Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit (10 page)

Not that she had an insecure man in mind when she re
jected heels. She just had an insecure woman in mind,
who had minded these things since the eighth grade.

“Shoe department:' Temple said in a threatening tone.

Actually, it had been an anticipating tone but Molina found that threatening.

There, Molina held her ground. She would not wear so much as an inch-and-a-half-high heel.

Mariah, trying on every tarty spike she could find, pled
with her. It was sad to see how much a teen girl wanted a glamorous mother. Molina almost caved.

Except that Temple, of all people, gently praised and prodded Mariah into demure slides with small, low heels.

“
She's too heavy for those spikes," Temple commented
as Mariah pranced before the mirrors in her petite
princess shoes, feminine to the max. "Maybe later, when the baby fat goes."

“You don't want me to wear them?"

“
Carmen's vintage platform forties heels, with all
those industrial-strength straps, scream sturdy as much as
sexy. They're fine on someone of your height. But these stilettos aren't. You'd wobble. And I bet you'd hate to wobble. High heels should look able to support their wearer."

“
I'm amazed. You make shoe selection sound like an
art form."

“It is." Temple frowned at Molina's size nine feet. "I'd like to see a tiny heel, but since you won't have it. . . .”

She darted away like a dragonfly with no credit card limit.

Moments later she returned with an utterly flat shoe, a thong sandal with a beaded triangle over the instep that perfectly matched the shawl.

Like a dragonfly, the improbable sandal reflected the light.

“Oh, Mom, that's perfect," Mariah pleaded.

Mariah wanted her to sparkle because then that meant she could too. Like mother, like daughter.

Molina bought the dragonfly sandals, not sure whom they would remind her of more—Mariah the would-be
Cinderella, or TempleBarr, the reluctant fairy godmother.

Later, she and her daughter celebrated their first mutual girly occasion (for Molina, it was her very first girly occasion): they whisked out their purchases in the living
room, while Caterina and Tabitha gamboled on fallen
pieces of colorful tissue.

“
This is so cool, Mom. Thank you! I know I can win.”

“
It doesn't matter if you win. It matters if you have
fun, keep your head, and . . . stay safe."

“Temple is so cool." Mariah, head bent, held up some ridiculous glitzy top to her underdeveloped breasts. "She hardly acts like an old person at all."

“I really hope so, honey.”

Mariah looked up, catching her change in tone. "Because we three have a secret, and it'll be up to you to help carry it off.”

And then she told Mariah that Temple was working undercover to trap a potential perp, and Mariah would have to help her carry off the masquerade.

Mariah the cop's kid looked even more amazed and happy than Mariah the potential 'Tween Queen.

Chapter 10

Louie Goes
Ape

What has happened to my dear little roomie, Miss
Temple
?

She was always a spirited, happy little human.

She always got a kick out of life and having a hu
mongous high-heel collection. She was perky but not
sappy. Full of mischief but not slaphappy. Upbeat but not nauseating. Cute as a ladybug but not too girly to
rock and roll.

Now she has done a complete turnaround.

I watch her upend about a zillion shopping bags on
the bed I have honored with my reclining presence.

I am adrift in a blizzard of mall-style plastic . . . the
Gap, Victoria's Secret, The Icing, et cetera. She has
been on a shopping spree wild enough to smother me
had I not beaten off a rain of plastic bags with the
Ginsu knife shivs so conveniently attached to my ex
tremities.

“
Oh, sorry, Louie," she remarks offhandedly, trying
on a faux-leather bustier over her faux-front gel cups in the full-length mirror on the wall.

I am used to seeing my MissTemple in a state of un
dress, due to our intimate relationship in the bedroom,
i.e., we share my king-size bed.

I am not used to seeing assorted tattoos and rings on her upper arms, ankle, neck, and the . . . gasp, small of her back, which is pretty small, her being a Lilliputian human.

When did she go berserk at a piercing parlor without consulting me, I would like to know! Obviously, I have been derelict in my duty of shepherding her through life as we know it in Las Vegas.

When she pulls out the Cher wig and tugs it on over
her own tortie-red curls, I know I have to take action.

She turns from the mirror, looking like something
from the back of a squad car on
Cops,
the first and most-forgotten reality TV show.

I am aghast to see that her eyes are as vibrantly
green as mine ... then I realize that she has borrowed
Mr. Max's performing trick: green contact lenses for that mesmerizing gaze. Trouble is, it works on cats and magicians but I am not sure it works for my MissTemple.

“Well, Louie, do I look like a reconstruction project?”

She looks like an escapee from the city pound, espe
cially with that rhinestone dog collar around her neck.

“Am I ready to take on the world of reality TV?”

Hmmm,
I already observed that she looked like an escapee from
Cops.

“
Am I post-'Tween Queen in the making?”

'Tween tweezings,
I think to myself. Not to mention a ripe candidate for brain implants.

“
Do I look sweet, swingin' nineteen going on Goth
thirty?”

Goth? As in I "goth" to get outa here?

I take my own advice and retreat to the outer room
but resolve to keep a very close eye on her from this moment on.

Chapter 11

Good Golly,

Miss Goth Girl

The mall was mobbed with 'tween girls from just-thirteen to a tarty fifteen. And a few good legally blonde bimbos from sixteen to nineteen. The decibel level in the vaulted central atrium suggested a jungle of screeching parrots.

Temple
had never seen so much metallic and iridescent
nail polish, so many spandex capris, thong flipflops, and belly buttons in one place since a Britney Spears concert. And she'd never seen a Britney Spears concert except in TV commercials.

Temple
glimpsed a shadow of herself in a Gap display
window. It took her a moment to pick herself out from the
crowd. She couldn't believe she was doing this: standing in line, hiding her hair, and showing her belly button.

This was the screwiest self-marketing job she'd ever done. She'd decided that the subject of a TV makeover
show should require some major makeover, plus. And she
needed to disguise herself enough to fool any possible acquaintances, so . . .

She craned her neck to see if her little buddy—or was that "budette" in this case?—was anywhere around. But Mariah was not here. No. The Molina kid had made the smart move. Applied early. Before the humiliating cattle call. Mariah was less than half Temple's age, and she was already a finalist, a contender. Temple was a raw recruit.

Temple, aka Xoe Chloe—"pronounced just `Zoey
Chloey,' or `Chloey Zoey' if you like that better," she'd
told the babe with the clipboard collecting their applica
tion forms—stared down the endless line forward, and
then back along the endless line backward.

It felt creepily like instant aging in a horror movie to be
bracketed by so many
genuine
tender young things. Skin creamy as a SouthBeach diet ricotta cheese dessert. Zits,
yes, but young, plump, cherry-colored zits, almost beauty
marks, not the occasional pale pink spot staking a pallid postdated claim on the shoulder blade of thirty years' duration.

Well, she had the right shoes. A girl could do anything with the right shoes: go to the ball, leave Oz, shave a decade or so off her age. Temple stared at her Heavy Metal Hot Pink Funk–painted toenails in their red rhinestone slides. Excellent color clash. The toe rings added a nice trashy touch. Her feet alone demanded a serious redo.

Then there was the black, straight-haired Cher wig
from the singer's Cleopatra period. Las Vegas had wig shops galore filled with celebrity dos. Even Temple was amazed by how totally a redhead with short curly hair
could vanish behind glossy dark eyebrow-length bangs
and shoulder blade–brushing strands of thick black. A Maybelline black eyebrow pencil covered the last of Temple's natural coloring. Any freckles disappeared under pale foundation and dead-white face powder accou- tered with assorted magnetic studs and rings at eyebrow, nose, and lip, adding a modern touch to the Queen of the Nile. And she hadn't forgotten the belly button ring, clip-on. She was a fraud from sole to poll.

Except for her long painted fingernails, each one a
color of the rainbow. They were real under that lacquer.

When she'd given her remade self a once-over in the bedroom mirror, for a surreal moment she was struck by the fact that she almost resembled the black-haired, rice-powdered persona of the evil she-magician, Shangri-La, who had kidnapped Temple and Midnight Louie months before. Now Shangri-La was missing in action and Temple was,
ta-dah,
suddenly a black-haired teen bad girl.
Think the twisted slayer Faith on
Buffy, the Vampire
Slayer.

But that was then, and this was now. Temple shuffled forward in the line. Her feet were killing her. Normally
wimpy little inch-and-a-half heels wouldn't bother her.
But she was used to flying around, on the job. Standing, shuffling, on these aggregate-stone mall floors. Killer!

She clutched the sheet she'd filled out in tilted block letters with the i's carefully topped by circles as fat as a cartoon dialogue balloon. Favorite hunk. Favorite punk band. Favorite junk food. Favorite class to skip. Favorite cosmetic. Favorite fast food.

She peered around the snaking line of bare shoulders
and barely covered rears. Oh, at last! She glimpsed a
long table at which people actually sat. They must be the interviewers, the
American Idol–style
judges who would say yea or neigh.

Nay! This was not a horse race.
This was an empowering opportunity for today's savvy young women.
Was she quoting the TV show propaganda, or what?

Stand. Shuffle. Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle. Stand.

Behind her, someone snapped her gum. A nauseous
odor of banana-strawberry almost put Temple down forthe count. A woman of thirty ought never have to smell that again!

Suddenly . . . open air ahead of her. A table clothed in
linen to the floor. Four adult humans sitting behind it. All
looking at her.

Four maybe-human adults . . .

Because one of them was (gasp!) Savannah Ashleigh, fading film starlet and an acquaintance.

Another was (gasp!) a very ripe Elvis impersonator,
big and bellied, complete with tinted aviator sunglasses, long, dark caterpillar-fuzzy sideburns, neck scarf, glitzy white jumpsuit and more knuckle-buster diamond rings than Liberace. Well, she supposed Elvis had been an expert on teenage girls, including his almost-child bride, Priscilla.

Another was (double gasp)—once you're thinking in terms of cartoon bubbles you're lost—her very own maternal aunt, Kit Carlson, aka the romance novelist Sulah
Savage!!! What was she doing here, all the way from New
York City
?