Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes (16 page)

Her eyes were misting up.

“They were gorgeous,” I added. “Really, once we get you back on the red carpet, I'm sure you'll knock Bacall's socks off in them.”

The activity level on her heart monitor speeded up.

“Are you okay? Are you having another episode?” I asked. “Should I get a nurse?”

“Oh, no,” she said, “I am having another episode, but it's a good episode. Aren't you just the sweetest thing that ever lived?”

I didn't know about all that, but I did know that the Parson Flats would set me back six hundred and thirty dollars before tax, meaning that if I still wanted those Ghosts—and I did; I'd lied about not wanting them—I was going to need to do a lot more in Las Vegas than just be Billy Charisma's talisman. I was going to need to win, too.

And I knew something else: that if Elizabeth Hepburn could just hang on long enough for me to phone Jimmy Choo's in Manhattan and order the Parson Flats, and then waited long enough for them to be delivered, that even if she died then, she'd die with happy feet.

When I got back from the hospital, Hillary still hadn't arrived home from Biff's yet, but there was on the machine my first ever message from Billy Charisma.

“Ready to go to Vegas, Baby?” he asked.

Was he serious?
I phoned him back at the number he'd left.

“Not just yet,” I said.

“Oh?” He sounded surprised.

“I have other responsibilities,” I said, thinking of Elizabeth. “Besides, I don't know you well enough to just hop on a plane with you and fly off to Sin City.”

Shit! I couldn't believe I'd just said that last out loud. Why couldn't I have just said “Las Vegas” and left it at that, like a normal person?

But he graciously ignored my faux pas, choosing instead to focus on something else.

“Oh, that's right,” he said, “you always need a little bit of foreplay first, don't you? Very well, then. How about if you come to my cottage for dinner next Friday? I promise not to bite.”

I allowed as that dinner at his cottage would be very nice, but neglected to comment on the lack of biting.

U
sually, when you are waiting for something good to happen, it seems to take forever for the big day to arrive, but that week before my date with Billy Charisma just sped by.

Life may have been fast, but work was slow. Window washing sometimes runs like that: perfectly gorgeous weeks where not too many people call for help, but then Thanksgiving hits and all of a sudden everyone wants their windows sparkling in time for the holidays, despite that the cleaning fluid sometimes freezes in the frigid temperatures if you don't put antifreeze in the mix. So we had mostly half days, which even allowed us enough time to stop off for a visit to see Elizabeth Hepburn. Having received the Parson Flats I'd had Jimmy Choo's overnight to her, she was recuperating nicely at home, her happily Choos-clad feet propped up on her 1600-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets.

“These are the best medicine anyone ever invented,” she said, admiringly twinkling at her own toes.

“That was really generous of you to buy Choos for her instead of for yourself,” Stella said as we were leaving. “But did you get a load of that awful Lottie person she employs as her companion?”

I had. If Lottie had been a weapon of war, she'd have been a Sherman tank—big, mean, deadly.

“A great lady like that,” Stella said, “deserves better than that in this life.” Which was saying a lot coming from Stella, who similarly had something of a Sherman tank about her personality.

“Maybe someday,” I said, “she'll get the better companion she deserves.”

And we'd both noticed, Stella and I, that The Girls From Brazil were subdued all week long.

“What's up with that?” Stella asked when they were out of hearing range.

“I'm not sure,” I said. “Usually they just get nasty with me, but never with each other as they've been doing.” I shrugged. “Maybe they're just upset about the scant work schedule? Maybe they'd rather have fuller days and make more money?”

“Nah,” she said. “That can't be it.”

If things at work were slow and odd, meaning the strange sullenness Conchita and Rivera were exuding, my more domestic life was fast and odd.

Having blown off our fairly regular Monday-night get-together, Black Jack was not very forthcoming about his reasons why when I called him about it.

“Let's just say there may be some surprises in your future,” he said.

“What surprises?” I asked.

“Just some surprising stuff,” he said.

“Stuff?” Well, that was very illuminating.

“Never mind that now. How did Atlantic City go for you?” he asked.

“I won! I even got dealt the twin Eights you prophesied!”

“That's great! And did you split them like I told you to?”

“Of course. But then when I tried to split them when another Eight came up—”

“Crap, you didn't get my message in time.”

“No, I did not.” He could probably tell from my tone that I was still miffed at being made to look like a piker. Then I shouted, “But I won! So I'll get over it!”

“That's great, Baby. So, are you going to retire now? Did you win everything you needed to win?”

“Well, yes and no.” I explained how, yes, I'd won everything I'd needed to win (“You're my little girl!”), but that, no, I wasn't going to retire yet, because I'd given a good chunk of my winnings away in aid of buying a little-old-lady fading Hollywood movie star a pair of ridiculously expensive shoes. (“Oh, right. Why didn't I ever think of that? Of course a gambler should use winnings to finance the wealthy.”)

I tried to explain that, somehow, it wasn't like it sounded at all.

“Save it, Baby,” he said. “I'm glad you're doing good works with your winnings. Who knows? Maybe if I were more like you, I wouldn't be where I am now. Speaking of which, are you really sure you need to go on gambling? Haven't you had enough already?”

What did he mean?

“What do you mean?” Surely, this couldn't be my dad talking. This was not the Black Jack Sampson I'd always known and loved. “Actually,” I said, “I was just about to ask you if, since we couldn't get together on Monday night because you were busy, if maybe we could get together on Thursday night instead so I could practice a little bit more, maybe learn some new strategies.”

I figured that with my date with Billy coming up on Friday, whatever else we might discuss, we would surely be discussing gambling and I wanted to be prepared. I also figured Dad wouldn't pass up the chance to play a few hands of his favorite game, even if it was with me.

“Sorry, Baby, no can do. I've got another meeting on Thursday night.”

“What's with all these meetings all of a sudden?”

“Sorry, but it's still a surprise.”

“What surprise?”

But no matter how many times I asked, he wasn't saying.

“I'll tell you when the time is right,” he said, “and we're not there yet.”

And then there was my roommate–best friend: the woman formerly known as Hillary Clinton who could now best be described as Hillary In Love.

“Biff is the smartest man I've ever spent time with!” Hillary had said, finally breezing in on Sunday night.

“That's wonderful,” I'd said, “I'm very happy for you.”

“Biff is the funniest man I've ever spent time with!” Hillary had said on Monday night after what was technically their second date.

“What more could a woman want?” I'd said.

“Biff is generous to a fault,” she'd said on Tuesday, just before midnight. “Even though I make as much as he does, he wouldn't let me pay for dinner…and, afterward, he didn't even want sex! He said we should wait at least until the technical fourth date!”

Was something maybe wrong with Biff?

And then came the technical fourth date, which I wasn't privy to the recap of until Thursday morning when she burst in on me somewhere between my Cocoa and my Krispies.

“Omigod!” she said, back pressed against the door and looking like a blond-haired version of a starry-eyed Natalie Wood in just about any movie Natalie Wood had ever made. “Biff Williams has the absolute biggest—”

“I don't need to know about that!” I said, picking up my bowl and thinking to take it into my room so I could eat in peace.

“He's just so dreamy,” Hillary said, following me.

“Dreamy?” I asked. “Does anyone ever really say
dreamy?
” My mom used to say it about my dad, but that was two decades ago. Next thing, she'd be launching into “I Feel Pretty,” in which case I'd be compelled to put on a poodle skirt and play Rita Moreno to her Natalie.

“Oh, but he is dreamy, Delilah, plus he's got the biggest schlong—”

“I said I don't need to hear about that,” I said, holding up a defensive cereal spoon.

She appeared crestfallen. “Look, Hill,” I said, “just because I don't want to hear all about Biff's schlong, it doesn't mean I'm not happy for you. Of course I'm happy for you. I'm beyond happy for you.”

And I was happy for her. The fact that she was out with the same guy every night, the fact that they always spent their time at his place rather than ours meaning that for the first time since we'd moved in there I came home to an empty home every night—maybe I should get a cat? None of that bothered me. It didn't even bother me in the age old tradition of female relationships everywhere, you know, the tradition that firmly states, “I would be so happy for you that now you have someone were it not for the fact that I have no one and now your never being here only serves to highlight my I-have-no-one-ness. Really, once I have someone, too—if I live that long—I'll be nothing but happy for your happiness. Of course, you may have broken up with Mr. Wonderful by then.”

But it wasn't necessary for me to experience any of that internal unpleasantness. Because Hillary having someone in this instance made me free to sort of have my own someone, Billy Charisma, and to have him without fear of what she might have to say about him or how I conducted my budding relationship with him because, thankfully, she was otherwise occupied.

So Hillary wasn't on the scene when I was fine-tuning the plans with Billy.

“I'll pick you up at seven,” he said. “You just need to give me directions.”

“How about if you give me directions?” I said. “I'd rather drive myself.”

Hillary wasn't there to point out how combination defensive-offensive I sounded, which was great since I was determined to do this my way. The way I figured it, if I drove myself, there'd be the twin bonuses of being able to bail on the evening if it was a washout, and keeping me from drinking too much, thereby saving me from falling into bed with him on a drunken whim, because I'd need to stay sober enough to drive myself the long way home.

Hillary wasn't on the scene to negatively critique my wardrobe selections.

Going through the scant nonwork options in my clothing collection, I'd found a basic black dress shoved in the back. And when I say basic, I do mean basic. Made of some kind of stretchy nonwrinkle fabric, it could probably be rolled into a ball for months if need be without sustaining any damage, but it was so nondescript that it would never look like much unless someone like Jackie O or Princess Di wore it, and then only because they contained that inner magic while the dress clearly did not. On my feet, I slipped on the blue-green Momo Flats, figuring the color would make a strong statement and at least my toes would feel magical. Then I borrowed a lipstick Hillary never used anymore, a red that looked too bright on me, but what the hell. I wasn't trying to impress so much at this point as I was trying to look not awful.

Hillary also wasn't on the scene to question whether or not I might be making a mistake.

“I don't think he's really right for you,” she might have said, echoing something Conchita or Rivera, I forget which, had said at one point.

“There's something a little bit…
dangerous
about him,” she might have added, echoing thoughts I'd been regularly having myself. Whatever Billy Charisma might have wanted from me, the mere virtue of the fact that he was totally comfortable in a tux put him out of any league I'd ever been in.

Come to think of it, I didn't even have a league.

But still, I was going over to his place for a simple dinner he was going to prepare for me. How much danger could I possibly be in?

Hillary wasn't on the scene to laugh at me as I scarfed down a half serving of Michael Angelo's Four Cheese Lasagna while standing up—insurance against the possibility that maybe Billy might serve me something odd for dinner like squid or peacock, so that at least my stomach wouldn't scream with hunger when I demurred about just not having that much of an appetite—or laugh at the fact that I did so with a paper bib tucked inelegantly into the scoop neck of my nondescript, nonawful black dress.

She really would have laughed her ass off at that one.

And Hillary wasn't on the scene to give me a gal-pal hug or a kiss, wishing me the best of luck with my evening despite her own qualms, as I sailed out the door.

If Hillary kept things up the way they were going with Biff, I really was going to need to get a cat.

Billy's cottage, were it not a small part of a much larger estate in Westchester, would have been impressive in its own right. Certainly, with its Cape Cod architecture, flower boxes in the windows, and green-and-white porch swing, it was cozier and more finished-looking than anywhere I'd ever lived.

“Baby!” he greeted me at the door.

This was the first time I'd seen him without his tux on and in khaki pants, loafers sans socks and pink oxford shirt, he looked downright…
naked.

“Yup,” I said awkwardly, climbing up the three porch steps. “Sorry I'm late.”

“Are you late?” The perfect host, he glanced at his watch, as though needing to verify I was indeed late, rather than doing what I would have done if a date were an hour late, which would have been to make the date feel guilty.

“I got lost,” I said, something about being there with him making me feel slightly out of breath, as though I'd run the whole way over. “Twice,” I added. “But it was only my fault once. The other time, there was a detour.”

“Well, you made it after all.” He smiled. “That's the important thing.”

He offered his arm and led me inside. A part of me felt as if he was the smoothest thing since black velvet or Cary Grant, and not in a good way; a part of me was eating up every second of the royal treatment.

This was almost better than a new pair of Jimmy Choos. Maybe this was what other women went through life feeling like? Maybe this was what it felt like to be treated like a goddess by a man whose nickname wasn't anything like “The Weasel” or “The Rat”? I tried to think, if I were to come up with a nickname for Billy, what would it be…