Cat In An Aqua Storm

She thrust out a foot in a canvas wedgie. Temple glimpsed swollen ankles and veins like angry red crayon marks. “Kelly was too cute and too smart to end up like her mom. She started as ring girl at wrestling matches when she was fifteen, then got a job waitressing at a topless club.”

“That’s how most of us break in,” Kelly said. “We see how the moves go. We also see how much better the tips are.”

“But you’re paid to cozy up to a lot of strange men.”

“So is Meryl Streep.”

“Some of those guys are pretty revolting.”

Kelly shrugged her handsome shoulders, flapping the ruffled gingham cherub wings that covered them. “Most of them are just lonely. Harmless. They pay for attention, and they get it. It’s a transaction. Damn few ever step over the line. They know what the girls are there for and how they make their money. It’s worth it to them to stuff a rolled-up fifty in my G-string, better than gambling with it. And we’re stars, girl, to them.”

Temple believed Kelly, but she wasn’t satisfied that the stripper’s life was that simple.

“What about Dorothy Horvath?”

“Who?” Both Bartles spoke in tandem.

“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.