“You said you’re going to a bachelor party?” Mike asked.
“Yeah, in Vegas on Friday—a friend of my brother’s.”
“Are you worried about Ashley meeting up with this construction guy while you’re away?”
“It’s crossed my mind, but I really don’t think so. And it’s not in my control.”
“Well, this may sound crazy, Dave, but do you want me to try and keep an eye on her when you’re away? I have to work, of course, but maybe if she said she was at some bar and you wanted it confirmed, if I had time, I could maybe reassure you that she was there.”
“No, but thanks,” I typed. “I don’t want to spy on her.”
“I hear you. It doesn’t bode well if you’re reduced to that. That can be a problem in itself.”
“Yeah,” I typed, “but I am committed to having a talk with her as soon as I get back.”
“Well, start thinking of what you want to say while you’re away,” Mike said. “Hell, even on the plane ride tomorrow, start sketching it out in your mind. Don’t kick the can too far down the road. You certainly won’t have time when you’re in Vegas.”
“Yeah,” I typed, “you’re right. I’ll jot some themes down on the flight.”
“Yeah, and keep your notes loose. Just prepare yourself for different things she might say … and potential answers.”
“Yeah,” I typed, “all good points. Well she’s going to be home soon. I should get going.”
“OK, but Dave?”
“Yeah.”
“Be careful when you’re in Vegas bro. Don’t be talking to your friends about what happened with Ashley at the party.”
“Oh, I won’t,” I replied, “I can’t and haven’t talked to anyone I know about this.”
“I know you haven’t. I’m just throwing out a friendly caution. I know how I get talking after a lot of drinks. You might feel better getting it off your chest, but this is not a ‘what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas’ kind of thing. It doesn’t matter how close you are as friends. I’ve seen your wife, and if you got real with them, I guarantee they would see the open sign and be scheming to fuck her when you get back.”
“There’s no way I would tell them,” I said, “but yeah, I am definitely going to back-pocket your reminder.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
As she was leaving for work, Ashley pointed at me and said, “Now, no funny business in Vegas, mister.”
“Oh all right” I said, like she’d just rained on my parade.
“And don’t come back with any missing teeth.”
“Yeah, Ash,” I said, “I’m really going to miss you.”
“I miss you already,” she replied, before heading out the door.
****
My meetings in San Francisco went well. And on both nights Ashley and I talked for a while. I was glad to be boarding the quick flight. In two days I’d be back with my wife.
The Vegas heat hit me as soon I stepped onto the boarding ramp. “One hundred six degrees,” one of the airline support guys said when he saw my expression.
My brother Sean was waiting for me in the airport bar. “Starting a little early,” I said, as he stood up and gave me a hug. “Is that a shot?”
“It’s tequila. You got to love Vegas. You order a beer, they offer a shot for three dollars more. I don’t turn down good deals. I’ve been waiting so long for your sorry ass that this is my fifth.”
“Jesus,” I said.
“I’m kidding, my flight was late, too—this is only my second—but get ready, little bro, this is only the second of many.”
****
“It’s probably too early for check-in,” he said, as we got in the taxi. “You don’t mind making a pit stop?”
“A strip bar?” I asked, rolling my eyes.
“No, a spray tan.”
“Are you freaking serious?” I said, “that’s a little gay, now, isn’t it, Sean?”
“Sure it is, but I read reviews about this place. You can’t tell it’s fake.”
“Oh c’mon Sean.”
“Hey, I plan on getting laid while I’m here, and with the rain in D.C. this summer ... anyway, you look whiter than me. You could use one yourself.”
“Like hell, I’m not going back to work on Monday looking orange.”
“You won’t, bro, trust me, it will look good. C’mon, we’re in Vegas, just roll with it.”
****
Twenty minutes later, I was listening to an automated woman’s voice telling me to strip naked and stand on metal footprints. I closed my eyes as this cold chemical sprayed both sides of my body.
“Pretty painless, right?” Sean said when I met him outside a few minutes later.
“No it won’t look fake,” I said. “Like who has a tanned ass? What are you going to tell the girl—how you spent the summer in Ibiza?”
“That’s good,” Sean said, “just one more pit stop, little bro.”
“What now? A stripclub?”
“No, the supermarket. There’s a fridge in the suite, and there’s a Von’s on Flamingo.”
The supermarket was far enough from the Strip that we were shopping with Vegas locals, or locals from a certain depressed neighborhood. Everything about the shoppers said “down and out”—their vacant eyes, their missing teeth, the way they screamed at their kids. I was thinking, crystal-meth addicts.
It didn’t seem to bother Sean as he filled the cart up with mixers and frozen food. I just wanted out of there. While I was waiting outside for the cab we’d called, a panhandler came up to me.
I didn’t reply to his question, at first trying to ignore him.
“Are you foreign?” he asked. “Do you not speak English?”
“No habla,” I said.
“Spanish, you speak Spanish?”
“Si,” I replied. Then he rattled off something in Spanish. I’d forgotten all that I learned from high school.
“I’m just waiting, sorry,” I said.
“So you do speak English?”
“What?”
“Well, fuck you, man.”
This haggard old raggedy man with no teeth was suddenly pointing a finger in my chest. “You’re a coward and a liar. Go fuck yourself. Did you hear what I said?”
“Yeah, I heard, I’m sorry,” I replied.
“Go fuck yourself, man. I don’t want your fucking money, it’s shit people like fucking you—”
I saw the cab pull up and ran to flag it down.
****
We checked into our suite and hauled everything up.
I lifted my t-shirt as I looked in the mirror. That spray tan shit really worked.
Sean went down to scope out the pool as I put my clothes away and checked in with Ashley.
I thought the knock on the door was Sean having forgotten his key, but it was Patrick. “You fucking made it,” he said, as he gave me a hug.
“Congratulations,” I said, hugging him back. “Why would you even question that I would make it?”
Patrick responded by pretending to mimic my voice when I was twelve, “I’m sorry Sean, I mean, I meant to go to your football game, but you see, I set the alarm clock for p.m. instead of a.m., and it was raining, and dad took my umbrella, and I mean the high school is like at least a mile walk—”
“Jeez, Patrick” I broke in, “that story is over twenty years old. Isn’t there a statute of limitations on shit like that?”
“It was our championship game!” he said and slapped my stomach. “I’m just kidding Dave, I’m really glad you came. So, where’s big bro?”
****
Beers by the pool led to a steak dinner and then a strip club.
Of the ten guys there, the only other guy I knew was Badger. He and Sean were off talking up a stripper, and I felt like the rest of the guys were thinking, “Who invited this stick in the mud?”
One of the guys rode me for refusing a lap dance. I thought about what Mike had said about getting drunk and blabbing about what happened. Two
of the guys were single and lived in New York—the kind who would pull a Jim Murta on my ass if they saw any opportunity.
Around midnight, I discreetly pulled Sean aside and told him I was heading back. He gave me the obligatory, drunken big brother hard time, but he was also distracted by girls. I put $150 down on the table where a few guys remained and hightailed my way on out of there.
I called Ashley and left a message.
Back in our suite, I sat on the balcony, waiting for Ashley’s return call, watching planes land at McCarren’s airport.
Three hours later, I was in bed, still waiting. Ashley still hadn’t responded. No phone call, no text, no nothing.
Then I heard a commotion. It was Sean, who was soon in our bedroom. “Hey little bro, Badger and I brought a girl back.”
“OK,” I said.
“I mean, so I’m going to shut the door, OK?”
“What?”
“Bro, we’re gonna try and pull off the tag-team. She’s never tried it, but she’s drunk and curious.”
“Who’s the girl?”
“A hot twenty-five-year-old UCLA grad student we met at the Bellagio.”
“Oh,” I said.
“She’s here for her bachelorette party,” Sean continued. “She’s getting married in six weeks.”
“You mean the girl you brought back is about to get married?” I said.
“Yeah, look I know you’re trying to sleep and I know this is an imposition, but I’m gonna shut the door, but you understand?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Suddenly hip-hop music started cranking and I could hear loud drunken talk and laughter. I went up to the door to listen, but the music drowned things out.
****
I woke up to the sound of Sean and Badger’s voices in the other room. It was 11 a.m. in New York, and still no reply from Ashley.
I knocked on the door to make sure I wasn’t interrupting. Sean was lying on one couch and Badger on the other.
“What happened to the girl?” I asked.
“She had to get back to her friends,” Badger replied. “She left a few hours ago.”
“So she was having her bachelorette party?” I said. “That’s how you met her?”
“She was at a bar with her friends,” Badger replied, “her actual party is tonight.”
“Badge had his A-Game going last night,” Sean said.
“How so?” I asked.
“He had this girl in his sights, laid down his rap, got Patrick and Casey to distract her friends, and that’s when I came in.”
“Yeah and—?” I said.
“Major props to you, bro,” Sean said over to Badger.
“We were getting it done old school, bro,” Badger replied, smiling.
“OK,” I said, “so Sean said you were gonna tag team her last night—any luck?”
“Oh yeah,” Badger replied.
“Both ends,” Sean added.
“Meaning?” I said.
“Pussy and mouth,” Sean said.
“Jesus,” I said.
“That’s what Vegas is about,” Sean offered.
“I guess,” I said. “So the girl was into it?”
“Oh hell, yeah,” Badger replied, “she was all horned out, going to town like it was a full cock nine-ninety-nine, all you can eat buffet.”
“Yeah,” Sean followed, “we were high-fiving and shit, but Badger had to go an’ piss her off.”
“How so?” I said.
“OK,” Sean said, “so I’m fucking this girl on the couch and she’s blowing the Badge, and after a while I blew my load.”
“Were you wearing a condom?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“OK.”
“So then Badger starts fucking her and she tells him she just came, so he pulls out, whips off his condom and tells her to blow him again.”
“And?”
“So she went back to blowing him, but she kept saying, ‘Don’t cum in my mouth, cum on my tits.’ ”
“So what does this motherfucker do?” Sean asked me.
Badger started laughing.
“Came in her mouth?” I asked, looking over at Badger.
“No,” Sean replied, “all over this girl’s face.”
“The girl was fucking stunned and just took it … but boy, was she pissed.”
“What did she say?” I asked.
“Jesus Christ, you bastard,” Badger said, trying to imitate a girl’s voice, “I can’t believe you just came on my face. Then she looked at herself in the mirror and she really freaked—”
“Dude, her face was coated in cum,” Sean added. “It was like a freaking porno.”
“Yeah,” Badger added, “but then she saw I had gotten her hair.”
“Yeah,” Sean said, “she was freaking how she’d just gotten her hair done, and she had a big splash atop her head.”
“Jesus,” I said.
“So Badger’s acting like what’s the big deal, it’s not like you’ve never taken a facial before.”
“And?” I asked.
“She was like, ‘Fuck you,’ ” Badger said, “ ‘I’ve never taken no fucking facial before, you asshole, I can’t believe you just did that to me. I said to cum on my tits.’ ”
“Wow.”
“So Badger says, ‘Oh come on, I’m sure your fiancé’s blasted on your face before,’ and she’s like, ‘No, he never has. I can’t believe this, look at me.’ ”
“I told her she looked hot all glazed,” Badger said, laughing.
“Then she saw text messages on her phone,” Sean added. “Her friends were looking for her. Badger offered to give her cab money back to the Bellagio, but she told him to fuck himself.”
“So she left?”
“No, she kept bitching me out,” Badger said, “and she kept looking at herself in the mirror, saying, ‘I can’t believe you just did this to me, I’m a fucking mess.’ ”
“Yeah,” Sean said, “so Badger got tired of her ranting and handed back her clothes and told her the door was that-a-way.”
“Oh my God.”
“Crocodile tears,” Badger said. “She enjoyed slobbering over my cock.”
“Sure,” Sean said, “and you respected what she said—‘Don’t cum in my mouth’—and you didn’t. You tried for her tits, but hey, your aim was off.”
“Here, check her out,” Badger said, showing me a picture on his cell phone. “Her name’s Jessica. She’s getting married in Redondo Beach, Columbus Day weekend.”
I was thinking he might have something explicit to show me, but here was just a pretty, young, blond girl smiling with Badger at the bar. She had a sweet girl-next-door look.
Not someone I’d expect to get tag-teamed by two older guys she met in a Vegas club.
****
After breakfast they all went to play Craps. I said I had to get back to my boss and went up to the room. I kept looking at my cell, making sure my battery was charged. It was now early afternoon in New York.
I lay in the bed thinking about what Sean and Badger had told me. Her poor fiancé was probably sitting home in L.A., waiting for Jessica to return from her bachelorette weekend. When she saw him, she’d be saying, “Oh, we just lay by the pool during the day, drank at the bars and gambled—goofy little bachelorette stuff.”
She certainly wouldn’t be telling him how she fucked two thirty-seven-year old guys back in their hotel room, taking one cock in her pussy and another in her mouth. And she certainly wouldn’t be telling him how pissed off she was when one of them blasted his sperm right in her face, how she had to take the hotel elevator down with the guy’s load dripping off her.
Good Lord, I thought, Badger had really done a number on this girl … the long trek back to her hotel, her clothes disheveled and his sperm dripping off her face.
Badger and Sean were Jim Murta types—strapping alpha males who saw in “taken” girls, opportunities. And Badger had no qualms about adding his own special cherry on top.
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