Going All Out by Jeanie London

between old world and Las Vegas spectacle.
    Toujacques bathed its guests in the pride of the old South. Fine old families and gentlemen who gambled with honor. The whole atmosphere made Bree imagine men riding into the bayou at sunrise to duel.
    She saluted the bouncer who stood guard in his tuxedoed finery at the entrance to the hallway leading to the employees-only suites. “Evening, Giles.”
    “Evening, Bree.” He tipped the rim of his top hat.
    Then she sailed through the door he held open with a smile.
    Even Toujacques’ employees were special, she thought while heading inside the hostess suite…well, most of them, anyway, she clarified, coming face-to-face with Lana, who’d apparently just arrived for her shift.
    Pausing in her primping, she met Bree’s reflection in the mirror. “Mr. Takimoto wasn’t happy with you yesterday.”
    “Hello to you, too, Lana.” Bree could afford to be generous as she was on her way out.
    “Not interested?”
    “I’m interested in everything about our guests.”
    “Then you’ll want to know that when I came on shift, Mr. Takimoto kept going on about how you wouldn’t find him someone to have dinner with.”
    Bree smiled harder. Lana was bitchy whenever she pulled the morning shift. Something about her face not waking up properly until noon. “I’m sorry Mr. Takimoto was unhappy.”
    “You couldn’t find the old guy an escort.”
    “He didn’t want an escort. He wanted me to procure for him. The last I looked, my time card didn’t say Madame Bree.”
    “You’re paid to make the arrangements to keep our guests happy. That’s your job. If you can’t be discreet about it, then you’re not much of a hostess.”
    No doubt Lana had been happy to rush straight to management with that opinion. But if she wanted to run afoul of the law in her dealings with clients, she’d better be more than discreet. Bree didn’t think upper management would appreciate their names splashed all over the headlines for suspicion of prostitution.
    She wasn’t going to take Lana’s criticism to heart either. If the bosses had had a problem with her, they’d have called her upstairs the second she’d walked through the door to start tonight’s shift.
    “You got mascara in your hair,” Bree said instead, continuing toward her locker.
    Lana turned her attention back to her appearance, looking for the errant mascara, which stood out like a fly on a stick of butter against all that bleached-blond hair. Why this ex-Vegas showgirl had chosen to work at Toujacques instead of Harrah’s was still a mystery….
    Then again, Lana wasn’t exactly a teen anymore, and pushing forty meant the twilight years between the blush of youth and a facelift. Judging by her ever-ready tube of hemorrhoid cream to keep the eye baggies at bay, Lana knew age was heading her way.
    Not that she looked old. In all honesty, Bree hoped to age so gracefully. For all Lana’s double-processed hair and UV-protection makeup, she was a very striking woman.
    Hostesses came in all ages because guests came in all ages. The management at Toujacques understood that. Contrary to popular belief, not every older man was comfortable interacting with a woman twenty or thirty years his junior. Management paired guests with compatible hostesses—not that Lana cared. All she worried about was the imagined slight to her appearance.
    Bree had heard her go on a twenty-minute rant about how only the junior department carried her size but the clothes teenagers wore weren’t suitable for an almost-forty-year-old woman whose breasts needed help staying where they belonged.
    Bree had thought about suggesting implants but had bitten her tongue. She had actually related to thisargument. Not because her body parts weren’t cooperating—thank goodness!—but the trendier fashions weren’t the classy stuff VIP hostesses were expected to wear.
    While VIP hostesses made decent money, they didn’t earn the kind necessary to take off months of