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

"Here!" She grabbed the kit and held it out to. .. "What's your name?" she asked the Wardrobe Witch.

"Mary Lou. And this is Lance." The hunk waited diffidently at the dressing-room door, head hung.

Temple nodded, thrusting the show-saving kit at Mary Lou, whose hands, even now wringing before the prancing unicorn on her sweatshirt, abruptly vanished behind her back.

"Oh, no. No, I couldn't," she demurred, bit her lip and backed away as if Temple was proffering Cleopatra's asp. "I can't . . . sew.

Mary Lou almost looked embarrassed, as well she should--a woman her age afraid of a little needle and thread.

Exasperated, Temple turned to Lance, getting a better gander at the hapless hunk. He was the usual good-looks-gifted, weight-lifted he-man hero with thick, wavy, coffee-colored shoulder-length hair Cher would envy. And, at a raw twenty-one or -two, he was one of the youngest contestants.

Mary Lou was backing all the way out of the room now. "I'll wait. Outside." She eyed a big-dialed watch whose pink plastic strap cut into her chubby wrist. "Hurry! Lance is due onstage in only a couple of minutes."

"So am I!" Temple said.

And she did loathe late entrances, for rehearsals, and especially for dress rehearsals, even when she loathed the forthcoming onstage follies even more.

No time to wonder why the Wardrobe Witch had deserted her post. The show must go on! Temple pulled her glasses from the case in her duffel bag.

"Where's the problem?" she asked Lance, selecting a needle with a large, easily penetrated eye and hunting for white thread.

His odd silence in a crisis made her look up.

Lance was looking down.

Temple looked down.

Oh.

She began looking for black thread, and lots of it.

A seam in Lance's black leather like pants had split open. Temple could see why, now that his nether regions were no longer lost against the black backdrop of a curtain. The skin-tight legs laced up open sides. Apparently an enthusiastic, or nervous, lacer--like Mary Lou--had overtightened the lacing.

Something had to give, and had, in the most unfortunate location: a seven-inch seam along the front fly.

"I can take 'em off," Lance suggested lamely, eyeing Temple's glasses with visible doubt.

"No time." But he knew that already, else why would he be so pale and wan, prithee? "Stand here."

The overhead light was thinner than chicken consumme, and theatrical makeup lights didn't shine past the dressing table edge. So Temple backed him tight against the table, knotted her double thread-end four secure times and went to her beskirted knees. At least the yardage cushioned the hard floor.

Needle poised to strike, she analyzed the truly prodigious problem. The needle had to pierce the fabric at an angle in order to suture the seam shut. Given the nature of the costume and the site of the split, any too-vigorous thrust ran the risk of spearing the wearer rather than the wearing apparel, and in a place best left unstimulated in any way, pleasant or painful.

Temple sighed. Lance said nothing.

Like national disasters, theatrical crises bring out the best in people, a neighborly no-nonsense coping. Each participant braced to ignore the task's inescapably delicate nature.

Lance gazed around the dressing room, his eyes on everything but the site of the tragedy and Temple's needle.

Temple concentrated on the task at hand, rather than its social ramifications. She had to draw the straining fabric closer, then quickly slice the needle through one side and out the other before tension sprung it apart again.

If the material hadn't been a somewhat sleazy leather substitute, she couldn't have done it at all. Still, the fabric was tough enough to resist the needle point.

"Two minutes, folks!" boomed Danny Dove's brisk, martinet voice from the dressing-room speaker set high on the wall. He meant it.

They both jumped, then froze.

Temple drove the needle into the next stitch, trying not to grunt and grit her teeth as she forced the tip through the resistant fabric. Grunting might make the guy nervous.

She couldn't help speculating idly as she struggled to close the gap in the rended seam. Rock stars were known to bolster their crotches with socks, just as women had used handkerchiefs in their bras long before the lingerie industry had thoughtfully provided the proper inflationary devices.

Did Incredible Hunk candidates resort to such cheesy stratagems? If so, dumping any stuffing would make her task much easier, and swifter to accomplish. Surely Lance would have thought of that, and suggested any sacrificeable flotsam to throw overboard in an emergency like this. Then again, Temple would hardly toss her Wonderbra at a male tailor were the situation reversed, so she could only . . . er, wonder.

And if this was not a case of artificial amplification, the interesting question became just how well-endowed Incredible Hunks were. Certainly considering the conundrum in long, Latinate words kept the speculations on a disinterested, academic plane. Plane ... or fancy.

Temple's needle plunged on. She also explored black thoughts about amateur dressers who are not professional enough to perform awkward but necessary theatrical tasks. Grandmothers who were far better equipped than she to deal dispassionately with strange young men--rather, young men who were strangers--and the more private parts of their anatomy. Grandmothers who had diapered and potty-trained and done heaven-knows-what-else and should be as asexual as amoebas by now.

Grandmothers who got eaten by big bad wolves, but grandmothers who might turn the tables on the wolves, too. For grandmothers also read--and sometimes wrote--romance novels, and had once starred in a few sensual scenes of their own (or they wouldn't be grandmothers and supposedly beyond the socio-sexual fray, would they?). Grandmothers who were still earthy enough to enjoy being around handsome men young enough to be their grandsons, and canny enough to duck the issue when it came to confronting the underlying roots of their admiration.

Temple nodded as she worked. A fan could have killed Cheyenne, or any of these men. Someone like a Wardrobe Witch. Someone with outlandish fantasies? Someone spurned? It happened the other way all the time: much older men and young women who traded on their looks sometimes do-si-doed into messy situations where murder might out.

"Places, people!" boomed the speaker. "Now!" Danny sounded like Patton in a snit.

Temple took some last frantic stitches, triple-knotted the threat at ground zero, then patted the dressing-table top for the scissors. They weren't within reach.

"Scissors?" she asked, curt as a surgeon.

Lance twisted to look, nearly breaking the precious thread below the knot and undoing all Temple had redone, while she drew in an audibly appalled breath.

"Uh, sorry." He had to toss a brunette tress over his shoulder when he turned back. "I can't find the scissors."

Temple considered using her teeth, then decided that was above and beyond the call of wenchdom.

"The dangling thread won't show against the black," she told him. "You'll have to have it repaired again on a machine anyway." She took off her glasses and threw them into the gaping duffel bag.

Then she was up and running for the stairs, her skirts hiked almost as high as Quincey's. Lance thudded up the risers behind her, asking for little but reassurance.

"Thanks. Um, do you think it will ... you know, hold up for the show?"

She devoutly hoped that he was asking about her repair job.

"Time will tell," she huffed back to him. "At least you only have to do your act once. I have to do mine eleven times."

And she was supposed to be onstage before the first trio of hunks.

Temple flew into the wings, Lance and his once-flapping fly forgotten. Lacey and Quincey were nowhere around, which meant that they already had melted onto the dimly lit set as directed.