Douglas, Nelson - Midnight Louie 05-Cat in a Diamond Dazzle

Jake of All Trades

"Cheyenne's dressing room? Sure thing." He jerked his head in a forward direction to indicate Temple was to follow him.

With thirty-three guys making five costume changes en masse somewhere in the Crystal Phoenix basement, Temple felt more secure asking a passing stranger for guidance than blundering around on her own.

Her guide was amiable, and also tall, but more lanky than hunky. In fact, he reminded her of Tiny Tim's cuter younger brother, which wasn't saying much for his looks.

But Temple followed his long legs as fast as she could without her high heels clicketying like a typewriter on the harsh concrete floors. She soon discovered that the pageant contestants had been given a vast, empty storage space as a dressing room. Long rows of imported folding chairs and tables topped with plug-in makeup mirrors had been curtained into two-person cubicles. Still, with thirty-plus contestants, any real privacy was--as always in theatrical ventures--a snare and a delusion.

Now that she had seen the dressing rooms, killing Cheyenne in the dark confusion of the spacious stage wings made much more sense than trying to do the deed discreetly in one of these cramped, confessional-sized, cloth-walled booths.

Temple's anonymous guide stopped by the burgundy entrance curtain to one cubicle and swaged it back, bowing with a sweeping gesture for her to enter.

She saw nothing inside she didn't expect to see . . . and smell. Theatrical makeup never hid behind floral additives; it broadcast a strong, oily-waxy odor. Temple eyed open tins of bronze body makeup, a much-fingered clear plastic bottle of some kind of oil, and an upstanding chorus line of mousses and other modern hair shapers and bodifiers necessary for long tresses, no matter the sex. That was one of the two adjacent tables. The other table top suffered from a neatness verging on abandonment, except for a blue folder, a box of tissue and a lone tin containing a pallid golden sun of makeup.

"Mine," the man said, noticing her surprise at the lack of cosmetics.

Temple turned, even more surprised. "You're a contestant?"

"Over forty." The man slumped onto his metal folding chair to gaze into a tilted makeup mirror rimmed with unlit theatrical bulbs, like the matching unit on Cheyenne's cluttered tabletop. The overhead fluorescent cast a sunken, sallow visage into the mirror. He made a deprecatory face. "More over forty than most. Jake Gotshall. And you are--?"

"Temple Barr. I work for the Crystal Phoenix."

"I guess I'm what you would call a wild card contestant." Jake smiled at his ghastly reflection.

He reminded Temple of Gumby, another elastic, vague figure dating from a few decades ago. Call it aging hippie. Jake's hair was long, but thin, lackluster and graying. From an ebbing hairline it dwindled into a limp ponytail that thinned into split ends before reaching his shoulder blades. His features were Gumby-soft too: no overshot ledge of jaw and chin to cast a shadow on massive pectorals; no lush eyebrows shading deep-set eyes. After a few days of seeing Incredible Hunks, Temple was amazed to realize that Jake looked completely masculine while claiming not a single characteristic that could be termed "hunkish."

He smiled at her expression.

"No doubt you're wondering why I called you all together here. Actually"--he looked carefully around Temple for signs of other people--"you're alone." His voice assumed an Alan Alda self-mockery. "No doubt you're wondering why I called you here alone?" His straggling eyebrows quirked upward in patented ogling villain style.

"I wanted to come here," Temple pointed out. "I took you for a stagehand."

"Oh, cruel fate! Does this indicate that my chances for this year's Incredible Hunk are not hunky-dory? Don't I look like the late hunk's dressing-room mate?"

Temple sat, gingerly, on Cheyenne's empty folding chair. "Apparently you are, whether you're sure about it or not. I knew Cheyenne, very casually. I wondered what had happened before he went on stage. Maybe you can tell me."

Jake leaned his elbows on the makeup table, hands cupping his amiable, if not particularly attractive face. "You're being too polite. You know you're dying to ask what I'm doing in an Incredible Hunk contest. Instead of inquiring about my late mirror-mate, you should wonder how I got past the contest doormen, in this case doorwomen."

"Enlighten me."

He grinned and leaned closer, revealing rather gray and crooked teeth. "I know a terrific photographer. Besides, I do some stand-up comedy, and figured this gig would give me an unlikely new shtick. Here's my photo." He slipped an eight-by-ten from the blue folder and spun it toward Temple.

"You do have a helluva photographer." Lots of shadow and tricky highlighting had given Jake an intense, aging Hamlet look. Too bad the man in person completely contradicted the image. He more resembled an aging ham-actor, period. From the stamp on the back, the photo wizard was a woman.

Temple would have to look her up if she ever needed a really flattering portrait. "Is that all it took to enter? A good photograph?"

He nodded. "And some bio sheets, with vital statistics." When Jake flexed his arm, as he did now, his plaid shirtsleeve remained loose and unimpressive. "Of course I lied a lot." He peeked, like Tiny Tim, from behind a strand of graying hair that had escaped the rubber band at his nape.

Temple started laughing. "You're a shill. A walking lampoon! What did the pageant organizers do when they actually saw you?"

"Screamed bloody murder until they realized that ejecting a pre-accepted candidate would be bad press. So they made the best of it. I'd showed up, hadn't I? Paid my money and they took a chance.

Besides, I'm warm and breathing, and they were really short of entrants in the over-forty category this year. I, as you can see, am tall, and about as over forty as you can get."

"Forty-nine?" Temple guessed.

"And three-quarters. That's what I put down as my chest measurement."

"Three-quarters?"

"Forty-nine and three-quarters."

"So you're more of an outside observer than the other contestants," Temple said thoughtfully, still smiling.

"Yeah. I mean, who'd watch me? So I watch them. And, boy, do they watch themselves a lot. A few of these guys are so hooked on mirrors that they can't even look at who they're talking to. Beauty is a consuming business, isn't it?"

"Don't ask me. So the contestants are pretty self-absorbed, but the people-watching must be enlightening."

"Fascinating," he responded Mr. Spock style, with cocked eyebrow and aloof tone. When he saw that Temple had recognized the delivery, he added a wry smile. "He wouldn't have stood a chance here either. Not with those Mickey-Mouse-on-Mars ears."

"What have you concluded so far?"

"Besides that I don't have a chance in Hairspray Hell of taking that super-Hunk title? Okay. Most of these guys are pros with attitude, ambitious models or actors hoping to catch one more eye, one more camera, one more big rolling wave of media attention. Some are fun-loving off-camera types, regular guys good-looking enough to enter on a dare from their girlfriends. These guys usually have expectations as ordinary as a day job. Only one other jokester like me slipped in for fun and self-humiliation." Jake spun his makeup tin.

"Why do it? Couldn't you have imagined a male beauty pageant to put in your comedy act?"

Jake shrugged. " A Current Affair , Hard Copy and Hot Heads don't show up, cameras running, for any exercises in imagination that I've dreamed up. Look at Pat Paulsen, the comic who regularly runs for president. He's not so nuts. He gets loads of coverage, and even a nanosecond on national TV can jump-start a career. Hey, regardez Kato Kaelin." Only he pronounced the name of the world's most hyphenated man, the live-in hanger-on in the O.J. Simpson case, "Ka-toe Kae-Iin," in a tres, tres phoney French accent.