‘No Dice’

In Mondo Banco Sarah sees no need to take her seat, elbow to elbow, with the wealthy, worldly people who waste time and money playing games of chance. Once a gambler herself, she now has more on her mind than where the chips may fall. Taking every opportunity to be alone and do what she longs for, she stays in her half of the suite in the Hotel de Luxe, prays to the Lords of Death and plays with her memories of Corn Dog.

Queenie, Prince, Coyote, Set,

let it come, my longshot bet.

Acey, Deucey, King, Jack,

send my brazen brave boy back.

She sprinkles her prayers liberally with her soft, high whistles.

Meanwhile Harry is down at the blackjack table wiggling his whiskers at another twenty-one-year-old number named Roxanne. Roxanne is cheap but not free. Lady luck hangs on to his arm and squeezes the inside of his thighs. When he goes to cash in his chips, she is right there along with him.

After his discovery in Heidi’s drawers Harry is on guard, always looking to see who may be watching him. When he notices a man in a checkered jacket fiddling with a camera, trying to hide behind a potted palm, he thinks the man may not be the tourist he seems, but another one of his sister’s private eyes out to scratch his good time. A photograph of him and Roxanne could incriminate and perhaps disinherit him. Better safe than sorry. In two seconds, before the fiddler behind the palm can snap a shot, Harry leaves the curvy Roxanne flat.

His meat however remains in the motion toward climax and gives the optimist the idea to try his luck with his wife once again. He knocks on her door and jokes, “Room service.” Getting no answer, he puts his ear to the door and hears her whimpering. She mumbles something that sounds like

Goldie, Blackie, Whitey, Spot,

fetch me the bone that gets me hot.

He hears her let out a soft high whistle, there is the faint tinkling of bells, and then a burst of tears.

“Cupcake,” he says, “are you all right? What are you doing?” He knocks again and again, louder, but the crying jag continues. It is more than he can ignore.

Using his keys, he comes into her room from his. The room is dark, the only light from a thick, black votive candle on the vanity table. In front of the mirror, it sheds a faint double flicker on the cream white figure on the bed: snow-white Sarah, lying on her stomach, arms beneath her, wearing a white silk chemise. Her bottom is bare, her beautiful legs are astride a pillow. She is so transfixed in her mutterings, her eyes are closed so tightly, with tears seeping through her lids, she does not even notice that he has entered the room.

The ringing in his ears is coming from a bell collar around her neck. The floor around the bed is strewn with an assortment of books. She is sobbing incantations backwards and forwards. Much of what she says sounds like nonsense to Harry, nevertheless he can see that she is grieving sorely. He approaches quietly, listening to what she is saying.

Mastiff, Turnspit, Shepherd, Schnauzer,

here is my crescent, my rebel rouser.

She tweets parenthetically.

Husky, Tiny, Lurcher, Bowwow,

I need my underdog for a game of pow wow.

There are more things in heaven and earth than Harry has dreamed of in his playboy philosophy. He is a man of the world’s surface. He knows nothing of what is beneath it, beyond it, within it. Her soft whiteness, her tender and juicy pink folds, are enough in themselves to spark him. But the bells, books, and candles, the strangeness of her ritual makes his heart pound with a new and powerful flood of love.

Hoochie, Cootchie, Poochie, Moochie,

fetch me my Corn Dog for a little smoochie.

It’s a moment of discovery for him in more ways than one. Because of Sarah’s class act he found himself actually enjoying the opera. Now the man of this world finds he has a secret yen for things that are out of it. But “Corn Dog”? Up until now he has suspected that this Cornie, Cornelius or Cornwallis, was a fiction. But it seems, from the emotion he sees his wife displaying, that she does love a dead Cornie! Corn Dog! With a name like that he must be for real. An Indigen, maybe. That would explain it. Whatever, he gets the idea that the affair that produced Gloria was unsanctioned, a mismatch. No doubt it was puppy love gone astray.

He listens to Sarah say her prayers, hears her pucker and whistle, and watches with mounting excitement as she stretches and exercises her womanhood, pressing her smooth white thighs into the soft down clasped between her knees. He has to lower his head a bit to see her fingers wandering, smoothing the creases and cracks, red-painted nails tickling her pinkest places. For all her stroking she seems neither hot nor wet. He, however, so long deprived, finds his breathing heavy. He has the feeling of falling, swirling in a whirlpool of love and desire. Although her invitation might be for someone else, he cannot resist answering the call. Maybe he can help. Sitting down gently on the edge of the bed, he kisses her lightly between the shoulder blades and proceeds south. She comes back from the nether world when she feels her husband’s head between her legs. “What? Harry! I didn’t even hear you come in. What are you doing? Oh, no dice tonight, dear, my head is splitting! Now, out with you. Please!”