Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  “Mira won’t be off her shift until midnight. How did it go?”

  “It didn’t.”

  “You look horrible.”

  “From you, that’s a new one.”

  “I mean you look like you’ve been through it.”

  “Imagine brokering a truce between Israel and Palestine.”

  “That bad? I made some hot tea.”

  “Like I need caffeine.”

  “I’ve never seen you testy before.”

  “She didn’t want to see him and I had to tell him afterward.”

  “Testy on you is not bad, mind you.”

  Matt wasn’t too emotionally exhausted to smile, which she’d wanted to make him do. Among other things. He couldn’t encourage her hopeless crush, but he knew a lot more about longing and forbidden love and all that sticky emotional stuff now than he’d known the first time they’d met last Christmas. He had to respect her feelings even as he had to discourage them. Had to clear the decks for the real guy who was waiting for her somewhere down the road to maturity.

  “Krys. Mom’s going to be coming home very soon and I don’t want to go into anything deep now. I’d like to be safe in my room, totally out of it.”

  “That could be arranged.”

  “Krys. No. You’re a sweet, funny girl but not my girl. This is way out of your league.”

  “No, it isn’t. It looks like it’s about them—him and her—but it’s about you. You’re in the middle. I don’t care how smart you are, or how cool you act, or how … shrinky. It’s gotta be awful.”

  He took the cup of tea she held out. “Herbal,” she told him, sounding like a nurse. “Won’t get on your nerves, like I do.”

  He had to smile. Again.

  But he was glad to be leaving Chicago tomorrow.

  Chapter 58

  Showdown

  Mariah searched the audience. The spotlights had panned earlier on Molina and escort in row five, beaming. Well, Molina was actually smiling. The guy with her had the quizzical expression of a classic observer.

  “Mom!” Mariah ran to join her in the audience now that the swirl of excitement was over. Mariah had lost but so had Elvis. Not bad company.

  A vapid blonde had won Temple’s erstwhile division, and a younger vapid blonde had won Mariah’s. They’d both applauded politely, and whispered “wicked” at each other, then giggled.

  Temple glanced out of the corner of her eye at Rafi Nadir. He was watching the Molina family reunion with the slow-mo reaction of Tommy Smothers trying to come up with the right answer for his brother, Dick. Wheels turning, mired in alternatives, searching for the one, the right answer.

  With the Smothers Brothers it was high comedy. With Rafi Nadir and Carmen and Mariah Molina it could be high tragedy.

  Temple felt her neck and shoulder muscles clench. Nothing a knowledgeable PR ace could do about this kind of crisis.

  Molina never acknowledged Nadir’s presence, existence, anything about him.

  Temple could read the pantomime in the impromptu family vignette arranged for the cameras: Larry, the new guy, scooted down so Mariah could sit by her mother, who was making all the proud and proper maternal motions. Larry was leaving the spotlight—and the television coverage, Temple noticed—to mother and daughter. Was that sensitivity … or a need to avoid being recognized?

  She eyed Nadir again. Still mentally doing the math, trying to figure out when Mariah must have been born … impossible to calculate without her birth date.

  Temple bet he would get it somehow, as soon as possible. Molina had ducked the inevitable tonight, partly through the strategy of her new male escort … was he hired muscle? Something about him read “professional” along with “don’t tread on me.”

  Temple waited until the spotlight and camera lens had moved on to the next performer before skittering over to congratulate Mariah in a whisper.

  “ … great,” Molina was whispering to Mariah. “Listen. I think you’re old enough now. There’s something you should know.”

  Molina spied Temple and stopped talking, darn it!

  Temple leaned down and hugged Mariah. “Great job on the song. Sorry you didn’t win.”

  “Wow. I feel like I have. Mom, Temple has been just the best roomie in the whole world.”

  “Apparently, you’re not the only one who thinks so,” Molina responded. Mariah missed the sardonic tone, and the veiled reference to Max Kinsella. “She certainly delivered when it came to crisis control. Let’s all go out and celebrate. No, don’t slink away, Miss Barr. You too, ‘roomie.’ Larry can take you girls in his car and I’ll run ahead and get things ready.

  “First I have to settle the hash of the creep behind all the nasty pranks on the set.”

  “You’ve got him?” Temple asked.

  “My excellent undercover officers.” Molina looked a bit uneasy. “They found incriminating materials in his camera bag but it seems he hated cats as well as women.”

  “Often goes together,” Temple said. “Both can be independent.”

  Molina sighed at her political comment.

  “Whatever.” She paused, then grimaced and plunged ahead with the apparently galling facts. “Seemed he tried to kick a couple of Persians out of his way during the mass exodus. My guys were already looking to grab him, but they found him pinned to the latticework wall beside the pool by a pair of rabid black cats and Savannah Ashleigh. I think she broke every artificial nail on her fingers clawing tread marks into his face. The arresting black cats, being shorter, went for tender parts lower down. We don’t have to worry about getting a confession.”

  “Gross. But what’s the big secret about tonight?” Mariah was finally coming down from her performance afterglow and tuning into her mother’s strange comment.

  “You’ll find out soon,” Molina said. “If Hollywood doesn’t come calling right away, we can leave.”

  “Oh, Mom. I knew I wasn’t gonna win. But who needs to?”

  “That’s a very mature attitude, Mariah.”

  “Who needs to be a stupid ‘Tween Queen? I’m going for American Idol next.”

  Molina speechless was a sight to behold. “We’ll see,” was all she could come up with.

  Temple tried to slip away. “Stay,” Molina said. “Sit,” Molina said next.

  They were commands you gave to a dog, but Temple decided she would be magnanimous and not ruin Mariah’s big night. Poor kid. She was about to learn the bodyguard at the competition was her daddy.

  Molina had more guts than Temple gave her credit for.

  Larry winked as he moved over to give Temple his seat, as if guessing every turn of her internal debate.

  After the closing hoopla was over, Kit came running up to them.

  “Fabulous job, girls! Of course you both earned my top honors and should have won your divisions but that cretin Dexter was fixated on boob size and that tipped the balance, excuse the expression. I am so disgusted. The other judges and I are making protests but frankly without Elvis—I mean just by the numbers—we’re not likely to make anybody listen. The cameramen and producers are fixated on boob size too.”

  Her effusions stopped as she regarded Temple. “Ah, a limo service has arrived to convey me back to my hotel, but the vehicle seems rather crowded by individuals and accessories of purely Italian manufacture. Am I going to get ‘taken for a ride’ out into the desert, or what?”

  Temple grinned. “I see the fabulous Fontana Brothers have arrived. You may recall my mentioning them to you.”

  “Yes, I do. And they are as collectively cute as a silencer on a Beretta, but is going with them safe?”

  “I don’t know, Aunt. Do you particularly care?”

  “You’re so right. I’ll take two aspirin and call you in the morning.” She was off on her high-heeled Blahnik slides. Off to see the Wizards of Las Vegas. Wicked!

  “I don’t get it,” Mariah said. “They sent her multiple limousine drivers?”

  “It’s a very long stretch li
mo. Let’s blow this crooked contest, kid.”

  Mariah and Temple/Xoe left in turn as the crowd shuffled out. No easy way for Rafi Nadir to fight the flow and reach them, though Temple knew he could if he wanted to.

  But she never saw him again, not even when she and Mariah stood under the porte cochere and waited for Larry and whatever kind of car he was driving.

  “Good job,” she told Mariah again. “Your mother nearly flipped when you sang that song.”

  “She liked it? I couldn’t see with all those lights.”

  “She loved it. And I did too.”

  “It didn’t win me anything though.”

  “How about your mother’s confidence? That’s a hard thing to get when you’re thirteen to nineteen. Trust me. Been there, haven’t done that yet.”

  “Your mother doesn’t have faith in you?”

  “Yeah, sure, in a general way. But mothers have a hard time trusting that you’ll hang with a decent crowd at school, or wear non-slutty makeup and clothes, or lock your car doors when you’re driving alone at night.”

  “I don’t have to worry about that driving thing for three years, remember. You’re the one who harped on it.”

  “Right.”

  “So your mother still doesn’t really trust you. And you’re … ancient.”

  “That’s true. My mother doesn’t entirely trust my judgment and I’m ancient.”

  “It’s not us then, it’s our ‘judgment.’”

  “Right. They think any hunky guy can send it out the window.”

  “My mom thinks your hunky guy should go out the window. I know that.”

  “She’s not my mom, thank goodness. The one I have already is enough.”

  “What do you think of that Larry guy?”

  “Too soon to tell. What do you think of him?”

  “I can’t believe she’s, like, dating him. I’ve never seen her date anyone. Is that what she wants to tell me, the secret, do you suppose?”

  “Too soon to tell.” Temple felt like a skunk for ducking the issue, but this really was just between mother and daughter.

  A black Jeep Cherokee pulled up. Larry’s angular face caught the wall-mounted torch light as he leaned over to open the passenger door.

  Mariah hopped into the back seat, leaving Temple to scramble up into the SUV passenger seat in her tight skirt and heels.

  Larry gave her one of those quick assessing male looks that said he wasn’t displeased but not personally interested. Maybe Molina had hit paydirt.

  Temple looked around, hard, before they took off. Rafi Nadir was nowhere in sight.

  Now why did that scare the living shih tzu out of her?

  They ended up in the Blue Dahlia parking lot.

  Temple gave Larry a warning look when he came around to help her and Mariah out of the Jeep.

  He shrugged at Temple and gave Mariah a reassuring grin. “That was a world-class performance, kiddo. You’ve got a ripe set of pipes.”

  Temple scanned the parking lot for signs of Rafi Nadir. That was the trouble. If he was here, there would be some.

  “You always this nervous?” Larry asked with a quick whisper.

  “We did just come from a murderer-grabbing scene.”

  “History. I have a feeling you don’t dwell on it. Neither do I. What else is bothering you?”

  “Nothing.”

  He laughed. “Women are the best little stonewallers in the business. And we guys call you the weaker sex.”

  Temple eyed Mariah nervously. She’d been through a lot, plus the poor kid was half-starved.

  “It’s their business,” Larry warned.

  “True, but why do I feel you’re butting into it?”

  He laughed again. “You’re one sharp cookie, aren’t you?” His hand on her elbow was custodial as he steered her inside behind Mariah’s happy jazz steps as she took in the artsy neon and the bluesy adult facade of the Blue Dahlia.

  It was the kind of place Travis McGee would boogie into without a regret.

  Temple hoped that more modern folk of the female persuasion wouldn’t regard it as a hothouse of worse things than mere regret.

  “This place is so cool!”

  Mariah eyed the cocktails on the surrounding tables, the all-adult clientele.

  She was feeling thirteen-going-on-thirty tonight, an emotion Temple remembered well.

  So this was the secret Molina was going to unveil. A small, glamorous secret to start with, before the main course, which was large, hard to swallow, and indigestible.

  Temple had become close enough to Mariah during their days as faux roommates to feel her stomach churning with anxiety. What if her own mother had revealed a hidden past as a … belly dancer! How would Temple, age thirteen, have reacted?

  She couldn’t be certain, but not with unbridled joy, for sure. Oh, Mother! The breed was so embarrassing to begin with. What if Mariah found Carmen laughable? Temple felt herself cringing for the risk Molina was taking, then thought of the bigger one she’d have to take later.

  “How long have you known Molina?” Larry asked her after ordering a Shirley Temple for Mariah and a half-bottle of pink zinfandel for them.

  “Too long and not enough.”

  “My feelings exactly. She isn’t easy.”

  “Why should she be?”

  “Right. I’m not either.”

  “What are you, then?”

  He glanced at Mariah to make sure that she was busy eavesdropping on the sophisticated blues lovers at the other tables, and the sophisticated lovers, period. The Blue Dahlia was a favorite trysting place. Carmen’s torch songs were music to make semipublic love by.

  “I carry a shield, like you didn’t know,” Larry said, way too laidback for a man in blue.

  Temple didn’t doubt him. This was a cop but an unconventional cop. The combination was intriguing and, she sensed, dangerous. She hoped Molina knew what she was doing.

  The jazz trio ended a riff. There was a moment of transition. Were they going to take a break? Or not?

  Not. Carmen merged with the narrow velvet curtains behind the instrumentalists, then passed through, blue velvet fog in motion.

  She was at the lone stool, mike in hand, like smoke in a mirror. Not there, and then there, etched irrevocably.

  Mariah’s jaw dropped before the first low, minor notes of “The Man I Love” escaped her mother’s lips.

  Everything about Molina that was larger than life and downright intimidating in reality became cinematic and dramatic on a musical club set.

  It was intimacy writ large. The microphone seemed an accessory after the fact to her true, husky voice, both bel canto and hip.

  She wove a vocal spell. The dignified sheen of vintage forties blue velvet that made femininity into a sculpted, strong icon was part of that spell. Women had seemed both sturdy and sexy then, part of the war effort maybe. Rosie the Riveter as Venus de Milo.

  It was hard for Temple to credit this view of womanhood, her being so small and so often underestimated because of it. But … hey, the goddess/Amazon type never died.

  “That’s my mom,” Mariah breathed.

  “Yup.”Larry.

  Boy, men were inarticulate about feelings!

  “Yeah,” Temple told Mariah. “Quite a set of pipes. I don’t think anyone knows about this now, besides us.”

  Mariah sat back, a troubled expression on her face. “Why’d she keep it a secret?”

  “Imagine what the guys at work would say? What would the boys at school say about you? Miss ‘Tween Queen singer/hip-hop heroine/beauty queen?”

  “Oh. Not good. I don’t get it. We’re supposed to be pretty and talented and we’re supposed to be … no competition.”

  “You got it. That’s right. Doesn’t make sense. Guys often don’t.”

  “Then why do we bother with them?”

  “You gotta answer that one for yourself.”

  Mariah regarded Larry.

  “What?” He sounded defensive.

>   “You don’t look worth much.”

  “Appearances are deceiving. Look. I’m your mother’s biggest fan. She’s good, isn’t she?”

  “Yeah. She is. Is that why you like her?”

  “Right.” He high-fived her.

  Temple watched Mariah ratchet another puzzle piece of life into place. This had been a busy week for her.

  Something was disturbing here though. Molina had left the real secret, Mariah’s father, securely closeted. Temple had assumed that was the thing Mariah was “old enough to know” now. Apparently not. Apparently Molina could be as much of a coward as the next woman, if the right stakes were involved.

  And then, at the mike, Molina/Carmen sat back on the stool. She nodded at the instrumentalists and segued, a capella, into “Mariah.”

  She sang it low and slow. It wasn’t nightclub fodder. It was a musical-stage number, dramatic and mock Western. It wasn’t urban, it wasn’t hip but it was powerful and it was pure torch song in its dark, contralto melody, meant for a man to sing, with unexpected hints of tenor, or tender soprano in this case.

  The song started “way out here.” The frontier. The urban edge. The selvage of self. The rain had a name. Tess. It hissed. The fire had a name. Jo. It spat. The wind was something else. More than monosyllabic. The wind was a woman named Mariah. Mah-rye-ah. This woman turned the stars around and made the trees sigh and whine. This woman wind was an icon for “only” and “lonely.”

  Molina’s voice made the wind mourn, made loss a sustained note, made the word “Mariah” into the most beautiful elongated three syllables in the English language.

  Temple, caught up in the exquisite beauty of the styling, still managed to gauge the reactions around her. She was a PR woman; she always took a room’s ambient temperature.

  Mariah, herself, was enraptured by the poetry of her name, which she really understood for the first time.

  Larry. Larry was no doubt enamored by the artistry of the woman he escorted, but was there more than that to his sudden pursuit of Molina?

  Temple sat by herself, moved but measuring, sensing, understanding. A siren had sung, momentarily throwing off her human guise. Each person here had heard a different song.