"Shit, the way this snow is falling, I'm not getting my rocks off tonight."
"Steady as she goes, Chuck. Lucky for us there are bars close to the ship. Let's try this one."
Naval Petty Officer Three Ryan Stevens pushed open the door of the bar and ushered Naval Petty Officer Two Chuck Adams into a dimly lit bar, filled with smoke and with muted and fuzzy Country Western music coming through the sound system. The light was brightest at the long bar. Two men were sitting at this end of the bar and a gaggle of three bar girls held down the other. The tables to the left, in more darkness, were occupied by a mixed bag of mixed-colored and mixed-gender blue-class patrons. The whites took up the center, with the Hispanics in the front corner of the room and the blacks, in the deeper corners, in the back corner. B-girls were working the floor. One was taking a sailor through a beaded-curtain door at the back of the room, and two more here draped on guys—a mechanic, by the look of him, and a sailor—on the small dance floor.
This was probably as busy as this bar got. It was a Saturday night near the Philadelphia docks where a naval repair facility was located. More sailors than was usual with most naval ports were on leave, as they were in resting mode when their ships were in for repair or refitting.
Ryan and Chuck were bosom buddies—but not in the sense, they insisted to each other, as were some sailors who were young, virile, and randy but stuck out at sea for long periods of time with no one to hook up with but each other. They were from the same area of Florida—Ryan from Tampa and Chuck from St. Petersburg—and were much the same age, their mid twenties now. They were from different spectrums of the social divide, but they'd been together from training to ship assignment, and went everywhere as a pair, each watching the back of the other.
They were so close that there had been speculation about them from the other sailors, but, if they'd heard it, Ryan and Chuck had pretended they didn't. And it didn't prevent them from sharing a woman when it came down to stripping and getting it down, although, in these rare instances, they stuck to using separate entrances at the same time.
Ryan, a redhead descended from the Irish, was from a wealthy family. He'd gone to private schools but hadn't done more than scrape by academically, and his family saw the Navy as a chance for him to grow up. It was working; he was ahead of the curve in moving up the enlisted ranks. That probably was because just getting by in a private school still imparted more accumulated smarts and sense of leadership than graduating from a public high school in Florida. Chuck, a Nordic blond, whose male family members worked the oil rigs in the gulf and female members dressed hair, had made it through public high school, but barely. Both had been on their respective football teams in high school, but hadn't been stars. It was a bond between them, though—talking football like they were a part of it. Both were fine looking, trimmed out, and muscular. Working on a ship helped ensure the trimmed out and muscular aspects.
Both had come in on a ship that had been in the Persian Gulf for four months and had docked in Philadelphia the previous day for refitting. And both were randy as hell when they showed up for shore leave, despite the start of the snow, and made it only as far as Cleo's Bar, nearly within sight of their ship.
They bellied up to the bar and ordered Buds from the hefty bartender, who had a friendly look for them but who obviously was capable of a mean look and doubled as the bar's bouncer. He had an anchor tattooed on his bicep and the three fell into a comfortable chat comparing service records.
"Speaking of service," Ryan said. "Any action around here tonight?"
The barkeep inclined his head toward the other end of the bar without looking there. "Take your pick. $20 on the bar top gets you beyond the beaded curtains there with one of them with me looking the other way and whistling and then it's up to you and them. If you pay more than $20 for a BJ or $50 for a ride, you've been taken. And you should know—"
He didn't finish that sentence as the guys at the front end of the bar had suddenly discovered a thirst that had to be service right now, and
that
, after all, was what the bartender was here for.
While he was gone, Ryan and Chuck took a look around, but the only free dollies were those three at the back end of the bar. Two of them were talking to each other across the one in the middle. She caught Chuck's eye, though, and rose off her stool and sauntered on up the bar to the two sailors.
"Two hunks like you shouldn't be in here all by your lonesomes," she said as she got to them. "Buy a girl a drink for some company? You two in the Navy?"
Ryan rolled his eyes. They were in winter service uniforms—black sailor jumpers over black trousers, with the thirteen-button, squared-off fly—and their naval insignia on their sleeves. And they could almost see the naval vessels in dry-dock from where they were sitting. Of course they were in the Navy. But then his eyes were rolling for another reason. The woman had her hand on his crotch.
"Sure, I'm Popeye One and he's Popeye Two," Chuck answered for them, moving over a stool so that she could perch between them.
"A drink for the lady. Another one of whatever she was drinking," Ryan croaked to the bartender, who appeared with a frozen daiquiri within a few minutes, as both men leaned into their elbows on the bar top and gave their full attention to the B-Girl. Each of them had a hand low on her hip on either side. She didn't bat an eyelash.
She had eyelashes to bat too. She was a mix of white and black, which on her had arrived at high cheek bones, a smooth light-chocolate skin tone, a lovely oval face, and long, silky black hair. She kept her hands moving above the bar top and touching each of the guys here and there to make them want to hyperventilate. The long, scarlet fingernails matched the color on her lips. Her eye shadow was a luminous deep violet, with sparkles in it, which brought out the same color and quality of her pupils.
"You two stick together like glue?" she asked. It was evident to all three of them that she was fishing on whether this was leading up to something in sequence or a threesome.
"Usually," Chuck answered. "Do you mind?"
"Not really," she answered, "but maybe one's enough for starters."
