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taking over. Male strippers were muscling in on the business. Birdie made her living by being just a little bit sinful, but if there wasn’t anything sinful anymore, she would be flat broke, wouldn’t she? Interpretative dancing had to wait while she made her way in the world. It had waited all these years, she guessed she could live without expressing her true self for a little while longer. But still, it is a terrible thing not to have an outlet for the terpsichorean passion that fires your limbs, for example.
    As for the years she had waited—Birdie was forty, and the funny thing was—she knew it was funny because everyone else in the business lied—she didn’t mind saying so. You had to lie to managers, certainly. Managers she told she was thirty-eight; but on the whole, forty was a fine age to admit to. It’s not as if you get to be forty without earning it. Every bump and grind had cost her, but she wasn’t sorry. Look what she had got for it: Sid Gold.
    Birdie loved Sidney. She had met him when she was doing a cake job at a stag party on Atlantic Avenue. Some smartass had pricked the balloon on her behind with his swizzlestick, and everyone had laughed except Sid. And her. It stung like hell, that stupid rubber snapping against her bottom. It was like being goosed with a slingshot. She didn’t mind pranks. She didn’t mind kinks, most of them. But one thing she hated, and that was pain. From the big stuff to the kid stuff, S and M was for the birds and not for Birdie.
    Sidney was very kind. He had a mushy heart and a cute fringe and a deep mind. Birdie gave him his own key to her place and he could drop in whenever he felt like it, though, being a gentleman, he usually telephoned first. This was as close to being married as Birdie cared to come, and she made sure that Sidney appreciated the honor she was bestowing on him. Of course, it wasn’t all give and no take. There was no one Birdie liked having around more than Sidney. He was undoubtedly the most significant human being she had ever known, and the sweetest besides. Why, she supposed she would do just about anything for Sidney.
    When he came to see her in the apartment on Madison, they turned the air conditioner on full and sat on the Empire sofa while she massaged his forehead. He said he couldn’t get a real massage anymore. You went into one of these parlors and you were lucky to get out with your clothes on. You had to drink champagne in a sunken Roman bath or lie down in an all-red room that made your eyeballs ache, and what good was it to satisfy one pair when the other pair was popping out? Furthermore, he preferred Concord Grape. It showed you what the world was coming to, he said. Birdie blew on his fringe and told him the story of her life.
    The apartment was in a high-rise with a doorman. It wasn’t a penthouse but, as she pointed out to Sidney, she was on the way up. She had a dressing room adjoining her bedroom, so she could put on her face in private like a lady; the dressing table had a skirt and a three-way mirror. Basically, making up involved moisturizing the skin, pancake foundation, highlighter, translucent powder, blusher, eye makeup base, eye shadow (blue or purple, or both, and silver frost), two strips of false lashes on each eye, eyeliner, pencil, mascara, lipstick, lip outliner, and a stick-on beauty spot in the shape of a baby chick. (But on the Fourth of July and Washington’s Birthday, as a patriotic person, she wore a beauty spot in the shape of a tiny flag.) Making up required about two hours each time she did it. In cocktail lounges, from a distance of ten feet, Birdie looked twenty. She liked being forty but she didn’t like looking forty. Her hair color changed with her wigs. Lately, she was into platinum.
    The rest of Birdie’s apartment looked like a set from a Hollywood musical. This was because Birdie found the movies very helpful when it came to ideas for