The skaters called the dressing room “the trailer.” That is basically what it was; a long skinny passageway, forty feet in length and only five feet across, something like the dimensions of a supermarket aisle. The trailer was a beast of mobile metal and it rolled all around South America with the rest of Hollywood on Ice, but always ended up in the same place, stage left of an ice rink's backstage. About as homey as a turn-of-the-century tenement, the trailer was an ill-lighted, dingy tunnel that reeked with the unique stench of professional figure skating: a bouquet of over-flowery anti-perspirant, industrial strength eco-terrorism hairspray, and the pungent aroma of showgirls who forgot their deodorant. The Russians in the cast seemed to prefer anti-perspirant to deodorant, or at least were unaware that the two could and should be used in combination.

…Along the left side of the trailer ran a pipe-like bar that was used to hang up the costumes. Everyone had his or her own personal section of the bar, on which we would hook our outfits chronologically according to how they’d be used in the show. The opening costume was first in line: a pink, purple, white and gold ensemble that attached itself to a sheer, nude bodysuit that covered our womanhood with patches of diamondy sequins. They itched, but on the ice we smiled. In the trailer, we scratched. The opening number had mediocre choreography and second-rate skating, but the costumes consumed the audience and the whistles and catcalls seemed to satisfy the management that all was well. The management never came back to the trailer.

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