Rachel

Rachel Ferguson had been dancing topless for nearly twenty years, and she loved it. She was currently working in Las Vegas’ largest, longest running, most over-the-top tits and feathers production ever. It featured 120 dancers, a dozen acrobats, assorted jugglers and plate spinners, a magician, and a real blimp that came in for a landing upstage center. The sets were bigger than apartment houses. The stage was big enough to house a baseball diamond. Complete with outfield. And bleachers. The show was called, with stunning clarity, Extravaganza!

“Have any of you seen that table far stage left?” Rachel asked her dressing roommates between Opening and the Big Bow parade. The six of them more or less appeared together throughout the show. They might go nights or weeks without seeing the dancers around the corner, but they dressed next to each other, trooped on- and off-stage together, showered and fixed their makeup side-by-side from 7:00 till 2:00 six nights a week. “It’s a bunch of tourists. Their mouths were hanging open when the curtain went up. But now they’re grinning and waving at us every time we come on – they’re cute.”

“I saw one cute guy stage right. Up in the second row of booths,” Nadja, the youngest girl, put in as she brushed on more mascara.

“He’s sitting with his wife, and she hasn’t let go of his hand once since the curtain went up and she saw the wall of boobs staring back at her,” said Sharon, who’d spent twelve years staring out at Vegas audiences and could diagnose age, weight, marital status, shoe size, and chances for faithfulness in a single glance. She screwed on her hairpiece and inspected her reflection. “Maybe I should go blond again,” she said.

“Still, he’s cute.”

Ellen, the sweet girl next to Nadja who never said a word, nodded wordlessly.

“Oof,” Heddy, a Norwegian Amazon with an impenetrable accent, said to herself in the mirror.

“You said it sister,” Linda agreed. She spent her days studying pre-law and arrived backstage each night with piles of books in her arms and dark rings under her eyes. She troweled her way through gallons of concealer and was known for her professional onstage sneer, honed for a decade in shows from Vegas to Madrid to Tokyo and now preparing to make its debut in the courts. “This crowd is awful. It’s like performing for dead fish out there.”

“Did anybody hear about a new show down at the Louisiana Purchase?” Rachel changed the subject.

“They’re doing a show?” Sharon retorted. “For who? Who goes to that place? They don’t even have a theater – are they doing it on that dinky little bandstand in the middle of the casino? Jee-zus, that’ll be classy. Testy, where’s my scarf?”

Their dresser, Testy Lesbiana, whose talents were legend and whose presence as their sartorial den mother made this line of girls the envy of every other dancer in Vegas, stuck her head around the costume rack at the end of the room. “On your hanger, where I told you. Who’s ready?”

Rachel hurried over.

“God help me, Test,” she muttered. “Every time I think I’ve come up with a safe topic of conversation in here, Linda or Sharon find a way to get all steamed about it.”

“Just get out, fast,” Testy advised. “Suck in, I relined this thing before the show.” She wrapped a sash around Rachel’s waist and hooked it, fastening a six foot blue and orange bow to her hips like the wrapping of the Birthday Present That Ate Fremont Street. Rachel wiggled it back and forth a bit.

“Nice work, Test,” she nodded. “It barely rustles. You are so good to me.” She blew an air kiss.

“Yeah, yeah. Now just get outta here.”

“Javol!” Rachel swirled the bow around and started making her way out through the opposite end of the wardrobe room. “Coming through!” she yelled as a startled dresser scrambled backward into a rack of costumes to save herself. “Wide load, wide load!”

She grinned, making her way through the racks, tables, and doorways, past the other dancers and the crew and the stored, stacked sets for other numbers. Another night at Extravaganza! the biggest show in the history of Las Vegas. Another audience of twelve hundred people, eager for the sight of her. Another number, another notch in her metaphorical g-string, which had so many notches in it now that it was falling into metaphorical ribbons.

That last part worried her a bit these days. How many notches could she carve before the powers that be decreed she’d been notching too long? How many more shows before she got booted, dumped, kicked out on her ass in the alley outside the stage door, sequin-stripped and de-lashed forever?

Better not to think about it. Now was time for Big Bows! Extravaganza! The grandeur! The spectacle and beauty! The bigger-than-life thrills!

NEXT: TESTY LESBIANA (Monday 7/13)