Cat In A Topaz Tango

Unhappy Hoofer

Matt walked into the greenroom for the competition, nodding to his new peers. Someone he’d already met was there, the Cloaked Conjuror, the Goliath Hotel’s oversize masked magician.

Glory B. was a straw-thin, twitchy teen diva with a bee-stung pout courtesy of collagen injections.

Matt found shaking hands with the handsome José Juarez, an Olympic fencer as lean and limber as a fencing foil, a knuckle-crushing experience.

Keith Salter, a celebrity chef, was as expected—charming, egocentric, and chubby.

The ladies he met were Olivia Phillips, a postmenopausal soap opera star who reminded him of Temple’s aunt Kit; Motha Jonz, a hefty black hip-hop diva; and last, but decidedly not least, Wandawoman, a World Wrestling Wrangle Amazon got up like Wonder Woman on steroids.

Matt couldn’t help thinking he’d joined some X-manish federation of talented freaks as the token ordinary guy.

Their pro dancing instructors were present, the guys a muscled mystery meat mélange of straight and gay and bi—you figure it out—the women young and sleek and as ambitious as spawning silver salmon leaping upstream.

Matt grinned to think that Temple had pushed him into the heart of this gender-ambiguous, openly sexual world. She must think he was pretty secure. Which he was. Nothing like publicly advising other people about their deepest desires and identity crises to make one blasé.

Matt sat beside the Cloaked Conjuror. He was a Klingon-imposing figure on high platform boots, wearing a completely concealing tiger-striped full head mask.

“I, ah, met you at the costume contest you were judging at the TitaniCon science fiction-fantasy convention,” Matt said, not sure the man behind the mask would remember him.

“That’s right.” He stretched his long legs ending in the Frankenstein boots. “The Mystifying Max’s pretty little redheaded girlfriend helped engineer catching a murderer that night. You were there too.”

“I’m always surprised when anyone remembers me at such a huge event.”

“Not my problem.” CC chuckled. His mask contained a voice-altering device, so he sounded unnervingly like Darth Vader giggling. “They mentioned you used to be a priest. I bet that and sitting behind an advice-line mike doesn’t make you a natural at tiptoeing through the triple-time foxtrot.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Matt conceded, “but you don’t seem geared for that either.” He nodded at the industrial-strength shoes in size fourteen.

“I’ll ditch these for the dances.”

“Temple said something . . . don’t you get death threats from disgruntled magicians because your act is built on exposing the tricks behind their most famous illusions?”

“Temple! That was her name! Max’s squeeze.”

“Not anymore.”

“No? Max dump her?”

“He’s missing. And . . . we’re engaged.”

“Humph. So my old compadre bugged out and left you with the girl.”

“It didn’t exactly happen that way.”

“No, I guess not. You look like a nice guy. You’d wait your turn.”

Matt held his temper, figuring he’d have to do it a lot in the next week. This greenroom looked like a theatrical variety show and he didn’t fit in.

“Aren’t you taking a risk?” Matt pushed. “Exposing yourself at a hotel that isn’t set up to protect you 24/7?”

“All Vegas hotels are set up for 24/7 surveillance, and I brought my own guys.” The massive feline head nodded at a two men in wife-beater T-shirts holding up the far wall. Matt had taken them for idle workmen or technicians. Which was the idea.

“Why are you doing this?” Matt asked.

“The charity. I lead a pretty isolated life because of the disguise and the death threats. That makes people even more eager to see me outside of my secure home hotel. Everyone who votes for me during the six days of this competition pledges twenty bucks to cancer research. I figure it’s worth the risk. Isn’t that why you’re here?”

“Yeah. The kids’ leukemia fund. And my girlfriend made me.”

CC’s weird, wheezy, basso laughter somehow conveyed warmth. “I’d do almost anything for a smart girl like her myself. You’re a lucky man. I can’t afford a romantic life.”

Matt just nodded. He gazed around the room at the assortment of strangers who’d become friendly rivals very soon. They were sizing one another up as the team of male and female hairstylists, makeup artists, costumers, and pro dancer-choreographers made the round of contestants with the show’s director.

“Good,” said the head guy when he reached Matt and CC. “You guys are getting acquainted already. Dave Hopper, director. You’ll discover a real camaraderie developing between you eight. You’ll work harder mentally and physically than you ever have, and cross barriers you never faced before. It takes guts to try something you’ve never done much of right before live TV cameras.”

He sat on an empty folding table as his production team gathered around.

“The Cloaked Conjuror here will be a challenge from start to finish.”

“The Penn Jillette of Penn and Teller of our show,” a costumer said. “A huge guy, larger than life. I’ll have to work around the mask.” The tall, blue-jeaned bottle redhead glanced at the lithe blond dancer beside her. “Vivi, you’ll need to dream up Beauty and Beast type routines. The masked man is a romantic image; we’ll have to play on it with the costumes and the choreography.”

She turned to Matt. “Stand up.”

He hesitated. He hadn’t been ordered to move since grade school.

“Stand up, cutie. I need to see your build.”

He hadn’t been called “cutie” ever. But he stood.

“Fit, if not awesome. All-American boy.” She sighed and eyed the sinewy brunette who was evidently Matt’s choreographer-coach. “Blond and smooth as butterscotch syrup, Tatyana, but that’s a handicap in the Latin dances. And those are the audience-pleasers.”

“We could cover the hair,” the hairstylist suggested. “Zorro scarf and hat. Or go brunet.”

Hopper nodded. “Worked for Elvis.”

“Could use an Elvis tune,” Tatyana suggested.

“Uh, black dye—” Matt began, appalled.

“Just a rinse,” the hairdresser said. “Could even spray it in. Look around you. How many of the pro guys and the male contestants are blond? Isn’t dramatic enough for guys.”

“There’s Derek on Dancing With the Stars,” the costumer noted. “Does work that darling boy thing.”

“Not in Latin,” Hopper decided. He was middle everything: in age, build, temperament. “We’ll go both ways on him. It’ll be a real shockeroo when the teen angel boy comes out all dark and devilish for the pasodoble. Audiences adore transformations.”

“Plays well against the priest thing,” Tatyana suggested. “I can have fun with that: devil or angel.”

Matt had a feeling her idea of “fun” wasn’t heavy on personal dignity, at least as he knew it.

They moved on, as did CC, linking up with his bodyguards.

And Glory B. moved in on him, taking the adjoining folding chair, then tapping her high and strappy spike heels on the floor so nervously they sounded like castanets. “How’d a priest get talked into doing this?” she asked.

He regarded the notorious oversexed teen idol and decided not to emphasize the “ex” part of his status. “The charity donation.”

“Yeah, me too.” Her ankles turned out like a kid’s wearing white patent leather mary janes for first Communion, skewing the hooker heels to the side. “I want do something for the kids.”

“You were one yourself not too long ago.”

“You think so?”

Matt wondered what she wanted from him. Flirting? Nah, she’d mastered that years ago, even though she was probably sixteen, tops. Glory B. He’d seen her name in the newspaper gossip columns, on TV. She’d been in trouble? Drink or drugs? Both, probably.

“I hit someone,” she blurted.

With kids her age, it was usually another kid. He frowned, confused. What was so newsy about that? Tantrums must be her middle name.

“With my Beamer,” she confessed. “Can’t drive it for a while anymore.”

“You must have people around who can.”

“Yeah.” Her nails were painted midnight-blue, but very short. Probably bitten that way. “It hit a kid. You know, a little kid. Broke both legs. So I’m dancing for charity to work off part of my probation.”

Matt couldn’t help glancing down at her broken-looking ankles. Where does a teenage superstar put guilt? In a tiny purse like the one Glory B. kept beside her on a chain, clearly capable of carrying nothing more than a credit card, and maybe some happy pills.

“Funny,” she said. “The kid’s in double casts and I gotta dance my ass off for doing it.”

“How old is the kid? Girl? Boy?”

“Girl.” She stood, wobbling on the four-inch heels. “These shoes cost more than the medical stuff. I was gonna give her a pair when she got better, but they say she might not be able to ever wear pretty shoes. Dancing shoes.”

“It’s called penance,” Matt said.

“Huh?”

“When you do something wrong, you have to pay for it. It’s not the probation or what the law says you have to do. It’s what you feel inside. It hurts. It’s supposed to. You’ll remember that the next time you don’t think about what you’re doing that might hurt someone else. But you can’t hurt yourself to make up for it either. That way nobody learns.”

She stood there clutching the ridiculous tiny purse, slathered in rhinestones like the cell phone probably inside it, and worth hundreds of dollars. She still looked like a lost seven-year-old and was probably worth millions.

“It’s okay,” he told her. “Everybody gets a second chance. Maybe this show is yours.”

The eyes rimmed in black liner blinked once as she nodded and tottered back to her seat with the soap and wrestling queens. Men, Matt mused, usually got famous for what they did. Women often got famous for being caricatures.

“Here come de judges, here come de judges,” Motha Jonz announced, springing up from her seat pretty spryly for a woman of size in her forties. Her Afro pompadour had a dazzling Bride of Frankenstein silver streak up the front and boobs and booty jiggled with every move she made, like Jell-O on parade.

She certainly diverted every eye in the room from the trio of folks joining them.

Then Matt jumped up to greet—of course!—Danny Dove, Vegas choreographer extraordinaire.

They did the one-armed hug authorized between guys, even when one of them was gay. Danny was compact and wiry, and apparently not considered authoritative because he was blond like Matt, except his hair was even less impressive, being as curly as Shirley Temple’s had been.

But his spine of stainless steel put the butch back in blond, and Matt was pleased to see him here.

Knowing a judge couldn’t hurt, but mostly it was good to see Danny get back into the Las Vegas event whirl after the trauma of having his partner murdered.

Another blonde, bottle-variety, was on the judge’s panel, and Matt knew her by reputation and sight: the endlessly self-resurrecting B-movie ex-actress, Vegas hanger-on, and Temple Barr crown of thorns, Savannah Ashleigh.

She was tall, enhanced by towering platform spikes, and dressed in extreme fashion. A purse pooch, all big black eyes and spidery blond hair, peeked out of a ridiculously expensive-looking bag. Savannah had previously traveled with a pair of glamour pusses, shaded silver and gold Persians named after French starlets, like Yvonne or Yvette. Temple’s cat, Midnight Louie, had seemed enamored of the missing pair but they were evidently passé now.

He and Savannah had appeared briefly on a panel together only a couple of weeks ago, but she’d forgotten him already. She proved the makeover crew prophetic by ignoring him to canoodle with the other two male, and brunet, contestants.

“Who’s the third judge?” Matt asked Danny.

“Leander Brock, the show’s creator and producer. Obviously, I’m the serious credentialed gay one and Miz Ashleigh is the over-the-top female impersonator one. Somebody bi of either gender would have been a nice blend at this point, but we’re stuck as a troika.”

Matt made a face. “Is it really pre-set up like that?”

“Absolutely. The judges’ conflicting personalities drive these reality TV competitions. I was brought on board to be demanding and biting. Any choreographer has to be a bit of that. We’re really drill sergeants in tights. Miss Savannah Ashleigh will be ditsy and amusing through no efforts of her own, and Leander will provide the balancing act. Of course, I wouldn’t put it past him to cast his votes in such a way as to trigger the most people calling in, but it is all for charity. Just don’t expect justice. It’s all opinion. Mob rule, really, as so much today. Everybody’s an expert.

“And so, Mr. Devine, the dancing wanna-be,” Danny went on, “what is your better half doing while you’re learning the cha-cha?”

“Temple is—I don’t exactly know. Between my midnight radio call-in show and this last week of rehearsal for ten hours during daylight hours I haven’t had time to think about that.”

“And how are you doing in dance class with—” Danny turned to examine the four buff men and women in rehearsal gear stretching and gossiping against the far wall. “Don’t tell me! Tatyana is your coach.”

“How did you know?” Matt was astounded by Danny’s accuracy.

“Temple is the sleuth, but I know dance. Tatyana, though petite, is an iron disciplinarian. I’d pair her with you myself, because you respond to structure and you’re attracted to small, feminine women with drive.”

Matt raised his eyebrows. “I thought I was counseling you.”

“That was on your turf; this is mine.” Danny’s analytical eyes narrowed. “You could learn something from her.”

“I am.”

“But on your terms so far, I’d bet. Let go, dear boy. Dance is an incomparably liberating art, but only if you sweat like a Clydesdale and aren’t afraid to float like a fool.”

“Does Muhammad Ali’s ‘sting like a bee’ part come in anywhere there?”

“Only if you become a judge.” Danny looked around again. “We need the just-right combo of personalities in the judging or this dance party show dies on its tootsies.”

“The whole thing strikes me as a mad tea party.”

Danny eyed the contestants. “A rather lethal tea party. I don’t know all these B-, C-, and D-list celebs, but I do know that Motha Jonz was lucky to avoid prison time when she shot a bystander during that limo hit on the hip-hop gangstas a few years back.”

Matt whirled to eye the Queen Motha filling out zebra-stripe spandex with proud mounds of cellulite while Danny dished on the woman’s history.

“Her ‘man’ was Mad Motown Guitry, record mogul and mobster. She claimed she was just defending herself with her little pistol when the limo was hit by a rival gang, but the car frame was full of cocaine. Guitry died. No one has ever been indicted, but when she lost his sponsorship her so-called singing career went down the drain.”

His eyes returned to Matt’s shocked face. “There are a million stories in the naked ambition sweepstakes along the Las Vegas Strip. Yours just happens to be one of the more mild-mannered of them.”

Mild-mannered. Matt chewed on that wishy-washy adjective after Danny danced away to pounce on other people he knew there, mostly the pro dancers.

Mild-mannered was good enough for Clark Kent, but not Superman. Mild manners didn’t win ballroom dance competitions. Most guys not in the entertainment world would be afraid of looking like a wuss wearing Fancy Dan costumes and waltzing across the polished floor. He got what Danny was saying: do it and do a good job of it, or wimp out and look just like you’re afraid of looking.

Kind of what Matt would advise himself. Admit it, Devine, he told himself. You want to perform up to the Max Kinsella standard for Temple. Play the hero. She was sure to return from her unlikely road trip with Molina’s wandering kid in tow. Then she’d get any DVDs of episodes she’d missed. He’d better come out looking like a combo of Gene Kelly and Sylvester Stallone.

Think Michael Flatley. Bring on the slicked-down hair. The high-heeled boots. The attitude. Sword and cape and swashbuckle. It was now or never. Either be a lord of the dance, or a loser. In public.

At least this was just a silly dance competition. Nobody’s life or death depended on it. You couldn’t get much more trivial than this.