Leonie by Elizabeth Adler Page A

thought it might amuse us.” He smiled at Rupert, enjoying himself.
    Léonie paced the dressing room tearfully in her high white leather boots, raging against the manager. “How could he—how could he, Loulou? Just look at me—look at this costume! ”
    Loulou stared at her. The white tights fit her like a second skin and the stiff white satin corselette, pulled tight by silver laces,pinched her waist, pushing her bosom upward until it spilled out at the top in two emphatic half-moon curves. A white leather belt, studded in silver, was slung low on her hips and padlocked strategically with a large silver heart. She carried a silver whip with a thin white thong and her blond hair was tightly tied back into a long plume plaited with tinsel strands exactly like the tail of the white horse she was to ride. She looked spectacular, a white virginal rebel from some masochistic dream of de Sade.
    “It’s too late to do anything about it now, Léonie. I don’t understand why you didn’t complain at the fitting.”
    “But it didn’t look like this at the fitting. The top came up to here and it wasn’t pulled as tightly, and there was supposed to be a little tutu to cover the tights—not this—this padlock! Oh, Loulou!” She was near to tears.
    “I think if we put a little flesh-colored gauze here”—Loulou tucked the soft fabric over Léonie’s bosom—“it should be all right. That way the audience will think they’re seeing more than is really there—it’s an old trick. Now,” she said, shrugging, “it doesn’t seem to matter anymore.”
    “It does to me,” cried Léonie.
    “I know, I know it does, but look in the mirror. You see, now you’re completely covered.”
    Léonie stared; it did look a little better. “What about this? ” she demanded.
    Loulou examined the belt. It was attached to the tights and there was no way to take it off. “I can’t go on stage like this. Oh, I just want to hide.” The tears streamed down Léonie’s face, ruining the elaborate makeup.
    Loulou thought for a moment. “That’s exactly what you’ll do. You’ll hide. Wait a minute.” She rummaged through the big drawer that held scarves, gloves, and odd bits and pieces of costumes and pulled out a silver domino mask. “I wore it in a Pierrot and Columbine number last year. Put it on, Léonie, it’s as good as hiding; your own mother wouldn’t recognize you.”
    My mother, thought Léonie desperately, never did anything like this—she never shamed herself appearing on stage looking the way I do. She put on the mask and faced herself in the mirror. It didn’t hide much but it was better, at least she didn’t feel so exposed.
    They could hear the orchestra crashing into the first bars of the overture. “I’ve got to go,” cried Loulou, “I’m on first.” Shedashed off down the dim passage that led to the stage and Léonie followed her slowly.
    Only four more weeks, she told herself, just four weeks and then I can leave all this. I’ll go with Rupert to the south, to the inn with that big bed in that moonlit room where we’ll begin our lives together, and I’ll never ever again in my whole life set foot in a cabaret.
    Their party filled the center block of the first two rows of the theater, crowding in together, laughing and chattering as they discarded furs and capes and took their seats, staring in anticipation at the advertisements for hair restorer and cough linctus on the stiff safety curtain still lowered in front of the stage.
    The audience up in the balcony was a raucous group, mostly young men who came to see the girls, already rowdy and excited, passing ribald comments on the dancers and showgirls they had seen before. In the stage boxes and the stalls, other men, their white ties and starched shirtfronts gleaming, waited quietly; they, too, were here to see the girls.
    After all, thought Paul Bernard from his seat at the back of the theater, that’s what cabaret is all about: girls. He studied