Odessa was one of a few black girls who were permitted by the Vegas police to work the Strip hotels back in the sixties. Her routine was to depart around 10 PM and return around dawn. I figured I could stick to my morning exercise and writing routine; I'd do that while she slept. But Odessa usually returned full of uppers and mischief. She sometimes stopped by the bus station and picked up a girl, one of the many who came to Vegas in search of a better life. The “better life” Odessa introduced them to was prostitution, for which she got a cut of the girl's income for a certain length of time. Since most of these girls were uneducated, their only other employment choices were jobs paying such low wages, they could hardly make rent.
        This business venture of Odessa's had me awakened around dawn by her crawling into bed on one side of me and instructing her new girl to crawl in on the other side. “Bobby, you gotta help me loosen this girl up,” she'd say in a faux little-girl sing-song plead, then run a line of chatter designed to spark the eroticism of the new girl. When such an active sex life threatened my durability, Odessa brought me a bag of Yohimbe powder and other erotic stimulants.
        She also brought home wallets, credit cards, rings and other trinkets she'd stolen from tricks, and dumped this loot in the top drawer of my—now our—dresser, along with handfuls of dollars. Odessa thought that I, like Mike, was a struggling writer. She loved the idea of supporting her own white boy toy. For me, it was another adventure into taboo territory, much like the one I'd experienced at Pitt 15 years previous.
        Some mornings Odessa would arrive with the newspaper and insist we read the latest murder story—usually about a girl's remains found in the desert. Odessa had taught herself to read—slowly, by sounding out words—and would laboriously recite the latest newspaper account, and fill in what the police and reporters did not know. Then she'd sleep and I'd go to the health club, and try to get some writing done, till Odessa awoke hungry, and we'd make breakfast, usually in the middle of the afternoon.
        One evening at the Moulin Rouge, Odessa got up to go to the ladies room and emerged a few minutes later whacking another girl with her high-heeled shoe. When she came back to our table, I asked, “What was that all about?” and she said, “That broad luuuvs me.”
        This relationship lasted some months, until Odessa got a call from her ex-boyfriend, a black musician named Eagle-eye, recently released from prison. When he found out she was living with a “paddy boy,” he threatened to kill me in order to get her back—or so Odessa told me. Eventually I would meet Eagle-eye and discover he had no such intentions, wasn't interested in renewing his relationship with Odessa. But “the return of Eagle-eye” ended her domicile with me, and she moved on to new adventures.

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