Danny figured the story of turning Marsha into a giant hemorrhoid would get around the Redlite Ranch in a flash and that there would be a number of women that wouldn’t take it well, especially since there had been some others sitting in the dining room when he told it. As it turned out, it did get around – but with a degree of amusement. If anything, some of the women, who had experienced somewhat less than happy breakups with boyfriends, husbands, or significant others, thought that he’d been pretty forbearing under the circumstances, and a number of them gave him extra credit for creativity.

Still, he doubted Marsha would see it that way, but then, she was probably still itching from the fiberglass powder. That thought made him feel good inside.

Sitting down and talking it out the long way with Frenchy got rid of a lot of the pain and the anger. Marsha and the bad days now seemed increasingly distant, shoved into the past by all the interesting and undreamed experiences of the last ten days.

Frenchy had done a lot for him just to improve his attitude and give him a few different ways to look at things in the few days that he’d known her, and in that time, she’d become a friend. But now, it was Friday, her medical certificate had expired at midnight the previous night, and it was time for her to head home, back to her husband and children in San Diego. Her shift was over, and it’d be almost three months before she was back at the Redlite Ranch. It would be spring by then, and assuming that everything went to plan, Danny would have had his divorce by then and be long gone.

But Frenchy was still hanging around, having breakfast and a final cup of coffee before getting on the road when Danny showed up for work that Friday morning. It was going to seem a little lonely with her gone; while he knew most of the girls to various degrees now, he’d gotten friendliest with Frenchy and Peppermint Patty. Patty would be back the first part of the week, but when Frenchy drove off, Danny knew that it would be the last time he ever saw a woman who had given him a great deal of solace in a rather short time.

As usual at that hour, the place was almost empty – just Danny who sat with Frenchy as she finished her coffee, and the two on-duty girls. He was going to regret not seeing her again more than he’d regret not seeing Marsha again, by a long shot.

"So," Frenchy commented with a wry grin. "About last night. Was I right?"

"Yeah," he nodded. "You were."

"Told ya so," she grinned.

"Thanks for greasing the skids for me," he smiled. "I don’t think I could have managed it on my own."

In fact, Frenchy had done a little more than just grease the skids. After their long discussion about his breakup with Marsha, she’d renewed her suggestion that Danny spend some time partying with Shirley – and had done it in front of Shirley, sitting right at this table. The three of them had talked it around a bit, and the upshot was that Shirley said sure, she’d be glad to give a few lessons, but considering that she wasn’t carded anymore, they’d probably better do it as an outdate over at the Sagebrush. Just to be legal, both with the law and the house rules, they’d better not have any money involved.

So, when they’d both knocked off the night before, they had dinner together, and then went across the street to Danny’s room. It had frankly seemed strange as hell to be sitting around talking sex and getting it on with a woman older than his mother, twice as old as he was, probably older than that, and she looked every minute of it. The strangeness lasted for only a few minutes, because it was clear almost from the beginning that Frenchy was right, Shirley was the best in the building and knew how to teach what she knew. The lesson was a touch on the technical side, and had gone on for several hours – and it had been one of the most interesting and rewarding training sessions in any field that he could have imagined.

What had made it especially amusing to him was that he was learning things that Marsha would never have appreciated. Most of them she wouldn’t have let him try, but it was clear that if he’d known some of that stuff and she’d unbent, even a little, she could have gotten a lot out of the experience. But that was then, this was now, and there was no turning back. There was a good chance that there might be someone else up the road who might appreciate it when the time came, and that made it worth the effort. He and Shirley had agreed on doing it again in a few days, to work on some more advanced techniques, and Danny was looking forward to it.

Frenchy shook her head. "You’re awful shy about stuff like that," she smiled. "I guess it seems strange, since we don’t see too many guys like that around here."

"I guess," he sighed. "You get right down to it, this isn’t my thing, but it’ll do to pass the time for another few weeks."

"Got any more plans?" Frenchy smiled.

"Not really," Danny sighed. "I told you about the railroad job. It’s not a thing I hope to make a career out of doing, at least I don’t think so, but it should do to get my feet back under me while I catch up on the local scene again. I have to say, though, it’s going to seem dull after this place."

"Probably so," Frenchy nodded. "Danny, can I give you one last piece of advice?"

"Sure, Frenchy," he smiled. "All the other advice you’ve given me has seemed to be pretty good."

"Danny, you’re doing good here, and you’re having fun," Frenchy said, not beating around the bush. "But like I said a minute ago, this isn’t your kind of place. It’s no place for you to make a life, not for what I guess you want out of life. Danny, I’ve talked to you enough to know that what you really want is a regular job, a family, a wife who loves you, kids to love and take care of. You didn’t have a chance of that with Marsha, and I’ll warn you, if you think about hanging around here after you’ve got that piece of paper, you won’t be able to have a normal life here."

"Yeah, I think I figured that out for myself," he nodded. "It is tempting, mostly because I’m doing all right on money, making good tips. But I don’t have much else to do but work, and that shit gets old in a hurry."

"I know that," Frenchy agreed. "The hours we girls keep, well I guess I’m just as glad that it’s only three weeks at a crack. It takes me a lot longer than a week to recover any more. I don’t know how girls like Patty can manage it. But, they’re young, they’re getting what they want out of this, and what they want is to get out of this eventually and make some sort of real life in the normal world. It wouldn’t surprise me if you have some troubles making the life you want in a normal world, but there’s no way it would be as hard as making the kind of life you want here. So, when you get that piece of paper, hit the road and don’t look back. Well, if you do look back, remember the good times but remember enough of the bad side that you’re not tempted to come back."

"Like I said, I think I figured that out already," Danny said. "And I am looking forward to getting home, reopening ties with friends and family and like that."

"Remember, Danny, it isn’t going to be easy," Frenchy warned him. "You’ll have been effectively gone for a dozen years. Times will have changed, people will have changed, things will have changed. Things that you used to have in common won’t be anymore. You’re going to hit some down times when this place will seem pretty good, but you’d better not come back, if you know what’s good for you."

"Again, I think you’re right," he said. "It isn’t anything that I haven’t thought about, and I know it’s going to be hard. But yeah, it needs a fair shot."

"Well," she smiled, "I guess I didn’t mean don’t come back, ever, ever. I mean, if you happen to be in the neighborhood and feel like partying, and I’m here, I wouldn’t mind it for a bit," she grinned. "So long as you bring money. Don’t expect a freebie next time, even with the stuff that Shirley teaches you."

"I hope I don’t have to come back for that," he smiled. "But if I do, and you’re here, I’ll be happy to see you. But, you know, a lot of that goes for you, too. You can’t keep doing this forever. Maybe you ought to think about getting into some other line of work."

"I’ve thought about it," Frenchy admitted. "Thought about it real hard, in fact. A master’s degree in psychology and a quarter will buy you a stick of gum some places, but I’ve given some thought to maybe going back to school, maybe for nursing or something. On the other hand, I’ve got college expenses coming up the next few years, so I may stick with it for a while yet. I at least know I’m the kind of person who can do it." She glanced at her watch and finished her coffee. "I guess I really ought to shut up and hit the road, if I want to get home before dark."

"Can I help you haul your stuff out to your car?" he asked.

"Of course," she smiled. "It’s not like I have a whole hell of a lot, I don’t move the whole household like some girls I know."

Frenchy was right; it didn’t take long for the two of them to haul her few bags out to her late-model Ford, which sat in the parking lot behind the fence. There was a cold, uncomfortable wind blowing across the desert, and the sky was gray and cloudy. "Guess this is it, Frenchy," Danny told her. "I probably won’t see you again, but have a good life, anyway."

"Yeah, you too," she said. "Hey, Danny, now that we’re outside the fence, would you call me by my real name, just once?"

"Sure," he replied. "I don’t know what it is, though."

"It’s Norma," she grinned. "My maiden name was Franceour, which is where the ‘Frenchy’ comes from."

"Then, Norma, you have a good life," he smiled.

She let out a sigh. "Danny, do you know what I was trying to say in there that I couldn’t say in there?"

"Maybe," he said. "You said a lot of things."

"I guess I did," she nodded. "Danny, what I was trying to say is don’t fall in love with a whore like me, and for Christ’s sakes, don’t marry one. You’ve had enough heartache in your life already, you don’t need more. You might get lucky, but the odds are way against it."

"From what you said, it sounds like you got fairly lucky with your husband," he commented.

"So, I’m a whore," she snorted. "Sometimes I don’t tell the truth, or when I do I shade it some, to delude myself if no one else. Danny, it works between Charlie and me somehow. It could work better. At least I console myself that it could work a hell of a lot worse. I’m hoping we can keep it working till we get the kids pretty well settled in college, maybe through college. Then Charlie and I are going to have to stop and reassess. At that, I’m probably lucky."

Danny had more than once got the impression that things weren’t all quite sweetness and light between Frenchy – well, Norma – and her husband. Now, in the last minute, here was the proof. "Norma, I hope it works out for you," he said. "In spite of everything, you are one of the more together people I’ve ever met, and you are one of the more helping and giving. You’re miles and miles better than Marsha ever was, so don’t kick yourself in the ass over what you do to get things done."

"I know," she sighed. "I tell myself that all the time. Sometimes, I even believe it. You may not realize it, but you’ve helped me drag out what I am and look at it. You’re a decent guy who got shit on a lot. Don’t let it ruin you, because a lot of guys who hang around people like me aren’t decent guys by any stretch of the imagination. You take care, Danny, and don’t let the dark side suck you in."

"I’ll try not to," he said. "I promise."

"I think you’ll do OK," she smiled. "You’ve just got more Marsha to get out of your system, that’s all." She put her arms around him, pulled him tight, and kissed him on the lips – which was so unusual around the Redlite Ranch that it was worthy of comment. For whatever reason, kissing wasn’t customary, even in times of really hot partying. Eventually, they pulled apart. "Bye, Danny," she said. "It’s freezing out here, and I need to get going."

"Bye, Norma," he smiled. "Drive carefully and take care."

"You too," she smiled. "You know, it’s sort of funny."

"What?"

"I feel like I cheated on Charlie more by kissing you outside just now than I did with all the partying I did inside the last three weeks. Go figure, I guess."

"What’s in there is in there, I guess," he shrugged.

"I guess," she sighed, and got in her car. "Who knows, we might trip over each other sometime again. I’d kind of like to, just to see how it works out with you. See you around, Danny."

"See you around, Norma."

She closed the car door, fastened her seat belt, started the engine, and in a moment drove off. She pulled out to the edge of the highway, waited for a fast truck to pass, and then pulled out onto the pavement. Danny stood there in the cold wind, just watching as the car got smaller in the distance.

In spite of everything she’d called herself, she was still one of the most fundamentally decent women he’d met in a long time, and she’d supplied several pieces in the puzzle of putting his life back together. In a sort of way, maybe he did love her – not real close romantic love, the kind of person to make a life with, although he could almost imagine it, but love as a warm and giving and cherished friend, one he was going to miss for the rest of his life.

He stood in the blowing cold wind, watching her car disappear in the distance, and stayed for a moment after that. He sighed, and turned back to the warmth of the Redlite Ranch. He had a little over three weeks left until the hearing, and with her gone they were going to seem a lot emptier than the last two had.

*   *   *

With both Patty and Frenchy gone – he found he could barely think the name ‘Norma’ inside the building – it did seem a little lonelier. There were several girls he was friends with to some degree, but nobody with quite the closeness, and who he could talk with in quite the same way.

It picked up a little as the morning went on – Fridays tended to pick up a little more quickly than other days – and since he had things on his mind he really didn’t want to consider, he was just as happy to be busy.

The place got rolling Friday evening, much like it had the week before. Mike, the evening bartender, came on at six instead of the eight that Danny had become used to, and it was just as well, since it was a busy Friday night, with a lot of action in front as well as in back, so Danny hung in there, helping out with the bar until Jeanann came in at ten; Mike planned on working until two or three or so, whenever it died out enough that Jeanann could handle the rest of the evening by herself.

At ten, the place was rocking, but without Frenchy or Patty around – as if they would have had time for him on a Friday night, anyway – Danny decided it would be a good time to head back over to the Sagebrush and catch up on a little sleep. He’d been working at the Redlite for ten days straight by this time, and it was starting to get a little wearing.

The bed felt good. Art had been in and changed the sheets, which he did every three or four days. He’d been seeing Art about every other morning at breakfast, and he always seemed to have some good stories to tell about the UFO freaks and the old days when Jackass Flats was regularly nuked. What a place.

Danny woke up at his regular time, which was a little earlier than he needed to. He’d tried several times to call both Brandy and Jennifer in the last week, but had missed on both of them – the former because she was usually gone, and he hoped he might catch her tomorrow, but it was worth a try on Jennifer. This time he got lucky.

Blake answered the phone, of course – the drill was that Jennifer never did; if Blake wasn’t available for some reason, she’d let the answering machine screen the call before she picked it up. And, for once, Jennifer was up. "Good to hear from you, Danny," she said. "Blake has been telling me that you’ve been trying to call, but he hasn’t been willing to wake me up."

"Sorry I have to call you so early," he replied. "I don’t know what Mom and Dad have told you, but I’m working a lot of hours during the day, and by the time I get off in the evening most evenings it’d be after midnight your time."

"Yeah," Jennifer agreed. "Just as well you don’t call then. Danny, let me give you a piece of advice. Don’t get pregnant."

"I think, with some luck, I might be able to avoid that," he laughed.

"It has changed so many things it isn’t funny," she told him. "Do you know John and Candice Archer?"

"I used to know John, years ago," Danny admitted. "I just heard Candice’s name for the first time the other day, and I’m pretty sure I never met her."

"We’ve gotten to know them pretty well the last few months," Jennifer told him. "They’ve got two boys, eleven and thirteen, both pretty good kids. Anyway, Candice says that the change never quits, you never go back to what you think was a normal existence."

"I suppose," Danny said. "I always wanted kids, but Marsha didn’t, and she had to have her way, of course. But the last month or so, I guess I’m just as glad it didn’t work out that way."

"You’ve still got time, little brother. I’ve got a huge belly that’s proof of it. Oddly enough, I never really wanted kids, and now I’m looking forward to it. The last couple months have been tough, though. I can’t sing, I can’t breathe right, and the last month or so I can’t even hold a guitar right. So, it gets frustrating."

"I can imagine," he said. "You were always the one to work pretty hard, harder than most people think. It’s got to be dull for you."

"Oh, I’ve managed to stay busy," she said. "Blake and I have been working on getting the house ready for Jeremy, cleaning up, and all that. And, we’ve been producing a new album."

"How are you doing that if you can’t play a guitar and sing?" he asked.

"I said produce, not perform," her familiar voice said; Danny could close his eyes and see her long blonde hair cascading down her shoulders. She really was a good looking woman, in a conservative sort of way. It was hard to realize that, with all the in-your-face pretty that he’d been seeing the last few days. "Did you ever meet Myleigh Harris?"

"No," Danny said. "I don’t think so. She’s the woman who played the Celtic harp on Saturday Night With Jenny Easton, right? I saw her on the cover photo."

"It’s not the first album she’s done with us," Jennifer said. "She did some on the At Home and Back Porch albums, too. Randy Clark introduced us, several years ago. She has a doctorate in English Lit, from Athens, no less, and teaches at Marienthal College down in Kansas City, but she has a very sweet, interesting voice and is a magician with that harp. We’ve known her for, oh, four years now, and over the years we’ve recorded a lot of her stuff, going right back to the beginning. She really is the sweetest person, although she talks like she just stepped out of the eighteenth century. Anyway, we’ve been pulling together her recordings, cleaning them up, and putting them into an album we call Harp Strings. If everything goes right, we want to release it next spring."

"Sounds like an interesting person, but I’m sure I never met her," Danny agreed. "Maybe I’ll get the chance to, when I get back home."

"You are going to come back, then?" Jennifer asked. "Dad said that was what you had in mind after you got done with the divorce."

"Yeah, at least for a while," Danny told her. "If I can put together some kind of a life there, I’m planning on staying, but we’ll just have to see, I guess."

"Yeah, it’s got to be tough to just walk away from everything and start over," Jennifer nodded. "It was like that for Blake when we moved here from Los Angeles, but it wasn’t the same thing. But really, Danny, knowing all the shit you went through with Marsha, or at least some of it, I can’t blame you. I don’t know how you had the patience to hold on as long as you did."

"It wasn’t patience," he protested. "It was procrastination. There’s a difference."

"Yeah, but still," he heard her smile. "It’ll be good to have you back and getting yourself out of that, even if it means going back to square one to start over."

They talked on for fifteen or twenty minutes, not saying anything much in particular, just renewing ties, touching base. Toward the end of the conversation, Danny asked his biggest sister to pass along the message that he’d try to call Brandy in the morning, since she was proving hard to catch up with on weekdays. Jennifer told him not to bother, since she and Phil were out of town, having taken some dogs to a sprint race for the sake of training. "Well, sometime," he said. "School breaks soon, so I expect she’ll be home some."

"Probably not much," Jennifer said. "You might try out at Josh and Tiffany’s, though. Everybody’s busting their butts with dog training, even Candice. It’s not as bad as it used to be, and won’t be as bad next year, but the decision for Phil to take over Run-8 Kennels came so late in the season they’re still running everything out of Josh and Tiffany’s. Sometime over the summer, Phil is going to have Randy build a new dog barn for them, and that’ll really bring the time issue back under control."

The conversation wandered on for a few minutes more, and then finally broke off, with Jennifer saying that it would be good to have Danny back home and be able to see him again, especially without Marsha. Well, it would feel good to him, too.

It wasn’t until Danny was out walking across the highway toward the Redlite Ranch that it started to hit him how disquieting the conversation had been – and how right Frenchy had been when she said that things would have changed. Things that had been common to him wouldn’t be so common anymore. Jennifer had mentioned a lot of friends and acquaintances in Spearfish Lake that he didn’t know well, or not at all.

For example, he barely remembered John Archer, and like he’d told his sister, had never met Candice and wouldn’t know her if she bit him on the ass. Jennifer seemed very close with Myleigh Harris, and he barely knew the name – she was apparently from out of town, anyway.

Randy Clark had come up in the conversation several times. Danny barely remembered Randy, and mostly because he’d lived up the street before his father bought a house out on the point, about the same time Blake and Jennifer did. Randy was several years younger, and had been in maybe seventh or eighth grade when he’d graduated from high school. Now, Randy was a good friend with Jennifer and Blake as well, played bass guitar in the band that his sister and brother-in-law had put together to do Saturday Night. He was also a fairly big cheese at Clark Construction, the biggest construction company in the area, assistant manager or something, and all Danny could visualize of him was some shrimpy little shit of a kid running around the neighborhood, kind of a pest. It was a big leap of comprehension for him, and he couldn’t quite make it, couldn’t get the image of that pesky little kid out of his mind . . . things had changed, even more than he had realized.

Maybe he was going back to square one to start over, like Jennifer had said, but it was clear that it wasn’t going to be the same square one it had been twelve years before.

He was still thinking about it when he sat down to eat his breakfast before he clocked in. Jeanann was behind the bar, yawning now, and a few more last dog hangers than normal were hanging around. As he sat there thinking about it, Melissa came up front, bringing a guy with her; he’d spent the night and that wasn’t cheap. She’d made out pretty well and had a good reason to wake up with a smile on her face, not that she’d apparently gotten much sleep. The guy ordered a champagne breakfast, a good way to throw a lot more of his money around, then broke free of Melissa long enough to head over to the jukebox, drop some money in, and start an album running. Danny was just a little irritated about that; he really wasn’t up for a roaring jukebox at this hour of the morning, although in reality the night was still rolling, just winding down.

He took a sip of his coffee, and heard the album start out with a very familiar voice, "Hello everyone, and welcome to Saturday Night with Jenny Easton, here in the old Pike Bar with lots of good friends around us . . . "

Now that irritated him even more, although he couldn’t say or do anything about it. Yeah, Saturday Night was a live-recorded barroom album with some damn good country music, but somehow it bothered him to have someone playing his sister’s album, hearing her voice, in a Nevada brothel. Jesus, he thought, she’d shit if she knew about that, and even more if she knew I was here to notice it . . . and I can’t say a damn thing about it, even to Patty or Frenchy, even if either of them were here.

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