Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In An Aqua Storm

Downstairs, the hard-surfaced halls broadcast the same eerie sensation of desertion. Temple’s heel clicks echoed, duplicating the sound of her progress through the parking ramp. She had thought herself alone then, too.

Suddenly, unintelligible voices joined the echoes.

She paused, and heard arguing tones, even some hot words: “You’re not doing it!”

“I will!”

“Won’t.” The sounds came from the very dressing room she had wanted to visit alone, darn.

Behind her, other footsteps were charging down the stairs, although less noisily. Temple ducked through the nearest door and pulled it almost closed behind her—not all the way. That would make a betraying click. She had never suspected she was so good at subterfuge.

Her heart pounded as if following in her earlier footsteps while she waited behind the door, glancing around to make sure that her shelter was truly safe.

Her worst fears were realized when she spotted a pair of peacock green sparks glimmering from the shadows. She was not alone! Luckily, she had seen this phenomenon before. Temple’s retinas may not have reflected as spectacularly as these, but they did eventually adapt to the dimness.

She made out a sphinxlike piece of darkness that never lightened even when she could discern the glimmer of the mirror and the glitter of hanging costumes.

“Lou-ie!” she whispered. She tiptoed nearer.

One and the same. He lay like a sultan on the former Max’s erstwhile wicker loveseat, his tail flexed in a graceful curve. Another double green glint flashed. Temple came nearer, bent down, and strangled a groan as she recognized Louie’s sofa partner.

“Lou-ie! That’s Yvette. Savannah Ashleigh’s Yvette.”

Louie blinked gravely.

“What? Once is for yes. Twice is for no?” Her next question would have made the parent of an errant teenager proud. “What are you doing here?”

He didn’t answer, of course, and resumed grooming the pale cat’s ruff. The overbred little hussy lounged on her side, slitty aquamarine eyes indolent, a throaty purr rumbling just above the subliminal level.

“Lou-ie! You’re not fixed!”

He yawned and applied his tongue to his forepaw.

“I could get hit with a paternity suit. You don’t know Savannah Ashleigh. Out!”

She picked him up. Weighed a ton. Still. At the door she listened, looked and found all quiet. She yanked it open to set the big black cat down on his four, fat furry feet.

The skin on his spine twitched indignantly. Then he stalked away without a backward glance, tail erect and quirking just at the tip. Okay, Temple thought, we’ll see if you’re as good at getting out as you are at breaking and entering.

“All right, Juliet.” Temple turned back to the dressing room and sighed in exasperation. She swept the dainty Yvette off the loveseat. It was like lofting an ostrich plume, so insubstantial was the shaded silver pedigreed Persian compared to Midnight Louie. “You little minx. How did you get out of your carrier? And where’s your devoted Momsy when you need a chaperone?”

The carrier sat on the floor beside the sofa, unzipped. Temple prepared to whisk Yvette back inside and hope for the best. Maybe she was fixed. That made a lot of sense.

Yvette’s limp little body thrummed like a cello string. Temple couldn’t resist pressing her face against the frothy fur so like a silver fox’s. Yvette’s tongue felt like warm, wet Velcro as it licked the tip of her nose.

“All right, so you’re irresistible. I won’t take it out on Louie. But now back to your home-away-from-home. There.”

Temple felt like a jailer as she zipped up the carrier. How on earth had Louie got in here? More to the point, how had Yvette got out of her carrier? That was one mystery she was not inclined to investigate. Both perpetrators had a speech impediment.

Temple soft-footed it to the door and peeked out. The hall was again so still that she could hear Yvette’s contented, fading purr.

She left as quietly as she could, heading toward the scene of the first crime. Within that room, voices still rose and fell, although much more softly now. Two. Female. Well, it was a women’s dressing room. Guess she could walk right in.

She announced her entry by pushing the ajar door open hard. Then she gave an indrawn shriek of alarm.

Two golden ghosts stood frozen face to face, shimmering in the glare of the makeup lights, as nude as classical statues except for gold lame G-strings. At least they were naked ladies, not laddies.

“Miss... Barr.” One spoke, and broke the spell. Temple followed Louie’s example when caught red-handed where she shouldn’t be, and blinked.

A gilt hand pounded its owner’s golden breastbone. “June.”

The other mirrored the gesture. “Gypsy.”

Temple almost pounded her chest, too, and responded, “Me, Jane.”

Instead, she sank onto a nearby ice-cream chair. “Golly, you startled me,” she said, realizing that by rights they should be accusing her of that.

“It’s the gold metallic paint,” the one on the left said. June. “We need to see what the light gels upstairs will do to it, especially with this opalescent glitter powder we’re mixing with it. Sometimes it can go green. First we have to wait for it to dry.”

“There’s only one way to put it on,” Gypsy added. “In the buff with a sponge.”

“You paint each other?” Temple asked.

“Only the back parts the other can’t reach,” Gypsy said. “Twins make it handy. And we have to leave a discreet spot blank. Otherwise our entire skins would be covered and we’d—what’s that word, June?”

“Asphyxiate.”

“We’d crack.”

“Ghastly, but the effect is phenomenal,” Temple said. “You look like duplicate Greek statues... even your hair is gold and glittery. I can leave—”

“Don’t!” June’s voice sounded a bit panicky. “Maybe you can settle an argument for us.”

“You argue?”

“Not often,” Gypsy said proudly. “But this time June’s being a stick-in-the-mud.”

“You’re the one who wants to blow our whole act.”

Temple sat up straighter, despite her fatigue, as befits an arbiter. PR people are problem solvers, first and foremost. “What’s the matter?”

Gypsy sighed and sat down, first checking to insure that her derriere left no gilded imprint on the chair seat. Temple was relieved. With June still standing, she had a foolproof way to tell them apart.

“It’s about coming out of the closet,” Gypsy said.

“The closet,” Temple repeated numbly. They were gay and in love with each other? Bizarro.

“No, it isn’t that,” June snapped. “Gypsy’s got it all wrong. She invited Dad to the competition Saturday without telling me, even sent him a plane ticket. Can you imagine? Our parents don’t know anything about... all this.”

June’s wide-armed gesture showed off more than the aura of the dressing room.

“I see,” Temple said.

“No, you don’t,” the seated Gypsy argued. “Neither does June. It’s a statement. Our father needs to confront our lives.”

“What’s to confront?” June asked. “We dance nearly naked, and are damn good at it. We make a nice bit of money.”

“I want him to come to the competition.”

“I don’t!”

“He has to see what he did.”

“Gypsy! You’re not reviving that crazy story again.”

“It’s not crazy. I’m not crazy. It’s true.”

“Dad never touched me.”

“He did me. Plenty.”

Temple felt a cold chill in her stomach as she realized exactly what issue was tearing the single-minded twins’ unanimity apart. Beneath their pert manners, their fit, agile forms and the glamorous gilt, lay an ancient rot.