Film Strip by Nancy Bartholomew Page B

to enjoy their little moment, but I was up next. I left without waiting to see Marla’s grand finale, when she’d tear off her bra and expose her Texas-sized bazooms. It was truly a picture, but not one I cared to have etched in my brain.
    Instead I walked back to the dressing room, lost in thought. What act was I gonna do to ensure that Frosty Licks never darkened the door of the Tiffany again? What could I pull out of my costume trunk that would positively ace my ranking as the Number One Act? I was so lost in my own thoughts, that I almost didn’t react to the open back door. As security conscious as we needed to be, it was unthinkable that someone had left the back entrance wide open to intruders, yet there it stood, open a foot and begging for someone to come along.
    I stepped over to close it, still with my mind on my next act, but the shrill sound of Frosty Licks’s high-pitched giggle forced me to snap back to the present moment’s reality. I pushed the door open a little farther and peered out onto the dimly lit back stoop. There was Frosty, happily ensconced on Little Ricky’s lap.
    â€œYou are the cutest thing!” she was saying. “I could just eat you with a spoon! You can’t really be a wrestler. You wouldn’t hurt a flea!”
    Ricky must’ve thought that the heavenly gates had opened and ushered him right on in, because he was sighing and running his hands up and down her body like he might never pass this way again.
    â€œRicky!” I snapped. “Do you just never learn?”
    Ricky jumped up like a thief, dumping Frosty once again on her perky little behind.
    â€œSierra, now, it ain’t what it seems.”
    Frosty was glaring at me, slowly struggling up and brushing gravel and dirt off of her little baby-doll nightie.
    â€œIt is every bit of what it seems, sport,” I said. “You’re thinking with your dick, Big Man, and that’ll mess you up every single time.”
    â€œWho do you think you are?” Frosty whined.
    I was about to answer her, but at that moment something flew past me, knocking me into the heavy metal door. Marla had finished her act. Apparently, seeing the three of us in conversation, and Frosty in a see-through negligee, had brought back traumatic memories of Venus Lovemotion and Little Ricky. Or maybe Marla had finally wised up to her skunky snake of a boyfriend. Whatever the reason, Marla had totally lost control and had launched herself into battle.
    A catfight between two well-endowed exotic dancers is the stuff male fantasies are made of, until you actually witness the real thing, with spit and blood and hair pulling. It is not a turn-on, not even to a pervert. Little Ricky stood back, clearly horrified, his knuckles jammed in his mouth. I was standing there, kind of dazed from my run-in with the door, still too unsteady to move. It was Bruno and little Rusty who broke up the action.
    Bruno took Marla, and Rusty tried to grab Frosty. Marla gave Bruno a good tussle, but Frosty had nothing left to give Rusty. She buried her face in his scrawny little chest and bawled like a baby. Ricky, aware now that he’d been buttering the wrong side of the bread, came to Marla.
    â€œBaby,” he gushed, “you done took it all wrong. I wasn’t doing nothing but minding my own business when this she-vixen came out and leaped at me.”
    Marla wasn’t any too sure who to believe. She stood, her arms pinned behind her by Bruno, her massive chest heaving like two mountains in a full-strength earthquake. She was sweaty and her lower lip was beginning to swell.
    We were starting to draw a crowd as customers in the parking lot wandered over to watch. This brought Gordon out from the front door, Vincent and several of the girls behind him.
    Frosty seized her moment and turned it on for the audience. “Is this the kind of place you’re running, Mr. Gambuzzo? A girl can’t even make a decent