Cat In A Topaz Tango

And Matt had that part knocked before he’d ever touched sole on a dance floor.

Temple was ready to burst with pride and declare him the winner in her head, when the last couple galloping around the floor took a sudden tight spin and broke apart.

Everyone in the greenroom took in a deep breath.

The camera closed in on Keith Slater, flabby white face studded with rhinestones of sweat. He broke contact with Glory B., then spun away. She automatically tried to resume a partner position, but he sank out of her grasp, writhing to the floor.

All the kids and adults in the junior greenroom were on their feet.

The camera drew back on the main stage. It showed a fallen Salter twitching horribly before Matt and the Cloaked Conjuror ran to him. The burly magician’s beastlike masked face glowered at the camera, then CC swept his ludicrous diaphanous cloak over the scene, obscuring the fallen man.

The camera panned in tight on the judges’ shocked faces . . . well, the shock showed only on Danny and Leander’s faces. Savannah Ashleigh looked merely stupefied, emphasis on stupid, and the camera caught Danny Dove in the act of vaulting over the judges’ table to get to the fallen dancer.

The producer sat as if cast in stone, in place and silent.

Crawford Buchanan, however, was stalking forward into the camera’s face, achieving a tight close-up, gloating with phony horror and all too real zest to be the center of attention.

“Oh, my gosh, ladies and gentlemen. We have another mishap. Keith Salter, celebrity chef known the world over has fallen unconscious to the floor. It is another Marie Osmond dive. Let us hope that Keith Salter has only fainted like a girl, folks. He was a bit chubby and these dances take a lot of starch out of the old pancake gut.”

Danny Dove appeared to wrest the hand mike from Crawford’s death grip.

“Mr. Salter is being attended to by medical personnel the show has standing by at all times. Break. We’re going to break,” he ordered the camera operator, “and will be back as soon as we can.”

The door to the junior greenroom burst open as a harried floor director burst in.

“Quick! We need to get back to the live broadcast with the baby dance. Who’s up tonight?”

EK stood, looking grim and fragile, as usual. Adam rose behind her, shaken.

“You two, into the wings, ready to foxtrot this crowd’s anxiety away. You. Introduce them.”

Temple recognized her outer Zoe Chloe being called to man the ramparts.

Okay. She couldn’t be any more upset and scared than her young introducees.

“Snap to it, Broadway babies,” she ordered her petrified dancing troupe of two. “We’re gonna save the show and you’re gonna foxtrot the audience to distraction.”

Rapid Recovery

Luckily, there was no time to think.

Temple was on camera clutching a mike before you could say “Midnight Louie.”

The two kids were standing behind each other in the wings off-camera.

The floor director hissed a last instruction to her, and then backed away, holding onto his headphones and pointing a silent, demanding finger at . . . Temple. Counting down with his four fingers.

Oops.

Zoe Chloe was on!

She strutted over so the camera could pan on the judges behind her.

“Here we are all in our places wearing shiny dance-mad faces. Keith Salter is doing well backstage. It looks like a touch of stomach flu for the famous chef, folks. All that hip-hopping about is hard on the duodenum.

“Meanwhile, we have to ask . . . just what can a pair of these junior dancers do with that most fabulous, flying squirrel of a dance called the foxtrot? So here we have the youngest and, oh my, cutest—an eleven on the Zoe Chloe one-to-ten hot guy meter—Los Hermanos Brother, Adam. We have the lightest-on-her-feet girl squirrel and you have a heap of hype and entertainment comin’ your way . . . Miss Ekaterina and the Sole Brother Hipster on the q.t. doing the quickest hot crossed biscuit step you ever saw. Gentlemen, waggle your Adam’s apples, and ladies, put your hands together for Adam and EK!”

Temple breathed her relief to see the red light of the active camera wink out, taking her out of the picture.

Crawford sidled up. “That bastard judge stole my thunder, but I see that you still have a little lightning left, ZC. Now give me that mike.”

“Not until somebody else tells me to,” ZC. gritted between smiling teeth.

You never knew what camera might be on, and on you, on a panic-stricken set.

Behind the curtained area, she heard the flurry of Keith Salter being loaded onto a gurney and rolled out by EMTs. Not a good sign.

Who would have it in for a chef, for heaven’s sake? Crawford Buchanan she could get. Uh, get that someone might have it in for him. Not “get” personally, as take revenge on.

Although . . .