The next several days went quickly enough, even though they were on the slow side. On New Year’s Day, it was time for Amelia to end her abbreviated shift and head back to Florida for the opening of school. Normally George or a driver would have provided transportation to the airport in Las Vegas, but Danny volunteered to do the trip. "Might as well," George said. "I really wanted to sit someplace and watch football, anyway."

Danny was surprised that his Chevy Lumina started; it hadn’t been moved in over a month, since there hadn’t been the need to go anyplace but across the highway, a brief walk, but it did start up, and soon he and Amy – as she was now – were heading to the airport. "Danny, look," she told him, "you’ve been incredibly cool about this, and I just want to thank you. You could have really pissed things up if you’d wanted to."

"I know," he said. "Amy, it’s like I told you two weeks ago. I’ve been around this enough to understand it some. It’s your life to live. I’m not up to messing in other people’s lives if I don’t have to."

"Yeah, but you’ve been incredibly sweet. I’m just surprised you didn’t want to party with me."

"Have to keep my hands off the merchandise," he said. "I’ll admit, the thought crossed my mind once or twice, just to see what it would be like after all these years, but I’m afraid it could have really screwed things up for both of us."

"You’re probably right," she shook her head. "I’m just sorry I’m not going to be around to stick up for you at your divorce. That’s what? Three days?"

"Yeah," he said. "Look, don’t be sorry, it’s not going to be any big thing, and if you were there, you might let it slip up to Marsha, and how would you explain that?"

She nodded thoughtfully. "It’s going to be hard enough to not mention that I’ve seen you the last two weeks. Harder than just covering up what I’ve been doing."

"I know," he sighed. "It’ll be hard for me, too. But I’ll keep my mouth shut, if you will."

"I guess I’ll have to," she agreed.

"You going to do it again?" he asked.

"I guess so," she said. "I did pretty good for what George said is a pretty slow period, about eight thousand bucks I wouldn’t have had otherwise. That should get me through the winter if everything else goes OK. I’m on the schedule for three weeks in June. Then, tentatively for July and August, and George figures I’ll work at least one of them if not both." She let out a sigh, and continued, "I’m not sure yet, but I might sneak up to Spearfish Lake somewhere on one of the breaks."

"Your choice," he said. "We’d not see each other much if you do. I’m not planning on being out at the club much, if at all, and I don’t think you’d want the word that you’d seen me to get back to Marsha."

"You’re right," she agreed. "That might not be pretty. But Danny, let’s try to at least stay friends, can we? I mean, outside of the people at the Redlite, you’re the only person I can talk about this with."

"Yeah, sure," he told her. "I’m not sure where I’m going to be staying, probably at my folks’ house for a while, and they’ll know where to track me down. I think I’ll tell them to be a little pissy about it if Marsha calls, but you’re OK."

"Thanks, Danny," she said. "Look, I’m still pretty ashamed that you had to find out about this."

"Don’t be," he said. "At least I do understand. And, in the future, I think I’m going to be even pissier about people sneaking around my back."

"Yeah, I can understand," she said. "Look, Danny, unless I happen to come up to Spearfish Lake some time, and that’s not a done deal, we may not see each other again. But you’re cool, Danny. Marsha didn’t deserve to have a decent guy like you, and you didn’t deserve what she did to you."

"It’s something I’ll have to work out," he said. "And, I suppose I will."

Silence fell in the car after that – they’d pretty well said what they had to say. Oh, they talked a little bit, mostly about some of the things of the last couple weeks, which had provided a secret that they’d have to share between them. After what seemed a longer time than it really was, they pulled into Las Vegas, bypassing the Strip on the freeway. Danny pulled the Lumina up to the arrivals lane at the airport, which happened to not be particularly busy at the moment, got out, and got Amy’s bags out of the trunk.

She met him there, and threw her arms around him. "Damn it, Danny," she said. "I’m going to miss you."

"Yeah, Amy," he said, pulling her close to kiss her. "I really wish things had worked out a lot differently all the way around, but I guess they didn’t."

"Thanks again," she said. "You have been just so incredibly cool the last couple weeks, just to watch me and let it go by without it pissing you off. I’ll always thank you for that, and admire you."

"You’re pretty cool, too," he said. "Look, don’t let Marsha get on your ass, but if you need to talk to me, you know how to catch up with me."

"Thanks," she told him. "I probably won’t have to, but maybe I’ll see you sometime, maybe Spearfish Lake, maybe not." She smiled an enigmatic smile. "Maybe even back at the Ranch."

"I hope not," he said. "It’s been good for me, but it’ll be good to be out of there, too. You take care, Amy. I’d better not block traffic much longer."

"You take care too," she said, planting a big kiss on his lips that went on and on.

Finally, he broke away. "You better go," he said.

"Yeah," she said. "I guess I better. Bye, Danny." She broke away, and walked into the terminal, as he walked back around to the driver’s seat of the Lumina.

Damn, he thought as he fastened the seat belt, and began to drive away, seeing her watch from inside the terminal as he drove off. She was reaching for you Danny, she’s been doing it for days and you know it. And she really is a nice person, and if there wasn’t the considerable amount of history and complications involved, it might almost be halfway tempting. But that history and those complications are there, and it’d be an awful damn long shot.

He thought back to Mallory’s words two weeks before: "You’re not tempted to say, ‘Amy, this is your last chance, let me take you away from this?’" In spite of everything, yeah, he was. But there was a hell of a lot of downside, and he knew it. For two weeks, he’d been tempted, but managed to resist. Maybe the cold winter air of Spearfish Lake could clear his head. Like he’d told her – the Redlite Ranch had been an important step in clearing up some of the issues of the past, but it wasn’t a last step.

*   *   *

Three days later, Danny took the morning off for the first time in five weeks, but he was back in the lounge by noon to find George with the bartender’s apron on, waiting tables. "It went all right, I take it?" he smiled.

"Pretty good," Danny laughed. "Until now, I never really understood just what was in Martin Luther King’s most famous words."

"Free at last, free at last . . . " George grinned.

"Thank God Almighty, I’m free at last," Danny finished for him.

"Been there, done that," George laughed. "Learned my damn lesson, too. That’s part of the reason why I bought this place."

"To have the partying easily available?" Danny smiled as he slid up onto a bar stool.

"Hell no, to spite my ex," he laughed. "I’ve never missed sending her an alimony check, and she’s never cashed one, she knows where the money comes from and she won’t touch it. How’d you make out?"

"Just what I offered," Danny told him. "All I wanted out of the marriage was me, my clothes and my car. She can have everything else, not that it’s really worth much, but no alimony. Shit, I’d go live under a bridge rather than give her another cent. But she didn’t file papers to contest the settlement, in fact, made no response at all, so the court part of it took about a minute and a half. I had to wait around for a while for them to finish the paperwork."

"They’re pretty cool about it at Piute Wells," George nodded. "I wish now I’d had my head screwed on and filed out here, rather than in Texas. Oh, well, all water down the river now and I don’t regret it much. So when are you getting out of here?"

"Whenever it works," Danny replied. "I’d just as soon not leave now, since a half days drive from here really leaves me out in the middle of nowhere. But I can work this afternoon and take off in the morning, or I can stick around a few days if you need the help."

"I need the help," George said. "But you might as well hit the pavement in the morning, because if you stay here I’ll just sit on my dead ass about finding someone until you finally leave, anyway."

"George, I really don’t mind staying, if you need me to."

"No, Danny, you really better go," George said seriously. "You’ve pretty much had to stay here this long or go nuts from boredom, that’s one thing. You don’t have to be here now, and Danny, you don’t want this place sucking you in." He let out a sigh, and went on. "Danny, you’re a good guy, and you’ve done a good job without messing with the help much, and I really appreciate it. But this isn’t your kind of life, you know it and I know it."

"Yeah, I suppose," Danny nodded. "But it has been interesting."

"It usually is," George smiled. "Look, I know you were getting into it pretty good back before Christmas, until Amelia showed up, right?"

"Yeah," he nodded. "That sort of made me think. Like I told Shirley once, I guess I needed the reality check."

"That should have taught you," George smiled. "Like I said, you’re welcome to stay if you want to, but if you’re smart, you’ll hit the pavement tomorrow, and at least try to put a real life together." He let out another sigh, and continued. "Danny, I’ve told this to a lot of girls, including Amelia, and a few guys as well, and I’ll tell you: try to make it straight if you possibly can. It’s better that way in the long run. If it turns to shit anyway, there’ll be a place here for you at the Redlite, but it’s better for you if you don’t come back."

"All right," Danny sighed. "I’m out of here in the morning, unless you really desperately need me to stick around for a day or two."

"Naw, I’ll make do," George said. "Patty expires today, and she doesn’t want to go anywhere since she doesn’t have anywhere to go. I’ll tell her she can wait tables and tend bar while she’s on break, and that’ll buy me a week to do something else. Who knows, someone else may be doing six weeks at the Sagebrush, and you aren’t the first guy Art’s brought to me. He’s pinch-hit for me on occasion, too. Now, I can have your W-2s ready this afternoon, and pay you either in cash or cut a check."

"Cash, I guess," Danny said. "I’d just have to hit a bank before I left Nevada, anyway."

"Not a problem," George grinned. "We never seem to have much trouble finding cash around here, anyway. You gonna be doing anything interesting when you get home?"

"Nothing as interesting as this," Danny grinned. "I guess work in my dad’s appliance store part time, and when the weather breaks I’ve got a part-time job as a railroad brakeman lined up, unless I can come up with something better first. That’ll do until I can get my feet under me."

"Just consider yourself lucky you’ve got a home to go to," George told him. "There’s all too damn many people here that this is the only home they got, and it’s a piss poor one. It’s like Polly Adler said years ago, a house is not a home."

*   *   *

It wasn’t a terribly busy afternoon, but most of the girls came by to wish him good luck. It was just a touch surprising to realize how many new faces there were, how many had come and gone in only the five weeks that he’d been there. Less than half the girls on the property now had been there when he came, and all of those had been on break once and a couple twice in that time. Frenchy was long gone, of course, but so were Mallory and Candy and Melissa and Gloria – and Amelia, of course – and there were a lot of new faces he hadn’t gotten to know very well. Things changed fast around here, with the three-week limit on shifts, and you hardly knew everyone from one week to the next. He’d made some friends here, true, some that he’d remember for a life time, but it was still pretty surreal if he even stopped to think about it a little bit.

It was a slow enough evening that Danny clocked out at eight, when Mike came in. He’d already been paid for that long, so anything afterwards would have been a freebie anyway, not that he would have minded. As usual, he ordered dinner and a draft, and just sat back in the corner, watching the flow of things, the guys coming in and picking girls out of the lineups, the laughter, the teasing . . . the depressing shallowness of the fun, and it left him with a strange feeling.

Finally, he finished his dinner, drained his beer, bussed the table, and headed out across the highway for his last night on the cheap, lumpy bed at the Sagebrush. He thought he might as well spend a little time packing so he wouldn’t waste time in the morning, not that he had a whole lot to pack – the majority of his stuff had stayed in the Lumina during his whole stay in Antelope Valley, so there really wasn’t much to do. He’d lived here for six weeks, and he really hadn’t made much of an impression on the beat-up old motel room, so it didn’t take long.

In the process of packing, he walked past the copy of War and Peace that he’d been reading five weeks before when Art had invited him over to the Redlite Ranch for the first time. It hadn’t been moved, it hadn’t even been touched since. Several times, Danny thought about packing it, but in the end, decided to just leave it where it was. Maybe the next person who stayed here doing six weeks residency would need something to do, he thought, and might not be interested in working in a Nevada bordello.

He wondered for a moment if there’d ever been women waiting out a residency there who had decided to work a shift at the Redlite Ranch, just for something to do to kill time, and realized, on reflection he wouldn’t have been surprised in the slightest. Maybe it had been good therapy for them, as good in its way as it had been for him – but, who knew? There had to be a lot of stories that he’d never heard, and never would, now.

Danny’s internal alarm clock woke him at six thirty, as it had been doing for weeks. He got up, took a shower, packed up the rest of the stuff, and made a final call to his mother at the Record-Herald to let her know he was starting on his way, then hauled the rest of his stuff out to the Lumina. He hiked over to the motel office, to do his final settlement with Art, give him the key, and thank him for all the help he’d been the last few weeks. Then, partly out of habit, and partly because he didn’t want to stop once he got driving, he headed back over to the Redlite one last time for breakfast.

It was a little different to just walk in and sit down. The place was almost empty – there was a guy and a girl sleepily having breakfast over in the corner, and that was all. He was a little surprised to see Patty come over to him, wearing a light blue waitress uniform and the bartender’s apron he’d worn the last five weeks, and say with a bright smile, "Good morning, sir. How can we serve you today?"

"Jeez, Patty," he replied, "where’d you come up with that outfit? That wouldn’t go over very well in a lineup."

"That’s why I’m wearing it," she grinned. "Actually, I had a client a while back that was kinky for waitresses, and he gave it to me. He’d buzz in twice, have me put it on, then go back out, come in again and pick me out of the lineup." She let out a sigh. "This is not going to be easy. It’s going to be hard to remember that I’m expired this week and have to keep my hands off the clients. Can I get you anything?"

"Yeah, a cup of coffee, and have Sarah throw together my usual," he told her. "Then bring yourself one and talk with me. It’s been a while."

"It has," she agreed. "I’ve been having a pretty good run in the evenings, and there just hasn’t been time."

In a minute, she had served coffee and sat down with him. "You’re making the break and heading home, huh?" she said. "It’s going to seem a little different without you around."

"I suppose," he agreed. "But George and I had a talk yesterday, and we agreed it was time to be heading home."

"What’s home like for you, anyway?"

"This time of year, snow ass deep on a tall moose," he replied. "Cold as hell, a lot colder than it gets around here."

"That’d be interesting," she smiled. "I’m from LA; I’ve never been around snow much."

"I’ve missed it, especially the last few years in Florida," he told her. "It’s going to seem strange. It’s really not that bad if you’re acclimatized to it, but I’m not anymore, so it’s going to seem pretty damn cold. I’ll just be getting used to it when it warms up. We’ve got trees all over everywhere, and then in the summer everything will be all lush and green, not the same old browns like you have here. The lake is big and blue and cold and clear, it never warms up much. Even at the height of summer it’s always a little chilly to go swimming."

"It does sound different," she said. "Sure not like here. Was Amelia from the same place?"

"No, a hundred miles south, a town by the name of Camden," Danny explained. "Her folks were summer people; they had a place out on a little lake northeast of the big lake. My folks have one there, too. That’s how I got to know both Marsha and Amy, er, Amelia."

"I suppose she was Amy there," she smiled.

"I’ve been meaning to ask," he said. "How did it work out with her, from your viewpoint?"

"Pretty much OK, I guess," she said. "She was a little nervous about it at first, but I think that was because she knew you were out here. It took her a little while to work her way through it. It bothers you some, huh?"

"Yeah, I guess," he said. "Patty, this place is pretty surreal, considering what I’m used to. It was starting to make some sense, and then she showed up. Like I told both George and Shirley, I guess I needed the reality check." He let out a sigh. "Don’t get me wrong. In one sense of the word, it still makes a lot of sense. Looked at from another viewpoint, it’s a little hard to swallow. I expect I’m going to be a while balancing the two, if I ever do. But, I may not need to, so why bother? The bottom line is that overall I’ve had a good time here, had experiences that I could never have had otherwise, met some very neat people who I would never have met otherwise, present company especially included. Most importantly, it’s allowed me to work out some issues I had about Marsha and what I’m supposed to think about them. I figure I got lucky as hell to be here."

They talked for a while longer; eventually, he heard Sarah call, "Order Up!" and it was hard to not get up and go get it himself. As he was eating, Shirley came in, got a cup of coffee, and came over to join them; they talked for a few more minutes, and Shirley told a couple more stories. Finally, he finished his breakfast. "I know I’m capable of sitting here and shooting the bull all day," he said. "But I really should be hitting the road. Shirley, I just want to thank you for everything you’ve done for me here, and I mean everything. You’ve done as much as anybody and a whole lot more to help me get my head screwed back on somewhat straight, and I’m going to be grateful forever."

"It wasn’t anything," the old woman smiled. "It was kind of fun, actually."

Both she and Danny knew that they were talking around the fact of the sessions they’d had over in the Sagebrush, but they couldn’t really say anything about those with Patty sitting with them. "Yeah, it was," he said. "I know I learned things I’ll carry with me the rest of my life, and I’m grateful for it and thank you for it."

In fact, they did make it through another cup of coffee apiece before Danny realized he really needed to get moving. They got up; he gave Shirley a hug, and told her goodbye before she headed out back to do something. In a moment, he and Patty were alone by themselves in the lobby, arms around each other, still just talking. "It seems strange how much has happened in the five weeks since I met you here," he smiled.

"Yeah," she smiled back. "I guess I still sort of owe you a freebie, but I’m expired now and I have to keep my hands off the clients. Guess you’ll have to take a rain check."

He shook his head and let out a sigh. "Patty, there’s one thing I feel I have to say to you."

"What’s that, Danny?"

"It’s something that both Frenchy and George told me. Patty, don’t let this place suck you in. I know that’s going to be hard because you’re going to be here for eight months yet, but don’t let it happen. Once the time comes, you go back to school, work your ass off, and forget that you were Peppermint Patty all this time."

"I know," she said. "I know it’s going to affect me, and it’s going to be hard to fight it off."

"Fight it off," he said. "Look, the odds are that I’m never going to see you again, but if I do, I damn well expect to be able to call you Doctor whatever the hell your real last name is. Don’t lose sight of that, and don’t let this place get to you."

"I know it’s going to be hard," she sighed. "I have told myself on occasion that it’ll help that I’ll have seen more dicks when I get out of here than any urologist sees in a lifetime. That’s part of the reason I’m pushing pretty hard, I want to get sick of this place."

"Make it work, Patty. You’re capable of it, so do it. I’ll be damn disappointed in you if you don’t."

"I’m doing what I have to do, Danny, if I want to do it. I’ve come to accept that. I will be seriously disappointed in myself if I don’t follow through. But it’s good to know you’re pulling for me. Now, maybe you better get on the road."

"I suppose," he said. "Right at the moment, I don’t want to leave."

"That’s an even better reason to go," she said. "But take this with you." She reached behind him, planted her lips on his, and laid what could only be called an extremely hot kiss on him.

It went on for a couple minutes before they broke free. "Thanks, Patty," he said.

"Hey, Danny," she said. "Goodbyes are hard as hell for me. Just take care, and have a good life."

"You too, future Doctor whatever," he smiled. "You have a good life, too."

Danny turned, walked out the door, and let it close behind him without looking back. He popped the gate open and walked across the parking lot and the highway. The Lumina started up, and he pulled out and left, trying not to look back at Antelope Valley and the Redlite Ranch Bordello and all the memories he had of the place shrinking in the rear view mirror behind him.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.