Rachel said, “Uh-uh, no way am I cooking for you. Next, you’ll want me to do your laundry and pick up after you.” Today, she was dressed in skinny jeans with rhinestone studs on the pockets and a fancy silk blouse with trailing sleeves. I thought they were useless and would get in her way. Her boots were also impressive and hand-sewn. Everything about her screamed ‘money’ yet she didn’t seem to care for the ‘bling’.
“Grab a jacket and I’ll take you out to eat,” she suggested and I wasted no time in obeying. I was eager to investigate this tower and its occupants. She took me to the twelfth floor which was one fancy restaurant after another. And some not so fancy. I had always had a craving to try McDonald’s but Mrs. Hamilton wouldn’t be caught dead near one let alone inside. When I asked if I could try a Big Mac, she informed me that those were no longer on the menu. I settled for a mushroom bacon cheeseburger, fries, and a vanilla shake. With my belly full of grease, carbohydrates, and plastic cheese, I burped in contentment.
“Want to try some of the games or the machines?” She asked, a strange gleam in her eye.
“Sure. Why not? It might be fun.” We went down to the lobby and entered a world of fantasy and make-believe. I’d never been to Las Vegas but I imagined it looked very much the same. Gold, glitter, costumes, bright lights. Girls with cleavage wandered between tables wearing black suits and ties with short shorts. The dealers wore neat uniforms like old-time Western card sharks.
There were rows upon rows of slot machines and several went haywire with alarms and lights signifying jackpots. Rachel stood back and let me take it all in. I was overwhelmed, I’d never seen so much activity and commotion going on 24/7.
A waitress approached us carrying a tiny tray and not much else. She was blonde, extremely well-endowed and carrying a year’s worth of face powder. Her eyes were made up to look like a cat and her lips and nails matched in a deep red.
“I’d ask if you wanted a drink but I know you’re under age, Miss Vaughn. Coke? Pepsi? How about you, sir?”
“Dr. Pepper?” I asked trying not to stare. Up close, she looked like an overly made up doll and not a real woman, much older and harder than I thought.
“Hello, Nikki,” Rachel greeted. “This is my cousin Blake from the East coast. I’m showing him the casino.”
“Well, have a good time and beginners luck,” she said giving me the once over. She licked her lips as if I was a tasty tidbit. “Be right back with your sodas.”
“Thanks,” I said and wandered over to the Blackjack table. I watched for a while and without even thinking too hard, calculated the odds of the next cards to come out of the shoe.
Rachel stood at my side and handed me a hundred dollars. “Go ahead,” she said with that same strange gleam in her eye. “See if you can beat the odds.”
I pulled up a chair and for the next hour played the game. I won more than I lost, I could almost predict what cards would appear next and my luck attracted attention especially since she was at my side.
The hundred dollars grew exponentially. Before I knew it, I had amassed a small fortune of a hundred thousand before the manager came out to whisper in the dealer’s ear. I heard him say, “I already changed the shoe twice, sir. He’s not counting cards and he’s too young to be a card shark.” The manager was Native American and he stared at Rachel.
“Hey. Don’t look at me,” she laughed. “I had nothing to do with this.”
“You know the House Rules state no one under eighteen can gamble, Miss Rachel,” the manager said.
“That’s a Federal law, Mr. Longbow. We’re on reservation land,” she came back. I pushed the chips back to the dealer.
“Here. I was just playing for fun, anyway,” I said.
“How did you do that?” The manager Longbow asked. “Can you calculate the odds on certain cards appearing?”
I hesitated as I looked at Rachel. In truth, I wasn’t quite sure how I knew which card would come up next, it was almost as with as if I saw it before the dealer flipped it over.
“Intuition,” I answered weakly. Mr. Longbow escorted Rachel and me to a back room behind the bar where a huge flat screen TV was playing LOTTO numbers. As soon as he closed the door, all sound from the gambling room ceased but we could watch the action on overhead CCTV’s.
The desk faced the door and the closed-circuit TV’s, there were no windows in the wood-paneled room. No photos, no paintings, the TVs the only decoration to be seen. There were two plush chairs done in leather opposite the desk and a massive overstuffed office chair behind the desk.
It was a work of art that desk – black granite top polished to a mirror shine and flecked with mica sparkles. A laptop was the only item on the surface.
“Have a seat, Mr. –?”
“Blake Strong,” Rachel answered for me. “My cousin from the East Coast. He’s visiting.”
“Didn’t know you had any redheaded cousins on the East Coast, Rachel,” he returned mildly. “What were you doing, Blake Strong?”
“Playing cards,” I answered nervousness playing with my stomach. “I wasn’t trying to break your bank or anything. I just wanted to see if I could predict the play of the cards.”
“Gambling is 90% luck and 10% skill,” he returned. “What you did was more than luck. Rachel, unless your cousin wants to be banished from this casino, I suggest you limit your playing to the machines.” She nodded. “And Rachel, I don’t like to see any underage players in my casino.”
“Yes, Mr. Longbow,” she swallowed. She stood up, took my hand and tugged me towards the door. Twenty minutes later, we were back in his office after having played four machines to five jackpots, the largest hitting twenty-five thousand dollars.
His face was grim as he pointed to the chairs and we sat down again. This time, he studied me with razor-sharp, hard anthracite eyes. Abruptly he pulled a brand-new deck of cards out of his desk. Flipped the cellophane off the pack and shuffled them leaving all the cards – Jokers and instruction card in the deck. Slapped them down on the desk and split them into two piles.
“Name the cards, boy,” he ordered and flipped over the top two of each pile.
Ace of Diamonds Queen of Hearts
Joker Two of Clubs
I called them down to the last card and missed only two. His lips thinned even further as if I had somehow offended him. “How are you cheating?” He demanded.
“I’m not,” I protested.
“Rachel, have you given him anything to help him?” He demanded and she became angry, leaping out of the chair to spit in his face. Her eyes flashed like chips of obsidian, cold and flinty.
“How dare you! I value honesty and integrity as much as my father did and my uncle does! I would no sooner cheat than I would prostitute myself! Lakan, come on!” She grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the chair, the room and the casino.
I heard the manager protesting all the way behind us as we stepped into the ornate lobby, down the escalators and out onto a broad avenue that looked like a second strip. Casinos, theaters, steakhouses and outright massage parlors vied for space with pawn shops, wedding chapels, and even diners.
I tried to get in a word of warning but she was so incensed that she ignored me. She didn’t stop but simply ran across the street, down a set of cement stairs and dragged me into a well-lit, modern subway system.
“You’ll be safe enough down here,” she panted. I didn’t think it was because she was out of shape but more to do with her emotional state.
I planted my feet and she was pulled to a dead stop on the platform where posters advertised shows and eateries, not products. Surprisingly there was no graffiti on the pure white walls.
“Rachel, I can’t go wandering off into the underground! Even if my…signal didn’t go out, there are people who will see me and report me.” Even as I said that, there were commuters veering around us as the train pulled in. I stared, although it looked like an old West UP engine and cars, the train was electric and worked on a maglev rail. The only noise I heard before it had pulled in was a slight whoosh as it displaced the air in the tunnel. Even the air conditioning units on top produced little or no sound. The loudest noise down here were the voices of the commuters. These were the service people – dressed in uniforms or coveralls. They smiled politely as they detoured around us and a few even greeted Rachel by name.
“Come on,” she hissed and pulled me over to a corner near a pillar, a restroom and a wall boasting French CanCan dancers at a theater uptown.
“This is the real world of the casino, Lake, the real people live down here.”
“Live down here? In the tunnels?” I asked.
“The subway system was built using old mining tunnels and caverns. The workers built homes into the bedrock and made a small town down here. With water and Hydro-electric power from the river. The ones who live above are the rich who’ve embraced the whites’ values and morals. Down here, no one will ‘rat’ you out.”
“Rachel, if I wanted to hide in a hole in the ground, I could have stayed in one of the caves in Shenandoah National Park. Besides, your uncle is going to have the tracer removed.”
She stared at me and hung her head. “Lakan, I saw your X-rays that they took when you were…asleep. That thing implanted in your chest is more than just a tracking chip. It also regulates your heart itself. Any attempt to remove it will cause it to send a lethal shock into your heart and kill you.”
“But, your uncle said they have doctors who can remove it!”
She shook her head. “What they were going to try was open you up, implant a small shield around both sides of your heart and hope it blocked enough so that it would only give out a distorted image that the government couldn’t trace. But, you would show up only as a curious anomaly on any X-ray or scanner.”
“Rachel, what am I going to do? I want to go home, retrieve my memories, find out who I used to be!” I whined and she took both my hands in hers. Instantly, we were back inside the Yellow Realm and the sand slid insidiously into my sneakers, the wind carried pieces into the crevices and cracks between my skin and clothing. My hair lifted and even the dark shine of Rachel’s black hair had a yellow glow.
Tungasila stood watching us, his face in shadow. “Hunta yo!” he said and ran. We followed him, my heart pounding in sudden fear yet I had no explanation for that feeling. Rachel ran with me.