Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes Read online

  Oh, hell.

  I ducked into the very next casino.

  But as I made my way through Caesars Palace, I found it too intimidating—all those Roman columns, all those togas—and I ran right back out again. It was just too formally and obviously a gambling place, when compared with the relative casualness of Foxwoods, and I just wasn’t ready for it. Besides, my dad had advised against jumping into the first casino and sitting down at the first table I came across. I wasn’t supposed to jump at all. I was supposed to feel my way into it.

  So I jumped into the curiously shaped Borgata, its two thousand-plus rooms making it way too big, and back out again. I jumped into the Sands, its puny five hundred rooms making it way too small. Then I jumped into the Showboat Casino Hotel and actually stayed for more than a minute. With its faux riverboat facade, it was just right, the whole instantly making me sad about New Orleans and glad about the Young Elvis. I was sure that when night came, with its red-painted exterior all trimmed with lights, the place would look just like somewhere on the Mississippi that Mark Twain might hang out in.

  This would be the perfect place for me to gamble, a place that felt somehow both racy and literary at the same time. I could probably spend the whole day there. I’d just walk my way through the lobby, make my way toward the casino…

  “Has your eye recovered yet?” a vaguely familiar voice asked as I felt a gentle hand rest on my arm.

  I spun around to see Furthest Guy. Gosh, he was cute.

  “Furthest Guy!” I blurted without thinking.

  “Huh?”

  “Oops, sorry, I mean Chris. Your name is Chris, right?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Um, your sign. When you were appearing at Foxwoods? You had a sandwich-board sign set up on an easel there.”

  But he didn’t seem concerned with that anymore.

  “I’ve been worrying about you ever since that night,” Chris said. “You took quite a shot in the eye with that yo-yo, but then you disappeared so quickly afterward.”

  “See?” I said, tilting my face so he could see my profile. “It’s fine now. By the next day, there was hardly any mark there at all.”

  “I was still worried,” he said. “I’ve had a few accidents while performing before, but I’ve never actually injured a spectator.”

  “Well, there’s always a first time for everything,” I said brightly, tritely, regretting the words just as soon as I’d foolishly uttered them. “Hey, what are you doing here?” I thought to change the subject. “Are you in town to do some gambling?”

  “I’m working,” he said, holding up his other hand, the one that hadn’t been on my arm. In it, resting there innocently as if it would never slam some unsuspecting spectator in the eye, was a yo-yo at peace. “I’ll be performing here in a little while.”

  “Wow, that’s so cool!” I said. “I can’t believe you play with yo-yos for a living! I mean, I know I saw you doing it at Foxwoods, but I figured it was just a hobby or a little side thing.”

  I didn’t mean to sound condescending, I swear, I’d just never met a professional yo-yoist before. Still, I could see where my words could give offense. But if he saw it that way, he didn’t let on, although he did look dismayed.

  “I guess what I said was misleading,” he said, “when I said I was working here. I actually have a different day job.”

  I couldn’t stop myself from thinking that was a good thing because the way he had trouble controlling his yo-yos, cool as it might be to become friends with a professional yo-yoist, I was tempted to counsel him not to quit his day job.

  “I’m on my vacation right now.”

  He played casinos on his vacation?

  “I started my vacation last weekend with that performance at Foxwoods. I’ve played a different place every night since then.”

  “All casinos?” I asked.

  “Oh, no. I’ve done a few conventions, too. The Shriners thought I was great. Or at least they did until I walked the dog right into some guy’s lap.”

  “I thought you said you’d never hit a spectator before?”

  “I haven’t. Didn’t you just hear me say the dog walked?”

  “Ah.”

  “Anyway, the Showboat is my last gig for this trip. But, hey, I’ve been practicing that move I hit you with the other day. Want to see it?”

  “Um, no, thanks. I don’t want to get hit again.”

  “I didn’t mean I’ve been practicing hitting people. I meant I’ve been practicing how to do the trick without losing control, without hitting anybody.”

  Before I could stop him, he’d taken several steps away from me. Somehow, instinctively, the passing crowd knew to grant him a wide berth as he began to spin his yo-yos.

  He was poetry in motion. The yo-yos twirled and zinged away from him at his command and, when he wanted them to, they came back home.

  I wasn’t the only one who clapped, but I’m sure I was, no doubt, the only one who jumped up and down like a cheerleader on methamphetamines when she did so.

  “Omigod, Chris! That was wonderful!”

  Only the fact that I didn’t really know him prevented me from throwing my arms around his neck in a solidarity hug.

  “Thanks.” He blushed a bit. “Like I said, I’ve been practicing.”

  “How much do you practice?”

  “When I’m not working my day job? Eight hours a day.”

  “Eight…?”

  God, talk about your obsessions.

  “And when you are working your day job?”

  “Six, still sometimes eight.”

  “Wow.” I was impressed, although it was hard to say with what, either his sheer determination or his sheer folly.

  “Ever since that night at Foxwoods, I’ve been working nearly every minute on that move. I just never wanted to hit anyone in the eye like I hit you again.”

  “That’s, um, very conscientious of you. But don’t you ever take breaks?”

  “Oh, I’ll take more breaks, once I master all the moves. But see this.” He demonstrated some kind of move. I had no idea what I was supposed to be seeing, all I knew was that the string somehow got wound up all around his forearm and that whatever I was supposed to be seeing, it sure as hell wasn’t that.

  “I’ll get the hang of it one day,” he said.

  “Has your eye recovered yet?” a vaguely familiar voice asked as I felt a gentle hand rest on my arm.

  Chris had spoken the exact same words just a short time ago, but his lips weren’t moving, so unless he was a better ventriloquist than he was a yo-yoist, that wasn’t him talking. Besides, the voice was all wrong. This time, the voice came from The Voice.

  “Billy! What are you doing here?”

  Even though it was still just late morning, he had on a tuxedo. I guess some people take their gambling very seriously.

  I wouldn’t have thought Billy Charisma capable of blushing, but blush he did.

  “I overheard you and your friends last week,” he said to me. “Outside in the parking lot at Foxwoods. I know I shouldn’t have been eavesdropping, but I couldn’t help but hear you say you were coming here.”

  “But I never said I was coming to the Showboat. I merely said I was coming to Atlantic City.”

  “I know,” he said, “which is why I’ve spent all morning going into every hotel on the boardwalk in the hopes of finding you.”

  “Into every…? But isn’t that a little excessive?” The word stalkerish came to mind, but excessive would have to do.

  “I had to find you again,” he said. “I haven’t had a night like we shared in Foxwoods in such a long time, but I didn’t know how else to find you and I just had to.”

  It still sounded excessive, but it also sounded kind of nice. I guessed he was right. That time we’d spent together had been pretty special.

  “Ahem.” Chris cleared his throat.

  “Ahem.” Chris cleared his throat again.

  “Oh,” Billy said, “you again.” T
hen he insinuated his body so that he was standing between us, with his back to Chris. He put his hands on my shoulders. “You’re such good luck for me, Baby. Come on.” He took my hand, pulled me toward the entrance, now the exit. “Come with me to Caesars Palace.”

  “Aren’t you going to stick around and see me perform?” I heard Chris shout after us.

  “Sorry, pal,” Billy answered for me. I’d never been with a man who answered for me before and it felt oddly exhilarating. “She’s with me.”

  Still…

  “You never said what your day job is,” I shouted over my shoulder.

  “You never said what your name is,” Chris shouted back.

  “It’s Delilah,” I shouted, “Delilah Sampson.”

  “That’s a beautiful name,” Chris shouted.

  And then I was out the door, into the sunlight, on the boardwalk and on my way to Caesars Palace.

  “Stop! Stop! Stop!”

  I tried to get Billy to stop pulling me.

  We’d just entered Caesars and were rapidly moving through the Temple Lobby, a dramatic four-story atrium designed in the likeness of the Forum of ancient Rome, and I realized that if I didn’t get Billy to stop pulling on my arm right then, he’d pull me right into the casino part of the resort. Of course, being in a casino had been the whole point of my trip, but it wasn’t supposed to go down like this.

  On my third “Stop!” he turned around.

  “Is something the matter?” he asked.

  “A lot!” I said, trying to catch my breath. He hadn’t been running, only walking at a brisk pace, but his legs were about a foot longer than mine and I’d had to scamper like a puppy to keep up.

  Once upon a time, I’d been a runner, an obsessive runner sometimes going for two hours at a shot, but Hillary had put a stop to that by doing an intervention when I dropped down to eighty-seven pounds. In the dressing room of a petite store, where the salesgirl had told me I could get size double or triple 0 in the city since the size 0 jeans I had on were sliding off my hips, Hillary had used a three-way mirror to show me that it was possible to visibly count the vertebra in my spine. Even I conceded it was gross and then Hillary put me on notice. “Like countries that aren’t allowed to have a standing army once they’ve done something too destructive, you can never run again.”

  “I’m pretty sure,” I’d pointed out, “that all those countries are allowed to have standing armies again. And, anyway, what exactly would a non-standing army be?”

  “I don’t care,” she’d said, “you’re cut off.” And I’d listened.

  I’d listened so well that after my brief sprint behind Billy down the boardwalk, I was still out of breath.

  “Are you asthmatic?” he asked, concerned.

  “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.

&
nbsp; “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.”