Unknown - Cat_In_A_Hot_Pink_Pursuit

Suddenly … open air ahead of her. A table clothed in linen to the floor. Four adult humans sitting behind it. All looking at her.

Four maybe-human adults …

Because one of them was (gasp!) Savannah Ashleigh, fading film starlet and an acquaintance.

Another was (gasp!) a very ripe Elvis impersonator, big and bellied, complete with tinted aviator sunglasses, long, dark caterpillar-fuzzy sideburns, neck scarf, glitzy white jumpsuit and more knuckle-buster diamond rings than Liberace. Well, she supposed Elvis had been an expert on teenage girls, including his almost-child bride, Priscilla.

Another was (double gasp)—once you’re thinking in terms of cartoon bubbles you’re lost—her very own maternal aunt, Kit Carlson, aka the romance novelist Sulah Savage!!! What was she doing here, all the way from New York City?

And the last (thank whatever gods may be!) was a Strange Man who looked like Simon Cruel, i.e., Cowell, on American Idol.

Two of the four judges knew TempleBarr, for better or worse. Was this going to be a cakewalk or a shambles or what?

More like, or what.

Temple, ex-TV newswoman … ex-community theater thespian … former repertory theater PR woman … decided to regard this debacle as an opportunity to stretch her dramatic muscles, i.e., her I.Q. Insincerity Quotient.

“Zoo-ee,” Savannah Ashleigh was reading from her cheat sheet with her usual skill at the cold read, rhyming Zoh-ee with gooey.

“Zoh-ee,” Aunt Kit corrected. Smartly.

“A zoo, all right,” the Simon clone bellowed loud enough to reach the back of the line. His diction was Aussie, not British, but just as scalding as Simon’s. “Child. Give those capris back to the zebras, there’s a good sheila. ‘Twould be a mercy.”

“Mercy,” Elvis repeated, frowning down at his sheet. He probably needed reading glasses. (The real Elvis would be—my gosh!—seventyish by now.) Maybe this guy’s vision would lose focus going from the sheet to her.

“So why are you here, my dear?” a woman with a wireless mike popped out of nowhere to ask. She was almost as astounding as Xoe Chloe. A woman past early middle age was a rarity on TV and this one was fighting age all the way: phony black-dyed hair, all Shirley Temple ringlets where Temple’s was all long, razor-cut bob. Her papery complexion emphasized baby bright blue eyes and an attitude of relentless good cheer.

Temple shrugged. It directed attention to her shoulder with the temporary tattoo: a tail-lashing crocodile.

“If you don’t know, lady, I don’t know. Somebody said I should. I’m blowing this gig. It’s been unreal.”

“Now wait a minute.” Savannah was squinting at Tem-ple, sans the glasses she obviously needed. “You look—” Temple cringed, expecting the dreaded word, “familiar.” The Ann Landers with the mike seized her arm. “This girl is not all brash insouciance. She’s got goose bumps.” So would anyone with those vanilla-ice-painted talons running crosswise on her forearm!

“You can see she’s trying to make a statement,” Savannah said. “Girls these days think they have to be so hard. You can be a lady and succeed.”

“Why?” Temple answered. “You obviously didn’t.”

“What d-d-do you mean?” Savannah was stuttering. “Succeed or be a lady?”

“Both. I’m outa here. I got a grunge band to run.”

“Really?” Elvis had finally exchanged his shades for a pair of half-glasses to read her entry blank. He regardedher over their rainbow titanium rims. “I think you’re all bluster and sass, young lady. I think you’re a fake.”

Coming from him … now Temple was considering stuttering.

“But a sublime fake, mate,” the Australian Simon was saying. “This girl has cheek. Love that bicep croc. And the underlying sentiment: ‘Green Machine.—

“You would,” Aunt Kit noted. “You’re nearly breaking your neck to see what those hip-huggers are embracing from behind.”

Temple, recognizing her advantage, shook her Cherlocks and her booty at one and the same time. “Dream on, old dude.”

At that moment, the middle-aged angel with the mike—she really did remind Temple of the good witch Glinda from The Wizard of Oz movie, all that chirpy upbeat optimism—thrust herself into Temple’s field of vision. Cameras were rolling from the sidelines.

“I’m Beth Marble, creator of this show. And I sense, dear girl, that despite your bold front, you’re really desperate to make the cast. Isn’t that true?”

Temple eyed the Simon-clone. “I think he’s the one into bold fronts.” Then she stared into the emcee’s impossibly sincere eyes, heard that impossibly syrupy voice, and managed to nod, gruffly. If one can nod gruffly, Xoe Chloe was the girl for the job.

The four judges’ vastly incompatible heads were nodding together as annotated pages passed back and forth.

Scratch “annotated.” Not a Xoe Chloe word. How about … pages scribbled with cool graffiti.

“Do you do anything entertaining?” Elvis looked up over his granny rims to ask.

“The lambada,” she said, “while clipping my toenails.”

“At least she confesses to clipping them,” Savannah ventured. “That’s a start. We could really fix her look, but—” They all frowned at Xoe Chloe. Temple sensed she was losing her audience, particularly Simon Pieman, whose real name was Dexter Manship, and who was sitting back with his arms crossed over his designer Tshirted chest, one bicep bearing a Crocodile Hunter tattoo. No sell, the body language screamed.

Temple thought she knew the type and what pulled his Hell’s Angel’s chain. She boogied around in a tight little circle, all the better to show off the back of her waist-high thong panties almost fully revealed by the plunging low-rise capris. Rise? Heck, they’d never heard the word.

Temple’d seen this classless getup on a teen mall salesgirl at Frederick’s of Hollywood last week, her attention drawn to the outfit by a pair of clucking old ladies. She had proudly and promptly appropriated it for bad girl Xoe.

Dexter was moved to chuckle. “I said she was cheeky. Let her in. We could use a juvenile delinquent.”

Aunt Kit was frowning at Xoe’s sheet, looking like someone about to cast a dissenting vote. Temple nailed her with a quick, pleading look the instant Kit looked up, her mouth already open and the no verdict on the tip of her tongue.

Temple watched long enough to see the surprised expression forming, then looked away, defiantly sullen. Actresses ran on empathy and prided themselves on seeing beneath the surface. Aunt Kit should be a shoo-in now, and Simon Pieman was all Xoe’s—muscles, tattoo, and libido. But the Elvis impersonator … what was he doing here, except maybe as a tribute to the Elvis-loving man who’d built the house and was now long gone. And maybe because Elvis, dead or alive, real or false, always drew a crowd.

Temple did a series of three quick-on-her-feet cramp rolls and assumed a West Side Story stance. “Hey, Officer Elvis, you ever do any break dancing during your film career?”

“Break dancing? I invented it in my `Jailhouse Rock’ routine.” He seemed surprised she had appealed to him as a dancer. No, shocked. His persona was mired in the seventies. His Vegas audiences were determinedly middlemiddle-middle. Middle-aged, middle-class, middle-of-the-road.

“I do the mosh pit thing,” she said. “You’d go over big today if you had one.”

He laughed at the idea of a bunch of moshing middlemiddle-middles, then glanced at the others. “I might be able to teach this one something, if she’ll listen.”

“Why, Mr. Presley, I would always listen to you … sing.”

“You talk tough, Xoe Chloe,” he answered sternly, “but you haven’t worked until you’ve worn your tail and toes off on a rockabilly dance floor. Are you game?”