steambath, though less healthful.
Nora clenched her teeth and thought, I will not be sick and make a fool of
myself. I simply will not.
After a couple of minutes of rapid conversation, Travis passed a pair of
twenties to the bartender and was directed to the back of the lounge, where a
guy as big as Arnold Schwarzenegger was sitting on a chair beside a doorway that
was covered by a densely beaded curtain. He was wearing black leather pants and
a white T-shirt. His arms seemed as large as tree trunks. His face looked as if
it had been cast in cement, and he had gray eyes almost as transparent as glass.
Travis spoke with him in Spanish and passed him two twenties.
The music faded from a thunderous din to a mere roar. A woman, speaking into a
microphone, said “All right, boys, if you like what you see, then show it—start
stuffin’ those pussies.”
Nora twitched in shock, but as the music rose again, she saw what was meant by
the crude announcement: the customers were expected to slip folded five- and
ten-dollar bills into the dancers’ panties.
The hulk in black leather pants got off his chair and led them through the
beaded curtain, into a room ten feet wide and eighteen or twenty feet long,
where six more young women in spike heels and bikini panties were getting ready
to take over from the dancers already on the floor. They were checking their
makeup in mirrors, applying lipstick, or just chatting with each other. They
were all (she saw) as good-looking as the girls out front. Some of them had hard
faces, pretty but hard, though others were as fresh-faced as schoolteachers. All
were the kind of women that men probably had in mind when they talked about
girls who were “stacked.”
The hulk led Travis—and Travis led Nora, holding her hand—through that dressing
room toward the door at the other end. As they went, one of the topless
dancers—a striking blonde—put a hand on Nora’s shoulder and walked beside her.
“Are you new, honey?”
“Me? No. Oh, no, I don’t work here.”
The blonde, who was so well-endowed that Nora felt like a boy, said, “You got
the equipment, honey.”
“Oh, no,” was all Nora could say.
“You like my equipment?” the blonde asked.
“Oh, well, you’re very pretty,” Nora said.
To the blonde, Travis said, “Give it up, sister. The lady doesn’t swing that
way.”
The blonde smiled sweetly. “If she tries it, she might like it.”
They went through a door, out of the dressing room and into a narrow, shabby,
poorly lit hallway before Nora realized she had been propositioned. By a woman!
She did not know whether to laugh or gag. Probably both.
The hulk took them to an office at the back of the building and left them,
saying, “Mr. Van Dyne will be with you in a minute.”
The office had gray walls, gray metal chairs, filing cabinets, and a gray metal
desk that was battered and scarred. No pictures or calendars hung on the bare
walls. No pens or notepads or reports were on the desk. The place looked as if
it was seldom used.
Nora and Travis sat on the two metal chairs in front of the desk.
The music from the bar was still audible but no longer deafening. When she
caught her breath, Nora said, “Where do they all come from?”
“Who?”
“All those pretty girls with their perfect boobs and tight little bottoms and
long legs, and all of them willing to . . . to do that. Where do so many of them
come from?”
“There’s a breeding farm outside of Modesto,” Travis said.
She gaped at him.
He laughed and said, “I’m sorry. I keep forgetting how innocent you are, Mrs.
Cornell.” He kissed her cheek. His stubble scratched a little, but it was nice.
In spite of wearing yesterday’s clothes and not having shaved, he seemed as
clean as a well-scrubbed baby compared to the gauntlet they had run in order to
reach this office. He said, “I should answer you straight because you don’t know
when I’m joking.”
She blinked, “Then there isn’t a breeding farm outside Modesto?”