Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Topaz Tango

“You made her look twenty-eight tonight.” “She made me dance like I was still twenty-eight. Olivia made Olivia happen. She’s a pro.”

“Glory B.”

“Makes you want to hug her sane. So much talent. So much pain. She knows she’s almost totally blown her career, and is so scared she rushes to the one real worst thing to do like a lemming to a cliff. I’d like sixty counseling hours with her, but I only get a few hours of rehearsals.”

“She was the first one hurt in rehearsal.”

“Maybe a real accident? She’s accident-prone. Look at her driving. I honestly think she’s been driven so hard since her TV commercial days at ages six and seven that her body and mind haven’t kept up with the career push. She works harder than Olivia, and it’s harder on her. And she’s only sixteen.”

“Motha Jonz?”

“I haven’t worked with her yet.”

“Not a clue?”

He shook his head. “That hip-hop, gangsta, drug and glitz world is so alien to me. The materialism outdoes the greedy corporate executives. I don’t see where women fit there, except as victims. Motha Jonz’s ‘man’ was gunned down in Vegas by any of a dozen so-called record executives, rappers, media ‘starz.’ It’s its own little gold-weighed-down, diamond-ear-studded, fancy-ride-driven alternative universe.”

“She was literally caught in the crossfire when D’mond J supposedly offed QuE2 here in Vegas a couple years ago.”

“I looked it up before I came to this competition. She was riding on the passenger side in the back of D’Mond’s limo. She was found to be carrying a pearl-and-diamond-handled .22 pistol, like something out of the musical Chicago. A messenger boy, just a teen, white, was shot and killed in the exchange of bullets. The bullet went right through and was never found. She might be a murderer. She certainly was hooked on drugs then.”

“The authorities didn’t settle this case?”

“It was one of those guns and drug cases where everybody was so guilty it was hard to pin anything on anyone. The men are still fighting legal battles. Motha Jonz has been out on her own as a performer ever since, but she’s not making it. That’s why she’s on this show.”

“Someone helped fill you in on all this.”

“Leticia keeps her ear to the hip-hop underground.”

“And she told you all this?”

“She told me to watch my back around Motha Jonz. Maybe not so much because of her pearl-handled piece, but because of her former associates. If she wasn’t a perp, she was a witness.”

“God, Matt! She could have a hit out on her. You could be dancing the jive with her and playing a target at the same time. In a crowd like the audience for this, it’d be easy to take out any one of you.”

“Right. Thanks, coach, for the career advice in getting me here.”

Temple clapped both hands over her mouth.

“Lordy. I had no idea what I was sending you into gang warfare and spray tans. I’m going to have to solve this thing for Molina just to get you off the hook.”

“You need to watch your own back.”

“Zoe Chloe doesn’t have an enemy in the world, except Crawford Buchanan.”

“She’s lucky,” Matt said sourly. “That doesn’t seem to be the pattern around here.”

Pasodoble Double Cross

Sometimes the show seemed like a guided trip to Europe. If it was Tuesday, it was Spain and pasodoble night.

Temple had to choose a new Zoe Chloe wardrobe fit for an emcee role, which was getting tedious. It was hard to be a clotheshorse. Who knew how much effort pop stars must put into looking outrageous? Luckily, the show costumers were into the ZC look and welcomed her to their rack of castaways and boxes of accessories and trims.

“Red, black, and purple tonight,” Temple told them when they had attired their charges and were relaxing with sodas and cigarettes.

“Kinda Red Hat Lady-delinquent-Goth?” asked Brandi, a gamine-haired sprite who looked much younger than she was thanks to a hip wardrobe.

“Got it.”

“You seem edgy tonight, Zee,” Manda mentioned after Temple had rejected three choice looks.

“Yeah. The improvisation when things go wrong is getting to me.”

“We’re glad our deadlines are backstage.”

“How’d it go?” innocent Zee asked. “Who are your odds on tonight?”

“The pasodoble always makes or breaks the guy,” Brandi declared. “I mean, you either break hearts or break wind out there.”

While everyone giggled, Tee in Zee guise probed further.

“Which guy, then, will win?”

“José is in the zone, and the ethnic bullring,” said Yolanda. “Olé!”

“The Cloaked Conjuror will comport himself well, as usual,” the older Manda said.

“Salter is gone! History in haut cuisine.” Brandi was the group’s talker. “And wait’ll you see what we did to the blond. He is locked and loaded. All he has to do is deliver.” Her eyes rolled with wicked anticipation.

“ Really ?” Zee Tee squealed, hoping for more racy girly tidbits.

She was disappointed. They returned to critically eying her getup, adding a large scarlet silk rose here, pinning up her full skirt with one, judiciously ripping her fishnet hose, adding temporary tattoos and a red feather boa. One thing about Zoe Chloe Ozone. She could never be overdressed or overexposed.

Well, Zoe Chloe Ozone would certainly get a breathless play-by-play from the dancing tweens, if not the jaded young Los Hermanos Brothers who’d mastered their own dance routines. She left the costume room to hang with her crew in the greenroom.

There she found that Zoe Chloe’s “posse,” Rafi and Molina, had joined the group, next to Mariah and EK. A little parental rivalry there? She sat on the long couch between the exes, on principle, and to make someone else as uneasy as she was tonight. Rafi and Molina scooted over to avoid crowding, but wanted some whispered guidance on the night’s program.

“What’s the dance?” Rafi asked Temple.

“Pasodoble.”

“Paso what?”

“Spanish for ‘double step.’ Inspired by the bullring. Matador, cape, bull.”

“So what’s a girl doing in that dance?”

“She’s either the cape or the bull. Gets tossed around a bit. It’s a sexy, intense confrontation.”

“ ’Tossed around,’ ” Rafi repeated, looking at Molina. “Sounds like someone could get hurt.”

“Nobody’s gone after Motha Jones yet,” Molina speculated.

“Or Wandawoman.” Rafi rolled his eyes, as if he doubted anyone would.

“Or Matt,” Temple finished up.

She was still alone with her secret Temple Barr anxieties.

No way would Zoe Chloe Ozone be able to hold a mike tonight to introduce this day’s junior performer and her partner at the end of the four adult dances. Her Kool Kid palms were oil-slick before even the first adult performer had been introduced in the overdone fashion of Crawford Buchanan.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Crawford’s deep baritone oozed into the mike, amplified all through the set and the live audience and the greenroom.

“Crawford Buchanan is da bomb!” Meg-Ann declared.

“Da stink bomb!” Sou-Sou trilled, trying to ditch her prima donna image.

How sweet it was to hear a new generation dissing Vegas’s answer to a walking, talking oil slick.

ZC sat back to watch and shutter her ears against screeching teen fans. At least she could “hang” with her adult “posse.” Mariah and EZ next to them were fairly mature and quiet, allowing Temple to indulge a long internal arpeggio of anxiety and regret.

This evening’s dance was true adult entertainment. The pasodoble. “Double step” was the literal translation.