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Chapter 21
In time, the evening started to wind down. Blake and Jennifer were the first to leave, less because Jennifer was tiring than because Blake was obviously increasingly worried about her. That started the movement; Brandy, Phil, and Tara took that as a cue to get moving as well, since Phil wanted to be out and get some miles on the dogs before sunrise. Chandler and Brianna had long since finished the movie they were watching; they’d joined the adults for a few minutes, but the yawning and fading out caused their parents to send them to bed. By then those left were pretty well winding down as well, except for Danny, who was still running on Nevada time to some degree, and it was still early for him.
As he watched the bustle around the bathrooms, he sat back in a comfortable chair in front of the dying fire, staring into the flames, occasionally sipping at a cup of coffee. It was actually part of a pot left over from dinner and reheated in the microwave, so it really didn’t taste very good, but it was coffee, it was warm, and it was something to drink.
It had been good to be together with everyone again, to renew the ties, even though there had been a few rough spots there for a while. One remained, in fact, one that he hadn’t wanted to consider while everything else was going down: Tara’s revelations about Marsha.
It had been clear to him from weeks before that when he’d caught Marsha with Sheena it had not been the first time the two had been together. But, it wasn’t until he was contemplating it behind the wheel of the Lumina as he headed west that he realized it had to have been going on for some time. But he hadn’t really thought that Marsha had been a lesbian even before he’d started going out with her.
Tara had said it had been going on for a long time at that point, although she hadn’t indicated how long. Now, his mind helplessly wandered back to what he remembered of summers at the Club, young and largely innocent of such things. In those days, Tara had been much closer to the Ashtenfelters than he had been, and kids were allowed to run pretty free out there. He could now remember times that Tara and Marsha had been off somewhere, doing something, and no one commented too much about it. It could have been going on for years before he and Marsha had become somewhat reluctant double dates to Josh and Amy, the first summer Tara was gone from the Club, off working as a camp counselor. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he realized that not only could it have been years, it must have been. There was no knowing without asking Tara, and he didn’t really feel like pushing the issue since she felt bad enough about it as it was. There was no point in knowing since the end result was the same.
How could he have been so blind?
The only thing he could come up with was that things worked a little differently between people at the Club than they did in the rest of the world, and that the signs that he ought to have seen had been buried in those differences.
And that wasn’t the worst of it. Tara had indicated that Marsha’s parents must have at least suspected what was going on, and apparently the impression Tara had from Marsha was that her parents had leaned on her a little to marry him. The more he thought about it, the more it irked him to have been put in the role of their unwitting guinea pig. If that was their plan, over the years they hadn’t been very damn supportive of his efforts to make things work, and often took her side even when it had to have been pretty clear to him that she was in the wrong. There was no telling if Marsha had been lying to Tara -- and that was something she was good at -- but even if she had been, it had already been clear that the Ashtenfelters were pretty well on Danny’s permanent shit list, anyway. If Marsha had been telling Tara the truth, it just engraved their names there. It was too bad that the Ashtenfelters were friends of his parents, but it was pretty clear he wasn’t going to have much to do with them, anyway. It just meant that he wouldn’t be hanging around the Club much, and he’d already made up his mind that was going to be the case, anyway.
So, really, there was nothing to be done out of Tara’s revelation, other than to accept that it added to the proof of how stupid he’d been in the first place. Even so, he couldn’t get the picture out of his mind of his sister and Marsha getting it on as preteen lesbians, even though there was no proof of that.
And, as far as that went, it explained a lot about Tara, too -- she had always seemed pretty strange and detached from the run of things when he’d been in high school, although "lesbian" wasn’t one of the things he’d considered as having been at the root of it. But now that he knew, a lot of things dropped into place. He knew that it had been hard for her in high school, and now he knew why. No wonder she’d turned her back on Spearfish Lake at the earliest moment possible and never looked back. It was always a little hard for kids of known members of the Club in school; they took some shit about it, and Danny knew it well -- but it had to have been worse for Tara.
There was a part of him that wanted to blame her for his troubles, at least a little, but how could she have known what had been going to happen? She’d made one serious attempt to go straight, and it had been a disastrous failure. However, she seemed to be happy with her life now, which was more than he could say about his. At least, the prospects of improvement still lay out there if the past could quit bugging him.
It was a circular logic and he knew it, but he couldn’t break out of the circle as he sat there and stared at the flickering flames. How long he sat there, it was hard to say, but he was startled by Garth’s voice: "Can’t sleep either, huh?"
"Haven’t tried," Danny said, and added a half-truth: "The night is still young. This is about the time things get rocking out in Nevada."
"Well, things are rocking upstairs," Garth said quietly, taking a seat on the couch not far away. He was in a bathrobe and pajamas, and yawning a little. "Michelle is shaking the whole bed with her snoring, as usual."
"She goes at it pretty good, huh?" Danny smiled.
"It’s sort of like hogs slopping at a trough," Garth shook his head. "Loud hogs. I’ve gotten used to it, but she keeps me up sometimes. The strange bed doesn’t help." He let out a sigh and continued, "Danny, I’m sorry. Michelle was running off at the mouth and shouldn’t have been on your case, but it’s not easy to stop her."
"Hey, don’t worry about it," Danny shook his head. "Michelle at her worst is nowhere as bad as Marsha just warming up. No apologies needed."
"It was pretty bad between the two of you, I take it?"
"Pretty bad," Danny admitted. "And, for quite a long time. I tried to keep things together, most of the time, but I can look back now and see that I encouraged it more than controlled it." He let out a sigh. "In fact, I can look back now and see a lot of things I should have done differently. But what’s done is done, and it’s over with."
"You seem pretty philosophical about it," Garth smiled, leaning back on the sofa.
"I can be, now," Danny told him. "Six weeks ago, I was not philosophical about it, and I was hurting pretty bad. But working at the Redlite Ranch helped me get some things in perspective."
"It still seems amazing," Garth shook his head. "How in hell did you manage to wind up tending bar in a place like that?"
"I didn’t go looking for the job. Art, the old boy who owns the motel I was staying in across the street, took me over there for breakfast one morning. They have a pretty good restaurant, and they don’t mind people coming in just to eat so long as they’re not busy. I figured hell, I ought to see what the inside of a place like that looks like once in my life, shouldn’t I? I honestly wasn’t thinking about the women even if I could have afforded one. I wasn’t thinking much about sex just then, Marsha had done that big a number on me. Anyway, Art and I got to talking with George, who owns the place, and somewhere in the conversation I mentioned that I’d done a little bartending. The next thing I knew he was offering me a job. It had been pretty boring sitting in the motel, and it was something to do, so I took him up on it."
"Pretty interesting place to work?"
"Yeah, I learned a lot. One of the things I learned was that I’m prouder of having been a bartender in a whorehouse than I was being a quack medicine salesman."
"So, what are the girls like?" Garth smiled. "Pretty rough?"
"Well, not rough at all," Danny told him. "George runs the business to pull in the high-roller trade out of Vegas, so he’s a pretty picky about them. Some of them are serious babes. Most of them are reasonably good looking, at least in the low light you get in there, but a lot of it is sort of a forced, in-your-face kind of pretty, not a natural beauty, if you know what I mean. There are some who look good in low light but show their age when you get them out in brighter light. Let’s say that all of them are well above average for their age group and let it go at that."
"Are they any good?" he asked. "I mean, you hear stories that all hookers are lesbians."
"Well, bearing in mind that I don’t have direct experience," Danny lied, "We usually seemed to have satisfied customers, and I never heard much complaining in the bar. The lesbian angle, I don’t know. Some of the girls will admit it. Some will go both ways. Some will not party with another woman involved. So, no stereotypes." He shook his head and smiled. "Now, bear in mind that most of the time, I was standing behind the bar and polishing glasses or whatever, but I heard some of the damndest things I ever heard in my life, things I would never, ever have expected to hear. There seems to be two schools of thought about whether a girl should get off on partying with a customer. Some say no, it’s unprofessional. Some of them, well, that’s why they’re there. I hadn’t really thought about it until just this instant, but I’d have to say in real general terms that the girls who make out a little better financially are in the second group, and maybe the first group is a little jealous. But that’s just my observation; I don’t know how much water it holds."
"I guess that’s not what I thought it would be like," Garth admitted. "How much do they charge?’
"Again, that sort of depends," Danny smiled, all of a sudden realizing that there just might be a little more than casual interest in his brother’s questions. "I rarely talked about this with the girls directly. It’s the custom out there that you don’t talk prices up in the lobby, dining room, or the bar, at least with other customers around. The girls have to take the clients back to their rooms to work out a deal, and it’s negotiable, and depends on a lot of things. But, in general terms, from what I overheard at one time or another, I’d have to say that the base price for something short and simple like a blow job or a simple screw runs around three hundred bucks. Now, the house gets forty percent of that, and that’s part of the reason that George gets higher quality girls than other places in Nevada. I’m told the average elsewhere is fifty-fifty. But, it can vary all over the place. I’ve heard girls say they did a half-off discount when things were slow, sort of to have something to do as opposed to nothing to do. On the other hand, the highest price I know of was $24,000."
"Twenty-four thousand?" Garth said, eyes wide.
"That was a girl whose prices are high, anyway," Danny explained. "As I understand it, it was for a package she normally charged six grand for, but there were a couple double or nothing bets involved, and he obviously lost both. But when I say all night, I don’t mean anything about sleeping, either, I mean partying all night. I usually came on at eight in the morning, and often there were one or more of those finishing up, and it was usually hard to tell if the guy or the girl was dragging ass more."
"Pretty, well, mercenary? Artificial?"
"Well, yeah," Danny agreed, his mind running hard. He knew that Garth traveled some in his job, and maybe his business took him near Las Vegas once in a while. What was it Shirley had said, that a lot of guys came there because they wanted to try something their wives wouldn’t do? Danny couldn’t imagine Michelle doing anything but pretty straight, and maybe not all that often. And, then, Michelle was pretty fat, maybe it held his interest down. It might just be that he wasn’t the last Evachevski who was going to get laid at the Redlite Ranch . . . "Really, when you stop and think about it, it can’t be much else. But, it’s business, man. Supply and demand."
"I suppose," Garth shrugged. "Hey, no matter what Michelle said, it had to have been pretty interesting."
"Like I said, I saw things I never dreamed I would see in my life," Danny laughed. "Especially after as barren as things had been with Marsha for as long as they were, to get dumped into an atmosphere like that was pretty wild. I mean, most of the time I was just a bug on the wall, but there were times it was downright unbelievable. Sure was different, though."
"Must have been," Garth smiled. "Hey, guy, it’s been good to see you again. I know you’ve been through a rough one, but that happens to all of us sometimes."
"Happens to a lot of people, I suppose," he shrugged. "You never figure on it happening to you. At least I never did. Things were pretty bad there, I don’t know how I managed to put up with it, but I kept trying to keep things together long after I should have quit. It wasn’t until I got bit in the ass that I finally did what I should have done long before."
"I hear you, Danny. There have been times . . . " Garth reached for words for a second. "It’s not quite the same thing, I guess. It’s a little different; you didn’t have kids."
Danny understood perfectly what Garth was trying to tell him but couldn’t bring himself to say -- and he couldn’t blame him, either. Maybe he’d better steer it away a little if he could. "From what I see, you’ve got a couple pretty good kids there."
"They are pretty good," Garth nodded, perhaps a little relieved at the digression. "They’re both doing well in school. Bree, she’s a sharp little squirt, likes soccer, shows some signs of both being athletic and a good student. Chan is one sharp kid, hell of a good reader, knows his way around computers like nobody’s business."
"Seemed to have a pretty good head on him," Danny nodded, not wanting to voice his misgivings from earlier.
"I think so," Garth sighed. "But . . ." Again, he visibly struggled for words for a long time. "Oh, damn," he said finally. "Danny, do you remember Scott Schneider?"
"You think?" Danny said. Of course, he remembered Scott Schneider. A guy who’d been a couple years ahead of him, a couple years behind Garth. He was a smart kid, pretty close to all A’s, but he was hugely overweight, and had been picked on and bullied a lot, as long as Danny could remember. Although Danny hadn’t known him well, it was common knowledge that Scott was pretty sensitive to the bullying, and Danny had often wondered how he’d put up with it. His pain finally ended in a messy murder-suicide that had shaken a lot of people.
"I hope to Christ not," Garth shook his head. "But, God, I’d love to have him stay up here with Dad for a summer, but since it would about have to involve the Club, Michelle would never buy it."
"Just to get him away?" Danny frowned.
"No, more to maybe give him a little motivation about losing some weight, some exercise, maybe some of the things Dad could teach him," Garth shook his head. "I don’t know if Dad told you this, but two or three years ago he got involved with another kid kind of in the same boat, a little shit who got picked on a lot, finally got suspended for pulling a knife when three guys were beating on him. Dad and some of his friends started teaching this kid a trick or two, up above the store. A few months later, this kid and that girl at the paper who wore handcuffs for a couple months came across the same three guys beating up on some other little kid, and pounded the living shit out of all three of them. The three were laughed out of town because they couldn’t beat up a little skinny runt of a 15-year-old and a woman in handcuffs."
"No," Danny laughed, "I hadn’t heard that story. I expect I will sooner or later."
Garth shook his head. "Chan needs a dose of that, bad. Or something. But I can’t get through to his mother. Shit, I remember Scott, and I know just how damn bad it could be. Danny, no matter how, I can’t let what happened to Scott happen to Chan. I’ll take him out of school and home school him myself if it comes down to it. But . . . well, that means I have to stick some other stuff out, too."
"It’s that bad, huh?" Danny said softly, seeing the reality.
"Not often," Garth admitted. "But, there are times." He sighed. "You’re lucky, Danny. You really are. You didn’t have kids involved."
"I’ve come to realize that," Danny nodded. "It’s been hard to realize, because I really would like to have kids, to be a father. But I realize now that Marsha would have made a piss poor mother, so I guess it’s just as well. Jennifer sort of reminded me that it’s not too late to start over, but I haven’t even figured out where that bridge is yet, let alone cross it. But, I guess I’ve got time. You’re going to try to stick it out, then?"
"I don’t really have a whole lot of choice, not for the next six years, maybe till Bree turns 18. Maybe by then things will ease up, or maybe I’ll have to do some reassessment. You know, back when we were in school, six years seemed like close to forever. When you get to be my age, your age, it’s not all that damn long. Or, at least, that’s what I keep telling myself."
"I know what it’s like to try to stick it out," Danny said. "Sometimes you have to do it. But Garth, look. If it does get that bad, at least you have the advantage of being able to do some planning and preparation. I had to do it on the fly and it probably cost me a lot, but I’m just happy to be out of it at all. I’ll be glad to give you what advice I can. But if and until the time comes, I’ve got six words you should remember. Maybe they’ll give you a little hope."
"What six words?"
Danny smiled. "Douglas Roberts, Attorney, Piute Wells, Nevada."
