Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In An Aqua Storm

Four he-men in muscle T-shirts hunkered around a tiny cocktail table meant for the intimacy of two, long-neck beers rampant before them.

Temple supposed it was her duty to investigate the male side of the issue, but approached gingerly, wary of blazing pelvises. The guys seemed a lot more up front, excuse the expression, she told herself, about enjoying their notoriety.

She marched over the carpet and paused beside the gathered hunks. “Hi, guys. I wonder if you could answer some questions?”

“Anytime, pretty lady,” said one.

Another rose and lumbered over to a nearby table, politely asking if a vacant chair was taken. Even if it was, would anybody in their right mind say so?

He efficiently swept it under Temple’s derriere as she sat, and took his own chair again.

She tried to avoid nudging knees with anybody, but given the smallness of the table and the quantity of knees, not to mention their massiveness, that seemed impossible. Temple was used to feeling small among the rest of the population. With these guys, she felt like a fly in an elephant yard.

“You with Entertainment Tonight ?” a man with Schwarzenegger muscles and crew cut asked.

“No. I’m doing public relations for the competition. If ET wants to do a competition segment, or if I can talk them into one, then maybe you guys’ll get lucky and meet Lisa Hartman. But probably not,” she warned. “She doesn’t do every segment in person.”

“Shucks. What’s your name?” asked another.

“Temple Barr.”

“Temple’s a neat name.”

“Would sound great onstage,” another put in.

“Any relation to Candy Barr?” teased the third, citing a famous stripper.

“Only in our apparent addiction to... chocolate. Really, if you guys wouldn’t mind talking about your work, I’d be able to put together a press release.”

“Yeah, let us do release the press!”

“All right!” the others agreed, slapping the heels of their hands together while Temple blinked at such enthusiastic physical force.

Maybe she had become subconsciously leery of big men since... no! She couldn’t get paranoid. For all their muscular presence, not one of these guys was more than twenty-four, and they all exuded a wholesome, careless energy that was rather engaging. If only they’d been around when the bad guys had decided to do a drum riff of “Night and Day” on her torso...

So she asked questions, they answered, and she soon could put names—stage names—to individuals rather than clones.

Kirk wore his hair wild-man-long. It brushed his well-developed shoulders and gave him a wicked, rock-star look. He would ride a motorcycle (probably a Hesketh Vampire, without a helmet), although a woman of any experience at all would realize that underneath he was a moody, Marlon Brando kind of guy. “You “know... sensitive.” Umm-hmm .

Stetson’s sun-streaked blond hair was long only in back. His tanned, muscled body radiated an outdoorsy, oil-rig-working, skin-cancer-defying, construction-crew kind of macho. The Last American He-man. Performing was putting him through pre-med.

The crew cut was Butch, of course. Butch was all man, and all muscle, and one day he hoped to be Mr. Universe. And maybe be in movies, like Arnold. Saint Arnold.

And Cheyenne, lean, rangy Cheyenne: dark-eyed, dark-haired, racially and sexually ambiguous, a dangerous trait in the Age of AIDS, but attractive, perhaps for that reason. Cheyenne was truly the strong, silent type, and finally admitted after repeated questions that he was an actor, kind of. He had auditioned for a soap recently. Temple could picture him in seminaked, steamy close-ups, getting tons of fan mail from ladies who would never think beyond the obvious.

Finally, Temple got around to her eternal “Why?”

“The money’s great!” said Butch.

“And it’s fun,” Kirk added.

“The chicks are really into it. You should see ’em,” Stetson said. “Here at the competition doesn’t count. It’s an audience of your peers. You should come to a club and watch us.”

“Yeah,” said Temple, “the women perform solo, but you guys usually go onstage in a group. Why? Chicken?” It felt good to pass on Electra’s challenge. The question also loosened whatever inhibitions they had left.

“Naw,” Kirk said. “But it’s true that guys are a new wrinkle in the club game. We’re not supposed to package it and sling it around unless we’re gay.”

“Is that why you emphasize the muscles and the macho poses?” she asked.

Butch shook his virtually hairless head. “We’re body builders, first and foremost. That’s what you gotta understand. We’re used to performing at bodybuilding competitions in no more than a posing pouch. Stripping isn’t much different.”

“Except we get paid for it,” Stetson put in.

“Man, those tips...” Cheyenne’s smile was slow and sensual.

“You don’t feel it’s undignified—?”

“Hell, yes!” Kirk burst out. “But they don’t ask at the bank how dignified your money is. Besides, it’s a kick to watch women act like raving animals for a change.”

“They know it’s not real,” Temple pointed out.

“Yeah.” Kirk was definite. “It’s not real, and that’s okay. Too much of life is real.”

“Like the murder of those female strippers,” she suggested.

The young men’s faces grew sober for the first time.

“Bummer,” Kirk murmured.

Stetson shook his blond head. “It almost makes you feel guilty. We guys get all the hoopla and the good clean fun, and the girl strippers get the sick.”

“You think a psycho did it?” Temple asked.

“Who else?” Cheyenne asked angrily. “Look. We’re doing this and no one will think we’re trash because of it. But women—they’re damned if they do, damned if they don’t. Maybe none of us said it, but it’s healthy to be up-front about your sexuality. But when they do it, women always get a bad rap.”

She was surprised by their angry-young-men passion, by their guilt on behalf of their own gender. “I was going to ask if stripping is exploitive.”

They nodded in concert.

“We exploit our audiences, you know?” Kirk said. “They exploit us. But we both know it.”

“We make money.” Stetson added. “We show off what we worked on, our bodies. We get to be somebody, not just some body. It’s the same for the women, except... a lot of them use stripping to work out deep identity and self-esteem problems. And when the men pant and pay, it’s not a harmless joke, like it is for us. It’s history. Some men can prey on women in nasty ways.”

Temple nodded. She liked these young men. Their work/art/identity was much more clear-cut than it was for the women. They were earthy, attractive, and they knew the score. They would be safe to fantasize about. And to not take seriously.

“Thanks,” she said. “You’ve helped.”

They couldn’t understand that they’d helped with more personal issues than understanding the urges to strip or make money.

“My card.” Cheyenne handed her a plain white two-and-a-half-by-three. Cheyenne, it read. And a phone number.

Everybody, she thought wearily as she walked away, is an entrepreneur.

22

Golden Girls and Boys . . .

S he was “Barred”from the ballroom, so Temple headed, like a lemming toward her irresistible doom, for the part of a theater she knew, loved and understood the best. Offstage. The dressing rooms. Why was she kidding herself? The dressing room was the only murder scene accessible to her.

Something still nagged her, and tugged at her subconscious like an advertising ditty you can’t forget.