Cat In An Aqua Storm

She undid the chain and left it swaying while she retreated to the bedroom. Not that the huge towel wasn’t perfectly modest. It just made her look like a resuscitated mummy, and walk like one too.

In the bedroom, Temple threw on her handy wraparound dress and low-heeled mules, then checked herself in the bathroom mirror. Nothing makeup could do for her now. The tuna sandwich had gotten soggy absorbing the hot water, and the ice had melted in the glass mug, creating an unappetizing liquid the color of pink lemonade.

She opened the tub drain to let the water gurgle out, grabbed the paper by the phone on which she had scribbled down the rhymes, and hustled into the living room.

Matt was standing by the French doors, arms folded and legs braced. From the back he was well built enough to pass for a Newd Dude, but less intimidatingly muscular. Self-absorbed bodybuilders were likely total losses as romantic interests, anyway.

He turned. “I didn’t mean to wake you. I just stopped in to see how you’re doing.”

“Okay. I spent two-thirds of the day at the Goliath and was more tired than I knew.”

“I stopped at the penthouse to ask Electra to keep an eye on you, but there’s no answer.”

“Oh, Electra... she might be doing errands, riding around. You know.”

“No, I don’t. She usually sticks close to the Circle Ritz in case an impromptu wedding party shows up and she has to officiate.”

“I’m sure she’ll be back later.” Temple felt it was Electra’s business to tell anyone what she was up to. And she was sure the landlady had a backup JP to cover the Lover’s Knot wedding chapel attached to the Circle Ritz building.

Matt rotated his lightly tanned wrist to check his Timex. Temple saw a thin white line where it had shifted. None of the strippers, female or male, had tans with unwanted white lines, she would bet. She’d heard the women chattering of tan booths and untimely burns. Too bad they didn’t know that a touch of reality is so much more inciting to the imagination than premeditated perfection.

“I just thought of something,” she said.

“Yes?” Ever-helpful Matt, ever ready to listen.

“I’ve been spending so much time among the strippers, and something about the men strippers just struck me.” She paused. It was probably a dumb question. “Maybe you’d know, being into physical fitness.”

“Wait a minute. I like to swim and I’ve studied martial arts since high school. That’s not ‘being into physical fitness.’ ”

“Well, being a man, then.” He couldn’t object to that. “These guys are really Arnold Jrs., overbuilt, if you ask me. But none of them have hair on their chest—and not much body hair anywhere else that shows. Is it because they take steroids, or what? Or do men who have no body hair become strippers? Fascinating, isn’t it?”

Matt smiled. “I have to answer a lot of difficult questions at the hot line, but I’ve never gotten one like that. It could be steroids, Temple. And I’d guess that if they went to all the trouble to build that muscle, they wouldn’t want anything obscuring it. I’ve heard some guys who wrestle shave their chests, and even their legs.”

“Their legs! You mean these big, macho guys go through the same rigmarole as women?”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Maybe they get it waxed,” Temple mused. “That would last longer than shaving such big areas. Can you picture these guys lined up in a salon covered in hot wax?”

“No, but evidently you can.” Matt was laughing. “You don’t miss anything, do you?”

“I’m just curious about people, and being around so many professionally pretty people is mind-blowing. I wonder if men really find women who work at being that calculatedly ‘female’ attractive? Frankly, the guys’ overinflated muscles and bulging veins and jeans turn me off instead of on. It’s all too-too. Is that terrible of me? Am I not with it?”

“Just sounds to me like you know what you like.”

“Real people,” she said promptly and firmly.

He was quiet for a moment, his eyes sobering. “Then the magician’s disappearance must have been quite a shock.”

“Oh, yeah. But then, who is real? As I get to know these women strippers a little, I see their toughness and their tragedies, and I like them. They may be selling a perfect fantasy, but they’re far from perfect, and they know it. I don’t understand if the skin game is kicky and liberating, or a symptom of repression and oppression and obsession and all those other big words. Maybe I don’t understand it because I never qualified for it.”

“What do you mean? You’re attractive.”