Abe assured me that a Nevada divorce would iron out the kinks of Pennsylvania law. He then suggested I offer Millie a settlement, “to be fair.” It took me a couple of months of living in Vegas to consider anything but all-out war with Millie. Eventually, I agreed with the settlement he suggested. I really didn't want parting with Millie to be contentious, and I felt she was entitled to some of the money made for putting up with me in my years of struggle.
        The record-breaking book contract simultaneous with the threat to confine me in a damp, dark, disease-ridden dungeon repeated the pattern of my teenage years in Girard, when an athletic scholarship offer to Princeton saved me from being sent to what was then a hellhole for kids: Glenn Mills Reformatory. It also seemed to duplicate having been born the first son of a soon-to-be brain surgeon only to have that silver spoon yanked out when he was killed in a car crash. I wondered what mysteries of fate repeatedly brought me to these ironic crisis points.
        In Vegas, I took a cheap two-bedroom apartment. What was I to do with myself for the nearly one-year stay I was obliged to complete in order to obtain what seemed another divorce?
        Scott Meredith called to say that if I gambled, using his system, I could turn my stay in Vegas into a moneymaking vacation. He said he went to Vegas for two-week vacations every year and always made the same side bet at the craps table, quitting whenever he lost his $5,000 daily limit. During his two-week stay, he said, he would eventually hit a lucky streak and come away a winner. Given my longer stay in Vegas, he said that if I invested a thousand a day at the craps table and quit when that was lost, I would eventually hit lucky streaks and win big.
        I love to play poker and bet games but had no interest in casino gambling. Crowds of people feeding money to slot machines struck me as an assembly line of loony fools. If you were able to remember cards well enough to win at blackjack, you were barred from the casinos. Playing craps in a casino seemed like trying to win a fantasy lottery. My favorite form of amusement was sex.
        I joined a health club and ran a mile each morning, then wrote—or tried to—from around 9 AM till 2 PM. Banged out a couple of magazine pieces but didn't make any real headway on an idea for a novel. Threw away about a ream of paper from aborted attempts, considered seeing a shrink about “writer's block.” Made friends with a waiter named Chaney at a revolving rooftop restaurant. He was an ebony black guy who had gone to UCLA on a football scholarship, flunked out and settled in Vegas. He was married with three kids, and his best friend was a poet named Mike Newman, a white guy who lived with a black call girl.
        Mike, Chaney and I went out nightclubbing. The Moulin Rouge became our favorite hangout. It featured jazz and catered to a racially mixed clientele. Mike asked me to look out at the gathering and see if I could spot a black girl who resembled the heroine in One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding. This is something I would not normally do but I was goosed by enough alcohol that night to point out one cutie, who turned out to be a call girl, a friend of Mike's black girlfriend. Mike introduced us. She had half a dozen “working names,” and had been originally christened Odessa when she was born in Tallulah, Louisiana. She'd been “in the life” since she her first job in a bar and brothel at age 12. Said she had a thing for white boys with glasses. We had a fling and, a few days later, she moved her clothes into my apartment. What fascinated me about Odessa was that she did indeed seem like a living manifestation of my fictional character Kitten.

                                4