But the manicure of orange polish is new and flawless -- and matches her signature tousled mane.
She brushes orange curls out of her face as she explains how she's been slighted.
She is the headliner, you know, a star. She is classy.
"I don't just get up there and rip my clothes off," she says.
Indeed, the 80-year-old burlesque queen takes off her clothes very slowly.
More than 50 years ago she was dubbed the "Girl with the Fabulous Front," the "Best Two Props in Hollywood." Since then, Storm has seen the art that made her famous on the brink of extinction. Her contemporaries -- Blaze Starr, Bettie Page, Lili St Cyr -- have died or hung up the pasties.
But not Storm. She kept performing. Las Vegas, Reno, Palm Springs, Miami, Carnegie Hall.
Her act is a time capsule, with her prop of choice a boa. It takes four numbers, she says adamantly, to get it all off right. To do it classy.
But the producers of tonight's show, just kids, want it faster. She gets just seven minutes.
"I did seven minutes when I started," she complains.
They gave her trouble last year, too -- cutting her music before she finished. Is it really time to quit, she wonders, but then quickly adds: "No, no. I'm not ready to hang up my G-string, yet. I've got too many fans that would be disappointed." Stardom and fandom feature prominently in Tempest Storm's life -- and in her neat, two-bedroom Las Vegas apartment.
Visitors are greeted by photos of a young Elvis Presley, her favourite rock 'n' roller and, she says, a former lover.
The relationship ended after about a year because Elvis' manager didn't approve of him dating a stripper, she says. But she couldn't change who she was. Stripping made her famous, put her on the same stage as Hollywood's heavyweights -- singers like Frank Sinatra, comedians like Mickey Rooney.
She dated some, just danced for others. The evidence is framed and displayed on tables and the living room wall.
Storm and 1950s crooner Vic Damone. Storm teaching TV news anchor Walter Cronkite to dance. Storm and her fourth and last husband, Herb Jefferies, a star of black cowboy films who swept her off her feet in 1957 when such unions were instant scandals. They divorced in 1970.
"When I look at this picture I say, 'What the hell happened between this gorgeous couple?"' she says.
The moment is brief.
Storm is rarely wistful. She has no doubt she still is what she once was. Although she performs just a few times a year, she would do more -- if asked. She chides those who think age takes a toll on sex appeal.
"Ridiculous," she says.
There are recent photos in the room, too: Storm and her daughter, a nurse in Indiana. Storm and her fiance, who died a few years ago. Storm and a beaming older gentlemen, just a fan who approached her for a photograph.
"That stage saved me," she says as after checking out the nightclub for the night's show. She had been expecting a much smaller space and is relieved. She's a "walker," she explains. She needs room to move.
Her direct, once-racy style is the signature work of Lillian Hunt, the choreographer at the Follies Theatre in Los Angeles where Storm became a star.
She was Annie Blanche Banks then. The 22-year-old sharecropper's daughter had fled sexual abuse, two loveless marriages and poverty in small-town Georgia, she says.
She was working as a cocktail waitress but wanted to be a showgirl. First, she needed her teeth fixed.
"Do you think my bust is too big for this business?" she asked Hunt at her audition.
Hunt put her in the chorus line, told her not to gain a pound and called a dentist. Soon, she had a new name -- "I really don't feel like a Sunny Day" -- and quickly became a star, dancing to a chorus of hoots and cheers that she loved.
The trick is having a warm presence, an inviting smile, she says.
When she takes the stage, she imagines herself as a little girl back in Georgia in her best dress. "I feel that I am that little girl dressed up out there. I got a picture in my whole mind of it," she says.
On Sundays, Storm tunes in to a televangelist who preaches anyone can overcome odds. This is her life's lesson: be a survivor, never stop doing what you love.
"If you want to get old, you'll get old," she says.
She concedes some disappointments -- men, financial strain, brain surgery. But she keeps exercising on a small stationary bike and doesn't smoke or drink or eat much. If some see all this as chasing after lost youth, she cares little. Younger dancers call her an inspiration, she boasts.
"I feel good about myself," she says. "I have fun when I'm onstage, and the audience loves it. Nobody ever said it's time to give it up. Why stop?" Indeed, no one dreams of telling Tempest Storm to give up stripping when she slithers onstage for her seven minutes.
"Something in the way she moves ..." pipes through the speakers, and the burlesque queen emerges in a slinky purple gown. A rhinestone necklace envelops her decolletage. The snakelike boa pours into her hands.
For a few seconds, her face flashes her nerves. Then she hears the cheers.
Storm smiles, leans back and walks on her heels, leading with her pelvis. Her hands float back and forth as if in water. They fall below her hips and sweep up in tandem with a full frontal thrust.
More cheers. Whistles.
The boa disappears stage right. As the tempo picks up, she loses the gloves. She steps off stage to slip on the negligee -- but it's quickly gone. Then, with two flicks of her orange fingernails, the dress goes, too.
Two-finger whistle. Hollers. Applause.
Staring up at the 80-year-old woman in fishnets, a sheer rhinestone bra and a G-string, a young woman turns to a young man and declares: "I want to look like that when I'm her age."
