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that then cascaded in lush waves down past her hips. Her skin was pale as alabaster, her mouth pouty, her eyes heavy-lidded and dreamy from the pot she had smoked to get the courage to do what she needed to do to earn the hundred dollars the manager had promised her every night . There was a fortune to be made, or at least it had seemed a fortune to the girl she had been then, if she would only dance naked except for a satiny G-string six nights a week for an audience of thirty to fifty drooling men.
    They weren’t allowed to touch her in the bar—the manager had explained that the owner was afraid of losing his liquor license, and so the rule was strictly enforced—and whether or not she “dated” a customer for more money after her performance was over was strictly up to her. She’d known she never would, so she wouldn’t be a whore. She would be only dancing, nothing more.
    Thus she had persuaded herself, convinced that in the long run the money would be worth the shame that had twisted her insides whenever she had allowed her imagination to take her as far as actually getting up on that stage. She would make nearly four times the money dancing as she did working split shifts as a waitress at the Harmony Inn, where she got decent tips only on Tuesday nights because of the all-you-can-eat fish special. It would be stupid not to take the job, she told herself with her customary hardheaded practicality, stupid not to cash in on her young, lithe body and pretty face while they were still there to be cashed in on. Yet she couldn’t tell Nick what she meant to do, though he was her best friend andher closest family all rolled into one and she told him everything else. Nick would hit the roof if he knew.
    When the time actually came for her debut performance on a less than crowded Thursday night, she never would have been able to go through with it if another dancer, more inured to the life, hadn’t taken pity on her obvious fright and gotten her high as a kite first.
    For three whole nights, she’d been one of the nine beautiful girls and three ugly ones (or so the newspaper ads described them) who had comprised the stable of dancers at the Pink Pussycat. Each night she’d vomited from nerves as she’d gotten ready for her performance, and each night she’d thought she couldn’t possibly go out there on that stage again. Smoking grass had gotten her through it. All the girls did, passing joints back and forth as they applied body makeup in the tiny rest room that served as their dressing room. Maggy had deliberately inhaled until she was comfortably lost somewhere in space. Only then had she been able to go on.
    Stoned, it hadn’t been so terribly hard. She’d felt she was floating as she walked out on the tiny stage and the bright stage lights hit her, all but blinding her. At first it had been easy to pretend she was alone, undressing to music in the privacy of her apartment. The pounding rhythm of the rock anthem “Born to Be Wild” had swelled until it seemed to be right inside her brain, and she had moved instinctively to its beat. For her entrance, her hair was piled high atop her head by one of the other girls. She began her act by removing the pins from the heavy mass and shaking it loose. Then she slowly untied the sash of the scarlet, feather-trimmed robe that was the outermost part of her costume. That first night, when she felt the silk of the robe slide down her arms to puddle at her feet and realized that she was almost completely naked beneath, she suffered an attack of fear and modesty acute enough to pierce the drugged fog that shielded her. Panic assailed her as, dressed in nothing but high heels, blackthigh-high stockings, and a black sequined G-string, she faced the audience of dozens of drooling, clapping men. She had glanced down, been confronted with the hard pink tips of her bare breasts and the naked curve of her belly and thighs—and had nearly died of shame on the spot. Quickly,