The Hen House – Ch.2

Jessica Comes Onboard
By reddear

On the Beach of the East Bay

I’m Jessica. As in Mitford, though that’s not my last name. My parents teach at UCB, and it’s a Berkeley thing. It could have been worse, but they never met Emma Goldman.

I just finished a journalism degree at Stanford which, I delight in reminding my parents, has a better reputation for such things than UCB. I interned at a newspaper in the East Bay during the summer between my Junior and Senior years, and I’ve been engaged in the game of trying to persuade them to hire me for several months. Practically, this means phoning the under-editor who supervised me last summer and wheedling them into giving me another follow-up follow-up interview every three weeks or so – whereat three or four members of some board whose name I haven’t been able to work out make encouraging noises about how much they’re impressed with me and assure me that they have great hopes of ‘bringing you onboard’ someday. I’ve heard that they have great ambitions of netting a Pulitzer, or three, and they want to corner all the talent they can – cheap. Sort of like a bottom-of-the-league sports team.

I hoped that was about to change when they called me yesterday and set up an urgent meeting this morning. This time the Features Editor, my mentor, a 40ish senior reporter named Catherine (not Cathy – last name classified), a 30ish guy photographer who wasn’t named and I were present.

“Welcome, Jessica,” the Features Editor (henceforth FE) began. “We’ve called you in because we’re planning to do in in-depth piece of investigative reporting, and we’re considering taking you onboard, conditionally, because we think you may be a good fit and a valuable member of the team.”

“Gag,” I thought, “does any senior editor in the world really talk such drivel? What reporting isn’t investigative?”

“The subject is legalized prostitution in Nevada. It will be a multi-part series and Catherine will be the lead reporter. She’ll cover the legal angle, history, and with some help she’ll interview some illegal prostitutes in Reno and Las Vegas and elsewhere. The focus will be on legal brothels, though, and the women who work there. I’ll let her tell you a little about her ideas”

“It has been suggested that women who work in the legal brothels are little better than white slaves. It’s been said that the brothel owners collude with the girls’ pimps outside the brothel because it makes the girls more controllable, and that working there is nothing but, in effect, signing a contract to be raped. The prostitutes are confined for weeks at a time, not allowed to live in the county where they work and are nickel-and-dimed out of much of their fifty percent of their gross earnings, being charged for lodging, housekeeping, food, condoms and sexual supplies. We intend to investigate this injustice and blow the lid off. It’s as simple as that.”

“Where we think you may be able to help, Jessica, is by infiltrating one or more of the brothels,” the FE said.

“Your youth and attractiveness should let you apply to work as a prostitute. The way the law works is that each prostitute must have a health check once a month and be checked for AIDS once a year. The health check is basically a pap smear and the AIDS check involves laboratory blood work. We’re told that results of the lab work generally take about three days to be processed and be returned to the local Sheriff’s Department so that Work Cards may be issued. Most of the women applying for Work Cards come from out of state and stay in the brothel for several days waiting for their cards to come through. You can see where this is going. If you were to go to a brothel and apply for a card you would have several days to befriend the women working there and find out from them the secret of what’s happening in such places.

“If you’re willing to take on the position of inside investigator we are prepared to offer you a three-month contract, renewable by mutual consent and contingent upon the success of your mission.”

“God,” I thought, “somebody’s been watching too many 60s TV adventure capers.” But I said,” Yes, I think I’d be interested.” After barely three more tedious hours I had a job, or was gaffed – in the FE’s fishing metaphor.

…………

Armargosa Valley

On Monday about a week later I pulled my old and battered car, with its California plates, into the gravel parking lot of the Hen House Too near Armargosa Valley, Nevada — conveniently located between Death Valley National Park and the Nevada Test Site about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Cunning agent that I was, I’d scraped off the Stanford parking stickers. There was a surprisingly professional and grammatical website with an Employment link, and I’d simply sent an email saying that I was interested in a job. Within hours I got a reply from the Manager (unnamed) saying that yes, they were looking to hire “girls” and suggesting that I pick a day within the next week or so and show up for an interview at noon. I suggested the next Wednesday and my appointment was confirmed an hour later. The plan was that if the tests took three days to come back I’d have all weekend to interrogate the working girls before doing a bunk. Brothel keeping was obviously run much more efficiently than the newspaper business.

The place looked to be a 50’s vintage trading post (Indian Jewelry 73 miles. Cold drinks! See the rattlers!!) with four stuccoed arches, and a mish mash of trailers and modular units behind a six-foot cyclone fence. A barbed wire arbor funneled me to the Entrance — Push Button and I was let into a knotty pine bailey (seemingly without murder holes in the ceiling) and through another door into a large lounge in the midst of remodeling, full of mirrors and deep cheap burgundy carpeting. It was probably better than the green shag it had replaced, once. The person who let me in was Tammy, a buoyant twenty-something blonde. After she told me her name she confirmed mine. “You’re Jessica. Sorry about the mess. We’re still moving in and getting rid of all the disco dancing crap. I’ll take you to see Joan.” If she was a good example of the girls who worked here, there went the oppressed sex slave angle of the story.

She led me through some confusing jogs to the older stucco building and then into a large white plastered office with oxblood tiles on the floor. Pointing to a cowhide-covered sofa she said, “Have a seat. Joan’ll be here in a minute.”

Joan was tall, confident and striking. Dressed in freshly pressed khaki shorts and a safari shirt, she was slim, athletic and large-breasted. She looked only a little older than I was, and like a patently successful businesswoman.

Shaking my hand, she said, “Hello, Jessica, it’s good to meet you. Would you like a cold drink of something?”

“Maybe an iced tea if you have any.”

“Sure,” she said, getting one from a small bar refrigerator. “So tell me a little about yourself and why you think you might want to work here. “

“Well,” I said, “I went to junior college in San Jose for a year and a half, but then my mom got sick and now I want to make some money and pay off my student loans and help my mom out and then go back to school, I guess. I’ve never done anything like this before but, really, I need the money and I think I could make enough here so that I wouldn’t have to wait so long to go back to school. I’m not very experienced about sex, but I’m not very shy and I think I could do it.”

“You’re certainly pretty enough,” Jessica, “and as long as you’ve made the drive here you may as well come with me to the county seat and do some paperwork and such. I have business in Tonopah this afternoon, so you can ride along with me and we’ll file your papers for a Work Card and get your health check. They’ll each cost fifty dollars, but the House will pay for them. It’s take a few days to do the medical stuff and get your card, so you can hang around and look things over and see if it’s for you. It’s a bit of a drive but we’ll get a chance to get acquainted on the way. I’ll make a call to confirm your health check and we can get going.”

A few minutes later in the car, a little Mercedes, she said,” The reason it’s called the Hen House Too is that the original Hen House is near Beatty, about 26 miles down the road. Rusty and Faye, whom you may or may not meet today, bought the place five years ago and I started working for them two years ago as their accountant/bookkeeper. I was a year out of UNLV with degrees in accounting and computer science and desperate for a job. Six months ago the original Hen House — the home place, as Rusty calls it – was doing very good business and there was a chance to buy out an operation in Armargosa Valley that was going bust and I bought in as a partner and moved here to manage the place. You’ll be amused when you meet Rusty, so I won’t spoil the treat for you. We’re open for business now, but as you saw we’re still refurbishing and staffing. We’re always hiring because the business keeps expanding. I think that’s largely because we’re efficient, but mostly because we treat the girls better than anyplace else, so they find out about us by word of mouth and want to come work here. I’ll tell you more about the pay and benefits later, but after your drive I suppose you might like to put your seat back doze off a bit. I’ll wake you when we get to Tonopah.” And I soon did.

Filling the papers at the Sheriff’s Department didn’t take long, and the doctor turned out to be a woman gynecologist named Sybil Hauser. She was in her mid-30s and quite pleasant; she obviously wasn’t contemptuous of working girls, and after the exam she asked me if I was on birth control. I wasn’t and I told her so. Then it struck me that I’d have to go on it to stay in character. That’s when I found out about Lybrel, a low-dosage daily pill that suppressed periods altogether. Not being a Cosmo reader I’d never heard of it, but I signed up on the spot and she gave me a sample packet. I’d believe it when I saw it. Maybe it came with free magic beans.

We had a late lunch at a family Mexican place and then headed back. Joan decided that we had time to stop briefly at the home place and I got to meet Rusty and Faye. He was a big, handsome 40ish guy and when I saw him I immediately thought “drugstore cowboy,” a term I didn’t know I knew. Fay was a pretty blonde in her mid to late 30s, and she spent a large part of her time riding herd on her cowpoke’s enthusiasms. I was grinning when we left for Armargosa.
“He was actually a commercial realtor in Las Vegas for years,” Joan said, “and he met Faye in a house near here. He’s really quite shrewd, and I love them both, but if he ever wants to make me line dance with him it’ll cost him dearly.”

We got back to the Hen House Too just at dinner time.