Cat In A Topaz Tango

She turns and vanishes behind the double doors to her bedroom suite, leaving us three twitching whiskers and blinking eyes. At least I am the only one able to whisker-twitch.

“Wow,” Miss Temple says to Mr. Rafi. “You pushed more buttons than I knew she had.”

“Right now,” he answers, “if I had any stake in anything, I would be more worried about her than her daughter.”

His cell phone rings and he claps it to an ear as hard as a sparring partner might hit it. Ouch!

I cannot tell you how sick, ticked, and piqued I am about cell phones. These miserable little devices are like a medieval infestation of rats. They breed everywhere. People are entirely at their beck and call, and run shrieking to cuddle them every time they squeal. And they have a thousand annoying voices, some famous. This fad to have unique “ring tones” is a plague on humanity. Anyone with sensitive hearing is assaulted daily, and also left out of the loop watching folks speak loudly as they wander down the street. Time was, people behaved that way, they were put in custody “for observation.”

Now, if you are not mumbling or screaming meaningless phrases when you front down the street, you are not hip. You are the new “boom boxes.”

I must say that my kind has admirably resisted the trend to constant and showy communication. We still say more with the blink of an eye or the twitch of a back or the flick of a shiv.

Still, such are these times that my Miss Temple and I are forced to tear our attention from Miss Carmen’s most satisfying meltdown to regard Mr. Rafi’s one-sided monologue.

“The Barbie memo? Sure, anything on that would be good.” He paces, nodding and listening. “No kidding. Just today. Missing? Search the mall, and do not forget to comb between every row of the parking lot. Especially the parking lot. There is precedent. Get back to me as soon as. The lieutenant? On the other phone. I will make sure she gets the message.”

Miss Temple and I have edged nearer on one very provocative sentence.

“Another Barbie doll has shown up at the Albuquerque audition site,” he reports grimly, “and a female competitor is missing. I had better tell ‘Carmina.’ Unless you—”

“No,” my Miss Temple says wisely. “She is all yours. I will check the Internet for fresh Barbie doll atrocities.”

So there we are again, torn between a cell phone and the Internet. I tell you, the art of investigation is not the same old gray mare it used to be.

Everybody Undercover,

Quick!

Temple figured she was playing a pretty good Mariah substitute at the moment.

She even had the typical teenager’s quarreling parents. There was no doubt that Lieutenant Molina and Rafi Nadir made volatile partners. After they’d made it to the high-roller suite, Raphael and Carmina made sure to get as far as possible from each other in their bedroom assignments. Lions, and tigers, and angry ex-lovers, oh my!

As soon as Temple could relax in the presumed privacy of her star bedroom, she phoned Matt on her cell.

“Where are you and what are you wearing?” she said when he answered.

“Who are you?”

“Your light of love in a kickier, bolder persona. Enjoy.”

“Temple, where are you?”

“Don’t you want to know what I’m wearing?”

“If it’s the usual Zoe Chloe Ozone Goth issue, no. Ish, for sure. Can I make it any plainer, because I certainly can’t make her any plainer.”

Temple was not about to relinquish making a provocative call from a high-roller suite.

“You are about to lose a date,” she told him.

“Our wedding date?”

“No, sweetums. We haven’t even set that yet. I’m referring to your dinner-dance date with a star, Mariah Molina.”

“Huh?”

“Surely you haven’t forgotten the glamour event of the fall, the father-daughter dance at Our Lady of Guadalupe High School?”

“Shoot. I had. Your crazy new assignment has my mind going to mush. I’m supposed to squire Molina Jr.”

“Yes, you are, and we’ve found the little footloose and fancy-free rascal. She’s managing a hot newcomer in the junior division of this very hot Dancing With the Celebs gig you’ll be dazzling with your fancy footwork.”

“Good for her.”

“Not good for Mama Bear’s composure and now Papa Bear has IDed her as a walking wounded policewoman, which makes her twice as dangerous a bear. Did you know anything about that? Molina getting hurt?”

“Uh, maybe.”

“Oh, no! Matt, you haven’t been playing Wailing Wall for the enemy? What’s this all about?”

“It’s hardly relevant to what’s going on now.”

“The heck it isn’t. You’ve got a rival for Perfect Dream Dad. Rafi wants to escort Mariah to that dance.”

“His world and welcome to it. Her mother sort of railroaded me for the job anyway.”

“Her mother railroads us all, but right now she looks like she’s been working on the railroad, rode hard, and put up wet. What is going on with her?”

“She’s been . . . wounded. That’s all I can say without violating—”

“The sanctity of the confessional.”

“In a way. I swore.”

“Humph. The only way you would swear. Fiancés shouldn’t keep secrets from fiancées.”