Chapter 9
Las Vegas! Glassy-eyed women aimlessly pulling down the arm of the slot machine, mechanically dropping in their dimes and quarters or maybe just nickels and, if you get off the strip, even pennies! Watching the wheels spin round producing their fruit baskets of lemons, cherries, plums, stars and bars, dreaming the dream of that heady moment when they can scream
"Jackpot" and see the cascade of money, sperm-like, jetting out at them from the dispenser.
Men, dead cigar butts clenched between their teeth, looking like stepped-on and mangled cockroaches, waiting their turn at the dice table, waiting for a chance to throw and keep on throwing and hoping the odds will win, not the evens, the low numbers will have it, not the highs, that they'll not crap out, that the dice will be good to them. Men invoking punishment and pleading for pleasure!
Couples gathered around the roulette tables, the endless expanse of green baize with the treacherous zero and double zero at the top, the neglected numbers. How eagerly they watch the ball bounce and jounce in place as the wheel revolves beneath it, sending it on its erratic course, waiting for a ball to pick a number and hoping that the number it picks is one of theirs! Three rows of 12 numbers each, three rows of destiny. Pick an intersection, put your chips on it, and if any of the four numbers win, you get paid eight to one. Pick a horizontal row of three numbers. Guess right and you get twelve to one. Pick a number squarely and you're paid off 3 to one-all thanks to the sneaky Zero and double zero at the top.
Croupiers seem like wax figures from department store windows. You slick their hair down even more, immobilize their faces still further, dull the gleam in the mannikin's eyes, put an amethyst on its finger, dress it in the house costume of tuxedo or shirtsleeves and, voila, you've done made yourself a croupier.
Watch them as they shuffle and deal the blackjack same, mechanically. You wind them up and they deal you bum cards. Got two aces? Separate them and double your bet and he'll hit you with a five and a four. Have you a run of little ones going and you need anything up to a nine to get the five cards that make you a winner? Here it comes: a queen. Twenty-two points and you've lost, brother. "Hit me," the fellow on your right says. He's the one who gets the precious jack-ace combo that makes him buy a moment of feeling great. Not you.
Las Vegas. Broads shoving their amplified breasts past your shoulders, giving you the sight of a tightly-clad pratt jiggling past your hand, slugging you with their perfume and those eyes made gorgeous with make-up and lashes. And while you're thinking that maybe you still have some of the old charm left, she's thinking how fat is your wallet and can you cut the mustard and which of thirty stock stories about how she got into this racket will make you unpocket an extra ten spot.
Las Vegas with its lounge shows and great names and its utter, absolute, cynical lack of soul.
From her vantage point behind the palms, Mildred watched Charlie Greco at the black jack table, watched him sipping his drink, playing heavy-lidded, reaching down furtively to pat the rump of the girl on the stool next to his whom he was staking in the game. She was winning consistently, too, and putting the chips into a big leather bag that matched her incredibly short leather skirt. And Charlie's hand kept running up and down the crack in her backside, sharply defined by the leather and the way sitting on the stool tautened it.
Mildred watched and felt a little pang of jealousy, even though Charlie had been generous in his gambling allowance for her and she was more than two thousand ahead.
One of the whores came by. A big, pretty brunette with flashing eyes and a big smile. "Come here, dear," Mildred said, authoritatively.
"Sorry, doll," the big brunette said, "I've had my fill of girl-guys. They fall in love and pay lousy and take forever and a girl finds herself less attractive to the men-guys after competition lias spred the word around. It's not just you, understand; you seem a nice enough sort. I just thought you needed an explanation."
"Not me," Mildred said. "My husband."
The girl's eyes widened. "Caught you cheating?" she asked.
"No, it's our deal. He wants to play. I help him. He has money and takes good care of me as well as his outside friends. And I can have a party with anyone I want whenever I wish."
"So you have to find a girl here in Las Vegas? Is he that much of a creep?"
"Hardly!" Mildred said. "He has a beauty with him now. I just don't want him to get too involved with her. When foxes are being chased by a hound, one will run until he gets tired and then he crosses near where his mate is hiding and she'll run some more until she gets tired, when the first one takes over again. Pretty soon the hound is so worn from chasing that he never catches and eats his prey."
The big bruette sat back on the couch laughing. "So your poor slob never gets a chance to get rid of that load in his pants until you get him home? Is that it?"
"Not quite," Mildred said, grinning ruefully. "I just don't like the little thing who's working on him now. That's the girl there; the one with the white silk tank top and the shore leather skirt."
"Gretchen?" the big brunette said. "Hell, she has talent when it comes to taking a man. She owns two apartment houses already. I hate her for how much she can get out of a John I already thought I'd wrung dry. Financially I mean."
"So will you help me?" Mildred asked.
"Do I have something Gretchen lacks?" the brunette whore asked.
"You will," Mildred said "'He's queer for bright silk scarves."
"So you going to dress me up?"
"Let's go visit that shop across the street."
They had spotted it as they were driving in in the big car Charlie Greco had rented. The window was filled with bright colored silken temptations, geometries, mod things, psychedellic colors, gleaming and enticing as gems. Charlie had seen the window and nearly overshot his turn-in to the drive in his noticing it.
Yet he said nothing to Mildred about it and she didn't mention it to him. This would be a better way.
They didn't pick the smaller squares, those twentyfour inches or less. Not much you can do with those. But the ones twenty-seven inches or larger, those were the sizes you could knot or fasten with a pin or puff up as a frame behind your head, or make into sashes by using a pair, one around the waist, the other flowing from it and concealing the knot.
They didn't pick the sheer fabrics, the extremely light silks or the chiffons, silk organzas or others that weren't opaque. Mildred recalled the time she and Charlie saw a woman wearing one of those over rollers in her hair. Charlie had caught her arm and explained most explicitly: "If I ever once catch you in a get-up Kke that, I'm shoving my fist hard into your mouth and then kicking your ass the hell out. Even once," he warned. And Mildred, looking at the repugnant sight, replied:
"And I'd not blame you."
But they did choose the gleaming satins, soft and smooth to the touch, a joy to see, to stroke, to feel against one's face. And they selected the handsome, weighty silk twills with their rich, authoritative colors, their excellent handle, the feeling of luxury to them. The rayons, or acetates, weren't neglected, not if they gleamed enough and were heavy bodied. Nor were the long scarves of rich, soft, silken, bright-colored fabric. All told, they bought a dozen scarves.
The girl, fortunately, was wearing a basic black silk dress that was an excellent foil for the silk scarves. Her hair was long enough for Mildred to tie one of the very long scarves to it in a big, droopy bow and let it trail its mane of beautiful, strokable color behind the girl.
Another was tied around her neck in a big, soft knot, a huge scarf in bold reds, greens, white and black, that was a promise of joy in-touching to the sight and that more than fulfilled its promise in the actual touching.
Then, around the waist of her black dress, Mildred fastened a scarf like an extremely wide belt and used a matching one as the flounce over the knot to make it excitingly floating when the big brunette walked.
Her handbag was also ornamented with one of the colorful silken delights and the others they purchased were put in the girl's purse and inside her bra.
"Take him from her now," Mildred promised, "and I'll top whatever you take him for with this fifty." She tore the bill in half and gave half to the girl.
"I feel like a walking window display," the girl said. "Here's an extra key to my room, 622. Why don't you go there and wait in the closet to see what happens and maybe give me clues on what to do next?"
"First I want to see your pick-up technique," Mildred said. Then she watched.
Charlie was playing in his short-sleeved shirt now, his elbows on the table, his drink on his right where the girl, Gretchen, occasionally took a sip. The stool on his left was occupied by a fat, comfortable looking man. The big brunette stood behind the fat man watching. He lost three times in a row.
"This is a cold table," the girl whispered to him. "At that table over there," she said, nodding her head toward another one, "they're hitting the dealer almost every other round."
The fat man looked at her, grinned and said, "Okay, sweetie. If I win there I'll come looking for you and buy you a pretty and a goodie."
"Oh, goody," the girl said drily.
Charlie turned his head slightly at the sound of her voice, then turned fully to face the girl. His eyes studied the array of beautiful scarves she was adorned with. Then Gretchen nudged him. "Come on, hon. don't hold up the action here."
Charlie asked for a card, stood pat on sixteen, and then the brunette unfastened the scarf on her purse, laid it across Charlie's bare arm as softly as a kiss while Gretchen was deciding whether to call for another card, and melted into the crowd behind her.
Charlie caught up the big, pretty silken square and held it gently in his hands, pressed it against his face, inhaled the fragrance of the perfume in it and then, not even waiting to learn whether he won or lost on the hand in play, swept his stack of chips into his trouser pocket, picked up the ones in front of Gretchen, murmured, "So long, kid. Stay here and play. Don't follow me." Then he was off in pursuit of his vision.
Mildred grinned in admiration of the girl's technique and the satisfaction that Charlie had been lured away from the beautiful Gretchen. Whatever it was that turned Charlie on involving scarves had just stood Mildred in good stead.
She was about to break for the brunette's room when she saw the girl pausing in a dark corner of the lounge and Charlie addressing her. He held up the scarf. She undid his tie and put it in her purse, then folded the scarf lovingly and fastened it around Charlie's neck, securing it with his tie tack.
Then the two walked off together.
Gretchen collected her remaining chips and also those Charlie had left on the table since the dealer had drawn a twenty-three and then, anxiously started out in search of Charlie. Mildred saw the scene and took out a razor-sharp knife from her purse. Gretchen was walking fast. Mildred judged her course and deliberately bumped into the girl.
"Oh, excuse me," she said earnestly, as her knife slashed the bottom of the leather bag. "That was ever so clumsy. Are you alright?"
"Sure, I'm okay, stupid," Gretchen replied, her eyes blazing. "If you old worn-out bags have to drink, why don't you do it in your rooms?"
The knife was a tempting weapon for Mildred, but she had to conceal it in her right hand. So she used her left to slap Gretchen hard in the face.
Gretchen, furious, swung her heavy leather bag and sent an arc of chips flying against the wall from the cut-open bottom. Frantically she started scrambling after them, forgetting all about Mildred in her haste, and Mildred, delighted with herself, scurried to room 622.
It was a typical Las Vegas whore's room. Not one of the best nor the worst. There was a pretense of a regular wardrobe there, but they were all extreme man-catching costumes except for the simple sweater and skirt and loafers the girl had probably worn to work there.
Naive, Mildred wasn't.
She liked the way the closet was situated. The door opened outward and presented a view of the-bed directly and it also let her see the dresser mirror so she could tell what was going on on the opposite side, too.
Charlie was grinning broadly with the scarf around his neck and the brunette was walking so that her hand deliberately fluffed out and lent movement to the one hanging from her waist. She tossed her head so that the six foot scarf Mildred had tied in her hair was a silken flutter of visia! delight.
"Know what it was that turned me on about you?" he asked.
"You like brunettes," the girl suggested.
"Yes, and also-"
"You like big, tall women?"
"Not especially," Charlie said, "but I have this thing about scarves and you seem to wear them more masterfully, with more beautiful authority, than anyone I've ever known before."
"There is such a thing, then, as wearing scarves with authority?" the girl inquired. "I hadn't realized it. How can you learn something like that?"
Charlie Greco's face hardened. "Listen, don't go teasing me, girl. And don't treat me like I'm some sort of queer. I dig scarves. You might even call me a scarf fetishist. You wear them a certain way and they make you extra pretty. I'd like to own your scarves. You give me a hard-on when you wear them a certain way and gave me a stiffer one when you put this one around my neck, but I'm a man and a tough one and I don't lose control. Understand?"
His voice was heavy and menacing and yet the girl found him exciting. "Shut up," she said, "and come to bed. Quit making tough-guy sounds and start acting like a lover."
She began to undress, but she took off everything except her scarves. Then she started undressing Charlie and soon he was naked save only for the scarf around his neck.
Now the girl went to her purse and took out two of the big squares from it, unfolded them and spread them over Charlie's nipples as he lay back in the bed. His reaction was phenomenal. She turned her belt so that the scarf trailing from it stroked his towering organ. Now she hovered over him, letting her bright silken ornamentation dangle above him, stroke him and his nipples were hardening under the light touch of the rich silk.
"Do me a favor," Charlie said "I'll give you an extra twenty if you do."
"Sure," the brunette said. "What?"
"Wad up one of them lightly and put it between my palms. Then use another to cover my two hands completely like a single mitten and tie my hands together at the wrists. That way I'll feel I'm a prisoner in scarves, feel the silk in my palm, which always did things to me, and then you keep on playing with my breasts that way and trail that one in your hair over aly face."
She understood. She used the scarves that had been in her bra to do as she was told. Charlie was thrilled and excited, delighted with what was happening to him. His wife, looking through the crack in the closet door, saw him tied by the wrists, excited and active in the thrilling participation in the game he was playing more so than anything she recalled since they were first married!
Under pretext of going to her closet for more scarves, the girl went to Mildred who urged, "Blindfold him so I can get out. Then call me here tomorrow." She handed the girl her phone number, some folded bills and the other half of the fifty.
Charlie was blind olded by the girl and then Mildred left. She'd seen enough!
The phone rang the next morning and Charlie answered. "Wrong number," he said. Then hung up. He left an hour later and the girl phoned. "I sold him all those scarves for a hundred dollars," she told Mildred. "And he paid a generous fee for my services. But now he's gone back to look for Gretchen. What did you do to her? The syndicate has a detailed description of you and one of the boys may be paying you a visit soon."
"Could that be serious?" Mildred asked.
"If it were me, I'd be worried about someone using acid on my face. You may just get beat up and thrown out"
"I don't think Charlie would permit that," Mildred said. "He can play rough too and his connections are good."
"But Charlie doesn't know you had anything to do with the Gretchen caper or me, darling," the whore said. "Sit tight. I'll get you out of it."
Nervously, Mildred waited. In less than an hour there was a knock. She looked out the other door of their suite and saw that it was just a maid. Then she closed the door and called, "Yes?"
"Maid," a voice said.
She didn't recognize the big brunette when she opened the door. No make-up, a gray wig, a pillow around her belly under the maid's uniform, she looked a sight and she pushed her cart into the room and closed the door.
"Here's' a micro-mini skirt for you to wear. That will take attention from your face, especially with these lacy black stockings. Also use this long blonde wig and this dark olive make-up. You'll look like one of the Florida Cubans passing for something that's' probably really inferior if only the girls knew."
Mildred hastily got into the things the girl brought, left a note for Charlie and proceeded to pack. "He tells me he has a collection of maybe a hundred and fifty scarves," Mildred's ally told her. "Keeps them in a locked metal tool box under his work bench. The key is on the door of the tool shed marked 'Inner Office.' Apart from that, there's not much I can tell you except that you should watch out for a short, fat fellow with a big, broad, easy-going grin. He's Gretchen's John and she claims she lost over five hundred yesterday from a cut you made in the bottom of her purse. He intends to blacken your eyes and loosen a few of your teeth as a warning and then take the money Gretchen lost from you one way or another."
Then the maid and her cart were gone, leaving behind an entirely different-looking and feeling Mildred.
Mildred enjoyed the sight she presented in the mirror. The brunette had been well paid for whatever these things cost. Now it was just a matter of getting out before she was found out.
Charlie was gambling and Gretchen was next to him when Mildred went down after calling for the bellhop to take down their bags. Charlie didn't recognize his wife.
And then she felt a strange panicky quality as she saw a short, fat man, sweaty-looking, a handkerchief around his neck protecting the knot of a florid, wide tie. There was a grin on the man's face, but-his eyes weren't smiling.
Instead there was a deadly, coldly waiting quality in the man as he kept his eyes on Gretchen and her purse-the same purse, resewn.
Mildred took a stool two players away from Charlie to await a chance to tell him what was happening. Gretchen was winning again and, smart girl, she was wearing a bright brown and orange silk scarf around her neck with the same outfit she wore yesterday.
Mildred played for awhile and won. When she spoke, it was in a far lower and slower register than her customary one. But she couldn't get Charlie's eye, couldn't communicate with him. He was all hands and attention on Gretchen.
Gretchen, however, started looking at Millie and Millie seemed to feel her disguise fading away under the girl's hard, cold scrutiny.
Then Gretchen signalled the fat man and the fat man came over to her. She whispered something to him and Mildred began speaking in her natural voice. Charlie looked over at her easily, betraying no sign of recognition. He leaned over toward Gretchen to catch the conversation between her and the fat man and saw the fat man approaching Mildred. Something metallic gleamed about his knuckles when he took his fist from his pocket.
Instantly Charlie grabbed Gretchen's purse, opened it wide and strung the open purse over the fat man's head.
He drew the strings tight and knotted them, ignoring the fat man's hard driven punches into his belly.
Then, while the fat man struggled with the knots to tree his head from its encasement while he was still breathing, Charlie asked Mildred, "You okay?"
"Now I am," she said, "but we'd better get out fast. There are several bruisers coming your way from that many directions."
Gretchen tried to delay them by throwing her arms around Charlie Greco's neck. Charlie helped himself to her scarf and then literally hurled her at the two nearest goons coming his way.
Mildred saw a third pulling a blackjack, a real black braided leather sapper, the kind they fill with buckshot, from his trousers pocket and swing back behind Charlie's head. Her knife cut the braided leather immediately next to the fist and she caught the loose head of the weapon in her left hand and smashed it hard against the base of the skull of her husband's assailant. He buckled and dropped.
The bellhop saw Mildred coming and said, "Your things are in your car, Mrs. Greco. It's parked in front"
"Great, dear," Mildred said as she and Charlie ran tor it. "Will you have them bill Mr. Greco?"
And then they were driving to the airport with its slot machines for the last few dollars change and Charlie was holding Gretchen's scarf in his hand, and Mildred took it from him and tied it around his head and stroked his ears through it
"You were just great there, darling," she said.
"Sometime next year will you please tell me what this was all about?" Charlie Greco asked.
"I guess I was jealous of Gretchen," Mildred said, "sp I dealt her a mortal blow by slicing a slit in the bottom of her money tote bag." She continued stroking the silk scarf against his responsive face and he had a prominent rising.
"Dog-gone it, woman," Charlie said, teasingly, "some day I'm really going to get mad at you."
Mildred opened his fly and proceeded to tie the scarf around his testicles and penis, then hide it in his trousers.
"Thanks for fixing up that fat boy so he couldn't use those brass knuckles on me," Mildred said. "I'll bet he hurt you, didn't he?"
"A little," Charlie admitted.
"I'll make it up to you, sweetheart," she told Charlie Greco. "You'll be guest of honor at a party to which only girls will be invited-and I promise you'll love what we do to you."
Tony Brazzi met them at the plane. As soon as he and Charlie Greco shook hands, there was a definite feeling of empathy established. Two good, strong, capable, manly men. Mildred looked at his physique and said, "Charlie, okay I should have him? After all you had two of them in Las Vegas."
"You lost count early," Charlie said. Then, to Tony, "Think you could handle a little hellcat like this?"
"Be kind of fun finding out," Tony said. "But don't you switchabout couples require that whoever gets a guy's wife has to bring a girl for her husband?"
"Sound thinking there. Tony," Charlie grinned, slapping him on the back. "And I'll bet you lined up something cute for me."
"As a matter-of-fact, it was Eric and Gary who fixed me up with mine and she's still so new with me I'm jealous," Tony admitted.
"Sounds like we may all be taking part in one of the wildest and most offbeat weddings in history before long, hey?" Mildred inquired.
"I'm not the marrying kind," Tony said, blushing.
"That's an incidental detail," Charlie said.
"Providing she's the marrying sort," Mildred added.
And then they were home and Tony drove back to work.
Charlie was busy after his vacation and he paid slight heed to Mildred. In fact he forgot her promise to him about the party.
But he had carefully smuggled the scarves he'd purchased from the brunette in his shirt case. The one Mildred had wrapped around him, that he had taken from Gretchen, he'd had dry cleaned. Together they were brought, several days after the trip, down to the workroom.
It was a strange thing to see this powerful, manly creature, his tongue dry, his hands sweating, as, reverently, he lifted the big tool box, green and efficient-looking, from its place under the bench to the top.
The door to the room was locked and all the cracks were sealed. He unlocked the box.
Charlie stripped to the waist and then spread a pink taffeta sheet over the smooth surface of the workbench He lifted the pile of smooth, neatly folded scarves from the tool box in several stacks, each of which was tied with a wide satin ribbon of a different color. A stiff sheet of cardboard was beneath and atop each stack of the scarves so that the ribbons didn't press into their folded edges and wrinkle them.
There they were, divided by basic colors, the predominately reds and pinks and oranges in one stack; the blues and greens in another; the .grays, blacks and whites in a third; the browns and yellows in a fourth.
Each of the new acquisitions was brought out and held fully opened. Charlie looked at it in the light, pressed his face into it, smoothed it over his nipples, chest and belly, draped it around his neck and looked at himself in the mirror, tried it around his head, and then, reluctantly, he folded it, being careful to get the four corners exactly together Next folded it each way once more and, with the care of an expert watchmaker, added it to the stack of scarves in that color range.
The expression on his face was one close to religious as he returned the treasures to their chest, locked it and put it back under the table, put his undershirt and shirt on again and left the workroom.
Lying on the floor above, her eye peering through the tiny opening she had drilled in the floor and filled with a peep-hole of the sort used in doors to inspect visitors, Mildred felt she was continuing to discover an entirely new Charlie Greco-an interesting one, too.
One who should have a party given for him a very special sort of party, "Hi, Mildred, baby," the woman's voice on the phone chirped. "I'm coming over to see you this, morning, so get your lazy ass out of bed and have coffee ready for me."
"Who is this?" Mildred asked, puzzled.
"Carson's the name," the voice said. "LaVerne Car son. We had a party while you and Charlie Greco were tearing hell out of Las Vegas. Met me a guy named Tony Brazzi who's a great lay."
"My, you certainly sound earthy," Mildred said.
"Don't get fancy-pantsed with me, kid," LaVerne replied "We both love a good roll in the hay, so I'll be coming over to talk about him to you. Be there in twenty minutes and don't give me any hard time about being busy or expecting guests. See you, Kid."
Mildred was still grinning when there was an authoritative knock on the door. She was pleased that she was wearing the latest in hostess outfits, wide-bottomed black silk crepe pants and a full-sleeved white satin blouse with loads of chains around her neck and waist and a cute little bolero jacket.
In her mind she expected to see a bleached blonde in a too-tight outfit, chomping gum and swinging her beads and with beaded eyelashes and a cupid's bow mouth, maybe with a cigarette hanging from the corner.
What she saw, though, was in dramatic contrast. For LaVerne was physically as feminine a creature as Mildred had ever seen. The narrow waist and the full hips and breasts were attractively clad in a smart paisley printed blue and green silk suit with a big, soft bow at the neck and the beautiful, fluffy blonde was stopped by a pert-looking hat that matched the blue of her eyes, her purse and her gloves.
The expert, subtle make-up of the girl was just right for the image she was creating and even the tone of voice was light and girlish, in contrast to the things LaVerne said!
Mildred instinctively extended both her hands in a warm greeting to catch LaVerne's. "Do come in, darling," she said, and it came out warmer and less artificially than the words themselves seemed. "I'm genuinely pleased to meet you."
"Yeah?" LaVerne asked. "Why?"
"Because I have the feeling," Mildred replied, "that we two can become damned useful to each other. Okay?"
"Okay. Let's have that coffee and don't bother to put any Irish whiskey into mine this morning."
Mildred poured and the two sat on opposite ends of the couch. "Shoot," Mildred said. "You called me first, remember?" saucer on the coffee table. "Tony Brazzi," she said.
LaVerne took a slow, thoughtful sip, then set the "I sent him to pick you two up at the airport. Wanted you to see him. I want that man."
"I don't see you having any problems there, dear," Mildred said. "He's obviously turned on by you."
"Okay, so I get him horny. That part's easy. Any of s-you know-can get just about any man going with a sott touch, flattering gab, wearing things that get to them and the perfumes that poleaxe them. But that's not enough." She took another slow, thoughtful sip. "I want him on my terms."
Mildred's brow cocked. "Namely?"
"He's not as bright as I am. I can get us making more money, having more fun, doing more things, if it can be arranged for me to be the absolute boss of our marriage."
Mildred let out a slow, low whistle. "Sister, you're asking for a fat order there. That guy's no maso, no pushover for the aggressive woman, no TV who can be molded by getting him into a damned dress, no submissive type."
"If he were any of those things," LaVerne said, her Up curling, "I'd not be in the least interested in him. No challenge. Even with me in charge of the guy, I want a man I can respect."
"And Tony fills that bill?" Mildred asked.
"Perfectly," LaVerne replied.
Neither of t em was very large. The petite, short-haired Mildred, brunette and shapely. The buxom blonde LaVerne, artful in her femininity. But they recognized one thing they had in common: cores of steel!
"Let's give that some thought," Mildred said, tugging thoughtfully on the long earring she was wearing. "How did you make out with him?"
"He thumb-cuffed one of each of our hands together and then Eric did the same with our opposite toes so that we looked like we were dancing, couldn't get apart, and each had one hand free. He's the fastest one-handed pants and shorts dropper and skirt raiser I ever met in my life!"
"That sounds good so far," Mildred mused. "But isn't he the sort of wild animal who loses his fight when he's caged?"
"Not if he's in a situation in which he can still keep on fighting-but in which I always keep on winning," LaVerne said. "And that's what we're looking for, dear. Give it some thought, won't you? You're the most diabolical of the lot of them as far as I can tell."
Mildred was amused rather than resentful of this diagnosis. "What's your reading of the others?" she asked.
"Emily is a woman who is finding fulfillment late but enjoying the discovery. With enough development, she could become wild enough to be interesting, but a man would really have to get her sent up the wall for that."
"Howabout Thelma?" Mildred pressed.
"I'm afraid we took her mask off when she was with us all last time. Eric needed help in getting her made helpless, but after that, as far as I could tell-Tony kept me mighty busy, you know-he seemed to know how to make her feel like a woman instead of a big broad. She'll still be the dominant one between them, I'm sure. Probably keep the guy in drag much of the time, even. But I suspect that now it'll be as much for love and to keep him on ice as it was before out of an effort to keep the guy suppressed and punished."
"You see Eric as more of a man than he was then?"
"Let's put it as more of a complete, understanding, self-realizing person."
Mildred found herself feeling a new respect for this interesting woman. So she talked like Ethel Merman and she was hard as nails. She also had enormous human insight.
"That leaves us Gary," Mildred pressed.
"He was a dullard to start with, as I read him," LaVerne said, "but he's a good-looking hunk of beefcake and maybe if enough people work him over enough ways Emily will get herself a man there who's not that much of a lemon."
"Alright," Mildred said, taking over the conversation. "I'll give you my best reading of how to handle Tony later, as soon as any really interesting brainwaves hit me. What I need now, though, is some help with the best and toughest man of them all: my husband, Charlie Greco."
"What's up?" LaVerne asked.
"This guy's every bit as much a man as Tony. Older. Better educated. Used to be a college professor and then he got so fed up with the system that he's practically a gangster today, legal and all, but that type.
"Well, as far as I could tell, he had no special hang-ups worth fussing over. Oh I knew he was particularly attracted to women wearing bright, shiny silk starves, but I read that as about in a league with someone responding to a girl's perfume or a tight skirt or good legs.
"But then I noticed it was getting stronger. He'd notice real dogs wearing pretty scarves and ignore pips a full-blown-you'll pardon the expression, please who didn't. I caught onto the fact that he probably had fetish there.
"Didn't have a chance to really explore it until I was in Las Vegas this time and a real knockout of a girl started getting through to him. An experiment's okay. But this was getting my goat. So I hired a big beauty and did a thing with scarves with her that simply clobbered the competition that the prettier, more artful girl set up."
"You let them go the whole route?" LaVerne asked.
"All the way and I just hope she's not pregnant," Mildred continued. "She got him to confess where he had a whole big cache of scarves hidden away, played a little game with him, putting one silk scarf between his palms and then bandaging his two hands together with another so they were tied at the wrist. She worked on his nipples and his tool with scarves and, man, did he ever give out!
"Well, I happen to love this guy a lot. So I want him to know that I'm a mighty understanding girl about the scarf bit. Rather than keep it a secret from me and hide it-something I'm mighty surprised and, frankly a little disappointed, that Charlie would feel he should do, I want this right out in the open and him having fun from it."
"Bet he knows he's a lucky bastard having you for a wife already," LaVerne said sympathetically, "but hell know it a hell of a lot better after you come up with a whole new sexual aberration for him."
"What do you mean?" Mildred asked.
"Looks like we'll soon be enacting a scene called 'The Scarfing of Charlie Greco!'"
Mildred grinned. "I knew it! Soon as you called, and soon as I saw you, I knew I'd have the accomplice needed for this. Come on, darling, let's work out the details. Here, I'll show you our set-up here and what's in the tool box and everything."
"Tool box?" LaVerne asked. "Hell, I'll bet yours isn't much different from most."
"Bitch!" Mildred exclaimed.
"The gang will be over tonight, Charlie," Mildred told him when she phoned, "so get home early. You have to meet the new girl anyway, the one Tony Brazzi was so crazy about."
"Sounds like fun, dear," Charlie said. "I'll be there around six."
The car was at the station where he'd left it that morning when the train disgorged its batch of brief cases with men carrying them He sat comfortably behind the wheel and let the car, like a well-trained horse, carry him home by instinct.
It was good to get home, fun to be with Millie and the gang. He thought about Thelma and how she was the only one of the women he knew he hadn't shacked up with. Might be interesting riding a big broad like that! And then his mind swung over to the new girl Mildred had mentioned. Maybe one of the tall, thin model kind who have high cheekbones and always seem so damned sophisticated. That'd be good for the opposites attract theory.
Or perhaps she would be young and impish with one of those mini-mini-miniskirts. They looked cute, especially with the scarves they always seemed to tie at the bases of their ponytaiLs.
Maybe she'd be a fat girl. He understood that fat girls are tight down there and they usually had nice complexions. But mostly he'd not been too attracted to them. He was still thinking along these lines when he unlocked the front door and walked in.
What the hell? Maybe he'd misunderstood, but he thought there was to be a party here and the place seemed deserted. Come to think of it, there weren't any cars parked outside either. Must have misunderstood Mildred. He'd best look around for a note.
Ah, there it was, right on that silver tray in the living room where she always put the mail.
"Take off your jacket and tie," the note read, "and go into the kitchen."
Alright, he was game. Off came the jacket and tie and then he was in the kitchen. The note was taped to the refrigerator door: "Take off your shirt and undershirt and come to the den."
Leaving those garments on the kitchen chair, Charlie Greco continued the pursuit and he saw the third note pinned to the back of his favorite easy chair in the den. "Off with your shoes and socks, Charlie, and go down to the basement."
The basement! But that was where-Hastily, Charlie Greco bared his feet and started, apprehensively, down the basement stairs.
He couldn't resist looking in the workroom first but there was the tool box in its customary place, evidently untouched. Feeling somehow relieved he saw the note on the pillar there: "Unpants yourself, Charlie, and come on up to the bedroom."
Hell, why not be a sport? So he left his trousers hanging on the doorknob of the workroom and went to the bedroom. The door was locked. There was a note on it: "Slide your shorts under the door, Charlie, or you can't come in."
Grinning he shucked off this last remaining garment, slipped the waistband under the door, and it seemed to be slurped under it. Then there was a key turning in the lock and he entered the completely darkened room. The door closed behind him and he heard the key again.
Turning quickly he grabbed for whoever it was and felt tire unquestionable touch of a silk scarf with a woman's breasts behind it, a big woman's big breast. His bands groped higher, lower, and again he felt scarves. But now two hands seized his wrists.
"I have him," Thelma whispered. "Scarf his hands, LaVerne."
With the pressure of the silk scarves against him, Charlie didn't struggle. He felt his erection rising as someone put a wadded silk scarf between his two palms and then covered the backs of his hands with the smooth silken material and used the ends to bind his wrists tightly together.
Now he felt bodies pressing against him, may feminine bodies, surrounding him from all sides, silken clad bodies, silk scarf clad women, he was sure!
And as they squeezed, pressing thighs and breasts and hips and arms against him from all sides, the light gradually came up in the room.
It was as though the world had suddenly gone mad! It was as if signal flags of a thousand feminine navies were hanging from a hundred lines! Wherever he looked there were gleaming, bright beautiful silk scarves!
Charlie saw that the canopy over their bed was draped with them, that myriad scarves had been sewn together to make the spread, that the curtains were now assemblages of beautiful scarves. On the arm of all the chairs, they were like doilies and he looked around him to his astonishment and delight to see Thelma, who had caught and held him; a new blonde beauty, evidently LaVerne; Emily, looking the most irresistible he had ever seen her, and, astonishingly in silk scarves!
Emily was wearing what would have been an Indian sari had it been of sari cloth instead of the gorgeous satin scarves she'd sewn together for the occasion.
Thelma was wearing an evening gown of scarves most ingeniously put together so that the squares were all complete and she had a long stole made of them and others around her head and hanging down the back!
LaVerne had contrived a blouse of two matching scarves sewn with sleeve holes and one for the neck and a skirt made of four scarves, two around her waist and two set into the sides of these so that their extra points hung down.
Around her head she had tied a scarf Indian fashion with a big bow at the side and one went around her neck which matched another around her waist.
Mildred's was more a Hawaiian costume with a necklace scarf to which had been tied literally dozens and a waistband scarf to which were even more of the lovely things tied. Around her head, she wore a six-foot one with a big floppy bow in back, one Charlie recognized as that he had purchased from the big brunette in Las Vegas. In fact he saw that his entire collection of scarves was here among the others worn and displayed by these women.
Sudden fury seized him. They had found out his secret! They were teasing him!
Lowering his head he charged the first of the women who was before him, LaVerne. Quickly she stepped aside and caught his ankle in the loop of a scarf in her left hand, pulling up sharply. He fell to the floor, turning onto his back as he dropped.
Immediately Themla, in her vivid silken evening gown, piled atop the man with the bound wrists and proceeded to rub her scarf-covered breasts against his face. LaVerne reached through Thelma's silken gown to capture his tool in the fabric the large woman was wearing.
Emily and Mildred sat on his ankles and began stroking his bare legs with the lovely silken material.
"Give up, Charlie?" Thelma asked softly, "or do we just tickle and stroke you to death."
Tingling, thrilling to the things these women were doing to him, Charlie groaned, "Alright, girls. You win. Take over. I give up. Just so none of the men are in on this."
"We promise, they don't know a thing about it," Mildred assured him. "This is an all-girl party except for you."
"Okay, girls," Charlie said softly, sighing. "What's the first thing you want me to do?"
LaVerne's hand which had been holding Charlie's tumescent tool through Thelma's lovely scarf-gown was suddenly joined by the other hand holding his basket in a nest of silk scarf. "Come right out loud, Charlie," she said, "and shout, 'I'm a scarf fetishist.' Tell us aloud, 'I'm queer tor scarves.' And say it proudly."
He seemed to hesitate. She began to squeeze. Then in a big, bass voice Charlie shouted: "I'm a scarf fetishist. I'm queer for women's heavy silk scarves in bright colors. I love them! They give me hard-ons! I dig being felt through them and feeling them against my naked breasts and chest and back and arms and ass and legs and face and neck. When I'm feeling silk scarves it's like the most exciting women in the world-even Mildred are working me up and jerking me off!"
"Great!" Mildred exclaimed. "That's just wonderful, Charlie. Get rid of those old inhibitions. Come on, now tell us what you would most want us to do to you with these scarves, Charlie. Say it and, I swear, we'll do it!"
There was a feeling close to madness in the air at the totality of this revelation so long nurtured as a guilty secret. Charlie found himself perspiring and trembling and still thrilling at this thing that was going on-as though a guilty secret had at last been wrung from him by the most exquisite of torture and, in admitting it, he found out he was innocent!
"I-uh, I like being stroked by women's' silk scarves, all over my body but mainly my face and neck and breasts and the base of my spine and. of course, my sex organs." Nobody seemed shocked. Nobody seemed triumphant. Hey, this was great! Charlie continued: "I'd love to be able to wear women's silk scarves, around my head and neck and where they can stroke my breasts. But I've never done it for fear I'd be mistaken for some sort of sissy and, honestly, I don't feel I'm a sissy at all."
Then it happened. Then the girls caught him and lifted him onto the bed with its scarf-cover and scarfcanopy, they piled on top of him in their scarf clothes and they stroked him and teased him with the scented shining silks they held in their hands and wore and had stashed within reach of the bed.
All of Charlie's sensitive skin responded to the touch of the fabric and the bound wrists were soon joined by bound ankles and scarves tied around his neck and his forehead. But he wasn't blindfolded. They wanted him to see everything that was happening to him, to recognize the sight as well as the touch of the fabrics that were patrolling his sensitive body.
Then Thelma put him atop Emily, trussed as he was and she was stroking his nipples from below while others stroked his back and rump and legs from behind with the glorious fabrics to which he responded so readily. He couldn't hold out. Soon his hips were pumping faster than ever and the forward thrust of the man drove the fluid deeply into the woman beneath him.
"I'm going to dress you in my sari of satin scarves," Emily confided as she gently stroked his face with puffs of the silken fabric while his orgasm pulsed in fiery spurts into her body. "I'm going to make you wear it and I'll stroke you as you do, Charlie dear, for I love the sight of a man in satin scarves."
Aroused? It was as though he were a teenager just discovering sex! The maddening words, the exciting touch, the thrilling idea Emily implanted in him sent his hips thrusting back and forth once again as the woman's silken belly massaged his and her knowing hands manipulated the stirring fabric over his nipples and his face.
And then, as though for the first time, Charlie found himself thrusting with long, wild, deep, incredibly satisfying strokes into this woman he had just serviced, found himself with his emotions building up like thun der in the distance and then it all came crashing through: a gigantic stream of thrilling fluid passing viscously from his being into hers as her body writhed from the plea sure of it, bringing satin scarves into constant, fresh contact with his sensitive, responsive skin.
Charlie lay there then, drained, happy, exhausted, thrilled. And Emily, more utterly satisfied than she had ever been before in her life, found a towel to wrap about his shrunken, moist tool and rose from the bed on which he lay, panting and gasping.
"Thanks, LaVerne," she said. "That was easily the best idea you've ever had."
"Remember now, you made him a promise," the buxom blonde reminded her.
"Listen, I have to get out of this outfit fast! If he comes to again and gets his health back and does that to me once more, I'll not be able to touch it with a powder puff," Emily said, unwrapping her sari.
Thelma stood the tired Charlie Greco on his feet while the naked Emily and the scarf-clad LaVerne wound the Sari Indian fashion around his body. They lowered him back onto the bed then-and the look of contentment on his face was, in contrast to his rugged features, positively angelic!
They let him sleep for a half-hour, untying his hands and feet while he slept in the beautiful, multi-colored series of satin scarves sewn into a sari. Thelma sat beside him in her evening gown comprised of silken scarves, gently stroking him as he slept, stroking him through the material he was wearing, watching the soft smile of contentment on his face with amusement.
Then the half-hour was up. "Come on, Charlie," she said. "Time to continue your scarfing. This time you work me over, dear, but you never actually, physically touch my body. All you may do is reach me through the scarves."
She lay face down on her elbows while the sari-clad man buried his face between her scarf-covered buttocks and stroked her legs, while he squirmed, snake-like up her body and down it again, rubbing the garments he was wearing against those she wore and imparting a deep sensual thrill to both as he did so.
Thelma guided and controlled all of his actions and Charlie, ecstatic in his scarfing, was delighted to obey her commands and gesture-indicated instructions.
She rolled over onto her side and he once again proceeded to squirm up and down her body, across it back and forth, moving toward her feet in his crisscross crawling and then again up toward her head, feeling her body beneath him with its full hips and its ample rump, its superlative breasts and its broad back and his hardening organ trapped beneath the layers of silken scarves he wore thrilled to the experience as much as did his hands and his sensitive nipples, his face and his legs.
On Thelma's other side Charlie continued, only now fie was crawling up and down instead of in a crisscross pattern and the sense of constant, fresh, exciting physical contact with the garments, the fabrics, the colors he adored had him fully erect now.
Thelma flopped onto her back and, once again Charlie proceeded to bring his body into contact with hers through the glorious tactual satisfactions this contact orgy engendered.
She made him crawl up and down on his back now so that the small of his back, the base of his spine, the sensitive calves of his legs were brought into contact with the voluptuous curves of her body, artfully backed up by the skillful stroking and fondling, massaging and tickling that her hands imparted to the experience he was having.
Face down again, Thelma made him crawl the length of her body from her head to her feet and then required him to stroke her through the scarf-evening gown she wore with his hands and his nose.
He had to bury his face deeply in the cavern of her parted legs where she had laid several extra thicknesses of scarves and the full-skirted silks she wore permitted her to entrap him there, catching his ears and his cheeks between her full, exciting inner thighs while her hands stroked his back and rump and calves in the sari Emily had put on him.
His nose became a sex organ as, hungrily, he nuzzled the woman through the fabrics he so adored.
And then Thelma was a wildly thrashing sea of silken sex. All of her being was responding to this off-beat excitement, the bizarre thrill of vicariously enjoying the other man's special aberration. She had glorious, heavenly, celestial pulsations thrusting through her whole being, thrilling her more than anything she had imagined could be like this.
Her grip on the man was a crushing thing and her hands were stroking him with such knowing adroitness that he was practically jacked up off of her body by the erection he developed.
Thelma's legs released their grip on the man and, panting, she relaxed and fell asleep to dream of a special paradise in which her servants dressed only in scarves and her sensual pleasures were constant in their existence and their gratification.
Watching this scene had driven LaVerne and Mildred to the need for joining in the action and the two lay together on a couch, their hands and bodies busily pleasuring each other. All was quiet soon after that.
Everyone was asleep-smiling.
Thelma was the first to wake up. It was morning. She looked at the man in the sari and carefully undressed him. Then she took off her own evening gown. As she stood there naked, she noticed that his eyes were open. "Come on, Charlie," she whispered, "stand up."
Dutifully he stood by the side of the bed, naked.
"I want to put this big scarf on you, diaper-style, as soon as you've gone to the bathroom," Thelma said, holding up a huge, silken, printed square.
Groggily, Charlie Greco went to the bathroom, brushed his teeth, shaved, showered and returned to the patiently waiting Thelma. Using two of Mildred's smaller orna mental pins, Thelma diapered the man and then she used two more scarves to form a bandeau over his breasts. "Now, dear, want you to put on this evening gown I was wearing."
"Aw, now, look," Charlie started to protest. Thelma stroked his nipple with a scarf through the silken bandeau and Charlie picked up the gown and thrilled as it slithered over his arms, head, chest and body. Then Thelma dressed him again in the sari, making him into a column of silken scarves.
She took the spread off the bed now and, ordering Charlie to hold his arms high above his head and hold one corner of the spread made of scarves and stand on another corner, she wound the exciting shroud around him.
Then she tied his wrists together. Next his ankles. She stitched the open side so that the material molded against his body. She opened the basting that held the scarves together near his face so that his head emerged.
Carrying him in her strong arms, the big naked Amazon brought Charlie to a spiral staircase in the hall and tied his wrists high above his head to the highest rail he could reach.
"Come on, you two," Thelma said. "You have a job to do, you know. After all, you're in on this scarfing of Charlie, too. In fact, you were supposed to be the two who got it started!"
"Hell, you didn't leave us anything to draw out of the poor guy," LaVerne said. "That's like inviting a family to a banquet after the food's all gone."
"You don't know Charlie," Mildred said solemnly. "Does he, Thelma?"
"Make like a fireman and slide down him like a pole and you'll find out," Thelma told LaVerne.
"I think 'II do just that," the beautiful blonde said. She scampered up the stairs in her beautiful costume improvised of scarves as blouse and skirt and with others worn, truly, as scarves.
When she got to eye level of the trussed, helpless, scarf-shrouded sensualist, she deliberately spun him so that he could see her and she reached through the banister to touch his body through his mummifying swaths.
"Hey, this is great, Charlie," she said. "With you in the middle of this spiral staircase I can reach you anywhere I want just by moving up and down the stairs and touching you. Look!"
She scrambled over the railing and, leaning far out, shoved her scarf-coated rump into his face. Then she turned around and did likewise with her scarf-thrusting breasts. Her hands found his body through the material encasing it and moved with a wonderful mixture of strength and stroking, tickling and teasing to force an almost alarming awareness onto Charlie Greco's face.
Then she used her trained athletic skills to climb out onto his body, to straddle his head, sitting on his shoulders and thrust her front in its scarfed skirt, against his face. She was like a skilled gymnast now, hanging from his shoulders by her knees, wrapping her arms and legs around the man and using her ability to reach the spiral staircase to push herself around and around the man in the direction of the closing of the column Thelma had stitched around him, moving around his body, bringing the material into opulent, voluptuous, sensual contact with him, stirring him.
Then she worked herself down to his hips and a little farther down and she stopped in amazement. "Put things like this around telephone poles and men wouldn't have any trouble climbing them!" she exclaimed. "I was wrong, Mildred, and you can tell Thelma I said so!"
Delightedly she worked the material into itself against his skin rubbing silk against silk against skin so that Charlie's breath was short, his chest was heaving, his need was indescribable!
"Want more, Charlie?" LaVerne teased as she deliberately wriggled against him in her strange scaff costume, stroked and thrust and stirred him even as he had just done Thelma.
She had the dual support of both Thelma's and Emily's exciting and imaginative costumes with their incredible tactual satisfaction and then the added enticement of the winding spread of square scarves all pressing against Charlie's skin, firing his imagination, extending and fortifying and amplfying the innate responsiveness of the man to the scarves and the materials he loved.
LaVerne stroked and teased and tantalized and stirred the man to near the explosive point. The she selected one heavy, rayon scarf of thick, squishy satin and wrapped it around his jutting penis which she had extricated from the scarf encasements of Charlie by carefully opening the basting.
Wrapping her legs around him, she pressed his penis in this particularly smooth satin scarf between her feet while her hands manipulated his nipples through their havens of silk.
She wriggled against him, moving, jiggling, stroking, and always with those feet holding his hungry organ captive.
Then it happened! She felt the moisture in her feet almost at the same moment she felt the electrical vibrations that indicated what was happening as a result of her toying with this thrilled man.
She clamped her two feet together, sole to sole, with the thrusting, wriggling, excited tool in between them and the passion kept spurting repeatedly until Charlie sagged from his bound wrists. And then LaVerne slid down his person again, caught and wrung out his rod, and she untied the scarf holding his wrists up high.
He dropped to the ground then and LaVerne and Mildred began freeing him. As they completed the task of reducing Charlie to nakedness, Mildred saw his red, raw wrists and looked at them horrified. "Did you realize that he was under that much physical strain with your combined weights?" she asked LaVerne.
"No, and I'm sure that neither d'd he," she replied. "He was so damned excited that he wasn't aware of anything but the touch of those silk scarves."
Sleepily, groggily, sorely, Charlie opened his eyes and looked at his lovely persecutors. "Quite a girl you have here, Mildred," he murmured. "Sexiest soles of feet I ever came into!"
"Well, Millie," LaVerne said, "I don't often get compliments like that. But remember, we made a deal. Come on through with your part, kid. Mine worked."
As she spoke she was taking off her costume, removing scarf after scarf and tossing them on Charlie's nude body' Mildred walked the naked blonde to the bedroom where she'd left her regular clothes, said goodbye, and then returned to her husband.
She began by taking off her own strange hula-type costume trailing each scarf she removed against some part of the naked anatomy before her and then leaving it atop him. When she was completely naked, she started gathering the other scarves, taking apart those that had been basted together such as LaVerne's bouse and skirt. Each of these was piled atop the naked, responsive body of her husband until, by the time the canopy and the curtains and the lines with their silken burdens were stripped of their scarves and the garments were piled on top of the man, he seemed to be at the bottom of the most colorful pile of oversized silken leaves any Fall ever witnessed. And thus Charlie rested.
In the morning, Mildred was adamant. He would have to wear them as she instructed him to, then dry clean all the soiled or wrinkled ones in a coin-op, disguised only by dark glasses. And then he was required to iron the lot of them, slowly, carefully, patiently, not permitted to fold them, but required to stack them out in the open in the area in which Mildred and Charlie lived.
"Say it, Charlie," Mildred demanded.
"I'm a scarf fetishist," Charlie confided to her. "I'm crazy about women's bright-colored, heavy-weight silk scarves. I love to have any and every part of my body stroked with them-and, Mildred, I love you for being so understanding about it."
Knotting one of the largest and brightest of them prettily at one of her shoulders and securing it there with an orna mental pin, Mildred said, "I'm proud of you for admitting it, darling. It helps me know how to please you-and what more could a woman want than that"
"Girls who talk like that wind up wearing expensive furs and jewelry," Charlie said heavily. "Don't say I didn't warn you."
"Shut up, you bully," Mildred said, "and let me fit this bright red and purple one around your head Gypsy fashion as long as we're just the two of us alone in the place together."
"What can I do," Charlie asked, "when you're logical?"