These days, not even sex sells

She typically does three-week stints, but starts wanting to go home to Utah after two. She used to pocket $6,000 each time -- even after splitting money with the house and covering room and board, condoms, licenses and legally required medical tests. But what she wistfully terms the good old days -- when she could see up to 13 men a day and afford to turn down customers -- are gone.

Tonight, the bartender counts four brothel customers. Maybe, Salinas says, things will pick up. Some car buffs are in Wells for a show. "I don't know," Amy says. "They bring their wives." The other women -- who likewise use pseudonyms and hide their jobs from their children and friends -- are discouraged too.

Tori, a blond veteran with a no-nonsense manner -- she waves off questions about her age -- commutes from the Reno area with an array of wigs and sequined get-ups. In the early '90s, she was laid off from a Southern California real estate office; she eventually turned to the brothel circuit: winters in southern Nevada, summers up north. She wants to work in auto sales but makes do at Donna's.

"Some other places want you to work 24 hours," she says. "They don't want you to sleep."

Danielle, younger and more reserved than the other women, is passing time solving word puzzles. She is milky-skinned with a long brown ponytail. She ended up here after a divorce. She periodically flies to South Carolina -- ticket prices have soared -- and tries to return with at least $2,000. But most customers have been trying to bargain down their prices. Some are paying with credit cards -- an indication they don't have as much cash. (The receipts say Apache Wells Development Co., not Donna's Ranch.)

"Whatever they have," Amy says, "you have to take it."

Earlier, when she was parrying with the trucker, Amy curled up at a folding table just big enough for a radio and mike, a water bottle, a gray stuffed kitten, an ashtray and a dry erase board listing selling points:

Free beer. Free chili. Free shower. SOUVENIRS.

"I'm going to bed," the trucker tells her.

"Maybe come here and have a happy ending?" she purrs.

"Tell me what a happy ending is."

"I can't talk about it over the radio."

Silence.

Thanks, the trucker says. Not tonight.

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ashley.powers@latimes.com