Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes (20 page)

“Fine. Then I haven't been proud to have you see me like this. I wanted to do better. But instead I lost everything.”

“You didn't even have the money to bail your own car out of extended parking. You were rock bottom.”

“Exactly. It was the next night, while doing the grocery shopping with the little money I had under the mattress, that I met Vanessa in front of the cherry tomatoes.”

“My hair clashed,” Vanessa said, “but Jack didn't seem to notice.”

“She talked me into getting a job as a security guard and going to Debtors Anonymous—”

“Bettors Anonymous.”

“—and the rest is history.”

“Fine. Great,” I said. “I'm really happy for you that you've found each other and that you're living here together in bathrobe heaven. But I'm still going to Vegas this weekend. I still need Dad to help me out just one last time. After this, I promise I'll stop. I promise I won't ask anymore.”

“But that's what everyone always says, Baby,” Vanessa said with great sadness. “Everyone always says they want just one last time, that that'll be it. And then they go back.”

“Vanessa's right,” my dad said. “I just can't do it. Look what happened to me.”

“Look what happened to you? You got the girl!”

“I'm sorry, Baby,” Vanessa said, “Jack just can't participate in your ruin.”

“Yeah,” he said, “I can't participate in your ruin.”

Vanessa kissed him on the head. “I'm going to go take my shower now,” she said. “It was nice meeting you, Baby. Maybe next time we can have a real dinner together and I'll even wear real clothes.”

“What does she do for a living?” I asked once she was gone.

“She's the head counselor at Debtors Anonymous.”

Of course.

“Look, Dad, I just need—”

“Shh.” He held his finger to his lips. Then, cocking his ear and hearing the sound of the shower drumming in the bathroom, he tiptoed into the kitchen and got a locked box down from the top of the fridge.

“What's in there?” I asked as he opened it.

“Didn't I just say ‘shh'?” he whispered. “It's got my insurance policies and birth certificate in it, stuff like that.”

Why was he showing me this now?

“Is something wrong with you?” I asked. Maybe he'd taken up with Vanessa to have one last fling before meeting up with the Great Croupier In The Sky.

“Nothing like that,” he whispered. “I just keep all my important stuff in here, plus a few things I don't want anyone else to see…like this.”

It was a slim paperback, vaguely familiar in cover design.

“
You
read
Blackjack Winning Basics,
by Tony Casino?” I was shocked.

“Shh! I don't want Vanessa to know I kept it.”

“But why would you need to read—?”

“Listen, Baby, all the greats need some help, a little reminding, every now and then. Do you think every time Beethoven sat down to play
Ode to Joy,
he remembered all the notes?”

“Well, actually, y—”

“Never mind that now. Really, there's nothing I can teach you that isn't in that book. And, anyway, I'd lose Vanessa if I
did
try to teach you.”

I studied the cover of the book as if it contained the mystery of the sphinx:
Blackjack Winning Basics,
by Tony Casino.

I couldn't believe that, instead of helping me, my dad was giving me
a book.

“You're on your own, Baby.”

I was on my own.

What do you do on the eve of your trip to Las Vegas, when your best friend is sleeping over at her boyfriend's place because you didn't want to ruin her good time by letting her know how important this is to you, when your dad has taken up with a redhead who won't even let him talk gambling anymore much less do it, when the two Brazilian girls you work with aren't speaking to each other let alone anyone else, when the fact that your boss was never your friend anyway rules her out, when the guy you're going with is the last person you should be revealing your anxieties to? You go see the fading Hollywood star who's slept with everyone who's anyone, plus more, which is exactly what I did.

“How did you know it when you were in love?”

“Who are we talking about?”

We were in Elizabeth Hepburn's bedroom, a pink affair with frilly curtains, flattering lighting, round bed with white fur bedspread—fake fur, I was almost sure—and round mirror overhead. If only that mirror could talk, I wondered what tales it had to tell. I was seated in a chair beside the bed and Elizabeth Hepburn had put down her Chick Lit book just long enough to offer me the sage advice I needed, the sage advice I couldn't find anywhere else.

“I don't know,” I shrugged. “Any of them.”

“Well, if we're talking about Errol Flynn, it was the sword.”

“Yes, but wasn't he—”

“If we're talking about the Sultan of Brunei, it was the money.”

My eyebrows shot up. “You've been to Brunei?”

“If we're talking about Frank Sinatra, it was the voice.”

“Not the eyes?”

“Hey, Paul Newman had blue eyes, too. Sometimes the eyes
don't
have it.”

“Um, don't you mean
ayes?
” I said, raising my hand.

“We're not talking about voting here, Delilah,” she said with uncommon snappishness. “But if we were, I could tell you a few things about Roosevelt.”

“You were with Franklin Roosevelt?”

“Who said anything about Franklin?”

“But wouldn't Teddy have been too far before your time? Just how old are you?”

“Who said anything about Teddy Roosevelt? I'm talking about Joe, Joe Roosevelt, the guy who serviced my Packer back in the forties. He used to fix elections and my engine like nobody's business.”

“I see.”

“What gives? What's with the love questions?”

I explained about my dad hooking up with Vanessa. A part of me was glad he had someone other than me and Dan The Man to spend time with now, a part of me worried she might not be good enough to fill my mother's penny loafers. Already she was changing him.

“And all this is about your father?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Excuse me for saying this, Delilah, but horseshit. People don't visit little old ladies at night to ask about their father's love life, not unless of course they want to fix the little old lady up with their father. How old did you say he was again?”

“I didn't, but he is kind of taken right now.”

Which would be worse, having Elizabeth Hepburn for a stepmother, the woman who liked to pretend she'd done Dallas before Debbie? Or having Vanessa Parker for a stepmother, the woman who was currently neutering my dad from Black Jack to just plain Jack?

“Bummer,” Elizabeth Hepburn said. “If he was free and we got married, maybe I'd be able to fire Lottie The Ghoul.”

Just then The Ghoul walked in.

“Do you need anything else tonight, Ms. Hepburn?” The Ghoul asked. “Isn't your visitor leaving yet? I could get you some tea after she goes…”

“No, thanks. I'll make my own in the morning.”

Once The Ghoul was gone, Elizabeth Hepburn whispered, “I used to not worry that she was poisoning me, but lately I sense a certain desperation around the edges. The other day she suggested I get my bedroom repainted a darker shade of pink. At first, I was tempted, but then I remembered what happened to Clare Booth Luce.”

“Clare Booth Luce?”

“When she was ambassador, she started getting a weird kind of sick.” She nodded sagely. “Then they found arsenic in the paint that was used to redo her bedroom.”

“You don't think Lottie would…”

“I'm not saying nothing,” she said, going all James Cagney on me. “All I'm saying is, I'm not eating anything, I'm not drinking anything, I'm not sniffing anything, unless I pour it, cook it, paint it myself.”

“Have you ever cooked a meal in your life?”

“Hey, I can make toast when I want to. And don't forget my cookies. It was how we met, remember?”

“But if Lottie's so bad, if you're worried she might be out to
kill
you, why don't you just fire her?”

“I've tried to tell you before, you have no idea how hard it is to find good live-in help.”

“What's so good about live-in help that wants to kill you?”

“Hey, at least she's not boring.”

“I guess.” Then I thought of something. “I'm going to ask Stella if she'll keep an eye on you while I'm gone, maybe pop in occasionally. You know, just to be on the safe side.”

“You're going away?”

“Yes, I—”

“Oh, good, I like Stella. In that uniform of hers, she reminds me exactly of Dean Martin, except she's not a man, has blond hair and I don't think she sings.”

“No,” I said. “Stella doesn't usually sing.”

“Rats. It's that guy from Foxwoods, isn't it?”

“Excuse me?”

“The guy who has your knickers all in a twist. It's that guy with the blond hair and his own tuxedo and The Voice, isn't it?”

I admitted as much, explained that we were leaving for Vegas the next day just as soon as I got off work, how Billy and I were going away together for four days, how I'd persuaded Stella that Columbus Day was a holiday I truly did need to have off for observance.

“You're not Italian,” Stella had said.

“True,” I'd replied, “but I do eat a lot of Michael Angelo's Four Cheese Lasagna, plus all those Amy's Cheese Pizza Pockets.”

“Oh, brother,” Elizabeth Hepburn said now. “I would not trust that one as far as I could throw him.”

“Um, I don't think you could throw him at all.” I sighed. “The Girls From Brazil, Stella, Hillary,
you
—nobody seems to trust Billy. What's up with that?”

“The guy hangs out at casinos, he wears a tux in the daytime and his name is Billy Charisma. How many reasons do I need?”

“You're saying I shouldn't go?”

“Are you kidding me? And miss the chance to be with that blond hair, that tuxedo that's never been worn by other bodies, even if he does wear it in the daytime, too, and The Voice?” Her own voice turned conspiratorial. “Hey, wanna sell me your ticket?”

“Then you're saying I should go?”

“Hell,
yes.
Just be careful.”

“How so?”

“Well, don't do anything I wouldn't do.”

That certainly left the field wide-open.

I
got my first foreshadowing that all would not go perfectly well on the trip to Vegas on the plane ride out.

Billy had made all the arrangements. We were to fly out of White Plains with layovers in Chicago and St. Louis.

“Isn't that a little insane?” I asked. “Isn't it a little too much stop-start to land in Chicago and then just basically land on the other side of the state again before heading off to your real destination?”

Billy shrugged. “They're both hub airports. I think they just like to get you to spend as many tourist dollars in the gift shops as possible.”

Apparently, he'd done more traveling than I had. Me, I'd mostly done none.

“Yes—” I still resisted “—but wouldn't it be more normal to have just one layover each way?”

“Ah, but that would depend on where your destination is, plus you wouldn't get the added pleasure of flying Flaps Airways for only fifty-nine dollars round-trip.”

“Will we have to fly holding on to the wing the whole time?” I asked him.

“Oh, come on, Baby,” he said, stowing the olive-green garment bag that no doubt held his tuxedo in the minuscule overhead bin, “it's not that bad. It'll be an adventure.”

Some adventure.

In truth, though, it wasn't the primitive aircraft that made me feel unsettled as we took off.

“If you grip the armrests any tighter,” he said, “you'll punch an ashtray hole through the screwed-over metal where one used to be.”

Nor was it that he still wouldn't tell me what hotel we were staying at.

“I want it to be a surprise,” he said.

“Will it be a surprise like Flaps Airways is a surprise?” I asked, still gripping those armrests.

“No, I think you'll like this surprise. I want to take you somewhere fit for a queen, somewhere where it'll be the perfect natural setting for your special talents to flow forth.”

“I'm going to be washing the windows at The Mirage?”

“No, Baby,” he laughed.

It wasn't even that he seemed to laugh at me a lot.

It was the food.

So far, with the exception of the night I'd spent in Billy's bed sans Billy, I'd only taken day trips away from the comforting habits I'd cocooned myself in for years. True, I'd probably be able to scare up a glass of Jake's Fault Shiraz somewhere, but what was I going to do for four whole days and three whole nights without my beloved Cocoa Krispies, my beloved Diet Pepsi Lime, my beloved Amy's Cheese Pizza Pockets and my beloved Michael Angelo's Four Cheese Lasagna? Sure, I could fake it for one or two meals here and there, but this really was too much.

“What do you think they'll give us for dinner?” I asked.

“Where?”

“Here. On the plane.”

“You're joking, right? You'll be lucky to get a stale package of pretzels.” He thought about it for a minute. “I'm pretty sure they've given up serving peanuts because of all the people who suddenly have severe nut allergies these days. We'll grab a bite on the run, if you're hungry, when we stop in Chicago. Hey, if eating is the most important thing for you about this trip, we can eat again in St. Louis, too.”

I pictured what the hub airports would be like, with all their chain restaurants. I'd starve. The good news was, by the time the trip was over, I'd be skinnier than I'd been in years. If I wasn't dead from starvation.

And, no, I guess it wasn't the food, either, although that was certainly a preoccupation. It was everything. It was leaving behind all the comforts of home, not just the food. It was leaving behind the security of family, of friends, of
routine
to fly into the unknown with a man I had yet to spend more than several hours with at a single go.

“You seem so tense, Baby,” Billy said. “Just remember one thing.” He covered his hand with mine. “Whatever happens in Vegas,
stays
in Vegas.”

Oh, brother.

“Welcome to Vegas, Baby,” Billy said, gallantly handing me out of the limousine he'd hired to speed us out from the airport.

Nothing had prepared me for the surrealness of the city as I'd gazed down at it from the airplane, the sudden nuclear glow of neon bursting out of the darkness of the surrounding desert.

“Wait until you approach it like that from the ground,” Billy said. “It's the oddest driving experience in the world. You're driving along in the desert and suddenly—boom!—bright lights, minicity.”

“You actually drive outside of the city sometimes when you go there to gamble?” I was shocked. My dad had mentioned many times over the years that there was plenty to do in the Vegas area—hiking, the Hoover Dam, chopper flights to the Grand Canyon, tours of the Ethel M Chocolate Factory and the Liberace Museum—but that he'd just never bothered to do any of it.

“Of course not,” Billy said. “I've just seen it like that coming in from the airport.”

If Billy had skimped on the airline, he certainly hadn't skimped on anything else. Not only was the limo a white stretch with full bar in the back and liveried driver, but the hotel…

“It's beautiful!” I jumped up and down, gazing up at its gold-toned monolithic twin structures. “I can't believe we're staying at THEhotel at Mandalay Bay!”

“You mean you've heard of it?” Billy sounded surprised.

“Well, no,” I admitted, “but I do like the eccentric way they spell the name, THEhot—”

“C'mon,” he said, grabbing my hand. “We'll let the bellhop grab our things. Let's go inside.”

“It's beautiful!” I oohed again.

The lobby was indeed impressive, and not at all Las Vegas-y, what with its black walls, subtle lighting and overall eschewal of glitz. Not to mention…

“Is that a real Andy Warhol painting?”

“Try not to gape, Baby. Yes, it is. And that's an authentic Jasper Johns, too. You didn't think I'd take you to a dump, did you?”

I don't know what I'd thought. My dad had always said that since you spent all your time in the casinos in Vegas, the room didn't matter.

Suddenly, I wanted to see the room.

“Let's go.” I tugged on his hand, tugging him toward the elevator banks.

“Let's go see the casino first,” he said, distinctly tugging me in the other direction. “Don't you want to see the casino first? It's one hundred and thirty-five thousand square feet. Can you imagine how big that is? They have twenty-four hundred slot-video poker machines, they have one hundred and twenty-two table games—”

“Please?” I said. “I need to settle in first. There'll be plenty of time for that later.”

His expression softened.

“Of course, Baby,” he said, “if you need to warm up to the place first.” He patted my hand. “Anything you need.”

“I
love
this room!” I said, flopping down on the cream-colored bedspread. It was huge! THEhotel at Mandalay Bay was an all-suite hotel and not only was there a giant plasma TV in our bedroom area, there was even one in our bathroom, as well! And the sitting room…which had a third TV…

“I could stay here all day,” I said, “or at least all night.”

He removed his tux from the garment bag, hung up the bag.

“Yes, well,” he said, “if we start
that
…” He went off to the bathroom, presumably to change. But who knows? Maybe he was going to watch some TV.

Prior to the trip, we hadn't gone into the specifics of the sleeping arrangements. All I knew was that Billy had overridden my protests about paying my own way, saying, “Don't be ridiculous, Baby. My talisman doesn't pay her own way. What kind of person would I be if I expected you to accept such terms? And you needn't worry about owing me a tit for my tat. Anything that happens between us in that regard is purely your decision.”

But of course as I'd seen firsthand that night at his cottage, it wasn't my decision, not if when I made my decision he could easily say no to me.

“I don't mind at all taking the couch in the sitting room,” he said, adjusting his black bow tie as he emerged from the bathroom. “It's plenty long enough for me.”

“I just assumed…” I said.

“What?” He looked up. “That I'd booked two separate rooms?” He shrugged. “Well, it is a bit pricey.”

“No, I mean, I thought…”

“What? That we'd share the same bed? Look, why don't we wait and see how things develop, shall we? I'm sure that, after a night down in the casino, well, anything might happen.”

He was right, wasn't he? Hadn't I come here to finally win enough for my Jimmy Choo Ghosts?

Still, something was stopping me.

“I just don't feel…ready,” I said. “It was such a long flight, what with the layovers and all. I'm just worried that if I play now, I might…lose.”

I was thinking about the sad story my dad's ATM receipts had told. And he even had an ATM machine with money in it to back him up! At least until he lost it all. I didn't even have that. If I lost my stake the very first night, I'd be stuck here until Monday with no money. Certainly, I'd feel foolish asking Billy for money.

Apparently, he could be made to see reason, though, or maybe there was something in the word
lose
I'd used, because he surprised me by saying, “Oh. Well. We can't have that.”

“Thank you! Thank you!” I said. I was so relieved I threw myself into his arms. “I'm sure that by tomorrow morning I'll feel—”

“Yes. Well.” He gently peeled my arms off. “I think at the very least we should go downstairs and look at the casino, don't you? That way the layout won't be completely unfamiliar to you tomorrow morning. I mean, it can't hurt you to just look, right?”

Of course, he was right. And he'd done so much for me already, paying for the trip, putting up with all my little idiosyncrasies without too much teasing. Why, he'd even had Diet Pepsi Lime on hand when I'd gone to visit him! When I thought about it, I realized he wasn't really asking for very much.

“Just let me throw some water on my face to freshen up,” I said.

Then I noticed he looked antsy.

“Tell you what,” I said. “Rather than holding you up, why don't you go down now, I'll put my own things away so they don't wrinkle any more than they have already, and I'll meet you down there in a few minutes?”

“How will you find me in one hundred and thirty-five thousand square feet of casino?”

“You'll be the man in the tux by the blackjack tables, right?”

Ka-ching!

It was difficult to tell, from the sound of the slots, whether more people were winning or losing. One thing was for certain: a lot of people were going to have sore right arms in the morning.

As I passed through the ocean of one-armed bandits and the roulette tables into the blackjack area, I craned my neck to find Billy among the multitude of gamblers. Despite that there were so many people crowded into the room, it being Friday night which was no doubt a hot time in the old town, I figured it wouldn't be that hard to find a man in a tux. After all, America had long since gone the way of down style, so that most people dressed in jeans or khakis in places where formally you would have only found black tie or some other form of formal dress, meaning that with the exception of the pit bosses, Billy would be the only one in jacket and tie and his tie was even a bow tie, and not an old-fashioned bow tie like Tucker Carlson's, but a really cool bow tie, a fuck-you bow tie. But what I hadn't counted on was that the crush of people, combined with my own tiny stature, would make the task as difficult as finding a free chip on the floor. I mean, who drops a chip in a casino without noticing?

“Mine!” a man shouted, knocking me over as he insinuated himself between two gaming tables and stamping his foot on the ground just within bounds of the pit.

“I believe that is the House's chip, sir,” a pit boss said, ringing the man's ankle with his hand and stopping him cold.

“It's mine, I tell you,” the man said. “I just dropped it.”

“Ohh,
really?
” the pit boss said, with a little more sarcasm than I felt the situation warranted. And, hey, wasn't anyone going to help me up off the floor here? Crap. I guess I was going to have to do it myself…

“Then tell me,” the pit boss said, “what denomination is the chip?”

The man tried to wiggle his foot so he could see underneath it, but the pit boss held firm.

“It was a twenty-five,” the man said, a bead of sweat breaking out on his brow. “Yeah, that's it,” he added. “It was a twenty-five.”

The pit boss lifted the man's foot and with disdain set it down next to the chip.

“Sorry, sir,” he said, picking up the chip and not looking sorry at all, “but it looks like the chip you didn't lose was a hundred. Perhaps you should have aimed higher? Better luck next time.”