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 seemedboth 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.
Temple—cursed by the gift of Cassandra, the prophetno one would believe—could see that some good, and a lot of bad, would probably come from this night, this siren song, this guarded family of two that was being inexorably circled by unpredictable outside forces.
Chapter 59
An Invitation She
Can’t Refuse
“Temple.”
Matt stood speechless when she answered his knock. It wasn’t just the longish straight blonde hair
“Don’t worry. I’ll get rid of it.”
“Your eyes will wash out? Temple, they’re green. Is it some strange dietetic reaction?”
“Don’t mention dietetic reactions! One of those was murder on my last case.”
“Have I got the right unit?”
“I just forgot about the green contacts. Let me go change them. The hair will have to be redyed to my natural color, then grow out. Come in. Sit down. Hang on. I’ll be right back.”
Matt did as instructed, which left him confronting Midnight Louie and his thoroughly natural green eyes over the flimsy barrier of a throw pillow.
Other than Temple’s radical change of appearance,everything else around her place seemed the same. Seemed … normal.
She came clattering back over the hardwood floors on a pair of feminine and creative shoes. That was the same, thank goodness.
“So. How was Chicago?” she asked.
He was still speechless.
“Well?”
“I found my father.”
“Matt! No. I can’t believe it. You found out who he was, finally?”
“No. I found out who he is. Found him.”
“Found his grave, you mean?”
“No. Him. The Jonathan my mother only knew by his first name. I had to stake out the Winslow family lawyer’s office to do it. You’d have been proud of me, undercover detective.”
“But, Matt, wasn’t he supposed to be dead? My God! You’re so calm.”
“His family told my mother he was dead to get rid of her, and me. It’s all over. We met and talked. It’s pretty disconcerting to meet someone you resemble for the first time, but he’s a stranger, after all. It wasn’t his fault. His family was wealthy and controlling, which goes together all too often. They high-handedly rearranged his life too.”
“I can’t believe it.”