“Only the back parts the other can’t reach,” Gypsy said. “Twins make it handy. And we have to leave a discreet spot blank. Otherwise our entire skins would be covered and we’d—what’s that word, June?”
“Asphyxiate.”
“We’d crack.”
“Ghastly, but the effect is phenomenal,” Temple said. “You look like duplicate Greek statues... even your hair is gold and glittery. I can leave—”
“Don’t!” June’s voice sounded a bit panicky. “Maybe you can settle an argument for us.”
“You argue?”
“Not often,” Gypsy said proudly. “But this time June’s being a stick-in-the-mud.”
“You’re the one who wants to blow our whole act.”
Temple sat up straighter, despite her fatigue, as befits an arbiter. PR people are problem solvers, first and foremost. “What’s the matter?”
Gypsy sighed and sat down, first checking to insure that her derriere left no gilded imprint on the chair seat. Temple was relieved. With June still standing, she had a foolproof way to tell them apart.
“It’s about coming out of the closet,” Gypsy said.
“The closet,” Temple repeated numbly. They were gay and in love with each other? Bizarro.
“No, it isn’t that,” June snapped. “Gypsy’s got it all wrong. She invited Dad to the competition Saturday without telling me, even sent him a plane ticket. Can you imagine? Our parents don’t know anything about... all this.”
June’s wide-armed gesture showed off more than the aura of the dressing room.
“I see,” Temple said.
“No, you don’t,” the seated Gypsy argued. “Neither does June. It’s a statement. Our father needs to confront our lives.”
“What’s to confront?” June asked. “We dance nearly naked, and are damn good at it. We make a nice bit of money.”
“I want him to come to the competition.”
“I don’t!”
“He has to see what he did.”
“Gypsy! You’re not reviving that crazy story again.”
“It’s not crazy. I’m not crazy. It’s true.”
“Dad never touched me.”
“He did me. Plenty.”
Temple felt a cold chill in her stomach as she realized exactly what issue was tearing the single-minded twins’ unanimity apart. Beneath their pert manners, their fit, agile forms and the glamorous gilt, lay an ancient rot.
“Why would he?” June demanded. “We always had everything the same. Same teachers, same clothes, same food, same sicknesses. Why would Dad mess with you and not me?” She almost sounded jealous.
“I don’t know!” Emotion made Gypsy’s voice tremble. “Maybe because doing it to only one of us would cause twice the pain. That’s why I invited him. To see us both.”
“Gypsy! Mom will know.”
“Maybe Mom should know. Maybe Mom always knew what our father did.”
June turned to Temple. “She’s crazy! Isn’t she?”
“She’s your sister,” Temple answered. “Do you think so?”
Her calm took the edge off of June’s anger. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Nobody’s closer to me than my sister. How could I not know—how could she not tell me all these years?”
“Shame,” Temple said.
“June.” Gypsy reached a tentative, golden arm out for her sister, like Yvette batting at a fringe. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“But you’ll hurt Dad.”
“I’ll make him see.”
“See what?”
Good question, Temple thought. Was the child Gypsy secretly eager to perform for her molesting father? Did she crave his attention and arousal despite herself? Is that why she stripped, to tease the other men in her audience who could see and not touch? Or did she want revenge, to taunt their father with the fact that she was now a woman with a sexuality he could no longer control? Did she want to show that she had dragged the unknowing June into her own need for exhibitionism that his sickness had caused?
“What will he see?” Temple asked, echoing June.
“What we are,” Gypsy said. “What we became. What he did to us. And that he can’t do it anymore.”
“Us,” June repeated. “You said it was just you.”
Gypsy sighed. “It was never just me, Junie. It was all of us. It’s what our father did to all of us.”
“Maybe we won’t make the Saturday finals,” June suggested almost hopefully.
“We always do,” Gypsy answered.
Our Father, Temple concluded, was definitely not in Heaven. Nor would he be, if he came to the competition Saturday night.
23
Nursery Crimes
It was a good thing Temple was not a Supreme Court Justice.
She had advised the Gold Dust Twins to see a counselor together, and then consider family counseling. Not a judgment of Solomon that cleaved to the heart of the matter, but a waffling, trendy modem way to deal with a form of human grief as old as Sophocles and Oedipus. She had then left.
“I thought you were headed home an hour ago.”
At the words, Temple came to a dead, guilty halt while skirting the Goliath’s Caravanserai Lounge on the way out. Molina’s voice was right behind her, the law’s long arm apparently had at last extended its reach beyond the ballroom.
She turned. “Ah, I needed a drink first.”
“You’d have been better off if you’d actually had one,” Molina noted sourly. “Don’t you know when to quit?”
“I was just leaving now. Honest.”
“Good. Rest assured that I will call you,” Molina added with sweet sarcasm, “in case there are any major breaks in the case that you should know about. Now get outa here.”
Temple hated to turn tail, but her energy was at its end. A chorus of aches and pains from her eyebrows to her knees had reached fever pitch.
Still, she felt like an AWOL from the French Foreign Legion as she dragged herself and her heavy tote bag through the clustered tables. Besides, the ambience had choked her. The color and confusion of readying a show made her homesick for the theater. She hated it when frailties kept her from the thick of things. Imagine how many clues were floating around this mob, just waiting for an agile intelligence to pick them up....
The sound of intense voices broke into her reverie. Two women stood at the cocktail tables that had been drafted as the competition’s field desk while the ballroom was unavailable. One of the women was Lindy, scanning a sheet of paper and smoking up a storm. A second woman, whose black iridescent hair matched her iridescent black-leather motorcycle jacket, was giving her the hard sell.
“—just blew into town,” the woman, who looked quite ordinary to Temple among this crowd, was saying. She hadn’t removed her sunglasses. Temple wondered if she had any unsightly bruises to hide.
“It’s awfully late to enter,” Lindy objected.
“Any rules against it?”
“Not exactly—”
“Not exactly means no. When can I get into the rehearsal room?”
“That depends on the police.”
“Say, hotel security is getting awful tight.”
“It’s not that,” Lindy said, saying no more.
Temple trudged past the pair, amazed by contestants who would stop at nothing and even pay for the privilege of baring their bottoms. The bizarre conversation followed her like faint and argumentative rap music.
“Your stage pretty strong?” the new contestant was asking.
“You don’t weigh that much, honey.”
“Thanks, but it’s not me. It’s my bike.”
“You use a bike in your act? I suppose that’s encouraging to over-sixty types.”
“Not that kind of bike,” was the contemptuous answer. “Mine’s a real bike. Weighs a thousand pounds.”
“A... motorcycle?”
Not only Lindy was incredulous. Temple, almost out of earshot, stopped cold. She turned slowly to study the over-the-hill Hell’s Angel.
“Listen,” Lindy was telling her, “we’ve had grand pianos and baby elephants on our stages. I think we can handle one overweight motorcycle.”