Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes (24 page)

“Here,” he said, pulling away, “let me do you now.”

Do me now? Well, if not exactly an artful synonym for making love, it had been such a long time I guessed it was okay. But then I saw what he meant: he was going to take my clothes off for me. Normally, this was a moment that, while experiencing the passion with one half of my being, had the potential to throw the other half into sheer terror.
What would he see when I was naked? Would he notice that I was nothing like the celluloid, glossy-magazine embodiments of female perfection that men and women are constantly being bombarded with? How could he not notice?

And yet, I was so caught up in the excitement of the day, so caught up in the winning and the moment, my usual insecurities fell like so many thongs off the back of a Victoria's Secret truck overturned on Route 66.

“You are,” Billy said between kisses and clothes fumbling, “you are so…I mean, you are…Baby, excuse me, but did a five-dollar bill just fall out of your bra?”

“Never mind that,” I said, kissing him forcefully on the lips before pushing him down on the bed and climbing on top.

“Oh, my,” he said, as I kissed him some more. “But, speaking of money, don't you think we should do something with the chips first?”

“Like what?” I said.
Kiss, kiss.

“Like maybe bring them down to the bank and exchange them for cash, then put the cash in the safety deposit box here?”

“No,” I said, undoing the clasp of his tux trousers.

“Then perhaps we should at least put the chips into the safe? You know, so they don't get lost or something here, or in case we run out afterward and forget all about them, or something like—”

“No,” I said, sliding down his zipper.

“Oh…oh, my, Baby, whoever knew that
no
could be such a wonderful word?”

And then as Billy quickly resumed his role of Gentleman while I continued in my current role as No Lady, and my
no
es turned into a string of yeses, all at the behest of his expert hands, tongue and, er, “big bet,” I recognized one thing for sure.

When it came to making love, Billy Charisma had The Rat and The Weasel beat by a tuxedoed mile.

I gazed up at the ceiling afterward, experiencing bliss. Is this, I wondered, what Elizabeth Hepburn felt like when she lay with Frank Sinatra, with Errol Flynn, with Jimmy Hoffa and Winston Churchill? No, it was probably better….

“I must say, Baby,” Billy said, stroking my hair as I lay with my head against his naked chest, “you are indeed full of surprises. That thing you did with your tongue? It was almost as good as drawing a hard Eighteen to a dealer's soft Seventeen.”

“Mmm.” All I could do was purr.

“But now,” Billy said, “I think I'd like to do something for you.”

“I think you just did.” I purred some more.

“I'm not talking about that,” Billy laughed. “Although that is very nice. I want to take you shopping.”

“Shopping?”

“Yes. I mean, the clothes you usually wear are nice enough, but wouldn't you like something, oh, I don't know,
zippier
for when we go back to playing later?”

I thought about him in his tux, me in my usual okay clothes. He did sort of have a point.

“And it would give me great pleasure to
buy
you things, Baby.”

“You want to buy me things?” No man had ever said that to me before. Usually, they asked me to buy them things—another beer, a burger and fries from the drive-through—before summarily dumping me.

“Oh, yes. I mean, I have to take good care of my perfect little talisman, don't I?”

“Um…okay!”

Retail shops in casinos are designed with winners in mind. No Gap stores, either regular or baby or geriatric. No JCPenney's. No Sears. Instead, it's all designer clothes, upscale foodie places like The Chocolate Swan, and price tags to break the bank.

“I can't accept this,” I said to Billy, as he picked out an outfit for me that was a formfitting silver cocktail dress.

“Of course you can,” he said. “It looks marvelous on you and it'll look great next to my tux. Besides, the color reminds me of the top you had on the first night I met you at Foxwoods. You remember. The first night we won together.”

No one had ever told me I looked marvelous before.

“I can't accept this,” I said, referring to the pure-white dress he picked out next.

“Of course you can,” he said, “although I do think we'll be saving that one for later.”

Later?

“Now,” he said, deep in thought, “I do think you'll need the right jewelry to go with that…”

“I can't let you buy me jewelry.”

“Oh, yes, you can. If it weren't for you, I wouldn't have so much money to pay these credit-card debts with when they come due. I think the diamond earrings will be lovely. Maybe the bracelet, too? No? All right, then, I can see where the clinking around of those stones would be distracting when you're at the tables. Now, then, before we leave, let me just ask the nice jeweler a question about, um, insurance while you wait outside…

“Shoes!” he announced as he emerged from the store. “I know you're pretty attached to those blue-green things I always see you wearing—”

How could he refer to my precious Jimmy Choo Momo Flats as “those blue-green things”?

“—but I don't think they'll go properly with the silver dress. Or with the white one, come to that. So the only thing for it is to…”

And then he bought me silver stilettos to go with the cocktail dress and pure-white pumps to go with the white dress, which was more of a sexy suit really, not unlike a skirted version of the one Bianca wore when she married Mick Jagger all those years ago.

“What do you think?” Billy asked, obviously still full of energy. “Have we covered everything?”

“More than,” I said, a little overwhelmed by it all.

“Are you sure about that? Perhaps a negligee? No, perhaps not. One more trip like the last to the gaming tables and I won't want anything to get between me and that body of yours.”

His words set my body all atingle, and I let my body fall into his, imagining us running back up to the room.

“Well, there is one more place,” he said.

I wondered what he had in mind, since we'd already ruled out the need for lingerie, but it wasn't long before I had my answer.

“The Sunrise and Sunset Chapels at Mandalay Bay?” I was incredulous. “We're getting married?”

“Well, yes. I mean, I figured, why wait?”

Why wait, indeed?

“Look,” he said. “The interiors of the chapels are open and airy with a tropical feel. Bamboo, chandeliers and French windows create an elegant ambience.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

“And we can have our choice. The Platinum Skies package includes video recording of the ceremony, a garter, pianist, bouquet, boutonniere and a bottle of champagne and champagne flutes—you'd look great in a garter. The Opal Shores package includes photography with complete coverage of wedding party and immediate family, video of the ceremony, pianist, a bottle of champagne and a custom wedding-certificate holder—well, I suppose the immediate-family part is out, since we don't have anyone here with us. The Crystal Waters package offers a bridal garter, bridal bouquet, pianist, bottle of champagne and a groom's boutonniere—simple, elegant, plus we'd still have the garter and I suppose the pianist would be okay, so long as it's not Billy Joel, and even though the Platinum Skies package did also offer a pianist, at least with this one we don't get to include immediate family so we won't feel maudlin about not having any. And the Diamond Lights package includes a bridal bouquet, groom's boutonniere, maid-of-honor bouquet, best man's boutonniere, garter, photos, video, unity candle, deluxe fruit basket, champagne dinner for two at Shanghai Lilly, breakfast in bed for two, a honeymoon suite for one night, a pianist and a Skinklinic package—I'm afraid I don't know what the hell the Skinklinic package adds on to the whole thing, plus this one's got a whole lot of add-ons that I don't suppose either of us need. I mean, are you really so into fruit that it needs to be deluxe and in a basket?”

Dumbly, I shook my head.

“No,” he said, “I didn't think so. There's nothing else for it then, it's the Crystal Waters for us, unless of course you want to go for the Platinum Skies with the added video recording. I suppose that might make a nice memento to show the folks back home.”

“Wait!”

“What?”

“When did we decide this? Did I miss something here?”

“Well, we are here,” he said, “and it is terribly convenient.”

“But shouldn't there have been something in between?”

“Such as?”

“Such as, oh, I don't know, maybe you saying you love me?”

I couldn't believe I was actually asking a guy to tell me he loved me. I mean, how lame. But then he was asking me to marry him. Sort of.

“Of course I love you, Baby,” he said gently. “How could I not love you? You're my talisman.”

Every now and then, I found myself wishing he'd lose that word from his vocabulary.

“Well, then,” I said, still in objection mode, “wouldn't this work better if you actually asked me to marry you first instead of just assuming—”

“What do you think I got this for then?” he asked, reaching into his inside jacket pocket.

What could he be going for? What did people wearing tuxes keep in their inside pockets? Did he have a gun in there, like James Bond? Was he going to hold his gun to my head until I said yes? Didn't he realize that such desperate lengths were unnecessary? That a simple bended knee would probably do?

But then he completed his reaching motion, at the end of which he produced a box from his inside pocket.

It was a jeweler's box.

“Here you go,” he said, opening the lid.

The thing was a fucking rock. It was a diamond-shaped rock that gave out more points of light than George Bush Senior before vomiting on the prime minister of Japan's shoes.

“I picked this out,” he said, “when I sent you out of the jeweler's before, when I told you I was staying behind to get insurance.”

I should have known that was a ruse. Every blackjack player knows that insurance—whereby the player takes out insurance to protect against the dealer beating her with blackjack—is a mug's game, invested in by losers who don't trust their own hands and want to play it safe by breaking even.

Did I trust my own hands, the hands that had touched Billy's body such a short time ago? Did I just want to play it safe?

I reached for a piece of the rock.

And that's when Billy snapped the velvet lid shut.

“Not so fast,” he said.

“But why wait?” I asked, deciding he'd been right when he said the same thing earlier.

“See,” he said, pointing to the hours of operation. “It's almost ten o'clock. The office closes in five minutes. So why don't we wait until tomorrow to do this. Haven't you guessed yet, that the pretty white suit I picked out for you is for tomorrow? Now, then, in the meantime…”

Naturally, I assumed that “in the meantime” meant we'd be going back up to the room to do the dirty deed again, now that we were sort-of officially sort-of betrothed.

And we did go back up to the room, only there was no doing the dirty deed.

“Here,” Billy said, handing me the garment bag from downstairs, “put this on.”

“The wedding suit? But I thought you said we weren't going to get married until tomorrow.”

“Of course I don't mean the wedding suit. I mean the silver cocktail dress.”

Oh. Of course.

“Great,” I said a few minutes later, emerging from the bathroom, “I'm dressed.”

Billy pulled me to him, so we were standing side by side in front of the mirror and I saw that it was great.

“Don't we look great together?” he said.

We did look great together now. So what if my feet, albeit pretty in sky-high silver, looked as though I'd betrayed them by wearing something on them other than my good luck Jimmy Choos?

“I'm ready,” I said, letting out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding. “But what am I ready for?”

He grabbed his chip caddy from earlier in the night, handed me mine.

“We're going down,” he said, “for more. This time we'll double what we have here.”

On the way out the door, I grabbed my crumpled five-dollar bill and shoved it in my cleavage.

I
t was a hand dealt straight out of a dream: two Aces.

What to do, what to do…

Easy answer: the dealer had just shuffled right before dealing, so there were nearly six full decks left in the chute, all of those beautiful Jacks, Queens and Kings. Even the Tens would be beautiful and a person didn't need to be a pro at counting cards to realize that the game, for once, was strongly in the player's favor.

So, very easy answer: split the Aces.

The next decision, if not as easy, relied totally on the player's instincts: double down, or let the original bet ride? The original bet represented half of the player's holdings, but the player was feeling cocky, riding high. Besides, the dealer was showing a Seven.

Big deal.

The player looked at the dealer, a face that had become so familiar. The player looked over one shoulder, at the man standing just behind, a man who gave a slight nod of his head: approval.

Giving the matter not a moment's further thought, the player pushed the rest of the chips forward, hitting the table limit. Those chips, tens of thousands of dollars' worth of chips, represented everything the player had in the world.

Whatever two cards the dealer turned over next would decide the future fate of the player.

And so, let the real game begin…

Dream had become reality. Only the dealer in the reality version was Chris and the man standing just behind the player, me, was Billy, only rather than being behind me, in reality he was sitting at the table beside me, in the anchor chair, with his own double-down dilemma before him.

As soon as we'd hit the casino floor just a few minutes prior, Billy had made straight for Chris like a heat-seeking missile. A few hours had passed since we'd been down there before, with mind-blowing sex and a shopping spree and a shoe change filling the intervention, so Chris had changed tables. But Billy found his new table right away all the same.

Before I could demur, Billy was placing his chip caddy down next to the anchor spot.

“We had such good luck playing against…Yo-Yo Boy before,” he said.

I should have stopped right then and there. I know that now. Certainly, I should have at least paused when Chris briefly met my eyes straight on, shaking his head almost imperceptibly: No. He was obviously trying to tell me something, but I was too drunk on the combined highs of Billy, of wearing pretty silver clothes, of
winning
for once in my life to pay him any heed.

And now here I was, with all my money on the table, everything I had with me except for the five-dollar bill crammed in my cleavage, waiting for him to chute out the cards that would double my money, double Billy's money, filling our chip caddies to the brink, making Billy so happy with me he'd marry me in the Sunrise and Sunset Chapels tomorrow.

Since both Billy and I were doubling down, we'd get one card for each of our two hands and that would be that. The odds were so strongly in our favors. Maybe we'd pull two Tens each and win everything with a quadruple blackjack. Or maybe one of us would win two hands, preferably him since he had more at stake, while the other would lose. Or maybe we'd each win one of our two hands, pushing…

It was all too much to think about. My mind couldn't race, couldn't compute that fast. And now here was Chris, the dealer, chuting out in rapid succession a Two for me and then a Three, followed by a Four for Billy and then a Five.

Ka-chunk.

Ka-thump.

What were the odds?

“You
stupid…cow!
” Billy said to me. He was out of his chair.

Only peripherally did I register Chris quietly taking all our chips away.

“Billy?” I said questioningly.

“Why did I ever listen to you?” he said. “You're not my talisman anymore! You're bad luck!”

Before I could say anything, he was gone.

And then I was out of my own chair. No, I didn't want to run after him, but I definitely needed to get out of there.

“Delilah!” Chris screamed after me. With the exception of his imperceptible shake of the head earlier, this was the first unprofessional thing he'd done on my behalf, but I was moving too quickly to pay that any heed, either.

Fuck you, too, Rudyard Kipling. It's just not that easy.

I spent the next half hour just riding the elevator up and down.

I didn't want to go back to the room—Billy was probably back there, packing, getting as far away from his broken talisman as fast as he could—and I didn't want to go outside. Where would I go with my stinking five dollars? Sure, I could try to use it as a stake to stage a comeback at the tables, but after what I'd just been through, I knew that madness lay in that idea.

Every time the elevator stopped at a floor, if there was a man on there with me, even sometimes if there was a woman, whoever was on would gesture for me to exit first; I must have looked that special in my silver clothes, like someone you'd always let go first. But I always declined and just kept on with my long elevator ride to nowhere.

At last, when the elevator stopped at the top of the building for the fifteenth time, I debarked.

The Mix Lounge again?

Sure. Why not.

I'll tell you why not. There was a twenty-five-dollar cover charge and all I had on me was my stupid fiver. The shopping and entertainments of Sin City are not for the losers or the poor.

But the doorman must have felt sorry for me when all I produced was that crumpled fiver from my cleavage, because he waved me on in, even waved my fiver away when I tried to hand it to him.

“Keep it, girl,” he said in a Jamaican accent. “Maybe you can buy a club soda with it.”

Crap. That probably meant I couldn't even afford a diet cola with a lime squeezed into it. Maybe I could at least afford the lime?

“The second show's about to start,” he said, “so you might want to find yourself a seat.”

I thought about sitting down at the bar, but then I realized the bartender would only come over and expect me to order something. Then I considered sitting down at a table, but figured the cocktail waitress would eventually do the same. So I walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows and looked down on the incredible view of the Strip. All those lights. All those dreams firing up and being extinguished by those lights. Honestly, it would be a great place if only a person were winning, if only a person still had someone by her side who sparkled like Billy Charisma…even if he had turned out to be both a rat
and
a weasel.

I turned back to face the room and for the first time noticed that the crowd was scant. Who could even draw such a small crowd? If there had been a sign outside saying whom the performer was, I'd been too depressed when I walked in to notice it. Maybe everyone else in the building was so busy winning that I was one of the few people there?

Oh, well, I thought, as some introductory music started to play on a piano, their loss—or maybe their winnings?—was my gain. I'd just slip into a seat at one of the tables, just so, right when the announcer was announcing the performer, just so. Surely, the cocktail waitress wouldn't bother me while the show was going on, would she?

“Ladies and Gentlemen, Las Vegas and THEhotel at Mandalay Bay are proud to present…
Tom Jones!
”

And there he was, in his black tux and crisp white shirt, hair still thick and bushy. True, a tux wasn't totally out of place in Las Vegas on a Saturday night. I mean, wherever Wayne Newton was playing, he was probably wearing one, too. And Billy, too, come to that, wherever he was now. But somehow a tux on Tom Jones looked different. He was just so Tom Jones. He was so…
Welsh.
Plus, his bow tie was bigger.

“I'd like to open tonight—” Tom Jones seduced into the microphone “—with an old favorite of mine. But, first, I'd like to ask the question I always ask. Is there anyone here named—”

Oh, no. He wasn't going to do this…was he?

“—Delilah?”

I craned my neck around the room to see if anyone else was going to raise their hands, but it looked like I was the only one in the bunch. Timidly, I twinkled my fingers in the air.

“You?” he boomed, his bejeweled fingers grasping the thick microphone as if it was, well, something else.

And then before I knew it, he was serenading me, “My, my, my, Delilah” and “Why, why, why, Delilah?” and telling everyone how he loved me and how I deceived him and how “I felt the knife in my hand and she laughed no more.”

Great, I'd been killed off in a song. At least I wasn't boring.

Before I could get over that one, he was launching into, “It's not unusual to be loved by anyone…”

Yes, it is,
I started to think, my thoughts turning maudlin.
It's very unusual for me to be loved by anyone. Oh, sure, I'm loved by my dad and by Hillary, maybe even by Elizabeth Hepburn. But I thought I was loved by Billy and look where that ended up.

And then it was time for “What's New, Pussycat?” and whoever knew that “What's New, Pussycat?” was such a sad, sad song? Oh, sure, it starts out all innocent enough with all that “whoa, whoa, whoa” stuff, but by the time Tom got to the last verse and chorus—“Pussycat, pussycat/You're delicious”—I was bawling—“…you and your pussycat nose!”

I mean, who wouldn't want someone to love them enough that the lover would even love the lovee's nose? I wanted to be loved like that.

“Back in five,” I heard Tom Jones say into the mic. “It looks like we've got a bit of an emergency here. I think we've got a crier on our hands.”

And then he was at my little table, sitting right there with me.

“What's wrong, luv?” he said, very Welshly. “Tell Uncle Tom what's going on.”

It all came out in a flooding gush.

“I don't even know what I'm
doing
here!” I cried. “I mean, I thought I knew what I was doing. I thought I came for the shoes. I thought I came for Billy. Maybe I came for the gambling? I don't know. But now the money's gone and Billy's gone…and I don't even have the shoes! I swear, I don't even know what I'm
doing
here!”

“Easy, luv, you're starting to move into what's known as the refrain in my business. Look, you're main problem seems to be that you don't know what you're doing anymore. Have I got that right?”

I nodded.

“Here's what you need to do then. Find what you love to do and just get out there and do it. I've been singing the same songs for forty years now and occasionally some grandmother still throws her panties on stage. Honestly, it's not a bad life.”

“But what if I don't know what I want to do? What if I don't know who I want to be or who I want to be with?”

He leaned over and patted my knee. Considering that the patter was Tom Jones, it was a surprisingly avuncular pat.

“Then
that's
what you need to find out, Delilah.” Then he rose to his feet. “Now, then, if that crisis is over for the moment, I think I'd better go sing ‘Sex Bomb.' Or possibly ‘Mama Told Me Not to Come'? Who knows.” He winked. “I'll decide once I get back up there.”

“Mr. Jones?” I called after him.

“Tom,” he said.

“Tom. Did you ever know an actress called Elizabeth Hepburn?”

“God, yes.” He smiled fondly. “Everyone knows Lizzie. Sinatra introduced us.”

I pushed the button for the elevator and as I was about to board, Chris stepped off. He was still in uniform.

“I've been looking for you everywhere!” he said. “I tried to run after you, but the crowd got in the way. And by the time I pressed through, I couldn't find you anywhere. I asked everyone. Then one of the front-desk people said some woman in a silver dress had been riding the elevator up and down for a half hour, so I figured I'd ride it, too, and maybe you'd come back.”

“You left your post for me?” I said. “Won't you get fired for that?”

“I don't know.” He shrugged. “I've never done anything like that before. It was the first time I've ever walked off the job. Do you think they'd fire me for that?”

Stella probably wouldn't fire me for walking off on a job, but then I was The Golden Squeegee and Stella wasn't a Vegas pit boss. They'd probably break Chris's legs.

“Uh,
yeah,
” I said.