Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Topaz Tango

Temple forced her attention back on the competition. How pathetic! Did she have to see Max under every disguise in Vegas? Maybe she would, for longer than she’d like.

“Wonderful,” Danny told the Cloaked Conjurer. “Your persona and costume would seem to keep you heavy on your feet and your side vision obscured, but you reacted swiftly and sharply when your partner had a wardrobe malfunction. And Olivia, the moment you touched toe to dance floor again, you were right on time. Your heel caught in your skirts, is that it?”

“No,” she answered. “It almost broke all the way off. Just folded out from under me.” She bent to gather up her voluminous skirts and reveal her left foot. The red satin heel swung from the last like a pendulum, affixed only by the cloth covering. “Since the women all have to dance on their toes anyway I just continued, arching that foot a little more so the heel wouldn’t drag.”

“A championship effort,” Danny decreed. “The mishap recovery was so smooth that although we’ll have to dock you for it, it’ll be much less than a fall would have been.”

The audience protested that, but Leander Brock patted his palms downward for their silence. “The judges have no other choice, but the viewing audience can call and e-mail in to support their favorites no matter what happens, and every vote will add to our callboard of success.”

He pointed to the large glitter-decorated LED board that would record the votes for each contestant by name and the cancer fund amount.

“I, too, applaud our sorely tried dancers, and especially Miss Phillips, who is very game to try this at an age, not that she looks it, when many women would be afraid of serious trouble from a fall. You remember the Frank and Ernest cartoon. It’s one of my favorites for the distaff dancers: ‘Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, only she did it backwards in high heels.’ ”

The quote got the expected laugh. “Right on, Leander,” Savannah Ashleigh said, waving her placard and displaying her score, eight, ahead of time. “I don’t dock a performer for a wardrobe malfunction.”

Danny revealed his grade, a seven. Leander also flashed a seven. The crimson couple left the stage for the greenroom to wild applause.

For the first time Temple considered the sympathy vote. Matt might be a little too perfect for the viewing audience. He’d striven all his life to meet high ideals and had made it look easy to be smart, polite, and caring. Good looks on top of his natural charm and civility could spur jealousy.

At least no matter how the votes went, the children’s cancer fund came out a winner.

“And now,” Crawford trumpeted at the mike, “Olympic fencer José Juarez exchanges foil for a female partner, the awesome Wanda-woman, queen of the wrestling arena. Be interesting to see who leads here, folks.”

José Juarez brought on the Hispanic drama as he led Wandawoman down the stairs and then around the floor at a gallop, like Mad Max wooing a human jonquil. Wandawoman had moves, but not for the waltz. She looked clumsy.

“Again,” Danny raved, “a male partner with impeccable posture. Your sport requires it, so it’s not quite as remarkable as it was for Matt, but bravo! Wandawoman, you are a wonder on the wrestling mat, but I’d never give you a waltz to dance. Decent job, under the circumstances, but not designed to showcase your literal strengths.”

Leander was in accord. “The amazing Danny Dove nailed it. Here’s hoping, Wandawoman, you fare better with tomorrow’s dance. Everybody is learning as they go.”

“José,” Savannah enthused. “How can one go wrong with a sexy Latin fencer? Looks, charisma, flexibility, yet really a great upright profile. Wandawoman was just too big to float in a waltz and all that yellow . . . my dear, you should shoot the costume department.”

The scores, from Danny down, were seven, seven, six.

The last couple was the unluckiest.

Motha Jonz did her best, but floating like a butterfly was not her shtick either. Although her sophisticated café-au-lait gown with trailing scarves hid her stocky figure, she resembled a dancing cocoa bean. Keith Salter’s dance for the show was worse than his dress rehearsal. His spine looked like it had been sewn to his stomach to the disservice of both. He was far too stiff.

The judges gave them sixes across. Even allowing for lower scores to start with, it was a glum couple that thumped up the four steps together to return to the greenroom backstage.

Temple scored Matt and Glory B. tops for a flawless waltz, with CC and Olivia the crowd-pleasers for sudden drama. The other two were ill-matched, but that would all change tomorrow.

She was so busy analyzing Matt’s chances of partner she only realized it was her turn in the spotlight as she heard Crawford’s oily baritone summoning Zoe Chloe Ozone.

She quickly joined him at the sidelines near the judges’ table.

“Here she is, folks, the dainty darling of the YouTube set, our junior emcee, the petite pint of dye-no-mite, the little girl who puts the Goth in ‘Goth, she’s good,’ Miss Zoe Chloe Ozone.”

Temple grabbed the mike and put several steps between her and the self-proclaimed “emcee of excellence.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Zoe Chloe riffed, “it is time to sit up and stand up for the next generation of dancing dervishes. The jazzy junior division debuts its first A-list couple, dreamy Dustin of Los Hermanos Brothers and Sou-Sou Smith, putting all the sass in the mambo that the older folks do.”

Out they pranced, miniature versions of the adult dancers. Sou-Sou wore a short, tight spangled costume as cute as a pink rhinestone butterfly pin. Cuban-heeled black Mary Janes encased her tiny, flashing feet. Her nonexistent hips flounced to the rhythm as the older boy managed the odd hips-back moves of the adult male dancers, which was as if an invisible string from their butts went straight up to the flies above.

The junior pair was impressive, and too cute to believe, until Sou-Sou suddenly stepped away in a series of turns from her partner . . . and kept on turning, her rouged little face screwing up in an agonized cry, her feet prancing high off the floor as if she were tap dancing on a red-hot stovetop, or doing the tarantella, not a slick, hip-slinging samba.

For endless, awful seconds she was like the girl in the Red Shoes fairy tale, dancing and spinning endlessly, unable to stop. She twirled finally to her hands and knees, and her slim body kept on rolling as she scrabbled as wildly as a water bug across the polished floor. Her appalled partner followed, stunned, his hands reaching out to stop her.

She ended sitting on her sequined rear, kicking her heels on the floor and bawling like a three-year-old, her red face making the hot pink of her costume pale by comparison.

Onlookers rushed toward her.

Her mother, obviously, was the larger version of blond and rouge and glitter that swooped to her side first. The thump of six twelve-size shoes on hardwood came hard on her heels as three Oasis security guards arrived to hold back concerned onlookers.

Oasis security uniforms were unisex and more discreet than at most Vegas hotels: khaki cargo pants and short-sleeved safari jackets. Even the essential duty belts were low-profile, which was both good and bad.

Molina and Rafi and Zoe Chloe’s disguises kept them held back among the concerned onlookers being pushed away, but Midnight Louie slipped and slid between the gathered forest of legs, which included the spindly shanks of Sou-Sou’s three rival junior dancers, Mariah, and the three other Los Hermanos brothers.

Then something dark and huge swooped down to pick her up. Sou-Sou left the stage in the strong arms of the Cloaked Conjuror, whose persona awed her long enough to forget the cause of her distress for a few key moments. She was swept behind the rear velvet curtains, her mother and the security forces trailing them, the rest of the cast and crew and audience held back.