“The woman who died Monday.”
“Oh, you mean Glinda.” Kelly nodded sadly. “We' almost all use stage names, and that was hers. Dorothy.” She shook her head. “Doesn’t sound like her. Maybe that was the point.”
“She was getting away from her past then, remaking it?”
“Most of these girls,” Mildred said, leaning forward to prop both elbows on the tabletop, “have had bad breaks, that’s true. Some of it’s pretty sad. Fathers that were beaters, or worse. I didn’t let Kelly in for any of that. I could have remarried a time or two, but by then it was pretty plain that she was going to be a looker. I didn’t want no stepfather messing her up just because 1 was as desperate for a man, or a man with a job, as a dog for a bone. No, sir.”
“That’s admirable,” Temple said, meaning it. She didn’t need Ruth and her statistics to know that stepfathers or a live-in boyfriends often abused the children of another man, and that their mothers didn’t—couldn’t, wouldn’t—see it because of their own abused pasts, or their financial dependence or their fear of independence.
“So,” Temple summed up, “you’re your daughter’s big sister. You support her, travel with her—”
“Hey,” Kelly put in, interrupting a pull on her beer, “I support her. I told you the money was good.”
“I meant emotionally, not economically,” Temple clarified.
“We support each other,” Mildred put in, pushing back one of her strapping daughter’s errant little-girl curls. “Don’t we, sweetie?”
“That’s right,” Kelly said. “We’re a team.”
Mama Rose and Gypsy these two were not. Temple sensed an easygoing affection between them that would be the envy of many mothers and daughters in primly proper families, often hopelessly estranged themselves. This duo liked and needed each other, despite, or maybe because of, the daughter’s supposedly seamy line of work.
She eavesdropped on her own thoughts, then analyzed them. “Supposedly”? Was she getting converted to life on the wild side? She suddenly recalled her own mother’s horror when Temple had developed a yen for amateur theatricals in high school. The playhouses were invariably in “bad” neighborhoods and the other cast members, especially the males, were suspect from the first read-through until the cast party.
That might be an interesting angle for a newspaper feature... strippers’ moms. Yeah. Temple eyed the cocktail area, looking for more story sources.
Ike Wetzel held court at a round, slate-topped table amid a harem of female strippers. The waitress was circling to deliver another round of drinks, her skimpy veils floating around her metal bikini.
Temple couldn’t join that table, not even in her most professional capacity, without aligning herself with the harem, so she looked farther afield.
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.