We drove north together out of Arizona. We wound through Nevada, through a glum wilderness, the sky gray the whole time, a long time, and nothing anywhere but dust and scrub and barbed wire. We stopped for gas in places that looked as if they rose out of the barren earth only once every century. We bought sandwiches wrapped in plastic, sandwiches made by people who had long since died. We never said a word to one another. We got out of our cars and gassed up and got back in our cars and drove on and never said a word. I kept the Taurus's rear bumper right in front of me. I hardly looked at anything else. I hardly saw the daylight rise and fall behind the clouds. I felt the night come quickly, but I wasn't sure when.
The hours passed. I had been excited for a while and fearful for a while, but now I was just tired and dazed with driving. I noticed a glow in the distance, a low dome of light below the clouds at the vanishing point. I didn't think much of it at first, but it turned out to be a town. Soon the blackness at the car's windows was broken by a billboard, then a gas station, then a sign for a trailer park. Then the town rolled up over the edge of the land. Union City.
It started to rain as we came off the highway. Weiss stopped the Taurus at a red light on the main drag. I pulled up behind him. I turned on the windshield wipers. Peered through the sweep of them at a desolate stretch of road. Mournfully bland restaurants and motels, hole-in-the-wall casinos, car dealerships, mini-marts. Block after block of them, side by desperate side. I stared down the narrowing corridor, wondering what would happen next, waiting for the light to change.
The light changed, turned green. The Taurus edged forward. I followed. Weiss drove slowly. I could make out the shape of him through his rear window. He was scoping the buildings left and right, glancing down the side streets left and right. It was hard to see anything much in the rain.
Finally, he pulled into a Mobil station. I pulled in behind him, although the Hyundai's tank was more than half-full. A leathery local in a straw cowboy hat was pumping gas into his pickup. Weiss buzzed down his window.
"I'm looking for the House of Dreams," he said.
The local smiled and pulled a toothpick from the side of his mouth. Pointed with it. "Over on River Lane." He winked. "They call it Damnation Street."
Damnation Street. I've never forgotten it. It was a little lane around the corner from the last motel on the drag, at the edge of town. It was a stretch of broken pavement going nowhere. It was lined with brothels on either side.
The brothels were shabby clapboards, with white walls and bright trim, bright red or bright blue. Most of them were built like houses. They had pitched roofs and covered porches outside the front doors. One was more in the style of a Western saloon, brown, long, flat, and low. Each had a neon sign of some sort, fizzing under the ridge of the roof or blinking in the window. Jenny's Place. The Pussycat Lounge. Isabelle de Paris… I remember I snorted when I saw that one. Isabelle de Paris.
It was early yet. A little after seven. But the slanted parking spaces at the curbsides were nearly full. There were all kinds of vehicles slotted in them. A Jeep, an SUV, a Corvette, a luxury-model Ford, a clutch of Harleys. There was a separate fenced-in parking area at the end of the lane set aside for tractor trailers. That was crowded too.
I was still looking the place over when I was startled by a knock on my window. Weiss. Standing in the rain, wearing his trench coat, the water running down the crags in his face. I opened the window.
"I'm going into that one," he said. He stuck his thumb at one of the white clapboards with red trim. Its name was written in a window in pink neon script: The House of Dreams and Joy.
I reached for the door handle.
"No," he said, "you stay here. I gotta see a girl and she may not want to see me. These places share muscle. If there's trouble, reinforcements'll come in from one of the others. Stay in the car. I'll take care of things inside. You watch for any tough guys moving in on me."
I nodded. I knew I was supposed to be grim and determined, but I was secretly thrilled. This was great. This was exactly what I was looking for. The real deal. Adventure. Experience. The sort of thing you could make a story out of at dinner parties.
I said, "You want me to give you the heads-up when they come?"
"No," he said. "I want you to stop them. Keep them out here till I'm finished."
I meant to reply but somehow I didn't. I think I was going to say What? Or How? Or maybe just Huh? But somehow I didn't say any of those things. I just sat there, looking at him, with my lips parted.
"I'll need about five minutes once the shit starts flying. Keep them out here as long as you can."
"Uh…," I finally said.
But by that time, Weiss was already moving across the pavement to the whorehouse door.