The idea for this story came to me one morning while I was half asleep and it just went from there. I wanna thank LT and especially Deke for all their beta help on this and Elektra for leads on research and basically just listening while I rattled :-).
This is another one of my odd jumbles of Movieverse and comic canon. It's Movieverse Logan with comic book Logan's background although I've taken some liberties with the timeline of Logan's epiphany.
I've also taken some literary license with the existence of burlesque theaters in New York City in the 40's since Mayor Fiorello La Guardia actually began shutting them down in 1937 but I'm sure you all don't really care ;-)
Disclaimer: Logan and anyone else you recognize belong to Marvel and 20th Century Fox. Everyone else is mine but I'm willing to share 'em. I'm poor and not making any money of this so please don't sue me.
Feedback: Fugu me, man!
1945
Snow wafted gently out of the gray November sky to settle on his shoulders. Logan glanced up, a slight smile playing on his lips. It was the first time he'd felt comfortable since coming to this Godforsaken burg almost two weeks ago. He'd been at loose ends since being discharged from the army so when his transport ship had docked in the Hudson River and he'd looked up to see the impressive skyline of Manhattan looming over him he decided this was as good a place as any to hang around. Now he was wondering if it was such a good idea. His separation pay was almost gone and he still hadn't been able to find a job. He didn't even have enough to get back to Canada!
He clutched the want ads a little tighter in his hand and crossed Union Square Park on his way to Irving Place a few short blocks away. He turned into the short street that ended at Gramercy Park and stopped in front of the address in the paper. 17 Irving Place. He double-checked the ad; yes this was the address but. . . this was a burlesque house. The marquee out front read "The Poor Man's Follies Bergere. Not A Family Show!" The sandwich boards and showcases to either side of the entrance were filled with 8x10 glossies of scantily clad women with luridly exotic names.
He walked up to the box office. The bored, middle-aged attendant looked up from filing her nails. "Fifty cents." She intoned in a high-pitched, grating voice.
He held up the newspaper. "I'm here about the ad."
"Go back around to 15th Street. You'll find the stage door in the first alley on your left. Ask for Joe, the manager," she directed him desultorily and went back to filing her nails.
He walked back to the corner to find the stage door. A burlesque house was not what he'd been expecting when he decided to answer the ad in the New York Herald looking for "Strong men for manual labor. Long hours. Decent Pay."
The war had been over for six months now and so many soldiers were being mustered out and returned to the States on a daily basis that both jobs and living accommodations were extremely difficult to come by. He was lucky to find a crummy room in a downtown Single Room Occupancy hotel but it was a considerable drain on his meager resources. He really didn't want to have to dip into his bank account back in Canada just yet. He hoped this job worked out.
He entered the stage door, taking a second to let his eyes adjust to the dark interior. He could hear the sounds of the performance on stage. A comic was doing a bit and going down pretty well judging by the volume of laughter he was evoking from the audience. The same scantily dressed women from the pictures in front of the theater were strolling around in spangled costumes or silk bathrobes.
Many of them were a bit long in the tooth and some even downright homely! Even so, he knew beauty and youth weren't always the attributes most highly prized in burlesque.
There was an old man seated at a desk right inside the door. He put a finger to his lips and pointed to the "Silence Please When Performance In Progress" sign hanging above his head. In a whisper he asked, "Can I help you, son?"
Logan gave him an amused look. He held up the newspaper and whispered back, "I'm looking for Joe."
The old man held up a palm to indicate Logan should wait where he was and disappeared into the murky recesses of the wings. He came back a few minutes later leading a middle-aged man of medium height wearing a ragged sweater and a beat up trilby hat. The second man, he assumed this was Joe, motioned for Logan to follow him back out to the alley.
"You answering the ad?" he asked in a voice that was all business but not unfriendly.
"Yep."
"So what're your qualifications," Joe asked with a twinkle in his eye.
"Well let's see. I just spent the past six years kicking German butt, jumped out of a plane on D-Day and, oh yeah, I can drink anyone under the table," he answered wryly.
Joe clapped him on the back. "Congratulations! You're my new stagehand. Can you start now?"
Logan held out his hand to the other man. "Absolutely!"
"You been around burlesque houses before?" Joe asked.
Logan grinned. "Only on the other side of the curtain."
Joe nodded. "Your job is mostly to set the scenery and props between scenes and keep the stage and the wings clean. Sometimes though we need to run interference if the girls are being bothered by a masher or eject one of the 'raincoat' crowd if you know what I mean, but fortunately that doesn't happen often.
"We've got a pretty simple system here. All the flats, flies and props are color coded by scene and their places on the stage are marked with the same color paint. I'm sure you'll pick it up fairly quickly but if you have any questions ask any of the fellas. You can stand in the wings and watch for the rest of this show and I'll get you started on the next one."
Both men re-entered the dark theater and Joe motioned Logan to a spot behind the wing curtain where he wouldn't be in the way. Logan peered out and saw that the singing act was just finishing. He knew that meant it was time for the soubrette, or second-string stripper to now appear. The soubrettes were the support to the headliner who closed the show.
He watched as Joe took microphone in hand. "Ladies and Gentlemen, the Irving Place Theater is proud to present that Goddess of the Terpsichorean Arts, the Ballerina of Burlesque, Miss Brandy Alexander."
Logan looked over to the other wing where a spotlight picked up the entrance of the performer in question. A young blonde woman burst onto the stage in a flurry of white pleated chiffon and an enthusiastic response from the audience. She smiled insouciantly into the glare on the other side of the footlights then flung her hands back and kicked her pointed toe way over her head before proceeding to strip one long white glove from her right hand.
It was obvious to Logan she was what was known as an ingénue stripper. Like he'd told Joe, he spent enough time at burlesque houses to know the different kinds of strip acts that comprised a burlesque show. It was unusual for the soubrette to also be an ingénue, that type of act was usually reserved for a headliner.
Logan watched as the left glove got tossed into the wings. He saw the chorus girls scramble to retrieve it. Miss Brandy Alexander then executed a stunning arabesque, her nose practically touching her knee, her legs almost forming a vertical line. She lowered her leg slowly and teasingly removed the pleated chiffon skirt exposing fishnet and spangle clad legs and sequined dancing trunks.
He reflected on how she seemed to be an amazingly talented dancer and found himself wishing he could get a better look at her face. Because of the lights shining into his eyes from the other side of the stage he could only see her in silhouette. She performed a stunning triple pirouette before reaching back to slowly and teasingly unzip her satin and sequined bodice. She gently shimmied her petite shoulders causing the straps to migrate several inches down her arms, letting them pause there for several moments before whipping it off completely and exposing the spangled brassiere that matched the dance trunks.
A few more ballet steps and the trunks were gone and then the moment that everyone in the theater waited for with bated breath, Logan included, the moment when the brassiere was removed and Miss Alexander stood before them in nothing but flesh colored tulle illusion adorned with strategically placed rhinestones. The music crescendoed, the move was completed and the audience and Logan erupted into thunderous applause, which the stripper demurely acknowledged through several curtain calls with dainty curtsies and inclinations of her head.
He watched as she exited stage right, opposite him, and began toweling off before donning her dressing gown. Joe stood at his side.
"That's Brandy, my best stripper. Wish I could convince her to headline but she doesn't want to. Says she's perfectly happy being a soubrette! Say's she'd have to tour and work more if she was the headline and she's got a kid to take care of."
"Sure is. And a real class act too. Not like some of the trash you find around burlesque houses if you know what I mean. Not that we get much of that kind around here. We may not be as well known as Minsky's but we're still pretty respectable," Joe told him proudly.
Logan looked around him. He'd been to Minsky's once and he could tell this place wasn't as fancy but everything was clean and in good repair and from what he could see of the patrons, they were solid working class individuals out for an afternoon of entertainment.
Joe went on to tell him how they didn't tolerate drunken patrons in addition to mashers or perverts. They wanted to maintain a respectable environment for the benefit of both the audience and the performers.
"I should probably warn you about Rosie, though." Joe continued.
"Rosie?"
"Rosie Le Fleur. She's the cooch dancer. She's tried to make every guy between 18 and 60 that has worked in this theater. The only one she hasn't made a pass at is old Pops over there." Joe gestured to the old man at the door. "Now I'm not gonna tell you what to do if she does make a play for you but my advice would be to steer clear, she's bad news. I wouldn't even keep her on but she's popular and brings in a lot of repeat business."
Joe teamed Logan up with a big guy named Gus so he could learn the ropes during the next performance. By the time the shows were over at 11:00 that night Logan had the process down to a tee. He and Gus were busy sweeping up and the performers and musicians were loitering together in small groups before heading out the door to their homes.
Gus took him over and introduced Logan to a few of them. He found himself scanning the groups to see if Brandy was among them.
"Hey, Logan," Gus called to him. "A few of us are going around the corner to Pete's for a coupla beers before heading home. Wanna come?"
"Sure, Gus. Just let me grab my coat."
When Logan and Gus got to Pete's, Logan was disappointed to find Brandy wasn't with the group from the theater. He asked Gus about her.
"Oh, Brandy doesn't hang around long after the last show. She usually goes straight home to her son as soon as she's done."
Logan found himself mildly disappointed; the Ballerina of Burlesque intrigued him.
"Her husband lets her strip?" Logan asked incredulously.
Gus shook his head. "Brandy's husband was killed in the war. She's a widow. That's why she strips."
He was standing at the bar with some of the other stagehands exchanging war stories, many of the men had also been stationed in Europe, when he felt a hand run up the back of his thigh and a pinch on his butt.
Scowling, he turned to see who the culprit was and found himself looking into a pair of dancing black eyes. Upon further inspection the black eyes belonged to a woman. He cocked his eyebrow and looked her up and down. She was tall and slender with dark olive skin and the brassiest red hair he'd ever seen. She also had about the biggest rack he'd ever seen on a woman, shown to advantage in her low-cut sweater. She was leering at him quite suggestively as well.
"Hello, guapo," she said in a deep silky voice tinged with a slight accent. "I don't believe we've met. I'm Rosie Le Fleur."
Logan cocked an eyebrow. "Oh, you're Rosie," he said.
The beauty in front of him pursed her lips. "Joe mentioned me, did he?" Logan nodded. "Yeah, well don't believe everything Joe says."
She inched a little closer to him causing one of her bountiful breasts to brush his arm. "Why don't you buy me a beer and we can go sit down and get acquainted?"
Joe's warning that she was trouble briefly echoed in Logan's head but he dismissed it. Logan had spent plenty of time without women in the past six years and here he was confronted by a gorgeous and obviously willing stripper and he wasn't about to say no. Playing it safe wasn't in his nature.
He secured two beers from the bartender and she took his arm and led him to a dark booth.
"You know, I'm the cooch dancer," she said seductively, emphasizing the last two words. Logan could hear the knowing chuckles from the men behind him at the bar. The cooch dancer was the stripper who did all the gyrating and acrobatic dancing. He glanced over his shoulder and smirked knowingly at the other stagehands who smirked right back.
At 2:00 am, Logan and Rosie stood on the sidewalk outside Pete's. Rosie was weaving slightly. Logan was only pleasantly buzzed; he seemed capable of drinking larger amounts of beer than most people without getting drunk or ever having a hangover.
In the last four hours he'd learned that Rosie was Puerto Rican, drank like a fish and had long red fingernails that she knew how to use very well. He hitched in a little breath at the memory of them raking lightly over his thigh and crotch.
"So, Logan. My place or yours?"
He eyed the redhead's generous curves under her sweater and tight skirt appreciatively and sighed. He couldn't remember how long it had been since he'd made love to a woman in a clean bed. Hell, he couldn't even remember the last time he'd made love to a woman at all. His last leave had been months ago and now this beautiful woman was standing in front of him propositioning him quite openly.
He slipped his arm around her slim waist. "Better make it yours, darlin'." Logan never took women back to his place. Then you never had to worry about how to get rid of them in the morning.
She rubbed her generous bosom against his chest, eliciting a low growl from the object of her attention. "Whatever you want, lover."
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