Page 22 of The Dirty Version

Meanwhile, Tash suddenly felt frumpy. She smiled, attempting to dispatch warmth. She hoped the low light masked her urge to bludgeon Astrid’s intrusion with a nearby candelabra; she hoped her teeth looked friendly, and not like savagely possessive fangs.

“Astrid, dear!” Across the room, Ilsa fluttered silver in the stage glow. “Come! Let me squeeze you for good luck.”

The stage lights blackened completely.

Astrid and her bad timing thankfully flitted off.

Tash stared straight ahead, grateful for the darkness, grateful to let it smother the war drum of her pulse. There was no time to examine her reaction. A pink spotlight hit the stage.

It illuminated two sets of snapping fingers, attached to wrists poking through the velvet curtain.

This became a twisting snake of limbs as three, then four pairs of arms joined the choreography.

Then a ballet barre rolled in from the left, led on a short leash by a voluptuous redhead dancer in a tartan micromini.

Her stride pitched exactly to the backdrop finger-clacks.

She struck a pose at center stage, her retro push-up bra and gartered fishnets bumping to the beat.

She hooked one knee-high, heeled boot defiantly over the wood barre, its steel base held in place by the disembodied hands behind. One of her arms went overhead, thumb to middle finger splitting out the sound of friction. Her hips canted forward, miniskirt lifting with each snap.

She stayed like that, a throbbing statue—head stock-still, torso an undulating drum.

The hands that weren’t hers took turns flossing a feather boa over her clavicle, sliding it under her rib cage, around her waist, the swell of her bottom, in a dirty spiral that reached its finish line between her thighs.

All the while, the dancer’s eyes stared out into the theater rebelliously.

Mesmerized, Tash leaned over to Caleb. She whispered: “I thought this was a movie screening.”

Caleb shook his head, bending to whisper close to Tash’s ear in a way that obliterated any lingering traces of Astrid. “It’s a movie teaser .” His rasp covered her in goosebumps. “This is burlesque, Natasha. I told you—we like to draw it out.”

The stage blurred, which was either Caleb’s nearness, or the champagne, or the theater’s general state of increasing musk.

The floating hands rearranged the woman, turning her around, folding her over the barre.

Her cheeky knickers were exposed to the audience, her derriere up; all the while, the snapping rhythm never stopped.

No clothing was shed, and yet. When the white glissade of projection screen dropped to spank the dancer’s upturned bottom, the entire theater flinched and squeezed its knees together. The room erupted in appreciative hoots.

Which only quieted when footage of a dance rehearsal began to whir, sepia and burnt-out at first, across the screen. The camera zoomed in on a cane, tapping counts out on hardwood flooring. It skipped to fingers on ragtime piano keys, then the glitter of a faceted Vegas headdress.

The sepia celluloid bloomed into color—what seemed like B-roll from Calypso’s dressing room.

The camera panned along a wall of sequined and bejeweled pasties.

Then a rack of burlesque baseball-team uniforms: hot pants and balconette bras with player numbers poking up over the half cups.

It swung to mannequins in leather cinch-belts, a patent police cap pinned jauntily to a tumbling bouffant wig.

Then a man—on a simple stool against a pointedly empty backdrop.

He had a full head of salt-and-pepper hair and a Tom Selleck pornstache.

He began speaking to the camera about a month-long “family values” protest outside Calypso; and how every day, he would bodyguard-piggyback Viv across the Sunset Strip picket line.

Tash could not contain herself; she leaned over, her whisper more a delighted hiss: “Caleb! Tell me that’s your father!”

There was no question—on the screen, the elder Rafferty had the same ocean-blue eyes, sans glasses; the same hair rumple and strong jaw, his carpenter shirt rolled up and showcasing muscular forearms.

Caleb hissed back. “Not you, too!”

“Oh, me, too.” Tash grinned her whisper when Caleb growled. “I’m sorry, but that man’s a stone-cold fox.”

Then Shane Rafferty’s testimonial transitioned to silent footage of a woman who had to be Vivienne Palmer—she dazzled from atop a parade-float-size papier-maché cake, bright and joking with whoever was behind the camera.

The footage resembled a home movie, with voice-overs from the Calypso crew.

Moving images of Viv onstage, in a spotlight, roughing steps out in a simple dancer’s leotard; holding a giant white feather fan; lifting a whiskey to someone in the footlights.

Viv backstage, a cadre of makeup-free dancers of all shapes and sizes hanging on her every word; then the same women later, costumed and clasping hands in a circle right before a show.

At Tash’s elbow, Caleb had gone still.

His breath held, his eyes glistening the reflection of his stepmother’s laughter, her vibrance caught in the projector flicker, unmistakably alive.

And Tash didn’t even think about it—on an instinct, she reached out and grabbed Caleb’s hand, squeezing, acknowledging the moment.

He squeezed back.

Then he intertwined their fingers instead of letting go.

He kept his chin up, gaze fixed on the film teaser—a little boy in tortoiseshell glasses, a stepson with a tattoo, a grown man in hunky chambray trying to hold it together in a darkened theater, his grip hitching him to Tash.

She leaned her head against his shoulder—in solidarity, in comfort. But as soon as she got there, she smelled him—husk and cedar and California wild grass, rock canyon and morning sex, easy laughter and unruffled patience. Solid and strong and so potently Caleb , Tash’s vision blurred again.

He trapped the gesture, dropping his temple to Tash’s crown.

Every molecule in her body reared up, bucking against the harness of her better judgment, begging her to twist ever so slightly; to part his shirt buttons with her mouth and press her face there and just give in.

Just as the film teaser ended.

Just as Caleb didn’t move.

Just as their hands stayed clasped, and the projection screen lifted, and Tash and Caleb remained side by side together in the fragile, glimmering dark.

Then a bathtub-size martini glass pushed through the curtains.

The water sparkled with tiny, gilded bubbles. A crystal ladder tilted carefully against its rim. An emcee’s voice boomed, announcing none other than the lithe and lovely Astrid Dalton, in a surprise tribute to Calypso, and to her godmother, Vivienne.

Astrid sailed onstage, burlesque her birthright, flinging her satin robe aside. The room exploded with applause as she posed in an elaborate nude gown, dusted head to toe in diamante. At the sight of her, Tash wanted to shrivel up and die.

But she endeavored to live—because a breath later, Caleb chuckled.

He’d turned his face into Tash’s hair.

In a rumble only Tash could hear: “I can’t look. I used to pack her lunch box.” With his free hand, he removed his eyeglass frames. “Tell me when it’s over.”

Tash had struggled to believe him when he’d told her, “She’s like my little sister”—but now it actually seemed true.

Tash anchored herself to the sturdy rope of his upper arm.

She felt his breath in her hair. She sank into the delicious backfire of Astrid’s seduction—which would have worked on any other man.

Tash barely noticed as Astrid began a slow peel, timed to Jazz Age snare swells.

A languorous striptease unfolded, but Tash’s mind glazed over, too busy memorizing Caleb’s closeness.

When Astrid’s garments had been reduced to just a flesh-colored body stocking with rhinestone nipple tassels and a crystal thong, she scaled the martini bathtub’s shining ladder, perching on the rim of the wet glass, sending a flirty wink beyond the blinding spotlight in Caleb and Tash’s direction.

She pointed her toes, pinup posing along the edge, scooping an oversized bath sponge meant to look like an olive from the water’s surface.

She arched her back, wringing out a downpour over the peaks of her breasts.

The action was so jarringly erotic, it startled Tash slightly from her Caleb haze.

She watched the slow slide of Astrid’s thong-clad bottom as it piked to the base of the glass, water sloshing between her legs and brushing the tips of her pasties.

Astrid spun, lifting back onto the rim, skimming down skillfully into the water again, head thrown back, thighs spread, a rush of liquid up her belly and through the valley of her breasts.

She raised the sponge brazenly overhead again—another rush of water, drizzling diamond suds over her long neck, splattering her pasties, drenching the glittering apex of her thong.

The theater cheered. Astrid beamed. She swirled, articulated toes kicking a crest of water across the stage, playfully misting the front clutch of chesterfields. The house lights illuminated softly, just for a moment, accenting the audience’s delighted squeal.

The brightness lasted only seconds, but it was long enough for Astrid to blink beyond the spotlight, searching for Caleb—and instead meeting Tash’s gaze.

Long enough for Astrid to see where Caleb’s effort to avoid watching her had become a rather intimate cling; and Tash saw Astrid’s flicker of dejection.

The house lights extinguished.

Astrid extended her legs again, kicking with a sunny flair, punting a stream of water directly at Tash and Caleb.

It doused them both.

The act continued.

Caleb jumped off the couch. But no one else seemed bothered. No one else around them had gotten wet.

Caleb bent to gasp at Tash’s running mascara.

“Come with me.” He crouched, ducking them out a side door.