Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes (14 page)

“No,” I gasped.

“Do you get any regular exercise, then?”

“I'm not allowed,” I gasped. “I've been cut off.”

The thought occurred to me that Hillary would probably kill me if she knew I'd been running in the Momo Flats.

“Well,” he said, “why don't you just catch your breath and tell me what seems to be the matter?”

“It's just that I don't even
know
you,” I said, suddenly finding plenty of breath with which to rant at him. “I share a gaming table with you at Foxwoods, you call me your talisman—”

“You are my talisman, Baby.”

“—then you show up here out of the blue, tell me you've been looking for me all over the boardwalk, you drag me away from a nice conversation I was having with Furthest Guy—”

His eyebrows shot up. “Furthest Guy?”

“—then you pull me like…like…like…like some kind of
pull toy
all the way over here—”

“I did not pull you like some kind of pull toy. I pulled you like a woman I want to spend time with.”

“—and now you're going to pull me straight into the casino without any kind of conversation first—”

“Is that what this is all about? Not enough foreplay?”

“It's just that I don't even
know
you,” I said, at last deflated.

“Easiest problem in the world to fix,” he said, smiling as he took my hand. “Why didn't you say something earlier?”

Because I never got the chance
was the thought that sprang readily to mind, a thought I didn't have the courage to voice.

I'd never had much courage around men; never had much courage around anyone, really, but particularly not around men. As previously documented, at the age of twenty-eight I'd had only two serious boyfriends in my life, both of those in college. I even had to go to my senior prom with my best girlfriend from high school. Of the two, Julian Preston, whom Hillary now referred to as “The Rat,” was the one I'd come closest to marrying, a paralegal who broke up with me on the one-year anniversary of our engagement in order to become engaged to the woman he'd been cheating on me with for the previous six months. The other, Bart James, Hillary called “The Weasel,” because he broke up with me six months into the relationship, claiming to be in love on the one hand while telling me on the other that he just couldn't keep seeing a girl his best friend couldn't stand. Sure, since The Rat and The Weasel, I'd been on the odd date—and, believe me, they were all odd—and had the occasional one-night stand (also odd), but guys and I had just somehow never worked together in a romantic way. I'd long since faced the fact that I was an awkward person, doomed to go on having awkward relationships in those few relationships I had.

Do I sound pathetic here? Of course I do. Do I sound like a loser? Of course I do. But I can't be the only woman in the world who knows what it's like to be incredibly unlucky in love, even if my lack of luck might seem deserved to some. Would I have given almost anything to be different, to be a winner for once? You have no idea. But nature had conspired with nurture to make me who I was. If I was ever going to change, it was not going to happen right that second—much as I may have wanted to.

“You're just such a whirlwind,” I said now.

“Well,” he said, smiling gently, “I hope that at least I am more whirl than wind.”

“The jury's still out,” I said, proving the point about my own social awkwardness. I always said the wrong things.

“I know what we should do then,” he said.
“Lunch!”

He said it like he was calling an entire barracks to the mess tent, to which I replied, “Um, okay.”

He put his finger to his chin, tapped. “But where to go? Where would be the perfect place to take you? Hmm…”

Then he proceeded to reel off all the eating options at Caesars. “I'd love to take you to Bacchanal, where you can relive the mythical experience named for the god of wine and revelry while indulging your palate and your imagination.” He sighed. “But, alas, it's not open until dinnertime. Nero's Grill is great for steak and lobster, but, again, not open until evening. Primavera? We could enjoy the spring of old Italy with hand-painted murals of Venice accenting our warm and inviting dining experience. Service is formal. But, alas—”

“Don't tell me. Dinner only.”

“Alas, you are right. La Piazza? Too buffet-ish. Café Roma? The ocean view is nice, but too many people go there. Gladiator Pizzeria? I like the four big-screen TVs from which you can keep an eye on the sports action, but I've never liked it that they put
pizzeria
right in the name—too common.”

“Um, you sure know a lot about every restaurant in here.” A part of me was beginning to think that, in his own way, Billy Charisma was just as weird as I was. Come to that, so was Chris Westacott, aka Furthest Guy. Maybe everyone in the world was weird and it was simply that some of us were more noticeable than others.

“Well, I have been here before, maybe once or twice. I know!” He snapped his fingers. “I'll take you to the Venice Bar. It'll be perfect!”

I wasn't sure that having
bar
in the title made a restaurant necessarily classier than one with
pizzeria
in the title, but I was hungry and I was game.

“Okay.”

He led me up to the third floor, above the Appian Way Shopping Promenade and I was feeling very Venetian already. Maybe if I won enough at the tables later, I'd get my Jimmy Choos right here. After all, these big casinos always had plenty of ways for winners to spend their winnings, so they probably had all the most expensive shoes for sale, too, right?

“This is…
nice,
” I said, once we'd been seated in the Venice Bar. And it was nice enough, if nowhere close to spectacular.

The waitress took our drink orders, club soda with a lime twist for him. “I never drink when I'm about to gamble,” he said.

“Do you by any chance have Diet Pepsi Lime?” I asked impulsively. I was feeling the need for the comfort of familiarity, plus Billy asking for his twist had put me in mind of limes.

She gave me a strange look. “I can have the bartender squeeze a lime into a glass of diet cola. Would that do?”

“It's worth a shot,” I said with a smile.

As she departed, she gave us menus and I glanced over the selections: hot and cold sandwiches, cold seafood appetizers, pizza any way you wanted it.

“Wow,” I said. “You can get mostly pizza in the bar that's advantage is that it doesn't have
pizzeria
in the title.”

“Are you disappointed?” he quickly asked.

“No, no. I like pizza.” As I took a sip from the diet cola with lime squeezed in that the waitress had just set down—not bad—I thought it would be just perfect if they had an Amy's Cheese Pizza Pocket. But what were the odds?

“I'll have the spinach, radicchio and fresh goat cheese pizza,” Billy said, surrendering his menu.

“And for you?” the waitress turned to me.

I really wanted to order something equally adventurous so I could impress the impressive man I was sitting with, but old habits die harder than Bruce Willis.

“You don't by any chance have…?”

“What? I'm sure the chef would be glad to accommodate any—” and here she glanced pointedly at my drink “—peculiar dietary needs.”

But there was no way I was going to finish out my original sentence, which would have insanely run, “You don't by any chance have any Amy's Cheese Pizza Pockets back in that kitchen, do you?”

I took it as a sign of hope for me that I recognized how ridiculous that would be. So instead, I said, “I'll just have a cheese pizza.”

The waitress looked surprised. “You don't want anything special on it? No lime?”

“No, that's okay,” I said, “but could you roll it so it looks like a pocket?”

“You mean like a calzone?”

“No, I mean like a pocket, but that's okay.”

“You know exactly what you want,” Billy said as soon as she'd departed.

“In food, anyway.” I shrugged.

“How about in men?”

“How about you tell me a little bit about yourself?” I asked, hoping to avoid his question. I mean, all the guys I'd ever slept with, dated or nearly married could only be referred to as
guys.
Certainly there was nothing about them that would make a person refer to them as something as mature-sounding as
men.
“Where do you live? Where did you grow up? Do you have any brothers and sisters? Pets? Do you work for someone else or yourself? What kind of work do you do? Do you always wear a tux?”

He laughed out loud.

“I live in a comfortable cottage on a much larger estate in Westchester County.”

Hey, that wasn't far from me! But a “cottage on a much larger estate”—maybe he was the handyman?

“I was born in Connecticut and my father was American but my mother was British so when they divorced when I was five, I went back there to live with her.”

I thought I'd noticed a slight stiltedness of speech. There was no British accent so much as a formality of cadence I'd had trouble placing. Now it made sense. Maybe he was the British handyman?

“I am an only child, although I did have an imaginary friend named Freddy the Crumpet growing up, and while I like animals well enough, I'm allergic to all sorts of pet hair, and anyway I'm away from home too much to take proper care of one.”

A very busy handyman?

“I work for myself, at my own risk and for my own reward. You could say I do odd jobs.”

“You're a handyman?”

“Of sorts. Oh, and I only wear a tux when I'm working.”

“You're a handyman in a tux?”

“No, Baby, I'm a professional gambler. Oh, look! Our food is here and the Steelers just scored a touchdown!”

“Steelers?”

I swiveled in my seat to see what he was gazing at with so much fondness just over my shoulder, because it sure wasn't the pizza. That's when I saw for the first time one of two large-screen TVs in the room. On the screen, grown men with giant shoulder pads on were doing little happy dances in the end zone and I could have sworn that one grabbed his crotch à la Michael Jackson and Madonna for the sheer joy of the moment. I guessed that, like with the Gladiator Pizzeria, the Venice Bar was set up to be conducive to those who wanted to keep a close eye on their sports bets.

“Did you pick this place,” I asked, trying to keep my tone light and teasing, despite the doubt creeping in, “so you could keep a close eye on your bet?”

“You really are the best good-luck piece I've ever stumbled across, Baby,” he said, ignoring my question as he picked up a slice of pizza. “I haven't beat the spread on a football game in I can't tell you how long, but I have the strong feeling that today all that will change.” He put the pizza back down, covered my hand with his, caressed my fingers. “I'm so glad you're here with me.”

And, in the moment, it was enough.

“Now, eat up,” he said. “We've got a whole fun day to spend together.”

The “whole fun day” turned out to entail gambling, gambling and more gambling. But that was okay. It was what I had come there to do and once we were at the blackjack table, I was as comfortable as white on rice, green on a dollar bill, a bear in the woods.

Through it all, Billy stayed at my side, sitting just to my left at the tables. It went against my dad's advice to yield the anchor chair, but we were such a winning combination when configured this way. Why tamper with success?

After just an hour of play, I'd doubled my original stake and was at four hundred dollars. Billy, betting with a lot more money, had turned five hundred dollars into a thousand.

“You're good at this,” he said, as the dealers changed shifts.

“So are you.” I was thinking if he played like this every day, I could see why he was a professional. I said as much.

“Ah, but it's not like this every day,” he said. “It's only like this today because you're here.”

After two hours, my four hundred dollars, moving at a slower rate, had turned into six, while Billy was up to two thousand.

“You might consider doing this for a living,” Billy suggested.

“No, thanks,” I said. “I'm just doing this with a specific goal in mind. When I make enough for what I want, I'll stop.”

“What is it you want?”

But I couldn't tell him. For while I had no problem sharing my goal with Hillary or Stella or Conchita and Rivera or Elizabeth Hepburn, I was certain no man could ever appreciate such a goal. He'd probably think I was the most frivolous person who ever lived. I mean, it wasn't like my one specific goal was to do something important that would somehow better the world; it was just about a material thing I wanted for myself. And, anyway, I was only half telling the truth when I said I was just doing this with a specific goal in mind. Now that I was doing it, I found the goal itself growing dimmer and dimmer, obscured by the exhilaration I felt as the dealer dealt the cards, as I saw an Ace come up in front of me followed by a Queen or when I beat the House with a soft Fifteen and the dealer busted, forced to draw a picture card to a hard Thirteen.