by Wesley Lewis
“Just one thing. If anyone should ask, I’m not here, okay?”
“Oh, honey,” said the woman with a grin, “we haven’t stayed in business this long by having loose lips.”
Crocker smiled. “Thanks. I owe you one.”
He waved to Jennifer to follow him and headed past the reception desk, toward a wide hallway lined with doors.
The woman turned to Jennifer and said, “Y’all enjoy yourselves.”
Jennifer gave a polite but slightly embarrassed smile and followed Crocker past the desk.
Just inside the hallway, she stopped to inspect a wall of bookshelves to her right. The shelves were filled not with books but with a collection of the most uncomfortable-looking stiletto heels she’d ever seen.
“What is this?”
Crocker turned to see what had grabbed her attention. “That’s the shoe wall.”
Jennifer studied the shelves. “Clearly.”
Crocker chuckled. “When Dottie rings the bell to signal that a customer is waiting, the girls who aren’t with a client have to come running to join the lineup.”
“The lineup?”
“Where the customers pick which—”
“Got it. Go on.”
“The girls can’t exactly run in those shoes, so when they get to right here, they change out of their street shoes and into their . . .” He pointed to the wall.
“Hooker pumps?” asked Jennifer.
“Exactly.”
“You know, Mr. Crocker, if I didn’t know any better, I might think you’ve spent a bit of time here.”
As if on cue, two female voices squealed in unison, “Matt!”
Two unnaturally proportioned young women in skimpy negligees rounded the corner from the reception area, ran past Jennifer, and threw their arms around Crocker, trapping him in a two-sided bear hug. The platinum blonde on his right kissed him on the cheek, and the redhead gripping him from the left followed suit.
Crocker looked more than a little embarrassed, but the women didn’t seem to notice.
“Ladies,” boomed a male voice.
Jennifer looked back to see a hulk of a man approaching from the same direction. He looked to be at least sixty but carried his large frame with the ease of a much younger man. At more than six feet tall and with a head of long gray hair, he looked like an over-the-hill professional wrestler.
“Give the poor man some room,” he continued. “Can’t you see he has a guest?”
“Sorry,” said the redhead as she took a step back.
“Sorry,” echoed the blonde as she too stepped away from the target of their affections.
“Jennifer,” said Crocker, “I’d like you to meet two of my best students—Scarlett and Vegas.”
Jennifer almost laughed out loud at the on-the-nose monikers. “Students?”
Crocker nodded. “We put together a complimentary class for some of the girls.”
“And you still haven’t let us pay you back,” pouted the descriptively named Scarlett.
“Yeah,” said Vegas. “When are you going to take us up on our offer?”
This time Crocker was definitely blushing.
“Ladies,” he said, “I genuinely appreciate the offer, but as I said before, the class was complimentary. No payment necessary.”
The two women uttered simultaneous whines of disappointment.
“Okay,” said the large man, “you gals run along and let Crocker get on with his date. I think you’ve embarrassed him enough for one day.”
The way he said the word date brought another flush to Jennifer’s cheeks.
Scarlett and Vegas each made childlike sounds of protest, leaned in to give Crocker a final kiss on the cheek, then scurried off down the hall before they could be scolded again.
“Sorry about that,” said the man.
“Oh,” said Jennifer, realizing he was looking at her, “don’t worry about it.”
“Jennifer,” said Crocker, “this is Larry Chappell. Larry is the proprietor of this establishment.”
Jennifer extended her hand. “Nice to meet you.”
Larry took her hand, leaned down, and brushed his lips across the back of it. “The pleasure is all mine.”
The greeting was either chivalrous or creepy, but Jennifer was too tired to decide which.
Larry turned to Crocker and said, “Sorry for the interruption, but Dottie came back to the office and told us you were here. I wanted to say hi.”
“No problem,” said Crocker. “As long as you’re just saying hi and not buttonholing me about this weekend.”
Larry frowned. “What if I upped my offer to a thousand a day? That has to be at least double your best offer from anyone else.”
“I committed to the tournament six months ago. How is it going to look if I back out now?”
“I’m desperate, pal. It’s not just about the crowd from Le Tournoi—there’s also a motocross race up at Amargosa and a big skydiving competition over at the lake bed.”
Crocker was already shaking his head.
Larry continued, undeterred. “It’s a perfect storm of horny adrenaline junkies. You know how I always say nobody likes working girls more than gamblers? Well, that holds true whether they’re gambling with their money or gambling with their lives.”
“I wish I could,” said Crocker, “but just like your girls, us security guys are in high demand on these busy weekends.”
Larry ran a hand through his stringy gray hair. “I can’t understand why you’d rather babysit suitcases full of other people’s money than hang out with the girls and toss a few drunks, but hey, you can only lead a horse to water.”
Crocker smiled. “No hard feelings, I hope.”
“Nah,” said Larry, “no hard feelings.” He grinned. “Of course, if you didn’t have this beautiful young woman with you, I might send Vegas and Scarlett back here to try to persuade you, but—” He glanced at Jennifer and changed his tone. “But pencil me in for next year.”
“Consider it done,” said Crocker. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, my date is waiting.”
♦ ♦ ♦
Jennifer had assumed that Champagne Suite was a title, like Presidential Suite or Honeymoon Suite. She now realized it was actually a theme.
In the middle of the room stood a giant champagne glass at least six feet high. Beside the glass a small spiral staircase wound its way to the brim.
“It’s a hot tub,” explained Crocker as he closed the door behind them.
Jennifer shook her head and muttered, “Just when I thought this place couldn’t get any tackier.”
He latched the door. “You haven’t seen anything yet. Let me see if I can figure out which . . .”
She heard the flip of a switch. Instantly the walls were awash in giant champagne-colored bubbles. She looked for the source and found a projector mounted to the mirrored ceiling.
A few feet beyond the projector hung a knot of straps and ropes that resembled a medieval torture device. To her left sat a round bed dressed in gold satin sheets and two large pillows.
Crocker stepped past her and took a seat on the edge of the bed. “If you want to get some rest, you can have the bed.” He pulled at one of his shoelaces. “I’ll find someplace else to sleep.”
Jennifer surveyed the room. “Where? In the sex swing?”
He glanced at the straps dangling from the ceiling and grinned. “The first time I was here, I had to ask what that was.”
For the third time since arriving at the Prickly Pear, Jennifer blushed. “I’ve seen ads in magazines.”
“I’m not judging. Anyway, I was actually thinking I’d prop myself up against the love pillow and sleep there.” He pointed to a wedge-shaped cushion resting in one corner
of the room.
Jennifer took a seat on the bed. “Is this your usual room?”
“On busy weekends the staff rooms are all occupied by working girls, so I’ve stayed in most of the guest rooms at one point or another.”
She fiddled with the buckle on one of her stilettos. “You don’t make social visits?”
Crocker shot her a sideways glance. “I occasionally work security when they’re expecting a big crowd. That’s it.” He kicked off a shoe.
“And you teach free classes to the girls.”
“That was a one-time thing.” He kicked off the other shoe. “Larry was concerned that some of the girls were buying handguns for protection, so I put together a half-day class.”
“But do you ever come here for”—she searched for the right word—“recreational purposes?”
He reclined on the bed, his socked feet still on the floor, and closed his eyes. “I don’t mix work and play.”
“So you’ve never—”
“I don’t mix work and play. Let’s leave it at that.”
Jennifer finished removing her shoes and sat up straight. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to pry.”
He opened his eyes and smirked. “Yes, you did. But I get it—this is a little out of the ordinary.”
“A little?”
He shrugged, wrinkling the satin sheets beneath his shoulders.
“Last question,” she said. “Why do all the women here call you Matt?”
“Dottie says it’s only polite to call a man by his surname if you preface it with ‘Mr.’ She insists on calling me Matt. I guess the girls picked up on it.”
Jennifer nodded. “Probably safer not to confuse them. Their cute little heads might explode.”
Crocker smiled again. “Don’t let the dumb-girl act fool you. They may not be angels, but they’re not bimbos.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” She stood. “If you don’t need the bathroom right now, I’m going to take a shower.”
“Do you want to call your people first?” He pointed to the hotel-style phone on the nightstand.
She shook her head and kept walking. “I still have to figure out what the hell I’m going to tell my boss.”
♦ ♦ ♦
Jennifer was contaminated with a grime that wouldn’t wash off with soap and water. The stench of death and betrayal lingered as she tried to simultaneously wash her body and scrub certain images from her mind.
Any time she closed her eyes, she saw either a dead body lying on the floor of the truck stop or a naked body straddling the man she’d hoped to marry. Sometimes the two images blurred together so that Ashley’s naked body was among the corpses on the truck stop floor. Exhaustion was taking its toll.
The tears came intermittently, in quiet streams rather than violent sobs, and were quickly washed away. She knew the real torrent would come later, after she’d had time to process all that had happened.
When the shower finally ran out of hot water, she turned it off and grabbed two towels from the rack. She wrapped her hair in one and her torso in the other and walked to the sink. On the counter sat an array of complimentary toiletries. She tore open a packet containing a cheap plastic toothbrush and a single-use pouch of toothpaste.
She worked up a mouthful of suds before realizing that her bothersome French lace panties were still soaking in the sink. She took a step to the left, spit into the shower, then wiped her mouth on the hand towel hanging beside the sink.
She looked down at the uncomfortably ornate panties and decided that trendy boutiques were an okay source for little black dresses but that all future lingerie purchases would be made at Victoria’s Secret.
She hated the idea of waking up and putting on the dirty clothes she’d been wearing on the worst day of her life, but washing out the sadistically designed underwear was the best she could do under the circumstances. There was no way her slinky black dress would survive a sink full of lukewarm water and shampoo.
She glanced at the dress hanging on the back of the bathroom door and took solace in the fact that it wasn’t splattered with blood.
She pulled the lace torture device from the sink, wrung out the excess water, and hung it on the towel rack to dry. Looking at the rack, now bare except for the soggy lace thong, she felt a twinge of guilt for using both bath towels. Normally she would have used just one towel to dry off her body and wrap up her hair, but she currently had nothing else to wear.
She hadn’t forgotten the brief moment she and Crocker had shared in his trailer, but she was pretty sure that walking out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a makeshift turban wasn’t the way to reignite that flame.
She leaned over the sink and wiped a swath of condensation from the mirror. What she saw made her stomach sink. Her body might not have been naked, but her face was.
She grabbed her small purse from the counter and pulled out the only item other than her wallet and room key that she’d managed to fit inside. There wasn’t much to work with, but for the first time since leaving La Condamine, she was glad she’d chosen the makeup kit over her cell phone.
♦ ♦ ♦
By the time she opened the bathroom door, Jennifer was confident her face wasn’t about to confess either her lack of sleep or her true age.
She stood in the doorway, toweling her hair, and studied Crocker, who lay on the bed with the room phone sitting next to him.
“Hey,” she said. “Do you think one of your friends here at the best little whorehouse might have a bathrobe or a T-shirt or something I can sleep in?”
He didn’t reply.
“You awake?”
Still no reply.
She stopped toweling her hair, took a step toward the bed, and half shouted, “Crocker!”
Still, he didn’t stir.
A deep sense of dread settled over her. She balled up the damp towel and flung it at his head. The towel landed on his face with a wet slap.
She waited, breathless.
Crocker reached up, pulled the towel from his face, flung it to the floor, and rolled onto his side.
Jennifer breathed a sigh of relief. She felt a little silly, but after the night she’d just experienced, she was primed to expect the worst.
She walked to the side of the bed and stood close enough to hear his rhythmic breathing. “Are you going to wake up, or did I just put on makeup for nothing?”
No reply.
Great, she thought, my safety depends on a gunslinger who could sleep through a train wreck.
She glanced around the room.
And I have no place to sleep and nothing to wear but a wet towel.
She walked to the closet on the far end of the room and opened the door, hoping to find a bathrobe or anything that might double as pajamas. Instead, she found an assortment of cleaning supplies, a couple dozen changes of sheets, and a shelf containing what she perceived to be the essential tools of the trade: condoms, wet wipes, and K-Y Jelly.
She grabbed one of the individually wrapped wet wipes from the economy-size box, opened it, and began scrubbing the fresh makeup from her face. When she was confident that the bulk of her makeup was now on the wet wipe, she dropped it into the small trash can on the floor of the closet and unwrapped the towel from around her body.
She lacked the energy to worry that Crocker, who’d proved himself to be a very sound sleeper, might choose this moment to wake up. She used the towel to dry her face, then dropped it in the laundry hamper beside the trash can.
A few minutes later, she sat on the side of the bed, wearing a satin sheet as a toga and waiting for the switchboard operator at La Condamine to connect her to Tom’s room. She would have preferred to call his cell phone, but like everyone else in the age of smartphones, she’d long since given up memorizing phone numbers.
>
She knew that Tom would leave for the convention center no later than seven, which meant she was cutting it pretty close. The clock beside the bed read 6:49.
The phone rang without answer. After a moment, an automated voicemail system picked up.
Crap.
If he was already gone, nobody would know where she was until sometime that evening. She considered trying to reach another coworker, but Tom was the only one she trusted not to ask too many questions. She decided to gamble that he was still in the shower.
The voicemail system beeped.
“Tom,” she said, “this is Jennifer. Listen, I need you to tell Bryan that I’m dealing with a family emergency and won’t be able to make it to my meetings today. He’s going to need to find people to cover for me.
“If, God forbid, you don’t get this message until the end of the day, just make sure he understands that my absence was completely unavoidable. Thanks, pal.”
She looked at the number printed on the base of the phone. “If you need to reach me, you can call me back at 775-684-4368.” She hesitated, then added, “Ask for the Champagne Suite. I can’t really explain right now, but I’ll be here for most of the day.”
She hung up the phone and glanced over at Crocker, whose deep slumber seemed unfazed by her conversation.
“Okay, Matt Crocker, I’m trusting you to be a gentleman.”
She held her toga together with one hand as she slid between the bedsheets. Five minutes later, she was sound asleep.
♦ ♦ ♦
The phone rang three times before Jennifer registered what it was. By then Crocker was already leaning across her to answer it.
“Hello?”
According to the clock on the nightstand, it was one thirty in the afternoon. Jennifer fiddled under the sheet to refasten her makeshift toga, which had come loose while she slept.
“Hang on,” said Crocker. He handed her the receiver.
