Especially if he can also snatch one last slice of free-range pepperoni after he is put down and before he leaves the scene of investigation.
Red Hot Chili Peppers
“Capsaicin in her shoes? That’s red pepper, isn’t it?”
Temple pretended to be stunned by this news, despite relaxing with a glass of sangria in Zoe Chloe’s suite. Rafi had used his position as assistant security chief to order up a pitcher.
Molina, looking more in the mood for a whiskey sour, had even permitted him to pour her a glass.
“It was a prank!” Temple didn’t so much ask, as exclaim. She couldn’t pin the prank on Mrs. Smith for sure, despite Louie’s valiant detecting efforts. Lots of women carry pepper spray.
“A nastily effective prank,” Molina said. “The hotel doctor said the girl’s feet are swollen and tender, but guarantees they’ll be normal by morning.”
“What’s the treatment?” Rafi asked.
“Think you’ll have another case of capsaicin poisoning at the Oasis soon?” Molina jeered.
“I can ask the doctor.”
Molina swallowed the sangria as if it were hemlock. “Don’t bother. I got the routine. They try shampoo or other soaps first, then oils or creams. This was an extreme enough case that he ordered milk-soaked rags from room service, as well as ice to relieve the burning symptoms. Poor little kid was severely unnerved and in real pain.
“Still, I think what hurt her most was that her dance number was ruined.”
“They’ll let her repeat it another night,” Temple said. “Mariah thought so, anyway. If she recovered.”
“The Smith girl is moving to another hotel room with her mother. Now that we know how competitive they are, not a bad idea. I wish Mariah hadn’t ever bunked with those other girls.” Molina eyed Rafi as if the show rules were his fault.
“I pulled in more female security guards from off duty,” he said. “One will be in the hotel suite with the two remaining mothers and daughters at all times. And the costumes are now under guard.”
“Mariah said,” Temple put in, “that Sou-Sou was ‘a little bitch.’ ”
“She didn’t learn that word at home,” Molina assured, bristling.
“This smacks of a malicious trick,” Rafi said. His dark eyes seemed ringed in charcoal. It wasn’t just his daughter’s safety involved, it was his ex sitting here on his recently acquired turf, judging every move he made. Or didn’t make.
So far, he’d maintained his cool better than she had.
“How does this tie in with the death threats?” Molina mused out loud. “With the seriously homicidal kooks the Caped Conjuror always attracts? With the threat of the Barbie Doll Killer? With the tension and jealousy of the adult competition?”
“I don’t know,” Temple said. “It could be the junior rivalry is hotter than the senior.”
“You’re putting your own true love in the ‘senior’ category?” Molina asked acidly.
“Relatively speaking. Actually, there’s more rapport building among the adult contenders than the teens.”
“Adults know how to lose gracefully, or at least to pretend to,” Rafi put in.
Molina shot him a sharp look.
Temple shivered internally. Everything exchanged between these two had an unspoken double edge. Being with them was like acting as the net during a killer championship tennis match. Something had to give, eventually. Hopefully, it was not her, the separating agent.
Volleys of unspoken recriminations were bouncing over her head.
And yet she detected a certain heat.
It was hard to think of Molina having a sexy bone in her body, but the lieutenant’s iron professional control was probably a challenge to certain overly macho men.
Not Max. He was too smart to act macho. Rafi came by his Mideastern macho culturally and was trying to overcome it. Dirty Larry was another case entirely. She didn’t think she or Molina quite knew what he was about. Temple guessed that Molina unwittingly posed a challenge to these men that she really didn’t want or need.
Life was funny. People often attracted the people who were worst for them. She herself was a case study in attracting a daring lone ranger like Max and a supportive sweetie like Matt. If only she could compress them into one delicious totally perfect boyfriend.
Eek! Zoe Chloe Ozone stomped a black lace-up oxford worn over fishnet hose down hard on Temple’s ruminations. Was she even speculating that women didn’t really know what they wanted? Or needed? And men too?
Her head hurt, and her feet ached in sympathy with Sou-Sou’s. The girl was obnoxious, but young girls often got confused about which way to go, Wicked, as in the Broadway play, or nauseatingly “good.” Either extreme was an overdose.
Witch way would this crazy dance competition go now?
The Shoe Must Go On
Rehearsals for Monday night’s dance began at 8:00 A.M. the next morning.
Temple and Louie padded down the hall leading to the junior rehearsal rooms. The big black cat was terminally tired of the tote bag and had adopted dog behavior, heeling alongside Temple like a well-trained spaniel.
They had barely turned down the hall before they had to stop. People were crowding wall to wall, and a constant murmur of voices echoed off them.
“Excuse me,” Zoe Chloe said, trying to elbow her way forward. “I’m in the cast. I have to get through.”
People gave way, barely sparing her a glance, which was saying something. She wore a black derby hat, blue lipstick, an orange-striped leotard, hot pink tights, and chartreuse Minnie Mouse platform shoes.
The bulk of TV station cameras loomed over the crowd ahead.
By the time Zoe Chloe and Louie reached the door to the first rehearsal room, it was obvious a media feeding frenzy was underway.
“Oooh,” Zoe Chloe trilled. “Hellooo remote feed. Pardon me while I boogie my Cheshire cat and me into the dancing party. I’m the emcee-ess of this little super circus and I need to see my dear little emcee-ees.”
That got the lights and cameras turned her way.
Temple knew they expected the third of the usual trilogy—Action!—so she danced sideways through the small tunnel they made singing, “Cockles and mussels, alive-a-live-oh.”
Zoe Chloe inhabited Alice in Wonderland territory as Temple saw it, and the more nonsensical she could be, the better. American Idol proved eccentric sold.
Rafi’s hotel troops kept the room uninvaded and Hank Buck saw that they let her through with a recognizing grimace while Roy stood by shaking his head.
The major media reporters and videographers were already inside, clustered around Sou-Sou and her feet. They were bare and normal this morning, but her mother was busy describing them as swollen as if a thousand bees had been at them the previous evening.
A series of foot-soothing devices were lined up for the famous feet: bubbling footbaths, soaking salts, blowing air dryers, ice baths and steam aerators. Sou-Sou was poking her hot pink footsies in them, as instructed by various media folks, as though they were exotic shrimp in need of many exotic sauces.
A second wardrobe malfunction had become a major media opportunity.
“Glorious, isn’t it?” a deep voice thrummed at the exact level of her ear, which was about four inches higher than usual, thanks to the chartreuse platform shoes.
Zoe Chloe eyed Crawford Buchanan and his glistening gaze agog at the publicity.
“Gross,” she responded. “Like cannibalism on Survivor.”
“Exactly!” he crowed. “You can’t arrange another interesting mishap, can you? That’d really raise ratings.”
“Someone sabotaged her Mary Janes,” Zoe Chloe pointed out. “That is baaad behavior, even on a reality TV show.”
“Hey! No permanent damage, just maximum media. That is goood showbiz. You’re just jealous, ZC.”
“Like her!” a woman yelled.
Zoe Chloe looked up to see Mrs. Sou-Sou pointing at her hot pink tights. “That’s how bright m
y poor Sou-Sou’s feet were last night. Like a boiled lobster’s.”
“Would you mind losing the shoes for us, Ms. Ozone?” a bold cameraman asked.
Crawford nudged her in the side. “Your big moment.”
She stepped out of the platform shoes and went flat-footed, herded by the reporters next to the preening Sou-Sou so they could pose with tiny feet together. Cameras crowded in to fixate on Zoe’s hot pink socks next to Sou-Sou’s hot pink bare feet. Flashes winked.
Then everybody laughed.
A large black paw was dipping in the footbath as if trolling for colorful koi.
When it came to scene-stealing, Midnight Louie was a master.
But his interference also gave the avid media maggots the money shot they craved. They faded away into the hall, leaving Zoe to mount her platforms again and assess the situation.
“So Sou-Sou can dance tonight?” she asked Yvonne Smith and her “Proud Parent” name tag.
No wonder the daughter had an exotic first name.
Mrs. Smith honored Zoe Chloe with a displeased once-over, but bowed to her online notoriety.
“Oh, yes. Doctor said a night’s elevation of her feet, along with ice packs and soothing ointment would have her in top tiptoe condition, and she is. Doctor said she just needs to keep her feet soothed between learning the new dance’s steps. She’ll trip the light fantastic like Tinker Bell by tonight.”
The woman smiled happily, basking with her daughter in the afterglow of media attention. Nobody would even wonder if mom had planned the shocking, attention-getting mishap.
Only Zoe Chloe had such a nasty, suspicious mind. And Midnight Louie.
Speaking of which, Temple decided to search out her light of love and see what insight he had into the goings-on.
The adult rehearsal rooms were down a whole different hall, one that Midnight Louie did not choose to explore. Maybe he guessed things could turn mushy if she could get Matt alone. Nothing hated mush more than a tomcat.
The Terrible Tatyana was in full cry.
“You are the perfect pupil but you have not a drop of Latin in your soul!” she was keening in despair when Temple teased open the door to Matt’s rehearsal room.
“That’s not true,” Matt answered reasonably. “I have spoken it, sung it. The old Polish neighborhoods in Chicago still have one Latin mass a Sunday.”
“Not this church Latin of the priests! I speak of the Latin of the bullfight and the sword and the cape, of the hot intemperate zone. Spain! Portugal and the prado singers. Of passion that is known only in the shadowy taverns of the Old World or the tangos that inflame the South American countries of the New World. This is not to be found in Chicago churches,” she finished, her words and voice and posture saturated in scorn. “This is to be found in the dancer’s soul.”
“There’s a lot of soul in churches,” Matt said, unperturbed.
Temple saw precisely what drove Tatyana crazy, the laid-back sweet reason that made Matt a master of the late-night airwaves. Also, he was too sophisticated to buy into the Old World domination mode of the battle of the sexes.
The Russian spitfire was right. This was a severe handicap in the current situation.
Tatyana turned her temper on the intruder.
“Who are you?” she demanded, whirling around in her tight spandex dance clothes as if wearing a ruffled skirt and castanets on her imperious fingers. She absorbed Zoe Chloe Ozone’s kooky façade and dripped more disrespect.
“Oh. This silly Internet clown-girl. You deal with the children division. You have no right here. We rehearse.”
“No.” Zoe Chloe swaggered onto the wooden dance floor. “You badger. And I deal with him.”
“Ladies,” Matt began, so not getting it.
There were no ladies here.
“I would like a word,” Zoe Chloe said, “with my fiancé.”
Tatyana’s eyebrows snapped up toward her hairline. “This is true?” she demanded of Matt. “This ridiculous circus girl is your lover?”
“Fiancée,” he said quickly. “And there’s nothing ridiculous about her.” He eyed Zoe Chloe. “This is a performing persona.”
“Ah.” Tatyana eyed Zoe Chloe with more respect. “She is ‘playing’ the zany gamine.”
The last three words came out: ze zanee gah-meen.
The French pronunciation made Zoe Chloe sound like an exotic animal. So she stamped one thick-hooved platform sandal.
“Darn right, toots. Now take a sweat break and let me deal with the dude.”
Zoe Chloe’s American slang had Tatyana blinking in confusion. She threw up her hands. “He is impossible. I need break. Tell him if he does not do sexy it will not sell and Tatyana will be fool of the entire competition.”
She exited with a final slam of the door.
“She’s temperamental,” Matt explained after a long silence.
“She’s exasperated,” Temple said, turning back to him, “because you do not do sexy.”
“I didn’t sign up for sexy. And she’s right. I don’t have that Old World Spanish temperament. I don’t preen at killing tormented bulls. I don’t want to sling women around the floor. I don’t get it. At best, it’s hokey. At worst, it’s abuse.”
“Sure. It’s all those things. It’s theater. Look at me! Zoe Chloe is theater. It’s hokey, but Zoe Chloe thinks she’s sexy. I don’t need to be her but something out there in Internet land needs to think she’s special, that she is what they could be if they had the nerve.
“Sexy is in the mind of the beholder, Matt. You spent half your life not allowing anyone to see you that way. It worked great while it lasted, and that you still don’t need to strut makes you sexy in a whole new way to all those dear hearts and lost souls on late-night radio.
“But to me”—Zoe Chloe slid nearer on her ridiculous shoes— “you are ultrasexy because you love me, because you dare to feel. And that’s what the dances demand. Feelings you can show. These Spanish dances ought to be a cakewalk for you.”
“No way on earth! Why?”
“Because . . . they are all about control. Self-control. And self-control is very sexy, because it can be lost.”
“You’re talking about virtue lost.”
“Or love found.”
“In the tango, the couple barely look at each other through most of the dance. It’s sublimated violence.”
“Yeah. You do get it. But she’s as powerful as he is. She can reject. We are twelve millennia from the cave days when a guy in an animal skin could drag a woman by the hair into his bachelor pad. These ritual Spanish dances explore the power of ‘no.’ The man can be gloriously egotistical and commanding, and still get shut down. It was a great leap forward for the species.”
“So . . . you’re saying?”
“Passion makes life earnest and real, the arts revealing, spiritual, affecting. I know you’ve got it. In what you believe in, in other people, in what you feel for me. I ask you. In your place. Here. Now. What would Max do?”
His head reared back as if slapped. “Temple—”
“And you think Tatyana is a demanding taskmaster.” She kissed her forefinger and pressed it to his lips to shut him up. “You’ve got the same smoldering dark brown Latin eyes José Juarez does, and a swimmer is as supple and strong as a fencer. You can out-tango him any day. The pasodoble is yours if you want it. You got me away from Max, didn’t you?”
Talk about pressing someone’s buttons. Talk about motivation.
He looked shocked, angry, turned-on.
He looked ready for the pasodoble.
Hell, he looked ready for Max.
But all he had at hand was her.
Matt seized Temple and pasted her to him like a paper doll, his long gliding strides propelling her backwards while he stared into her eyes as intently as a cobra practicing hypnosis. He spun her left and then right, ending each dizzying twirl with a full frontal embrace that hot-glued them together from neck to knee. This dance should be banned in Boston.<
br />
Temple wasn’t aware of her feet touching the ground and they didn’t need to. Matt flung her around with such skill and authority that she couldn’t think of anything other than being caught in a sensual eddy of motion that had her stomach lurching like she was plummeting over the scary top of a Ferris wheel or experiencing sudden serial stabs of pure lust, pardon the oxymoron. . . .
He dipped her parallel to the floor, leaning closely over her, never breaking their gaze, and let her settle there gently, only his braced arms on either side of her shoulders keeping him from pinning her to the hardwood in an R-rated hip-lock.
Temple, as breathless as a Victorian virgin, felt her bosom heaving in and out in the prescribed manner. They were alone. They were engaged. There was no reason this dance shouldn’t have a very personal climax.
Matt’s face with its seriously hot expression drew near to hers. Surrender was the only reasonable option.
He kissed her lightly on the lips, grinned, and pushed himself up to extend a hand and pull her upright again.
“And?” he asked.
“I want a really private rematch later, Valentino.”
Temple patted her hair and heartbeat into place again.
José Juarez was chopped pico de gallo.
Mercedes Pasodoble
The Internet had been as unrevealing as his memory.
He’d visited the Hummerbar again for a nightcap. He was revved. Revienned. Couldn’t sleep. An Internet search for the Mercedes license plate had gotten him nowhere. A Bailey’s Irish Cream and coffee in the bar only deepened his phony Celtic accent. He was a faker without a memory.
He limped out of the hotel onto the Bahnhofstrasse, still teaming with foot traffic a lot more sound than his three-way thump of cane and then two footsteps.
He’s paced this expansive, expensive tourist trap avenue for a day and a night. Was he grinding his legs to permanent disability? He sensed he never knew when to give up.
And then, there it was, a gift of the teeming night.
Cat in a Topaz Tango Page 20