Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Topaz Tango

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 food, 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.