Back in Black (15 page)

S
HOWGIRL
C
ONTEST
! $500 P
RIZE
! 9
P.M.
!

The Lush amateur showgirl contest was clearly a popular happening. The club was packed. Girls dressed to thrill sat at various tables, some with other girl

-friends, some with guys. A lot of them, from the way they were stretching out their calf muscles, were preparing to enter the contest. Anna saw girls in silver lame G-strings and glittery pasties and even a curvy redhead who looked like a giant fruit pie: Huge cherries covered her nipples, and a tiny skirt made to look like a piecrust encircled her hips.

“Hey, where have you two been?” Adam asked, sliding over to make room for more chairs at their table.

“We went to Dee's suite to try and coax her into coming,” Sam explained. “But there was a just a note—she went to the Venetian for some yoga class and then was going back to the hotel. Something about having promised her kabbalah rabbi that she'd study the Talmud before bed. Of course, I'm the one who's half Jewish. Dee is as WASPy as they come—except for Anna, of course.”

“With Dee it's New Age one day, kabbalah the next,” Parker mused. “I guess she's looking for the meaning of life.”

“Honestly?” Sam queried. “I don't think Dee knows what she's looking for.”

Anna hadn't known that Sam was half Jewish; she never talked about it. It had to be on her mother's side. But come to think of it, Sam never really discussed her mother. Anna had no idea who she was or where she was. Funny how much about her life Sam hadn't shared.

“Anyway,” Sam went on, “we wrote down for Dee where we'd be, in case she changes her mind.”

“She won't,” Cammie predicted. “These days she's either ready to shave her head, put on a wig, and move to the Fairfax district, or Velcro herself to Poppy and the baby. I have no clue why she even came with us.”

Could Cammie really be that dense?

“To be with you,” Anna said pointedly.

Cammie assessed her coolly. “Come again?”

“She came because you and Sam are still her best friends. She wanted to be here with you.”

“Please,” Cammie scoffed, leaning into the leaf-printed faux leather banquette. “She's too busy breast-feeding Ruby Hummingbird, or whatever the hell she does over at Sam's house.”

“Geez, Cam,” Adam chided.

“I'm just kidding,” Cammie assured him.

But it was obvious to Anna, and, Anna was sure, to everyone else at the table, that Cammie was definitely
not
kidding.

“So, Cammie, what's up?” Sam asked. “You didn't make much of an effort for the contest.”

Anna had been wondering the same thing. Cammie had on low-slung Dolce & Gabbana black jeans with diamond studs on the fly, and a black
DIRTY GIRL
T-shirt. The effect was underwhelming, especially after Anna and Sam had expected Cammie to show up in the most outrageous outfit in North America. And, Anna recalled, the contest had been Cammie's idea in the first place.

Cammie just shrugged, craning around for a waitress. “It'll work. Anyway, who do you have to screw to get a drink around here?”

“Well, you and Sam look hot,” Parker told Anna. He flashed his patented megawatt grin.

“In a tacky, Vegas kind of way,” Adam added.

“Emphasis on the tacky,” Cammie put in, with a smile that never reached her eyes. “So I guess one of you wins the little contest.”

“Tell me the prize, and I'll tell you if I forfeit.” Sam glanced at a girl walking by clad in a sixties mod miniskirt that was entirely see-through, showing off her black-and-white op art-print thong beneath. “Although I think I have a clue.”

Adam and Parker shared a grin.

“Winner's in the showgirl contest,” Parker said.

“Not loser?” Anna ventured. She figured that was why Cammie had come so underdressed.

“Then I forfeit to Anna!” Sam sang out. “Congratulations, Anna. May the farce be with you.”

“Forget it!” Anna protested, though she laughed as she said it. But there was just no way was she getting up on that stage to parade around in her stupid little white dress.

Parker folded his arms. “You girls did not play by the rules.”

Cammie smiled. “That's what makes us fun, Parker.”

The lights in the club dimmed and the stage lights rose as the curtain parted, revealing a trio of musicians playing rock music Anna couldn't identify. Three buxom girls in very high heels and sequined bikinis made to look like flowers came out and began a slinky dance routine. A harried waitress scurried over to their table and took their drink orders. Maybe it was because the lights were low and she couldn't see how old they were, or maybe she was just so busy that she didn't care, but she didn't ask any of them for ID.

The dancers finished their warm-up routine to a smattering of applause. Then a voice came over the sound system. “Ladies and gentleman, please welcome your host, recently retired from the World Wrestling Federation and a new addition to the Vegas comedy circuit, Monty Markam!”

Monty Markam—an energetic guy with a shaved head and the burly looks of the former wrestler he was, trotted onstage to a drum roll and a cymbal crash from an onstage trio of guitar, piano and drums. Then he immediately launched into his comedy routine. Fans of the WWF might have found him funny. Otherwise, it was a lost cause. All his jokes were about other wrestlers.

“He's gonna need to broaden the range of his material,” Sam observed. “In Los Angeles, people would throw beers at him.”

Finally, Monty stopped his jokes. “Okay, let's get this party started!” he boomed as the musicians went into a funk groove. “We've got twenty-three contestants this week, and these girls are hot, hot, hot!”

“Make it twenty-four,” Parker urged Anna. “Come on, it'll be a hoot.”

“How about if I loan you my dress, and
you
make it twenty-four?” Anna asked sweetly.

Parker's laugh was drowned out by the emcee. “Let's introduce this week's three celebrity judges,” Monty went on. “Voted Best Showgirl on the Strip in 1995 and again in 1996, Miss Doily LaFlame!”

A spotlight hit a woman seated in the front; she stood and turned to nod at the crowd's applause. Her raven hair reached the bottom of her low-cut black dress.

“Number two judge, choreographer
extraordinaire
, who's done shows at MGM, Harrah's, and the Crazy Girls Fantasy Revue at the Riviera, Mr. Rock Hard!”

The crowd applauded as a slender man with a bad rug stood and gave the crowd a royal wave.

“And finally,” Monty continued, “there should be silence before I introduce our third judge.” He waited and waited, until the club was as quiet as a funeral parlor. “Our third judge is a very special guest. Frankly, it's an honor even to be in the same room with this man. We're talking legend here, folks. The one, the only … Mr. Wayne Newton!”

A chubby-cheeked man stood and waved as the room erupted into cheers and applause.

“Who's he?” Anna was baffled.

“A singer,” Adam informed her. “My grandmother used to listen to him.”

“Mr. Newton, I salute you,” The emcee put two fingers to an eyebrow. The band went into a different groove, and Monty moved to the side of the stage. He read from index cards. “Our first contestant is a local fave. Give it up for Lucy Gianni!”

Lucy sashayed out onstage to Michael Jackson's “Billie Jean.” She was a short girl with stubby, muscular legs that even her bright pink platform heels couldn't do much to improve. She wore a glittery gold one-piece swimsuit; a giant Cleopatra headdress made of pheasant feathers and crystal stones adorned her head.

The spotlight followed her as she paraded around the stage. Meanwhile, a lone table of friends behind Anna hooted and hollered for her.

“Why would a chick with those thighs enter a show-girl contest?” Sam asked.

“And why would she dance to ‘Billie Jean?’ ” Cammie wondered aloud. “That's like guaranteeing you're gonna lose.”

“She's never gonna win if she can't afford a decent freaking costume,” a pear-shaped, spiky-haired redhead at the next table said loudly to a friend. The redhead was obviously going to compete later on—her red sequined dress and stiletto heels gave it away. “She should shop at Show-Off!”

Then the redhead caught Anna's curious gaze. “You a tourist?” Her voice was raspy—the voice of too many cigarettes.

Anna nodded.

“Well, there's a place called Show-Off! where everyone gets their showgirl outfits,” the girl explained. “The headdress costs like three hundred something. But if you don't shop at Show-Off!, you don't win. I think the owner here has an interest in the place.”

Sam, who'd been listening, nudged Anna's arm. “Damn. We should have gone to Show-Off!, huh? Who knew?”

When Cleopatra Headdress was done, the next girl paraded out. She wore a green hula skirt made of raffia with a floral bikini top and did a Hawaiian dance. More contestants followed in quick succession. A tall, thin girl in a bikini made entirely of sequins, with matching long sequin-encrusted gloves. A woman in a mermaid showgirl outfit with a fantail. Most of the would-be showgirls merely paraded around the stage and posed like they were in the Miss America Pageant. A few did original things—a dance or acrobatics. At the moment, a skinny girl in an ill-fitting red-white-and-blue two-piece bathing suit and Uncle Sam stovepipe hat was wobbling onstage in cheap high heels, looking more than a little uncomfortable.

“No tits, no ass, no problem!” Cammie chortled to the others at the table. “This is such a hoot!” She pushed back her chair. “Pee break.” She took off for the ladies' room.

Leave it to Cammie to say something bitchy about the poor girl, Anna thought. Cammie made a career of putting down everything and everyone. Maybe it was genetic, Anna mused, the result of some strange virus in her father's pool. Or maybe Cammie had done it for so long that it was as automatic as breathing.

Anna glanced at Adam. It still amazed her that he was with Cammie. Two boys Anna had been with, Adam and Ben—both of whom Anna knew to be sensitive and deep—had been with Cammie. It was disturbing to think that they'd settle for a girl with so little character, with such a lack of heart, just because she was the hottest thing in the zip code.

Onstage, the skinny girl stumbled and started to dance again, her face as red as the stripes on her bikini. She stumbled again and finally wobbled off stage with a tiny wave to the crowd. Most people in the club clapped politely, which made Anna think that maybe the rest of the country—the part that Sam always called flyover country—had better manners than the rich and famous.

“Hey, at least she's got guts,” Adam told the table.

“I agree,” Anna chimed in.

More guts than I have
, she added in her head.

Next up was a tall, beautiful girl with long platinum blond hair and a showgirl's body and walk. She wore an angel outfit worthy of the grand finale of a Tony Kushner play; transparent wings spread from the sides of her gossamer bikini top when she spread her arms.

“Hey! Disqualify the bitch!” the redhead at the next table shouted, getting halfway out of her chair. “She worked at fucking Harveys in Lake Tahoe last year! I know—I was a blackjack dealer!”

What would it be like, Anna wondered, to be a blackjack dealer? Or a showgirl? Both jobs were solar systems away from anything she would ever actually do. Even for one night, even in this place. What was the famous saying? “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas?” It irked Anna that she wasn't willing to try it out, unlike so many of the girls and women she'd already seen compete. So many of them—like the painfully skinny girl she'd just seen—had no chance of winning; they were doing it because it was, in some way for them, fun.

So here she was, in a tacky Vegas outfit, looking in from the outside. That was as far she was willing to let herself go. Except for wondering what it would be like to be the kind of girl who could get up in front of a nightclub full of people and—

“And our final contestant, all the way from Beverly Hills, California—Miss Cammie Sheppard!” the emcee boomed.

What?

Anna's attention snapped to the stage, where the spotlight hit Cammie. She wore the same black T-shirt and black jeans she'd worn earlier, the same Constança Basto sling-back aqua heels.

“That bitch!” Sam cried, but she was laughing as she said it. “I thought she went to the john!”

Cammie strutted across the stage, followed by the spotlight. She'd chosen “Miles Apart” by Yellowcard, and there were a few protested shouts over the music that the blond bitch wasn't in a real costume. But then Cammie stopped, crossed her arms at her waist, and slowly inched her T-shirt over her head before flinging it into the cheering crowd. All she had on now above the waist was her pale pink satin Dior push-up bra, pushing up the best breasts that money could buy.

Next off were the heels—she kicked them into the vicinity of the three judges. Then she slowly undid the diamond studs on the fly of her jeans, one after the other, swiveling them down her hips until she could step out of them. Her pale pink satin G-string matched her bra, exposing the slender twenty-four-karat gold chain she wore around her belly. Then Cammie stood on her toes—Anna figured this was to compensate for her lack of high heels—and paraded around the stage, swinging her sexy curls over her shoulders.

Guys stood and whistled. Adam and Parker, Anna noted, among them. Some stomped their feet. The red-headed girl and her friends, though, stood on their chairs and booed through cupped hands. “Disqualify her!” they bellowed. “No costume! Disqualify her!”

Sam leaned into Anna's ear, shouting to be heard over the crowd and the music. “This is just such a Cammie Sheppard moment!”

Sam was right. Which meant that it was the exact opposite of an Anna Percy moment. Anna knew she could never pull that off, not in a million years. Sure, her best friend, Cyn, from back in New York, definitely could. Anna smiled at the thought of Cyn being there. Cyn would strip down to her Brazilian wax just for the pleasure of vanquishing Cammie. Scott Spencer would be right there, too, clapping and whistling for her the way Adam was clapping and whistling for Cammie.