“Believe me, that’s Vegas. Read ’em and weep.”
I looked at the slips of paper. They were dated receipts from ATM machines.
“I bring them to meetings with me,” he said. “They’re a reminder of how sick I am.”
“I’m still not sure what I’m supposed to be seeing.”
“Every ATM receipt tells a story,” Vanessa said oh-so-helpfully.
“Thank you, Rod Stewart,” I said, “but I still don’t—”
“It’s a record of my last trip to Vegas with Dan The Man,” my dad said.
“Dan The Man is Jack’s football bookie,” Vanessa said.
“I know who Dan The Man is,” I said. “Believe me, I’ve been hearing about Dan The Man for a lot longer than you have.”
My dad grabbed the receipts back from me, studied them. Sure, it was rude for him to just grab like that, but at least he wasn’t admonishing me again to speak nicer to Vanessa. As for Vanessa, I didn’t really mind that my father finally had someone to fill the vacancy my mom had left—much—but I minded a lot that she was keeping him from fulfilling his duties to me, his only child and blackjack heir. Color me selfish, but I had Choos to win.
“No wonder you couldn’t figure it out,” he said, shuffling the order of the slips of paper. “They weren’t arranged properly so a person could read the story in order, kind of like a book that jumps all over the place. Here, try again.” He handed the papers back to me.
But I guess he still didn’t trust me to be smart enough to figure it out on my own, because he stood beside me, pointing with his finger so I wouldn’t miss a thing as he narrated his tale.
“This is Saturday afternoon, at two-fifteen. We’d arrived late the night before, so all was good up to this point. I started out winning right off the bat, nearly doubled my stake before packing it in for the night. But the next morning, who knows what happened? First the losing started in dribs and drabs, or five-dollar chips and ten-dollar chips, but then by the time I hit the ATM for the first time, my stake was gone.”
The first receipt was for one hundred dollars. What’s a hundred between friends? But hadn’t Black Jack always said you should walk away if you lose your stake?
“What’s a hundred between friends, right?” he echoed my thoughts. Then he shuffled to the next slip. “But as you can see,” he said, “six hours later, having multiplied my hundred as high as a thousand, it all disintegrated and I was back at the ATM.”
This one said two hundred dollars.
And from there on, the slips decreased in time intervals while increasing in withdrawal amounts. The last, for five thousand dollars, was on Sunday afternoon.
“That was right before heading for the airport. It’s amazing how quickly you can blow through five thousand dollars in chips at the high-stakes tables.”
“Wow,” I said. If I’d been doing the math right, he’d lost ten grand in a single weekend. Sure, he’d lost more in the past. But he’d also had more to lose in the past.
“Oops, one more,” he said.
This one, time-stamped four-eighteen, was at the airport ATM and was for fifty dollars.
“Parking at the other end?” I asked.
“Nah, it was for the airport slots. I was hoping to at least recoup a little while waiting to board, but no such luck. At the other end, I had to borrow from Dan The Man to get my car back from extended parking in White Plains.”
“How’d Dan do?” I asked, vaguely curious.
“Oh, his ATM story was even worse than mine. But you know Dan. He’s got the book behind him, so he can afford it.”
True.
“So,” the man formerly known as Black Jack Sampson sighed, “that’s how I lost the house.”
“Wait a second. Back up. What do you mean you lost the house?” I studied the slips. “You didn’t lose the house on this trip. You lost the house last year. These slips are dated a little over a month ago. Besides, ten thousand dollars isn’t exactly a house. Not since around 1950, it’s not.”
“True, but I’d been planning on winning the house back. Well, not the same house, but at least a house. I had it all planned out. If I kept doubling my money over the course of the weekend, by the time I left I’d have enough for a down payment on a new place, a place that would make you proud to come to see me.”
“I’m always proud to come see you, Dad.”
“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 o
n 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.
18
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.”
Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes Page 17
