Onstage, the baby sucked at the left breast of the swooning woman. I watched in amazement from the back of the club, undergoing toward my best friend a mixture of emotions I rarely encountered together: shock and concern, sure, and yet, deeper within me, a more poignant love for Leslie than I'd ever felt. And deeper still ...? I was turned on.
The "baby" in her arms was fake, it turns out. A decadent, lifelike stage prop from somewhere in Europe. Of course, my friend's perfectly stunning boobs were not fake. And Leslie, the sporter of them, was truly the real thing.
I am the club's owner—with Jackson, my husband—and Leslie was our new regular. Dancer, that is (or else supposed to be) ... a regular showgirl, that one, behind the mild demeanor. We share the same birthday.
"Lez" stands 5'7", higher with heels. When she performs, the wings of her medium-length blonde hair, cut in a bob, play a sort of patty-cake with the lines of her tapered jaw, under the high, fair cheeks. When we were teens I would marvel at her womanly hips, and now her shoulders appeared to have caught up with them in breadth. She is beautiful like a moving sculpture. Leslie loves men, and I believe she's loved a woman or two. I certainly know her to be a lover of the life of the mind, of fantasy, and in her quiet way, of people. But you sometimes have to keep an eye on her. Not a hard thing to do. Besides the obvious, there are her eyes. They don't so much take you in as invite you for a swim ...
Leslie has put us on the map. Already feeling like sisters, I scored big when Leslie ceased meandering abroad and moved back to town. Maybe her type of sensuality, I thought, was just what the gentrifying Pittsburgh needed. We could give her another start after some honest mistakes ... channel the talent I remembered from our high-school classes in theatre and dance.
I should have guessed she'd expanded into erotic performance art. Leslie is capable of meeting an audience right where they need to be met—which is usually around the next bend in their brain. We're actually on the brink of recognition by the "perv" crowd in New York.
She and I used to talk about the possibilities of family life to come, but soon enough I knew she was headed for a less conventional life. On the last day of high school, Leslie looked into my eyes in the woods on the way home and proceeded to make faltering love to me before she ran away with her boyfriend the next day; I cried, but could only pray for her protection and let her go, hoping for the best. It was our only time like that. So sweet. However, now that she was back, I found myself with not only a husband, but also our seven-month-old baby—both of which are acquired tastes, I can assure you.
I mentioned my concern for Leslie. I've actually been so busy that we really haven't time to catch up like I wanted. Something told me she was regretting not marrying and even having a child of her own. It could happen.
When our birthday, March 20, approached, I proposed a weekend trip together in what was left of the country. We were backstage after a show. Leslie had just gone on as a firegirl and at the end of the act muscled a wide, black water hose. We actually ran a few blasts of water through it, as Leslie sprayed down the brickwork to each side of the stage. Once the valve was off, she put on a sulk and stepped downstage, holding the end of the hose toward the row of men in front, letting it dribble pitifully from the hole. Her pout turned to peeved and she flung a last necklace of droplets at them, let the hose fall to the floor, and strode off bitchily. What a queen. Everyone loved it.
I was helping her undo something at the back of her costume as we talked. "Sure, that sounds good, Jenna," she said, already relaxing after her performance. "Maybe we could we follow it with a birthday celebration the night we get back. At your place. Since you'd be driving, I could sleep over?"
This occasional touch of assertiveness from Leslie always managed to have a heady effect on me, but like many things over the years, it went unexamined.
"A slumber party!" I said. "Great."
"Jackson and Molly can be there."
Behind her, I chuckled briefly and smiled. Of course they would be there, they were my family and it was my birthday.
Her getup was part of an authentic firefighter's suit from her private stock. But it had a fussy clasp, or my concentration had slipped. All of a sudden, my fingers zigged when they should've zagged and the whole coat ended up falling to her feet, leaving her stark.
"Oops, sorry," I squeaked.
She just thanked me and walked to the dresser-! My God, but her backside was tempting ... and then, still frozen, I got a full frontal thanks to the mirror.
My pleasure,
I thought.
She said, "I look forward to our trip. Just remember, it's your birthday too."
+++++
The spring season brought good weather early. Jackson was a sweetie and helped oversee the club operations on our "missing weekend." Leslie and I went to the Pocono mountains, sleeping both Friday and Saturday at a bed-and-breakfast; we ate well, and generally kept away from heart-shaped bathtubs.
Driving back, things got even more interesting when the poor thing revealed she'd had to have an abortion back in Paris! The fact that she came right out and told me this—in French, no less—while I was driving (forcing me to do some quick translation) made me want to grip her shoulders the way I was now doing the steering wheel. And shake her. But I knew she was strange, and enticingly so. I wouldn't have her any other way.
We discussed the particulars a while, and then she put a soft hand on my right shoulder. Immediately my tension eased.
