Cat In A Topaz Tango

Text for Two

Their triumphal road show journey to the City of the Angels to find the delinquent little angel from the Molina residence was interrupted in the dawn’s early light by the unimaginative ring tone of Molina’s cell, which sounded just like an ordinary phone. Yawn.

Molina stared at her cell phone screen.

“It’s Mariah, thank God!” Jubilation and relief quickly became irritation. “But what is this, Aztec?”

Temple held out a hand. “Let me see.”

“You think you can read teen text messaging? I hate that! She knows it. Why couldn’t she have left a voice mail?”

“Probably didn’t want you to hear the fear.” Temple frowned at the abbreviated words on the small screen. And here she’d never taken shorthand in high school because she’d thought it was career-limiting.

“Basically, she’s saying that something became an ‘overniter’ and they had to stay in line or lose their place. She’s so ‘SorE’ but will ‘xpln’ later.”

“No hint of where she is?” Molina demanded.

“‘OK n LOFln.’”

“Laughlin?” Rafi repeated. “That’s just ninety miles down the highway from Vegas. If we backtrack we can cut off forty-five miles of highway 95. Laughlin’s a time capsule of how Vegas used to be in the eighties. What’s Mariah doing there?”

“‘AWdishn,’” Temple said. “Who knew phonetic spelling would ever become so hip?”

“It’s a way for kids to avoid learning grammar and spelling and parts of speech,” Molina said. “Hip-hop rhymes are now ‘high’ literacy, emphasis on the street meaning of ‘high.’ ”

“Lunacy,” Rafi added.

Molina looked up sharply to check if his agreement was sincere.

Temple wondered: if she and Matt had children, what strange symbols would they have to learn to communicate? Aliens R Us. And usually our kids.

Rafi took the phone and, while Temple hung over his shoulder and Molina leaned in to watch, texted: “U sing? Whr R U?” He hesitated and added, “Rafi.”

He shrugged at Molina. “I don’t know if she remembers me but I might come across less threatening than Ms. Policeman.”

New letters appeared on the screen. “Kool, R. Not sing. Dance. Aquarius.”

“As in ‘the age of’?” Molina asked, mystified.

“Not cool, Mombot,” Temple said. “Lyrics from Hair date you back to the Stone Age.”

“You mean the ‘stoned’ age.”

Temple shrugged. “Well, it was the sixties. If I didn’t like vintage and theater, even I wouldn’t have gotten your reference. I wasn’t born yet! It’s High School Musical today, and maybe a revival of Grease, not Hair.”

“U momma dont dance,” Rafi had texted back. “Me n Zoe meetya ther.”

“KOOOL! LOUEE 2?”

“LOUEE 2. Main dsk. 4 hrs OK?”

“OK.”

Molina glared at the cell phone screen, but breathed audible relief, then caught her breath and put a hand to her side. “At least she’s still a runaway, not a hostage.”

“Temple and I will be first contact when we get to the Aquarius,” Rafi said. “It’s a major Laughlin hotel-casino. You hang back.”

“You hang back! I’m her mother.”

“That’s the problem. We don’t want her rabbiting. I’m just the security guy from the last place she was a talent contestant, and Temple’s an ex-roomie, a pal. We’ll find what’s going on, and why. Then you can sweep in and put her in cuffs.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It takes discipline to rear a kid these days.”

“And being in top condition. Come on, Carmen, you’ve got a major pulled muscle, or worse. This race to the rescue hasn’t done you any good physically or mentally. Take some Aleve and make a late entrance as a reasonable woman. We’ll clue you in first.”

“You are a bastard.”

“Yeah, and I’m right.”

Temple added, “Why finally find Mariah just to scare her off? You are the police. We’re not.”

Molina’s hands scrubbed the expression of uncertainty off her face. “Fine. I agree that you two established a more peer-style rapport with Mariah at the reality TV house.” She eyed Rafi. “Keep it that way. You don’t tell her who you are unless I say so.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

Silence rode shotgun with them all the way to Laughlin. They retraced their path on Highway 15, then took 164 east to pick up the last forty-five miles on 95 to Laughlin. The highway paralleled the snaking Colorado River as it flowed out of Hoover Dam. They drove until midmorning, when they finally hit a mini-strip of Vegas-style high-rise hotels. The buildings fronted the river, a distinctively non-Vegas look.

This was a movie model Vegas, miniatures so far. Hotel towers loomed only sixteen or so stories high. The skyline looked less pretentious, less expensive, and more fun, like the old style Vegas, as Rafi had said.

Louie had disdained the tote bag to recline on the seat next to Temple for the drive, but now he had his front paws braced beneath the side window, surveying Laughlin with them. He seemed pretty unimpressed.

“Looks like the kid’s performing ambitions have gone down-scale,” Rafi noted.

“Good!” Molina let her anger off the leash. “Upscale is more dangerous.”

The hotel was a pipsqueak compared to the behemoths that now ruled Vegas yet the lobby was as swanky, with acres of gleaming marble, blazing crystal light fixtures, and a hubbub of echoing voices and luggage wheels.

Molina paced outside the parked Tahoe under the entry canopy while Rafi and Temple in full Zoe personality bustled up to the desk, eyeing the snaking lines of guests checking in.

Louie in his tote bag bumped Zoe’s sixties-patterned hip.

“Jeez, Midnight Louise,” she complained under her breath. “It’s like dangling Big Ben in a sack from your shoulder.”

With that, the tote bag contents shifted and twisted. Louie lofted down to the ritzy floor. In an instant he was a puddle of flowing black India ink, slipping out of sight among the huddled feet and backpacks and wheeled carry-ons, most of them black.

“Oh, shoot!” Zoe cried. “Now we’ve got two of them missing.”

But Rafi was edging expertly through and around the crowds, carving a path for Zoe and in hot pursuit of Louie.

A second later the mobs of people lining the block-long reception desk started rearing back from their prime positions, wailing in dismay. Louie’s ears and tail could be glimpsed taking the high road down the marble desk, scattering credit cards, room cards, and pens as he went.

“That cat dude knows how to cut a swath,” Rafi said. “Come on! I think he knows where we want to go.”

At the end of the reception desk the exclamations and curses stopped abruptly.

Zoe and Rafi broke through the last line, leaving hurt toes and feelings behind them, to see an empty floor. Only a short desk for selling show tickets sat ahead. It took a moment to spot Louie atop it, looking as if he’d just pulled a photo of a magician on a placard out of a hat.

“Louie Too!” Mariah screeched. She shot into view from the right, trying to embrace the big black cat, who ducked expertly behind the placard to avoid having his fur mussed.

Temple stopped dead. “We’ve found her! And she looks perfectly all right. Perfectly normal.”

“Yeah,” Rafi said behind her, his tone pleased. “But don’t let looks fool you. Kids this age are never perfectly normal.”

“Would you want one who was?” Temple asked.

Rafi was regarding his daughter with satisfaction, even a bit of pride. “Nope.”

She was wearing orange Capris and a yellow-and-green sixties-print smock top with fluorescent poison-green flip-flops and carried a lavender canvas backpack for a purse. The girl’s Dutch bob of highlighted blond over brunet looked hip but wholesome for a soon-to-be high school freshman nowadays. Temple felt a pang that Mariah could accessorize Teen Fashion Queen without even trying, when Zoe Chloe had to really work her look.

“Mom’s gonna freak,” she muttered to Rafi, “but Mariah looks like she knows what she’s doing.”

“Terrifying,” he muttered back. “Let’s find out what that is before Momcat gets here.”

Mariah turned to greet them with no guilt, like they were here to join a fun party.

“How’d you guys hear about this?” she asked. “Did the Dance Partee people hire you as security because of the Teen Queen house gig?” she asked Rafi. “And you’re a little old to compete,” she told Temple-Zoe. “But you look cool, as always.”

“Your mom’s worried about you,” Zoe said with a twinge of Temple disapproval.

Big sigh. “I sent her a text message. She’s been too bummed to even notice I’m gone. I hadda do this! Ekaterina heard she could try out and she needs something to keep her in this country, or she’ll just die! I mean, maybe literally. Could be the publicity will help. And she’s just made the finals! Is this a great country or what?”

Mariah was hopping up and down with excitement.

Rafi put a big hand on her hyperactive shoulder. “Your mom’s been worried sick about you, and you’re right, she’s already sick. How could you do this to her? It was really stupid and selfish.”

Mariah’s glee wilted in the face of adult male disapproval. Her eyelashes batted back regret. She’d thought Rafi had been cool. “Oh, Mom’ll be fine. She always is. But EK is a Chechnya refugee and her family’s only chance. I had to help her.”

“How?” Temple asked.

“I know how these audition things work. I’m . . . I’m her manager.”

“Does EK’s family know where she is?”

“Not exactly.”

“‘Not exactly’?” Rafi repeated.

Temple eyed him. He’d wanted Molina to hold back because she was “too police” and now he was acting like a truant officer.

“No. I guess.” Mariah was fidgeting like a preteen. Temple had to give Catholic schools credit for delaying adolescent rebellion and fine-tuning guilt. “We wanted to wait on telling anybody until we knew EK was going to be on the show.’”

“The show?” Temple took over, figuring it was time for Zoe Chloe to display some camaraderie for The Young and the Restless. “What a cool deal! What show is this? Sumthin’ I can groove at?”

“My mother got you out of the closet again,” Mariah accused. “You’re both shills for my mother. Please! I need to help Ekaterina. She wouldn’t have made it without me. I did her clothes, her makeup. She can dance but she doesn’t know a thing about being with it.”

The blind leading the blind, Temple thought.

“Where is your . . . client?” Rafi asked gravely.

“Well, my allowance would only pay for bus fares,” Mariah said. ‘So we’re sorta camping out. There was a huge line waiting outside the ballroom anyway, and everyone came early and was sleeping until they opened this morning and let us sign up.”

She glanced over his shoulder. “Uh-oh. Mombot heading straight for us. I shoulda known she’d be here too.”

Temple glanced back. Molina was grimly advancing on them.

Louie chose that moment to jump down and rub encouragingly back and forth on Mariah’s bare calves.

Rafi took Mariah by the shoulders and turned her to welcome, and face, her mother. Still, she had a wall of defensive male in black denim behind her.

“Mariah!” Molina bent to take custody of her daughter’s shoulders. “What possessed you to pull this kind of stunt? We were about ready to put out an Amber Alert for you.”

“You can’t! I’m not a kid! I’m thirteen.”

“You sure are a kid. Amber Alerts can go out on kids up to eighteen.”

“No! They’re old.”

“What was so important you had to scare all of us so much? Me, Morrie, Mrs. Alverez across the street?”

“I needed to help somebody.”

“Help somebody? Why would you be so foolish to listen to anybody but me and the nuns at school? You’re not in a position to help anybody.”

“Yes, I am! And she won! Just a couple hours ago. I’m sorry. Really I am. But EK needed a chance.”

Molina straightened up, her knees visibly shaky. “What’s this about?” she demanded. “Who, or what, is this EK?”

She asked Rafi, Temple noticed, as if he was to blame just for having gotten to Mariah first. As if she’d given up on asking Mariah anything.

Mariah’s mouth froze in mid-answer, and shut as stubbornly as her mother’s.

“I don’t know,” Rafi admitted.

“Mariah was just going to show us.”

Molina turned to Mariah. “Show me,” she ordered.

Subdued, Mariah turned away and led them around the corner to the elevators.

The four joined the people waiting for the cars. Most of them stared at Louie, still playing thread-the-needle with Mariah’s calves. She looked down at him and stifled a nervous giggle.

Mama was not happy.

Temple supposed they looked like a normal family to the clustered strangers: mama, papa, kid, and oh-you-kid, one of those awful Goth girl teen delinquents. That would be her. Like any normal family, none of them said anything, except for Louie, who growled occasionally when some stranger bent to pet him. Temple scooped him up and pushed him into the tote bag.

When they finally got an elevator, Mariah only pressed the next floor up. Ballroom level.

“How’d she get here?” Molina asked Rafi.

“Bus.”

“And the fare?”

“Allowance.”

“Not anymore.”

“Not a good idea. Grounding would be better.”

“Step two. No allowance will be step one.”

Mariah rolled her eyes at Temple.

They were almost the same height, Mariah a little taller. The two adults repeated the similarity at a foot higher: Molina almost six feet in low-heeled moccasins; Rafi a little more than six feet. Temple/Zoe felt like a firstborn daughter. Ick!

She hiked the tote bag again bearing the remarkably docile Midnight Louie. He must have realized he was failing to follow the Feline Rule of Domination.

Louie used the opportunity to tangle a forepaw in her hot and itchy black wig.

She was glad this masquerade would soon be over.