“You think?” she asked, turning the page back to study it. “I don’t know. I’d wear that.”
“Sure, to a costume party,” I said, flopping down in an oversized side chair.
Cher angled her eyes up at me, plucked brows winging high. “See, honey, that’s why I don’t exercise. It puts me in a shitty mood too.”
“I’m not-” I stopped, sighed, realizing this could go on forever. And would, I thought, if I were still me. The good thing about being Olivia was being able to change mental direction without signaling first. Especially with Cher. “So where would someone go if they were looking to have sex with a lot of people?”
“It’s Las Vegas,” she pointed out, flipping another page.
Point taken.
Then again, that kind of thinking would mean I had nowhere to begin looking for Joaquin, which wasn’t exactly true. Since I knew the virus was now being spread sexually, I had a fulcrum around which to expand my search. Las Vegas was hardly lacking in establishments meant to whet the sexual appetite.
The question was, which of the nightclubs, sex shops, lounges, or strip joints would be most alluring to Joaquin? Because he’d want to be out there, watching devastation unfold among the populace of healthy, sexual humans who had nothing more on their minds than a sweaty workout themselves. It fit in perfectly with his M.O.-causing pain through sexuality.
I mentally scratched the strip clubs from my list. As much as mainstream society liked to demonize the clubs and the women who worked there, they were fairly white-bread. How else could they flourish in every city in the country? Our culture’s dirty little open secret. Besides, that was too blatant for Joaquin; the sensuality and allure of sexual desire would be lost in the transaction, money for titillation. No, he got his jollies from more unpredictable circumstances. Joaquin, I knew, liked the chase.
I reached over and grabbed one of the folded weeklies from the bed, tossed another to Cher, and flipped directly to the back where all the political rants and pseudo-articles that filled the earlier pages were replaced with ads offering phone sex or house calls or “special massag-ies.”
“Help me look for a dominatrix,” I told Cher, trying not to wonder where all these girls came from. I angled the paper to the side. Did their mothers know they were posed like this?
“Dang, girl,” she said, picking up the magazine. “You aren’t turning into a muffin bumper, are you?”
“Don’t worry, Cher,” I said, skipping past the ads that promised one-on-one action. Joaquin would want to cast a wider net. “You’d be the first to know.”
She smiled brightly. “Why thank you, honey!”
“Thanks for what?” Suzanne asked, entering the room without knocking. In other families that could be a cause for death by stoning, but Cher made room next to her, passing Suzanne a third magazine as she continued her search.
“Olivia’s trying to decide if she wants to munch rug, but first she’s looking for cheap sex with a stranger and no strings attached, just to make sure.”
I blushed under Suzanne’s startled gaze and held up a hand. “That’s not true. I’m just…adding a service to my web business that makes it easy for potential visitors to find what they’re looking for when they come to Vegas.”
“How entrepreneurial of you, darlin’,” Suzanne settled next to her daughter and picked up her weekly. “Sex does sell, and it’ll certainly spice up that racketeering thing you have going,” she said, flipping open her magazine. I stared.
“Yeah,” I said slowly, trying to shake off the image of my sister, the mobster. “Anyway, I’m looking for some place kind of illicit. Something that reeks of secrecy and intrigue. One where you have to know a secret password or handshake or something to get in.”
“Well, you’re not going to find it in one of these rags,” Suzanne said, and tossed her magazine aside. I looked at her. “You’re not.” She crossed her legs, flashing lean thighs. “What you want is something exclusive. Invitation only. Like a sex club that meets every so often to masturbate together, or a same-sex meeting.”
I wrinkled my nose. “There’s such a thing?”
She looked at me like I was hopelessly naive. “Honey, there are fringe groups for anything that tickles a human’s fancy, and a few things that shouldn’t. Bondage, bestiality, sometimes both.” I shuddered at that, and Cher let out a horrified squeal. “They don’t advertise because they know society wouldn’t approve. But there’s a whole subculture of people who indulge in fetishes others try not to even imagine.”
“I don’t really want something that…uh, extreme. A little more vanilla. Regular people looking for a good time, but lots of them.”
“Oh, you mean like partner swapping?” That sounded about as vanilla to me as a double-caramel-mocha frappuccino, but before I could say so, Suzanne went on. “What you want is a swingers’ club, though they often have an interview process that takes weeks, and you’ll have to send in a picture as well.”
Interviewing? I thought. To be a sex partner? I began to look through my magazine again. There had to be something else.
“Of course, anyone can register for the yearly swingers’ ball. People from all over the country come to those, and if you belong at a national level you’re automatically allowed in to any local gatherings.”
Bingo.
“How many people?” I asked, angling my head.
“What, at the big balls?” she said, causing Cher to snort. Suzanne arched a brow in her direction, but continued speaking to me. “Thousands. People plan it into their summer vacations the same way they would Disneyland, though here they don’t bring the kids.”
Here, I thought, where they could die wrapped in a stranger’s embrace. It was perfect. Perfectly horrible, I thought, correcting myself, but perfect for the Shadows’ intentions. Joaquin might even see such an event as a mass suicide. Thousands of people putting the metaphorical cup to their mouths, and him on hand, goading them to drink. “That’s it,” I said quietly. “That would be perfect.”
“Really?” Suzanne tilted her head. It made her look younger than her years. “You’d be interested in that?”
I nodded, then quickly added, “For my website, of course. Strictly professional research.”
“Of course,” she said, standing. “Well, you’re in luck. The ball’s this weekend, and this one’s a huge to-do in the swingers’ community, an anniversary of some sort. Troy’s been trying to get me to go for a month now. He says it’ll ‘strengthen our relationship’ and ‘add another dimension to our knowledge of sexuality.’”
Troy was full of shit, but I wasn’t going to say that to Suzanne. I made it a rule to never say anything bad about my friends’ boyfriends until I was sure they were well and truly out of the picture-preferably dead. Or gay. Or both. And while her voice was neutral as she talked about him, Suzanne might still be interested in the little jerk. Though at least she didn’t sound bowled over by the idea.
“Oh, I have an idea,” Cher said, sitting up on the bed so fast my head spun. “We could all go! We could dress up like Dawn in Daughter of Blood, and pretend we’re into the ‘lifestyle.’” She made little quotation marks in the air.
Alarmed, I sat up straight as well. I didn’t want these two anywhere near a place where both Joaquin and the virus promised to be running rampant. “I don’t know if they let you pretend to be someone you’re not,” I said, thinking quick. “They probably ask for social security and health cards and everything down to your latest medical exam.”
“No, they don’t. Troy’s already checked it out,” Suzanne put in, and I thought, I just bet he has. Then she added, “Who’s Dawn?”