Cat In A Topaz Tango

“Who would hate a chef?” she mused. “Other than his kitchen staff?”

“Keith Salter? Plenty. He had that reality TV show, Butcher’s Holler, where he anonymously ate at restaurants all over the country and then tore the menu, food, and service apart.”

“Could Keith Salter be why Dancing With the Celebs had death threats before it even aired? Everybody in Vegas would figure the Cloaked Conjuror for the target. He’s had local death threats since he opened his Goliath show exposing the other magicians’ stage tricks. That might have led the authorities astray. It could be someone from out of town, following Keith to kill him.”

“You think like Agatha Christie,” Matt said. “Now that I rethink it, Keith could have been scared, not just a snob. He didn’t have much to do with the rest of us.”

“What are ‘the rest of you’ like?”

“José has the drive and dedication of an Olympic athlete. If I’ve got a rival in this thing, it’s him. But he’s fanatic about winning, and I’m not. I lack his Latin fire, but I have a certain ease of self and lightness of heart he could never master. I mystify him. I suppose I’m the most laid-back of all the contestants. I don’t have anything to prove. Keith must, or he’d have never made a career out of exposing and disparaging his peers. The Cloaked Conjuror has given up fellowship with his peers for im mense amounts of money, but has to endure anonymity and hatred, the worst of both worlds.”

“Hmm. Incisively put. I think I’ll keep you. What about the male and female dance pros who train you?”

“They’re doing this because all dancers wear out their bodies in a few years. Founding a studio and teaching and doing choreography is the next stage in their impassioned careers. And they are impassioned about their art form. I get that. I get the dedication of a true vocation. That’s why the kids’ competition is important. Start young, make hay while your legs last, or forget it. Olympic performers have that same pressure. Chefs and ex-priest radio shrinks, not so much.”

Matt finished with a self-deprecating grin.

“And the women?” she asked, astonished by his insights.

“I don’t share a dressing room with them. Only you.” His voice had lowered on the last two words, and an intimacy break was definitely in order.

“I’m glad you came,” Matt whispered as they took a breather.

She decided not to comment on the double entrendre. Zoe Chloe Ozone had been hired to be a G-rated act.

“The women,” Matt said, now fully cerebral, lying back again and staring at the white ceiling. “I really enjoy dancing with Olivia. She feels she has a lot to prove, works hard, and I like helping her look good. Neat lady. Dotes on her grandchildren. Pretty amazing for an aging femme fatale on the soaps. She knows she’s an anachronism, but loves her work. Maybe it’s just a job for her now, but she has her pride and she needs the income. The soaps are dying. Not Olivia.”

“You made her look twenty-eight tonight.” “She made me dance like I was still twenty-eight. Olivia made Olivia happen. She’s a pro.”

“Glory B.”

“Makes you want to hug her sane. So much talent. So much pain. She knows she’s almost totally blown her career, and is so scared she rushes to the one real worst thing to do like a lemming to a cliff. I’d like sixty counseling hours with her, but I only get a few hours of rehearsals.”

“She was the first one hurt in rehearsal.”

“Maybe a real accident? She’s accident-prone. Look at her driving. I honestly think she’s been driven so hard since her TV commercial days at ages six and seven that her body and mind haven’t kept up with the career push. She works harder than Olivia, and it’s harder on her. And she’s only sixteen.”

“Motha Jonz?”

“I haven’t worked with her yet.”

“Not a clue?”

He shook his head. “That hip-hop, gangsta, drug and glitz world is so alien to me. The materialism outdoes the greedy corporate executives. I don’t see where women fit there, except as victims. Motha Jonz’s ‘man’ was gunned down in Vegas by any of a dozen so-called record executives, rappers, media ‘starz.’ It’s its own little gold-weighed-down, diamond-ear-studded, fancy-ride-driven alternative universe.”

“She was literally caught in the crossfire when D’mond J supposedly offed QuE2 here in Vegas a couple years ago.”

“I looked it up before I came to this competition. She was riding on the passenger side in the back of D’Mond’s limo. She was found to be carrying a pearl-and-diamond-handled .22 pistol, like something out of the musical Chicago. A messenger boy, just a teen, white, was shot and killed in the exchange of bullets. The bullet went right through and was never found. She might be a murderer. She certainly was hooked on drugs then.”

“The authorities didn’t settle this case?”