Author's note: This story contains belly inflation. It is set in the early 1930s.
*
Outside a certain town in Grosseputain Parish stood May Belle's House. Generations of the local Louisiana menfolk had known this house - under its present ownership, through the long years before that when it had been Marie Louise's House, and back before that in the days when General Butler had been forced to issue a special order prohibiting the occupying Yankee soldiers from visiting "the bawdy house of which Miss Eliza is proprietress". It had been twenty-five years since May Belle first entertained a gentleman in her red-wallpapered "lady's parlor" upstairs, and ten years since a fat, perspiring lawyer in Beau Ville had read out the will in which Marie Louise had left what she tactfully referred to as her "premises" to May Belle.
May Belle herself had prospered. Her days as a sharp-tongued young whore were behind her, but as she had ripened over the years into a voluptuous and imposing matron, dressed almost every day in gowns of her favorite bright colors of red or deep wine-purple that flattered her broad hips and discreetly displayed the enormous expanse of her decolletage. She had continued working for long after nominally turning out her red lantern; May Belle preferred to refer to them (if at all) as her "assignations", but it wasn't much of a secret that her talents had lightened the loins of wealthy and prominent men from all over the Gulf Coast. There had been a scandal back in '23 when a senator's wife - angered by well-founded rumors which had passed her way - had been graceless enough to comment out loud at a ladies' tea that she had heard that Grosseputain Parish was plagued with disease owing to "women of low character" in the area, and that the local men were becoming "positively polluted". May Belle sipped her tea, smiled, and tartly commented (or so it was said) that Mrs. John J. Jarreau at least had nothing to worry about, because the Senator's seed was inside her at that very moment, and (having some familiarity with such matters) it seemed pure enough to her. Men had to be called to drag the two women apart.
It was a sleepy July afternoon in Grosseputain. Mornings and early afternoon were the time to sleep, because business was slow then, and most of May Belle's girls were either dozing upstairs or trying to keep cool in the front parlor and porch. The two amazonian blondes, Helen and Ellen, were mending a tear a clumsy patron had made in one of Ellen's gowns the night before. They were often taken for twins, due to their resemblance, but they claimed no relation. It wasn't much of a secret that they preferred their own company - or, rather, generally speaking, the company of ladies - but they did not mind tending to the needs of men awed but not intimidated by their statuesque height. Sally Ann was composing a letter to a maiden aunt in Paducah, telling her all about a supposed job as a shopgirl in New Orleans. Gloria Marie was chewing gum and reading a magazine. Darla was looking for a missing spool of green thread. Molly Cheeks was trying to learn to play the piano. New to the House, redheaded Molly had acquired her nickname in an incident soon after her arrival when she had (in violation of rules) entertained an impatient gentleman on her knees in the kitchen. Two other girls had come in suddenly to wash up some dishes, and when Molly looked up, wide-eyed in embarrassed surprise, her client's enormous member was visibly puffing out one cheek like that of a squirrel.
May Belle was sitting at an old roll-top desk in the parlor balancing on the books, when June sang out lazily from the porch that a young man was coming up the walk.