Cat In A Topaz Tango

Stomp ’Em If You

Got ’Em

“Matt’s next,” Mariah breathed reverentially in her ear, all hero worship and teen crush.

Zoe Chloe managed to growl a sour “Olé,” but Temple stuck a fist in her big mouth.

Take the shot. It’ll be good exposure for your career.

Publicly humiliating your intended was so not a good move. She’d just never thought about this whole Latin dance thing. Matt came from northeastern European stock, Polish stock. They fought for centuries for freedom from foreign rule, not to kill cattle.

But it was too late. Matt’s hat had been thrown into the ring.

By her.

And Crawford was already gloating at the mike.

“Well, well, well. Our first three contestants have surprised the audience and the judges by turning in their finest performances of the competition so far. The pasodoble seems to be the make-or-break dance. What will our mild-mannered radio guy do partnered with the formidable wrestler babe, Wandawoman? Methinks he’s outclassed in the weight department. In the center ring, ladies and gentlemen, gentleman Matt Devine and the lady who’s not for burning, but who could start a few conflagrations, Wandawoman!”

Temple closed her eyes. And couldn’t keep them that way. She split her mascaraed lashes just a little.

“Ai carumba,” Rafi muttered on her left. “Wandawoman is a heavy-metal load.”

“Ouch,” Molina murmured on her right.

“Don’t watch,” Mariah urged from her mother’s other side.

The music again deepened into the Latin chords of big-bodied acoustic guitar, piercing trumpets, and shaken, not stirred Mexican maracas.

Temple understood this dance celebrated the moves of teasing a bull to madness and then striking it dead of a sword stroke in the ring. She always rooted for the bull. Now she was obligated to cheer—symbolically—for the bull-slayer.

José had copped the whip, sword, and mask of a Zorro costume. Chef Salter owned the plain black pants and shirt concession. The Cloaked Conjuror had captured the massive cape and boot approach.

What could the exhausted costumers have left to do with poor Matt, who danced last?

“Locked and loaded,” Manda had said.

The stage was dark, one spotlight on the center.

The guitar strings trembled.

A man stepped from the dark pillar of the wings, caught in silhouette.

His head bristled with stiff projections like a metal crown. Temple recognized the miniature projectiles. She’d signed some online petitions against the ignoble sport of bullfighting.

Before the toreador even enters the ring, the bull is tormented by three banderilleros on horseback each sticking a pair of lances called banderillas into the charging bull’s neck and back. Six wounds tormented by the very act of moving, forcing the bull to run around the ring trying to escape the agony.

The pain-maddened creature charges the cape-flourishing toreador on foot, distracted by the moving cape, not the human pole around which it flutters, until he’s drawn close enough for the bull-fighter to drive his sword into the killing point, the neck aorta. At least José’s sword was no longer on stage.

As Matt leaped over the four steps onto the dance floor, Temple levied Zoe Chloe to her feet in the greenroom. This dance celebrated killer moves. This dance contest was haunted by could-be lethal incidents.

Wandawoman, slathered in black lace that disguised her less-than-hourglass bulk, a black widow spider corseted in a lacy web, lifted her head to eye her partner.

Well, he sure wasn’t one bit blond, Temple thought.

A skull-clinging scarlet scarf covered his forehead above a wig of dangling black dreadlocks twisted with bits of gold chain and stiff quills reminiscent of the crown of lances on a bull’s high humped back. He had a black mustache and the requisite Hollywood fringe of beard along his jawline, emphasizing its strength. His eyes were contact-lens jet-black and surrounded by smoky liner, à la the sexy sheik of silent 1920s films, Rudolph Valentino, or that latter-day reincarnation and sterling metrosexual sex symbol, Captain Jack Sparrow, courtesy of Johnny Depp. Mediawise, it didn’t get much better than this. Olé to the costume and makeup folks.

His boot-cut trousers, tight as black molasses above the knee and flaring dramatically below, had side seams of gold coins that clicked like a rattler’s tail at every dramatic stomp of the Cuban-heeled boots.

The audience leaped to their feet, cheering just the transformation already.