Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

The pinnacle was the clear Lexan plastic onion-shaped dome. Lexan was Lucite on steroids: impact proof. When the Czar Alexander scepter was suspended above its stone base and a bright pinpoint spot was aimed at all that high-carat jewel fire, the effect would be spectacular.

Already the exhibition’s lower levels glittered with period gowns and high-polished furniture, interspersed with islands of imperial silver and gold and more gemstones.

“This should be a knockout, Randy.”

“This information should knock you out more.”

Temple gave him an inquiring look. Her usual slightly sandpapered voice was raw gravel this morning, thanks to serial sobbing into her pillow. Even Visine had only softened the bloody tinge of her eye whites. Having an emotional meltdown as a blonde was way too risky. Normally, her natural red hair would have deflected interest from her eyes.

“Tell me,” she said. Even bad news would take her mind off . . . things.

“The dead guy may have been a petty con man, but he had experience topside in this kind of show. He was, get this, Madame Olga Kirkov’s brother. Got his start performing in her traveling ballet company, then came here and got an American citizenship years ago.”

Temple allowed herself to look shocked. “Art Deckle had been a Russian ballet dancer?”

“Andrei Dechynevski. He made the leap thirty years ago. Did you know Madame Olga herself had defected from Russia twenty years ago? Back when you couldn’t leave the Soviet Union without an escape pod and help from the CIA or an underground group?”

“So, this White Russian exhibition in the white-hot center of American tourism would mean a lot to her. Could she and her brother have been in it together? Why would a respected elder stateswoman of the ballet world want to steal the Czar Alexander scepter?”

“Dunno. Maybe some clever person with a reason to interview the old dame should ask her. You know the ins and outs of this museum/performance fine arts stuff.”

“That’s true. I do,” Temple said. She winced at her last two words. “I will.” That wasn’t much better. Why did she have vows on her mind? For reasons of breaking or making them?

Concentrating on the weird death—and now strange family history—of Art Deckle might take her mind off . . . other things.

After inquiring, Temple was directed to the second-floor meeting room that served as exhibition headquarters. She found her way to the same oblong room wrapped around a very long conference table littered with architects’ floor plans and elevations.

It was her luck that Madame Olga was the only one here. The old woman was sitting cross-legged like an elf atop the table, studying the pale blue lines of the drawings. The prominent veins in her hands and arms were even more vivid than the sketch lines.

Still, her back and spine were ruler straight. That she maintained that ballerina’s combination of flexibility and ramrod posture was amazing for a woman of her age. Maybe Aunt Kit was mistaken about inevitable female decrepitude. Just a little.

“Ah.” The woman looked up with a grateful sigh. “My eyes are seeing double on these drawings. Just the one to make it all come clear. Miss Barr, is it?”

“Yes. Why are you sitting on the table, may I ask?”

“Why not?” The age-faded face wore a pixieish grin. Madame Olga reminded Temple of an octogenarian teenager, a total contradiction in impressions. “Come. Join me, child. You can’t see anything right unless you’re in the middle of things.”

Or the muddle of things. That’s where Temple was right now.

“I don’t know if I can—”

“Not in those high heels. Leave them on the floor.”

“But . . . I’m not wearing stockings.” She didn’t feel that bare-foot odor was suitable for the woman’s turned-up yet aristocratic nose.

“Excellent. Stockings only cut off circulation. High heels are the average woman’s equivalent to toe shoes. They strengthen the line of the leg and intensify the curve of the calf. Very sexy, my dear. Do you dance?”

“Only socially. A little.”

“Pity. You have dancer’s legs. I noticed that immediately. I always judge people by their legs. A clumsy leg betokens an idle mind and crooked legs signify a twisted soul. Your legs are slender and straight. You can be trusted.”

Temple hoped Max would agree with that evaluation.

“Why are you here to see me? You are here to see me?”

“Um . . . yes, I am.” Temple gazed at the architectural renderings papering the wooden tabletop. She felt she was at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party without tea, and with only one very old, eccentric, and formidable guest.

She eyed the old lady next to her, who seemed her own height.

“It’s funny,” Temple said. “I always feel short but I don’t now that I am sitting next to you.”

The black eyes in that pale, blue-veined face crackled with energy and amusement.

“The best ballerinas, my dear, are petite. We reach for the sky, or the flies, when we go en point , our arms high above our heads. We then become one elegant attenuated line, as if suspended from an invisible thread of spider silk. There is nothing like it in the performing arts. We are the centerpiece. The male dancer is but a suitor, a slave, a mere prop to our strength and certainty. We are queens. We are the Alexander scepter of the stage. We are czarinas. We defy gravity.”

Temple was reminded of Mariah Molina’s performance song at the recent Teen Queen pageant. “Defying Gravity” was from the Broadway hit Wicked , based on the imagined lives of the good and evil witches from The Wizard of Oz .

The confluence of ideas and images confused Temple. Just as they did in her personal life. Everything seemed weighted now. Significant. Painful. Liberating.

Was she consorting with a wicked witch, White Russian style?

Madame Olga had no doubts. “You have not come to me for affirmation, but confirmation. Am I right?”

“You must always be right,” Temple said with a grin.

“I am old enough to give that impression, but my early life was struggle, disappointment, frustration. Uncertainty. I deserted my homeland because it was in the hands of venal bureaucrats. I left my family because they were broken and accepted it. I abandoned my one true love because he could not change. I gave myself to my art because it was cruel and demanding, but it gave me wings.”

The old woman’s knotty but strong finger speared a point on a nearby drawing. The sketch of the Alexander scepter’s installation.

“This is the nexus. The link between the Old World I loved that nurtured my family line and my art, and this New World that makes art into spectacle. Still, that is a kind of immortality. They draw on the same energy, River Dance and Swan Lake.”

“A peasant form and an aristocratic one?”

“They are the same. If you do not understand that, you do not understand art. That is why I embrace this American potpourri of commerce and art. Why I lend my name, which is all the power I have left.”

She flexed a bare instep, drawing it almost into the image of a bound Chinese foot, all exaggerated curve of arch with the toes curled into crippled insignificance underneath it.

Temple winced to witness that ingrained deformity. Were her own means of borrowed height that disabling? No, she wore heels only for short periods. If she could have gone en point , maybe she wouldn’t have worn them at all.

“What do you want to know?” the old woman asked.

What not?

Temple tried to fix herself in here and now, job and profession. She wasn’t a czarina, but she was a media mistress.

“The dead man was your brother?”