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
“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
“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.”
“This back rub is good for starters. What do you get for a back rub?”
“I do this for tips,” Amber said. “But I specialize in massages — hands-free, whole-body massages.”
“ ‘Hands-free’ massages? What’s that?”
She crossed around in front of him, stepped between his knees; her hands went to the back of her gown at her neck, and she undid something. The gown fell away like a wisp of vapor.
“Ohhh…”
This had to be part of the sales pitch, the gab, the come-on. Okay, Daren figured, he’d let the pro do her thing.
Amber’s hips were swaying, her humongous breasts seemingly tracing their own separate orbits in front of him. “What do you say, baby?”
“I say that’s the best damned sales pitch I’ve ever seen.”
“Thank you.” She poured herself a glass of Pellegrino, took a sip, moved around behind him again, then continued her back rub, using her elbows on the knots she found. She brushed her bare breasts against the back of his neck while continuing with her massage. She was good, Daren thought,
“Thanks, Amber.”
“Are you in the military?”
“Yes.”
“A flier?”
He nodded.
“Things are getting busy out there at the base, but it still seems like an awfully lonely place.”
“Is that part of the sales pitch, too?”
“Anything I can do to keep you here a while longer, I’ll do.” She let her breasts touch his neck again. “Anything at all.” The law of diminishing returns said get him the hell out of there before she lost too much more money on him that evening. “What do you say, flyboy? A relaxing hot tub, my deluxe full-body, hands-free massage, a nice shower — one hour, two hundred dollars. Anything else you think you’d like, just tell me, and we’ll renegotiate.”
