libidos-to-let only to white customers… ¡Dios mío! try mixing the white, the black, the brown, and the yellow in a place like this! It wouldn’t last one hour! It would explode! Nothing left but blood and sexual debris—
“How you guys doing?” A big beefy man, close to fifty, materialized from out of the darkness… clad in the Honey Pot polo shirt with a laminated card pinned to the breast pocket bearing the orange Honey Pot script logo and the inscription ASSISTANT OPERATIONS MANAGER.
“There’s plenty a seats—” He stopped right there and stared at Nestor. He frowned so hard, his eyebrows drew together like two little muscles gripping the top of his nose. “Ayyyyy… don’t I know you?”
::::::Goddamn YouTube again! Growing this eight-day stubble of beard—some disguise, right!:::::: But by now Nestor was tactically ready. “Probably,” he said. “How long you been working here?”
“How long have I been working here?” He seemed to find the question impudent. He closed one eye and sized up Nestor with the other. Do I swat this pest or do I let him off this time because he’s so obviously clueless? The latter, he must have decided, because after the ominous pause he said, “About two years.”
“Then that’s it,” said Nestor. “I used to come here a lot with my friend Igor.” He detected a pained look on John Smith’s face. “You know Igor? Russian guy? Big mustache?” With his fingers Nestor did another air sculpture of Igor’s mustache. “Half the time I don’t know what he’s talking about. You know? But he’s a great guy”… He smiled and shook his head in a Good Old Days way. “Know if he still comes here?”
“If it’s the guy I think you mean,” said the man, somewhat reassured, “yeah, he still comes here.”
“No way!” said Nestor, eyes wide open… a happy boy. “Is he here tonight?”
“I don’t know. I just come on.” He gestured vaguely toward the interior. “There’s plenty a seats.” <<>>
John Smith’s pale face was agitated. He kept clenching his jaws and then pressing his lips together. “I don’t know if that was such a great idea, Nestor, bringing up Igor’s name and telling that guy that you know him. What if he comes in half an hour from now, and the guy tells him there’s somebody here asking about him?”
Nestor said, “Well, the guy—did you catch the title he has, pinned here on his chest in big letters, Assistant Some-kinda Manager? If you ask me, he’s got BOUNCER written all over him.”
John Smith smiled ever so slightly and said, “Did you mean that as a play on—”
But Nestor cut him off. “The guy gave me the YouTube look. You know? So I had to give him another reason why he recognizes me. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought up Igor’s name, but now we know he’s still coming here.”
John Smith said under his breath, but not very far under it, “We already figured that much.”
Nestor said, “Come on, John! Don’t be so cautious. Sometimes you gotta goose things along.”
John Smith averted his gaze and didn’t respond. He was not happy.
Their eyes began to adjust to the gloom. They could now see that the blaze of light on the far wall was from a stage. At this moment the show was obviously… on. <<>> Men crowded about the edge of the stage, cheering, hooting, crying out, making odd sounds. Nestor and John Smith saw them in silhouette. They looked like a single, huge colonial animal wriggling and writhing and throbbing with lust… and blocking their view.
Out of the darkness came a girl jacked up on six-inch-high heels, all of her, her long blond hair, her wisp of black thong cache-sexe, her filmy long-sleeved shirt, wide-open, revealing most of her breasts. She passed right in front of them, barely five feet away—leading a young Anglo—midtwenties?—by the hand. All he had on was a tank top—a tank top!—hanging outside of a pair of filthy blue jeans and a baseball cap worn backward. The notable bulge in the crotch of the jeans he obviously wasn’t trying to hide. John Smith looked stunned—mesmerized. He couldn’t take his eyes off them until they disappeared through a wide doorway on the far wall where a bouncer seemed to be standing guard. Over the entrance was a small but rather stately sign saying, “Private CHAMPAGNE ROOM for Invited Guests.” The couple was no longer to be seen, but