When fall comes, it feels the time to make a cool change. Rosa's ladder out of this tar pit is to get a bartending license. So instead of hooking up with men, she juices them up. Feeding this vice is much more to her taste.
Ruth tells Rosa, "Get your prissy self to serving drinks. You know the boss don't like you popping Benzedrine on break time. Sure you look like a 40s starlet in that red dress with all the frills but if you get jazzed on those pills you might start spiking their cocktails with crazy medicine. We might have the men giving the women a pat down like in airport security when the camera isn't looking. The ladies would stop patronizing us. Then the men would vanish like the wooly mammoths and Sweet Jesus it would just be us, waitresses, to drink up all the suds."
The dragon lady, sprawled on the couch, summons that husky voice like she was channeling Garbo in a séance, "Gimme me a whiskey, ginger ale on the side. And don't be stingy, baby."
"Your Anna Christie imitation made my heart skip a beat. You get a drink on the house for that."
Rosa watches her sip her drink with the coyness of a virgin but her fiery mane cascades in waves of ecstasy and dangles on the edge of forever. Her bare midriff tells the tale of her dragon heart with a tattoo which rises like a harbinger of unearthly pleasures with the promise of what lies beneath where paradise beckons in luscious splendor.
A plump lady with short black hair sits at the bar. But what is most conspicuous about her is the huge green boa wrapped around her neck. The Boa sips brandy from a glass. The lady says, "Stop that Arthur. You know you can't hold your liquor." She tenderly strokes the snake whose head sways while gazing at the lava lamp on the wall. Arthur seems hypnotized by the hemoglobular shapes as they evolve before his very eyes. The snake sips some more brandy and the lady brushes him away from the glass. Rosa looks surprised when the snake looks at her. Quickly it slips from the lady's neck and slithers under Rosa only to climb under her dress and up her leg where the bulge in her panties makes her gasp. The lady tells Rosa, "Stay still, he is a constrictor and you don't want to spook him because he might wrap around you and then who knows what."
Rosa says, "My God, he's licking me!" She looks creeped out at first but says, "He's making me ticklish" and giggles. She says, "This isn't what it looks like. I'm laughing to keep from screaming." What started out as a shock turns into laughter to be put in such a position. Arthur pokes around down there where he seems to have found a burrow warmer and cozier than any hole in the ground. Arthur slides down her leg leaving a moist trail. Rosa tells Ruth, "Sorry but I didn't want to provoke him. Please forgive me." Ruth shakes her head. Rosa says, "When I was a kid my brother Joey stuffed a garter snake down the seat of my pants. That was icky. But this was a hoot like when Joey stuck a garden hose in my jeans."
