The jeep pulled up into a parking lot that was even more packed than the last. Bethany doubled-parked without a twinge of conscience. Giles peered out the window at the sign over- looking this unassuming sanctuary.
'The Burly Girly.' A spot-lit representation of a Rubinesque cowgirl twirling a lasso. A pasteboard sign had been pinned up below. "Midnight Cowgirl Madness! Mixed Couples Night!"
"Place is shimmying tonight!" Naomi enthused. She looked at Giles. "But we can't bring him in with us.
Bethany had opened the door and stood perched out on the way down. "Why not?"
"He's not in costume. Duh!" Cecily said with a huff.
"Oh, right. Easily remedied." Bethany draped herself over the seat to rummage around on the back floor, her denimed behind waving in the air. She finally tipped back up, triumphantly bearing a battered cowboy hat, which she set on Giles' head. "There, done. You look gorgeous, my man." She planted a quick kiss on his lips. "Let's boogie."
The women piled out of the jeep, carrying Giles with them. He was borne into the club on an irresistible female tide.
The theme for the night did seem to be country and western, and the place was elbow-to-elbow with those in costume. Giles was struck, however, by the number of them who'd apparently seized on the first available costume off the rack.
"Sissy!" An immense, bearded man in dance hall girl's red ruffled skirts bore down on the slender Cecily and ground her between two muscular arms. "Where've you been hanging out these days? Hey Beth! Have you and the girls met my wife?"
"'Lo, Mim." Cecily waved at a tiny woman, dressed in Riverboat Gambler style complete with mustache, who emerged at the man's side. "These're my buds: Bethany, Naomi, Veevee, Sweets. Oh, and Rupert, our latest acquisition."
"Pleased!" the bearded man said with a grin. He looked closer at Giles. "Hey, I know you. You're Jenny Calendar's main squeeze!"
"Squeeze?" said Giles, wondering if his ears were finally giving out on him.
Wife Mim was grinning at him in an uncomfortably familiar fashion. "So this is Rupert," she purred.
"You remember me!" the man continued gleefully. "I upgraded the cataloguing database on your computers last week."
He remembered now: a rather diffident man talking bits and parameters and logins and other esoteric incantations. It occurred to him that Jenny had finagled an acquaintance a service contract with the school. He felt vaguely scandalized.
"Dear, dear Jennifer," the man continued. "I remember when she first came to Sunnydale. Such a sweet, serious girl . . . Boy, how people change, eh?"
"Stan," his wife said.
"Tell her we miss her at the Poly--" He yelped. "Ow, Mim. Watch where you're stepping with those boots."
"Give Jenny our best, won't you, Rupert?" Mim said graciously. She seized her husband by the earlobe and dragged him back into the crowd.
"Well!" Bethany said brightly. "We'll let you mingle with your friends then."
His feminine escort evaporated.
"Squeeze," said Giles irritably. He pushed his way through the swarms of people, towards a sign labeled 'Phone'.
The telephones were in working order, but he was out of quarters.
He headed towards the bar. A scan of the 'Specials' billboard provided him with an quick option. 'Long Island Iced Teas -- $2.25'. Another check up front failed to produce any evidence that he'd been successfully tailed. He suspected that tea of the Long Island variety wouldn't be up to any of the best British teas, and he shuddered at the thought of drinking it iced, but at least he'd stay sober.
Giles purchased the drink, collected his change, and made his way back through the crowd. It was slow going; the music was getting louder and more manic, and everyone seemed determined to be out on the dance floor. By the time he reached the telephones again, they were all in use.
He sighed and moved against one wall to wait.
"Hey, you're Mr. Giles, aren't you?" a young woman accosted him. Dressed in a white, flouncy long-skirted dress and red ribbons in her dark hair, she was the very picture of a Silent Screen Sweet-Damsel-In-Distress. "Remember me? I replaced some of the broken windows in your library last June."
"Uh --" He tried to remember back that far; there had been so many contractors in and out of the school then.
"I was practising some of my folk songs while I worked," she said helpfully.
He winced. He did remember her. "Y-yes. Uh -- quite delightful they were. . ."
She beamed. "I'm Lili. I didn't expect you to remember me by name, or anything. But Jenny has been talking a lot about you, and I just wanted to check you out."
"You and Ms. Calendar --"
"Go way back. For over a year now! Is Jenny here tonight?"
"Actually, no --"
"'Cause Chuck is here, and she might just want to avoid him."
"Chuck." Giles was beginning to feel like a particularly clueless parrot.
"Or maybe he'd be better off avoiding her. Given that shiner she gave him the last time they went out together. Of course, he isn't holding a grudge --"
"What a relief."
"But his current girlfriend sure is. Would you like to dance?"
"I -- uh -- was waiting to use the telephone."
"My girlfriend won't mind."
To his immense relief, one of the telephones became available. Smiling at her in what he hoped was a soothing manner, he moved to claim it.
Giles placed his drink on top of the telephone and inserted a quarter. He paged Buffy, put his finger on the hook, and waited, the receiver pressed against one ear. If anybody wanted the telephone before his call was returned, they would have to fight him for it.
He took a drink of his iced tea and nearly dropped the glass. Whatever was in the concoction, tea was certainly low down on the list of ingredients. The bartender must have raided the distillery. Several distilleries. He gingerly shelved the potion back on top of the phone.
Lili had, fortunately, set her sights on someone else in the crowd. A fickle girl, he thought, watching her, but quite charmingly ingenuous. She had accosted her new quarry with the same familiarity she'd used on him. Laughing, she moved to one side.
He'd seen the man she was flirting with, earlier in the evening. One of Spike's henchmen. A bookish fellow with glasses (looking more than faintly ridiculous in the small party cowboy hat they'd made him put on at the front door) who was apparently easily distracted: at the moment, by the cameo she wore on a red ribbon close about her neck.
'Go away,' Giles willed him, still hanging on grimly to his telephone. They were in a clear line of sight of one another. No other vampires were visible; but if one was circulating, the others would be about. His only protection at the moment was the sheer crush of people out and about the dance floor.
The vampire was shaking his head at her -- he did seem to be rather diffident for a demon -- and abruptly they made eye contact. Damn. Giles waited several heartbeats, while the vampire processed the fact that he was within lunging distance of Spike's quarry, then gave up on the telephone. He hung it up with a clatter, on impulse snatched up his drink, and made a determined oblique run into the crowd.
The fellow might have been a pushover by vampire standards, but he was still strong enough to shove his way through the mob with little effort. Giles got the cross from his pocket, but in the crush couldn't effectively get it up into the vampire's face.
A sharp-taloned hand locked onto his right arm, pulling him around. "Hey, Spike's been looking for you," the vampire said reasonably.
"Yes, tell him to give me a call." Giles tried to pull away, but the vampire yanked him back.
"He's really angry now," the vampire said. "Trust me, you don't want him to get any madder than this." He started hauling Giles through the crowd.
"Now you wait." Giles planted his feet hard enough to halt their progress for the moment. "I'm tired of being shoved about. Keep your hands to yourself." He threw the drink into the vampire's face.
The vampire yelped and fell backwards, disappearing under a hoard of dancing torsos.
Giles stood stunned, looking at the now empty glass. What the hell had the bartender put in that drink?
The dancers had good-naturedly parted to haul the downed vampire to his feet. He was moaning softly, his hands covering his face. Others were meowing and hooting at Giles, apparently having missed the whole tenor of the altercation.
"Ooh, whoever would've thought of him as the grabby sort?" Lili had reappeared at his elbow and latched on, steering him into still another direction. "Oh, sorry, hope you don't think I'm being over-familiar, or anything. Don't throw anything on me, okay?"
"Umm, that's all right. I -- Is that a telephone ringing?"
She turned him around. "Right over there. You called Jenny to come on down?"
There were three vampires standing by the payphones, peering intently about them. Spike was nowhere to be seen.
"No. Wouldn't want her to run into that Chuck chap," Giles said distractedly. The vampires started to head in their direction. He grabbed Lili's hand and spun her around into his arms.
"Wow," she mouthed at him, and took his lead. She was very light on her feet, and he discovered that they could make rapid headway across the dance floor doing an odd kind of foxtrot-waltz. The vampires disappeared behind the masses of dancers. "Jenny never told me you could dance."
He blinked at her. "I suppose she doesn't know. We've never had the opportunity."
Lili grinned. "So now I know something about you that she doesn't." She looked over his shoulder. "You've got an admirer.
"What?" he looked back and missed his step, treading hard on her instep.
"Ow! Don't look until I tell you. He's kinda cute, but he's definitely the Mr. Macho-Too-Cool-For-You type. And he went way overboard on the bleach. He's been following you around the room for the last five minutes."
Giles began to waltz her back towards the other end of the room. "I know the man, and I do not want to renew the acquaintance," he told her. "Would you like a drink?"
"Sure, why not?" she said, as the music segued to a more stereotypical country and western dance ditty. "I was never much of a Garth Brooks fan anyway."
The bartender was perched on top of her bar, watching a television feed of some talk show, with the sound muted. Lili climbed on top of the bar to sit next to her. "Com'on, Rupert. That guy won't come back here. And if he does, Reva has a baseball bat she keeps here for people who can't behave themselves."
Giles hesitated, then pulled himself up to sit on the bartop next to Lili.
"You're drinking Long Island iced teas?" Reva asked, without peeling her eyes from the television screen.
"Well, I -- uh, I was wondering what you put in that?"
"I had a whole lotta odds and ends, so I just poured them into the mix. Kinda a goulash of a drink."
"Do you have any of it left?"
"Me too!" Lili said.
The bartender gave them both an odd look, then hopped down from her perch. She siphoned off two large glasses and handed them over. "Anybody who can choke down more than one of these things can have them on the house."
Lili handed Giles her drink, stood up on the bar top, and grabbed onto a railing situated above the bar. She started to scramble up. "Com'on, Rupert. We'll be out of sight up here."
"You're supposed to use the stairs," Reva said.
"They've got the stairs locked off, okay?"
Reva grabbed her petticoated hips and boosted her up. "Stop flirting with every cute thing on two legs in the room and you won't have to hide -- at least not this early in the evening."
With a scramble of white lace bloomers and buttoned-up boots, the young woman was up and over. "Actually, Rupert here was the one getting in over his head." She held her hand down to him. "Com'on, Mr. Giles. We'll hang out with the DJ and keep out of harm's way. At least 'til midnight, anyways."
"Am I going to regret this?" he wondered out loud. But he handed the drinks up to her.
She set them aside, caught his wrist, and hauled. "Oh, probably," she grunted. "But it's kinda late in the evening to be worrying about it, isn't it?" He felt himself being boosted from behind by a pair of strong hands, and then he was up top with Lili.
It was a small balcony space set well above the dance floor. The queen of the roost, the club DJ, was enthroned in a canvas director's chair set at the juncture of a long table, which bore the sound console and rows of glittering compact disc cases, and a smaller table strewn with crumpled candy bar wrappers and dented cans of Diet Coke.
"That was 'One In a Million' by the Cow Licks, kids," the DJ said to the room at large, in a sultry voice. "Keep raising the barn now, here's the Vibrators -- 'Slow Motion'."
The headache-inspired boom of yet another lethargic cow lament began to roll down from on high. The DJ snapped off the microphone, stuffed half a doughnut in her mouth, and shoved her eye-glasses up on her nose to peer at Giles with a myopic cuteness. She looked rather like a Pippi Longstocking all grown up in a book-worm surfer-girl.
"This is my girlfriend, Copper," Lili said with fond pride. "Copper, this is my beau for tonight, Rupert."
Copper swallowed and reached for a can of Diet Coke. She was dressed distinctly, defiantly in non-Western garb: cutoffs, t-shift and rubber thongs.
"What happened to Freddy?" she said to Lili, still studying Giles with (it seemed) a disapproving eye.
Lili pulled a face. "He had to go home."
"Jenny know you're dating her boyfriend?"
Lili began to pout. "I only borrowed him for the evening. I'll give him right back."
Giles grabbed a directors chair from the corner and folded it out, sitting down heavily. It occurred to him just how utterly tired, hungry, and irritable he was. "Jenny and I have had two dates," he growled. "I am finding it hard to fathom why people I've met here for the first time tonight seem to have firm opinions on the state of the relationship. May I have one of your doughnuts?"
Copper suddenly grinned at him and shoved the box his way. "Don't blame Jenny, Rupert. It's hard to keep romantic secrets in the techno-pagan community -- or just about any human community, come to think of it." She pointed at the iced teas that Lili had set down on the small table. "What are you going to do with those?"
He glanced at the drinks. "I was saving mine for a vampire," he said.
She nodded. "Good thing. I was afraid you were going to actually drink it."
The plodding 'Slow Motion' finally creaked to an end, sputtered, coughed, and died.
"About 11 PM," Copper noted, with a glance at her watch. "Tradition calls, I suppose." Lili rolled her eyes.
The DJ opened the microphone. "Now that we have you all mellowed out -- ah, hell, you people know what time it is?"
"TIME WARP!" the crowd roared.
"Yep, you shit-kicking morons," Copper said pleasantly, but her remark was muddied out by the noise of the dance crowd at large. With a flick of an ivory lacquered fingernail, she set the Rocky Horror dance classic in motion.
"The tragic thing about this is that I really used to like the movie," she said to Giles. She pulled a pair of earplugs from her shirt pocket and popped them in.
Lili grinned at him and shrugged. "Really great thing about being up here is that you can watch everybody in the place." She tugged at his sleeve. "Your admirer is trying to find a way up. He must've seen us come up here. Don't worry though. Reva'll give him a good rap if he tries."
"With luck, he won't be able to come up without an invitation." Giles glanced around. "There's no telephone?"
"Nah. Once we're up here we're in total control. Ooh, look -- royalty has arrived." She pointed towards the front entrance. The frantic flashing of light bulbs heralded the arrival of somebody with some notoriety. "Right on schedule too."
"She here?" Copper said loudly, without bothering to look for herself.
"She's ba-ack," Lili affirmed loudly.
Copper got an evil glint in her eye and reached to the top of one CD rack to pull out a case. "Mater-real Girl," she piped in a false falsetto.
Lili giggled.
The moment 'Time Warp' ended, the DJ triggered off 'Material Girl' on the secondary player. She touched a button: 'Continuous Track Play'. "Let's see how long it takes her to get embarrassed enough to send someone up to stop us."
"I thought this was a 'Staff Only' area," Giles said, beginning to feel alarmed by the turn of events.
"Well, officially, but a fair lot of other people are coming up here all the time."
"Christ." He realized suddenly how boxed in they were here. "Do the stairs exit outside, by any chance?"
"Nope, just onto the dance floor." She scooted her chair to the railing. "Hah, hah. Who does that bitch think she's fooling? She's as bent as my Aunt Martha."
A strangely familiar, voluptuous blonde strode through the dance crowds, smiling with all her teeth. She wore somebody's idea of whatever lingerie a 19th century call girl might wear -- that is, if the 19th century call girl were seriously into spandex, diamonds, ermine, and aluminum. She was surrounded by a bevy of young men and women dressed in tight leather cowboy gear.
"Ooh, she's mad," Lili said in admiration. "You can tell by the way her nose stud is glittering."
Copper leaned out over the railing and blew the blonde a kiss.
"Don't moon her," Lili said. "We both got thrown out the last time you did that."
"Don't worry," Copper said with a smirk. "I'll just remind her." She leaned well out over the railing, put two fingers in her mouth, and gave a piercing whistle. "Hey!" she yelled down at those gathered immediately below. "Why don't you all come up and kiss my ass."
With that invitation, a hoard of faux cowboys scrambled up to the bar top. In their midst was at least one vampire in a party cowboy hat.
Lili shrieked and threw her arms around Giles. Her girlfriend began to bombard the assault with half-full aluminum cans.
He struggled to get loose, even as he saw Spike coming over the railing. The director's chair collapsed, sending them both sprawling under the DJ's console. Lili rolled away from Giles, saw Spike in full game face and shrieked even louder.
The vampire staggered and fell to his knees.
"Leave her alone," Copper yelled from behind him, waving a baseball bat in one hand.
A cowgirl grabbed the DJ around the waist, and a mob of attackers swept over her.
"Copper!" Lili yelled, and scrambled over to the struggle.
Spike sat up, apparently dazed enough to have been knocked temporarily out of his game face.
Giles lunged to his feet and threw himself onto the drinks on the table. A moment later the vampire's hands were closing around his neck, and Spike yanked him around.
"Enough is enough," Spike screamed.
"I quite agree," Giles shouted back at him, and threw a glass of tea into his face.
Spike's cry might have owed as much to utter surprise as to pain, but the vampire did stumble back, clutching his face. Giles didn't waste time in determining which -- he hauled open the more traditional exit and headed back down to the dance floor.
No time to make a cautious entrance. He'd just have to duck through and hope for the best. He threw the door open and walked out into the crowd.
Strong hands seized him from the side and yanked him off the dance floor.
"Oh, goody, it's you," The Material Girl said, peering into his face. "Roland, will you tell those morons to stop fighting up there and change the fucking music?"
The big, beefy cowboy at her side grinned. "Sure thing, 'Dona."
She tucked Giles' arm firmly into the crook of her arm, perilously close to the aluminum studded brassiere. "Com'on, big boy. I don't bite. Much."