Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Topaz Tango

“No rest for the wicked,” he muttered, reading the name and phone number, then the message scrawled beneath them, and groaning. “So my Dancing With the Celebs taskmistress is insisting I need an after-hours, early-morning rehearsal to ‘brush up’ my tango footwork. I’m glad this is the last dance. You remember the formidable Tatyana?”

“You sure that’s all she wants?”

“Sure. This woman is all business.”

“All business shaking her jiggle parts.”

“You seemed to have that routine down too, when you visited me at the rehearsal,” he reminded her with a laugh. “No, life is all work and no play with Tatyana. The other prodance instructors lighten up a little, but never her. You’d think she wanted to rehearse me to death.”

“Then don’t go. You’re the ‘celeb,’ sweet boy. Show a little temperament yourself. You’re too easygoing, Matt. Always accommodating other people. I like that when I’m the ‘other people,’ but you need to put your foot down more.”

“Believe me,” he said, rising, “I’m putting my foot down plenty these days. Especially in those Spanish dances. It’s okay, Leticia,” he said. “You know it’s always hard to settle down after two hours live on the air anyway.”

“Yeah, you and Wayne Newton. Or should I say Elvis?”

“Haven’t heard from his ghost lately, thank goodness. No, I could use some exercise after hunching over a hot mike for two hours.”

He didn’t add that his fiancée was bunking in an alternate persona at the dance competition hotel and he had no one to go home to at the Circle Ritz. Odd how having that option had made relaxing after a show no issue at all. That’s why he’d taken the comped room at the Oasis all the celebs got.

In the mellow hot-fudge night outside, he smiled ruefully as he clicked his silver Crossfire unlocked under the lone blazing parking lot light, waiting to see Leticia’s silver Beetle pull safely out of the driveway before he left.

In an hour he’d be drilling with Tatyana in the empty rehearsal room far below Temple and Louie sleeping above in a giant suite with two tweens, Molina and her ex.

Politics wasn’t the only thing that made strange bedfellows.

Passing through the lights, noise, and action of the Oasis’s casino area a half hour later reminded him that Max Kinsella had played his last stint as the Mystifying Max at another Vegas hotel, the Goliath, and had lived up to his magician’s moniker by disappearing after a dead body had been found in the overhead spy spaces above the gaming tables.

Now Max was out of the picture again and Matt had performed here nightly—for almost a week. Life was crammed with ironies.

Coming here to rehearse at this god-awful hour actually kept Matt’s energy high and hyped. He relished burning off his frustration. He’d gotten used to living with and loving Temple, used to the summaries of their days, the companionship of their nights.

He was starting to think he needed a day job so they’d be in better sync. People would think him crazy to quit “The Midnight Hour” and its syndicated success, but relationships were more important.

This mini-separation had him thinking a lot of things. Like it was also crazy to delay marriage. The only reason he had was wanting Temple to be sure she wasn’t in love with Max anymore, wanting to be sure he was a good enough substitute, but nothing in life was sure.

All he knew was that he’d never been happier.

Maybe he could convert to a daytime show, television, or Web-based even. Talk shows were myriad and female-hosted these days, so maybe the field could use a new guy. Maybe Oprah could make him the way she’d made Dr. Phil .

He laughed out loud at his mental maunderings and ducked through the door leading to the maze of rehearsal halls ringing the ballroom set for Dancing With the Celebs . Just the word “celebs” was a clue to the essential sleaziness of the concept. Cheerfully admitted sleaziness.

Guess that made the world go ’round.

Matt moved down the dim hall and barged into “his” rehearsal room without thinking about it.

The place was as black as King Tut’s tomb.

He backed out, surprised, wondering if the message had been garbled. “See Tatyana at 3:00 A.M. to rehearse.” After work. Underlined. “Your tango footwork stinks,” had been added.

The insanely early hour was no surprise. She knew he worked nights. The bluntness was all Tatyana. Her sentences came as short and sharp as bullets.

He guessed he’d be entitled to hand her some bluntness for being late to a wee-hour meeting she’ d called for. Guess that was what Leticia meant about him being too easygoing.

He reached in and patted the wall until he found the light plate.

He pushed down the plastic switch.

Nothing.

No light.

Matt sighed loudly. The station receptionist must have written the information down wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time.

He stood on the dark threshold to this room so familiar to him, now just a black hole, and started tapping his foot on the durable vinyl tile meant to survive the constant scrape of folding chairs and spilled water, coffee, tea, and stronger stuff.

The sound echoed like bullets in the empty darkness. One hand clapping. One foot tapping.

Clap!

The real sound of cupped palms meeting. A call to the dance. Sharp. Summoning. Arrogant. Spanish. Then the drum of distant boot heels pounded an echoing wooden floor like an indoor hailstorm. Not this floor.

He knew where the sound came from. Tatyana must be playing one of her dramatic games. She liked to put her students on new ground, in “unsafe” dance situations. He left the rehearsal room and followed the maze around in the dark until he felt the brush of velvet curtains backing the show’s set.

The Spanish boot heels throbbed on wood flooring like a joke set of chattering false teeth. Machine-gun fast. Automated, almost. Endless.

Matt brushed through the curtains into more darkness, feeling around the bulk of the big light and sound console onto the actual stage. Everything was black except the well-lit image of the now-familiar space in his mind.

The flamenco beat of steel nail heads covering leather soles kept up the frenzied chatter. Matt stepped farther into the darkness, toward the sound as it clattered toward him, then stopped.

All he could hear now was his heart pattering like a hard rain in reaction to that visceral vibration in the floor beneath him.

A ripping sound jagged by his left ear.

He couldn’t help putting out a hand to sense something in this dark carnival of sound.

His left palm touched passing fire and separating velvet.

The solid curtain behind him was now torn in two and his palm was creased with a line of fire that had thickened like lava and turned sticky.

He recognized that moment of stunned sensation taking fresh shape as pain.

He’d been cut across the hand, across the palm’s head and heart lines. Blood was flowing and running down his bare forearm.

He made a fist to stop the flow and pain. Useless.

Boot heels retreated in the dark, sharp and fast as the angry, mocking laughter that accompanied it.

“Die, bastard, die!”

Matt wheeled and turned back.

Not to run.

He bumped into the big sound console and, dripping blood from his closed fist, ran his uninjured right hand over all the many levers, releasing demon voices of sound bytes, prerecorded snatches of mambo and waltz and samba music, sprightly and stately and frantic in turn.

His hand reversed the buttons as fast as his fingers found them until a light blossomed on the opposite side of the backstage area. There was the single backstage “ghost light” that should be on at all times. He flipped more metal switches along that row, illuminating a random patchwork of high and low spotlights until a dark, grotesque figure became visible in the shadows thirty feet away.