Mistina Bates - Indian Country Noir

“I guess you like to play.”

“When I’m on a roll,” he said. “But these out-of-the-way places, I come here for the chips as much as the action.”

“The chips?”

“Casino chips. People collect them.”

“You sure collected a batch at the crap table.”

What people collected, he explained, just as other collected coins and stamps, were the small-denomination chips the casinos issued, especially the one-dollar chips. At each casino he visited, he’d buy twenty or thirty or fifty of the dollar chips, and they’d be added to his stock when he got back home. He had a collection of his own, of course, but he also had a business, selling chips to collectors at chip shows — who knew there were chip shows? — and on his website.

“Ever since the government decided the tribes have the right to run casinos,” he told her, “they’ve been popping up like mushrooms. And they come and they go, because not all of the tribes know a whole lot about running a gaming operation. You belong to the tribe that’s operating this place?”

She didn’t.

“Well, nothing against them, and I hope they make a go of it, but there are a few things they’re doing wrong.” She half-listened while he took the casino’s inventory; she had another sip of her Dirty Martini (which, all things considered, sounded better than it tasted) and breathed in his aftershave and an undertone of perspiration.

He finished his casino critique and reached across the table to put his hand on hers. “Now it seems to me we’ve got a decision to make. Do we have another round of drinks before we go to my room?”

For an answer she picked up his hand, lowered her head, and blew her warm breath into his palm. “For luck,” she said without looking up, and then her tongue darted out and she licked his palm. His sweat, she noticed, tasted not all that different from the Dirty Martini.

He had a nice body. Barrel-chested, with a little more of a gut than she might have preferred, and a lot of chest hair. No hair on his back, though, and she supposed he got it waxed at the same salon that provided his million-dollar haircuts.

Muscular arms, muscular shoulders, and that meant regular gym workouts, because he couldn’t have gotten those muscles simply by throwing his own weight around. An all-over tan, too, that probably came from a tanning bed. You could shake your head at the artifice, or you could go with the result — a fit, good-looking man in his late forties, who, it had to be said, was as impressive in the sack as he’d been at the craps table. And if he owed some of that to Viagra, well, so what? He got her hot and he got her off, and what more could a poor girl desire?

And the best was yet to be.

Optima futura — that was the Latin for it, and she knew it because it had been her high school’s motto. It was, she’d always thought, singularly apt, because anything the future held had to be better than high school.

Somewhere along the way, after high school years were just a blur, she’d come across some lines from Robert Browning, and perhaps it was the high school motto that made her commit them to memory, but it had worked, because she remembered them still:

“Part Indian, huh? I bet I know which part is Indian.”

And he reached out a hand and touched the part he had in mind. She put her hand on top of his, rubbed his fingers against her.

“A third Indian,” she reminded him.

“So you said. You know, I was wondering—”

She put her hand on him, curled her fingers around him. She worked him artfully, and he sighed.

“Lucky,” he said. “Man, I’d say I got Lucky, didn’t I? But I think I’m tapped out for this evening.”

“You think so?”

“You drained me to the dregs, babe. About all I can do right now is sleep.”

“I bet you’re wrong.”

“Oh?”

“What we did so far,” she said, “was just a warm-up.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Can I ask you something?”

He raised his eyebrows.

“Have you ever been tied up?”

“Jesus.”

“Just imagine,” she said, her hands still busy. “You’re tied up, you can’t move, and the entire focus is giving you pleasure. I’ll do things to you nobody’s ever done to you before, Hank. You think this has been your lucky night? You just wait.”

“Uh—”

“I’ve got all the gear in my bag,” she said. “Everything we could possibly need. You’re gonna love this.”

Handcuffs, silk scarves, nylon cords. She had everything she needed, and she knew just how to employ them.

The last time she’d done this she’d given her partner a couple of roofies first, and let the pills knock him out before she trussed him up. That had worked fine, but she’d been stuck with a two-hour wait for the son of a bitch to wake up, and who needed that?

This was much simpler. And he cooperated, putting his hands where she told him, spread-eagling himself on the bed. And making little jokes while she did what she had to do.

By the time she was done, he was already semi-erect. She wrapped the base with an elastic band. “Sort of a roach motel,” she said. “The blood gets in and it can’t get out, so you stay firm.”

“Is it safe?”

“Absolutely,” she said. “It’s an old Indian trick. Now you can do something for me, and after that everything will be entirely 100 percent for you.” And she sat on his face and he did what he was supposed to do, and he was pretty good at it too. He didn’t have to be, she was so excited right now that great technique on his part was by no means required, but this made it even better.

“Now that was just wonderful,” she said. She went to her bag, got out the duct tape, and cut off an eight-inch length. “I wanted to do that first,” she went on, “because it’s our last chance for that particular activity.”

And she slapped the tape over his mouth.

Oh, the look in his eyes! Worth the price of admission right there. He wasn’t quite sure whether this was going to make it even more exciting for him, or whether it was maybe something he ought to worry about.

But why worry? What good would it do? What good would anything do?

“See, isn’t this neat? You’re harder than ever. And you’re going to stay that way.” She mounted him, felt him swelling impossibly larger inside her. “Mmmm, nice,” she said. “Oh, yes. Very nice.”

She rode him for a long time. Her climaxes came one after the other, and all they did was pitch her excitement higher. At last she fell forward, her breasts crushed against his chest. A smooth chest would have been nice, but a hairy chest was nice too. Everything was nice when you could do whatever you wanted, and when you knew just how it was going to end.

She got up because she wanted to be able to see his eyes now. “I told you some lies,” she said. “My name’s not Lucky. Or Lucretia, or any of that. My last name’s not Eagle, or Eagle Feather, and don’t ask me how I came up with all of that on the spur of the moment. As far as I know, I haven’t got a drop of Indian blood in me. A third Indian! How could anybody be a third anything? I mean, you’ve got two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents — I mean, do the math. You’re the one who knows all the odds on the craps table, so you would have to know that you can only be half or a fourth or an eighth or three-sixteenths or whatever you are of anything.”

She wagged a finger at him.

“You weren’t paying attention, Hank. Little Henry there was doing your thinking for you. And that’s another lie I told you, incidentally. That it’s safe to wrap you up like that. If you don’t loosen it in time, you can do permanent damage.”