The Gift of Women by George McWhirter

Author:George McWhirter [McWhirter, George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Exile Editions

LILY OF THE BELLY

Lily’s début engagement was at the Candia Taverna on 10th Avenue. Initially, the Candia suggested vouchers and Herbie said okay. The Taverna did a good pizza, great chicken and Greek salad. Herbie liked the wooden booths – maybe stalls described them better – for four or for two people. One served a party of twelve by the window; the cops used it, which added an aspect of public safety to the cuisine.

This double-sided row of dining stalls ran from the front door down to the bar at the back. To Lily, her Candia Taverna performance – swinging her hips, raising her arms, clicking her fingers and looking down at the diners, who looked up at her from their fodder in the stalls – was like belly dancing in a stable. Too much wagging in the aisle and Lily’s lace skirt would be soaked in sauce, but the cash was easily stuffed into Lily’s belt as she passed. Even the city police came back and poked in the odd five spot for her seven o’clock show.

People would be dipping into their fasolada soup when Lily’s brown belly appeared right beside the pale brown beans. Doh-ray-me-fah-soh-lah-doh soup, Herbie called it because a while after you supped it, the stuff sang.

The next venue was the Achilles on Broadway. Here Lily had a centre to the floor, but it wasn’t as good as the Candia for getting her belly into close quarters with the customers. However, the ambience of whitewashed walls, hinting at poverty and parched afternoons by the Aegean, turned the hunger and thirst on. Wine flowed between its larger selection of tables, and with those in the balcony upstairs, its numbers made the belly business there more lucrative than at the Candia.

While Lily danced, there was always a pause while the guys got over their embarrassment and pegged a bill to her belt. It happened as soon as they saw the women were more enthusiastic about Lily than they were. For Lily always danced to the women, demonstrating what women of her age had, what they could do with their own belly, if they had a mind to.

Herbie spent a lot of brain power explaining it to himself because he was both jealous and excited, no matter how hard he tried to keep business-like about it and just count their assets: his favourite, the kidney-shaped tub and Jacuzzi, added on the strength of her gyrations. Sometimes Lily would turn the jets off and agitate the water herself, for the exercise and to give Herbie a thrill. Lily, the one-woman whirlpool.

But her waters never broke in the way a woman’s should. Maybe Herbie was too comfy with her at home, too sedentary, driving and delivering, waiting while his balls got grilled in the winter with the car heater on, waiting till she whipped through the back door and out into the alley in her trench coat.

So many stops at Greek Tavernas along Broadway and up 10th Avenue. Herbie wondered if there was enough feta cheese left in Greece for the Greeks to eat.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.