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SHOWTIME

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DEE RAYMOND

The show was obviously fail- ing. Not even Joe Dubilow both- ered now to give the dancers a hearty goodnight. "I guess that means we've had it!" exclaimed Cindy Brenner to the little group following her.

David Rennick glanced in through the stagedoor-keeper's lodge window. Dubilow was reading the entertainment sec- tion of an evening paper. There'd be a review in there somewhere of "The Great Shoot-Out", damning it with the faint praise that had been the show's lot since Baltimore. "Old Joe always knows," said David softly, slip- ping his arm through Cindy's. They'd been going together since the second day of rehearsals, over six months, and all the 'kids' recognized them as a pair. "Where're we going tonight?" asked Marty Salter. He was the kind of male dancer whose slim- ness and smooth features made people raise their eyebrows and smile knowingly. Yet, he too was paired, to Sally Rader, a striking, big-busted girl, who stood taller than any of them in her high heels.

"To Fatima's!" shouted Cindy pointing up the Great White Way "Our taste buds deserve it!" Her shoulder-length red hair was blown all about her laughing

face as she turned out of the alley into the street proper.

"Besides, it's the only place you still have credit." Ace De- manski's growl only made the group laugh and giggle more. You could always count on Ace to be glum and serious even when they were all trying to be jolly, and, as well, it was true that money ran through Cindy's fingers like water.

"Seriously though," said David, when they were seated on the brown, leather-covered benches that Ali, the proprietor, called 'booths', "our being here is as stupid as this show we're trying to fob off on the public."

"Tush, child," Rosalie Ham- mond, the Eurasian, put a green- tipped finger on her dark lips. "Don't ever bite the hand that feeds you."

"Feeds us!" Now, Ace was joining in, too. "Look at the pack of us. We twelve keep that whole show going, and look who's on the percentages. Not Nadine or any of the backers. Oh no. Not Miss Congeniality. Ugh!"

David hadn't wanted to get Ace started again, even though he could sympathize with him. They all felt it, he was sure. The very unfairness of the system wrankled. They'd had nothing

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to do with setting up the show, but the demands of Director Nadine Boorman that they be actors, singers as well as dancers, on stage almost constantly, even for costume changes, were add- ing up to be too much. And now with the last pay day missed, all the 'troupe', at least they were together in that, all they could afford was coffee at this second- rate diner, while listening to last year's hits on the jukebox.

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"Come on, Dave, let's dance.' Cindy had his hand, pulling at him, and he followed her willing- ly. Ali didn't have a license but he didn't object to them dancing in the small space behind the ma- chine. The girls were good, and the boys were sometimes better. Ali would beam and say it was good for business, though no- body ever gave them more than a second glance. David cynically guessed that Ali was just trying to be friendly enough to get them to stop calling the Bazaar- am-Baal Coffee House, 'Fatima's'.

"We lack elan," he returned to his theme later as he and Cindy prepared for bed, in the bed- sitter they shared in the board- ing-house.

"Oh, David," she said, tired and snuggling down into the soft mattress. She'd heard him go on