she didn’t intend to let him go—ever—and removed the other from her sofa prospect’s thigh. Nestor got his first good look at the man. He looked almost distinguished… had a gray beard… meticulously trimmed… a thick head of gray hair, well groomed, a go-to-the-office shirt unbuttoned at the collar, no jacket, no tie… a pair of pale-tan pants you could tell were a lot more expensive than khakis… Why would a man like that come to a place like this and listen to a whore’s entreaties? Even Nestor realized he was asking a naive question.
The girl looked down upon her sofa quarry and put on her most mischievous and lascivious expression and said, “Now, you stay right here! I’ll be back in a minute!”—whereupon she stood up straight and let her hand slip from between Nestor’s legs. The man looked at her and Nestor dumbfounded. But Nestor knew he wouldn’t say a word or anything else to call attention to his real—meaning proper—self.
She took Nestor by the hand forcefully and led him the four or five yards to the door. The bouncer was back at his station. He looked Nestor up and down, dubiously, but being in the hands of a bona fide whore made you legitimate. She led him—still by the hand—around the baffle wall. Nestor found himself in what looked like a long, narrow, dingy, and dimly lit locker room with a row of stalls right on top of him, right in his face. He felt like he could reach out and touch them, although in fact they were about six feet away… They were an endless row of cheap partitions about five feet apart and maybe a foot higher than an airport restroom’s… and instead of doors, the stalls had dark-brown-and-tan-striped curtains of Transitester that went with a wall-to-wall carpet in a jumble weave of dark brown, light brown, and tan Streptolon industrial carpet you couldn’t dent with an axe… all of it rather the worse for wear but at least a stab at interior decoration at the Honey Pot. The same BEAT thung BEAT thung music that pounded the rest of the club tenderized you in this room with its congestion and low ceiling and total lack of windows. In the tiny intervals between the BEATs and the thungs Nestor could hear human sounds nearby, not words but sounds… from behind the curtains of the stalls… unhh, ahhh ahhh, ooom-muh, ennngh ohhhhunh… all of them the moans of men—not the girls… moans that sometimes did cross the border into meaningless verbiage… ohhhyes ohhhyes, dohnstop dohnstop dohnstop, yes yes yes yes, diiiig harder diiiig harder, bring it home, bring it home and then back to a lot of unhhh uhnnn ahhh ahhh oooweh oooweh oooweh sounds. Nestor listened to them all with intense interest.
The girl looked up at him with as lascivious a smile as he had ever seen in his life, and in words that slid out of her mouth as if labially, lubriciously, lubricated, “What’s your name?”
“Ray,” said Nestor. “What’s yours?”
“Olga” slid out of her mouth.
“Olga… I’ve met so many Russians here tonight. You don’t have any accent.”
As if offering him the key to Paradise, “I’m Russian on my mother’s side. I grew up here.” Her lips took on the contours of unspeakable ecstasies. “You probably already know the… uhhh… guidelines. A basic lap dance is twenty-five dollars, not touching. Touching brings it up higher, depending on what. And, of course, cash is up front whatever it is. You still want a basic lap dance, Ray?”
“Great!” said Nestor. “Terrific!” He dug twenty-five dollars… of John Smith’s money… out of his pocket, and she put it into a side pocket of her pink shorts.
“Okaaaay… thank you,” said “Olga,” and she took his hand and led him to a stall with the curtain pulled back. The interior was just big enough for a cot-sized bed apparently, composed of a frame, a mattress, and a self-striped tan coverlet… a modernistic lounge chair made of a fiberglass shell with a dark-brown seat cushion… with no arms… a matching stool with a brown cushion, and in the rear a Formica shelf with a basin and two taps set in… and a double-doored cabinet beneath… Just before “Olga” pulled the curtain shut, Nestor heard a man moaning far louder and more ecstatically than any other so far.