Donatella’s looked nothing like the hundreds of antique stores, rock shops, or tourist traps that lined the highways. A flashing sign with a slinky black cat was the only visible advertisement. A long, wide ramp — the place was fully wheelchair-accessible — was enclosed and brilliantly lit, with a valet-parking attendant and buzzer-operated iron gate at the bottom and a doorman/bouncer and another buzzer-operated gate at the top of the ramp. It reminded Daren of entering an alert facility when he pulled nuclear duty in the FB-111s. There was even covered parking for motorcycles. Daren was impressed. He’d never been in a brothel before, so he decided to check it out.
Once buzzed inside, Daren found himself in a large, comfortable room, with two living-room areas to the right, a long mahogany bar in front, and a space to the right with several dining tables. His view of the bar, however, was blocked — by six lovely women in evening gowns standing before him. When the buzzer button at the bottom of the ramp was pressed, Daren assumed, it gave the otherwise unengaged ladies time to assemble at the front door for the “introductions.”
“Good evening, sir,” said the madam, who introduced herself as Miss Lacey. She extended a hand in a courtly, almost old southern manner. “How nice to see you.”
“Good evening, Miss Lacey,” Daren responded. He took a moment to make eye contact with each of the ladies arrayed before him. “How is everyone tonight?” They all murmured responses while maintaining their seductive poses and inviting smiles. He’d never seen anything like this before, not even growing up in Nevada. Brothels were strictly off-limits to kids under eighteen — his parents strictly enforced that rule, and Jackpot was too small to get away with much — and he was out of Nevada before he turned eighteen.
“I’d like to introduce you to the ladies.” Miss Lacey named them, one by one, using their “stage” names. “Please make yourself comfortable. If you’d like a tour, please feel free to ask at any time. Enjoy yourself tonight.” The ladies slowly departed, making eye contact again — the last sales pitch before working the room again.
Daren went to the bar. He automatically picked up a menu, just as he did at the truck stop, but was shocked to find it was a menu of sex selections, not food selections. A big guy behind the bar in a Hawaiian-print shirt stepped over to him. “Good evening, sir,” the bartender said. “I’m Tommy. What’ll you have?”
Daren put a ten on the bar. “Sparkling water. How’s it going tonight?”
“Not bad, not bad.” The bartender served him a bottle of Pellegrino and a chilled glass. “Are you military?” he asked as he poured.
“Yep.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“You a spy or something?” Daren asked, grinning over the rim of his glass as he drank.
“No. I just wanted to know if you knew how long they keep recruits incommunicado after they start basic training?”
“You have a kid in boot camp?”
“My oldest son. I only just heard he was going into the service. Me and his mother split up — she didn’t approve of me workin’ here at Donatella’s, even though the money’s good — and she moved off to Reno with the kids. I found out he’s in San Antonio.”
“The only phone recruits can normally use is in the orderly room,” Daren explained. “They can’t hang out in the orderly room until the weekends, and only if they’ve finished all their other duties, which they can rarely do. Most of the time, even if they’re all caught up, they’re too exhausted after the first week to do anything else but sleep and eat.”
“So what do I do?”
“Wait till next weekend. The drill sergeants are good about reminding recruits to call home often. In fact, most DIs withhold money from recruits’ pay for phone calls, postage, stationery, haircuts — that sort of thing.”
“Is that right? Thanks,” Tommy said. “He’s my oldest boy, and I hardly seen him at all since the old lady moved to Reno. I should’ve taken the time and gone to his high-school graduation — I didn’t know he enlisted and had to report right after graduation.”
“I can help you find out when basic training is over. You get the time off and go,” Daren suggested. “You won’t recognize him. He’ll have lost a bunch of weight, he’ll call you ‘sir’ until you’re sick of it, and he’ll be as hard as a rock.”
Tommy looked amazed, since he himself was six feet four and weighed more than three hundred pounds — no doubt his son was more than a chip off the old block. “No shit? That I gotta see. Thanks again.” He went about his business.
A few moments later one of the courtesans came up to Daren. “Hi there,” she said. “I’m Amber.”
“How are you tonight, Amber?”
“I’m fine, really fine.” Amber looked as if she was in her mid-twenties. Her blond hair was real, but the life had gone out of it, and she obviously overdosed on mousse to fluff it up. She was thin, verging on gaunt, but she was adorned with a fabulous set of breast implants that could have easily weighed more than the rest of her entire body.
“Would you like a drink?”
“Yes, thanks. Same as you is just fine.” While her drink was being served, she stepped around him, letting her fingertips trace a line across his chest, and started kneading his shoulders. She certainly had very strong hands — she might even have been a masseuse at one time, but Daren thought she’d probably earned those strong hands in a number of other pursuits. “Hard day at work, handsome?”
“Just got into town.”
“New job?”
“Yep.”
“New boss, new town — lots of tension, huh?”
“You know it.”
She waved her hand and snapped her fingers. “I can take away all that tension for you, just like that.”
“How?”
“How about a dip in the hot tub and a massage. Care to join me?”
“A hot tub, huh? That sounds like fun.” He’d never done anything like this before, and he had no idea what was in store — but he knew it involved copious amounts of money. “What does a dip in the hot tub and a massage with you go for?”
“Follow me and I’ll show you around first.” Daren believed that she had practically pushed him away from the bar and down a long hallway, but in fact he’d moved perfectly well on his own.
Amber led Daren into a room with a king-size bed, a pillow-backed couch, a bathroom with a large double-headed shower, and a TV with a VCR bolted to the ceiling, tuned to CNN. Somehow Tommy the bartender had already placed a large bottle of ice-cold Pellegrino with two chilled glasses on a coffee table in front of the couch, where Amber now led Daren.
Exactly when Amber poured him a glass of Pellegrino, Daren couldn’t tell, because she did it so seductively and so tantalizingly that he wasn’t watching the glass. “I want you to just sit back, relax, and unwind,” Amber said. She took a sip and sat next to him. “I’m here for whatever you’d like to do.” She gazed at him as she drank.
“First time in a brothel?”
“Definitely.”
“It’s simple: We’re here to make you feel good and make sure you have a good time,” Amber said.
“I saw the sex menu — nearly fell out of my chair.”
“Oh, that’s for the tourists mainly,” she said with a smile. She got up, walked behind him, and continued massaging his shoulders. “But don’t go by that. It’s whatever you want tonight. If it’s just a back rub, I’m pretty good at that. If you think you might want to try the hot tub or the shower or a full-body massage, we can do that. If you’d like the whole round-trip ticket, we can do that, too.”