<div class="floatleft">(https://i.pinimg.com/564x/43/93/f1/4393f166030eaa580d7f3dd73708f07e.jpg?b=t)</div><strong>Character:</strong>Tallulah DeBois<br/><strong>Location:</strong>Back Stage<br/><strong>Time of day:</strong>Night<br/><strong>Tagging:</strong>Open<br/><br/><hr/>Something funny, something risque and a lullaby. That was the strict set Sam had in place for her the nights she performed. The funny usually done in the earlier hours to give the punters good chuckle and ready for another drink. This evening she had donned a poor altered old suit of his, graced herself with a charcoal mustache and belted out ‘Second Hand Aristocrat’. At one point she even tripped over a cane. On purpose. When Sam had suggested it in rehearsal she had asked he didn’t just throw a pie in her face? He had threatened to do just that if she didn’t stay on her mark for the chorus.<br/><br/><em>This coat, I wear, belonged I declare <br/>To Joe Chamberlain once on a time <br/>The great Duke of Devonshire's pants I've got on <br/>And Lord Raspberry's suit suits me prime <br/>These gloves were worn by the Marquis of Lorne <br/>And I'm wearing Lord Balfour's old hat <br/>And I'm smoking a 'topper' of Rothchild's cigar <br/>I'm a second-hand aristocrat.</em><br/><br/>She’d be singing that in her sleep for weeks, but it was better than what he had lined up for the risque number of the evening.<br/><br/>The risque was also more often than not humorous as well, often about naughty ladies stuffed full of double entendre,  but it was later in the night when the drink had the crowd in an uproar. Tonight’s ditty was unbearably British. While Tallulah now found herself at the mercy of Columbia she kept some aspects of her home close to her heart. Her English was perfect but she kept enough of an accent and dropped enough monsieur, mon deur and mon amours to make sure these American savages knew she was worth her 75 cents. She also still despised anything that stank of that dreadful island Great Britain. Some days that excluded Sam, with his graying temples and ancient London slang. Tonight may not have been one of them, as the second song was about a English bigamist who seduced men while bathing and whose refrain warned young men that you ‘can’t judge the marmalade by the label on the jar’. She had told them early in their artistic partnership that she would quit if he ever made her sing about girls named Sally or bicycles. He had been true to his word, but delighted in finding new ways to affront her sense of taste. This evenings line up a prime example.<br/><br/>“She does that when I’m on stage, I’m plucking her bald,” She told Sam as she watched Babydoll maker her unsteady debut from behind the curtain.<br/><br/>“Easy now luv, I’m sure the miss is just clumsy,” Sam responded, his fingers flipping over the sheet music to make sure it was in the right order for the evening.<br/><br/>“That gag so old it’s got whiskers,” Tallulah, now dressed in her usual fare of sparkling gowns trimmed in ostrich feathers put the back of a pale white hand on her forehead and stumbled backward, straining against the confines of her gown so that her bosom resembled alpine peaks “Monsieur please, you overwhelm me, take my hand.”<br/>Sam was still looking at the sheets and ignored her on her tottering heels. She loudly cleared her throat.<br/><br/>“I do see you,” he told her, “What I don’t see is your closing number.”<br/><br/>“Humph, I’ll tell Miss Lola I need a new piano player. You’re immune to my charms, what good are you?”<br/><br/>“I play in your key,” he told her, “Now dammit all to hell, where could that have gone? These things aren’t cheap you know.”<br/><br/>Did she ever. They waited for months for new music. Whatever his cousins down the East End sent to their family in New York, who put together care packages that rambled over the frontier to reach to their doors. At that point the music may have been out of fashion but it was new to the boys here and that was all that mattered. The point being that it was new and she wasn’t forced to perform the same number more that than twice. She wasn’t Miss Lola, she doubted she could bring the house down every night with a sweet rendition of ‘Clementine’.<br/><br/>“What does it matter? I know it by heart, you know it by heart. I do nothing but sing for you, day and night.”<br/><br/>“That’s not true now is it Miss. You also do private performances for those with more money than brains.” Tallulah smiled wolfishly and laid her large fan made up of black ostrich feathers in a gilded holder heavily against his chest, “They don’t play in my key.” He batted it away from his chest, “I should get there and you’ve got five minutes before you’re on stage. Don’t disappoint.”<br/><br/>Tallulah pulled back, straightened her dress and looked down her lashes, “I never do.”<br/>