by Tyler Keevil
She wouldn’t even look at me, now. She just gazed at the TV.
‘At least I don’t have worms,’ I said, and walked out.
I followed the map I’d printed off the internet. It led me past a lumber yard and a vacant lot and a place called True Value Hardware, then down an unpaved side street that ran between two warehouses. Behind one of the warehouses was a dumpster stuffed with garbage bags, puffy and swollen and spilling over the sides. I stepped in a puddle, tripped, then stopped to check my map again. It was hard to read drunk and in the dark, but I seemed to be going in the right direction. The side street curved to the right and ended in a chain-link fence, and a gate – the kind of gate that slides sideways on roller wheels to allow vehicles through. The gate was open. I walked up to the threshold.
On the other side was a cul-de-sac. Around the perimeter, crooked buildings leaned and loomed at awkward angles, like the backdrop of a Tim Burton film. The entire area had been fenced off, ghetto-style. The ground was dusty and dotted with oil spots. There were a few different brothels: Villa Joy and the Red Light Lounge and Simone de Paris. But the one I’d come down for was the Pussycat Ranch. It was easy to spot: there were four neon signs in the shape of cats prancing along the edge of the eaves. The building was on the right side of the cul-de-sac. My old superstition – about left always being right – would have to be forfeited.
Tonight, right was right.
I walked over. The Pussycat Ranch had a paved area out front, like a patio, that was separated from the lot by a shallow swale-gutter. It must have rained recently because water – brown and foul-smelling – had puddled in the gutter. I hopped across it and approached the door. From inside, mournful country music leaked out into the night. I stopped to listen for a minute. It was some guy singing about Winnemucca, asking to be dropped off and left alone there. He knew his stuff, that guy.
I drained the dregs of my mezcal, tossed the can aside, and went in.
The front of the brothel was a saloon, with a bar, two pool tables and a tiny stage for stripping and pole-dancing. There were a couple of sofas and a chaise-longue covered in red velour, and – over the windows – purple drapes held back by tasselled curtain ties. I guess it was all supposed to be vaguely fashioned after those old bordellos you see in Westerns.
A woman stood behind the bar. She had grey hair that hung over her shoulders in greasy snarls, like an old mop. When she saw me come in she straightened up and blinked.
‘Whoah,’ she said. ‘Hello there.’
‘Hello, ma’am.’
There weren’t any other customers in yet. The music I’d heard was coming from a jukebox in one corner. The tune sounded even sadder than it had from outside.
‘What can I get you, lovebird?’ the bartender asked.
‘I’ll have a beer, please.’
She got out a bottle of Bud. It was six bucks. She took my money and looked at me, waiting. Apparently the women were like beers at this place. You ordered them at the bar.
‘And a woman. I’d like a woman, too, please.’
She smiled. Wearily. ‘Let’s do a line-up, girls.’
The women appeared: rising up from tables and stepping out of corners and emerging from the shadows. They formed a line in front of me. The bartender announced each of their names in turn. When a woman’s name got called, she would strike a half-hearted pose. None of them were the sex-kittens I’d seen on the website. There was a towering black Amazon, with crimson lipstick and muscular shoulders. She looked as if she could break me in half. She looked as if she wanted to, too. Next to her was this peroxide blonde, wearing thigh-highs and a leather corset that squeezed her breasts together. There were others, as well: a pale girl with Celtic tattoos on her forearms, a middle-aged redhead in torn fishnets, and a dark-skinned woman who had a chubby, cherub face and a crooked smile. She got announced last.
‘This is Sunita,’ the bartender said.
I took a long pull from my beer – practically shotgunning the entire thing. They were all staring at me, uninterested and resigned, waiting for me to decide.
‘I’ll go with Sunita,’ I said.
I don’t know why. I think because she looked the least menacing. Also, I couldn’t really remember the names of any of the others.
‘Come with me, baby,’ Sunita said.
She took my hand, and led me through a doorway.
chapter 48
To reach her room, we walked down a series of winding hallways. The walls were lined with wainscoting, and decorated with velvet paintings of naked women riding around on horses. Along the way, Sunita gave me a tour and showed me some of the extras that they offered. One of the extras was a suite with a king-sized vibrating bed. Another was the Jacuzzi. It was the only thing that resembled the pictures I’d seen on the internet – except there was an old, rat-faced man in it, and a woman with spiky hair. The man was leaning back, eyes closed, and moaning faintly. The woman must have been giving him a handjob under the water. She waved to us with her other hand. The water looked murky and the air stank of chlorine.
‘We can come back here later,’ Sunita whispered, ‘if you like.’
‘Great.’
She took me to her room. It was only a few metres wide, with a single bed, a closet, and a shower in one corner, sectioned off by a curtain you pulled across. There wasn’t a lot of standing room. After shutting the door, Sunita squared up to me. ‘I don’t do anal,’ she said, ticking off a finger, ‘and I don’t do pain.’
I told her that was okay, and asked her how much the basic stuff cost – the meat and potatoes. I called it that, too. She gave me a funny look but she knew what I meant.
‘How much you got, baby?’
‘A couple hundred bucks.’
I actually had five hundred. But three hundred were tucked in my shoe. I had thought I might get jumped or mugged, as soon as I got in the brothel.
‘A hundred gets you a little. Not sex.’ She had a soft accent, but it was hard to tell what kind. It was disguised by a lisp. ‘Sex’ sounded like ‘thex’. ‘A handjob or a blowjob.’
‘What about sex?’
‘Sex is two hundred. And you pay up front.’
I gave her two hundred. She seemed happier once she had her money. She told me to wait. Ducking into her shower cubicle, she pulled the curtain across. I heard clothes rustling.
I sat on the bed and looked around. There were only a few personal touches in the room: a pink pillow with a butterfly embroidered on it, a postcard from Tucson, and a framed photo of people washing their clothes in a river. It looked like some place exotic. India, maybe.
Sunita came back out, naked. Her body was plump like her face. She had a pot belly and stubby legs. Her breasts dangled down like udders, and a ring of fat encircled her hips.
‘You’re still dressed, baby,’ she said. ‘You’re making me self-conscious.’
I apologised, stood up, and peeled off my shirt. Then I unzipped my jeans and let them drop. But I’d forgotten to take off my shoes. I had to sit back down to lever them off, with my jeans around my ankles, like a guy on the toilet. One of the shoes got stuck in the hem of my jeans. Sunita watched with her hands on her hips. It would have been a lot more embarrassing if I hadn’t drunk so much mezcal.
Finally I got the shoe off. I stood, and we faced each other. She only came up to my chest, so I had to stoop to kiss her. Her mouth had an artificial strawberry taste – like candy or chewing gum. As we kissed, I stroked her belly, and breasts. Her skin felt chilly as stone.
She made encouraging sounds, and guided my hand to her groin. I fingered her for a bit. She was sticky with some kind of lubricant, but I could tell she wasn’t really turned on. I wasn’t, either. My dick was hanging down, limp.
‘Is everything okay, baby?’
I told her it was. But she was peering at my dick. Warily.
‘It’s all red,’ she said.
Then I had to explain about pouring mezcal over it, because of my little problem
. I don’t know if she believed me or not. She said that we had to use a condom, anyways. She got one out from a box beside her bed, but I said, ‘Maybe we could start with a massage.’
‘What kind of massage?’
‘Like a back massage.’
‘It’s your money, baby.’
I don’t think she got to give massages very often, because she seemed pretty excited. She spread a towel over the bed and told me to lie down on my stomach. Then she climbed up on top, swung a leg over, and straddled me – riding me bareback. Her bristly pubic hair tickled my coccyx. Since she didn’t have any proper massage oil, she used this moisturiser that smelled like peppermint. Her hands made slurping sounds as they moved over my back.
‘You should be more careful, baby.’
‘I’m usually pretty careful.’
‘But you’re all scratched and bruised.’
‘Oh, that.’
I told her about meeting up with the hitcher, and the little prank he’d played on me. She giggled at the part where he turned up in the tiger mask. Then her hands slid down, around the sides of my ribs. She prodded them for a bit, as if testing their resiliency.
‘You’re too thin, baby. Don’t you eat?’
‘I’m on a fast.’
‘If you fast any more, you’ll waste away.’
My neck was getting sore, so I turned my head to face the other side. On the wall by the bed she had a big mirror. For customers to watch themselves, I guess. I could see her in it, frowning and grimacing as she worked over my shoulders. She wasn’t quite as skilful as the masseuse at Madame Cleo’s, but she was more earnest.
‘Do you have a boyfriend?’ I asked.
She shook her head. ‘I have many boyfriends, like you. But no time for a real one.’
‘They work you pretty hard here, eh?’
‘I want to work hard. I’m saving up, to go to nursing school.’
‘You could be a masseuse.’
‘No – a nurse. Only two more years of this, and I’ll have enough. I can move out and get my own place, and pay my tuition fees. My mother always said I’d be something.’
‘Your mother must be proud.’
‘She would be proud, if she was alive.’
‘Oh. I’m sorry.’
After that, we stopped talking for a moment – out of respect for her mother. Sunita started getting a bit experimental with her massage. She tried chopping at my back, then dug her elbows in and rubbed them around. It wasn’t exactly pleasant, but I could roll with it.
‘What about your father?’ I asked.
In the mirror, I saw her expression change.
‘My father is a terrible man. He thinks I’m dead. He tried to have me killed.’
‘Jesus.’
She explained that she hadn’t wanted to marry the man her father had picked out for her, back in Bangladesh. She didn’t love the man, and she’d seen what that kind of marriage could do to you. It had slowly killed her mother, she said, with each strike of her father’s fist. Her mother’s spirit had died first, then her body. Sunita didn’t want to have the same thing happen to her. But, when she’d refused, her father had beaten her and broken her jaw.
‘That is how I got this,’ she said, touching her finger to her mouth. I assumed she meant her lisp, and crooked smile. ‘But I still wouldn’t obey him.’
She’d fled to another town. Her father had sent men after her, to kill her. As she told the story, her massage became more intense. She was working the story right into my back.
‘One of the killers caught up with me, too. But it was my uncle.’
Her uncle had a soft heart, apparently. He’d always liked her. He couldn’t bring himself to kill her. Instead he hid her in a cargo truck, which drove her to India. He said he was going to tell her father that he’d killed her and dumped her body someplace. She didn’t know if the trick had worked. Her uncle had instructed her never to come back, or get in touch.
‘Now, I am here,’ she said. ‘I have come far.’
I nodded. ‘Like a fairytale.’
‘And you, baby? You have come far, too.’
‘Just from Vancouver.’
I was picking at the edge of her blanket. It was riddled with lint-balls.
‘You had trouble there?’
‘No,’ I said. My troubles didn’t seem like much, compared to hers. ‘Not real ones.’
Now that she’d finished her story, her massage settled down again. She rubbed me in silence for a few minutes – first with her hands, and then with her hair. She shook out her hair and smoothed it across my back, spreading the strands between my skin and her hands. Lastly she pressed her body against mine and rubbed her breasts on me, sliding them up and down. They felt soft and warm, like balls of dough. Slowly, her movements wound down. We lay there, with her on top of me, cheek to cheek, looking at each other in the mirror.
‘How are you, baby?’
‘Good. This is good.’
We stayed in that position, playing piggyback, and dozed off. When I woke up, Sunita was snoring. She’d dribbled on the pillow next to my face. I wiped the saliva away before nudging her. She sat up, blinking, and yawned.
‘Oh, no, baby,’ she said. ‘We didn’t do anything.’
‘That’s okay.’
‘Don’t you want a handjob or a blowjob or something?’
‘No – that was great. Just what I needed.’
She didn’t believe me. She fussed and fretted over me as we got dressed together. She helped me put my clothes back on, and wrote down her phone number on one of their business cards, and told me to call her the next time I was in town, or if I just wanted to talk.
‘Maybe we could have coffee together,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow.’
‘Okay, baby.’ But she looked a bit surprised. I don’t think she had expected me to take her up on her offer so soon. ‘You call me in the morning. I know a place.’
She checked her watch, opened the door, and ushered me out. I followed her down various hallways, in a different part of the brothel-maze. We reached the saloon through a door opposite the one we’d gone in. That was how it worked, I guess. You went in one side, and came out the other – maybe to keep the flow of traffic in one direction.
The music on the jukebox was livelier now. Other customers had turned up. A few guys were playing pool at one of the tables. When the bartender saw us, she frowned.
‘That took a while. You got a friend waiting, Sunita.’
She nodded towards a scrawny guy sitting at the bar. He was wearing an oil-stained trucker’s hat, pulled low on his forehead. A few empty bottles of Bud sat on the bar in front of him. He grinned at Sunita. His teeth were stained yellow and brown, like candy corn.
She gave my hand a squeeze and let go.
‘Hello, baby,’ she said to the other guy.
He seemed to know the drill. He got up and followed her towards the other door – the entrance. I lingered, hoping she would look back at me, but she didn’t.
The bartender-lady was watching me.
‘Anything else, cowboy?’ she said.
I told her I didn’t want anything else, and went outside. On the porch, I stopped to light a Lucky Strike. As I smoked, I studied the sky. The stars were bright blobs, smeared by mezcal. If I squinted I could make them drip threads of light – almost like at the peak of my peyote trip, only not as vivid. I stared for a long time, trying to figure out how I felt. I was thinking, I go to a massage parlour and ask for a handjob, and I go to a brothel and ask for a massage. That was just like me.
chapter 49
I lay on my side, staring at the window. Dawn had come and gone. The hotel curtains were flimsy and full of holes, so I’d draped a blanket over the curtain rail to block out the sun. I had the TV on low, tuned into static. I’d been lying like that all night, sweating alcohol and basking in the glow of the screen. The mezcal had dried out my brain like a sponge. When somebody knocked on my door and told me it was checkout time, I dragged myself
into the bathroom, turned on the tap, and lapped at the brown water. That didn’t make me feel much better.
The cat was curled up in the corner of the room, where she’d slept. I tried to pet her in passing, and she took a swipe at me – a really vicious swipe across my wrist.
‘Why’d you do that, cat?’ I said.
She glared at me, as if to say, You know why.
‘But I behaved myself last night. I didn’t really do anything.’
Her eyes narrowed to slits. So you came all this way to do the dirty, and you didn’t even do it.
‘Because I didn’t want to. Not like that.’
Because you still couldn’t get it up, you mean. Mezcal or not.
I sank down on to the bed. The scratch on my wrist was beading into a bloody strand. I sucked at it absently, tasting iron. I said, ‘It seemed kind of noble and poignant last night.’
She sniffed. If there’s one thing worse than paying for sex, it’s paying for it and then not having it.
I sat staring at my hands. They were empty.
‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘What a joke. What a fucking joke.’
Even the hookers probably thought it was a joke. Sunita would tell them all what had happened and they would retell it to each other. They would repeat the story of the bruised and beaten boy-man who’d paid two hundred bucks for a massage, just as the hunters would tell the story of the kid who’d shot a bald eagle. I was leaving a legacy behind me, all across America.
‘Come on, cat,’ I said. ‘Let’s blow this joint.’
I packed violently. I jammed my dirty clothes and shaving kit into my backpack, then carried the pack out to the car along with my bottle of mezcal. I hucked the bottle down hard. It bounced off the seat and clunked in the footwell. It hadn’t done anything for me, that stuff.
Lastly I tried to grab my cat, but she slithered beneath the bed. ‘Fine, cat,’ I said. ‘Whatever. I’ve got to make a phone call, anyway.’
I’d already decided I couldn’t face Sunita. If she was going to laugh at me behind my back, with all her hooker friends, then I would break off our little coffee date. I trotted across the street to a payphone and called the brothel. Some guy answered. I had to wait for Sunita to come to the phone.