"I wouldn't think of it. A pleasure," he said extending his hand, "a real pleasure. Until tomorrow."
Gregory Ashton was for real. So was the address on his business card with the Park Avenue address. So was the six month contract with full medical coverage, room and board for the first three weeks plus air fare and a guaranteed take home salary of two hundred and fifty dollars a week. Toni signed on the dotted line.
There were half a dozen girls of assorted sizes, colors, talent and dispositions at the baggage check-in counter of the TWA flight to Vegas the following week. It was a cold, sunny day in March and the terminal was jammed.
"I hope this flight isn't delayed."
"They better put us up a nice place."
"I can't stand heat-wet or dry."
"Vegas is the place to get a rich husband."
"My legs are killing me."
"Do you have enough cigarettes?"
The flight left on time. Toni sat next to a six-foot black girl from Arkansas with a wide and very beautiful face with a fall that reached down to her ass. Her skirt was so short and so tight that her underpants flashed visibly every time she moved. "Honey," she confessed, "I don't know about you but I hate flyin'." Toni watched as she gulped three tranquilizers. "Why I almost took a train but at the last minute decided-fuck it! I'll try and overcome my fear but right now," she said looking out the window. "I don't seem to be doin" a very good job of it. Do you think we're goin' to meet some real nice men?"
"I hope so."
"Me too 'cause you know somethin'?"
"What's that?"
"I sure could use some. I ain't had nothin' but the worst of luck with men this past year. Why my last beau beat me so bad that if I wasn't this gorgeous mahogany color that I am I would never have gotten this job. I mean I was black and blue. You know all over my thighs," she grimaced her hand touching the place where the lash had fallen the hardest. Her eyes rolled upwards in her head expressing the pain she had to endure at the hands of her last beau.
"I've never been hit by a man in my life." Toni said with some pride. "If a man ever laid a hand on me that would be it for him. I mean I just wouldn't put up with that kind of shit. How can you have any feeling for a guy after he belts you? I mean, doesn't it make you scared?"
"Well babe, I guess I'm just a bit different. When I wasn't gettin' whipped I was getting loved something fierce and that seemed to make up for it, but now that I think about it maybe you're right."
"I know I'm right and no two ways about it."
"Where was you working before they signed you up?"
"The Tampa Lounge, the Metropole, the parlors-around."
"Oh I know the Tampa. Yeah I was moving around some myself. That Ashton feller seemed all right and I'll tell you something," she said moving closer to Toni, "I had to fuck him to get the job but honey, I would have fucked the entire US fleet to get this job in Vegas."
"It's just net my style," Gregory Ashton's words came back at Toni. "Why that dirty prick!" she snapped under her breath.
"Hey look what are you going to do. If that's what needs to be done to dance in Vegas, I figures it could be a lot worse-a whole lot worse."
It was a champagne flight. Lunch was served up and the bubbly flowed from within ten minutes after the 'No Smoking' sign flashed off until just before it came back on. Toni was feeling very mellow sitting there next to this warm, gorgeous black creature with the long legs, the sun burning pleasantly at the right side of her face as the plane moved closer to Las Vegas, Nevada.
"You know the trouble with all these goddamn choreographers is that there all a bunch of nasty, bitchy old fags!" Toni heard one of the girls whining. "I mean it's just impossible to find a straight one among them. I'm beginning to think there isn't a real man left in the world. And just wait until you meet some of the male dancers in the show. Gorgeous, but fruity as a Christmas cake!"
"Well are you going to Vegas to dance or get laid?" her friend asked her.
"Both."
"Sweetheart, let me tell you something. If you don't know by now that that's the way it's always been and that's the way it's always going to be, then you are in for a big letdown."
"Maybe I am, but I still don't have to like it." "Who said anything about liking it?"
Rehearsals began the following afternoon and the revue was a lot bigger than Toni had anticipated. She counted at least twenty five other girls and their faces passed over her in a confusing blur as they all rattled off their names to the head choreographer and his assistant. It only took her one time around to get each of the four separate routines they had to go through. Vinny, who ran them through their paces picked up on this right away and said to Toni as she was smoking a cigarette during their fifteen minute break, "Thank heavens you're here!" She smiled at him
knowing exactly what he meant. Most of the girls really thought of themselves as dancers, but in reality most of them were just gorgeous hunks of womanhood.
Eight days later Toni met Lisa Williams under circumstances both of them remembered for a long time to come.
"Jesus the years have slipped by."
"I know, don't remind me," Lisa said prying her burning body from her towel and slipping into the water gasping as she made contact.
"Cold?"
"No, but I'm awfully hot!" She could swim like a dolphin, Toni noticed. With her long powerful strokes she covered the length of the pool and made a perfect underwater turn that placed her midway back from "where she started before she came up for air.
"Do you feel like taking in a movie tonight or doing anything special?" Lisa asked floating on her back and looking like she was being buoyed by her tits that emerged from the water like two islands in the Pacific.
"I'm flexible."
"You always were."
"Say, are you still as crazy about Monopoly as you were Lisa?"
"To tell you the truth, I can't stand the fucking game anymore. I like action games as opposed to head games. I'm getting a pool table next week that's a real beaut and I've got a ping pong table folded up inside if you feel like a game, but I've gotten heavily into electronics in the past couple of years and that's how I pass many an evening."
"Electronics?!? A girl interested in electronics! What kind of electronics? Like computers?"
"I'll show you after we've had something to eat and drink. I think I've had enough sun for one day."
"Me too. If I'm not careful I'll be on my way to a third degree burn."
They both moved inside leaving a trail of wet footprints on the burning flagstone patio, their beautiful asses undulating in perfect time to each other. The air conditioned cool interior was welcome to them.
"So what's this electronics trip you were talking about? I'm dying of curiosity," Toni said and she was.
"This way," Lisa said with a sly smile and a wiggle of her finger.
She led Toni into the bedroom and walked to the wall facing her circular bed and pushed a button that Toni hadn't noticed before. Suddenly the smoked and dappled mirror that covered the entire length of the wall began to move upwards and vanished into the hanging, overhead valance. Toni gasped in amazement and sheer wonder at the bank of what looked like four large monitors in a television studio. To the side of the blank screens were five buttons marked on-off, volume, brightness, contrast, horizontal hold and vertical. The panel was all brushed chrome and gleaming like silver in the sun.
Lisa stepped back and with a maternal nod of pride said, "I built it all myself from scratch.
"What is it?!?" Toni pressed, "It looks like something out of Buck Rogers!"
"In a way it is," Lisa said flipping the on-off button. The number one screen lit up and the interior of a room came into view. Sleeping in a bed was a middle aged woman with curlers fringing her head and in the background was a man standing in his underpants with the bathroom door open, brushing his teeth and examining his face closely.