Pussy On Parade

Miss Honoré held emergency auditions three weeks after Rachel’s last appearance in Extravaganza!

What she was looking for was merely some bodies. Good bodies, tall bodies, bodies with a minimum ability to count music, she hoped, but mostly bodies, just to fill the stage and give the costumes a place to hang.

What she hoped for, as always, was Pussy Galore reborn.

Vegas showgirls have been called many things, but in Miss Honoré’s mind they were no more nor less than the ultimate Bond Girls. Super feminine and super powerful, willing to melt in any man’s arms who proved himself worthy, but steel-spined bitches to any man who failed. They were what feminism aimed for but missed, what the ancient Amazons tried for but couldn’t conceive, what women were designed to be, as she’d lectured more than one cowering reporter over the years. She sat down in the Extrav! audience twice a year hoping for that girl, that magic, and was invariably disappointed, no matter how much dancing ability or how much beauty she observed. Pussy Galore, Honoré mourned, had passed away once and for all. She collected and stacked the new resumes, and leafed through them as she called this audition to order.

Auditions, under Honoré, followed an invariant pattern. Barring magic, she wanted to see the hopefuls demonstrate they could dance, prove they could listen, and show some small indications of poise and professionalism. She had her own system for testing these attributes, which did not always go over well with the participants in question.

There was nothing resembling ballet in Extravaganza!, but Honoré always began with a short ballet combination, anyway, choreographed and taught by her assistant, Gina. Gina was never much of a presence anywhere– she’d acceded to the assistant company manager position mostly because she’d survived more Extravaganza! contracts than anybody else. In fact, Miss Honoré had been surprised she was still around, when the question of an assistant came up. She hadn’t noticed the girl in years.

Gina usually taught her ballet steps so quietly and unobtrusively that the girls who were supposed to be learning them never noticed her, either. They certainly couldn’t hear her, and generally had no idea she was anyone of importance. The ballet portion of the proceedings tended, therefore, to be chaotic, disorganized, injurious, and marked mainly by dancers stridently demanding to know what was going on and who was in charge. It was also, in consequence, mercifully short. After being treated to three or four raging stampedes of girls rambling across the stage with no rhythm, displaying not the least hint of grace or choreography, Miss Honoré would pick up a mic, yell “Stop, stop!” in tones that had been known to shatter eardrums, and then she would slide out from her seat in the center booth and stomp on stage to take control of things, herself. Gina, in shame, would melt into the shadows of whatever booth was nearest and shuffle some papers.

Miss Honoré would then proceed to tutor the auditioners in something basic, like a showgirl walk. Showgirls in Vegas, as Testy had explained many a time to brand-new ballerinas who had somehow landed on her row (Ellen had been the most recent) do not just schlep from place to place on stage. Neither do they float, as ballerinas are wont to do, or grind their way, as Broadway dancers might. Showgirls swivel, they reach their long legs out like flamingos, they slide along sideways without ever turning their displayed breasts anywhere but straight ahead. Their hips swing and twist and move in half-circles, their legs extend so far they cover more floor with each step than any other woman could in three. They mesmerize and scandalize. The showgirl walk may be the single biggest contribution the state of Nevada has made to sex, legalized prostitution notwithstanding. And that walk, that undulating, sexual, super-feline way of moving, was generally Step Two of an Extrav! audition, tutored and demonstrated by Miss Honoré herself, and leaving, all who beheld her aghast and in awe.

“Wow,” one out-of-town girl told another on this particular occasion, “She’s some old broad– imagine your grandmother doing that?”

“Sh!” her friend told her, staring and struggling vainly to move her hips in anything like the figure-eight inverted swirl of Honoré’s. “If we can’t do this it’s back to L.A. and waiting tables for a buck fifty in tips.”

“I bet they’d tip better if we walked like that,” the first girl commented, and, indeed, they did, when both girls were thrown out five minutes later, along with half the others who’d also failed to meet Honoré’s standards. They drove, dejected, back to Southern California, where they worked on their walking technique and soon had income and table service jobs beyond their wildest dreams. They eventually gave up dancing altogether, and opened the first waitress employment agency, where they made millions teaching other girls The Walk that Honoré had shown them and then reaping a percentage of the take from restaurants all over Southern California.

“Gina’s going to teach you a number, now,” Honoré announced over the mic again, having returned to her booth and resettled herself. The two or three stage hands who were present watched her warily, ready to stuff cotton in their ears. But Honoré’s walking stint always calmed her. “Now, pay attention this time.” And she set down the mic with a heavy clunk and waited while the hapless Gina set about familiarizing the girls with a few eight counts worth of dancing from Extravaganza!

On this memorable occasion, Honoré realized early on, watching the two dozen or so remaining hopefuls stumble through the movements, there was only one girl up there worth looking at. One girl, indeed, caught her attention right away, and held it. That girl wasn’t bothering to watch Gina, or learn the number, or do anything remotely similar to anything the girls around her were doing. Honoré stared at her, and kept staring. She couldn’t imagine why she hadn’t noticed her in the walking. Or even the ballet.

“That’s enough, that’s enough,” she cut Gina off early. “Let’s see what they’ve got. You–” she pointed at the one girl, and riffled without looking down through the pictures and resumes on the table in front of her. “What’s your name?”

“Venus,” the girl said.

Honoré waited. “Venus,” she repeated when a moment had passed. She noticed, out of the corner of her eye, that all the stage hands had stopped in their tasks, far upstage and in the wings and out here in the audience. They were all staring at... Venus, if that really was her name. Honoré was sure she’d seen no resume with anything like that on it.

“Have you ever danced before?” she asked into the mic.

“For years,” the girl answered.

She tossed her hair a bit. She stood center stage and waited. Honoré heard a gulp from her left. One of the sound guys, busy rewiring a speaker till half a minute ago, was nearly falling off the stage.

This “Venus” obviously knew nothing about the business. Her hair was all over the place, she wore no makeup, and she hadn’t even offered any contact information. Honoré had certainly never considered anyone who didn’t know at least those basics. “Let’s see you,” she said, and Venus waited while four other girls, hastily hustled out by Gina, took their places all around her.

Honoré waved a hand, and the music started. And the four girls around Venus danced.

At least, Honoré assumed they danced. They must have– they still wanted the job, they were trained dancers—when music came on, all dancers danced. That was how they were built, how their brains were wired. But in this case, at this particular time, Miss Honoré Jerques never noticed what those four girls did at all. Because Venus, in the middle of them, also moved.

You couldn’t call it dancing. Not exactly. There was nothing discernable as a step. But it was... sensuous, and enticing, and utterly, utterly fascinating. Honoré heard a sudden clatter and assumed that the careless sound man had fallen the four feet to the pit floor. No one made a move to help him. Venus kept on shimmying, or shifting, or whatever she was doing, long after the other girls ran out of choreography. The music ran on until it ended, which, since this was a cut from the show, itself, took about five minutes.

There was silence for another minute. The girls on stage all stared at Venus. Gina forgot to get out of sight. She stood right out in the open where Miss Honoré might yell at her, eyes fixed on Venus, jaw hanging loosely. All the stage hands and waiters who’d come in early to set the room stood still. Miss Honoré caught a flash of dark blue to one side and saw that a pride of executives had wandered in from the hotel offices. They, too, were silent, and moved only to get closer to Venus, creeping slowly down the rows toward the pit where they could worship her more intimately.

“Ahem,” Miss Honoré cleared her throat, and it echoed through the speakers and around the theater. “Very nice. And... Venus–” she’d have to do something about that name, it was ridiculous, “are you available immediately?”

Venus smiled down from on high, and everyone else in the room smiled back, their faces lighting up and lifting to meet her warmth, pouring out from center stage at them.

“I’m here for your pleasure,” she promised, and raised her eyebrows naughtily. She giggled.

Miss Honoré disciplined her lips into a straight line. “Let’s go down to my office,” she said. “I’d like to talk to you.”

She set the mic down on the table and slid out of the booth again. Then she made her way along the row, down the stairs to the pit, through the tables, and up to the stage one more time, while all around her the room stayed silent. The crowd waited, their every breath and every muscle held perfectly still. Venus kept smiling, and looked all around at everyone, meeting, it seemed, each pair of eyes that stared at her, and dimpling back at them. Honoré heard tiny, individual gasps from around the theater, and adjusted her jacket, her skirt as she climbed on stage. “Won’t you come with me?” she asked Venus.

“Of course!” the marvelous girl said, and Honoré knew that Venus was not just happy but thrilled. She was fulfilled to walk– with her, Honoré and only Honoré– down the stairs, through the hallways, to the office. Just them. Just the two of them.

Pussy Galore could eat her heart out.

Honoré nodded at Venus, and Venus shook her hair and fell in with her, and they strolled across the world’s largest stage and disappeared, and all around the room the dozens of dancers, and the dozens more who’d been dismissed but hadn’t left yet, and the stage hands, and the waiters, and the hotel executives who’d come in for a cheap thrill at lunch, and Gina, all stared after them as they went and didn’t say a word or take a breath until they’d gone.

NEXT POST: A CLUTTER OF CATS (Friday 11/20)