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By Root 1432 0

they are, the vending-machine and Sicilian element, men of sharp practices, standing frozen at the back of the club. It’s the whole Carousel in a five-second glimpse, plus the tourists from Topeka. They are saying go go go. They are crying for a garment. They want the piece of silk that passed between her legs. They are here to bathe in the flesh of the sleepwalking girl, the girl who wakes up naked in a throbbing crowd. This is how it always seems to Baby L. She is having a private fit in the middle of the night, like she is demonized, and wakes up naked in a different dream, where strange men are clutching at her body. Does anybody here know the stupid truth? She wants to be a real-estate agent who drives people around in a station wagon that is painted like wood. An award-winning realtor in a fern-green suit. But she is humping a spotlight in front of a crowd, flinging sweat from her belly and thighs, and the tassels on her pasties are swishing to the beat.

She did her trademark twirl of the breasts, one breast spinning clockwise, the other counter, and quickly disappeared.

Then she showered and wrapped herself in a towel and sat in the dressing room, smoking. This was the time when a cigarette was the purest pleasure known.

Lynette was in street clothes sitting at the next mirror. She had her head in a copy of Look.

“If I had the slightest sense,” Brenda told her, “I’d get what I’m owed and just scram. I have a seven-year old and a four-year old and I am half the time too tired to say hello.”

Lynette turned a page. She said, “I will tell you this Bobby Kennedy is right up my alley. Bobby is the one who could make me crazy. He has got this little hard gleam. Ten minutes with Bobby, I am out of my head.”

“He doesn’t do a thing for me.”

“He could drive me into wah wah land.”

“Where is that, Lynette?”

“He has got this little meanness in the eye but he doesn’t really know it like?”

“I think he knows it,” Brenda said. “Give me his brother any day. Jack would be better in bed. I like a lover with some shoulder to him. I stay away from these rabbity types.”

“Bobby’s an athalete.”

“The President is mature to handle a woman like us. Not that I’m ready to settle down with the man.”

“You need one of those bouffant hairdos like Jackie.”

“I need more than that.”

“You got the knockers, Brenda.”

“Tit tit tit. This is my Achilles heel you’re pointing out. Too much talent up front. It means a bunch of trouble.”

“What’s he do anyway, the Attorney General?”

“Are you kidding? He’s the top cop.”

“Top cop or top cock?”

“Same difference,” Brenda said.

There was some kind of commotion out front. They could hear a few voices and a glass or bottle breaking. Lynette turned a page.

“Do you believe what they say about tell a person exactly when you were born, to the hour and the minute, and they can figure out everything about you?”

“I smell a fish, to quote a maxim,” Brenda said.

The disturbance, whatever it was, grew louder. You feel these things in the walls. Brenda put on her robe and went to the end of the hall and looked out. Between the bar and the entranceway there was a flurry of bodies and arms, maybe four guys including Jack who were physically propelling a man who looked like he combed his hair with firecrackers. It now developed that Jack wanted to throw the man down the stairs. The others were trying to prevent this as extreme. Brenda waited until the odd-job boy lost his place in the moving knot of people and came off to the side, shaking a hand that may have been bitten.

“What is it?” Brenda said.

“This guy like grab-assed one of the waitresses. You know, felt her going by.”

“Do we kill people for this?”

“You know Jack when it comes to abusing the girls. He about Hipped sky-high.”

Jack wrestled the man away from the others and the two of them went quick-walking down the narrow stairs, actually out of control, banging off the handrail, almost pitching forward to the street.

The bar crowd went after, hurrying down single-file and loud. Brenda took a deep drag on the cigarette and went back to finish her