a tap on my shoulder.
I whirled around. Annie stood there with Whole Foods CEO Lite Topher Doyle at her side! “Surprise!” she said. “I brought a special guest.”
I was so excited I hugged her and Topher Doyle, too. He seemed kerfuffled (but not entirely displeased) at the invasion of his personal space.
“This is quite a protest,” he said. “Your signs are something else.” I couldn’t even manage to say thank you, I was so floored. All I could do was hand him a flier. He read it carefully, then said, “I’ve never really thought as much as I should have about how this intersection is a core location for local values and local businesses. But it makes total sense. I have to say I agree with the ethos of your protest.”
“Thank you,” I managed to say. “Would you like to carry a sign?”
“I’m not sure I’m ready to be the poster child for a battle against Lululemon. My PR director would have a stroke! But count me in as a supporter. I have to get back to my office now, where I’ll be working to create an international anti-GMO coalition led, not by our nation, but by our company,” he said with a wink.
As he and Annie turned to walk away, she looked over her shoulder and gave me a giant thumbs-up. “I’ll be back,” she mouthed.
“THANK YOU!” I mouthed back.
We all marched and marched and then a giant gaggle of about fifteen or twenty women came around the corner from the Waterloo Records parking lot. A couple of them were carrying huge speakers and another woman lugged two car batteries. I went over to one. “What are y’all doing?” I asked. Too late, I recognized her as the dark-haired burlesque goddess who’d been making out with Patrick. “Shit, it’s you,” I said.
“Roxy?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry—I didn’t know when I got together with Patrick that you’d been hooking up. I didn’t even know you existed. I shouldn’t have been so rude. I’m Sal, by the way.”
“So what are you doing here?”
“Artemis has a surprise for you,” she said. “She told me to tell you to roll with it.”
What choice did I have? I had no idea what they were up to. But the women expertly set to work hooking the big speakers up to the car batteries. By that time we had way more protesters than signs, and we filled the sidewalk all the way down the block. I’d spotted old pals from my ThunderCloud Subs days—including Logan Ray Jones, currently of Emo’s bouncer fame—and a few of my Barton Springs lifeguard buddies, too. Chants of, “Hey hey, ho ho, Lululemon has got to go!” reverberated in the air. Traffic on Sixth Street was almost at a standstill as rubberneckers slowed to check out what we were up to.
The door to Lululemon burst open and Artemis stormed out decked from head to toe in Lululemon and wearing a full face of dramatic makeup. “You guys need to shut the fuck up and listen!” she yelled.
We all fell silent and turned to gape at this redheaded Erinyes who had burst into our midst. Had she gone insane? The burlesque girls moved quickly to stand behind Artemis in a triangle formation with their redheaded queen at its foremost tip. The speakers began blaring the opening of a pop hit it only took me a moment to place.
As the lyrics sounded, the women began to dance in unison.
Girls, we run this motha, yeah
The burlesque girls had clearly been practicing, because they were tearing some shit up. I’m not saying Beyoncé would have been proud, but she would have been something. The crowd cheered as the dancers stomped and shook and slid and shimmied; they high-kicked and did a military march. Then together, they yanked off their pants and skirts in one motion so that they were all dancing in shirts and gold underwear. Artemis must have rigged her Lulu outfit with stripper snaps for a quick removal. I looked around to see two women on the edges of the crowd filming with their iPhones. Horns blared. Protesters jumped and cheered. My heart swelled with emotion. I’d thought Artemis had forsaken my protest for her lame-o job, when in actuality she’d clearly spent weeks practicing her moves with the burlesque girls, working them over with her enthusiasm, manic energy, and choreographic talents until each and every one of them could finally hold their own. As the song ended with “Who run the world? Girls!” the dancers