Cat in a Topaz Tango

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  When he let her feet hit floor, she grinned into the camera coming in for a close-up and crowed, “We are gonna be ready to rock with the angels on tonight’s show.”

  Wrap and roll.

  The cameraman left, happy not to have been steamrolled under, grinning at the great sound and motion he’d recorded.

  The churchwomen filed out laughing and gossiping, Ambrosia last.

  “Were you surprised to see me?” she asked Matt after he hugged her goodbye at the door.

  “I was floored.”

  “Did we help?”

  He considered. “Sistah, if the church choir can shake it like that, so can I.”

  “Right on! Don’t hold back. That’s what you tell our people out there in radioland almost every night, and that’s what we do to show ’em the way.”

  “Amen.”

  “Now we vork,” came a tight, light voice behind him.

  Matt turned around to study his tiny but fierce taskmaster. No one who had heard Ambrosia’s hypnotically soothing voice for years over the airwaves knew she was a woman of size. Now the world would.

  If she was willing to “bare all” on TV for him, he guessed he should be willing to reveal a little “rock and roll and rhythm” for her. Besides, he couldn’t let Temple down by looking like a dork.

  “Now we work,” he agreed.

  Danny Dove regularly dropped by all the rehearsal rooms, being the general overseer as well as chief judge. Matt was glad he came by to help with lifts.

  This was Vegas, baby. Dramatic “lifts” might be rarely allowed on Dancing With the Stars, but here they were encouraged.

  “You two are made for lift training,” Danny diagnosed. “You Tarzan, she Jane and weighs a hundred pounds tops. Perfect. And you,” he told Matt, “are already at home with slinging a petite woman around.”

  “He may be able,” Tatyana said, “but he is blushing! This is the trouble. I need a mate with erotic command.”

  “A ‘partner,’ ” Danny corrected her quickly, taking pity on Matt after having picked on him himself. “And you need acrobatic command.”

  “Whatever this language means. He must lift me with confidence and skill, and look like he likes it. So far, you would think I was a teacup, when I must be a . . . a kettle.”

  “A teakettle,” Danny corrected her again, “a hot Russian samovar, maybe, about to blow its top.”

  He turned to Matt. “Once you understand that a female dancer is an athlete who’ll be contributing her own strong spring and control to the moves, you won’t worry about dropping or hurting her. She’s like a cat. If something goes wrong, she can torque her torso to compensate in an instant and make a mistake look like an inspired move. That’s what a talented and gutsy partner does.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Dove.” Tatyana folded her arms and regarded Matt with satisfaction.

  Matt was unconvinced. “For the show I’ll be dancing with the women competitors. Not to be rude, but a couple of them outweigh me considerably.”

  Danny shook his head with the halo of curly cherubic blond hair, but grinned like the devil.

  “It’s all in having confidence and learning how to balance the weight. Don’t worry about it.”

  Tatyana nodded forcefully. “You have the easy job, Mr. Man, and the upper body strength for it. Just show a little courage and I will show you how lifts make the dance world go round.”

  With Danny adjusting their poses, Matt soon realized that his role in lifts was either as stabilizing strongman, turning with Tatyana perched on his shoulders, or human stepladder, providing a steady base while she sprung from the floor into some pose in his arms.

  Sweat was streaming off them both, making their handholds slip, when Danny called a break. Matt had actually enjoyed mastering the lifts. He had the strength needed and was quickly developing the balance and skill, even in the turns, which put a lot of pressure on the male partner.

  What he couldn’t hack was those hokey face-to-face stares and cheekbone-to-hip caresses in the Latin numbers that made him feel like a flea circus Romeo.

  “It feels . . . sexist,” he complained after they ran through their pasodoble moves for Danny.

  “That’s because it is,” Danny said cheerfully. “It’s macho to the max, all male peacock pose and sound and fury. And the woman matches every show-off move with her aloof disdain. It is indeed a love-hate dance, and, sadly, it mirrors a lot of relationships still relevant today.”

  “So we’re miming a mistake.”

  “It’s a cultural thing,” Danny said, laughing, as he corrected their pose at the end of a complicated series of turns. “Latin fireworks. But all dance has truth in it and anger is the dark side of love all too often.”

  “It shouldn’t be,” Matt said. “It wouldn’t be if children were reared without pain and fear.”

  “True,” said Danny, a flicker wincing across his usually open features. Matt could have kicked himself, pointing that out to a gay. “I always tell myself that in the Latin dances, as often in life, the man may flex and preen, but the woman always wins, and he likes it. Dance as if you know this, and love this, and you will have a Latin soul.”

  “We Russians understand this,” Tatyana interjected. “Soul is always, what’s the word? Intense. Extreme. Sexy.”

  Of course, Matt understood, that’s exactly what made him uneasy. He’d just have to overcome his upbringing and find some underground spring of Polish passion. Maybe it was . . . freedom.

  Suddenly it all came clear to him. Spain and Mexico were Catholic countries. Sexual repression was a historical given. The dances were little dramas of natural attraction versus social constriction. Even the flashy costumes were constricting, especially over the torso and hips. Okay. Call him a nerd, but once he understood the social underpinnings, he could get the emotional and artistic needs.

  He just had to play these Latin numbers like John the Baptist tempted by Salome. But the Baptist had been a saint and resisted all the way. Matt would have to let himself be seduced. Live on television. At least his mother in Chicago and the parishioners of St. Stanislavsky’s wouldn’t see this regional show.

  “Ready to dance again?” Tatyana demanded.

  “Olé,” he said.

  The door slammed open. A stagehand’s head frantically eyed all three.

  “Anybody here know first aid?”

  “Me,” Danny called.

  The stagehand jerked his head. “Rehearsal room three.”

  They both followed Danny out, drawn by the sudden burst of urgency, the rehearsal forgotten.

  Shaken, Not Stirred

  A clot of hovering dancers and support staff blocked the door to rehearsal room three.

  Whispers rustled the grave, nodding faces like a wisp of wind in a flower bed.

  Danny, Matt figured, had seen a lot of rehearsal accidents, but Matt knew about ministering to the distressed.

  So he pushed inside behind the choreographer, while Tatyana peeled off to gossip with her fellow and sister pros, who might know exactly what had happened.

  The room mirrored his and Tatyana’s rehearsal area: portable wood floor laid over impact-absorbing material, wall mirrors, any spare chairs pushed to the perimeter.

  But this room also hosted the metal-pipe jigsaw structure of a jungle gym.

  That’s where Danny joined several people hunching over something on the floor.

  The sight had Matt’s heart pounding as if he’d just done a six-spin airplane lift with Ambrosia to hold up.

  He rushed over, calming only when he saw a small figure half sitting, answering questions.

  “It was scary,” she murmured in a daze. “I don’t even know how I feel. The fall. Everything’s tingling, but I can move stuff. My toes. My fingers.”

  “Stay still,” a man in a dark suit carrying a walkie-talkie ordered. “We have a hotel doctor and EMTs on the way. You don’t move until someone with medical expertise is here.”

  Glory B. looked up, wide-eyed. Her
left hand was holding her right wrist, but she didn’t seem aware of what that might mean.

  “It just . . . gave,” she said. “When I was on the top rung. Jesse said I needed to work on my agility and balance.”

  “I’m sorry, B.,” said the young male dancer still crouched next to her. “I tested the bars myself after it was erected. Did spins and flips all over them. They were solid. At least for me. I’m sorry. I just don’t get it.”

  Danny knelt to gently test her limbs and rose.

  Matt nudged Danny’s arm. As he stood again, Matt whispered. “You and I need to take a fresh look at the jungle gym once Glory is taken away.”

  Danny mouthed, “Why?”

  “Temple Barr disease,” Matt whispered back.

  Danny got it and nodded, his forehead a broad ladder of worry lines.

  Temple Barr disease: never settle for benign equipment failure as an explanation when malign interference might be a cause. And this was a highly public, highly charged competition, with a lot at stake for the producers and performers.

  If a muscular male dancer bounding all over the device didn’t find the weakness, why would a wisp of a girl who was practicing with uncertainty do it?

  For now, Glory B., hot up-and-coming teen pop tart with attitude, was just a scared, possibly hurt kid. Matt thought about Temple out there somewhere, on the trail of another lost kid.

  Everyone except Danny and Matt followed the ambulance gurney with Glory B. on it out the door. Camera flashes danced like heat lightning in the hall outside. Matt cringed for Glory. No wonder she was a self-involved media brat, with that kind of center-of-the-universe attention 24/7.

  Meanwhile, Danny was doing awesome acrobatics on the jungle gym. Matt watched his taut form spin around the high bars and leap down to the balance board. He switched to the high bars again, then suddenly twisted and vaulted to the floor.

  “That’s it. The right side of the high bar. It’s ready to break away.”

  “Why didn’t it come down with Glory B.?”

  “She’s a lightweight amateur. She stressed and bent the bar, but didn’t break it. Her grip broke instead when the horizontal support wavered. You could be right and that bar was rigged to collapse. Luckily for Glory B., she triggered the collapse but didn’t fully cause it.”

  Danny was straddling the bottom horizontal bar—ouch!—jiggling the joint where the top bar met the upright supports, using Glory B.’s fallen warm-up jacket as a latex glove.

  “Yup. Here it is. Wiggles. Probably sound until the unit was used. I don’t know who’s going to investigate this equipment, but I bet if you pull the pipes apart, one of them has been cracked mostly through. These things are houses of cards.”

  Danny thumped down to the floor, eyeing Matt. “I’ll have hotel security witness me taking it apart.”

  “Photograph and save the pieces,” Matt suggested. “Are you sure we shouldn’t call the police?” he asked doubtfully.

  “Overkill. There’s no concrete evidence here. It could be metal fatigue. Setting up equipment in non-normal dance venues makes for shoddy assembly. Accidents happen in rehearsal. And . . . these amateur dance contests get heated. Might be some overeager fans around. I’m thinking I need to keep an eye out for sabotage as much as good form and talent. So, just in case . . . watch yourself.”

  Matt nodded. Who would have thought ballroom dancing could be so dangerous?

  En Sweet

  An Oasis hotel flunky met our party at the double doors opening onto the “Mata Hari Suite,” aka the Zoe Chloe Ozone suite for the duration. All right. A high-roller suite, free! Obviously, Midnight Louie has finally arrived! Sweet.

  As soon as our party enters, I am decanted like a fine bottle of French wine from Miss Temple’s tote bag onto the plush carpet of the suite that will be our joint base of operations.

  Both my Miss Temple and Miss Lieutenant C. R. Molina immediately massage their ears with cell phones, checking with their outside connections.

  I rub on Mr. Rafi Nadir’s black denim calves just to let him know who has more hair to lose and who is boss in other departments too.

  He is watching Miss LCRM with a frown I recognize. He does not like being outside the loop, or the phone link, in this case. His hands are pushed into his jean pockets as if he is keeping them from grabbing the cell phone away from his former lady friend.

  She takes the cell phone from her ear and clicks it off. “Mariah says Ekaterina has connected with her cocontestants. Mariah will be allowed to bunk with the whole crew, contestants and moms, since EK has no adult chaperone. I think—”

  Then Miss Temple shrieks from the adjoining room.

  Rafi and Carmen dig in heels to wheel like paired Dobermans, charging across the expansive living room and past its six-foot plasma TV screen.

  My Miss Temple is standing in the center of a huge bedroom looking ultra Zoe Chloe and teensy teen, her hands splayed out. “I cannot believe it! All the M&Ms have my name on them! How cool is that?”

  I leap atop the console table to inspect the huge Easter basket of goodies. I know that it is past Easter, but the bunny appears to have passed through here on its way out of town and laid a whole lotta sweets and treats down in farewell.

  “Look!” she is crooning, holding up one colored candy shell after another. “Zoe. Chloe. Ozone. Is not that sweet?”

  Only I notice that both Rafi and Carmen are pushing discreet semiautomatics into paddle holsters concealed by their denim jackets. One wears black and one wears blue. Naturally, Miss Carmen’s is law-enforcement blue. Naturally, when one thinks of this long-estranged couple, it is in terms of black and blue, not that I am saying anyone whomped on anyone other than emotionally.

  “Get a grip,” Carmen spits at my roommate.

  I am forced to growl, low and long like a dog. I hate resorting to shallow canine tricks, but sometimes humans only heed the overobvious.

  “And you shut up, you mobile dust bunny!” Molina rants on. “I am about to call off this whole silly charade. I am out of here if nothing breaks in the next couple of hours.”

  Nobody says anything, including me. Without the lieutenant’s cooperation, we are all off duty faster than a dropped and smashed M&M.

  Where would the Miss Lieutenant go? we are all thinking. Mariah will not forsake her little friend who is in the finals of this contest. EK is her new “cause.” And the contest itself helps seriously ill kids. Even a hard-nosed police lieutenant cannot bow out of that, despite having to play a personally repugnant undercover role with her ex-boyfriend, least favorite female amateur detective, and her own kid, who has gone star-mad.

  I count myself blessed to have evaded this horrible, hormone-hyped state called teenagery. My kind goes from litter to littering in a heartbeat, with no awkward in-between stages but hunting homes or eking out sheer survival.

  Maybe human kits would be better off if they did not believe that life offers more than constant struggle, danger, deception, and death, as those of my ilk have long known.

  I have just returned from a leisurely inspection of the suite’s three bedrooms, deciding on my lodging for the night, to find that my Miss Temple has claimed the big central chamber with the black marble bathroom.

  She says it will “look odd” if the celebrity did not take the biggest bedroom. Not that anybody is going to come in here and ruminate on who is in what bedroom. Still, right on! So Baby Bear gets the biggest bed. I do find the black-and-gold brocade coverlet a bit overdone, but a suitably splendid backdrop for one of my coloring.

  Miss Carmina Carmen strides into the bedroom to my Miss Temple’s left without inspecting it first. “The usual tawdry high-roller taste,” she declares.

  That leaves Mr. Rafi Raphael to shrug and take the bedroom on Miss Temple’s other side.

  “Ah,” I hear him say, “a really big plasma screen.”

  I pad in after him. The décor here is royal blue and gold, a bit downscale from the central bed-and-bath combo, but cushy nev
ertheless. I frown at the wall-mounted screen, already on some sports channel. I prefer House and Garden, being the domestic sort when I am not trodding mean streets. Bye, bye, Papa Bear. I whisk around the corner and sneak up on Miss Carmina Carmen.

  She has slung her hobo bag atop the black-glass-topped dresser and is examining the assorted luxuries with hands on hips. She is still frowning. The mounted plasma TV screen is black and shiny like my coat. It will be quiet in Mama Bear’s retreat tonight. The coverlet is ruby velvet. In fact, this is the royal red room.

  She spots me and holds out a pointing finger. It is not tilted upwards at least. I take the hint and leave. Despite the striped pair among her household, I can see that Mama Bear is no mammal to cuddle up to.

  It looks like I will have to fight my Miss Temple tonight for the primo square footage of bedspread, as usual.

  Rafi is in the living room, roaming the vast space as he talks on his cell phone.

  “Mariah is safely settled in,” he announces loudly, nodding at whoever is talking to him.

  The two women hustle out from their respective retreats.

  Rafi-Raphael gives them the “okay” sign of circled thumb and forefinger.

  Manx, once again I wish for an opposable thumb! There is not much I can signal with a dewclaw and four shivs except a desire to rip and roll.

  He clicks the cell phone dark. “That was my head of operations, Hank Buck. He reports that Mariah has been registered as EK’s roommate, but all four competing girls and their mothers—or mini-manager in EK’s case—are sharing a suite with multiple bedrooms, like this one.”

  “Why did you hang up?” Miss Carmina Carmen demands. “I want a full report on Mariah’s setup in the contest. Where she will be when.”

  “I will get you a schedule, but she is completely safe with the teen contenders, Carmen,” Rafi, aka Raphael, says. “The hotel has provided high security for all of the girls. Trust me.”