Cat In An Aqua Storm

"Tech rehearsals are the best time to get the feel of a show,” she pronounces. "Some of my directors say I do my best work at the rehearsals." Laughter hearty, hers. Laughter polite, her attendants. Laughter silent and unconvinced, mine. "Do you want me to turn left? Right?” Her feet swivel so fast that one translucent heel nearly kicks me in the kisser. "Three-quarters is my best angle.”

I hear the murmur of some camera jockey.

"My—what? Hat. Oh, cat! Of course, my Darling Yvette. Yes, I still travel with her."

I hunch forward, all ears.

"Not here. She was sleeping. I left her carrying case in the dressing room. I could send someone for her—” Said hopefully, even as the camera dollies back and away. “Rats!” Miss Savannah Ashleigh hisses to herself, and inadvertently to me.

Or rather, to my decamping posterior. I, too, am dollying away, slinking among the oblivious feet and chair legs, heading for the dressing room and my own particular Sleeping Beauty. I am a habitué of the chorus girls' dressing rooms at every hotel in town. Nobody is as generous as a hoofer, especially to a dude who has to pound the pavement day in and day out with four feet instead of two.

So I am down the back stairs before you can say “Stage door Louie.” No guard is on duty yet: the show doesn’t start until seven p.m. Since everybody else is beating their feet on the ballroom floor, the windowless depths beneath the stage are dark and deserted, except for muslin-shrouded costume racks lining the concrete corridors, I stick my puss in a few dressing rooms and encounter—more shoes, these in a scattered, unpaired condition... more chairs askew... the poignant twinkle of sequin and rhinestone on abandoned headdresses... the tremulous nod of ostrich feathers dyed a color no self-respecting ostrich would claim.

At last a sound draws my alert ears to another dressing room. I hear a shoe scrape across the bare floor—no sense carpeting a room where spilled cosmetics will soon make it a twin to the deliberately nauseous carpet upstairs. I also hear the apparent gargling of a parrot—ugly birds with uglier beaks and claws.

I dart inside the door and shelter under a row of identical magenta sequined Flamenco gowns with turkey-feather ruffles. A feather tangles in my eyelash, then tickles my nose. I am about to sneeze when I spot a pink canvas bag under the opposite chair. In emblazoned silver letters, I read the name “Yvette.” Behind the pink mesh side lies a dim form.