The gun metal gray Firebird idled furiously at the curb while a small contingent of bellhops loaded the trunk with twice as much luggage than what they'd arrived with, two of them standing by each open door of the car, awaiting Victoria's and Janet's approach and entrance to the machine. Along with the eye opening gratuity Madeline and Winona had left, Buckner's bonus Dollars for each job they'd done made their new and expensive purses seem heavy as well.
He stood with them underneath the Hotel awning, Vernon and Bull at each side, all five of them smiling genuinely, although not without some regret in their eyes.
"Ladies, if you ever come to Vegas again, by all means, stay here. Bring your husbands, you'll get the royal treatment and they'll never know why." he promised with a twinkle in his eye.
"Plus, that way, if we get into trouble again,...", Victoria laughed.
"Better the devil you know." he finished, he and Janet laughing as well.
"I hope you don't think we feel that way about you, though." Janet said when they stopped. "Because we don't. We were stupid, we got ourselves into trouble and we paid the price to go home free of it right now, just like you promised."
"That's right." Victoria said. "And we're really thankful you gave us the chance to get off the hook."
"Janet, Victoria, you're both two of a kind. I really didn't like putting you two to work like that from the outset and I regretted it more and more later on, but you two were,... I'm sorry, but you were perfect. You did everything I asked better than I could have asked and some of the things you've accomplished for me go way beyond just money. And by the way,..."
He stopped to fish something out of the inside pocket of his very smart, gray suit. Two small envelopes appeared in his hand, one of which was passed to each woman.
"It's a short list of email addresses." he explained. Winona and Madeline have extended an open invitation to you both, should you ever decide to visit Italy. I'd be a little careful there, if I were you. Also, my email address is in there, so that, like I said, if you're ever in town again, or if things don't work out in some way and you need some place to go and a job, you know. Not like before, one that would take better advantage of your, ah, people skills. You know, Francine tells me I'm crazy to let you two go." he laughed.
"Oh, we'll certainly keep that in mind, Mr. Buckner.", Janet graciously told him, inwardly thinking of how soon and how horribly things could still go wrong.
"We'll handle it.", Victoria assured him, looking to Janet in order to try to assure her too.
"I believe you can. Good luck, Ladies. Drive carefully and try to stay out of trouble."
----- ----- ----- ----- -----
"It seems like a year ago, somehow." Janet noted as they drove through town on their way to the onramp.
"Since we blew in here." Victoria assumed she meant. "Yeah, it's like that for me, too. And somehow, this trip, this time,... it's more real. I don't know if you get what I mean." she said, disengaging the clutch and gearing down for a red light in her tight new designer jeans.
"More vivid. Little things and details are more appreciable."
" ... Yeah. Yeah, that's it."
They were silent amidst the traffic for a while in the non air conditioned antique, windows rolled down until Victoria spoke thoughtfully.
"I wonder why Buckner warned us about Winona and Madeline?"
"I don't know, but I trust him. I don't think I'd ever be interested in going to Italy, anyway."
"Hmm.", Victoria said as though she wasn't convinced.
"Comes to that," Janet added, "I'd rather we visited Patricia."
"Heh. Yeah, I liked her. She was good."
"Yes.", Janet agreed with a recollective smile that matched Victoria's. "But to be honest, I enjoyed it all, everything we did, even though, sometimes, I was pretty scared."
"Mmm. Me too."
"Then again, maybe that's just the potion talking."
They said little more as they worked their way closer to the highway, the vague regret that hung in the air at the Hotel seeming to have followed, compressing itself around them within the confines of the car.
They said even less after they eventually gained the onramp and were fast tracked down the highway towards home, the talk petering out altogether as the traffic did, the further they drove from Las Vegas.
After a while, Victoria suddenly slowed the car down, pulling off to the wide, dirt shoulder and stopping, a cloud of dust overtaking and passing around the car, happy to head on down the road without them, if need be. Switching the ignition off, she turned in the seat, left arm draped over the top of the wheel, and took her sunglasses off, looking Janet squarely in the eye.
"We can flag down the next car that has a man behind the wheel and suck him off right now, if you want. We could. It's not as if he'd refuse."
" ... I don't want to do that at all."
"Sure you do, that's why you hesitated, right? You actually had to think about it, if only for a split second. Just suggesting we do it conjures up images in our heads and we want to, potion or no. We know we shouldn't, but we have been, so why not now? Oops." she said, turning her head momentarily as a car whizzed by. "There he goes. I'm sure they'll be another, though. So what do you say?"
"I say no.", Janet insisted. "Before, there was no choice."
"But, we enjoyed it."
"That doesn't mean- that doesn't change anything outside those circumstances. Those circumstances no longer exist and reality is reality again. We have to fit into it and, underneath our base desires and how the potion and our recent circumstances encourages them, we
want
to fit into it."
"Well, I'm glad we've got that established."
"Oh, I see what you're doing."
"Janet, we can't go back home with any more baggage than what's in the trunk, you understand? That would ruin everything, I tell you it will and I do mean
everything.
It's exactly like you said at the Hotel, we were stupid and we had to do what we had to do so we could avoid paying the highest price for our stupidity. Not many people would have done any different in our shoes and we're just lucky that it was Buckner's casino we went to and that he gave us that opportunity."
"I know, I know,... I said all that and I know and believe it, it's just that now, on our way home, it doesn't seem to cover the whole thing."
"I'm not saying it does, I'm just saying that things could have been a whole lot worse, nobody got hurt and, if we enjoyed it, lucky us to be able to get through it that way and move on. We're still basically the women we were when we left home, just with new experience below our belts. If you'll pardon the pun."
"I'll laugh about that later. Right now, I must point out that Dr. McNeer, her Receptionist and two of her patients were certainly hurt. Not in a physical way, but imagine what they must be thinking now? And who's to say that Meshac and his friends won't eventually come to harm because of what we did? Not to mention Willy and his family. We did cause harm and I'm pretty sure that's a big part of what doesn't get covered by my neat and tidy little excuses, not to mention the fact that I cheated on Tom. Yes, I cheated. Once I accepted the enjoyment of it, had fun with it and tried to forget about him so I could get through it all that much easier,... I cheated."
"We had no choice."
"That doesn't justify it. Poor Dr. McNeer wouldn't think so."
"Janet,... Baby, listen: You made the right decisions the entire way through this. If you had to go back, even feeling the way you do now, you'd still make those same decisions for the good of both of us, and that's one of the reasons I love you. Again, I know this is hard for you, it is for me too, but there's nothing we can do about now, anymore than there was anything we could have done when we first met Buckner. Nothing but to get over it. As for Willy,..."
Victoria looked down for a moment before speaking, seemingly to the console between their hips.
"You heard Buckner. Willy's lucky he didn't end up dead. If you think we fucked his family up, imagine how a bullet in the back of Willy's head would have fucked them up."
"They'll never get over it."
"You don't know that. You don't know that at all. And what if they do and you don't? Buckner even said that they all deserved it. Don't get hung up on this, it serves no purpose other than to rip apart everything we worked to save and, if you need to talk about it, you know I'll listen. Right?"
"Yes."
They gazed seriously at one another for a short time before Victoria spoke again, breaking a seemingly fragile moment.
"Janet,... are we, ahhh,... we still good, baby?"
"Yes, sweetie, we're still good." Janet reassured her, managing a sincere smile.
