Cat In A Topaz Tango

Rehearsed to Death

“You sure this daily dance gig ain’t burnin’ out your baby browns, boy wonder?” Ambrosia asked Matt as they shut down their mics and she became just plain Leticia again.

He nodded as he yawned.

His “Midnight Hour” stint at WCOO-AM was over. Rehearsing dance numbers days to perform them live on TV evenings, then doing a two-hour live radio show at midnight was getting to him.

Leticia also passed him a yellow message form as soon as he had hung up his headphones for the morning. “Two A.M. and all is well, or not well?” she pressed.

“No rest for the wicked,” he muttered, reading the name and phone number, then the message scrawled beneath them, and groaning. “So my Dancing With the Celebs taskmistress is insisting I need an after-hours, early-morning rehearsal to ‘brush up’ my tango footwork. I’m glad this is the last dance. You remember the formidable Tatyana?”

“You sure that’s all she wants?”

“Sure. This woman is all business.”

“All business shaking her jiggle parts.”

“You seemed to have that routine down too, when you visited me at the rehearsal,” he reminded her with a laugh. “No, life is all work and no play with Tatyana. The other prodance instructors lighten up a little, but never her. You’d think she wanted to rehearse me to death.”

“Then don’t go. You’re the ‘celeb,’ sweet boy. Show a little temperament yourself. You’re too easygoing, Matt. Always accommodating other people. I like that when I’m the ‘other people,’ but you need to put your foot down more.”

“Believe me,” he said, rising, “I’m putting my foot down plenty these days. Especially in those Spanish dances. It’s okay, Leticia,” he said. “You know it’s always hard to settle down after two hours live on the air anyway.”

“Yeah, you and Wayne Newton. Or should I say Elvis?”

“Haven’t heard from his ghost lately, thank goodness. No, I could use some exercise after hunching over a hot mike for two hours.”

He didn’t add that his fiancée was bunking in an alternate persona at the dance competition hotel and he had no one to go home to at the Circle Ritz. Odd how having that option had made relaxing after a show no issue at all. That’s why he’d taken the comped room at the Oasis all the celebs got.

In the mellow hot-fudge night outside, he smiled ruefully as he clicked his silver Crossfire unlocked under the lone blazing parking lot light, waiting to see Leticia’s silver Beetle pull safely out of the driveway before he left.

In an hour he’d be drilling with Tatyana in the empty rehearsal room far below Temple and Louie sleeping above in a giant suite with two tweens, Molina and her ex.

Politics wasn’t the only thing that made strange bedfellows.

Passing through the lights, noise, and action of the Oasis’s casino area a half hour later reminded him that Max Kinsella had played his last stint as the Mystifying Max at another Vegas hotel, the Goliath, and had lived up to his magician’s moniker by disappearing after a dead body had been found in the overhead spy spaces above the gaming tables.

Now Max was out of the picture again and Matt had performed here nightly—for almost a week. Life was crammed with ironies.

Coming here to rehearse at this god-awful hour actually kept Matt’s energy high and hyped. He relished burning off his frustration. He’d gotten used to living with and loving Temple, used to the summaries of their days, the companionship of their nights.

He was starting to think he needed a day job so they’d be in better sync. People would think him crazy to quit “The Midnight Hour” and its syndicated success, but relationships were more important.

This mini-separation had him thinking a lot of things. Like it was also crazy to delay marriage. The only reason he had was wanting Temple to be sure she wasn’t in love with Max anymore, wanting to be sure he was a good enough substitute, but nothing in life was sure.

All he knew was that he’d never been happier.

Maybe he could convert to a daytime show, television, or Web-based even. Talk shows were myriad and female-hosted these days, so maybe the field could use a new guy. Maybe Oprah could make him the way she’d made Dr. Phil .

He laughed out loud at his mental maunderings and ducked through the door leading to the maze of rehearsal halls ringing the ballroom set for Dancing With the Celebs. Just the word “celebs” was a clue to the essential sleaziness of the concept. Cheerfully admitted sleaziness.

Guess that made the world go ’round.

Matt moved down the dim hall and barged into “his” rehearsal room without thinking about it.

The place was as black as King Tut’s tomb.

He backed out, surprised, wondering if the message had been garbled. “See Tatyana at 3:00 A.M. to rehearse.” After work. Underlined. “Your tango footwork stinks,” had been added.

The insanely early hour was no surprise. She knew he worked nights. The bluntness was all Tatyana. Her sentences came as short and sharp as bullets.

He guessed he’d be entitled to hand her some bluntness for being late to a wee-hour meeting she’d called for. Guess that was what Leticia meant about him being too easygoing.

He reached in and patted the wall until he found the light plate.

He pushed down the plastic switch.

Nothing.

No light.

Matt sighed loudly. The station receptionist must have written the information down wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time.

He stood on the dark threshold to this room so familiar to him, now just a black hole, and started tapping his foot on the durable vinyl tile meant to survive the constant scrape of folding chairs and spilled water, coffee, tea, and stronger stuff.

The sound echoed like bullets in the empty darkness. One hand clapping. One foot tapping.

Clap!

The real sound of cupped palms meeting. A call to the dance. Sharp. Summoning. Arrogant. Spanish. Then the drum of distant boot heels pounded an echoing wooden floor like an indoor hailstorm. Not this floor.

He knew where the sound came from. Tatyana must be playing one of her dramatic games. She liked to put her students on new ground, in “unsafe” dance situations. He left the rehearsal room and followed the maze around in the dark until he felt the brush of velvet curtains backing the show’s set.

The Spanish boot heels throbbed on wood flooring like a joke set of chattering false teeth. Machine-gun fast. Automated, almost. Endless.

Matt brushed through the curtains into more darkness, feeling around the bulk of the big light and sound console onto the actual stage. Everything was black except the well-lit image of the now-familiar space in his mind.

The flamenco beat of steel nail heads covering leather soles kept up the frenzied chatter. Matt stepped farther into the darkness, toward the sound as it clattered toward him, then stopped.

All he could hear now was his heart pattering like a hard rain in reaction to that visceral vibration in the floor beneath him.

A ripping sound jagged by his left ear.

He couldn’t help putting out a hand to sense something in this dark carnival of sound.

His left palm touched passing fire and separating velvet.

The solid curtain behind him was now torn in two and his palm was creased with a line of fire that had thickened like lava and turned sticky.

He recognized that moment of stunned sensation taking fresh shape as pain.

He’d been cut across the hand, across the palm’s head and heart lines. Blood was flowing and running down his bare forearm.

He made a fist to stop the flow and pain. Useless.

Boot heels retreated in the dark, sharp and fast as the angry, mocking laughter that accompanied it.

“Die, bastard, die!”

Matt wheeled and turned back.

Not to run.

He bumped into the big sound console and, dripping blood from his closed fist, ran his uninjured right hand over all the many levers, releasing demon voices of sound bytes, prerecorded snatches of mambo and waltz and samba music, sprightly and stately and frantic in turn.

His hand reversed the buttons as fast as his fingers found them until a light blossomed on the opposite side of the backstage area. There was the single backstage “ghost light” that should be on at all times. He flipped more metal switches along that row, illuminating a random patchwork of high and low spotlights until a dark, grotesque figure became visible in the shadows thirty feet away.

Jesus, Mary, Joseph, his mind breathed in long-accustomed prayer.

He faced Lucifer out of an operetta, poised for battle in shiny black satin cape and mask.

Matt itched to swipe his burning and throbbing wounded left hand down his outside pants leg, clear off the blood, but he knew he needed to keep the arm upraised to slow the flow. Up high. Like a dancer. Like a fencer.

He turned sideways to face the figure posed the same narrow way as a duelist to avoid exposing his vulnerable trunk full on. The scanty lights showed the straight, thin line of a rapier raised from its hidden position along the man’s leg high into the air above his right shoulder.

Matt recognized the clothing now. José Juarez’s Zorro getup, complete with mask and flat-brimmed hat, with gloves and sword, boots and spurs.

His thoughts were still shocked, sluggish. Zorro ready to cut him into mincemeat, and he in his knit shirt, khakis, and lace-up suede shoes.

Not a lot of stomping going on his way.

Going My Way. Major forties movie with Bing Crosby playing a priest. Crosby and Hope on the Road to Sliced Liver, or Bali or Mandalay, bungling and making comedy villains trip over their own feet.

Okay. Not a lot of role models out there in the collective unconscious for dueling demonic Zorros. He felt a cool, clammy sweat break out on his face. The blood was coming mostly from his wrist, below the hand slash. From the cut vein. It was already getting hard to organize his thoughts and he couldn’t tell whether the symptoms were of fear or blood loss.

Matt ran through his memorized impression of the set. Easy. Cut-rate Dancing With the Stars rip-off. Four steps up center stage with winding staircases at each side. Dance floor. Judges’ table and chairs at his right, backup singers and live octet setups at the left. Audience chairs on three sides of the dance floor.

And now this out-of-time addition, the heart of darkness poised on the dance floor with a blade that had already tasted innocent blood.

Shoot. Didn’t he wish he had a semiautomatic, or even a vintage dueling pistol? But all he had was a sense of self-preservation, some martial arts and dance moves, and a pure heart that had been a little bruised lately.

“José?” he asked, not really believing this costumed figure was the Olympic fencer, even though he flourished the blade as if he knew how. Or that he would admit it if he was.

The ersatz Zorro simply shouted, “Ha!” and advanced sideways toward Matt, each step magnified into a sharp, drumming dance.

Maybe this was Michael Flatley, the lord of the dance himself?

No. This was someone else who knew the steps. Matt himself had practiced them, and could produce this same sinister, stuttering advance if he wore the same heeled leather boots and cared more about prancing than survival right now.

He needed to hoard his energy, wear out his adversary. Playing this extravagant role would tire someone not accustomed to it.

Matt sprung up the four steps to the stage. “Zorro” leapt over them.

Impressive. Also wearing.

Matt ran up the curving staircase he’d glide down at the moment of introduction every night. Zorro stomped up behind him, then began slicing the sword back and forth in S-shaped swathes.

Grace took time and energy, and Matt was more interested in saving his hide from more bloody creases than looking good. His heart in his throat, he sat on the slick brass railing and slid down it, an unrehearsed move he’d only seen Wandawoman use.

His weight teetered left and right, but he slid off the end and hit with both feet flat-footed at the end. Ugh. The friction put his rear on fire. Wandawoman must have worn asbestos shorts during her seated railing run.

The thump of his rubber-soled shoes sounded like the battle cry of a rabbit rather than a steel-hooved steed.

Of course he had his cell phone in his pants pocket, and could use it to summon help.

Except . . . Zorro was swooshing down the railing with a lot more swashbuckle than he had and Matt needed twenty seconds in good light to punch in even an auto-dial number, probably Temple’s, wake her up, and remain still enough long enough to say where and what.

If he could manage all this while dodging the lethal tap dance spitting sound at him like Uzi bullets and sword thrusts as fast as heat lightning, he’d probably get Rafi Nadir to the rescue on the run, with Oasis security behind him.

By then he’d be a bled-out shish kebab. One dead bastard.

His mind wanted to stop and figure out who’d want to damage or kill him. Disable him for the stupid contest? His reflexes wanted to maintain a sword blade’s distance between him and the Zorro gone amok.

Matt stumble-ran across the dance floor to the judges’ skirted table and dove over and behind it, reversing Danny’s recent emergency moves in the other direction.

Nail-studded boot heels and toes clattered after, his enemy’s body knocking the table askew.

Matt was already dashing for the velvet curtains the dancing couples retreated behind after their numbers. His discreet Hush Puppy soles obscured his exact route.

Thank God! He’d said that vocally and mentally thousands of times in his life and had never meant it more.

Here, in the less open spaces, martial arts moves had a chance against the thirty inches of steel death in a darting rapier.

He crashed into the velvet curtains, making them sway and disguise his position.

The dark was almost total again behind the curtains, just a halo of light visible from the few illuminated spotlights on the dance floor. It would hide Zorro’s approach.

Matt danced with the dark, twirled himself into the velvet curtains’ embrace, felt them twitch and shake as the sword pierced them with quick, blind thrusts. He stepped away in one bound, then jerked them back against the way he’d come.

The boot soles stilled. He wrapped the curtains around and around the dark in his wake, hearing the rent of heavy fabric muffling, and then stopping.

He’d hoped to wrap up his attacker and his flashing rapier like a mummy in the heavy theatrical velvet. He finished his reverse spin with a killer kick, feeling the side of his foot impact a barrier of bone and muscle.

Zorro’s breath escaped on a belly-deep oooph!

Matt’s bleeding left fist still held a world of burning pain, but he punched it full strength into the slowly twisting bundle. He felt a body sag. His own energy flagged.

So.

The sword was wound and bound along with the mystery man who wielded it.

He could stay here on guard, letting his wrist bleed until he passed out—and a lot of blood had streamed out already—waiting until a technician came along in five hours just before rehearsals began, or. . . .

Now that he was still again, he felt dizzy. Was he getting woozy already from blood loss? He’d have to get to someplace with more light to use the cell phone. The lit number pad seemed to flare and blur.

Holding his left arm high, elbow doubled back to apply at least some pressure higher up the arm, he turned and stumbled farther into the backstage dark. The light board’s high-intensity bulb that illuminated the controls should overcome the fuzzy glare of his double vision.

Leaning against the console, he was dismayed by how slowly he moved now, by how close the attempted murderer still was, a sagging lump in the curtains. He saw enough to use the menu to auto-dial Temple’s cell phone, but what chance was there that she’d hear it at three in the morning? It was probably tucked away in a purse outside the bedroom suite. She’d said the place was palatial. He doubt he’d remain conscious long enough to tell 911 the complex details of where he was and what had happened.

Her cell phone rang and rang, and there was no answer.

He punched the number again. He was feeling drained. No kidding.

The phone rang and rang and there was no answer.

Again.

Again.

Matt’s head was throbbing. Adrenaline, blood loss. He’d seen a finger cut sop an entire terry cloth bath sheet with blood. This was way more serious.

Then a faint voice, as if from heaven.

“Louie! Where are you?”

Temple’s voice. She wasn’t talking to Matt, though, but to the cat in the room.

“You must be really hard up, cozying up to a cell phone I left on vibrate. It’s not a purring pussycat in heat. It’s just a damn midnight solicitation—”

“Temple!” Matt called into his phone. His voice was half the usual loudness. “Temple, it’s Matt.”

“Matt? I thought you were going to get all the sleep you could after your radio show, given the early-morning rehearsals.”

“I’m here already.”

“Here?”

“The dance set. ‘Zorro’ just tried to slice me to ribbons.”

“Oh, my God. Matt!’

She was moving. Her voice stuttered like a strobe light. He could hear her pounding on a door.

“Rafi! Matt’s in the hotel. He’s been attacked on the dance set. He’s bleeding. Call your guys pronto!”

The phone sounded as if it was being dropped.

“Yeah, Lieutenant. I know your daughter is sleeping. Matt’s been attacked on the dance show set. Rafi’s gone to—God, that’s a big gun! Do you sleep with that thing? Yeah, I’ll watch Mariah. But—”

Matt was surprised to find himself sliding slowly over a metal landscape of toggle switches on a tide of slippery syrup. Couldn’t pass out. His tormenter was probably coming to by now, and velvet curtains weren’t iron manacles . . . .

Lights blazed on in the audience area. House lights.

Footsteps came pounding. Someone grabbed Matt and propped him up against the light board console.

“God, look at the blood. Looks like the left arm.”

“Tourniquet, quick. Belt will do.”

“We found him, sir,” a youthful tenor male voice crowed from what seemed like a half-block away.

“Get the hotel doctor immediately,” Sir ordered in an urgent basso Matt didn’t recognize.

“Matt!” Temple cried, her slightly raspy alto voice soprano with anxiety, her warm palm soothing the side of his face. And then, said to someone behind him, “I’m watching her! She’s with me, all right? I wasn’t staying behind to babysit.”

“I don’t need babysitting.” He recognized Mariah’s light soprano, scared and defiant. “Is he all right? Mom? He’s supposed to take me to the school dance.”

Ah, Matt thought, feeling oddly buoyed by the young’s assumptions. The thoughtless egotism of the tweenager . . . he’d be happy to go to that dance now.

“Attacker’s gone, but the sword isn’t.” A male voice from a distance. “Skewered in the curtain. Maybe we’ll get fingerprints.”

“Wearing gloves,” Matt croaked.

“Damn!” The dark mezzo of Carmen Molina had the last word, as always, and sang the same old song.

“Rafi, get your guys locking down this whole area pronto while I call forensics. Everybody else in this damn-fool party—you know who you are—get up to the”—a very pregnant pause—“Zoe Chloe Ozone suite. Now! Mariah Molina and EK, your shadow, that means you.”