Cat In A Topaz Tango

CC was still wearing a mask! A celebrity one. He was the spitting image of that Dancing With the Stars Las Vegas favorite: Wayne Newton. He had revealed nothing but another entertainer’s iconic persona.

Applause broke out for the clever conceit and the costumers who’d accomplished it.

Which meant that many had missed Motha Jonz’s equally inspired transformation. Until now Motha Jonz had most resembled a dreadlocked punching bag attired in overdone and glitzy flour sacks. Not any more.

Temple was clapping for that transformation from the wings.

Someone had turned Motha Jonz into a sleek cross between Queen Latifah and Catherine Zeta-Jones in the musical, Chicago. Her hip-hugging costume billowed out into salsa-hot orange ruffles at her thighs below and her shoulders above, giving the impression of a waist. Her dreadlocks were swirled into an updo that sported chrome yellow feathers and a rhinestone Spanish comb a foot high.

Her sleek lower legs and arched foot ended in four-inch platform spikes.

All of this made her look as tall and almost as thin as her partner.

The song said the Copacabana nightclub was the “hottest spot” north of Havana. As the impudent rhythmic lines of the song were sung by the show vocalists, CC and MJ circled and strutted, enacting their onstage love affair . . .

Lola had “yellow feathers in her hair.”

CC was her waiter-lover Tony, who moved from the “bar”—the beaming judges’ table . . . well, except for producer Leander Brock—to join Lola on the dance floor to court her.

The audience gasped as a third figure in black appeared at the fringes of the dance floor.

José Juarez posed there in his Zorro outfit, sans mask, cape, and sword, with a four-carat diamond ear stud. He cut in on Tony and Lola, and wrested her away in a twirl of ruffles, dragging her across the floor pasodoble style before Tony dashed in to draw her upright again.

The song lyrics said there was “blood and a single gunshot,” but only red spotlights smeared the dance floor.

The gunshot, though, was real: a sharp bark that pierced the amiable Latin beat.

The music and dance reached a crescendo.

Music and passion is always in fashion.

“But who shot who?” the lyrics asked as audience members started standing up one by one to see. The dancers froze in place.

“Lola” Motha Jonz was posed with her ruffled skirt pulled up to one hip, a tiny pearl-handled pistol lifted from a red satin garter on her fishnet-hosed thigh. Smoke wafted from the tiny silver barrel as a spotlight caught it dead-on.

Music and passion were always the fashion.

And “Rico” José lay still on the dance floor . . . .

Music and passion were always the fashion.

At the Copa, Copacabana.

Wait a minute!

Rico hadn’t fallen, as in the song. That was what was so confusing. Both men wore black, but one was bulkier.

“Tony” CC had fallen. Hard. Gracelessly. His limbs were splayed in ugly disarray.

Music and passion were always the fashion.

The audience giggled at the awkward staging.

The music stopped.

The cast froze in place.

Music and passion were always the fashion.

Lola’s shot had gone wild, which wouldn’t have mattered if she had been firing blanks as planned. If not . . .

Someone breathed “Oh, my God” over a microphone in a deep, dramatic voice, Crawford Buchanan finally getting to use his most sepulchral tone.

A man from the sidelines executed an emergency knee slide toward the fallen fencer. Rafi Nadir of all people, also all in black.

The audience actually broke into scattered, spontaneous applause.

This was all part of the show. “Wasn’t it?” they were asking each other.

For a moment Temple recalled Max’s identical knee-slide entrance on the stage of the Elvis impersonator competition at the Kingdome.

But the next onstage speedster was Danny Dove, the choreographer-judge used to handling dance floor injuries. He joined Rafi in gauging the fallen man’s condition.

Molina didn’t slide on her knees but she was there almost as fast as Danny. Her hands, gloved in latex, which went oddly with her hippie garb, snatched the toy gun from Motha Jonz’s hand.

“He’s been shot,” Rafi announced softly, pressing hard on the downed man’s upper arm. “We need a doctor!”

“Oh, my God,” Crawford Buchanan intoned again. “Commercial break, goddammit! Commercial break. What the hell?”

José and Motha Jonz, after freezing with disbelief, had edged over to the fallen man.

Temple’s close observation of the scene was rudely interrupted.

Crawford grabbed her arm and twisted her to face away from the crime scene. “Thirty seconds to the Brat Brigade. Thirty seconds until you’re on.”

Temple opened her mouth like a fish told it was headed to a sushi bar.

He shook her a little. “You are the distraction, ZC. Get yourself and your junior hoofers onstage. Now!”

Yeah, right.