Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In An Aqua Storm

Each act lasted only the four or five minutes of a song. Then the main stage performer rotated to bartop or tabletop, writhing for the solitary men who occupied the stools and seats. After several acts, Ruth indicated she was decamping. Temple rose to accompany her, and Lindy followed.

Instead of leading them to the big front door, Lindy threaded a path through the tables occupied by a sprinkling of men. Ruth was as nervous as Temple about their passage blocking the audience’s view of their entertainment. They scurried after Lindy like ducklings not about to abandon Mama, and dove in relief through an open doorway to the right of the main stage.

They found themselves in rest room so unglamorous that the phrase “ladies’ john,” however oxymoronic, best described it. Temple took in graffiti-tattooed, generic cubicles, a single sink, a mirror above a powder-strewn shelf. On one cubicle door, the words “Theda’s Throne” were picked out in transfer letters and adorned with the iridescent metallic decals so popular among teenage girls.

Besides the standard wall-hung tampon dispenser, this john offered a wall-hung perfume dispenser, mute testimony to how hard a girl had to labor to make disrobing look easy.

The irregularly shaped room, obviously chopped from whatever space was available, also served as a hallway. Lindy passed through to a long narrow room equipped with lockers on one end, and with the stock mirrors and makeup lights lining both long sides.

Only a couple of chairs occupied the space, abandoned far from the mirrors. This was not a dressing room where one sat and applied makeup with leisurely care.

Three or four slim, small-breasted dancers in a state of stage undress stood before the mirrors fussing with their getups. Nylon gym bags gaped open on the countertops before them, disgorging hair spray, makeup and pins.

Female visitors were immediately drafted as dorm sisters.

“What do you think?” a blonde with Madonna-black roots asked the newcomers, ankling over on high heels. A purple satin garter belt frosted with black lace was all the coverage her thong-back G-string got, and was the only thing holding up her black lace stockings.

She turned. The garters were absent from the back set of black satin streamers. “Can I get away with tucking these suckers up?”

While she demonstrated what she had in mind, Temple wondered how long the energetic pelvic motions required on stage would keep anything tucked up, including the presumably private portions of her anatomy.

“Looks stupid,” said a towering redhead wearing a Day-Glo G-string-plus-suspenders outfit. It mimicked a teddy that had been left in the rain too long and had shrunk beyond belief. “Pin the ribbons to the stockings.”

“No pins!” the first woman wailed.

“Let me check.” The redhead rooted through her huge bag, but despite unearthing a vast quantity of makeup and costume fragments, dredged up not a single safety pin.

The blonde turned to regard her bare, unbestreamered rear in the mirror. “I need the stockings held up in back,” she decided. “Besides, it looks better.”

In the name of full coverage, such as it was, Temple dropped her tote bag to a chair and began rummaging. From her fat paisley cosmetic bag she took the big-mama safety pin with all the little baby safety pins hanging on it that she always carried.

She flourished this find like an enemy scalp. “Voila.”

Blondie ambled over, loose garter streamers swaying pertly aft like a show horse’s tail.

“Great, thanks.” She accepted the pins that Temple detached, then twisted her agile torso to fasten the garter streamers to her stocking backs, and straightened. “How do I look?”

“Uh, terrific,” Temple said.

Ruth said nothing, apparently being in a state of shock. “Okay, babies,” a new, full-bodied voice announced, “Mama’s here with a brand new bag.”

A plain-faced, heavyset, middle-aged woman wearing loose black knit slacks and matching top swung into the room on an invisible raft of energy and good humor. She slung her camouflage-colored bag to an empty countertop and pulled over a chair, onto which she plopped.

Blondie and Scarlet hustled over.

Lindy remained leaning against a banged-up locker, smoking. For a moment, Temple thought she had heard a muted thump from within it, but Lindy remained unmoved. Temple decided she was imagining things, which was better than standing like Ruth in the middle of the floor, her purse clutched in both hands, as if she feared contamination from the cheerfully tacky surroundings.

Temple was as curious as the next woman, and possibly more than most. She approached the newcomer, who had whisked a chrome belt-ring bigger around than a bowling ball from her bag. Dangling from the ring was a glittery, colorful, lacy array of thong-back G-strings sewn from spandex pieces the size of Band-Aids. A young black dancer arrived wearing an elongated forties-patterned jacket that served as a dress, and was also swept into the whirlpool of interest eddying around the Bag lady.

“Oh, Wilma, those are so cute,” thin, tall Scarlet cooed. “Have you got any bigger ones? The last T-back I bought almost made Kitty City live up to its name.”

Wilma thumbed through her supply before pulling a magenta flocked-velvet number off the ring.

Scarlet dropped everything to wiggle into the equivalent of a slingshot. She adjusted the skimpy elastic over her narrow hips.

While Scarlet considered, beautiful Blondie of the impeccable makeup was paging through the selection with bitten-off fingernails decorated with chipped fuchsia polish.

“This will go with a gauze float I have.” She snatched at a lurid lime green leopard-print T-back that Temple wouldn’t have tried to sell to a desperate chameleon.

Off the ring the item came. Going, going, gone—for twenty-five dollars. Scarlet paid thirty-five bucks for hers, which fit just right, not that Temple could tell. Ebony stripped off her street jacket on the spot, and nearly everything else, to model a metallic-spangled copper-colored G-string-cum-straps that she bought for fifty flat. The trio scattered to separate mirrors with their booty.

Wilma didn’t need to be a hard-sell artist. She glanced at Temple from under unruly gray brows. “Anything for you?”

“Huh? Me? Oh, no... just browsing.”

“That’s okay. Look all you want. Say, kids, I got some hot new cosmetics, too.”

The ducklings came clucking back to look at glitter-embedded body gels, metallic powders, at transfer tattoos and jet black lipstick, and at nail polish in every color from green and purple to pale pink. Temple hoped that Blondie would buy some lacquer to disguise her tattered nails, but she seemed oblivious to this telling chink in her beautiful body armor.

Besides, Blondie was apparently new to the club. She was more interested in frantically filling out a form so the disc jockey could personalize her introduction.

“Favorite actor,” she fussed, reading the line. “Who was the guy in Roadhouse ?”

“I didn’t see it,” Temple answered, “but Patrick Swayze.”

“P-a-t-r-i-k. How do you spell ‘Swayze’? Quick! Anybody.”

Silence.

“S-w-a-y-z-e,” Temple said. A PR person couldn’t stop herself from giving out information on any occasion.

Blondie jiggled on her high heels. Showtime was coming. “Actress, actress, actress—who’s big?”

“Uh, Sharon Stone,” suggested Temple, coming to the rescue again. She hadn’t seen Basic Instinct , either. Now she wondered if a man-stabbing lesbian made a suitable role model for a stripper, but it was too late to backtrack.

“Favorite fantasy,” Blondie prompted again, looking expectantly at Temple.