Long American Legs
Five minutes after the first curtain call, Velma knew they had it made. The audience loved them – it had been eating greedily out of the palms of their hands the entire night, and still howled out by the stage door, waiting for an autograph.
Velma replaced her stage lashes with even longer ones before she donned a picture brim hat. She wanted to be stunning for her public, flawless.
Roxie was out in the hallway, waiting for her, carefully put together in head-to-toe white. What a contrast, she heard the buzz - Snow White and Rose Red. Sensational!
Roxie smirked cheekily. “Our public wouldn’t want us running around in potato sacks, Vel.” She took a couple of puffs off of the half-smoked Lucky Strike she’d been nursing before grinding it out under her new, expensive suede pumps.
A smirk, a flick of ash, and they were out the front entrance, soaking in the approval of their adoring public.
***
Ten years later, she felt that hot bang of electric temptation. Velma had been watching Roxie tear through a solo tap routine when it happened, the quicksilver neuropathy of lust singeing her brain and making the world pink as a bathtub of champagne.
Lately, Velma’s decided that it was all about angles; the act of seeing Roxie from below, in an orchestra pit while she tapped her way through “Fascinating Rhythm” under one eggshell (not ‘white’, not ‘snow-colored’) spotlight.
Velma hated those solos; to everyone around them, they were further evidence that she and Roxie were starting to wind their way back down to the bottom rungs of the vaudeville circuit. Five years ago, they would have toplined the movie, two dog acts and a magician – now they played second-fiddle to an opera singer in third-rate supper clubs.
Squatting miserably in the orchestra pit in her finale costume, waiting for Roxie to finish vamping her way through a forgotten solo, Velma remembered their choreographer’s words. ‘“You’re getting up there, girls. Even Isadora Duncan worked breaks into her routines.” Roxie had snapped her Beemans gum, her eyes bugged out, red mouth agape. “Who the fuck does he think he’s talking to?” she raged. Velma rolled her eyes. As always, Roxie thought herself singular in her outrage as she ranted and raved. “What the fuck are you rolling your eyes at?” she howled back, and in a moment they were off to the races, slamming doors and breaking room service dishes.
Of course they would ultimately accept his advice – he’d put together a hit stage show for Lillian Gish. So together they struggled to try to fit the ethos of a decade they hadn’t made. Their terminal sense of self-reliance refused to allow anything close to sharing or intimacy, yet they leaned on each other in weak times, when shoestraps broke and creditors came calling.
But somehow, she was all off, all wrong – they got into a screaming match later about how off-key she’d been – vases were thrown, and Velma dumped the diamond bracelet Roxie had gotten from a minor Scottish duke out the window of the five-fifty express to Brussels. She knew she was in deep when, by way of apology, she sat across from Roxie in their dressing room at the Blue Danube, smoking cigarettes as Benny Goodman played on her ancient phonograph. It was newly fascinating, how smoke wreathed her blonde bob, making an artificial halo as she straightened fishnet stockings on thick, strong legs that seemed to go up and up…
***
The first time they kissed, they were braced against a dressing room door in Budapest, an hour before they performed before a half-sold out supper club.
It began with an argument – back then it always did. Roxie had taken up half of the make-up table, to Velma’s complete disgust, crowding out her liner and body make up with pots of rouge and a box of Blondine that stunk up their small shared space to high heaven. It was the first time they’d ever actually physically shoved one another, a match of wills that landed Roxie shoulders-down on the desk, scattering bruises, screaming invective about how she was the star of the show and could get along perfectly well without Velma, and could prove it with her fists or her feet.
She couldn’t remember who kissed whom the first time, only that they were suddenly enmeshed on the counter, and Roxie was kissing her back, and Velma’s heart pounded violently in the depths of her chest like a kettle drum in an opening night fanfare.
Her lipstick smeared, a blood trail, on the white of Roxie’s thighs; fishnets caught in lacquered nails and ripped; bugle beads scattered, drops of light refracting across the moodily lit dressing room floor.
Some time after orgasms rose to overwhelm their addled reason, Roxie rested her pale head against Velma’s dark-shadowed sex, panting her delight, and grinning behind lipstick covered teeth.
“Geezum crow, whatta way to make up!”
***
Somewhere along the line, they ended up in LA. No one seemed to notice the shared glances, the subtle brushing of thighs against thighs, hands touching under the table; maybe because there were plenty of other ‘scarlet tandems’ populating the town.
Roxie passed a screen test with Republic Pictures; Velma won a bit contract with MGM. They became entirely different people publicly; Roxanne, the sweet farm girl with the tragic past who had come to Hollywood to make good; Velma, the vamp who would turn Joan Crawford green with envy. No need to remark about the wrinkles that had begun to mark Roxie’s brow, or the crow’s feet straining Velma’s eyes; those could be neatly covered in make-up. Their agent passed Roxie off as twenty-five, Velma as thirty-two.
There were westerns for Roxanne, and occasional light comedies; Velma did a costume drama where she was the femme fatale who died of consumption on a snow-filled city street. They went out on studio-directed dates at the Copa and Sardis with producer-approved swains, who they entertained, bedded (occasionally together), but ultimately shredded.
The result was the same every night; they would be Roxie and Velma again, intertwined under the covers, lost in a world of perfumed silk.
***
They never did have a successful hit. Their contracts were summarily cancelled, and so they moved back to New York because – so they realized over a ‘good-bye-and-good-riddance, California’-dinner - Neither of them had ever conquered the Great White Way.
Nowadays, the apartment’s dingy, and they’re on their fifth agent; Roxie’s hair is pure Blondine, and Velma’s girdle’s a size larger than it was before. They’re still vamping it up at the age where most women have retired to sewing circles and church groups. But they’ll climb up that ladder again, get back to the garden of plenty, make all the fools who laughed at them incredibly sorry they crossed two gutsy dames such as themselves.
As long as they have silk sheets, bright lights, and one another, they’ll be just fine.