"C'mon in," the host took one look Doo and he knew she was staff. Her short red dress gave her away. No woman of class in the 1930's would wear something so short AND strapless. Only working girls, house cleaners, performers, cigarette sales girls. Gertrude, Doo, was the latter. She walked down a long carpeted hallway and took the first right as she was instructed. It was her first day on the job. In the door there were dozens of girls getting ready, show girls, waitresses, bus girls, and, yes, cigarette girls. They were making sure their seams were straight, their eyelashes were straight, their fingerwaves aligned.
One of the girls noticed Doo standing in awe at the doorway. She closed the door behind them and sat her at one of the lighted mirrors.
"Where's your makeup bag?" she asked.
"I don't have one," replied Gertrude. There was a momentary look of shock from several of the girls and they all got to work on Doo's hair and makeup.
"I'm Stephie," said the first girl. "Not Steph-a-nie, just Stephie." She chattered nonstop about club business and hair and makeup, plucking Gertrude's eyebrows painfully. "In this club," she said, "in this club, if you want to get anywhere, if you want to make the big bucks, you go to the back room."
"Well, why doesn't everyone go to the back room?" asked Gertrude.
"Silly Doo! You have to be invited to the back room. Here --let me get your hat," and they positioned it just so on Doo's head. Doo's eyes were smoky, her lips were painted, her hair was smoothed.
The club was three stories high. The first floor was dedicated to that long carpeted hallway and girls' dressing room, though, at 23 and unmarried Gertrude was practically a hag. She wondered if she belonged there. Once she'd gotten her hat and her cigarettes, Gertrude was fully transformed into Doo, who was pushed out of the dressing room by Stephie and Doo made the long walk down the hallway and up the stairs to the main entertainment room, trying hard not to trip in her highest of heels. They were a sparkly gold and, Doo thought, they suited the trim around the hem of her dress rather nicely. It took a full month's pay from her last job to pay for them, but this new job was her ticket to lower-middle class, and a glance at the glimmer of the upper class. Her shoes had to be a reflection of that.
She carefully placed one foot in front of the other, wavering a bit on her ankles, flexing all of her leg muscles to balance herself in those heels and balance that cigarette box around her neck. The crinoline of her petticoat scratched her thighs, in between her legs as she walked, in the most tender of places, and somehow this pain gave her a relief from the pinching in her toes. She viewed this hallway as a practice walk, for all the walking she would have to do this evening. She was already regretting those heels. How would she bend over? Innocently? Daringly? Should she be complex or airheaded?
She walked up the steps, slowly letting each hip slide deeply into its socket and sway with her movements. The tray did not move. Customers passed her on the left. She was in role now. A role that seemed to take on a life of its own. Cigarette girl. Cigarette girl. She was offering men not a chance to eat or break the law in drinking, not a chance to ignore what they want to ogle, but a chance to appear cool and suave. She was offering them something healthful even.
As soon as she walked in a man, sitting with two other men in leather chairs around a round table waved her over. The bartender watched her intently. She walked over to the man and stood in front of him, with her back to one of his companions, the other leaned aside to watch the inevitable show that was about to occur.
"Cigarettes?" Doo asked, standing on one leg, the other leg pointed out, topped by a golden heel.
"I'm afraid I can't see your selection from this chair. Would you mind bending over?" Doo bent over slowly, revealing to the man her ample cleavage and cigarette selection, and revealing more and more of the seams of her stockings to the two companions who leaned in and leaned further forward, seeing the crinoline, the garters, the lace edging of Doo's silk panties. The man made his selection and paid Doo in the stiff, boning lined and heart shaped neckline of her bodice.