"That’d be the Redlite, out toward Antelope Valley. I don’t run the meter on a run out there, it’s a flat eighty bucks."

"Any others around?"

"There’s Sheri’s and the Chicken Ranch in Pahrump, they’re a little farther out, the flat rate’s a hundred."

"I know you’re not the person to ask, but do you know if they’re hiring?"

"Usually are," he said. "Sheri’s is smaller and they get a little picky, but you wouldn’t be the first woman with a black eye I’ve taken to either the Redlite or the Chicken Ranch and not brought back."

"Tell you what," she grinned. "Run me out to the Redlite and stick around for a few minutes so I can find out what the scoop is. If they bounce me, you can take me to the Chicken Ranch."

*   *   *

Sandy’s first view of the Redlite Ranch was not what she’d expected. It sat right out exactly in the middle of nowhere. The cabbie told him the place was called Antelope Valley, but it was flat as a board and covered with sagebrush. "Way back when, they used to set off open-air atom bomb tests not far from here," he told her. "They did underground tests until just recently. Honest to God, that place has been nuked more than anywhere in the world."

They could see it a long way off – a fairly large building, but what she noticed first was a huge tower, something like an oil derrick, with a rotating light on the top; even in the day she could see it was red. As they got a little closer, they could see a huge red sign on the tower, an old fashioned red railroad lantern with a naked woman’s silhouette superimposed on it, and surrounded by the words, "Redlite Ranch Bordello".

"In my opinion this is the best of the houses in this end of the state," he told her. "They pull out all the stops to pull in the Vegas high-roller trade."

"Why the hell is it way the hell out here?"

"Because the county line is about two hundred yards this side of it," he told her. "Prostitution ain’t legal in Clark County."

As they got closer, they could see a handful of other buildings scattered around, a general store/gas station/casino/God knew what; a small motel, a handful of mobile homes half masked by cottonwoods. There was an airstrip sitting to one side. The building itself was single story, but large and modern, sitting behind a solid fence that covered a large area, a couple of acres, at least. "Why the fence?" she asked.

"County ordinance," he said. "In some places it’s supposedly to keep the girls in, but I’m told that here they look at it more as a way to keep assholes out. Mad husbands, mad wives, mad Mormon protesters, people like that."

The cabbie pulled to a stop in front of an iron gate. It looked pretty intimidating, she thought, but there was no turning back. "I’ll stick around for a few minutes," the cabbie said. "Don’t worry none, they’re pretty cool." She got out of the car, grabbed her gig bag and suitcases, and walked up to the gate, where there was a sign reading, "RING BELL – PUSH GATE – HAVE FUN". Well, here we go, she thought, pushing the button. She pushed on the gate for an instant, but it didn’t move. Instead, there was a woman’s voice from a hidden speaker: "May I help you, Miss?"

"Yes," she said. "I’m here looking for a job."

"Thought that might be it," the woman’s voice said. "All right, I’ll pop the gate for you." There was a light click, and the gate popped loose. She pushed against it, and walked up a wide AstroTurf sidewalk to an ornate door on the front of the building. Before she reached the door, it opened, and in the shadows behind she could see a woman. An older woman, slender, gray-haired, wearing a nice dress, nothing fancy. As she got closer, she could see that she was not older, but old; her face was deeply lined, but she had a nice smile. "Welcome to the Redlite Ranch," she said warmly. "I suppose that shiner has something to do with why you’re here."

"Yes, it does," she admitted. "I need to establish residency for a divorce."

"Have you ever worked as a prostitute before?"

"Not in a house, but I’ve turned tricks off and on for about five years."

"Street or escort?"

"Sort of incall," she said. "I worked with another girl, we had an RV we worked out of."

"That’s different," the woman grinned. "Miss, we’re a little strict about some rules, and I’ll have to go over them with you. One of them is that you can’t leave the property unescorted on your first shift, but we do that with all girls we haven’t worked with before, whether they’ve worked in a house or not. If you’re asked back, you can come and go as you please."

"I’m only concerned that I can get to see a lawyer and get the divorce going."

"Not a problem," the older woman said. "We’ll have to run you into Piute Wells to get your medical check, background check, and get you carded, no reason we can’t run you by Doug’s office while we’re there."

"Doug?"

"He’s our local attorney. He can run you through the divorce with no problem. It’s actually simpler and cheaper here than in Las Vegas, I’m told."

"Talked me into it," Sandy smiled.

"Good enough," the woman said, then turned and waved at the cabbie. "Like I said, welcome to the Redlite Ranch. I’m Shirley Hoffman, I’m the house manager, and I double as the shift manager during the day. Let’s go inside, I’ll show you around a little, get you a cup of coffee, and we’ll get down to business."

*   *   *

Sandy had no idea what it would be like to be inside a Nevada bordello and was pleasantly surprised to see that it was clean, well-decorated, and just short of luxurious. "We won’t be able to have you working before tomorrow, what with all the license stuff," Shirley said. "But let’s go back. I’ll set you up with a room so you can leave your stuff." She stopped at the office for a second, grabbing a couple keys and a padlock, then led her down a hall and around a corner. "This should do you," Shirley said. "The door locks, and you keep the key, although I’ve got a spare up in the office. Anything you don’t want walking off, put in the closet and use this padlock. You’ll have the only keys."

"Does stuff walk off a lot?"

"The girls are OK; sometimes we get a thief in the house, but she’s out on her ass as soon as we find out," Shirley said. "We have found some clients like souvenirs."

Over the next several minutes, Shirley gave her a quick tour. The Redlite was quite a place. Beyond the regular rooms, there were several small bungalows out in the back yard, which Shirley explained were used for special parties; they had special themed interior decorations. There was an indoor and an outdoor pool, a Jacuzzi by each. There was a gym where the girls could work out, off limits to customers, and a lounge, also employees only. Back inside, Shirley led her to a lounge area off the main entry, then into a dining room; there was a bar that fronted on both. They sat down at one of the tables, and Shirley asked the bartender to bring them coffee.

"Shirley, this is quite a place," Sandy said as they were waiting. "I don’t know what I was expecting, but this wasn’t it."

"They all say that," Shirley laughed. "Believe me, you compare this to Maybelle’s up in Ely where I turned out, there just ain’t no comparison. When George and I started designing this place, we wanted to make it the best house there ever was, and I think we’ve done pretty well, even though we’re still only about halfway through our building plans."

"George? Is he your husband?" Sandy asked.

"No, my husband’s been dead since 1970," Shirley told her. "George is the owner, although I’ve got a piece of the action, too. He’s put several million bucks into the place. You’ll meet him a little later; he’s a nice guy." She smiled. "Back when I ran a place up north of here called Bettye’s Ranch, George used to come in, negotiate a package deal and then proceed to party with every girl on the place, so I was just a little leery about what was going to happen when he owned a house of his own. I mean, kid in a candy store kind of thing. Turned out exactly the opposite. He’ll do a girl once in a while, especially if she’s had a tough run she didn’t deserve at breaking luck, but he always pays full rate."

"You sound like you’ve been doing this a while," Sandy smiled.

"A while," Shirley grinned. "I turned out at the age of fourteen back in 1943. I took a few years off in the late forties and early fifties, but I’ve been working houses in one way or another ever since. As far as I know, I’m the longest-standing carded prostitute in the state, although I only party for special situations anymore, like an old friend or someone with a special problem. What I’m saying is that if something comes up you don’t know how to handle, come to me, I’ve probably dealt with it sometime in the last fifty years. Don’t be shy, I’m not here to be on your ass or watch over it, just to make things go smoothly."

There was something about Shirley that brought on a lot of confidence and eased concerns. She seemed just like everybody’s dream grandmother – except that she’d been a hooker for half a century! "I don’t want to cause any trouble," Sandy said. "I’m here to learn and make some money."

"I’ll do everything I can to help you with both," Shirley told her. "Now, I say that to a lot of girls. Some take advantage of it; others think they know better. They’re usually wrong. Now, you say you never worked in a house before. Do you have any idea of how things work?"

"Not really, I never thought about it much."

"Let me give you a brief run-through, then. There’s a couple hours’ worth of stuff I need to go over with you, but we don’t need to do it all today. If it doesn’t get busy, maybe we can. Anyway, the customers come in from the gate. One ring on the bell means for the girls to form a lineup to greet them, but when you rang I called it off. When a lineup is called, you all line up in the lobby. About all you can tell the customer is your name, anything other than that the girls consider dirty hustling. The customer may put it off and head into the bar for a drink, and there you can talk to him and hustle him, although you don’t want to undercut another girl who’s already working on a guy or she’ll get pissed. Usually the term is that you’re taking the guy out back for a tour, which usually means a tour of your room. Now, one important thing: you can’t talk specifics of what you’re going to do with a customer, or the cost, out in the front of the building, it has to be in your room, or in one of the negotiation rooms off the lobby if you think you’re going to walk the dude, anyway."

"Walk?"

"Turn him down because you don’t like him, he’s too drunk, or something," Shirley explained. "Anyway, once you’ve worked out a rate, you do a dick check, that means look for STDs, and you’ll be shown how. Then get his money or credit card, come back up to the office and pay, then go back to the room and party. We keep the money up front because if a guy thinks he’s been shorted and the money is in your room, he may try to get rough."

"That’s something we always had to watch out for," Sandy said. "Sometimes we put the money in an envelope addressed to us and dropped it in a mailbox."

"All right, you’re professional enough to understand that," Shirley smiled. "I think you’ll do OK here. Now, the deal is that the fee is split 50-50 with the house for your first shift, or at least till we know we want to invite you back, when it turns 60-40 with you getting the top half. We’re the only house in Nevada with a 60-40 split. House minimum is a hundred, and the customer, who is never called a john, by the way, doesn’t get much for it. Beyond that you’re on your own for rates, but I’ll give you some rules of thumb a little later. One big thing to remember, and I will be on your ass about it the first few times you party, you always put a condom on him, above or below. No barebacks, and I mean never, although most of the guys coming in here understand that. We’ve never had a case of AIDS transferred in any Nevada house, and we don’t intend to start."

"I never had sex without, except with my husband, and I usually made him use one."

"Like I said, I think we’ll get along just fine," Shirley said. "Any questions so far?"

"Just one," Sandy said. "I’m trying to get in touch with the girl I used to work with; I need to have a number where she can get in touch with me."

"Is she going to have any problems with you working in a house?"

"I don’t think so, but the message will be coming through her parents, and they would have one."

"Not a problem, there’s a special phone in my office, the red one, that’s always answered as ‘RLR Casino Management.’ It’s mostly used for just that reason, because it sounds like a casino or something. There actually is an RLR Casino Management; it’s one of several companies George runs, but its main purpose is to be something to stamp on credit card slips that doesn’t say ‘bordello.’ You will have customers who will ask you about that."

"You sure have all the details worked out," Sandy grinned.

"After fifty years, I damn well better have," Shirley laughed. "Look, I think what I’m going to do is get George to run you into town so we can get rolling on your paperwork. He can run you by Doug’s office and get the divorce going, too. Oh, and while you’re getting the medical, see if there’s anything the doctor can do about that shiner. Probably not, but sometimes they can help a little. But we can help with the makeup. You got any good hooker clothes?"

"Not really," Sandy sighed. "I left in kind of a hurry."

"Not a problem, we have sort of a grab-bag lost and found, there’ll be something there you can use; although if you’re going to stay with it, you should invest in some good duds. But you don’t have to worry about it your first shift. While I’m thinking about it, most of the girls take a work name, rather than use their real name; sometimes it limits the problems they have on the outside. You might want to think about it."

"Not a problem," Sandy grinned broadly. "My girlfriend and I used work names occasionally. She was Lucille Bogan. I’m Memphis Minnie."

"Oh, ho!" Shirley laughed. "A couple real serious blues fans! I’ve heard those names. Have you ever actually been in Memphis?"

"Only to do some recordings. My girlfriend and I cut three albums there, in the same studio where Elvis did his first five records."

"Interesting," Shirley smiled. "I suppose that explains the guitar. Are your albums anything I might have heard?"

"Probably not," Sandy shook her head. "Except for a few hundred that went through a distributor, we mostly sold them out of the back of the RV. We made out pretty good."

"Sounds like a good deal," Shirley nodded. "Why’d you quit?"

"It’s a long story, but it can be summed up pretty quick: I got sick and then fucked up big time. But I’m hoping to get back together with her."

*   *   *

Everything went pretty smoothly after that. A little later, George ran her into the small town of Piute Wells for the paperwork and to see the attorney. The only thing that seemed at all out of place was that she figured the guy who owned a brothel as nice as the Redlite would have the biggest, glitziest Cadillac pimpmobile on the face of the planet. But no, George drove her into town in a dusty, old, beat-up Ford pickup truck. "Gets me around and no one, I mean no one, thinks about stealing it when I drive into Vegas," the heavyset, balding, fiftyish man grinned. "Hell, I can leave the keys in it and no one bothers it."

"I have to ask," Sandy grinned. "How did you get into this business, anyway?"

"You mean besides liking to hang around cathouses?" he laughed. "I used to live in Texas. Several years ago, my wife divorced me and tried to take me for everything she could. She got a judgment with a really ridiculous alimony, so I had to do something. I got together with Shirley, and we started this place. I’ve never missed an alimony check, and she’s never cashed one. She knows where the money is coming from and won’t touch it."

"Cute," Sandy grinned.

"It’s even cuter," George said. "In Texas, there’s this law about living off the proceeds of prostitution, which is aimed at pimps and those sorts. But she knows damn well if she cashes a Redlite Ranch Bordello check I could call the cops."

"God," Sandy laughed. "I wish I could do something that dirty to the asshole I’m divorcing, but just getting the fuck away from him will be good enough."

"Ask Shirley for ideas," George suggested. "I never met her husband, Carl; he was killed in a car wreck long before I met her, but from everything I ever heard he was one of the greatest men to walk the earth. But she’s heard about every dirty divorce story that’s gone through a Nevada cathouse, she might have a suggestion."

*   *   *

Though she couldn’t go to work for another day, Shirley told her to hang around the lounge and watch the action, but walk any guy that hit on her by telling them she didn’t have a current card yet. It turned out that action picked up as the day progressed – it was almost dead quiet during the middle of the day. After she called Dayna’s mother and left the phone number for RLR Casino Management, along with the message that she’d have to be called to the phone, George asked her to join him and Shirley for dinner, which was cooked by a Mormon woman of Shirley’s age, Sarah, who proved to be one of Shirley’s high school classmates. The dinner was excellent with several selections; Sandy dined lightly on low-carb, low-fat foods, determined to get started on getting her weight back under control. That gym was going to get used, too.

Shirley introduced her around to some of the girls, as Memphis Minnie – "Your real name is your business; you can tell the girls if you want, but it’s usually best to not let the customers know." Everybody seemed friendly. While there were some extremely good-looking women there, Sandy observed to herself that not everyone was a knockout, and was interested to note over the course of the evening that the average-looking girls did as well as the knockouts. Sandy realized she wasn’t a knockout and never had been, but the average-looking girls seemed to make out by working harder, and she resolved that she was going to be busting her ass.

Somewhere along the way, George explained that while a handful of girls were more or less regulars, a lot of the girls only came in for a week or two or three at a time, sometimes with several months’ break between shifts. On top of that, a number of girls came in just for the weekends, when traffic was heavier. That evening, she stayed up fairly late, then went to bed in her room rather relaxed. This was going to work. Not much more than a day before, she’d been lying on the floor of her apartment, in pain and tears, wondering what the fuck she was going to do. Now she knew. Though she’d had yet to actually have a customer here, if the deal with Dayna didn’t work out, she had a fallback position she felt she could be comfortable with for as long as she needed to be.

The following afternoon, George asked if she’d like to ride into Piute Wells, just for the sake of the ride, and she went along, of course. "So, what do you think?" he asked.

"I’m looking forward to getting to work," she said. "While I’ve never worked a house before, I know I can do this, and it looks like it ought to work out pretty good."

"Good," he said. "We’ve often had women show up looking to do a divorce and work at the same time. Sometimes they work out, and sometimes they don’t. That first customer can be a real eye-opener, and reality can hit pretty hard. But you’ve done tricks before; it doesn’t look like you’re going to have a mental block about it."

"I shouldn’t," she said. "My girlfriend turned her first trick about a month before I did, and I agonized over it all that month. But then the chance came, the money was green, and it went pretty well. We tried for years to just think of ourselves as occasional hookers, not real pros. But the time for that is past."

"Good," he smiled again. "Because one of the things we’re going for is to pick up your card, and when a lot of girls look at that line that says ‘Licensed Prostitute’, sometimes it hits them pretty hard."

"In a sense, yes, it’s a little hard to make that admission," she said. "But you know what I’d like to do? I’d like to wave that card in my parents’ and my husband’s faces, just to let them know what I’d rather be doing than be married to him."

"They might be a little pissed," George observed.

"George, there is no way they can be as pissed with me as I am pissed with them."

An hour and a half later, wearing a very short, very tight Spandex dress, Memphis Minnie stood her first lineup – and got picked out. While she’d turned tricks before, she now realized she’d been an amateur, a chippie. Now she was a pro. She had the card to prove it.

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