Black car. Zurich license plate, pulled up to the curb, pulsing there with a muted Mercedes purr. A blond woman in a pink wool suit was pushing out of the open back door as if her skirt was too tight (it was), her boot heels too high (they were) . . . and the pale pink leather was shriveled up the heels as if they had been thrust repeatedly down into resisting dirt. (They had been.)
Revienne! Trap or lucky break? That was the price of amnesia, constant second-guessing.
She struggled upright, glancing around wildly, staggering away from the car.
He bounded forward (ouch!) to grab her elbow in a gentlemanly way.
“Need help, miss?”
Her stricken eyes met his without recognition, only panic.
He pulled her away from the car and behind him. Right. Like he and his game legs were any kind of wall. But this street was Tourist Central.
Two beefy men poured from the car, one from the front seat, the other from the opposite back door. He felt Revienne shrink against his back.
He lifted the cane.
“Hey!” An American GI on leave, probably from some hellhole, was making this his fight. “This guy is handicapped and this woman wants out. What’s going on, buddy?”
Now three American Army buddies gathered around, the word buddy needing no translation.
“Michael! Is it you?” Revienne breathed in his ear like an answered prayer.
So just right. So suspicious. But the cards were all falling his way. Play them.
She eyed the instant rescue party and spoke in English. “I don’t want to go with these men. They separated me from my husband. Call the police!”
The three GIs had brawny bodies and three months of boot camp behind them, marine-tough expressions and, if you looked very, very close, far too young eyes. He knew their breed well. They form a wall much better than he can.
“Until the police come, we’ll do the policing,” one announced.
By now a crowd had clotted around them, a cross of casual tourist class and well-heeled Swiss natives enjoying an expensive night out on the town.
American soldiers on leave weren’t necessarily a rooting-for entity in Europe these days, but attractive women fleeing obvious muscle had propelled many a movie plot and was always box office magic.
One thug reached for a firearm against the eager young soldiers.
Max used the cane like a sword to ram him in the stomach just before the trio swarmed him. Whirling, he used its length to trip the other man as Max spun Revienne hard into the custody of his free arm. Backstepping with long strides abetted by using the cane for leverage, he saved Revienne from tripping on the cobblestones and clasped her close to his hip while he watched the incident’s last act.
The firearm never appeared because its owner was clasping his cane-punched gut as the two middle-aged thugs retreated before three young jaws jutting outward, fists leading, and witnesses well able to testify. They vanished back into the car as quickly as they’d appeared and it glided away into the teeming traffic.
Revienne had arranged herself artfully against Max’s side but stopped leaning on him and pulled herself upright, for which he was grateful. He wasn’t quite ready for dance partners, not even in a sexy pasodoble.
“Thanks, mates,” he told the three American soldiers.
“Aussie?” they asked.
“Irish,” he answered.
“Same diff.”
What did they know, at this age? Maybe more than he did.
The men from the Mercedes had vanished like all bad guys do when foiled. Max didn’t believe in happy endings but Revienne was clinging to him, smelling like freesias, keeping him upright in more ways than one, and he didn’t want to argue right now with fate or connivance. He could learn from both of them.
“Thanks, fellas,” he said with a grin.
They grinned back and swaggered away. He led the prize, Revienne, back to the Hotel California, where you can never leave. Or never want to. Revien.
It means, in French, “I return.”
Revienne.
It means, in English, “I’m an idiot, but I wonder, and I burn to know more.”
Chef du Jour
Instead of urging her fiancé to find his inner Zorro for Tuesday’s pasodoble, Zoe Chloe should have been worried about her upcoming patter as emcee tonight, when the quickstep ruled.
Instead she was watching the huge flat-screen TV in the greenroom. It was nerve-wracking for the kids of the cast to have to sit here nightly watching the adults flash their footwork while they had all evening to get nervous before their own big moments. So Zoe Chloe had come in to keep them company.
Each dance lasted less than two minutes, but the hour show was expertly managed to reap the most major commercials and milk Crawford Buchanan’s oily chitchat over the mike and with the judges.
Meanwhile, the young performers’ nerves felt no mercy.
Sou-Sou’s mother had her off to the side under her literally protective wing: a filmy bat-wing tunic. The girl’s foot injury seemed to have subdued her adult-encouraged air of superiority. She looked smaller, more human now. Humbled.
Temple couldn’t help wondering if that had been the point of the nasty prank. It was hard to imagine a child coming up with that subtle a form of harassment. Yet for an adult to stoop to hurting and scaring a child was chillingly sick.
She eyed the other contestants’ mothers. Frances was relaxed but alert. Angie looked the usual distracted. Temple recalled the Texas cheerleader mother who paid a man to kill the mother of her daughter’s rival, feeling a dead mother would take the girl out of the running for a cheerleader spot.
Pinning adult ambitions on a child would curdle the blood.
None of these moms looked that loony, not even Yvonne Smith with her overdone, aging beauty queen look.
Meanwhile, Temple tried to weigh the performances of Matt’s rivals between watching her possibly lethal brood of mothers and daughters.
Sou-Sou would repeat her sabotaged dance on the third night. Ekaterina would be tonight’s featured junior dancer. Her thin limbs were drowning in a ruffled ball gown for the lighthearted foxtrot. She nervously eyed her dancing Hermanos brother, Adam, while watching the performing adults with intensity.
Matt had drawn the right to squire the lean and glamorous Olivia through the quickstep. The aging actress had played a heavy for decades on the soaps, so she grabbed at the chance to unveil a lighthearted, flirtatious flair that took decades off her face and figure.
Matt had responded to her theatrical lead by morphing into a twenties playboy, the Great Gatsby on speed, as they smiled and flirted and flounced all over the stage. How amazingly the costumers and makeup artists could remake their contestants completely to match each dance. Matt and Olivia were delightful together. They had this dance knocked!
The judges thought so too. Danny’s enthusiasm for them both was champagne-bubbly. Leander, himself past sixty, was clearly smitten with Olivia Phillips. Savannah was now fully into Matt, and babbling about them starring together in a revival of The Boyfriend. Nine, eight, eight.
The Cloaked Conjuror had drawn Wandawoman, and they were two people never destined to quickstep anywhere for any reason. Here the costumes went wrong. The decision to “lighten” CC’s look with a diaphanous black cloak only made him look like a large gray moth.
Wandawoman, stuffed into billowing, knife-pleated pink chiffon studded with black sequins, resembled an overblown rose about to wilt from black spot. Her muscular power would shine in the ponderously sensuous Latin dances but now CC could barely steer her to keep up with him, nor did her moves evoke any sprightliness.
Even Danny Dove became acid in evaluating the dance: “Too slow, the steps were more galumphs out of Lewis Carroll. I thought your costumes were competing for an Oscar for ‘most sickening sunset clouds in collision.’ ”
Leander tsked. “I can’t say either of you were convincing. This is one case where lightness of being is a prerequisite and you two are not angel f
ood, but pound cake.”
Savannah was, predictably, on a different page. “I thought it was magnificent. The metaphor of the large gay . . . I mean, gray . . . moth flitting about the sparkling rose in the garden to sip its essence is so profound.”
“That’s butterfly and rose,” Danny put in, teeth gritted as tight as Molina’s had been earlier this week.
Savannah babbled on. “One would expect the courting gray moth to be awkward and heavy . . . er, winged. And the rose is full-blown, fat and fluffy as a dandelion head just when the wind shatters it and blows it away.” She sighed deeply. “Touching beyond words.”
Six, six, ten.
“The first ten of the competition,” Crawford crowed, caressing the mike.
Ick.
José’s lean and lethal fencer’s frame looked sexy in formal evening wear. He had the speed and the lilting moves down, but Motha Jonz, wearing white full-length feather streamers, looked like a poorly plucked chicken. It was the aristocratic fencing foil engaged with the street switchblade or, worse analogy, the kitchen shears.
Seven, seven, seven.
Temple watched the others follow Matt and Olivia and fail to better them. She cheered inside, mostly for Matt, but also for the token older woman in the lineup, who wasn’t expected to win.
Last came the celebrity chef and the troubled pop tart teen, another match not made in Bob Fosse heaven.
Keith Salter was too rotund to do anything quicker than short-bread, even though Glory B. was giving the dance her all, looking as adorable as a butterfly flitting over a hot stovetop. She’d have scored big if she’d been partnered with Matt instead.
But it was Olivia who’d been as flushed and happy as a bride when she and Matt had taken bows for their standing ovation. He’d stood aside to give her the center stage, kissing her hand with European flair when she turned to give him the applause. It wasn’t his nature to take the spotlight, but in partners dancing a gracious man looked like a prince for deferring so effortlessly to the woman.
And Matt had that part knocked before he’d ever touched sole on a dance floor.
Temple was ready to burst with pride and declare him the winner in her head, when the last couple galloping around the floor took a sudden tight spin and broke apart.
Everyone in the greenroom took in a deep breath.
The camera closed in on Keith Slater, flabby white face studded with rhinestones of sweat. He broke contact with Glory B., then spun away. She automatically tried to resume a partner position, but he sank out of her grasp, writhing to the floor.
All the kids and adults in the junior greenroom were on their feet.
The camera drew back on the main stage. It showed a fallen Salter twitching horribly before Matt and the Cloaked Conjuror ran to him. The burly magician’s beastlike masked face glowered at the camera, then CC swept his ludicrous diaphanous cloak over the scene, obscuring the fallen man.
The camera panned in tight on the judges’ shocked faces . . . well, the shock showed only on Danny and Leander’s faces. Savannah Ashleigh looked merely stupefied, emphasis on stupid, and the camera caught Danny Dove in the act of vaulting over the judges’ table to get to the fallen dancer.
The producer sat as if cast in stone, in place and silent.
Crawford Buchanan, however, was stalking forward into the camera’s face, achieving a tight close-up, gloating with phony horror and all too real zest to be the center of attention.
“Oh, my gosh, ladies and gentlemen. We have another mishap. Keith Salter, celebrity chef known the world over has fallen unconscious to the floor. It is another Marie Osmond dive. Let us hope that Keith Salter has only fainted like a girl, folks. He was a bit chubby and these dances take a lot of starch out of the old pancake gut.”
Danny Dove appeared to wrest the hand mike from Crawford’s death grip.
“Mr. Salter is being attended to by medical personnel the show has standing by at all times. Break. We’re going to break,” he ordered the camera operator, “and will be back as soon as we can.”
The door to the junior greenroom burst open as a harried floor director burst in.
“Quick! We need to get back to the live broadcast with the baby dance. Who’s up tonight?”
EK stood, looking grim and fragile, as usual. Adam rose behind her, shaken.
“You two, into the wings, ready to foxtrot this crowd’s anxiety away. You. Introduce them.”
Temple recognized her outer Zoe Chloe being called to man the ramparts.
Okay. She couldn’t be any more upset and scared than her young introducees.
“Snap to it, Broadway babies,” she ordered her petrified dancing troupe of two. “We’re gonna save the show and you’re gonna foxtrot the audience to distraction.”
Rapid Recovery
Luckily, there was no time to think.
Temple was on camera clutching a mike before you could say “Midnight Louie.”
The two kids were standing behind each other in the wings off-camera.
The floor director hissed a last instruction to her, and then backed away, holding onto his headphones and pointing a silent, demanding finger at . . . Temple. Counting down with his four fingers.
Oops.
Zoe Chloe was on!
She strutted over so the camera could pan on the judges behind her.
“Here we are all in our places wearing shiny dance-mad faces. Keith Salter is doing well backstage. It looks like a touch of stomach flu for the famous chef, folks. All that hip-hopping about is hard on the duodenum.
“Meanwhile, we have to ask . . . just what can a pair of these junior dancers do with that most fabulous, flying squirrel of a dance called the foxtrot? So here we have the youngest and, oh my, cutest—an eleven on the Zoe Chloe one-to-ten hot guy meter—Los Hermanos Brother, Adam. We have the lightest-on-her-feet girl squirrel and you have a heap of hype and entertainment comin’ your way . . . Miss Ekaterina and the Sole Brother Hipster on the q.t. doing the quickest hot crossed biscuit step you ever saw. Gentlemen, waggle your Adam’s apples, and ladies, put your hands together for Adam and EK!”
Temple breathed her relief to see the red light of the active camera wink out, taking her out of the picture.
Crawford sidled up. “That bastard judge stole my thunder, but I see that you still have a little lightning left, ZC. Now give me that mike.”
“Not until somebody else tells me to,” ZC. gritted between smiling teeth.
You never knew what camera might be on, and on you, on a panic-stricken set.
Behind the curtained area, she heard the flurry of Keith Salter being loaded onto a gurney and rolled out by EMTs. Not a good sign.
Who would have it in for a chef, for heaven’s sake? Crawford Buchanan she could get. Uh, get that someone might have it in for him. Not “get” personally, as take revenge on.
Although . . .
Meanwhile, Adam and EK were tripping the foxtrot fantastic, as only lightweight teens could, with dazzling, show-must-go-on desperation. Wispy Ekaterina had pulled out a bundle of endless energy. The pair mimicked their elders’ skill and sophistication so perfectly that the crowd was standing and applauding them even before their dance was over.
Talk about the perfect distraction!
Temple heard the music peak triumphantly, then end as the pair stood holding hands, panting and grinning and bowing. Innocent youth was sure the ideal distraction.
EK was radiant, a performer whose charisma couldn’t be measured until the dance began. Adam made an ideal partner. They both seemed stunned by their own success.
Temple didn’t even notice when the mike was gently pulled through her hands.
“A truly rare performance,” Danny Dove told the audience, who knew it, with a calm smile. “I’m sure everyone is also eager to know that Mr. Salter is fine and being attended to. Check www.dancingwiththecelebs.com for a progress report on his condition. Of course, the judges must score only on what they saw of the full dance, and so must th
e audience.”
Behind them, Crawford was leaping and capering, trying to regain center stage.
Zoe Chloe let Danny Dove pull her close, like a coconspirator, like a cohost.
“Meanwhile, this is Danny Dove and the effervescent Zoe Chloe Ozone pulling the curtain closed on another episode of Dancing With the Celebs. And wasn’t that Matt Devine and Olivia Phillips quickstep, well, divine?” he finished with a totally inappropriate plug.
Temple could only nod and grin.
The camera’s bleary red eye winked out as the floor director pantomimed brushing a hand over a sweaty brow.
Staff and judges, and the other adult and child dancers, came pouring from the backstage area to gather around, congratulating the shell-shocked kid dancers, chattering, and asking how Keith Salter really was.
Danny called for quiet.
“He’ll be all right, we think, but for now we don’t know what hit him, possibly . . . food poisoning.”
The buzz all around them only heated up.
“Yes,” Danny said. “The hotel contracted to keep a buffet going for our performers and staff, and everybody used it. If any of you feel the least bit queasy, call the hotel doctor immediately. The Oasis has three more on call now, in case we’re dealing with something more than a quirk here. Meanwhile, I’d suggest you patronize the hotel restaurants from now on.”
Temple spied Mama Molina with Mariah in tow and Rafi Nadir on the fringes.
Having the whole ruptured family Molina-Nadir together was awkward with a capital AWK. Not to mention EK as a fourth wheel.
Temple frowned, mind back on the poisoning problem.
It was possible that Keith Salter had eaten something too exotic or heavy for bouncing over the dance floor. He was built like an opera singer, as in a sack of cement.
Who would poison the food of a cook? Okay, a chef, not just a common cook. A celebrity chef with the airs and chutzpah and tummy roll to prove it.
A chef who’d made a media name for himself by descending on unalerted restaurants and totally trashing their food, their preparation, their reputation, and their house chefs.
Cat in a Topaz Tango Page 21