Cat In An Aqua Storm

She bent over from the waist, hands to the floor, without flexing her knees. Spandex boldly left where spandex had been before, exposing cleavage north and south.

“So you’re basically an athlete,” Temple hazarded.

Racy stretched her lean ectomorphic form into a backward shimmy. “Yeah, I guess you could say so.”

Temple left her there, defying gravity, and gingerly approached an Amazon with Cher-black hair tumbling down her lean bare back. Black was her color: thigh-high patent leather boots and a silver-studded wet-look G-string/teddy combination topped with a velvet garter belt. Open-knuckled wrist-length black gloves and an understated leather riding crop completed the outfit.

She posed in the mirror, jutting hips in turn, cocking out first one knee, then another, analyzing her looks and movement with concentrated objectivity.

“May I ask your stage name?” Temple said a bit diffidently.

The woman flicked a glance to Temple’s notebook. “What are you writing down?”

“Just some notes to myself. I’m doing PR for the competition, but got in late—”

“Oh, you replaced that Buchanan creep.”

“Right.”

“Well.” Shoulders shrugging, the woman returned her eyes to her image in the mirror and took a straddling stance while flinging her whip-hand behind her head.

This was a big-boned, plain woman, despite her aggressively erotic attire. Temple wondered how much she appealed to men on the town, with her lanky body, bony shoulders and stingy breasts.

“Switch Bitch.” The woman threw the words sharply over her shoulder at Temple, like a whip lash.

“I beg your pardon?” Temple responded, bridling. Was the creature inviting her to trade places?

The long, serious face peered past the false fall of luster-less curls. “My stage name,” she repeated patiently. “Switch Bitch.”

“Oh.” Temple nodded and wrote it down, desperately wondering how she could work that into a family-rated press release. Maybe she should stick to mentioning the straight acts, like Randy Candy, Lacy Lavender, or the ever-tasteful Otto Erotica.

She wandered on, clutching her notepad amid a mob carrying far more lethal props, beginning to feel that she was overdressed.

She didn't have to worry about approaching one of the he-men stalking to and fro with musclebound gait: a veritable Hercules stomped into her path, pectoral muscles twitching on his bare and hairless bronzed chest. Hadn't any of these people heard about overexposure to UVs?

“Hi” was his ancient yet unoriginal gambit. “You're new here.”

“Yup.”

“Don't be shy, little lady. Find a spot and get to work.”

“I am. I'm doing PR for the competition, so I’m going around getting a feel for—er, a grip on... I'm learning about the contestants.”

“Great.” He grinned down at her in utter self-satisfaction, blocking her way with his inescapable nudity as well as his formidable physique. As a stray riff from another stripper’s nearby boom box surged to a climax, he circled his hips and ground a pelvic bump in her direction.

Temple gazed on massive thigh muscles oiled to mahogany perfection, and a commendably flat groin clothed only in a glossy gold G-string and apparently housing a croquet ball. She was not impressed. She had heard about rock stars and their socks in the crotch trick.

“Ah, very nice,”^, she said, taking advantage of his frozen pose to skitter around and past her human obstacle.

“Hey, don’t you want my name?”

The man actually sounded hurt, so Temple stopped a safe distance away, turned and held her pen at the ready.

“Ken,” he said, flashing teeth, charm and smoldering eyes. “I’m with Newd Dudes. N-e-w-d. We’re the hottest group on the Coast.”

“Newd Dudes,” Temple repeated. “Shrewd. See ya.” And she clattered away so fast she bumped into someone.

“Oh. Sorry!” Temple recognized the T-shirt. “Lindy, isn’t it?”

The woman nodded, glanced back at the still idiotically grinning Newd Dude, then jerked her head toward the ballroom doors. “Listen. I could use a smoke in peace. Come on down to the dressing rooms, and I’ll fill you in on more stuff about the contest.”

Temple hesitated. She wasn’t crazy about cigarette smoke, but she could use a break from so much blatant skin. Not being used to it, she didn’t know where to look. She felt like a nun in a nudist camp.

“Shell shock,” Lindy said with a grin that revealed she could read Temple’s mind. “Civilians always get it the first few hours. Come on, there’ll be fewer girls down in the dressing rooms and you can get some straight dope. Strippers don’t screw around with half-assed answers.”

“No, they don’t. I can see that,” Temple agreed as Lindy propelled her past an agile miss engaged in bending from the waist and sliding to the floor by doing the splits. “Isn't the dressing-room area where the murder occurred?"

Lindy was making top time in her battered sneakers, but she stopped on a dime at Temple's question.