'." Gert and Rainey both laughed.

Rainey leaned in close to Gert and asked, "You see that guy over at the bar? The one flexing his arms?"

Gert peered towards where Rainey pointed. "I can't tell from the back, except he has a nice butt that I haven't seen before."

"So you don't know him?" Rainey nervously twirled her glass of beer.

"No, his butt don't look familiar. But I ain't had every butt in Nevada. What's with you? You're actin' like you got some sort of school girl crush."

"I danced with him, and he has the most wonderful tattoo on his arm."

"Is that what's got you all moist? Listen Rainey, just cause a man's got a tattoo--"

"A very cool tattoo."