Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes (12 page)

“Yes.”

“Kiss Frank for me.”

“Frank?”

“Sinatra. You are going to Atlantic City, aren't you?”

But wasn't Frank…

Then I remembered my promise to her that night in the limo after Foxwoods, my promise to keep her secret, implicit in which was my promise to go along with the game.

“Of course,” I said brightly. “As soon as I see Ol' Blue Eyes, I'll pucker right up.”

T
he bus to Atlantic City was like, well, a bus to Atlantic City.

“Don't scuff the Choos on the metal steps!” Hillary admonished as she boarded behind me. Great. Most people had a backseat driver. Me, I had a backseat boarder. Her admonition, the third of its kind in as many minutes, made me regret her largesse.

Earlier in the week, after I'd given her the money for the Momo Flats, she'd immediately phoned the Manhattan store, ordered the shoes and had them express mailed. When the package had arrived, I'd thought she'd want to try them on right away (that's what I would have done) and that she would have then modeled them for me with pride right away (that's what I would have done). But, being the annoyingly atypical human being she could sometimes be, instead she'd merely snatched the package from the UPS man and scurried off with it to her room, slamming the door behind her. What was she going to do in there all alone with them, some kind of satanic rite?

“Aren't you going to model them for me?” I'd asked.

“No.”

“Did you try them on yet?” I'd asked. I'd been dying to know, if only vicariously, what it felt like to walk in one's very own Jimmy Choos.

“No.”

“But aren't you going to—”

“No! I'm saving them for our trip to Atlantic City on Saturday. It's bad luck to try new shoes on before the special occasion you plan to wear them for.”

“Huh?” This was a new superstition on me.

“Oh, just eat your lasagna and go do your Sudoku.”

But then Saturday came and Hillary brought the box of Choos right into the kitchen, trying them on with no more ceremony than if they were from Payless.

“Huh,” she said, after trying to force her foot into Choos that were clearly too small for her feet. She picked up the box, studied the label. “The store sent me the wrong size.”

“This is the first time you've even looked at them?” I was shocked. The woman had nerves of steel.

“I thought I already told you, it's bad luck—”

“I know what you said about trying them on. But you didn't even
look
at them? What kind of insane person are you?”

“I'm the kind of insane person that makes you lucky I'm insane, that's the kind of insane person I am. Look.” She held the box out to me, pointed to the label. “It says size six.
You're
a size six. They sent me
your
size by mistake.”

It was true. Everyone knew that about us. I was a six; Hillary was a nine. Even with a crowbar, she'd never get her feet into those Choos, not without ripping the seams.

“But that's awful!” I said. Then I sighed. “Oh, well. I guess there's nothing for it. You'll just have to exchange them. Still, you'd think a store as expensive as that wouldn't dyslexically mistake a six for a—”

“I can't do that,” she said hurriedly.

“Why ever not?”

“Because it's bad luck to exchange shoes once you've had them express mailed.”

“Huh?”

“So I guess you'll just have to wear them today instead.”

Suddenly, I smelled something, and it was dirty feet.

“You did it on purpose!” I said.

“What?” Her eyes were all innocence, so innocent it set me thinking her eyes doth protest too much.

“You deliberately ordered the Choos in the wrong size!” Then my own eyes filled with tears. “This is all just so…so…so…so
Gift of the Magi!
”

“What are you talking about? This is not a thing like
The Gift of the Magi.
”

“Yes, it is! I give you the money I won at Foxwoods, you use it to buy Choos that could never fit you so I could have them instead. It's exactly like
The Gift
—”

“Delilah?”

“Huh?” I spoke through my tears.

“Just take the damn Choos. Wear them in good health.”

But now as we settled into our seats on the bus and she extolled, “Don't scuff the Choos on the metal footrest!” I wished she hadn't been quite so generous with my gift.

She'd taken the window seat, claiming she got carsick on buses. I'd have tried the same ruse, but she beat me to it.

“You'd think,” she said, “that since you're the one wearing the Choos, you'd have thought to dress in a more presentable fashion.”

“What's wrong with how I'm dressed?”

She looked at my old jeans, my pink-and-green striped oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

“Everything?” she suggested. “I just think if you're going to wear the Choos—”

“Do you want them back?” I asked. “After all, your own outfit—” she was wearing a blue-green sleeveless linen dress that was a perfect match for the Choos in question “—more befits their…
grandness.
”

There was a part of me that couldn't believe we were talking this way about a pair of shoes, even if they were Choos.

“Oh, no. No, no, no,” she demurred. “They're yours to keep, my gift to you.”

Some gift. I mean, I did pay for them.

As the bus driver pulled onto the highway, Hillary extracted a book from her matching blue-green mesh carryall bag.

“What's that?” I asked.

“A guide to Atlantic City. Hmm…” She wet the tip of one manicured finger with her tongue, turned the page. “Now, let's see here…It says the first boardwalk opened on June 26, 1870, and was one mile long. Did you know it was designed by Jacob Keim and Alexander Boardman to keep the sand out of the tourist shoes? Did you know today the boardwalk extends just over four miles long?” She pondered. “Do you think it's possible that board
walk
was named for Board
man?
”

I leaned closer, tapped her on the shoulder.

“Hillary?”

“Hmm?”

“I don't want a history lesson,” I whispered in her ear before practically screeching,
“I'm just going there to gamble!”

“So-
rry.
” In a huff, she reached into her carryall—how much stuff did she have crammed in that thing?—and extracted her iPod, covered her ears with it and proceeded to ignore me. Hillary was nothing if not technologically advanced, having at least one each of everything Apple or any of those other places ever produced. Me, I was a confirmed tech-not and when she'd asked me how I could live without my own iPod I'd merely replied, “By the time I can figure out how to program it, it will be rendered obsolete by some new and improved gadget. Besides, I'd probably strangle myself on the wires.”

But as I sat there beside her, the sound of the bus's exhaust and the overflow of whatever she was listening to were the only things disturbing my silent solitude—it was maddening not being able to figure out what song she was hearing clearly—I decided to switch seats. Despite her music and the no-doubt gripping guide to Atlantic City before her, she had fallen asleep and was snoring. Hillary could be a loud snorer.

Toward the back of the bus, I found a pair of unclaimed seats on the other side of the aisle and slid in beside the window. At least I had a view now. Watching the green road signs and trees zip past me, I thought about
Funny Girl.

Okay, maybe that was an odd thing to be thinking about, but I'd been thinking about my parents' relationship a lot lately and thinking about them as a couple always made me think about the 1968 movie starring Barbra Streisand as Fanny Brice and Omar Sharif as Nick “Nicky” Arnstein. The movie, about a talented girl with a big schnoz who talks her way into the Ziegfield Follies only to wind up falling head over tap shoes for a suave gambler, had long been a favorite of my family's, at least of my mom and me; Dad had hated it. He said the character of Nick Arnstein was a “complete Hollywood fabrication” and that “no real-life gamblers would ever behave that way,” even though Nick Arnstein had in fact been a real-life gambler. So we could only watch it when he was out of the house, huddled together under a comforter on the couch, popcorn and cocoa at the ready as Streisand sang big number after big number.

“But why does she have to leave him in the end?” I'd always sob.

“Because he's a gambler and a criminal,” she'd say, arm around my shoulders.

“But he's her man! She loves him so!” I'd memorized the lines from all of Streisand's songs from the show so I knew this just as much as I knew that people needed people, that they were the luckiest people in the world, and no one was ever going to rain on my damn parade.

“I know, dear, but he's still a gambler and a criminal.”

I'd look up at her, tears staining my cheeks. “Would you ever leave Dad like that?”

“Of course not.” She'd always seemed offended that I'd even suggested such a thing. “Your dad's not a criminal.”

I'd had my doubts. If Fanny could leave Nicky, what else could go wrong in the world? But as the years went on and my mother never left, we watched the movie less and less often and my obsessive nature turned to other things. Still…

“Nicky Arnstein, Nicky Arnstein,”
I whispered-sang, face pressed against the window of the moving bus, just as Fanny Brice had done at the stage door after meeting him for the first time, except she hadn't been on a bus. What can I say? I was alone on a bus and the romantic allure of those old Streisand songs never paled.
“Nicky—”

“Heh. Another one.”

“Excuse me?” I looked up to see an elderly man with brown polyester slacks practically belted up to his chest and thick glasses making his eyes look magnified to a frightening degree.

“There's always one on every bus,” he said, “young chicks obsessed with Nicky Arnstein. Is this seat taken?”

Before I could answer, he was sitting next to me.

“My wife kicked me out,” he said.

“Oh, I'm so sorry,” I said automatically. What else do you say to a total stranger's problems? Do you ask if maybe his wife kicked him out because he calls women
chicks?
I tried again. “Have you two been together very long?”

“For about three hours and a half.”

“Oh. Well. That's not very long.” How devastated could he be? He certainly didn't look devastated.

“Since we got up this morning.” He must have seen my stunned look, because he added, “What? You thought she kicked me out of the marriage?”

“Well…”

“What a crazy assumption! Betty would never do that. She just kicked me out of my seat.”

“Oh.”

He craned his neck over the seat in front of us, searching. “Oh, look,” he said, “I think Betty's getting jealous.”

I craned my own neck and saw, several rows forward, a blue-haired lady with glasses on a chain around her neck glaring at me. Shit. I didn't want to get in bad with Betty. Still, if she kicked him out…

“What did she kick you out for?” I asked, settling back into my seat.

“A book.”

“A book?”

“What are you, an echo? A book!”

“Must have been some book.” What was he reading while sitting next to Betty—porn?

Thinking I should get away from this pervert, I craned my neck again, this time in search of Hillary to see if she was still snoring. But when I found the back of her blond head, I saw it bobbing in enthusiastic conversation and after briefly thinking that must be some great song she was listening to, further realized that she wasn't talking to herself, either. Some other blond had snagged my seat.

“Stop worrying about Betty,” my companion said, tugging me back into my seat. “She doesn't even carry a gun in her bag anymore.”

Gun?

“Here's the book.” He pulled out a skinny paperback.

“‘Blackjack Winning Basics,'”
I read the title, “by Tony Casino. Betty kicked you out for reading
Blackjack Winning Basics
while on a bus trip to Atlantic City? What did she think you two were going to do there, get sand in your tourist shoes?”

He studied me. “You're kind of an odd chick, aren't you?” Not waiting for my answer, he adjusted his glasses and opened the book. Assuming he was going to mind his own business from now on, either because he thought I was so odd or because it was what any normal seatmate might do, I went back to gazing out the window, only to have my reverie intruded upon by…

“In the
event
that the
dealer's
upcard is
a
Two—”

“What are you doing?” I asked.