Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Topaz Tango

“Temple! That was her name! Max’s squeeze.”

“Not anymore.”

“No? Max dump her?”

“He’s missing. And . . . we’re engaged.”

“ Humph. So my old compadre bugged out and left you with the girl.”

“It didn’t exactly happen that way.”

“No, I guess not. You look like a nice guy. You’d wait your turn.”

Matt held his temper, figuring he’d have to do it a lot in the next week. This greenroom looked like a theatrical variety show and he didn’t fit in.

“Aren’t you taking a risk?” Matt pushed. “Exposing yourself at a hotel that isn’t set up to protect you 24/7?”

“All Vegas hotels are set up for 24/7 surveillance, and I brought my own guys.” The massive feline head nodded at a two men in wife-beater T-shirts holding up the far wall. Matt had taken them for idle workmen or technicians. Which was the idea.

“Why are you doing this?” Matt asked.

“The charity. I lead a pretty isolated life because of the disguise and the death threats. That makes people even more eager to see me outside of my secure home hotel. Everyone who votes for me during the six days of this competition pledges twenty bucks to cancer research. I figure it’s worth the risk. Isn’t that why you’re here?”

“Yeah. The kids’ leukemia fund. And my girlfriend made me.”

CC’s weird, wheezy, basso laughter somehow conveyed warmth. “I’d do almost anything for a smart girl like her myself. You’re a lucky man. I can’t afford a romantic life.”

Matt just nodded. He gazed around the room at the assortment of strangers who’d become friendly rivals very soon. They were sizing one another up as the team of male and female hairstylists, makeup artists, costumers, and pro dancer-choreographers made the round of contestants with the show’s director.

“Good,” said the head guy when he reached Matt and CC. “You guys are getting acquainted already. Dave Hopper, director. You’ll discover a real camaraderie developing between you eight. You’ll work harder mentally and physically than you ever have, and cross barriers you never faced before. It takes guts to try something you’ve never done much of right before live TV cameras.”

He sat on an empty folding table as his production team gathered around.

“The Cloaked Conjuror here will be a challenge from start to finish.”

“The Penn Jillette of Penn and Teller of our show,” a costumer said. “A huge guy, larger than life. I’ll have to work around the mask.” The tall, blue-jeaned bottle redhead glanced at the lithe blond dancer beside her. “Vivi, you’ll need to dream up Beauty and Beast type routines. The masked man is a romantic image; we’ll have to play on it with the costumes and the choreography.”

She turned to Matt. “Stand up.”

He hesitated. He hadn’t been ordered to move since grade school.

“Stand up, cutie. I need to see your build.”

He hadn’t been called “cutie” ever. But he stood.

“Fit, if not awesome. All-American boy.” She sighed and eyed the sinewy brunette who was evidently Matt’s choreographer-coach. “Blond and smooth as butterscotch syrup, Tatyana, but that’s a handicap in the Latin dances. And those are the audience-pleasers.”

“We could cover the hair,” the hairstylist suggested. “Zorro scarf and hat. Or go brunet.”

Hopper nodded. “Worked for Elvis.”

“Could use an Elvis tune,” Tatyana suggested.

“Uh, black dye—” Matt began, appalled.

“Just a rinse,” the hairdresser said. “Could even spray it in. Look around you. How many of the pro guys and the male contestants are blond? Isn’t dramatic enough for guys.”

“There’s Derek on Dancing With the Stars,” the costumer noted. “Does work that darling boy thing.”

“Not in Latin,” Hopper decided. He was middle everything: in age, build, temperament. “We’ll go both ways on him. It’ll be a real shockeroo when the teen angel boy comes out all dark and devilish for the pasodoble. Audiences adore transformations.”

“Plays well against the priest thing,” Tatyana suggested. “I can have fun with that: devil or angel.”

Matt had a feeling her idea of “fun” wasn’t heavy on personal dignity, at least as he knew it.

They moved on, as did CC, linking up with his bodyguards.

And Glory B. moved in on him, taking the adjoining folding chair, then tapping her high and strappy spike heels on the floor so nervously they sounded like castanets. “How’d a priest get talked into doing this?” she asked.

He regarded the notorious oversexed teen idol and decided not to emphasize the “ex” part of his status. “The charity donation.”

“Yeah, me too.” Her ankles turned out like a kid’s wearing white patent leather mary janes for first Communion, skewing the hooker heels to the side. “I want do something for the kids.”

“You were one yourself not too long ago.”

“You think so?”

Matt wondered what she wanted from him. Flirting? Nah, she’d mastered that years ago, even though she was probably sixteen, tops. Glory B. He’d seen her name in the newspaper gossip columns, on TV. She’d been in trouble? Drink or drugs? Both, probably.

“I hit someone,” she blurted.

With kids her age, it was usually another kid. He frowned, confused. What was so newsy about that? Tantrums must be her middle name.

“With my Beamer,” she confessed. “Can’t drive it for a while anymore.”

“You must have people around who can.”

“Yeah.” Her nails were painted midnight-blue, but very short. Probably bitten that way. “It hit a kid. You know, a little kid. Broke both legs. So I’m dancing for charity to work off part of my probation.”

Matt couldn’t help glancing down at her broken-looking ankles. Where does a teenage superstar put guilt? In a tiny purse like the one Glory B. kept beside her on a chain, clearly capable of carrying nothing more than a credit card, and maybe some happy pills.

“Funny,” she said. “The kid’s in double casts and I gotta dance my ass off for doing it.”

“How old is the kid? Girl? Boy?”

“Girl.” She stood, wobbling on the four-inch heels. “These shoes cost more than the medical stuff. I was gonna give her a pair when she got better, but they say she might not be able to ever wear pretty shoes. Dancing shoes.”

“It’s called penance,” Matt said.

“Huh?”

“When you do something wrong, you have to pay for it. It’s not the probation or what the law says you have to do. It’s what you feel inside. It hurts. It’s supposed to. You’ll remember that the next time you don’t think about what you’re doing that might hurt someone else. But you can’t hurt yourself to make up for it either. That way nobody learns.”

She stood there clutching the ridiculous tiny purse, slathered in rhinestones like the cell phone probably inside it, and worth hundreds of dollars. She still looked like a lost seven-year-old and was probably worth millions.

“It’s okay,” he told her. “Everybody gets a second chance. Maybe this show is yours.”

The eyes rimmed in black liner blinked once as she nodded and tottered back to her seat with the soap and wrestling queens. Men, Matt mused, usually got famous for what they did. Women often got famous for being caricatures.

“Here come de judges, here come de judges,” Motha Jonz announced, springing up from her seat pretty spryly for a woman of size in her forties. Her Afro pompadour had a dazzling Bride of Frankenstein silver streak up the front and boobs and booty jiggled with every move she made, like Jell-O on parade.

She certainly diverted every eye in the room from the trio of folks joining them.