Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes (17 page)

Well, of course it would have to be “The Gambler.”

“Baby? Earth to Baby?” He gently tapped on the side of my head. “Are you in there?”

“Oops, sorry,” I said, blushing. Even though I'd been with him for a few hours at Foxwoods, even though we'd spent the whole day and a good part of the night together in Atlantic City, it had been so long since I'd been on a date proper, I needed to get my proper-date sea legs back on. I was going to need to remember that being in a room with a male human being actually meant interacting with that male human being.

“So, what do you think?” he asked, gesturing around.

I thought that, just like the exterior of his home was nicer than anywhere I'd ever lived since moving out on my own, the interior was, as well.

“I know,” he said ruefully before I could pronounce a verdict, “it looks like a gay interior designer did it, doesn't it?”

“Well…”

Well,
I
didn't say it, I thought, taking in the floral chintz and brocade, as well as the other fabrics I'd never be able to put a name to, not even if you held my Momo Flats–clad feet against the fire, gently roaring in the small fieldstone fireplace. “What can I say?” he said. “That's the dad in me coming out.”

“You have kids?” I blurted. Sure, if he had kids, I'd need to know at some point, but this was a rude awakening I wasn't ready for. He could have waited until after feeding me at least.

“Oh, no,” he laughed. “I meant ‘the dad' as in ‘my dad.' He was a gay interior designer, at least he was after Mother and I moved back to England, and I guess he just rubbed off on me.”

“But I thought you said…” I stumbled. “Wasn't your dad married to your mom for several years?”

“Oh, yes. And if he wasn't gay before he met her, he certainly was afterward. I never saw him again after he moved out, but as you can see, he left behind him a legacy of femininely refined taste. I've found in the past that some women are put off by all this—” he gestured “—but I've lived with it for so long, I can't imagine being without rose and vine patterns everywhere. Now what can I get you to drink? Champagne? Diet Pepsi?”

“Lime…?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Come.” He crooked his finger at me, invited me into the kitchen, opened the fridge: there were at least two rows of Diet Pepsi Lime in there.

“I remembered,” he said, “your asking the waitress if she had any when we were in Atlantic City and I figured it must be a particular favorite of yours. I just wanted to make sure I didn't run out.”

That was so thoughtful! See? If Hillary had been around to warn me about him earlier, I could have called her on my cell phone right now to tell her how wrong she'd been.

“So.” He waited patiently. “Which would you prefer, the champagne or the Diet—”

“Oh, the champagne, please,” I said. “But just one glass, maybe two. I'm driving, after all.”

Expertly, he undid the foil wrapping and extracted the cork from a bottle with an orange label.

“I entertained and rejected Perrier-Jouët, Moët, Piper Heidsieck and Roederer,” he said, “in favor of this very lovely Veuve Clicquot. I don't know about you, but I just love saying Veuve Clicquot.”

“I don't know about you,” I said, taking the flute, “but I try to avoid saying things I know I'll mispronounce.”

He laughed as though I was the wittiest woman ever. I can't say I thought what I said was all that funny, but by the time I was halfway through my first glass of Veuve Clicquot, I was ready to accept his obvious assessment that I was as funny as Jon Stewart and Ellen DeGeneres combined.

“Do I smell something…
burning?
” I asked, wrinkling my nose. Or maybe it was the bubbles from the champagne.

By now we were seated on the floor, backs propped against the rose-covered couch, and I was thinking that his pink shirt looked awfully nice right next to my black dress. Maybe his pink shirt and my black dress should get closer?

“Oh,
shit,
” he said, swearing uncharacteristically—really, it was as surprising as if Queen Elizabeth said “fuck” at tea—as he leapt to his feet. “And I wanted it to be a surprise.”

I raced after him into the kitchen, champagne glass in hand. I wasn't sure exactly why I was racing. It just seemed like a good moment to express my solidarity for whatever was going on. Host races, guest races, he races, she races, my kingdom for a horse and then we all move on.

As he grabbed an oven mitt, I entertained the vague notion that at my own home, I didn't even know if we had an oven mitt, let alone where to find it. Then he was unceremoniously yanking open the oven door, from which tiny wisps of black smoke emerged.

“Shit,”
he said again.

“What were those supposed to be?” I hiccupped, trying to adopt a look of grave concern as I studied the two charred rectangles on the baking tray.

“They were supposed to be homemade pizza pockets,” he said in dismay. “I remembered how in Atlantic City, you asked the waitress if she could turn your pizza into a pocket somehow, so I made my own dough from scratch, made my own sauce from scratch, then I grated fresh cheeses over the whole lot and gently folded them into pockets.”

He'd done all that for
me?
Omigod, he was trying to
impress
me.

“Oh, well,” he sighed as he threw in the oven mitt, totally missing the look of adoration I was bestowing upon him, “I suppose there's nothing for it. You toss the salad while I call Domino's. At least we've still got the champagne to drink.”

Throughout the salad, throughout the Domino's, throughout the second bottle of champagne, Billy remained charming. He even did a romantic reminiscence of the time we'd spent thus far together in casinos, which was very touching until a sore subject came up.

“And what was with that…
yo-yo guy,
the one we keep running into every time we turn around?”

My back stiffened at his insult to Chris. True, Chris wasn't the smoothest guy in the world and he did drop his yo-yos an awful lot for someone who was trying to get taken seriously as a semiprofessional at it, but still…

Then I had to laugh, though, as Billy began opening and closing his Craftsman cabinets. “Yo-Yo Man? Yoo-hoo! Yo-Yo Man? Are you stalking us, by some chance? Are you hiding in the flower box with the fresh basil? Oh, Yo-Yo Man!”

Maybe it was the Veuve Clicquot, but it was funny at the time. And, despite feeling a guilty twinge about Chris, I laughed along with Billy. Besides, what did I owe to The Yo-Yo Man, who was really only Furthest Guy, anyway? I was with The Gambler.

“How about—” Billy's eyes flashed “—a game of cards?”

“I think I've had too much to drink,” I said, suddenly realizing how drunk I was.

“Come to think of it—” I burped “—I think I'm too drunk to drive.”

Billy put his arms around me, pulled me close, tilted my chin upward with one hand and looked deep into my eyes.

“Too drunk to play cards,” he tut-tutted, “too drunk to drive. Are you too drunk for this?”

He lowered his face so that his lips were just a breath away from mine and then stopped. Taking the bait, I leapt at the chance, meeting my lips to his.

“No.” He shook his head after a moment. “I guess you're not too drunk for that.”

I liked that first kiss. I wanted more kisses like that.

Moving closer into his arms, I sought his lips with my own again.

For a time, he kissed me back, but even through my drunken haze I sensed that he was more distant this time, that he was somehow removed.

And then he drew away, studied my face.

“You know, Baby, I really would like to show you my bedroom right now. I'd like to take you in there, remove every stitch of clothing you have on, some of them with my teeth, then I'd like to kiss every inch of your body, fulfill desires you don't even know you have…”

Take me! Take me in there!
My mind half screamed, as I tried to move yet closer into his arms again, practically falling into him. So what if I'd originally insisted on driving myself, my reasoning being it would keep me from drinking too much and falling into bed with him on a drunken whim. But I'd changed my mind about the drinking. I'd changed my mind about the bed. If there's one thing regularly drilled into women's minds, it's that it's our prerogative to change our minds.

“But I'm afraid I can't do that,” he said sadly, shaking his head.

“Why? Why can't you do that?”

I wanted him to do that. Oh, how I wanted him to do that.

“Because it wouldn't be right,” he said, chastely, kissing the tip of my nose. “Because it wouldn't be fair,” he said, tauntingly kissing my neck.

“So be unfair, be unfair! I won't tell!”

“No, I'm afraid not. If you really are too drunk to drive, if you're too drunk to play cards with me, then I can't possibly take advantage of your condition. Tell you what, you can have my bed, I'll get blankets and set myself up on the couch.”

What was with guys these days? First Biff wouldn't sleep with Hillary right away, or at least not until the fourth technical date. Now Billy wouldn't sleep with me right away. What was wrong with doing it right then? I was old enough! I had my own condoms!

“Really, Baby,” he said, “as hard as it is to wait, I must resist you. We can do it when we get to Vegas. You know—Sin City?”

I
t goes without saying that not only did I have a champagne hangover the next day, but I also had the raging depression to go with it as I drove myself home from Billy's cottage in Westchester in the brutally clear light of a crisp autumnal morning. If I were still a virgin, the correct phrase for my state would be “still intact.” But what is the correct phrase for a twenty-eight-year-old woman who can't persuade the man she desires to sleep with her, despite his professing a similar desire? There wasn't a whole correct phrase for it. There was just one correct word.

“Loser.”

“You are so
not
a loser,” Hillary said after I'd said as much to her.

Arriving home, I was surprised to find her there. I would have thought that, at the rate they were going, they'd spend the whole weekend together.

“What are you doing home from Biff's so early?” I asked after calling Elizabeth Hepburn's house to see how she was doing; it was a daily habit now, checking up on her each morning to make sure she was still all right.

“What are you doing wearing Friday night's clothes on Saturday morning?” Hillary countered.

“How do you know these were last night's clothes?” I asked.

“When have you ever worn a black dress on Saturday morning?” she countered.

“I had a date with Billy,” I said. “I drove myself there, but I drank too much and had to wait until this morning to drive myself home.”

“Biff had an early golf date,” she said. “I told him that true love was one thing but that there was no way I was going to start playing a sport I hated just to impress him and that I'd see him later. Besides, I missed you.”

“Have breakfast yet?” I asked.

“Nah, I was waiting for you,” she said. “Cocoa Krispies?” She waved the box cheerfully in my direction.

“Nah. I'll change and then we can go out.”

“Out? You mean ‘out' as in to a restaurant, a place with a real menu, where I can maybe get a full brunch with pancakes and eggs and bacon? A place where they maybe don't have Cocoa Krispies on the menu? But it's never your idea to go out to eat. I always have to drag you kicking and screaming. What has this man done to you?”

She was right. I was changing too quickly. I needed the security of old habits.

“Let me just hop into the shower and while I'm in there, you can pack a Ziploc with Cocoa Krispies so I won't starve.”

And, while waiting for the water in the shower to heat up, I could always sit on the toilet and get a quick round of Sudoku in.

Hillary was in pig heaven as she dined on Belgian waffles topped with peaches and cream, chocolate-chip pancakes, a spinach and chèvre omelet, and about a half pound of bacon at the New England House.

“Never mind what Billy's done to me,” I said, watching her shovel it in. “What's Biff done to you? You're eating like you're in training to get big enough to have bariatric surgery someday.”

“I can't help it,” she said, spooning in another bite of the fluffy omelet, a piece of spinach briefly adhering to her front tooth before her tongue swiped it away. “I eat like this when I'm in love. But don't worry, I burn it all right off, too. Being in love for me is like magic.”

“Hill,” I said, “I've known you for years and I've never seen you eat like this before.”

She shrugged, snapped a piece of bacon in two, munched. “That's 'cause I've never been in love before.”

“Then how do you know this time it's for real?” I asked.

“Believe me,” she said, “when it's real, you can't miss it.”

“Oh, so now you're some kind of expert?” I couldn't keep the cynic's half sneer out of my voice. I know it wasn't very attractive of me, but how could she be so sure? I mean, if a person has never had a thing before, then how can they know that the thing they have is that thing?

I said as much, to which Hillary replied, “You just know.”

“Oh, thank you, wise swami.” I salaamed her. “With circular reasoning like that, you could start your own religion.”

“Okay, I know it sounds lame when I put it like that, but trust me, if it's real, you don't even have to ask yourself if it's real. You just know.”

“More coffee?” the waitress offered Hillary, pointedly ignoring me.

Hey, what was I here, chopped liver?

But then I remembered the waitress's scathing look at my clothes when we'd first walked in—my jeans and T-shirt seemed perfectly clean to me, but apparently they weren't good enough for
her
—and remembered the sniff she'd emitted when I pulled out my Ziploc baggie of Cocoa Krispies and ordered an empty bowl and a glass of milk. So maybe she was worried about her tip, but Hillary had ordered enough food to feed a family of four, so she needn't have worried. Certainly, she didn't need to ignore me like that.

“Could I have another glass of milk, please?” I asked sweetly, tapping her on the arm with one hand as I waved my empty glass with the other.

Despite the chilly service, I liked it at the New England House. With its natural pine tables, Windsor chairs, exposed floors, evergreen-colored walls and faux fire in the fireplace, it was a sight more comfortable to eat my Cocoa Krispies there than it was back in our tiny ill-colored kitchen. Plus, it was nice to be spending time with Hillary, being just us two girls again.

“So,” Hillary said, after Ms. Cheerful had departed to fill my milk order, “you spent the night at Billy's place. Then you slept with him?”

“Well, no,” I admitted, and then I went on to explain what happened, a recitation that ended with my repeated self-pronouncement of “Loser.”

“You are so
not
a loser,” Hillary said.

“Then what do you call it?”

“I call it that Billy's a gentleman. I call it that he respects you too much to sleep with you for the first time when you're too inebriated to know what you're doing.”

“I wasn't that inebriated! I knew I wanted to do it!”

“I call it that he wants to be sure it's what you really want, that you won't have any regrets in the morning.”

“I do have regrets in the morning—I regret I didn't sleep with him!”

“I think he's just too much of a gentleman,” she said again. “He wants it to be just perfect for you the first time.”

Her worldview seemed at once practical and romantic, like Billy was practical enough to keep a clear head about the way he wanted things to be and romantic enough to want them to be a particular way.

Still, a part of me, the part that was used to working with Conchita and Rivera, couldn't help but channel what their reaction to all this would be:

“If he really wanted you so bad,
chica,
” Rivera would say, “he wouldn't be able to stop himself.”

“He'd have that little pecker in you so quickly,” Conchita would say, “you'd be spinning like an acrobat on Brazil Day.”

Of course then they'd both point out to me how wrong Billy was for me.

“Do you think Billy is wrong for me?” I asked Hillary.

“It's not important what I think.” She stabbed a cream-enshrouded peach with professional conviction. “It's important what you think.”

“I'm not asking you for psychologist-speak,” I said, exasperated. “I want your honest opinion. As my friend.”

“I've never really talked to Billy, so how can I honestly say?”

“Well, I've never talked to Biff, not really, but I can tell he's right for you. I've never seen you so happy. You're right, you must be in love.”

“And are you in love with Billy?”

What a ridiculous question! Hillary was like the scared person seeing shadows everywhere, only in her case she was the romantic in-love person seeing love everywhere. Still, I thought about it. I certainly wanted to be in his company again. It was thrilling to be in his company, to be the object of that glow he gave off. And, too, I wanted the chance to show him that I was the kind of woman who was as much fun outside of the casino as in it, the kind of woman who was worth jumping heedlessly into bed with, practicalities be damned.

“I just don't know,” I said.

“Then you're not,” she said, amending, “at least not
yet.
” Then she glanced at her watch and quickly knocked back the rest of her coffee, rising from her chair even as she did so. “Gotta run.”

“So soon?”

“Biff said he'd only play nine holes this morning. If I rush I can be back at his place just in time to meet him at the door in my nightie.”

So much for the modern career woman—a psychologist, no less—refusing to cede her personal identity by subsuming it in service of a new relationship and becoming a cliché.

“Aren't you going to finish your waffle?” I called after her.

But she was gone.

“Check?” Ms. Cheerful materialized at my side.

Considering I'd only had two glasses of milk, twenty-five dollars seemed like a lot to pay for breakfast, but I paid it and even tipped well. The doctor, being Hillary, may have been out, but while she'd been briefly in at least she'd convinced me that I was so
not
a loser.

“Only losers have nothing better to do than go visit their aging dads on a beautiful Saturday,” my dad said when he finally answered the door.

I'd been pounding for five minutes. His car was in the drive, so I knew he had to be there; Black Jack Sampson never walked anywhere, not even down to the mailbox. As minute after minute of pounding passed without him answering, I'd grown concerned. What if something bad had happened to him? What if he'd had a cardiac episode, like Elizabeth Hepburn, only in his case he had no live-in Lottie to call for help on his behalf? What was the last thing I'd said to him? I couldn't remember.

So it was particularly insulting, having passed through that crucible of worry, to be greeted so rudely.

“What took you so long?” I said. I took in his disheveled hair, so atypical of him, took in his bathrobe. I'd never seen him wear a bathrobe in the daytime. It was a nice bathrobe, plush crimson, but still…“Only losers wear bathrobes in the middle of the day,” I said, trading insult for insult. Hillary would probably say I was exhibiting hostility as a means of repressing the concern I'd been feeling a moment before. Then I wondered: when most people wear bathrobes in the daytime, it's because they're either sick or depressed. Black Jack didn't look sick. He looked too healthily annoyed at my being there to be sick. So maybe he was depressed? Maybe he'd been on another losing streak, one so bad it had caused him to retreat into the depression of plush velour? “What's wrong?” I asked, all concern now.

“What do you mean, what's wrong?” he challenged, still not letting me in.

“It's just that you're wearing a bathrobe in the middle of the day,” I said.

“Oh. That. I have to go to work in a little while—” ‘going to work' was the euphemism Black Jack always used for ‘gambling'“—so I figured, why change twice?”

Why, indeed.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. “Don't you have anything better to do with your weekend than spending it with me?”

What was with the hostility?

“Can I come in?” I asked.

“Well, no, I mean, oh, why the hell not?” He held the door open.

“Gee, thanks.”

“I was just going to grab a quick bite before getting ready for work,” he said. “Cocoa Krispies?” he offered, waving the box at me. Black Jack never ate them himself, but he did keep a box on hand for me.

“Well, no, I already…” Then I stopped myself. In order to counter his hostility, I figured it was important to be as companionable as possible. Besides, who can't eat a second bowl of Cocoa Krispies? “Sure, why not?” I said.

Black Jack poured me a bowl, then popped some toast for himself into the old toaster as he waited for his coffee to brew.

“So,” he said, “how long are you staying for? You never said why you're here.”

I munched my dry cereal. It was really good.

“Did you ever notice how much time people spend just eating and talking? Sometimes, it feels like that's about all we people ever do.”

“Is that what you came by for—to offer me your philosophical analysis of the banality of human experience?”

“Do I need a reason?”

“No, you don't. But what is it anyway?”

“I just wanted to spend a little time with you. I missed our regular get-together on Monday night—”

“We never got together
every
Monday night.”

“—and then when I tried to see you on Thursday, you said no to that, too. I just missed you, Dad.”