Mike Resnick The Three Legged Hootch Dancer

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long since gone out of business, or currently tunning hardcore movies instead of burlesque, or piping in
music as the girls danced for fifty businessmen on their lunch hours. It didn't matter that only two ads in
the whole book were more than one column wide or an inch deep. It didn't even matter that none of them
appeared in the journals of any city boasting as many as two hundred thousand people. In her chosen
field Butterfly Delight was indeed a star, and it was hardly her fault that the bottom had fallen out of the
field years before she had entered it.
"Who's this?" asked Tojo, coming to an eight-by-ten glossy photo of a tall, leggy brunette. "It looks very
old."
"That's Gypsy Rose Lee," replied Gloria proudly. "She autographed it for me just before she died."
"That was very nice of her," said the hunchback.
"She was a very classy lady," responded Gloria. "Did you know that she played to more women than
men during her career?"
"No, I didn't."
"It's true. Stripping doesn't have to be cheap and vulgar. It can be anything the audience will let it be. Ann
Corio has been touring the country for the past fifteen years with an old-time burlesque show. Most of
her audiences are families." She closed the book and tenderly returned it to the trunk. "I never saw a
family audience in my life," she said at last. "All I ever got were freaks and drunks."
"You came along too late," said Tojo sympathetically.
"But I played as if my audience had class. I was always a lady on stage."
"I'm sure you were."
"I never let a customer touch me, and I never balled anyone to get work."
"Thaddeus used to complain about that all the time," said Tojo with a smile.
"After I'd been on the circuit for a few years, I found out
there was a school for strippers out in California, and I enrolled there to see if I could make my act even
better. That's where Thaddeus found me."
"I remember. You were the best we ever had, Gloria."
"That's because I work harder at it than anyone you ever had. I jog two miles every morning. One
hundred sit-ups. Stretching exercises. Constant dieting. I dance to my tapes every day. I never get out of
condition."
"I know."
"This is what I am, Tojo. This is me. I can't help what my audiences were back on Earth, and I can't help
not having them now. Gloria's just an ordinary girl who passes time between Butterfly Delight's
performances. If I could be Butterfly Delight twenty-four hours a day, I would. I can't be, so I've made
my adjustment but I can't stop being her altogether. I just can't!"
Tojo stared at her long and hard, wondering what he could say and wishing he knew how to recognize
the preliminary symptoms of a mental breakdown. He even found himself half believing in Butterfly
Delight as a separate entity not as a headlining stripper, but as the person who kept Gloria Stunkel sane
for twenty hours a day. Suddenly he wished they had taken a doctor along, instead of the extra games
barker.
Gloria had returned to her chair and seemed content to sit there, sipping her fruit juice and staring at the
sequined gown that was still hanging on the closet door, but Tojo felt he had to say something, anything,
to break the silence. His brain raced through hundreds of prior conversations he had had with her over
the years, scanning them, trying to find some interest they had in common, or even some subject other
than her work that she had ever shown any enthusiasm for. He was startled to discover that he couldn't
come up with a single one, and wondered what to do next.
Finally she asked him if he would like a refill, and the sound of her voice breaking the grim silence of the
room" so startled him that he almost knocked his glass over.
"Yes, please," he said, not wanting one at all but suddenly afraid to offer her any rejection, no matter how
trivial.
He was taken off the hook a moment later when Mr. Ahasuerus knocked on the door and entered the
compartment.
"Ah, hello, Tojo," said the tall, cadaverous blue man. "I hope I'm not interrupting."
"No!" said Tojo, so anxious to force the word out that he almost screamed it.
Mr. Ahasuerus stared at him curiously, then turned to Gloria. "I'd like to speak to you for a moment, if I
may."
"I'm not working the booths!" she said defiantly.
"This has nothing to do with the carnival," said the blue man.
"Oh?" she said, eyeing him suspiciously.
"Well, only insofar as everything that takes place aboard ship pertains, directly or indirectly, to the
carnival."
"Will you get to the point?"
"Certainly," said Mr. Ahasuerus. "It has to do with something you requested from the galley robots. I
believe you called it pineapple-papaya juice."
"What's the matter with that?" she said. "It's perfectly healthy. You might even try some yourself."
"The problem," he continued patiently, "is that our computer has nothing in its memory banks concerning
the chemical composition of a papaya so if it isn't absolutely essential to your health and well-being,
would a substitute be acceptable?"
"I suppose so," she shrugged. "Make it banana-mango instead."
Tojo made a face at the thought of that concoction, and Mr. Ahasuerus shuffled his feet uncomfortably.
"I'm afraid there's something else as well," he said.
"Now it comes," she said, glaring at him.
"This bicycle you ordered. We're going to have to repro-gram one of the robots, which will run into quite
a bit of money, and I was wondering if it was really necessary."
"/ think it is."
"But what is the purpose of a bicycle that doesn't go anywhere?" asked the blue man.
"It's an exercise machine," she said. "It keeps my legs in shape."
"Isn't there some less complicated way of so doing?" persisted Mr. Ahasuerus. "Running, for example?"
"Different muscles/' she replied.
"And it is absolutely essential that you have this?"
She shrugged. "No, it's not absolutely essential."
"Then," he continued, "if it will not constitute too great a hardship ..."
"Fine," she interrupted him. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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