Tammy seemed to understand all this, having a good sense of the intimate relations that went on behind closed doors in Highland Park.  I think she may have understood it better, the ins and outs, than those who lived and died there.  She told me a story about another client of hers.

“That old coot,” Tammy said, “Mr. Vickers was one of those oil men, real old, way up in his nineties.   Like the rest of them, he had a thing for women half his age.  The younger the better.  He thought he could get them, too, even though he was confined to a wheel chair.  I used to have to open the windows to keep cool in his place.  He’d keep his house heated, even in the Texas summers.  He said it was because of his poor circulation.  He was a smooth fellow.  Really a nice man.  He used to always tell me my wooden leg mattered nothing to him, said if anything that it gave me more character.  More than once, Mr. Vickers tried to convince me to leave the reservation permanently, take up with him, go to Florida or some other place, my choice, so long as it was tropical.  He offered to pay for everything, provided I’d be his girl.”

Tammy said she thought this was the biggest bunch of nonsense she’d ever heard, and told Mr. Vickers that he could keep his Viagra to himself. 

“My refusals,” Tammy said, “only encouraged him. Mr. Vickers said he liked his women feisty.”

Read this story in its entirety