Naughty Bits: Too Hot to Print (3 page)

It wasn’t at all sexy, though. And because it wasn’t sexy, it wasn’t burlesque. Evie sensed the audience growing restless, and the applause at the end was more polite than
appreciative. This wasn’t the kind of place that Natalie and Laura usually performed: they’d been asked to fill in because a filthy comic had dropped out at the last minute, and had
simply done one of their regular routines, sexed up a little by Natalie’s last-minute suggestion of wearing the white boots.

This dim, low-ceilinged, cabaret venue was much more Evie’s atmosphere than theirs. Evie knew how to dance sexily, always leaving something back, something to the imagination, something
that teased you by remaining perpetually just out of reach, but so close you felt you almost could grasp it, could caress it, for a split-second, with the tips of your fingers. Evie knew how to
make men, and sometimes women gasp, convince them that they had seen more than they had, but leave them even more desperate to see it again. It was a game, where you gave just enough but promised
more, a promise you never quite filled, so that you kept your audience in an endlessly-burning state of wanting, longing, flushed and swollen with desire for you that they could never completely
satisfy.

In the Lounge, Evie showed a lot less skin than some girls. She’d never needed to do the gynaecological stuff, the writhing on the floor playing with yourself, pulling at the crotch of
your g-string titillatingly, sliding it back to make it look like you were going to show everything. And, without doing any of that kind of porno crap, she made more tips than anyone else there
– which the other girls always resented.

The barman was busy setting up trays of drinks for the table service waitress, everyone wanting to get their rounds in before the final act for tonight, the headliner. Evie was squinting at his
watch, trying to work out the time. She’d told Paulie she’d be back by half-midnight, like a skanky, low-rent Cinderella.

Which, let’s face it, was exactly what she was.

And unexpectedly, the thought of going back to the Lounge depressed Evie so much that she felt herself slump on her stool, her back sagging. She wanted to put her head down on the bar and
weep.

Bam! The club was suddenly plunged into darkness. Music blared from the speakers, an old-fashioned bump-and-grind of trumpets and saxophones and the sexy pluck of a double-bass. People were
applauding already, knowing what was coming, psyched up for the headline act. Evie swivelled on her stool to face the stage. And there, in a blast of white spotlights, she was: Carrie On, one of
the biggest stars on the new-burlesque circuit. Literally.

Not that you could see much of her right now: her body was entirely concealed by two huge, beautiful mauvy-pink feather fans, each held in a gloved hand, her face peeking over the top. She
winked, and the audience clapped some more. White-blonde hair in a fall over one eye, very Veronica Lake. Cat’s-eye black eyeliner, flicked up at the corners, and fake lashes so long and
luxurious they must have been mink. Red lips, glossed and glittery, pursed into a perfect bow. And a black heart-shaped beauty spot high on one cheekbone. She looked like a boudoir fantasy, a girl
from a chocolate box come to life.

She started to dance, slowly, a controlled and choreographed routine of shimmies, wiggles, and the occasional dramatic leg kick. It was a game she was playing with the audience, to the sound of
the pumping trumpet: see what you can spot as I undulate and bend over and spin around, always covering myself with my fan. . . is that a round white hip curving through the trembling feathers for
a split second? The top of a breast? Or are you just imagining it, because the more I dance like this, the more you want to see what’s behind the fans . . .

And all the time, she was laughing, winking, flirting madly and naughtily with the spectators, making each and every one feel that she was connecting directly with them, dancing just for them.
She had them in the palm of her hand. Evie was fascinated. This was pure burlesque: the knowingness, the playfulness. The opposite of what Evie herself did, the opposite of stripping.

In Carrie On’s dancing, everyone was in on the game, everyone was having fun. This audience was happily mixed: women, men, straight, gay, all enjoying the spectacle. Carrie On was teasing,
revealing, teasing, revealing, playing with them just as a stripper did – but when you stripped, nobody laughed. God forbid. It wasn’t witty, playful, like this: it was deadly serious.
In the Midnight Lounge, the audience was almost entirely composed of straight men, with a few idiot girlfriends trying to prove to their boyfriends how cool they were. As if, Evie thought
ironically. Dumb bitches. Strippers despised those girls even more than the male clients; they were either secretly gay – so come out already! – or they were, no matter how much they
might deny it to themselves, in competitions with the strippers to be sexier. I mean, I don’t go into their jobs and try to show I can do them better, do I? Idiots.

Plus, the only feedback you got from the clients of the Lounge, Evie reflected, you did your best to ignore. You fed off their attention, sure: you knew you were performing for them. But apart
from that, you pretended they weren’t there. Really. The more you looked at them, the more gross you felt. You blurred their faces so you couldn’t see their expressions. You sang songs
in your head, loudly, so you couldn’t hear what they said to you. You pretended you were looking at the bulges in their crotches admiringly, but really you were glazing your eyes, trying not
to see any of the gross gestures they made to their fly area.

And if you were like the majority of the girls, you were hopped up on something extra – pills, booze, powder – to help you get into a happier place and blur out the clients still
further . . .

Boom! Carrie On popped a hip and a silvery garment shot off as if fired from a gun. She pantomimed surprise. The audience whooped with laughter. To the next trumpet blare, she popped the other
hip. A garter magically pinged off her leg. It was with wide-eyed amazement that she let the fan she was holding over her breasts slip down so they were revealed, two enormous white globes
imperfectly covered by a silver bustier. She looked down at them. Pop! The bustier flew off, revealing the silver tasselled pasties on her nipples. The audience was in ecstasy as they watched her
jiggle her breasts in perfect synch, spinning them in circles, the tassels flying out. As the music reached a crescendo, she swirled around, turning her back to the room, slipping away the fan
covering the equally rounded and enormous white spheres of her ass, enough so that so they could see the glittering silver G-string threading between them. She bent over, thrusting her bottom at
the audience, just as the trumpet wailed to a final top note and the lights dropped to black.

The audience went wild. Cheers, screams, whoops of applause. As the spotlights snapped on again and Carrie On, covered again by her lavender-pink fans, curtseyed demurely, laughing and waving
one silver-gloved arm in acknowledgement of her adoring public, Evie was already slipping off her stool and heading for the door.

‘Hey!’ called a voice behind her. ‘Hang on a minute!’

A tap on her shoulder made Evie swing round, realising that the voice had meant her; she looked down to see Sallie, the stage manager of Maud’s, a small, efficient, tubby little woman in a
black bandage dress that turned her figure into Ursula’s from The Little Mermaid. The thought made Evie smile: her own act, which she’d been choreographing with the help of Natalie and
Laura, cast her as a mermaid: maybe I can get Sallie to come on and do a witchy cackle, she thought, even as Sallie said:

‘So! Want to do your audition in front of an audience?’

Evie’s jaw dropped. She’d been visiting Maud’s that evening as a prelude to her audition the next day, which was scheduled for the afternoon, well before both Maud’s and
the Midnight Lounge opened for business. There was no way that there would be an audience here tomorrow afternoon; so Sallie must mean—

‘Natalie and Laura didn’t go down like a house on fire,’ Sallie said bluntly. ‘Too much acrobatics, not enough sex. They say you’re the one to bring the hoochie.
You want to take their slot in the late set? It was their idea, so you won’t be stepping on any toes.’

‘I wasn’t expecting—’Evie started.

Sallie shrugged. ‘Your costume’s here, right? Give it a shot. You’d be going on after Jerome.’ She grinned widely. ‘Trust me, he knows how to work up a crowd
– he gets them all hot and bothered, it’s a great act. So.’ She put her hands on her hips. ‘You in or out?’

I don’t have a choice, Evie thought. It’s now or never. And she wasn’t some newbie just off the bus, fresh out of stage school in Oklahoma, suddenly getting her big break
because the lead in the musical turned her ankle: she’d been stripping for ages, in front of a much more hardcore audience than this one. What the hell am I pussying around for?

‘Let me just ring Paulie at the Lounge and tell him I won’t be back, okay?’ she said, pulling out her phone.

‘You can do that from backstage,’ Sallie said, bustling her out of the bar, through an anonymous black-painted door and down very scruffy corridors.

All backstage areas look the same, Evie thought as they went; she’d visited one of the girls from the Lounge who’d got a gig as a Rockette at Radio City Music Hall last Christmas
season, had been so excited at the prestige, plus being in a show her kids could come to see. She was back at the Lounge now, telling all the girls there who met the height and leg length
requirements not to even think about trying out for the gig: they worked you like dogs, two shows a day, and backstage at Radio City was apparently a shitheap into the bargain.

Maud’s, at least, had little separate dressing rooms for its acts, partly so that they could store all of their props. Evie’s mermaid tail, her pasties and body makeup, were already
in the cubbyhole that Natalie and Laura were using for the night. They passed Carrie On’s dressing room, which was so full of huge feather fans, glittering hula hoops, showgirl’s
headdresses, that Evie didn’t know how Carrie managed to wriggle her ample figure inside it. The next room was the opposite, just a few day clothes hanging on pegs, no props at all. Just a
giant, shaved, black man, sitting on a wooden stool, wearing only a tiny black jockstrap that barely contained his privates, a jumbo-sized bottle of baby oil in his hand, dripping its contents over
his body and working them in.

Evie stopped dead. She couldn’t help it. No-one could. She had broken up with Lawrence, but she had only moved one floor down, to a room in the big apartment that Natalie, Laura and the
rest of the circus performers shared. So not only was there always the chance of seeing him – bumping into him on the stairs, on the sidewalk, in the subway – but the horrible idea that
he had taken up with Autumn, his roommate, who was dying to get in his pants. She had been working up the sexiest act of her entire life while, simultaneously, not getting any herself; she and
Lawrence had been hugely sexually compatible, had fucked like maniacs, and Evie was, frankly, burning up with the frustration of having him so close and not being able to – well, have
him.

So it was naturally quite impossible for her to take her eyes off this huge, gorgeous, entirely-shaved, glistening slab of rich dark chocolate. His wide shoulders, his long muscled legs, his
pumped arms seemed to fill the entire dressing room; sensing her stare, he looked up, his slanting dark eyes widening with interest as he looked her up and down as thoroughly as she was surveying
him.

Oh, thank God! she thought, smiling with relief. He’s straight! Gay guys outnumbered the straight ones in this branch of the performing arts; and especially with his lack of
self-consciousness at displaying his body, the statistical assumption about a man this handsome – and this oiled-up – was that he was very unlikely to be heterosexual.

‘Hi,’ he drawled, dripping more oil into his hand.

‘Hey,’ Evie said, leaning on the doorjamb. ‘Let me guess – you’re Jerome.’

‘How’d you know?’ he said, still rubbing baby oil into his stomach, which was so cut his abs were as ribbed as an old-fashioned radiator.

‘Sallie said Jerome gets the crowd hot and bothered,’ she answered, hooking her thumbs into the belt of her tight jeans. ‘I figured that had to be you.’

‘Damn right,’ he said, holding her gaze as his hand slid lower, to his groin area, where the narrow strip of black fabric slung around his hips held his fabric pouch in place. Its
contents stirred, stimulated by the sight of Evie in a form-fitting t-shirt and equally snug jeans, plus Jerome’s caressing hand slipping down to his inner thighs, anointing them with oil;
Evie bit her lip as her eyes dipped downwards, following Jerome’s huge hand as he dripped more baby oil onto his pink palm, his eyes never leaving her body as he stroked himself in slow
circles, working in the oil.

In front of her, Sallie huffed out a laugh. ‘Jerome, this is Evie,’ she said. ‘She’s going on after you. Trying out for a slot.’

‘Hey, good luck,’ Jerome said to Evie. ‘I warn you, though.’ He sprawled back, spreading his legs, putting down the bottle of oil, wrapping both hands behind his head,
his body six foot six of lean, dark, nearly naked, masculine perfection, his lips curving in a come-hither smile. ‘I tend to get the crowd pretty worked up. You think you can handle
that?’

‘Oh,’ Evie said, the corners of her mouth quirking in response. ‘I’ve never met a . . .’ She sketched a pause, flicking her gaze up and down the entire length of
Jerome’s phenomenal body – ‘
crowd
I couldn’t handle.’

He sketched a long slow wink as she pushed herself off the doorjamb, arching her back fractionally as she did so to show off her slim figure.

‘I bet you haven’t, baby girl,’ he purred as she walked away, a positive sashay in her step, down the corridor to where Carrie was indicating the room in which her costume was
stashed.

‘Oh, shit!’ Evie exclaimed, remembering what the brief encounter with the insanely hot Jerome had briefly pushed from her mind: she needed to ring Paulie and tell him she
wouldn’t be back for the late shift.