Professor Anderson pulled the Jaguar into a well- populated parking lot, which was awash in the neon of a range of gaudy signs. Giles climbed out of the car on shaky legs and looked up to see where they'd landed.
"LOLITA'S," the largest sign declared. "GIRLS - GIRLS - GIRLS," another one flashed. "Ladies Night Every Night!" another sign promised. And: "Lap Dancing!"
"Zuzu's on tonight!" Anderson rubbed his hands gleefully.
Giles looked longingly back at the car, then looked again, realizing just how redly it stood out in the lot lights.
"Com'on, Gill," Professor Wilson clapped an arm around his shoulder -- unnervingly reminiscent of Spike's gesture earlier -- "Evening's on us."
They pulled him to the entrance, where Wilson, benefactor of the evening, paid cover charges for the group. The men swarmed in like a pack of over-eager puppies.
"Hey!" The man at the door snagged Giles out of the group and pointed up at a sign.
'All Under 40 Will Be Carded,' he read.
"That's perfectly all right," Giles assured him. "I'm 43."
"Hey, man, I'm just doing my job. Let's see some ID."
He fumbled his driver's license from his coat pocket. He hadn't even remembered slipping it there earlier, but he had been preoccupied at the time.
The bouncer peered at the license suspiciously, looked at him, and back at the license. "You don't look anything like the picture," he announced, handing it back finally.
"Thank you." Giles shoved the license back into his pocket.
Professor Wilson came back to grab Giles by the sleeve. He hauled him down into the din of a popular night spot gearing up for the evening. "We've reserved a table for our party," Wilson shouted in his ear. "The girls are just getting warmed up!"
The Thunderbird hadn't suffered more damage than an ugly scrape down one side, but it took five vampires about fifteen minutes to right it and push it up out of the ditch. Spike stood by, fumed, and screamed at them indiscriminately.
Dalton hated to intrude on his mood, but felt duty-bound to make the suggestion. "Spike, he's made his escape. We know where we can catch the Watcher later. Let's go back, get the book, and go home."
"Besides, I'm getting hungry," one of the other vampires whined.
Spike stood still for a minute, mastering his temper. He finally heaved a pseudo-sigh. "You're probably right, you pathetic nit. Home would be the most prudent destination right now. We've already spent far too much time on that walking piece of meat."
Dalton smiled in relief. Spike turned and punched him in the stomach. "But I don't care," he screamed. And more quietly, "It's the bloody principle of the thing." He picked his henchman up by the hair, hauled him to the car and tossed him into the back seat.
The others stared.
"Well, do I have to tuck you all in?"
There was a general rush for the car.
The lap dancers were certainly energetic, but Giles kept darting nervous glances back towards the front entrance. The women seemed to take his distraction as something of a challenge, and he soon found himself the center of more feminine attention than he'd had in several years.
"Girls don't appreciate a fellow of a mature age," Scopes was grumbling at him. He'd been waving a 20 dollar bill at a dancer, but she seemed oblivious to it.
"I really do need to make a phone call," Giles said, fending off still another determined lap dancer.
"Phone's in the back, next to the restrooms." Anderson gave him a dig in the ribs with his elbow. "Take your time, eh? Give us old fogies a bit of a break."
Giles realized, somewhat belatedly, that he was the youngest man in the group. That hadn't happened to him in so long that it gave him something of a visceral jolt. He wandered off to the wrong corner of the club, before pulling out of that distracted state and moving more purposefully towards the 'Restrooms' signs.
"Well, well, the chicken's come to roost," Spike said, as he leaned out the window to regard the fire-red Jaguar in the parking lot. "Com'on lads, we're about to collect our bird and go home."
He pulled the Thunderbird up to the entrance, straight into the 'No Parking' zone, and five of them moved to the door.
A hulking young man jumped up at their arrival. "Hey, guys --", he pointed at a sign.
Spike grabbed the bouncer by the throat and squeezed.
"With all due respect, Spike, maybe you shouldn't kill him just yet," Dalton gibbered. "We still have to locate the Watcher."
Spike scanned the bustling nightclub with a scowl. Vampire sight was no problem with the darkened spaces and corners, but the flashing strobes and blinking neons were a definite distraction. Not to mention all the hot, pulsing female bodies about the place. He dropped the choking bouncer on the floor.
"Dalton, you go out back and kill the power," he snarled. "The rest of you spread out and find him. If he gives us the slip again, I'm going to be sharpening some hooks tomorrow."
The one phone was, of course, out of order. At this point, Giles decided that he couldn't have hoped for anything else. He leaned against the wall, wearily considering and discarding several absurd courses of action, distracted by the parade of scantily clad female bodies that moved past him.
The 'dressing rooms' must be back there, he thought. He felt some sympathy for the young women, having to make their way past the public washrooms, after the crazed din of the dance floor, in order to reach a sanctuary of sorts.
"Hey, hottie, you look like you're not having a very fun night." A pretty young women with long brown curls that fell to her waist had stopped to regard him.
"Well, I did want to use the telephone," he gestured at the payphone on the wall, determinedly keeping his eyes off the very tight bodice of her cartoonish school girl's uniform. "But --"
"Oh, Mike pulled the plug on that months ago," she said. "Too many assholes were using it to conduct their drug deals. Com'on back," she twitched her head. "You can use ours."
"Won't your friends object?" But she already had him by the hand and was dragging him on back.
"Nah. Naomi was even saying earlier that there was only one presentable guy in the place tonight. Guess what. Duh. You're him. Not that the competition tonight is all that great. The Shriners must be in town. By the way, I'm Bethany."
"Rupert Giles," he managed, although formality seemed more than a little odd, given the circumstances.
The dressing room was little more than a well-lit storeroom, with a few vanities and mirrors fit in as an afterthought. "Hey, Cecily." His escort tapped an Arabic- looking women on the shoulder. "Leave off your girlfriend for two minutes and let the man use the phone."
"Oh, all right," Cecily pouted and hung up without making any attempt to wrap her conversation up. "The bitch was riding me anyways." She got up and pulled the seat out for him.
Startled by the act of reverse chivalry, Giles fumbled his way into the chair and reached out for the receiver.
"I am dogged," Bethany exclaimed, pulling off her long mahogany curls to expose a close-cropped hedge of bright blue hair beneath. "How long are we supposed to stick around here, anyway?"
"Till Zuzu and company show up," Cecily said, turning to her mirror. "I'm dying for a joint, but if Freddy comes back and catches me he'll kick both our asses."
"That'll be more action than we'll see tonight if Zuzu pulls one of her non-appearances again. For a bunch of rich old guys, this crowd isn't throwing much money our way."
Giles shook himself out of his inadvertent eavesdroping daze and dialed Buffy's home number. Still only the answering machine presence at the other end. He paged her again. "Pardon me, what's the number here?"
"Huh?" Cecily blinked at him.
"The telephone number."
She jotted it down on a pad of paper and shoved it towards him.
Several other minimumly-clad women bustled into the room, laughing hilariously over something.
"Did you see what he had in his pocket?"
"I didn't see it, no --"
He pulled the chair back into a corner and sat in an uncomfortable huddle. For some reason, none of the women seemed to think his presence worthy of even an off-handed comment.
"Hey, which one of you bitches has been into my Cheetos?"
"Look for she of the orange lips."
Abruptly, the room went dark.
There was a thundering silence, then somebody giggled. "Hey, keep your hands to yourself, Cis."
"Wasn't me," Cecily said from across the room. "Guess again."
Sharp fingers gave Giles a pinch on the thigh. He jumped.
"Owww, stop it," another one of the women complained. "Somebody is asking for a trip to the emergency ward."
"Remember that seance we did last month? There are candles in the closet."
"Oh, yeah, good thinking, Bethany."
A door creaked and a match flared up.
"Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness," his blue-haired benefactress said solemnly, holding the candle under her face to give herself an eery glow.
Somebody snickered. "Hey, bet Mike forgot to pay the electric bill again."
"Right," Bethany said. "Let's ditch this dive before they figure out a way to turn the power back on. Burly's is running a Ho-Down tonight. Bound to be more kicks than playing the geriatrics ward here."
"More kicks, no money," Cecily said with a sigh, but she joined the general rush for the closet. Giles hadn't known that women were capable of dressing that quickly. Within three minutes the concupiscent school girls were replaced by a hoard of lean, leather-and-demin women of the American West.
"Com'on, Rupert," Bethany grabbed his arm and hauled him out of his seat.
"My call --" He braced himself against her tug.
"Can't leave you back here by yourself," she said. "You can call home again when we get to the other place. It's not all that far away."
The five young women hustled Giles out an obscure door to an unpaved parking area out back. A massive purple jeep ballooned up on four outlandish tires sat amid several nondescript vehicles. He followed them to the jeep in an almost fatalistic daze. Supposedly, this would be some men's idea of a fantasy come true, but at the moment all Giles wanted was a sandwich, a hot shower, and a really dull Victorian novel.
"Gawd, look at all those cars," Bethany said from behind the steering wheel as they drove on past to the road. "Lucky we snuck away. Bet it's a real madhouse in there."
"Well, somebody has some taste." Cecily pointed at the black Thunderbird that was parked by the front door. "Too bad they didn't get here earlier."
"Don't think you're missing much," Bethany said, smirking down at the two men who stood by the car. They gawked up at the jeep and its occupants. "Look like some loser over-the-hill gang members to me. Some guys just can't get it up unless they're driving some hot-shot car."
Buffy dashed into the 7-11. "Where's the payphone?" she shouted at the pimple-faced clerk.
He cowered behind the counter. "You watch your language," he said timorously. "I've got a gun."
Buffy tried out some words she'd never had occasion to use before, then spotted a phone by the pinball machines at the back of the store. "Gotcha!" she yelled, and pounced on it. She consulted the pager in her hand, then dialed the number.
Which rang. And rang.
"Damnit." Buffy slammed the receiver down on the hook. The whole apparatus shuddered, then came crashing down. Coins spilled across the floor.
She stomped over to the counter and made four grape Slurpees.
The clerk accepted her money from a cower low down under the counter. "You know," he said, as he shoved her change across the surface, "you really oughta get a cell phone."
"I didn't mean to do that. Really."
"No, no. It was probably waiting to fall down. Better you than some guy looking for a law suit. Not that I'm giving you any ideas, you know --"
"Oh, shut up." Buffy gathered the Slurpees and went back out to the car.
"Well?" Cordelia demanded impatiently. Buffy handed the Slurpees to Willow through the window, then climbed into the front seat.
"No answer. That man is playing games with my head."
"They didn't have cherry?" Xander said, poking at the icy foam in his cup.
"Grape is a comfort food," Willow declared.
"Let's go back to the Bronze," Cordelia said. "I mean, this driving all over the place is so quaintly hick-small- town, but so far we've wasted exactly zero of the evil guys, and I'm going to have to gas up again anyway."
Buffy glared at the pager in her hand. "'spkcllglslolitas.' I'm guessing 'spk' is a certain annoying pointy-toothed wonder who I've already seen tonight, and 'cllgls' is short for 'Call Giles', but who the hell is this Lolita chick?"
"Oh, must mean that topless girly bar on the other end of town," Xander said between noisy slurps.
All three young women turned to look at him. Xander looked up, aware of a certain -- hostility -- in the air. "What?" he said plaintively.