Cat In A Topaz Tango

Brothers, Where

Art Thou?

It nearly killed Temple to wake up early the next morning. This was Sunday, the day of the first live evening show but she doubted Matt would miss mass.

She ached to trail the cop side of the undercover team, but she knew Zoe Chloe Ozone needed to hang with her “peeps,” the four teen girls dancing with the barely older singing sensations, Los Hermanos Brothers.

The boy band’s name was redundant, hermanos being the Spanish word for brothers, but Temple supposed record and TV moguls liked the spin of a bilingual name.

The brothers themselves, ranging from twelve to sixteen, were reassuring both to their adoring fans and their mothers, and even to Temple.

Early showbiz exposure and training had made them smooth and creamy tween idols. They all had the cheeky, choirboy innocence of the young Bobby Dylan, not that it meant that they were. Nowadays, though, looks were everything.

Each girl had her soundproof mini-rehearsal “room.” Ekaterina was unique in having her own “manager,” Mariah.

Temple imagined Mama Molina was as thrilled as she was that Mariah and EK were joined at the hip for this competition. Official nerves were as tight-strung as the high E-string on a guitar about the junior competition members’ safety with reports of the Barbie Doll Killer elsewhere as well as the usual Cloaked Conjuror worries.

Los Hermanos Brothers made millions and the girl contestants were invaluable as the ordinary members of the community who were getting a gazillion-dollar chance to turn pro. Anything bad happening in this neighborhood was a disaster.

Temple donned Zoe Chloe makeup and clothes, which took an hour over a room service tray, and headed for the theater area. Things were getting serious. Maybe that’s why Midnight Louie had donned his best ears-perked attitude and came along like a lamb in his tote-bag transport.

He even proudly wore the silver collar trailing a bib of rainbow-colored heart-shaped beads Temple had made from an overdone ankle bracelet she found at the nearest dollar store. Well, he wore it without bucking out from under it and scratching it with the massive scimitars of his hind claws once Temple had explained that they all had to suffer through abominable articles of clothing to make this undercover operation work.

Louie’s aloof green eyes had then surveyed Molina’s Woodstock tie-dyed headband, Rafi’s leather vest and Navajo shirt, Temple’s Goth fingerless spiderweb gloves, navy-blue-painted finger and toe-nails, and skunk-striped pantyhose, then leaped for cover in the depths of her zebra tote bag, his collar strands clicking like mini-castanets or Chihuahua toenails on a kitchen floor.

All four girl contestants were in EK’s and Mariah’s “rehearsal room,” sitting on the wooden portable dancing floor in frog posture with their ankles together and their knees splayed flat as if they didn’t have a joint or sinew or protesting muscle in their bodies.

Louie jumped down to join them, getting copious oohs and aahs and pettings.

Zoe Chloe elected to perch pixielike on a nearby ladder, so as not to overstress her knees. Jumping down would be so much more graceful than jumping up from the cold, hard floor.

“That José Juarez is hot!” the black girl named Patrisha opined.

“So is Captain Jack!” a blond girl breathed.

It took Temple a millisecond to realize they were referencing the metrosexual Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean. She blinked at the advanced level of sophistication of young girls today. She’d never dreamed she’d be behind the curve ball at thirty.

For a moment, she ardently sympathized with Molina, who must be at least seven years older than she, and only a decade away from being able to sit on the floor. At all.

Watching the four competitors sink bonelessly to the floor and let their hair down was amazing. They chattered away, ignoring her now that Zoe Chloe was just another semi-adult supervisor.

EK’s doe-eyed, sallow look made her seem as wary as a starving alley cat. Skateboarder Patrisha’s elongated ebony frame was pertly elegant. She seemed a likelier candidate for a supermodel contest than this gig. Meg-Ann was a soccer star, big-boned, strong, and determined. Her long brown ponytail and sunshine-spawned freckles gave her tomboy appeal. And, of course, there was the perfect, cool, spoiled blond girl wearing the latest fads and destined to be prom queen, if nothing else: Sou-Sou Smith.

“What we really need to decide,” Sou-Sou said with a toss of her highlighted hair, “is who has the hottest Hermanos brother. I vote for my partner, Dustin. His sideburns just radiate sex.”

Sideburns on teen boys? Temple wondered. When did the world turn back to the seventies when she was born?

“You’re just pimping your dance partner,” Patrisha said with a, well, patrician sneer. “I got Brandon, babe. He has that delicious name and that open shirt and tie bit going. Speaking of bite—I may go gaga vampire on stage.”

Temple blushed at this open teen lust.

“Chris is cool,” tomboy Meg-Ann added matter-of-factly. “That back flip he did on the last tour was awesome. He’ll win this thing hands down, literally.” She glanced politely at the tongue-tied Russian girl. “You like your guy, EK?”

“Adam has very nice curly hair.”

“Wuss!” Sou-Sou hooted.

“And he has much better rhythm and tempo than the other boys.” EK sounded positively assertive for a change. “We will do very well together.”

A silence prevailed. Girly had gone gritty. Each one of these girls was highly competitive, far more than the already famous boys, probably.

Mariah, on the sidelines with Temple, leaned against the ladder.

“EK’s right. Adam is the youngest, but he’s the least anxious to impress the girls, rather than the judges. The older brothers think they’re so big boy and hot! They’re such a pain.” She rolled her eyes.

Mama Molina would be happy to hear her only daughter dissing smooth older boys.

Temple wasn’t.

There was as much rivalry, gender maneuvering, and naked ambition among the junior dancers as among their supposedly wiser and older counterparts.

Musing about naked ambition, Temple escaped the adjoining rehearsal rooms for the ballroom performance area and looked up her most likely source for an inside view on the show personnel.

Unfortunately, that was her least favorite person, Crawford Buchanan.

She cornered him in the backstage area, already preening in penguin evening dress.

“How did you get the emcee gig for this event?” she demanded.

It took him a moment to recognize her previous disguise from the Teen Queen house.

“Well, if it isn’t the one-girl brat pack. How’d you arrange to emcee the junior division?” he shot back. “I guess you go where your Teen Queen little buddy girl goes, the cop’s daughter who got me into so much trouble. Guess she didn’t run away after all.”

“Mariah was never lost,” Temple lied. “And Zoe Chloe Ozone is an online diva in high personal demand.”

“So am I.”

“You?”

“Check it out. I’m the Dick Clark of the West Coast.”

Dick Clark had founded the teen music TV show, American Bandstand, in the fifties, and, forever young, had been a major figure in TV and pop music until his stroke a few years ago. To imagine Crawford Buchanan enduring another forty years like his on-air idol was revolting.

“‘Dick’ is so right,” Temple retorted. “I need a quick rundown of who’s who and what’s what. How long does this show run?”

“It runs all the lighter attendance nights in Vegas, starting Sunday to finish with a flourish on Thursday, when all the weekend crowds come in. We introduce the contenders tonight with a dance de jour, then they have the next day to rehearse a new dance with their proteacher and present it that night, and so on until the Friday grand awards ceremony.”

“Who’s all participating?”

Crawford finally had a chance to show true form and leer at her. “Checking up on the competition your sweetie is facing, huh? I see you and Matt ‘Mr. Sob Story Radio’ Devine hanging together. José ‘Hot Hips’ Juarez, the Olympic fencer, will samba him off the stage.”

“Blimey, Crawf ‘the Barf Bag’ Buchanan! Are you going to introduce every contestant with those ‘quotes included’ nicknames? Pretty lame emceeing. Come on, tell me who’s in the whole cast, besides Mr. Olympic Olé.”

“I’m sworn to secrecy,” Buchanan said. “So hold your horses, honey, and weep.”

Temple wanted to say she was a designated police snitch, but she was sworn to secrecy on that. She stomped her foot so hard he jumped to save his patent leather slip-on shoes from danger of smudging.

“My horses say your hide is history,” she said.

At that instant the tons of teenyboppers in line recognized their fave YouTube Girl.

With a screech, a wave of them surrounded Zoe Chloe, pushing Crawford Buchanan out of the bright lights of the roving videographers.

He turned away, hunching against the sound and fury. If this were a Victorian melodrama, he’d be muttering, “Curses, foiled again!” into his mustache.

Temple was only able to ditch Zoe Chloe’s fans by signing about a hundred autographs and escaping into the maze of rehearsal, makeup, and wardrobe rooms. Major hotels could tailor-make spaces with portable walls to fit any event.

While she shook her aching right hand and wrist, she quickly toured the facilities.

Separate dressing and makeup rooms were assigned the male and female adult and junior dancers. She encountered Mariah outside the female junior rooms, along with Rafi Nadir. Temple thought Molina would cringe to see the pair camped out on metal folding chairs, chatting like buddies.

“Where’s our Glorious Leader?” Temple asked. “Liaising between the hotel and competition and media and the police people,” Rafi told her seriously. “Rotten job. And all the while playing in character as your obnoxious agent. The police are in on the joke, but they’ll never let her forget it at work later.”

“It’s so totally cool that I have an obnoxious agent,” Zoe Chloe trilled. “Mariah here can learn how to rep her ‘talent.’ ”

“Have you seen your boyfriend yet?” he asked.

“My boyfriend is in a boy band,” Zoe announced as some tech workers passed by. She lowered her voice. “I clued Matt in, but maybe Mariah’s mom will do more of it. It was a fast phone call. Zoe Chloe would sooo not hang with an older guy unless he was Ashton Kutcher.”

Rafi chuckled.

“You see something funny in this situation, dude?” Zoe asked.

“Yeah. I see the new, New Age Molina telling your straight-arrow boyfriend that we are all here on police business and he needs to play along. Exasperation becomes her.”

Temple glanced at Mariah, who was watching Rafi with a certain hero worship of his obvious disregard for her mother’s authority, if not the outright adoration she rained on Matt. Temple couldn’t say what she wanted to in front of the kid but realized she wouldn’t have traded places with Molina for all the cool jazz arrangements in ASCAP.