Cat In An Aqua Storm

“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.

“Don’t you have one?”

Blondie tilted her head at the questionnaire and pouted her lips indecisively. “Beating the shit out of my old man.” She laughed, her eyes uneasy.