Cat In A Topaz Tango

“It was one of those guns and drug cases where everybody was so guilty it was hard to pin anything on anyone. The men are still fighting legal battles. Motha Jonz has been out on her own as a performer ever since, but she’s not making it. That’s why she’s on this show.”

“Someone helped fill you in on all this.”

“Leticia keeps her ear to the hip-hop underground.”

“And she told you all this?”

“She told me to watch my back around Motha Jonz. Maybe not so much because of her pearl-handled piece, but because of her former associates. If she wasn’t a perp, she was a witness.”

“God, Matt! She could have a hit out on her. You could be dancing the jive with her and playing a target at the same time. In a crowd like the audience for this, it’d be easy to take out any one of you.”

“Right. Thanks, coach, for the career advice in getting me here.”

Temple clapped both hands over her mouth.

“Lordy. I had no idea what I was sending you into gang warfare and spray tans. I’m going to have to solve this thing for Molina just to get you off the hook.”

“You need to watch your own back.”

“Zoe Chloe doesn’t have an enemy in the world, except Crawford Buchanan.”

“She’s lucky,” Matt said sourly. “That doesn’t seem to be the pattern around here.”

Pasodoble Double Cross

Sometimes the show seemed like a guided trip to Europe. If it was Tuesday, it was Spain and pasodoble night.

Temple had to choose a new Zoe Chloe wardrobe fit for an emcee role, which was getting tedious. It was hard to be a clotheshorse. Who knew how much effort pop stars must put into looking outrageous? Luckily, the show costumers were into the ZC look and welcomed her to their rack of castaways and boxes of accessories and trims.

“Red, black, and purple tonight,” Temple told them when they had attired their charges and were relaxing with sodas and cigarettes.

“Kinda Red Hat Lady-delinquent-Goth?” asked Brandi, a gamine-haired sprite who looked much younger than she was thanks to a hip wardrobe.

“Got it.”

“You seem edgy tonight, Zee,” Manda mentioned after Temple had rejected three choice looks.

“Yeah. The improvisation when things go wrong is getting to me.”

“We’re glad our deadlines are backstage.”

“How’d it go?” innocent Zee asked. “Who are your odds on tonight?”

“The pasodoble always makes or breaks the guy,” Brandi declared. “I mean, you either break hearts or break wind out there.”

While everyone giggled, Tee in Zee guise probed further.

“Which guy, then, will win?”

“José is in the zone, and the ethnic bullring,” said Yolanda. “Olé!”

“The Cloaked Conjuror will comport himself well, as usual,” the older Manda said.

“Salter is gone! History in haut cuisine.” Brandi was the group’s talker. “And wait’ll you see what we did to the blond. He is locked and loaded. All he has to do is deliver.” Her eyes rolled with wicked anticipation.

“Really?” Zee Tee squealed, hoping for more racy girly tidbits.

She was disappointed. They returned to critically eying her getup, adding a large scarlet silk rose here, pinning up her full skirt with one, judiciously ripping her fishnet hose, adding temporary tattoos and a red feather boa. One thing about Zoe Chloe Ozone. She could never be overdressed or overexposed.

Well, Zoe Chloe Ozone would certainly get a breathless play-by-play from the dancing tweens, if not the jaded young Los Hermanos Brothers who’d mastered their own dance routines. She left the costume room to hang with her crew in the greenroom.

There she found that Zoe Chloe’s “posse,” Rafi and Molina, had joined the group, next to Mariah and EK. A little parental rivalry there? She sat on the long couch between the exes, on principle, and to make someone else as uneasy as she was tonight. Rafi and Molina scooted over to avoid crowding, but wanted some whispered guidance on the night’s program.

“What’s the dance?” Rafi asked Temple.

“Pasodoble.”

“Paso what?”

“Spanish for ‘double step.’ Inspired by the bullring. Matador, cape, bull.”

“So what’s a girl doing in that dance?”

“She’s either the cape or the bull. Gets tossed around a bit. It’s a sexy, intense confrontation.”

“ ’Tossed around,’ ” Rafi repeated, looking at Molina. “Sounds like someone could get hurt.”

“Nobody’s gone after Motha Jones yet,” Molina speculated.

“Or Wandawoman.” Rafi rolled his eyes, as if he doubted anyone would.

“Or Matt,” Temple finished up.

She was still alone with her secret Temple Barr anxieties.

No way would Zoe Chloe Ozone be able to hold a mike tonight to introduce this day’s junior performer and her partner at the end of the four adult dances. Her Kool Kid palms were oil-slick before even the first adult performer had been introduced in the overdone fashion of Crawford Buchanan.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Crawford’s deep baritone oozed into the mike, amplified all through the set and the live audience and the greenroom.

“Crawford Buchanan is da bomb!” Meg-Ann declared.

“Da stink bomb!” Sou-Sou trilled, trying to ditch her prima donna image.