“Is she available for office hours?”
“Not tonight.” He pushes Eliot’s chips away.
The gesture is an obvious bluff from a man with plenty of experience at overplaying his hand. He wagers his last chip in silence.
The dealer hands the chief a face and a three while Eliot receives two eights. The house shows a seven. The chief hits and busts. He bangs the table with his fist.
Eliot splits his cards and draws a face and a four. The dealer shows a five as his hole. He busts, and Eliot wins the split.
“Well played,” says the old Indian. The dealer agrees, and Eliot collects his winnings.
“I might be young,” he says, pushing his entire stack over to Chief Shunu, “but I have respect.”
The chips represent more money than the old Indian can refuse. And yet, as Eliot knows, there isn’t much he can spend it on. Not much to buy on the reservation, and if he puts one foot over the painted border, Chief Shunu is risking a life sentence at Pelican Bay. The old Indian sighs wearily and speaks to the chips as if they can hear. “The Chumash tribe used to control half the California Coast,” he says, “Santa Barbara to San Diego and all the mountains to the east. Best real estate in the world, and it was all ours.”
He takes his glass and swallows a pull from his drink. Goes down easy, but it’s never enough.
“You in this hand?” asks the dealer.
“Why the Hell not?” He takes two of the chips and tosses them over as a bet. He slides his room key over to Eliot in exchange. Eliot reaches for it, and the old Indian covers his hand. His palm is soft like a woman’s.
“Be gentle, young heartbeat.” His voice cracks with emotion. “Martha is all I have.”
TWENTY-THREE
Martha
Backpack on his shoulders, Eliot stands alone in the elevator and sniffs a teaspoon’s worth of drip. He folds the hanky into his pocket and notices the display is stuck between the tenth and eleven floors. He waits, but the doors don’t budge. He tries a few buttons and looks for an alarm, but there is none. No regulations on the reservation. He wedges his fingers into the door and pulls it open to reveal the elevator’s stuck between floors. He pushes the backpack out first. He climbs up and rolls out quickly so the elevator doesn’t drop and slice him in half.
Cigarette smoke hangs across the sporadically lit corridor. The wallpaper peels. The floor shows its ass through the more walked-on stretches of carpet. Chief Shunu’s key reads 1114, but no sign indicates the way to the room. Some of the doors have numbers, some don’t, their arrangement follows no order Eliot can decipher. He hears fucking in one room, fighting in the next, liquid screen too loud in a third. On one door, the faded number reads 111 with a missing digit covered by a gold star. Twentieth-century ska plays within.
Eliot knocks hoping for the best.
“Come on in,” says a garbled voice, too deep and distorted to belong to a woman.
Eliot puts the key in the lock and enters. Cigar smoke greets him in the vestibule. He fans it away with his hand, coughing lightly from the stink.
“Come closer,” says the voice. “Martha don’t bite.”
Eliot shuts the door behind him and steps across piled rags of clothing massed about the floor. The room is dark and narrow. A tapestry billows from the ceiling. Candles burn in the corners and red shades cover the lamps. There are shadows where Eliot wishes there were light.
“Come closer so Martha can see.”
Amid the rolling mounds of fur and fabric and junk piled knee-high, Eliot can discern the contours of a form mounted atop a sagging mattress. It’s a woman reclining in a beached position as she peruses a newsbrane on a bed. Smoke curls from the cigar she holds above her enormous hip.
“Come closer, baby. Don’t be shy.”
Eliot inches closer. He sees the chief’s whore half-naked in a red silk robe that struggles to conceal her bulk. Martha is a poor representation of a woman, a craggy mountain of limbs that only a fool would assemble. She has the jowly head of an obese black woman with a fold of fat beneath her chin. One arm is a cheap prosthetic that narrows to a metal hook. The other is a hairy, masculine limb with a fading tattoo of an anchor.
“Mm, mm, mm.” Martha grins, putting aside her newsbrane to take the measure of her trick. “’Bout time Chief found somethin’ worthwhile down in that nasty-ass casino.”
Beneath the wide expanse of her hips, Martha’s exposed legs are even more inconsistent. One is beastly fat, the other looks like it was plucked off a power lifter. Eliot can fathom no part of this creature that could ever have belonged to Iris.
“I’m sorry,” says Eliot, assuming some mistake, “but are you Chief’s only girl?”
“What’s that?” She flips her hair from the hole on the side of her head. “Come closer so Martha can hear.”
Eliot inches closer. Through the hole where her ear should be, he can see the corroded circuits sparking inside her brain.
“I asked if you’re Chief’s only girl.”
Martha waves off the question. She reaches for a rag and a vial of drip. She unscrews the cap and pours a few drops in the cloth.
“Want a hit?” She holds out the rag as an offering. “Ancient recipe. Not like that paint thinner the disciples be slingin’.”
Eliot refuses even though he has heard that the Native Americans manufacture a strange and exotic blend four times as powerful as the street grade he’s used to.
“You sure ’bout that?” Martha wags the rag close enough to Eliot’s face that he gets a whiff. “This right here’s the sweetie sweet.”
The quality is apparent from the scent, but still Eliot refuses. This is not why he has come all the way from Hollywood to the Chumash Reservation in the middle of the night. He is here for a reason. He has a goal in mind. Stay focused, he tells himself. Resist temptation. Stick to the plan. Though he can’t imagine one brief, little sniff would do any harm.
He removes the straps of his backpack and sets it by the dresser.
“There ya go. Take a good one while Martha get that pussy ready.”
Eliot takes the rag and raises it to his face for a quick hit.
Boom. His brain hits the top of his skull like the recoil from a cannon. He reaches for the dresser to steady his legs. A lamp wobbles; Eliot grabs it before it falls.
“Heh, heh, heh.” Martha reveals her yellow horse teeth as she laughs. “That right, sugar. Red niggers be spiritual ’bout they drip!”
The spins overtake him. Nausea. The fear he has been poisoned. He tugs at his collar and gasps for air.
“Roll with it, sugar. You be all right.”
It feels as if his entire body has become digitized and pixelated away from its material nature. Errant waves of energy alter and distort the light data of his being. Is this death? Eliot wonders. His particles race about the room then reconstitute then scatter again with each faltering murmur of his heart.
A dry, calloused hand squeezes his arm.
“Wait,” he begs weakly.
“Ain’t no wait in Martha. Martha a busy lady.”
“I think there’s been a mistake.”
“What mistake?” Her cold, metal hook snakes inside his shorts. He’s too disembodied to stop her. Before him, he sees two Marthas, one more horrid than the next, each with his cock in her hook. “You sayin’ Martha too pretty?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You sayin’ she too old?” She flings her robe open to reveal the rest of her body. “’Cause Martha real young and pretty where it count.”
Eliot averts his gaze toward the ceiling where a lewd pattern on the tapestry renders him even more disoriented. His knees give. His eyes lower and he looks, he can’t help but look, and when he looks, he sees that what joins and holds these disparate parts together is something altogether different at its core. From the floral pattern on her lavender panties to the fragile bones of her throat, it is Iris’ soft, delicately toned torso that lives at the base of Martha’s grotesqueri
e. Eliot stares at the figure transfixed, bewildered, as if only the drip could convince him that such an assembly ever fit together into one strange and monstrous collage.
“Uh-hm,” says Martha. “Not what you expected, huh?” Her big, hairy man hand reaches into the bra and pinches Iris’s nipple. “Red nigger won it in a poker game off some trapper playin’ seven-card stud. This down home cookin’ right here.”
The hand reaches inside her panties.
“No!” Eliot shouts. “Don’t do that!”
The bot cocks her head in confusion. She takes out her fat-knuckled man hand and hooks a wet finger into Elliot’s mouth.
“Don’t do what?”
The sour taste of vaginal fluid and cigar ash spreads across his tongue. She pulls him by the teeth as she falls back on the bed.
“Don’t fear it,” she says, trapping him with a muscled leg around his back. “It’s what you come for, ain’t it? What all young heartbeats come for.”
Her hook rubs his cock across the damp of her panties as he tries to resist.
“I-I-I knew you,” he stutters in a panic.
“Did you now?”
“Before you were you.”
“Martha always been Martha.”
He pushes away, trying to free himself, but her arms and legs are too strong.
“You don’t have to do this.”
“Do what?”
“You don’t have to be Chief’s whore.”
The bot cackles her cigar breath into his face. “What you gonna do, heartbeat, promise Martha a better life? Martha already got a hundred furs, good cigars, and a man that love her. But Chief can’t give what you got.” She spreads her legs and pulls her panties to the side. “Give Martha what you got.”
“Oh, God.”
“Fuck Martha.”
“I-I-I…”
“Fuck that pussy.”
“Please.”
“Fuck that sweet young pussy ’tween them big ole legs!”
“No, no, no!” Eliot rips his cock from the metal clamp of her hook. Pants at his ankles, he falls ass-backward onto the carpet and upends a table on the way.
“Goddamn, boy, you some kind of faggot or somethin’? Don’t you come in here wastin’ Martha’s time. You either need to fuck or get the fuck out!”
Eliot climbs forward, ass in the air, crawling on his drip-heavy elbows. He looks up and finds himself eye level with a vagina peeking from behind two giant hams guarding it like sentries on either side of a perfumed treasure.
Oh, good Lord, says the vagina, are you stoned again on drip? Have you come all this way just to feed your pathetic addiction while my very existence hangs in the balance?
No, he shakes his head.
I’ve warned you about that stuff, what would happen to you if you didn’t quit.
You did. You’re right. I’m so sorry.
Pull yourself together, says the vagina. Quickly before it’s too late! Rescue me from this nightmare before I’m abused by every low-life gambler in that horrid casino. Help me, Eliot. Please! Do something!
“Chief told me you have three heads.” The words fall from his lips like a mouthful of broken teeth. “Can I fuck you while you wear another head?”
He looks up into Martha’s soulless black pupils looking down at him with contempt. It appears she’s about to pounce. But then, warily, her anger breaks as custom forces her to acknowledge his request is in keeping with the norms of modern whoring.
“Pain in Martha’s ass is what you are.” The bedsprings croak as she lifts her bulk from the mattress. “You best be leavin’ a tip.”
Eliot focuses on his breathing so he can try to regain his wits. He watches as Martha leans into the closet to sort through the dildos, handcuffs, whips, leashes, and other accoutrements of her trade. She pulls a spare head from beneath a pile of shoes and raises it by the hair. It looks like one of those cheap, blue heads that botwhores keep for lonely sci-fi freaks who want to pretend they’re fucking the queen of Xenon.
“Other one’s at the beauty parlor so this the only one left.”
“It’ll do.”
She sets the blue head on the air conditioner and curses under her breath. “Crazy heartbeat motherfucker.”
As Martha slides her fingernail into the skin beneath her neck, Eliot quietly opens the top of his backpack and dumps the towels on the floor. He waits as Martha unclicks the latch and cranks her chin. Her eyes dull as she unscrews her jowly, black head and places it atop the AC.
Crouching low, ready to spring, Eliot creeps behind her and holds the backpack upside down. He waits for the moment to strike. Just as Martha positions the blue head before her chest, Eliot quickly swings the open pack over her shoulders, pulls it to her knees, and yanks the cinch tight.
“What the hell you think you’re doing?” The black head startles him as it comes to life atop the AC. “You out of your fuckin’ mind?”
Eliot freezes, stunned as he realizes that though detached, the head still has enough juice to speak.
“Take that sack off a’ Martha! Take it off her ’fore she whoop yo ass!”
A shock of nausea jolts him from his stupor.
“Get that Goddamn sack off a’ Martha!”
Eliot upends the backpack so the legs extend upward and the feet point toward the sky. He heaves the pack onto his shoulders and charges for the door.
“Help!” shouts the head from inside the room. “Help Martha! Help!”
Clumsy from the drip, Eliot rushes down the hall until a knee smashes the back of his head. Doors open in the hallway. Guests stand in their skivvies bewildered at the sight of a four-legged beast rolling around on the carpet.
“That motherfucka stole Martha! Help!”
Eliot heaves the pack onto his shoulders. He regroups. He sets off for the stairwell and knocks aside a bellhop on his way.
“Help Martha! Help!”
Inside the pack, the legs kick, the arms punch, the headless body fights to escape. Eliot manages the first few flights but takes a tumble down the next. Crouched on the landing, wrestling with the pack, he puts in his earpiece and calls Shelley on his brane.
“Get the car!”
“Wait a second. I’m up two grand.”
“Get the fucking car!”
Eliot heaves the battling pack back onto his shoulders and races down the stairs. Nine flights later, he crashes through a door and into a crowded kitchen.
“Excuse me, pardon me, my bad.”
“Hey, watch where you’re going!”
Martha’s feet kick wildly knocking pots and pans off their hangers. Chefs curse. A dishbot pulls a knife. A baker takes a swing, but Eliot ducks. Martha’s foot kicks him in the face. Crash! A tray falls. Glasses break. Eliot escapes into the dining area. He runs for the entrance with the legs kicking in the air above him past the tables of bewildered diners. He trips as he passes the hostess and slides face-first onto the casino floor.
“Hold it right there!”
The guards spot him. The gamblers watch. Eliot ducks low and drags the pack to a crawl space between two rows of slots.
“I said freeze!”
Eliot grabs his pocketbrane and sees his brother’s image on the screen. “Shelley, I’m cornered!”
“Sit tight.”
The guards form a perimeter. They block the entrances. A drone floats above Eliot’s position and looks down on him with its lens.
“Young heartbeat,” Chief Shunu shouts from the blackjack table. “What are you…” He sees the thrashing body in the pack. “He has my Martha! That heartbeat stole my Martha!”
A guard aims his weapon, but the chief puts himself in the way.
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot my Martha!”
“Get down!” says the guard.
“Don’t shoot!”
Again, Eliot yells into the brane. “Shelley, where the fuck are you?”
“I said sit tight!”
The car bursts through the revolving doors in an explo
sion of glass and wood. Women scream. Guards duck and cover. They flee the wave of debris undulating through the casino as Shelley plows the car through a maze of slots and poker machines and green felt tables exploding into shards of wood.
Eliot stands and waves his arms. Shelley sees him. The car speeds past the sports book and screeches to a halt beside the Keno. Bullets whiz overhead. Eliot jumps into the passenger seat and wrestles the pack into the car until he feels a pull in the opposite direction.
“Give me back my Martha!” Chief Shunu flops on the floor, pulling at his whore by the ankle. “Give her back to me, you thief!”
“Drive,” says Eliot. “Drive!”
The car lurches forward. They drag the old Indian across the carpet until the baccarat island knocks him loose. Eliot yanks the pack inside and slams the door.
“Get us out of here!”
“I’m trying!”
Shelley steers through the cocktail lounge punting bar stools into the air. They pass the spa, the arcade, and the coffee shop. The legs kick and fight as Eliot struggles to hold them down. Suddenly, an Indian cop leaps from a balcony and pounces onto the hood. He reaches for his piece.
“Gun, gun, gun!” says Eliot.
Shelley breaks left and crashes down a marble staircase into an outdoor pool. The Indian clutches the hood as his weapon floats from his hand.
“Vehicle submerged,” says the calm, female voice of the car’s CPU.
Shelley drives the length of the pool underwater. The Indian on the hood holds his breath. Officers aim from a distance. Eliot can see their wavy figures refracted through the deep. The car floats to the surface, tilts back, and launches itself onto dry land. A bullet blows away the side mirror. The Indian remains on the hood as guns blaze from across the pool.
“Go, go, go,” says Eliot.
Shelley reams the car through a fence and speeds across a patch of brush. Out in the darkness, he turns on the brights and looks for a stretch of road. Meanwhile, Eliot tackles the grappling backpack into the backseat. He digs his fingers into the bot’s body looking for a release lever for the android’s violent, swinging limbs.
“I can’t see with this Indian on the hood,” says Shelley.
Love in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: A Novel Page 21
