There was now an important drum roll from the orchestra as the master of ceremonies strode onto the stage. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “the Gayety Theatre now has the honour to present, direct from New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, the remarkable, the unequalled, the unsurpassed interpreter of the terpsichorean art, Montreal’s sweetheart — we ­can’t see enough of her, can we? — ha, ha — the one and only Miss Lili L’Amour.”

Again there was applause as the audience waited to see what surprise Lili had in store for them this time. It was four months since she had last played Montreal and this was her first night back in town. She always came with a new act. What would it be this time? Aficionados knew that her dances always told a little story, of her own concoction. Montreal had adored routines like Slave Girl in the Harem, the Jilted Bride, and Locked into a Chastity Belt. Her stories often dealt with a woman in peril, a woman with a terrible problem that could only be solved by getting slowly undressed. Tonight would be no exception.

“I wish she’d do Jungle Goddess again,” Morty whispered to Richard. “The way she fights off the animals is something to see.”

As they waited for Lili’s entrance, the music from Len Howard’s orchestra was slow and sensual. When she finally appeared, she was enveloped in more clothes than her admirers had ever seen. She glided to the centre of the stage in a huge hoop skirt of rose-­coloured silk, a long-­waisted bodice, a flowing scarf to conceal her bosom, and an enormous hat decorated with birds and butterflies. Aha! She was Marie Antoinette, dressed with the extravagance that had infuriated the starving peasants and hastened the French Revolution.

Oblivious of her political effrontery, the French queen was dancing a stately minuet, her feet invisible under the floor-­length hoop skirt. But the minuet seemed to go on a bit too long, and Richard detected some restlessness, as well as a few coughs, from the audience. “Take it off!” some lout shouted, and his neighbours looked at him resentfully. You might shout that at Bombshell Betty, if she kept you waiting too long, but you just ­didn’t do it with the great Lili L’Amour.

But now things were going to happen. From the orchestra came spooky violin scrapings, like movie music heralding the imminence of catastrophe. Then he arrived, the Executioner, wheeling in his portable guillotine. He was a huge, muscular, bare-­chested brute wearing a black mask. With a flourish, he ran his finger along the guillotine’s blade, to assure himself of its sharpness. As a further test, he produced a large cabbage, placed it on the block, and sent the blade crashing down on it. The cabbage was neatly sliced in two, one half falling into the head basket. Marie Antoinette’s remaining moments on this earth would be few.

Seeing the guillotine, Lili recoiled in horror. She retreated to a corner of the stage and stood there, trembling, as the music became quiveringly plaintive. But then a smile came to her lips. She had a plan. As the music quickened, she glided to the centre of the stage, took off her huge hat, and hurled it into the wings. The audience immediately understood her strategy. She would reveal her naked body to the Executioner, who would be so overwhelmed by her beauty that he would have to pardon her. And beautiful she certainly was, more beautiful than any woman, or any photo of a woman, that Richard had ever seen. He drank in her glowing skin, her wildly high cheekbones, her extravagantly arched eyebrows. Visualizing what he suspected was about to happen, he felt the familiar tingle in his trousers.

Now Lili was dancing close to the Executioner and flaunting the hoop skirt in his face. Unimpressed, the masked monster brought his blade down on another cabbage. Lili now drifted to centre stage and, with the help of a clever spring-­loaded mechanism, sent the voluminous skirt flying away from her body. With a quick motion, she tore the long gauzy scarf away from her neck, revealing that under her bodice she was encased in high-­waisted stays, which, in the appropriate eighteenth­-­century mode, thrust her bosom as high as it could go, revealing most of it. Applause from the audience.

The Executioner was taking notice now. Distracted, he fumbled with his next cabbage and almost cut his finger in the slicing. The audience laughed appreciatively. As she danced, sometimes slowly and sometimes fast, Lili gradually escaped from the constriction of the bodice and the whalebone stays, revealing her breasts. In deference to the police, Marie Antoinette’s nipples were concealed by small circular pasties. These were the first naked breasts Richard had ever seen, and they were beyond his most fevered imaginings.

“Notice she ­doesn’t do the old bump and grind,” Morty whispered hoarsely. “She ­doesn’t have to. But you ­don’t miss it, do you?” But Richard was too entranced to reply, or to ask what bump and grind was.

From the waist down, Lili was now clad in long, beribboned eighteenth-­century pantaloons, and, as connoisseurs of the art knew, slipping pants off gracefully was always a challenge. But Lili, whirling like a dervish, divested herself of the pantaloons without anyone knowing how it was done. She was a magician, and the hips were quicker than the eye.

Marie Antoinette was now wearing only frilly black lace panties, secure in the knowledge that her audience would not be troubled by this historical inaccuracy. She was circling the Executioner now, with slow, writhing motions. Flustered and irresolute, he mopped his sweaty brow and fumbled his next cabbage, which rolled across the stage unchopped.

The guillotine blade now came crashing down on the empty block, and as it did so, its thud mingled with a crash of drums from the orchestra. That was the signal for Lili to whip off her black panties and stand there wearing nothing but the minimal G-­string demanded by the law. For the Executioner, it was too much. With a sudden violent push he sent his wheeled guillotine careering off stage. His sweaty torso was now glistening in the spotlight as he approached Lili with arms outstretched, in the grip of lust. But Marie Antoinette was still a queen, even without crinoline and bodice, and with an imperious gesture she ordered him away. The orchestra obliged with a nyah-­nyah-­nyah sound as the wretched brute, defeated by beauty, shuffled off the stage.

The audience was on their feet now, applauding long and loud, as their beloved Lili L’Amour, pristine and glowing in G-­string and pasties, took four curtain calls before the final blackout.