Nothing to do with our guys. Something else entirely.’
‘Like what?’ he said.
‘Lost property,’ I said. ‘Nothing important. Everything’s
COOl.’
He said nothing.
‘Special Forces?’! said.
He nodded. ‘Lost property?’
‘No big deal,’ I said. ‘Just something that went missing across
the street.’
He thought about it and then he raised his bottle again and
clinked it against where mine would have been if I had bought
one. It was a clear display of acceptance. Like a mime, in all the
noise. But even so a thin stream of men started up, shuffling
towards the exit. Maybe twenty grunts left during my first two
minutes in the room. MPs have that effect. No wonder the guy
with the face didn’t want me in there.
A waitress came up to me. She was wearing a black T-shirt
cut off about four inches below the neck and black shorts cut off about four inches below the waist and black shoes with very
high heels. Nothing else. She stood there and looked at me
55
until I ordered something. I asked for a Bud, and I paid about
eight times its value. Took a couple of sips, and then went
looking for whores.
They found me first. I guess they wanted me out of sight
before I emptied the place completely. Before I reduced their
customer base to zero. Two of them came straight at me. One
was a platinum blonde. The other was a brunette. Both were
wearing tiny tight sheath dresses that sparkled with all kinds of
synthetic fibres. The blonde got in front of the brunette and
headed her off. Came clattering straight towards me, awkward
in absurd clear plastic heels. The brunette wheeled away and
headed for the Special Forces sergeant I had spoken to. He
waved her off with what looked like an expression of genuine
distaste. The blonde kept on track and came right up next to me
and leaned on my arm. Stretched up tall until I could feel her
breath in my ear.
‘Happy New Year,’ she said.
‘You too,’ I said.
‘I haven’t seen you in here before,’ she said, like I was the
only thing missing from her life. Her accent wasn’t local. She
wasn’t from the Carolinas. She wasn’t from California, either.
Georgia or Alabama, probably.
‘You new in town?’ she asked, loud, because of the music.
I smiled. I had been in more whorehouses than I cared to
count. All MPs have. Every single one is the same, and every
single one is different. They all have different protocols. But the are you new in town question was a standard opening gambit. It
invited me to start the negotiations. It insulated her from a
solicitation charge.
‘What’s the deal here?’ I asked her.
She smiled shyly, like she had never been asked such a
thing before. Then she told me I could watch her on stage in
exchange for dollar tips, or I could spend ten to get a private
show in a back room. She explained the private show could
involve touching, and to make sure I was paying attention she
ran her hand up the inside of my thigh.
I could see how a guy could be tempted. She was cute. She
looked to be about twenty. Except for her eyes. Her eyes looked
like a fifty-year-old’s.
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‘What about something more?’ I said. ‘Someplace else we
could go?’
‘We can talk about that during the private show.’
She took me by the hand and led me past their dressing-room
door and through a velvet curtain into a dim room behind the
stage. It wasn’t small. It was maybe thirty feet by twenty. It had
an upholstered bench running around the whole perimeter. It
wasn’t especially private, either. There were about six guys in
there, each of them with a naked woman on his lap. The blonde
girl led me to a space on the bench and sat me down. She
waited until I came out with my wallet and paid her ten bucks.
Then she draped herself over me and snuggled in tight. The
way she sat made it impossible for me not to put my hand on