"Pick you up at seven-thirty sharp. Call me if there's a problem."
"Okay."
"And Amy . . ."
"Yeah."
"Uh, think about wearing an actual dress. Not one of those experimental East Village—"
"Daaad. I'm gonna look so straight. You'll see."
"Never doubted it for an instant."
That night I'd intended to explain that her college fund was currently being hedged via a comparatively unorthodox investment scenario. However, she was too busy marveling over the lights of Manhattan a hundred stories down to give me much time to talk.
What I really wanted to tell her but somehow didn't was that I'd had this spiritualist vision we'd been reincarnated as a couple of those crazy sheiks at Monte Carlo—when I'm the guy who never ventures past the quarter slots next to the door. It was as though I'd pillaged the hundred grand carefully hoarded for her future and spread it over a giant roulette play, stacking chips on every number on the board. Who knew where Dai Nippon's wheel would stop, but when it did, one of them had to pay off a hundred to one. Noda couldn't touch us. Right?
No sweat.