Free Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes by Lauren Baratz-Logsted Page A

table as he took in what other people had, what the dealer had, what he had.
    Then I noticed something else: like Cigar Man before him, The Voice had one lone red chip on the table in front of him, which he had pushed forward as his ante. Well, at least we had that in common, since wanting to start out cautious, I had only wagered one red chip, as well.
    I began wondering what else we might have in common…
    â€œCard?”
    The dealer was studying me with mild impatience, his left hand drumming on the top of the chute.
    â€œOh!” That was fast. It was already my turn and I hadn’t even looked at my cards yet. I looked then and saw I had a Queen and a Six: Sixteen. The dealer was showing a Ten and I wouldn’t know until all the players had finished, what he was hiding in the hole.
    â€œCard?” He tapped the chute some more.
    Looking around the table fast, I saw a preponderance of low cards and, remembering some of what my dad had said, instinct told me the cards might be about to run high. I didn’t want to take a chance on busting with my first hand, which would be demoralizing that early in the evening, so I held out my hand flat over the card as my dad had shown me.
    â€œPass,” I said.
    The Voice was showing a combined Twelve. The only cards that could bust him were those worth ten, but he was taking his time deciding.
    â€œCard?”
    The Voice looked at my Sixteen rather than at his own cards, then he laid his hand out flat. “Pass.”
    The dealer at last turned over his hole card to reveal a Six, so he and I were pushing at Sixteen, but House rules said the dealer always had to pull at Sixteen, stand on anything Seventeen or higher.
    I felt another tingle inside as the dealer slid the next card out of the chute and saw that my dad had been right: it was a Queen. The dealer now had Twenty-six and was busted.
    The Voice beside me let out a deep breath. Then he turned to me with a winning smile.
    â€œWow,” he said, “that’s the first hand I’ve won all night. It must have been a stroke of luck, me sitting down at this table just in time for you to sit in my lap.”
    His words made me feel good because what single woman wouldn’t want to be thought of as good luck by a man who looked like The Voice? Plus, his words made me want to sit in his lap again. Plus, it’d been a long time since I’d sat in any guy’s lap, so I was really wanting to sit there.
    â€œâ€˜Herein Fortune shows herself more kind than is her custom,’” I started to say, but then a new hand was before me on the table and I realized I’d better get serious and stop quoting ol’ Bill. Sure, I’d felt great making the right decision and winning the last hand against the dealer, because if I’d asked the dealer to hit me instead it would have been me who busted. But let’s face it, I had only won a single round, and one red five-dollar chip does not a Jimmy Choo buy.
    I realized the only thing to do was to follow what my dad had told me: narrow my concentration down until it was the size of a dime, ignore the noise and the smoke and everything else that was going on around me except for what was happening right at that table, and just play. Hell, I was sure if my dad was right there, he’d tell me to ignore the beautiful sound of The Voice, as well. There would be time for that—or not—once I was finished with doing what I came there to do.
    So the only thing for it was to concentrate totally on the hand that was dealt, making the best decision possible based on the cards I held and the cards I could see in front of the others.
    Except there was no decision I needed to make because when I looked down, I saw the dealer had dealt me a Jack and an Ace: Twenty-one. It’s the name of the game, baby.
    My first blackjack.
    â€œYou’re better than a stroke of good luck,” The Voice said exultantly. “You’re a