Cat In A Topaz Tango

“Chris is cool,” tomboy Meg-Ann added matter-of-factly. “That back flip he did on the last tour was awesome. He’ll win this thing hands down, literally.” She glanced politely at the tongue-tied Russian girl. “You like your guy, EK?”

“Adam has very nice curly hair.”

“Wuss!” Sou-Sou hooted.

“And he has much better rhythm and tempo than the other boys.” EK sounded positively assertive for a change. “We will do very well together.”

A silence prevailed. Girly had gone gritty. Each one of these girls was highly competitive, far more than the already famous boys, probably.

Mariah, on the sidelines with Temple, leaned against the ladder.

“EK’s right. Adam is the youngest, but he’s the least anxious to impress the girls, rather than the judges. The older brothers think they’re so big boy and hot! They’re such a pain.” She rolled her eyes.

Mama Molina would be happy to hear her only daughter dissing smooth older boys.

Temple wasn’t.

There was as much rivalry, gender maneuvering, and naked ambition among the junior dancers as among their supposedly wiser and older counterparts.

Musing about naked ambition, Temple escaped the adjoining rehearsal rooms for the ballroom performance area and looked up her most likely source for an inside view on the show personnel.

Unfortunately, that was her least favorite person, Crawford Buchanan.

She cornered him in the backstage area, already preening in penguin evening dress.

“How did you get the emcee gig for this event?” she demanded.

It took him a moment to recognize her previous disguise from the Teen Queen house.

“Well, if it isn’t the one-girl brat pack. How’d you arrange to emcee the junior division?” he shot back. “I guess you go where your Teen Queen little buddy girl goes, the cop’s daughter who got me into so much trouble. Guess she didn’t run away after all.”

“Mariah was never lost,” Temple lied. “And Zoe Chloe Ozone is an online diva in high personal demand.”

“So am I.”

“You?”

“Check it out. I’m the Dick Clark of the West Coast.”

Dick Clark had founded the teen music TV show, American Bandstand, in the fifties, and, forever young, had been a major figure in TV and pop music until his stroke a few years ago. To imagine Crawford Buchanan enduring another forty years like his on-air idol was revolting.

“‘Dick’ is so right,” Temple retorted. “I need a quick rundown of who’s who and what’s what. How long does this show run?”

“It runs all the lighter attendance nights in Vegas, starting Sunday to finish with a flourish on Thursday, when all the weekend crowds come in. We introduce the contenders tonight with a dance de jour, then they have the next day to rehearse a new dance with their proteacher and present it that night, and so on until the Friday grand awards ceremony.”

“Who’s all participating?”

Crawford finally had a chance to show true form and leer at her. “Checking up on the competition your sweetie is facing, huh? I see you and Matt ‘Mr. Sob Story Radio’ Devine hanging together. José ‘Hot Hips’ Juarez, the Olympic fencer, will samba him off the stage.”

“Blimey, Crawf ‘the Barf Bag’ Buchanan! Are you going to introduce every contestant with those ‘quotes included’ nicknames? Pretty lame emceeing. Come on, tell me who’s in the whole cast, besides Mr. Olympic Olé.”

“I’m sworn to secrecy,” Buchanan said. “So hold your horses, honey, and weep.”

Temple wanted to say she was a designated police snitch, but she was sworn to secrecy on that. She stomped her foot so hard he jumped to save his patent leather slip-on shoes from danger of smudging.

“My horses say your hide is history,” she said.

At that instant the tons of teenyboppers in line recognized their fave YouTube Girl.

With a screech, a wave of them surrounded Zoe Chloe, pushing Crawford Buchanan out of the bright lights of the roving videographers.

He turned away, hunching against the sound and fury. If this were a Victorian melodrama, he’d be muttering, “Curses, foiled again!” into his mustache.

Temple was only able to ditch Zoe Chloe’s fans by signing about a hundred autographs and escaping into the maze of rehearsal, makeup, and wardrobe rooms. Major hotels could tailor-make spaces with portable walls to fit any event.

While she shook her aching right hand and wrist, she quickly toured the facilities.

Separate dressing and makeup rooms were assigned the male and female adult and junior dancers. She encountered Mariah outside the female junior rooms, along with Rafi Nadir. Temple thought Molina would cringe to see the pair camped out on metal folding chairs, chatting like buddies.

“Where’s our Glorious Leader?” Temple asked. “Liaising between the hotel and competition and media and the police people,” Rafi told her seriously. “Rotten job. And all the while playing in character as your obnoxious agent. The police are in on the joke, but they’ll never let her forget it at work later.”

“It’s so totally cool that I have an obnoxious agent,” Zoe Chloe trilled. “Mariah here can learn how to rep her ‘talent.’ ”