Cat In A Topaz Tango

Terminal Tango

Temple had only one more night after this to don Zoe Chloe Ozone garb, the awards show on Friday.

She could hardly wait to dump the annoying little spotlight-grabber.

What had almost happened to Matt made this entire competition, for charity or not, seem trivial. She knew she should lighten up, and would later. People just want to have fun, and that’s very good for the human race.

Someone, or several someones on these premises, didn’t.

Temple glanced around. She saw Dirty Larry and his camcorder plying the aisles along with other pro and amateur videographers. Hank Buck stood at the far stage wing, arms folded, eyes scanning the audience. His gaze met hers and he gave a little nod. Other discreet, safari-uniformed hotel guards dotted the back of the house. One was seated almost invisibly behind the judges’ table.

Molina had insisted Leander Brock give her a list of the dancers in order.

When Temple saw it, she knew she was still enough of a competitor to rejoice that Matt had been paired with Olivia Phillips again. By the fifth show and final dance, repairings were inevitable.

Olivia was an ideal partner for Matt. Their heights were right for the cheek-to-cheek tango, and they liked and therefore enhanced each other. Olivia’s tall, slender frame was made for the tango, and Matt had proven he had Latin cojones in the pasodoble. (And even later in the Paso Duel with “Zorro.”)

Temple wasn’t sure that the dance partners were “drawn” for this final performance night. Glory B. was paired with Keith Salter, not the greatest dancer but a good height match. The tango was built on sharp head motions and close body contact by both dancers, facing each other, then apart. Matched heights made it work. So CC had “drawn” the statuesque Wandawoman and José was stuck with Motha Jonz. Giggle.

Temple eyed the “thermometer” graphics board. Despite no personal onstage mishaps and therefore no sympathy votes, Matt had edged out José. Temple would bet his working against type was winning over voters. Olivia and Glory B. were neck and neck on the women’s side.

The dance order would be Salter and Glory B., José and Motha Jonz, CC and Wandawoman, and Matt and Olivia last. Some thought last was the best position in a competition. You stay on the judges’ minds better. Yet mostly call-in and e-mail voters counted these days.

Zoe Chloe would only be onstage at the end, to award the junior dance studio scholarship. That vote board showed Patrisha and EK at the top.

Temple crossed her fingers for EK as she eyed “her girls.”

The four wore glittery tops and short skirts, less trashy but a mirror of what older teen celebrities wore. Molina had sprung a mint for Temple to take Mariah and EK to lunch at the Fashion Show Mall on the Strip and on a shopping spree that midday, so Mariah was looking successfully “teen queen” too.

Temple had welcomed the outing. It took her mind off Matt, his rehearsal demands and physical condition. Although by early this morning he had been remarkably ready to, ah, rise and shine.

“What are you grinning about, ZC?”

Crawford Buchanan had breezed close to whisper in her ear. He loved taking these hit-and-run liberties and could play his fingers across his victim’s neck if he didn’t think she’d call him on it. ZC would. She was wearing the radically high, platform wedge, black satin ballet-style shoes she’d splurged on at the mall for Zoe Chloe’s final appearances, so she could stomp him like a bug if she wanted to.

“Just thinking,” she said, “that my junior dance corps look darling but age-appropriate. Even the Los Hermanos Brothers are giving them a new look.”

“Eh. They’re okay. A little mousy, maybe. Never your problem,” he added with a patented leer at her black-and-white polka-dotted hose. She also wore a kilt-length fuchsia plaid taffeta balloon skirt and white, puffed-sleeved cropped jacket with a giant fuchsia silk peony on the shoulder that hosted a black rhinestone spider pin as big as a teacup.

On this last competition night (and because Molina and Rafi refused to watch from the greenroom), the ZCO party had seats along the front row on the judges’ side.

Sitting in the audience was so different from watching on a TV screen in the greenroom. They still had their little “family” row: Rafi, Temple, Molina, and Mariah.

The final introductions began as the band played the first couple on stage.

Tango music was sophisticated, like the dance, sometimes brighter and jazzy, sometimes darker.

Wisely, Glory and Keith had been given a quick, intense routine, with lots of dips, leg wraps, and intricate steps for the agile and petite Glory. Keith wore men’s formal black and she sparkled in vibrant orange taffeta. Keith pretty much functioned as the pole in a stripper club. That quieter role enhanced his dignity, so the applause was warm when the couple finished with Glory doing the splits in front of his upright figure.

“Your best dance,” Danny could honestly tell Keith. “A subtle job of supporting your partner so she could perform some very demanding moves. Fabulous job, Miss B. You’ve come far. I expect to see you in a High School Musical touring company shortly.”

“Really?” Glory B. radiated new confidence even while panting hard.

“Nine,” said Danny, looking at Glory B. so she’d know the rating was hers, not theirs.

The audience went wild. Glory B. grinned and waved at them as she left the stage.

“There’s one contestant whose self-esteem has visibly soared during the competition,” Temple whispered to nobody in particular, her eyes glued on the stage.

“Actually,” said Molina, “you’re right.” She glanced at her rapt daughter, visibly reconsidering.

Audible breaths were drawn in when Crawford announced “José Juarez . . .”

“. . . and his partner, Motha Jonz.”

Their held breaths whooshed out like a disappointed tide at the news of his partner, a cumbersome dancer at best.

This was another dance opening that placed the partners at opposite ends of the stage.

Jose wore the tight, chest-baring black shirt and pants of male ballroom dancers in sexier routines. His rolled-up sleeves showcased forearms muscular from fencing. A tilted black fedora with a crimson band shadowed his chiseled features.

Motha Jonz glittered in basic black studded with bloodred rhinestones, but she still was shaped like a saguaro cactus, round and fully packed. They stalked each other around the dance floor, their steps measured between intricate twining moves and sudden hip-to-hip turns. They’d break apart to pose, then resume the tease.

The audience was whooping at every sexy move now, with pockets of applause bursting out. In this light and this dance, Motha Jonz looked like a contender for the first time.

The judges thought so too.

“Your best dance, both of you,” Danny said while awarding them a nine.

Leander was almost in tears. “A terrific recovery from the sad mishap last night. Motha Jonz, you looked ‘mahvelous.’ And, José, you are perfection in this dance.” He awarded them his first ten of the competition, which had the audience in an uproar.

“What was with the hat?” Savannah Ashleigh complained. “We want to see all of Mr. Juarez, don’t we, ladies?” she asked the audience. “Even his face!” Her raucous laughter was echoed by approving shrieks from the female audience members.

The shrieks died fast when the Cloaked Conjuror strode out in a Darth Vader mask, wearing a long black leather coat slashed open along the sides and back so every stride cracked like a whip or the flap of giant batwings. Wandawoman stalked after him in a Spider Queen outfit, a spandex catsuit slashed open more than it concealed, accessorized with torn net and tattoos, working a red-satin lined cloak like combination train and tail.

Some nervous high-tech music emphasized both the robotic rhythm of the tango and the simmering passion beneath it. It was a mad, bad dance and the audience loved it.

The judges, not so much.

“Power, yes,” Leander said. “Physically, you two are the most powerful of the men and women. But . . . finesse, my friends! The tango does not celebrate the birth of the Death Star but the intimate, dangerous dance of the sexes. Your footwork did indeed live up a military march, not a dance, and despite the magnificent visuals, no underlying feeling came through.”

He waved a “seven,” with Savannah and Danny brandishing “eights.”

So far no “mishap” had marred the evening. Temple hoped Matt and Olivia would make that a record of four couples unmolested.

Tension in the ballroom was tangible. Matt’s paso had knocked them dead. How could he improve on it? Those few who knew what a harrowing night he’d spent were figuratively nibbling their nails. Temple could sense the tension from Rafi and Molina on either side of her, not only for Matt, but for knowing that if the evil luck that had dogged the contestants was to strike again, tonight, now would be the last chance.

Temple had felt the mood in the audience and among her “posse” heightening with every dance. Even Rafi and Molina stopped scanning the audience like presidential bodyguards and applauded the end of José’s number. They better not be disloyal to Matt, Temple thought. Her nerves were twitching inside of Zoe Chloe’s faux adolescent little body while waiting for Matt’s tango.

She tried to remember her new platform shoes made her almost five-and-a-half feet tall and Crawford would look like a total shrimp when they were onstage together for the junior award later and at tomorrow’s adult award show. Matt had called her cell phone before the show began to tell her he felt fine and ready to rumble. She’d semi-punned back that the rumba wasn’t the dance of the day.

“And now,” Crawford finally crowed, sensing his reign as emcee peaking, “our last couple of the night performing the . . . Last Tango in Vegas! The glamorous Olivia Phillips and her partner, new Latin king Matt Devine!”

Oh, wow. Temple’s eyes were glued on the staircase. She wanted someone’s hand to grab. She looked right past Molina and saw that Mariah had scrunched down on her mother’s other side and was staring raptly at the stage. “He’s gonna be okay, he’s gonna be okay,” she was mouthing, as if making up for her unguarded and selfish blurt when she saw Matt streaming blood in the wee hours of this morning.

Kids have to learn to deal with shock; it doesn’t come naturally.

No couple arrived at the top of either stairway in the wings.

The audience stirred, uneasy.

Temple fidgeted in her seat. Was he ill?

Then Matt was there, sliding down the curving banister as he’d first done to escape the masked attacker fifteen hours ago. Talk about capitalizing on real-life experience.

He shot off the end doing a spectacular airborne split over the four risers to the dance floor, landing perfectly in a wide-legged stance, his martial arts training coming into play. He turned and looked back up the stairs as if willing an apparition to appear.

“Oh, wow,” Mariah squealed.

Temple echoed her internally. The makeup and costume crew had made a totally bold move. Matt’s hair was the natural color, but gelled close to his head except for a blindingly blond high-rise top. His black leather pants and shirt were “skinfully” tight. A black leather gauntlet on his wounded left arm stretched up to his shoulder, a brilliantly kinky twist on a practical costume necessity. The recent strains had chiseled features set in the expression of predatory intensity affected by male ballroom dancers.

The effect was startling for a tango: a blond man, totally icy-hot Nazi cyborg fetish awesome.

The look made a certain historical sense, Temple told herself while swallowing hard. Many Nazis had escaped to South America after World War II, and Argentina streets gave birth to the tango and refined it later after World War II.

Mariah didn’t get these nuances, but she got the one that mattered. “He is smokin’. The girls at school will be so freaking jealous!”

Olivia appeared at the top of the stairs in a clingy backless burgundy gown slathered with sequins. Its fluttering “car wash” skirt was slit strategically up to her hips at every opportunity.

Age did not wither, nor custom stale her utter feline sensuality.

This was the couple to beat. The audience rose in a standing ovation to acknowledge that.

That motivated Olivia to move. She glittered like a glamorous serpent as she slithered and slid down the banister, spinning down the four stairs to plaster herself against Matt’s back and wrap a possessive cocked leg around his braced thigh.

O-kay, Temple told herself. She was watching Rico and Lola at the Copa, right? Music and passion were always the fashion. Disengage, Zoe Chloe!

That was kinda hard. The audience was clapping and hooting at every move, and there were lots of them. The tango was a deliberate dance with sharp leg flicks keeping the couple entwined in a sexy procession of moves, scissoring their lower legs in and out.

In this version Olivia was the attempted aggressor. Her sharp, spike-heeled leg flicks flirted between Matt’s wide-planted legs very . . . dangerously. Throbbing, aching violin music dictated each nerve-wracking flirtatious advance and retreat of the dancers’ legs and hips.

Temple couldn’t even imagine rehearsing this dance. The guy would have to wear a suit of armor. At least an athletic protector.

On her left, Rafi was emitting a low, admiring laugh.

On her right, Molina’s eyes were no longer wandering like a bodyguard’s, but transfixed on the stage and Matt.

Olivia was all flashing naked leg, stretching a supernaturally long and straight gam to, uh, Rico’s broad shoulder. He caught her arched ankle and turned her legs like the hands of a clock, until she slid slowly down his side in the splits, an amazing feat for her age. Grandma Gypsy Rose Lee.

Even more amazing, Olivia moved from lying at his feet by drawing herself up through his legs from the back in a torso-clinging move that defied gravity . . . and decency.

The audience frenzy was drowning out the music now. Temple glimpsed Molina quickly distracting Mariah’s eyes from the stage with a whispered comment.

Temple had heard network dance show judges comment once that a routine was so hot and intense that they felt like voyeurs, like it was too private to watch. That was happening now with an ex-priest and a grandma who’d just met a week earlier. Dance was an amazing art form.

Zoe Chloe was blushing and Temple was thinking someone should call the police to shut this show down when the couple executed a series of sharp spins and Olivia sank into the splits again, clutching at . . . Rico’s . . . disdainful hip. Was there such a thing as a disdainful hip? If there could be a contrite right hand, sure.

The applause and screams were overriding everything, even the couple going to the judges’ table. They took bow after bow at center stage.

“Some full recovery,” Rafi growled on Temple’s left.

“Max certainly nailed the competition there, and practically the girl,” Molina muttered on her right.

Max?

Temple stared at Molina, to find her longtime antagonist flushing. “I meant ‘Matt.’ God, Barr. Can’t you manage to get boyfriends without mirror names?”

That’s when the audience gasped.

Molina snapped her head back to the stage and a dazed Temple changed focus a split second later.

While she was ambling toward the judges’ table arm in arm with Matt, Olivia’s shoe had hit a slick spot on the shiny wooden surface. One high heel kicked out from under her.

She was going to land flat on her back, the worst kind of impact. Especially for a sexy senior citizen.

Matt’s knees buckled as he tried to push himself beneath her before she hit, hard.

Molina and Rafi were sprinting onto the dance floor as were a bunch of beige shirts from hotel security, not to mention Dirty Larry slinging his camcorder strap over his shoulder to rush down the aisle to the scene of the accident.

Another dirty trick—sabotage—was all anyone in the know could think. The triumphant couple went from a strut to the judges’ table to being swallowed by a clot of converging security personnel.

The center of the stage looked like a football field with a loose ball.

Temple charged over, late, picturing Matt and his already disabled arm crushed at the bottom of the pile.

Feet lost purchase and skidded, bodies and arms flailed about on a floor as slippery as an ice rink.

Danny was standing, leaning over the judges’ table on the dais that gave him an overview of the melee. “He’s holding something! Striking. Get him!” Danny yelled with the overriding vocal command of a choreographer who could call whole chorus lines to attention.

A mantra of screamed “Die, bastard, die” came from the unseen heart of the struggle.

“Get him. Get him. Get him!” male voices chanted between desperate grunts. “Get who?”

“Man in beige,” Danny bellowed, leaping over the tabletop to help. “He’s got some kind of weapon.”

Midnight Louie, long MIA, suddenly came streaking past Temple’s side vision, making for the tumbled bodies in the pile.

He paused to eye the flailing limbs and feet, lifting a snarling face featuring an amazingly wide and bloodred maw lined with white, sharklike fangs.

Then he leaped onto the struggling pile of flesh, bones, and clothing with what Temple would swear later was a martial arts cry. Or the feline version, anyway.

Louie chomped down hard on one particular exposed khaki butt, ripping a back pocket clear off, so the contents scattered, including a small brittle comet that flew across the wood floor.

The accosted man screamed with pain and reared up, revealing a clenched fist.

It was the oddest sight. All the other men in the pile lifted up too, as if it was a modern dance movement, chaotic, brutal, choreographed.

The man Louie had targeted was pushed up by their pressure, one fist held high, something in it.

“Matt!” Temple cried, spotting a pool of black at the very bottom of the pile.

She charged forward, glimpsing Danny Dove on her left trying the same rescue maneuver. Her brand-new shoe sole slipped, but it wasn’t an issue.

She was suddenly stopped in midleap by a blow at her midsection that knocked the breath out of her, partly because of her own rash forward momentum.

Matt! her mind screamed.

Her body was being hoisted in a lift, and then slammed back down to earth, every bone shuddering from the impact.

She couldn’t move. She was held fast to a living wall and every eye was turning to her and whatever imprisoned her, the guards’ . . . Danny’s . . . Molina’s . . . Matt’s . . . a black cat’s . . .

The silence in the ballroom became profound, like total deafness.

A fist shook in front of her vision. Big. White-knuckled. Clutching . . . something small and silly and insignificant.

She could hardly see it.

A thread? A hair? A cat whisker?

“Thisss,” a guttural voice in her ear whispered, and then shouted to everyone. “Thisss is a sssyringe of pure, uncut heroin. One jab and she’s dead meat.”

Temple realized that her feet in their empowering platform wedgies were dangling, that the man had again hoisted her like a Barbie doll.

Damn! She always knew there was some seriously big disadvantage to being short and slight. On the other hand, she might be able to do an Olivia and kick her Goth shoe up behind her, right into the family vault.

“Don’t move,” Molina ordered. “Anybody.”

The policewoman was pushing herself up from the floor like a Greek tragedienne coming back to life, like a really pissed off Medea.

“Hank,” Rafi Nadir called from the rear. “Give it up.”

The guy spun, Temple’s limbs flopping doll-like as he turned.

The chest she was pasted against heaved, powerful and iron-hard, like a machine. “I can’t get the bastard,” the voice heaved out behind her, “I can get her. Again. And again and again.”

She saw his arm rising above her. He wasn’t brandishing a cat whisker. It was a hypodermic needle. Heroin! No, God!

She’d seen slow-motion, damning scenes like these in live theater. The helpless chorus writhing in joint impotency on the floor. The mad, cursed central figure lifting an arm to tear out his own eyes, to drive daggers into her innocent children’s bodies, to rend garments at the cruel fate the gods decree. . . .

Temple lifted her foot in its industrial-strength Zoe Chloe Ozone Goth shoe just as ahead of her Danny leaped up, up, and awaaay in his beautiful balloon of a powerful dance kick, and behind her someone shouted, “Hike!”

Hike? Why not?

She kicked hard up and behind her like a tango diva with gladiator-style spike heels and a life wish.

The man screamed, tumbling away and down behind her, and she was on the floor as the flying tackle behind her hit home.

She was belly down, face-to-face with a horizontal Matt, who grabbed her hands and pulled her hard toward him in a paso move. On the slippery floor they could roll far away from the kicking feet and churning arms and legs behind them both at last.

Temple examined what she could see of herself. “No hypos?” she asked.

“God willing,” Matt said, patting her limbs and torso, hunting hypos.

“You were way too hot in the tango to be doing that right now,” she managed to huff out. “I might explode.”

He pulled her up to her feet as if doing an Olivia lift and held her even closer as Molina and Rafi and Dirty Larry pulled a man in an Oasis guard’s uniform away from his fellow guards and into custody.

The face was a deranged mask, but Temple was able to identify it. Hank Buck.

Rafi held the lethal hypo in his hand and moved carefully over the slick floor to show it to Matt and Temple. Empty.

“Good thing you’re so short,” he told Temple. “And have happy feet. And a berserk cat. Between the two of you, he missed harpooning you and did in his own shoulder.”

“What happens now?” Temple asked.

“In seven or eight minutes he’ll be as high as a fruit bat and we’ll read him his rights and interrogate him backstage while he’s euphoric before the EMTs get here. Because the horse was injected into a muscle, he’ll have two to four hours before it kills him. A nasal mist called Narcan can reverse an overdose.

“Buck was obviously hoping to dose Matt during the confusion of helping him and Olivia up. Floor was probably sprayed with silicone. Being on duty here, he’d have watched the rehearsal and figured out where Matt would end up.

If he’d gotten away before Matt realized he’d been ‘stung,’ or if Matt just didn’t register what had happened, we’d have no idea he’d been drugged or what was used and how to reverse it. So, though Buck is the bastard who should die, he’ll live to stand trial for attempted murder.”

Rafi slapped Matt on the shoulder. “Lethal dance, man.” He smiled at Temple. “You still have Supergirl chops, babe, and your cat rocks.” He sighed. “And Molina will happily take my ass to the cleaner’s because one of my staff was the wacko.”