The foxy lady. 
By Diana the Valkyrie
An actuary and a croupier


I don't really know who she was, or anything about her. All I know is 
that she came into my life like a tornado, and uprooted all my 
assumptions and convictions, and left me confused and bewildered. 

I'll begin at the beginning. I worked out this system for winning at 
cards, blackjack. Yes, I guess you've heard that before. The fact is, 
though, blackjack really is a game of chance, there's no skill involved, 
that's why they can hire anyone as a croupier. They give the croupiers a 
few simple rules to play by, and everyone knows them. What makes the 
game profitable for the casino, is the fact that the odds are in favour 
of the house. Like at roulette, the house wins on zero; at blackjack, 
the house wins when it's a draw, if you follow my meaning. But the fact 
that you can predict the opponent's moves, that's very handy. 

Well, everyone knows there are ways to reduce the house advantage. 
Always split aces and eights, double your bet on eleven unless the 
dealer is showing an ace, that sort of thing. You can get books, read 
articles about that sort of thing. But here's something they never tell 
you; once you know where a card is, it can't be anywhere else. So, if 
you've seen, say, the four of hearts, then you know you won't be dealt 
that card. 

Obvious, right? But it changes the odds, you see. And the more cards 
you've seen between shuffles, the more you know. So why don't they tell 
you that in the books? Because most people can't remember what cards 
they've seen, is why. Huh! As if it's difficult to remember fifty two 
cards. And then, if you do remember what you've seen, how do you 
recalculate the odds? The computation is beyond most people. And they 
aren't about to let you take a computer into a casino! 

So the computer was in my hotel room, humming away. And I wore an 
earphone, like a hearing aid, and I had a little mike in my tie. You can 
get them at Radio Shack, a couple of hundred dollars. They're radio 
driven, used with camcorders. So the mike connected via radio to the 
computer, and the computer spoke to me via the earphone.  Sure, it spoke 
to me, you think that's difficult? What do you think blind people use? 
It's easy. Oh, and you're probably wondering how the computer understood 
what I said. Radio Shack again, software sold by IBM, fifty bucks. And I 
only needed it to understand a few words. 

So every time I saw a card, I muttered the card's name out loud, like I 
was trying to remember it. But the computer picked it up and 
recalculated the odds, and told me what they were at each point. And all 
I had to do, was bet low until there was enough information about the 
cards I'd seen to swing the odds in my favour, and bet high when I had 
the edge. 

And was this illegal? I don't think so, any more than using a piece of 
paper to make notes would be. Certainly not against the law. And was it 
against the casino's house rules? I'd read those rules; basically, they 
said that anything they didn't like you to do was against their rules, 
and the manager's decision was final. I didn't bother to work out the 
odds that the manager wouldn't like what I was doing. Especially if it 
worked. 

Did I mention I'm an actuary? It's the oldest profession, you know, even 
older than the ones that always claim to be the oldest, the accountants. 
Us actuaries deal in statistics, probabilities. Fire insurance. Ship 
insurance. Life insurance. Did you ever wonder who worked out what the 
premiums should be? And we make it so that the house, I mean the 
insurance company, comes out ahead on the average. 

I deal in human life, life and death. For example, if you've reached 
fifty, your chances of reaching seventy are better than if you're only 
forty. Obvious, of course - but how much better? What's the odds? 
Actuaries are experts in calculating the odds. 

I didn't pay much attention to the croupier at first; she was just the 
hand that dealt the cards. I was too involved in the first experimental 
verification of my system. Well, I knew it would work, obviously; you 
can't beat the statistics. But it was pretty thrilling to be actually 
doing it. 

But as I got into the swing of things, I began to pay more attention to 
my environment. And then I noticed her, the croupier, the woman who was 
dealing the cards. 

She wore the standard croupier uniform. I guess that most of their 
customers are men, so she was dressed to distract. It worked, I was 
distracted. Her skirt was so short it didn't even get halfway down to 
her knees, and she wore a sort of, well, they call them halters, don't 
they. It didn't halt me, didn't even slow me down, just the opposite. 
But none of that was important, what really hit me was the firmness of 
her body. She wasn't thin, although there wasn't any fat on her that I 
could see. And she wasn't heavily muscled like a bodybuilder, she was 
just, well, just right. Firm. 

She saw me watching, and laughed. "It's called fitness, honey" she said. 
"I compete in fitness events. You have to be really fit; strong and 
agile, tough but flexible." "So you work out?" I asked, "ten of spades". 
She nodded and dealt cards. "This is just what I do for money. My real 
life is competing in fitness events." "How well do you, seven of hearts, 
do?" "Oh, you know. Win some, lose some. I think I'm taller than the 
judges would really like, but they can't tell me that." "How tall are 
you, four of spades?" 

"Why do you keep calling out the cards?" she asked. So I explained that 
I wanted to know which cards had played, and that if you say something, 
you'll remember it better than if you just see it. She nodded, and I 
felt bad about lying. What I'd said was correct, but I'd said it with 
the intent to deceive, so it was a lie. Actuaries make distinctions like 
that. Did I mention that to become an actuary, you start of by being a 
mathematician, and go downhill from there? "So if I want a four or less, 
and I've already seen the four of spades, then there's only fifteen 
cards that will do, instead of sixteen." She looked at me as if I'd just 
said something dumb. "Obviously". "Well, it changes the odds. So I can 
play better, win more often." She laughed. "Win as often as you like, 
honey, these aren't my dollars." 

"So why work here, king of clubs?" She shrugged. She had a nice shrug, a 
very nice shrug. Mostly, it was her shoulders that did the shrugging, 
but other bits shrugged a little on their own. I wondered how I could 
get her to shrug again, I wanted to see that in slow motion. It wasn't 
just an up-and-down motion, there was a certain amount of rotation there 
too. "It's a job. It pays the rent, and I can work out during the 
evening." "I bet the costumes don't cost much." "They're included ... 
oh, I see." She smiled. I changed my mind, I didn't want to see her 
shrug again, I wanted more of that smile. I briefly considered telling 
her The Joke, the one about the Mathematician, the Accountant and the 
Actuary, but I decided it was the wrong ambiance. 

I looked down at my chips. I'd started with a thousand dollars worth. 
What was in front of me now, two hours later, looked very like about a 
grand. Never mind, you have to persist with these things. So I 
persisted. "Are you married?" She showed me her hand, there was a 
wedding ring on her finger. I nodded. "So, are you married?" She 
grinned, and looked over her shoulder. "No. But it helps to pretend I 
am, it keeps the fluff off my jacket." "Nine of diamonds" I replied. 

Over the next several hours, we chatted as I watched the pile of chips 
in front of me get smaller, then bigger, then smaller again. I thought 
of binormal distributions and the bell-shaped curve (more correctly 
called the Gaussian curve) and how well her breasts would fit that 
curve. I wondered how one would do an experimental verification of that. 
Well, I did tell you I was an actuary. I expect accountants dream of 
things balancing. Mathematicians don't dream, they have axioms instead. 

She brushed her hair back and got off her stool. "Well, that's me done 
for the day. See you, honey." "Wait!" I said. Oh help. What comes next? 
Ah yes. "Let me buy you dinner, you can tell me all about fitness and 
stuff." She looked down at me, so I stood up. She still looked down at 
me. I suspect she'd have been looking down at me even if she hadn't been 
wearing those absurd heels, I suppose they were part of the uniform. I 
could see her thinking, "He doesn't look like a nutter." "We could spend 
my winnings" I offered. "How much have you won?" I looked at the neat 
piles of chips in front of me. "About thirty dollars". She laughed, and 
that smile lit up the room again. "OK, honey, but I warn you, I have 
expensive tastes. You might only have twenty of that left by the time 
I'm through." 

I waited till she went and got her things and signed off. I suppose I 
was expecting her to dress more ordinarily, but she was still wearing 
her casino outfit when she came back.  "OK", she said, swinging her bag. 
"Where are we going?" 

I'd thought about that. Where do you take a date in Vegas? This is a 
non-trivial question; if I took her to one of the casinos, it would be 
like taking her to work. Food is great, but you can't spend that long 
eating. If I took her to a movie, then I wouldn't be with her, we'd each 
be in a separate little world, not really together. And I wanted to take 
her someone really nice. 

Well, you've probably already guessed; I took her to the Las Vegas Art 
Museum. Oh, you didn't? You didn't know there was one? You thought all 
that glitz and glitter was all there was in Vegas? Well, you're wrong. 
$3 per head gets you into a different world, the world of art after Post 
Modernism, and I won't even try to pretend that I understand it, but 
it's different, it's interesting, and it beats sitting at a blackjack 
table all day. Well, anything would beat that. 

We wandered round the galleries looking at the art of Mark Mulfinger, a 
bit like an explosion in a clock factory, and Jim Craft, vaguely erotic 
but in an abstract way. I looked across at her, she seemed to be 
enjoying it. I explained bits of it to her. "This is reconstitutive art" 
I said. "It isn't deconstructive, it's reconstructive" "What does that 
mean?" she asked. "I don't know, it says it in the brochure here, you 
see?" So I threw the brochure away, and we tried to just enjoy it for 
what it was. 

"Would you like to watch me work out and practice my routine?" she 
asked. Would I! "Um, OK then" I said. 

So we went to a place like a medieval torture chamber, I tell no lie. It 
was full of clanking instruments for causing pain to the human body in a 
fiendishly clever variety of ways. Scattered around this inquisitorial 
dungeon were people in various degrees of agony, you could tell from the 
looks on their faces. I suppose they did this voluntarily, but I 
couldn't imagine why. Then I looked at my foxy lady and I realised - to 
get a body like hers, or else to be close to bodies like hers. She 
headed for one of the machines, and I watched her clank and clatter as 
she moved the weights to and fro, exercising some part of her that I 
wasn't sure about. When she'd finished with it, I surreptitiously tried 
it myself. I could barely move it. Actuaries aren't known for their 
weight lifting ability. She had a go on several pieces of equipment, she 
told me that today was leg day, whatever that meant. I guess it means 
mostly doing things with your legs. 

At one end of the gym, there was a clear area, and she headed for that 
next. She skipped towards it, then turned a somersault. I've seen that 
before, but she did this one without her hands touching the ground. I 
thought that was the sort of thing you saw in circuses. After that 
opening, I could barely follow what she did, she sort of bounced around 
like a rubber ball and leaped and twisted and turned, then she did 
several one-armed push-ups, and I wondered if I could do several two-
armed, and then she stood on her hands and walked backwards, toppling 
over but somehow landing on her feet, and as a finale she cartwheeled 
across the space, and finished with a somersault landing on her feet, 
bowed to the audience, and said "I'm hungry". So we went to eat. 

I was surprised at how much she ate, and I asked her. "Surely in fitness 
you have to stay lean?" "Yes, but I burn up so much energy doing and 
practising my routine. As long as I'm careful to eat the right sort of 
food, I can eat lots and lots." The right sort of food seemed to be 
steak and boiled potato. 

It was dark by the time we left the restaurant. I say dark, it's never 
dark in Vegas. What I mean was, the light didn't come from the sun any 
more, it came from the Hoover Dam, beats me why they named it after 
a household appliance. "I hate it when it's like this", she 
said. "It's all so, so artificial". "But almost everything is 
artificial, humans make their own environment wherever they go. Look at 
what I do, what you do, that's artificial." "There's nothing artificial 
about being fit, eating meat and potatoes and other good things." "No, I 
meant the croupier job. Totally unnatural". "It's a living. So what do 
you do?" "I'm an actuary." "A what?" 

I always get that. Why doesn't anyone know what an actuary does? If I 
was an accountant, all I'd have to say is "I'm an accountant", and 
everyone would instantly have me pegged. But I have to spend half an 
hour explaining every time. "We work with probabilities and stuff." "Oh, 
like in cards?" "Sort of. But with human life." And I explained to her 
about actuarial tables, and the likelihood of death in the cohorts, and 
the probability of a ship sinking, and that sort of thing. And someone 
grabbed her bag and ran off with it. 

Huh? 

Er. 

I'm a thinker, not a doer. So I stood there, thinking. 

And as in uffish thought I stood, she was away. How you run in five inch 
heels, I can't imagine. But if you saw the streets of Vegas, you 
wouldn't want to run barefoot either. Worse, she was catching up with 
him. Worse, yes. Because I couldn't see him tamely giving her back her 
bag, and I wondered what was in it that was so important. Small amounts 
of cash are replaceable, credit cards can be cancelled. She was running 
towards a criminal, and I don't know what arguments she intended to use 
to persuade him to hand over her bag. 

She moved fast, and I thought, I better follow, maybe I can call the 
cops or an ambulance or something. Not that I can run very well; you 
don't get much practice as an actuary in running. Accountants run, they 
run trial balances. But I was used to sitting and thinking. 

I saw the whole thing. She caught up with him, grabbed his coat, and 
yanked him off balance. He staggered sideways, bounced off a tree, and 
came towards her. I could see his expression, it was "let's get this 
nuisance out of the way". I'm not sure if he even realised she was the 
one whose bag he was snatching. And I tried to remember the phone number 
of St. Rose Dominican Hospital, it's faster if you call direct. 

And then he was lying on the pavement, unconscious. Something happened 
in between him standing there menacingly, and him lying down. I think my 
subconscious mind edited it out as being unsuitable for me to know 
about. You know how minds do that? That's how come people believe so 
many absurd things that violate the facts; the facts aren't there, 
they've been edited out. 

I wheezed up and stood there panting, wondering if I was going to get 
lucky and have a heart attack, or whether this pain in my chest would go 
on for ever. "What happened?" I said, following the script of every 
straight man since Aaron. "I kicked him" "OK, he's unconscious?" "I hope 
so." "You hope so? Look, he's lying down, he isn't moving ... oh. Ah." 
Life and death, my specialty. Yes, I could see why she was hoping he was 
unconscious. "But what happened?" I said, persisting with my straight 
line. "I kicked him. In the head. He looked like he was going to get 
rough. You think I should have let him hit me first?" 

Well, it is traditional. The good guy is supposed to let the bad guy do 
some very unfair things to him, and then the good guy is supposed to 
make some supreme effort to pull himself together, and get one big punch 
on the jaw, finishing off the bad guy. I'm a John Wayne fan. Aren't we 
all? Did you think real life was like that?

But surely a kick to the head wouldn't ... I mean, I've seen all the 
movies where the bad guy breaks a chair over the good guy's head. Hmm. 
Maybe they use balsa chairs? Thinking about it, maybe being hit with a 
real solid chair would kind of knock you down. 

And then the actuary took over and I did a few calculations. I'd seen 
those legs kicking in her routine at the gym. In one of those high 
kicks, her foot must have been travelling at fifty miles per hour, and I 
guessed that her leg might weigh twenty pounds or more, and all that 
kinetic energy was transferred from the point of her shoe to the 
robber's head, and I rather hoped he was unconscious. So I called an 
ambulance; yes, actuaries have mobiles, and I did remember their number, 
it's (702) 564-2622 if you ever need it. 

And then she said to me, "Honey?" I looked up from my phone call. 
"Kicking a man unconscious always makes me very horny." And she smiled. 
I decided not to refuse whatever it was she wanted.  Even actuaries know 
when to give up gracefully. I got a lot of great practice that evening 
in giving up gracefully.


Oh, I worked out what was wrong with my system. It worked just as I'd 
calculated, don't get me wrong. It's just that the edge it gave me was 
worth about five bucks per hour.