'Big fucking deal,' Lisa said breaking into tears.
Lisa's recuperative powers were stronger than she had imagined. Two weeks after Claude Frescotti's letter of farewell had brought the whole world crashing down about her, Lisa was dating again; moving around Hollywood with a string of suitors. She was enjoying the five thousand dollars she had acquired as a result of their break-up and feeling less and less sorry for herself.
Still there was something too familiar about it all. Los Angeles had become a place she felt like staying away from; if only there was someplace better to go to. Her mind groped for an alternative but found only empty space. One night at the Club Laurent in Beverly Hills, Jay Saxon, her date of the evening and the drummer with a local lounge band asked her if she had ever thought of becoming a dancer. 'A dancer?' Lisa echoed back at him, 'no Jay to tell you the truth I never have.'
'Well you should, because I think you'd be a good one.'
'But I haven't ever had any lessons, no experience. Isn't it something you start at young.'
'Oh sure ballet baby, but I'm talking about go-go stuff and chorus dancing. You know you put one foot in front of the other and move three steps forward and then cross your legs and move three steps back. It's not that difficult. A lot easier than driving a car. I mean you're not a bad number on the dance floor and I think you'd be a natural.'
'You might have something there… '
'What do you mean, I might have something. Baby you're talking to a man who knows! My friend Mario the faggot is getting a show together to take to Palm Springs and he's looking for girls and I told him I had just the blonde for the chorus line and he told me to bring you around. Now all he has to do is see you and hell flip-believe me I know this guy's taste. He may be bent but he's got a great eye for what's right and baby you are it!'
Suddenly Lisa felt all her confidence coming back to her as this new vista opened up inside her head in the smoke filled, packed night club. Maybe this was just the thing she was looking for to get out of Los Angeles, to give her something new to look forward to in life. She knew she had better start doing something because she was pushing twenty-one and that was a dangerous age. She grabbed Jay Saxon's arm excitedly, her long nails biting into his forearm. 'Do you really think I could get the job Jay? Do you think I'd be right for it?'
'Hey Lisa-do you think I'd stick my neck out just because you're such a hunk? I mean I do business with these people and if I didn't think you could do it and be dynamite at it I wouldn't have brought it up. Besides, the pay is good and Palm Springs is a nice place to hang around, really healthy. You ever been there?'
'Once, about a year ago.'
'And I'm going to be playing down there with my band so it won't be like you're moving to the moon or anything. What do you have to lose anyway? So you slide into a pair of leotards and shake around a little and do what Mario tells you to do and you're off! Fucking easy and good exercise too. You know you've got a nice figure now but if you don't do something about it it's not going to stay that way forever by itself.'
'Yeah I'm beginning to feel fat,' she said patting her stomach.
'When are you free tomorrow?' Jay asked, waving at the waiter, signaling for him to bring the check.
'All day.'
'OK then I'll pick you up at noon and well go see Mario.'
'All right.'
Mario rolled his eyes in his head, wiggled his ears and shook his hands when he saw Lisa the next day. 'But Jay my sweet, you didn't tell me she was this beautiful!' he said mincing around her in a tight circle, his eyes flapping furiously over her long, cool blonde length. 'The legs! the legs! the legs! Such legs,' he said lifting her short, ass length mini skirt and surveying her thighs. Lisa stood there with a frozen, plaster like smile, flattered and a bit confused.
'Hey man,' Jay said stepping back, bouncing on the balls of his feet, 'do you think I'd lay some dog on you? When I said.I had just the blonde for you was I right or was I right?'
Mario continued his exaggerated eyeing of Lisa, squinting his eyes and stepping back, visualizing her in the chorus line on opening night. 'You never bullshit me Jay, never yet have I been sony I listened to you, never.' Lisa hadn't said a word. She hardly knew what to say; it was as if.she wasn't supposed to say anything.
'She's worried that she hasn't danced before Mario,' Jay told him.
'Will you tell her that that doesn't matter.' Mario dropped his head back and threw out his left hand, palm upwards.
'My dear Lisa let me assure you that in Mario's hands which are, in all modesty, the hands of a true svengali those minor considerations are not,' he said shaking his head vigorously from side to side, 'considerations at all. They are only trivial fears. You will of course, become very sore but that will last only a while and is a very small price to pay for being taught from The Master.'
'Well just tell me what to do. I'm ready to go to work-that is if you've hired me… '
'We'll give it a week before I hire or fire you, just a week. Rehearsals begin at six tonight at the Mermaid Theatre. You know where that is?'
'On La Cienaga?'
'That's right and please be there promptly at six.'
Mario was very talented and he was a delight to work with and after seven days of agonizing dance exercises and relentless routines Lisa was officially hired to join his revue going to Palm Springs in two weeks time. And Mario was right-she was very sore. 'I've got muscles that I never knew existed,' she told Jeanette one night as she rubbed liniment down the length of her legs having just emerged from a steaming hot tub. 'Christ do I hurt all over!' she groaned, hobbling into the bedroom.
'But you know,' Jeanette remarked, 'it looks like you're getting more curves. I mean the lines of your body are expressing themselves-all that dancing is chipping away at that little layer that was starting to gather around you. You look great even if you feel like shit.'
'I do, I do, I do. Mario said we should put a dozen aspirin in the tub when we went to soak and that would take all the soreness out of your body but I don't feel much different.' 'You will.'
Lisa left Los Angeles on an air conditioned Greyhound bus with a dozen other girls, a wardrobe mistress, a road manager and Mario The Master overseeing the whole show. He kept them in stitches the entire trip with an unending stream of stories of life in the line and on the boards. As further testimony to his genius and impeccable good taste he had provided delicious picnic basket lunches for everyone along with a dozen bottles of champagne that he urged everyone to drink. He also told them between volleys of laughter that if any of them ever showed up for work drunk or stoned he would personally kick them out of the show on their beautiful asses. They knew he wasn't kidding.
Lisa's head began to spin like a gyroscope as the bus pulled into Palm Springs; her weekend with Claude Frescotti descending upon her like some unbearable weight.
By the time they had stepped down into the sweltering heat of the desert she had successfully regained her equilibrium. The air was breathless and the girls whistled in unison as the transition from the air cooled womb of the bus into the midafternoon sun hit them with its full impact.
Lisa wasn't the best dancer in Mario's Palm Springs Revue but she was the one that everybody noticed first- the one they all remembered. She worked hard at it. 'Wrap up warm and dry off fast,' Mario always advised when the girls came off stage dripping like they'd just stepped from a steam bath and Lisa was the one that perspired the most because she put the most into it. That her timing wasn't always note perfect seemed not to matter very much to Mario or anyone else.
The gig lasted six months. When it was over and another show was to replace Mario's Revue Lisa was in a quandary as to what path to follow. 'I feel like I've found my vocation Mario,' she told him on the last night, 'and I've really become a desert person. I mean I just couldn't imagine living anywhere else now but Palm Springs but what am I going to do? There just aren't that many hoofing jobs going down here.'
Mario tapped the side of his head and rolled his eyes in that way of his and said, 'Dummy! Haven't you ever heard of Las Vegas, Nevada?'
'Las Vegas?' Lisa asked like she was discovering the lost continent of Atlantis.
'Yes my baby, Vegas!' I'm putting another show together to be showcased in a month's time. There's a place in the lineup for you if you want it-just say the word.'
Lisa said the word, planting a wet, sloppy kiss on Mario's forehead, and her eyes filled with tears.
'Why are you crying toots?' he asked.
