"Yes?"
The man in the blazer must have told a joke; everyone was laughing. The band riffed.
"If you need to ... hit the head, or whatever... it's-"
"No, I'm fine," Valentine said, fighting to make coherent conversation. "Warm in here, isn't it?"
"If you need to cool off I've got good air on ..."
The band drowned her out with a flourish, and two pairs of female dancers each stepped out from either side of the stage. They wore what Valentine guessed were once called biking shorts and sports bras. They started a hip-hop dance number to pre-2022 techno that seemed designed to make Valentine's head throb. Valentine lapsed into silence and watched the girls through their routine, then some kind of magician came on stage and levitated a pair of them into a variety of pseudoerotic poses. RC gave the inside of his leg an exploratory squeeze.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Dom said, taking the microphone from the blazered master of ceremonies when the magician and the girls had gone off stage and the hooting faded. "We've come to the highlight of our show. Returning to our stage, after a too-long absence, is someone I'm sure you all remember well. She needs no introduction, so just let me say ... Miss Tanny Bright!"
The jazz band exploded into noise again.
A woman marched out onto the stage, smiling and confident, basking in the cheers, applause and wolf whistles from everyone but David Valentine.
He'd even forgotten the witch's brew bubbling in his stomach in the shock of recognition.
Alessa Duvalier wore a stripper's version of the TMCC uniform. A peaked hat was perched on her glorious red hair, tipped so far over it must have been held on with hair pins. Thick layers of stage makeup covered her freckles. She wore a choker with some kind of medal on it, and a sleeveless fatigue shirt cut away to reveal her midriff, held closed by two buttons struggling against her upthrust bosom. A uniform skirt, which ended about where her thighs began, was cut up each side to the web belt. Her stocking-clad legs and patent-leather shoes made the most of her toned limbs. She carried two sheets of flimsies in her hand.
"Oh, how I miss him," she said, pretending to read the pieces of paper in her hands. "All I can think of is the last time we were together."
She looked across the faces in the audience, found General Hamm's eyes, and winked at him theatrically. The men guffawed, and Valentine heard twenty variants of "lucky bastard" muttered. She pretended to finish the letter. "And he's coming home! To me!"
The trumpeter in the band let loose with something that sounded like a bugle call. Duvalier planted her fishnetted legs wide, held the papers to her bosom, and broke into a dome-raising song, set to a marching beat.
"My sweetheart's slung his rifle
And marched away from me,
For duty sounds beyond my door
A call to destiny.
Waited true these lonely days
Until his letter came.
I saw the words: 'My darling,
We 'll soon be one again!" "
It was a cheerful, upbeat song, and Duvalier marched across the dance floor, stepping high with her legs, swinging her arms in parody of a dress parade, touching and bouncing from man to man at the edge of the dance floor like a pool ball ricocheting across a billiard table. She ran her fingers up the arm of one, pressed her barely covered derriere against another, brushed a third's hair with her breasts.
Valentine felt the Blue Dome grow warmer, brandy and lust heating his blood.
The other dancers came out on the stage for the chorus, costumed in variants of Duvalier's getup. As they sang, she pretended to wipe the sweat from an officer's brow with the fake letter crumpled in her hand.
She lingered at Valentine's table, tousling the hair of each man as she continued the song. She sat on one's lap and sang into his face, then moved on to Valentine. She wrapped her arms around him and nipped him on the ear as she thrust her hands into his tunic, unbuttoned by RC in her efforts to clean his shirt. Valentine noticed, when her arms came back out, that she only had one sheet of paper in her hand. She kicked up a leg and planted a foot on the table, and all eyes went to her as Valentine buttoned his tunic over the note.
She finished the last chorus of the song at General Hamm's side, singing it to him. She hopped up on the table before him, feet planted wide to either side of his plate, joining the other dancers for the last chorus.
"Wait at the station
For the victory train.
We'll run from the siding,