Cat In A Topaz Tango

“That’s because it is,” Danny said cheerfully. “It’s macho to the max, all male peacock pose and sound and fury. And the woman matches every show-off move with her aloof disdain. It is indeed a love-hate dance, and, sadly, it mirrors a lot of relationships still relevant today.”

“So we’re miming a mistake.”

“It’s a cultural thing,” Danny said, laughing, as he corrected their pose at the end of a complicated series of turns. “Latin fireworks. But all dance has truth in it and anger is the dark side of love all too often.”

“It shouldn’t be,” Matt said. “It wouldn’t be if children were reared without pain and fear.”

“True,” said Danny, a flicker wincing across his usually open features. Matt could have kicked himself, pointing that out to a gay. “I always tell myself that in the Latin dances, as often in life, the man may flex and preen, but the woman always wins, and he likes it. Dance as if you know this, and love this, and you will have a Latin soul.”

“We Russians understand this,” Tatyana interjected. “Soul is always, what’s the word? Intense. Extreme. Sexy.”

Of course, Matt understood, that’s exactly what made him uneasy. He’d just have to overcome his upbringing and find some underground spring of Polish passion. Maybe it was . . . freedom.

Suddenly it all came clear to him. Spain and Mexico were Catholic countries. Sexual repression was a historical given. The dances were little dramas of natural attraction versus social constriction. Even the flashy costumes were constricting, especially over the torso and hips. Okay. Call him a nerd, but once he understood the social underpinnings, he could get the emotional and artistic needs.

He just had to play these Latin numbers like John the Baptist tempted by Salome. But the Baptist had been a saint and resisted all the way. Matt would have to let himself be seduced. Live on television. At least his mother in Chicago and the parishioners of St. Stanislavsky’s wouldn’t see this regional show.

“Ready to dance again?” Tatyana demanded.

“Olé,” he said.

The door slammed open. A stagehand’s head frantically eyed all three.

“Anybody here know first aid?”

“Me,” Danny called.

The stagehand jerked his head. “Rehearsal room three.”

They both followed Danny out, drawn by the sudden burst of urgency, the rehearsal forgotten.

Shaken, Not Stirred

A clot of hovering dancers and support staff blocked the door to rehearsal room three.

Whispers rustled the grave, nodding faces like a wisp of wind in a flower bed.

Danny, Matt figured, had seen a lot of rehearsal accidents, but Matt knew about ministering to the distressed.

So he pushed inside behind the choreographer, while Tatyana peeled off to gossip with her fellow and sister pros, who might know exactly what had happened.

The room mirrored his and Tatyana’s rehearsal area: portable wood floor laid over impact-absorbing material, wall mirrors, any spare chairs pushed to the perimeter.

But this room also hosted the metal-pipe jigsaw structure of a jungle gym.

That’s where Danny joined several people hunching over something on the floor.

The sight had Matt’s heart pounding as if he’d just done a six-spin airplane lift with Ambrosia to hold up.

He rushed over, calming only when he saw a small figure half sitting, answering questions.

“It was scary,” she murmured in a daze. “I don’t even know how I feel. The fall. Everything’s tingling, but I can move stuff. My toes. My fingers.”

“Stay still,” a man in a dark suit carrying a walkie-talkie ordered. “We have a hotel doctor and EMTs on the way. You don’t move until someone with medical expertise is here.”

Glory B. looked up, wide-eyed. Her left hand was holding her right wrist, but she didn’t seem aware of what that might mean.

“It just . . . gave,” she said. “When I was on the top rung. Jesse said I needed to work on my agility and balance.”

“I’m sorry, B.,” said the young male dancer still crouched next to her. “I tested the bars myself after it was erected. Did spins and flips all over them. They were solid. At least for me. I’m sorry. I just don’t get it.”

Danny knelt to gently test her limbs and rose.

Matt nudged Danny’s arm. As he stood again, Matt whispered. “You and I need to take a fresh look at the jungle gym once Glory is taken away.”

Danny mouthed, “Why?”

“Temple Barr disease,” Matt whispered back.

Danny got it and nodded, his forehead a broad ladder of worry lines.

Temple Barr disease: never settle for benign equipment failure as an explanation when malign interference might be a cause. And this was a highly public, highly charged competition, with a lot at stake for the producers and performers.

If a muscular male dancer bounding all over the device didn’t find the weakness, why would a wisp of a girl who was practicing with uncertainty do it?

For now, Glory B., hot up-and-coming teen pop tart with attitude, was just a scared, possibly hurt kid. Matt thought about Temple out there somewhere, on the trail of another lost kid.