Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit (30 page)

“Good idea." Temple struggled up and pulled the bedside clock closer to read it in B.C. time. Before Contacts were installed for the day.

“Yikes! My lifestyle session is in eighteen minutes. Gang way!”

In fifteen minutes, Xoe Chloe was fully assembled, bedhead and all.

“The great thing about punk," Mariah noted from her watching post on the bed, "is that you can be considered put together no matter how ragged you look."

“Thanks, kid." Temple dashed into the hall where she ran into the Golden Girls, advancing in a pack and sniggering at her approach. This was not a promising sendoff to her lifestyle consultation.

“Are you going to get it," Silver predicted.

Temple's faux-green morning eyes blinked in the glare
generated by so much pink, shiny spandex in a group.
Even if they were all as stick-thin as flamingos.

“What do you mean?" she asked.

“You haven't buckled down to the program," Honey
said. "I hear the coaching team will be reading you the
riot act."

“Shape up or flunk," Ashlee added.

This was not good. If Temple was totally out of the running, she'd be of less use to Mariah, and her mother. "Outa my way, Blondies." Temple ploughed through
the permanent wave of sugar and spice and everything
not nice.

Under the current regime, the house's den had the feeling of a headmaster's office. Temple paused at the closed double doors, then opened one and strolled in.

The whole Teen Queen team sat around the big oval wooden table. Only one chair was free, at one end of the oval.

Temple slid onto the huge leather chair, feeling like Little Orphan Annie called onto the carpet in Daddy Warbucks's office.

Four judges and the five consultants glanced up,
away, and shuffled folders. Not promising. Their spandex-shiny hot pink folder covers looked ludicrous lying on the dignified walnut conference table. Arthur
Dickson might have been a tad eccentric, but he would
be spinning in his presumed grave to see this crew tak
ing over.

“Normally," Beth Marble announced, "at this point in the competition we're starting to see real improvement in the candidates."

“
I am too." Temple nodded sagely. "I met a bunch in
the hall coming here. Their high-pitched giggle quotient
is way lower and I think they're all developing larger calf muscles. Must be from the spike-heel footraces."

“
You always have a sassy answer." Beth shook her
head, putting her halo of curls in motion. "That hides nothing but your own anxiety."

“Hide my anxiety? Not my idea. Anxiety is the watch
word of our modern age. I'm visibly neurotic and proud
of it."

“I don't think so." Ken Adair, the Hair Guy, rose and
walked toward Temple. "Everybody wants to be confi
dent and secure, and you too are going to get that way if we have to browbeat you into it.”

Temple rolled her eyes, trying to think up a suitably Xoe Chloe comeback. "Anybody recording this? Sounds like lab-rat abuse to me.”

Adair reached her chair, spun it to face him, and
scalped her.

“
Yeow-ouch!"
She gazed up at a foot of limp coal-
black monofiber filaments dangling from the hair
dresser's viselike grasp.

“
You are a fake, Xoe Chloe." Beth Marble came to
stand behind him.

“A freaking fraud," Dexter Manship added to the chorus, while still balancing on his tailbone in his matching leather chair.

“A spirited but self-deluded girl," her own Aunt Kit threw in, trying to put a positive spin on this shocking revelation.

“A . . . a has-been," Savannah added after a long and visible search for words that hadn't been used yet. Appar
ently, she could only come up with phrases that applied to
herself.

“So I wear a wig." Temple/Xoe sat up boarding school straight. "So does Cher. And Dolly. And a lot of performers. You going to tell me that's not true?"

“
Why a black wig?" her aunt asked, playing the de
fense attorney role.

“
Sim-ple. I've got red hair."

“So?"

“
So who wants that? It's unlucky. And mine's curly
too. Who wants to be Shirley Temple in a world where
the Good Ship Lollipop is dropping anchor a day away from Guantanamo Bay?"

“No politics!" Beth commanded. "We are an issue-neutral show."

“Yeah, right. So anyway, curly red hair's a drag. It be
longs in a comic strip. Like I'd want to be mistaken for
that loser comedian, Carrot Top? Black is the new red."

“
My dear child:' Beth said, "wigs are not
allowed.
We're going for natural beauty here.”

Temple snorted. "Tell that to the Golden Girls. When they sit in the bleachers, it's at their hairdresser's. Right, Mr. Adair?"

“Nothing wrong with subtle colorations, Miss Xoe. Subtle," he repeated in a voice like a drill bit.

“Subtle sucks:' Temple said airily. "It's the refuge of uncertain minds."

“
Well, we're certain about one thing." Manship had
risen and was staring her down. "That rats' nest of fake hair has got to go. What's under there can't be any more pathetic. Color and restyle, Adair. Right now.”

Temple would have opened her mouth to protest, ex
cept Adair had her by the shoulders. He was dredging her
out of the chair and marching her down the hall before
she could say "Gamier Fructose." In one minute flat, she was shoved into a room where the reek of hairspray was sickly sweet enough to choke a skunk.

This was a part of undercover work Molina had never prepared her for: beauty boot camp.

For the next ninety minutes, Temple was buckled into a
rotating chair where she was washed, styled, spun, dried, spindled, and mutilated.

She felt like a duck in the weeds whose shelter is
ripped away one reed at a time. Huddled under a pink plastic cape, she watched tiny feathered remnants of her
past haircut fall like residue from a tarring and feather
ing. Too many people inside the Teen Queen Castle knew
Temple Barr, redhead and PR whirlwind. Her cover was
being stripped away and blown dry even as she sat
strapped to the chair.

“I don't know why you hate your red hair," Adair said.
"So many girls do. Guess they feel like Raggedy Ann
dolls. A shame. Red rocks for me, but change what irritates you. Take a look, pussycat.”

He handed her a mirror.

Temple glanced sideways at her reflection through squinty eyes. How would she face Molina when she ad
mitted to having lost her cover to a pair of barber's
shears, leaving the policewoman's daughter alone in
a house crawling with secret tunnels, cameras, and sick stalkers?

Temple, shrinking in the chair, straightened.

So had her hair. Straightened somehow.

It had been bleached into a medley of warm and cool blonde shades! And straightened and razor-cut into
shoulder-brushing length. She looked like . . . nobody
she knew. A stranger. The Power of Blonde: hide behind your hair color.

Her cover was not blown! It was . . . better than ever.
Hallelujah!

Of course, imagining what the grow-out would be like was a nightmare, but for the moment...

“Pretty foxy." Her Aunt Kit was standing there, beam
ing down on her niece. "This girl has a chance at the prize
if her attitude improves.”

Thanks be to savvy aunts! What an actress! Still, Kit might be onto something. Temple was still studying herself in the mirror. Dang if the blonde hair didn't make her green contact lenses even more dominant. An eye of an
other color was a slim sliver of a disguise but it had
worked for Max. Temple guessed that her new pale honey
hair would even make her real eye color, a wishy-washy blue-gray in her own opinion, resemble the dangerous, deep steel blue of a Fontana Brother's Beretta.

“
Pink
is
not her color," Kit told Adair, "too sweety
sweet with her pale complexion. If she were on one of
my book covers, she'd be wearing Nile green or peach velvet.”

Vanetta, the show's wardrobe witch had appeared as well. "We'll go with the icy Easter tones . . . peach, aqua,and pale lilac for her. This will be one of the more dynamic makeovers. From jet black to liquid blonde.”

Vanetta, a brunette and therefore one who might be
expected to have issues with blonde, instead grinned
from ear to ear. "I love it. I have to put everybody else
but that Molina girl in pasty pastels. This honey-warm
blonde at least gives me a mid-tone palette to play
with.”

Temple was startled to realize that she and Mariah
were the only not-blondes in the finals. And also the reason why: in states with a large Hispanic labor force, An
glo women, even natural-born brunettes, didn't want to
be mistaken for "the hired help.”

On the other hand, not being blonde made the two of
them stand out in a crowd. For a wild, wonderful mo
ment, Temple pictured Mariah winning her category, in her glory, going—oh, all right, no dog in a manger, Tem
ple—going to her school father-daughter dance with Matt
Devine, a "dad" to die for.

Oops. Another prominent brunet haunted the premises:
Rafi Nadir, Mariah's real father. Temple didn't see him playing a role in any fairy tale ending except one of the darkest tales by the Brothers Grimm, maybe Iron John.

Meanwhile, the moment was all about her, Xoe Chloe, debunked brunette and closet redhead now transformed into a mainstream blonde bombshell. If only Max could see her now. Not Matt. He didn't have Max's theatrical instincts and would probably just be shocked.

“
Okay, pumpkin." Adair the Hair Guy was suddenly
her best friend. "What d'ya think?”

Xoe Chloe had only one thing to say to the mirror. "It rocks, dude!" She slapped palms all around and stood up.
Her sigh blew snips of hair into a small whirlwind
around her.

Still in the game, Temple thought. Who knew a new hairdresser was the best disguise? Probably the eighty
million women who patronized them regularly, which
had not included her. Until now.

By that afternoon, the ravishing, newly conventional Xoe Chloe had instantly blossomed into the lead in the makeover sweepstakes.

Matte-black Xoe Chloe'd had so far to come that the transformation was breathtaking. Blondes of all descrip
tion—tall, taller; thin, thinner—darted stiletto glances
her way as Temple put in her forty minutes on the elliptical machine and her twenty-minute jog around the Hearst
Castle–size pool, slathered in the sun screen recom
mended for her pale complexion, sweating into her extravagant dye job, which seemed up to the abuse.

It occurred to her that, having proven herself the most dramatic makeover so far, she might also be the freshest candidate for harassment.

Every cloud had its silver lining.

She was ready.

First she had to put up with reactions.

“Hey, toots! Love the paint job. Looking good. How about an interview for KREP?" Awful Crawf suggested, slinking alongside her at the pool.

She cringed. Without the wig she felt naked. Worse,
recognizable. Was blonde really the best disguise?
Maybe for Marilyn. But her? She easily outtrotted him, avoiding the moment of truth.

“Wow. Oh, wow." Mariah. "Wonder what they'll make me look like? I should be really spectacular. Well, I'm younger. Way younger. Although you look pretty teen-y for a . . . you know." She glanced about for cameras and mikes. "For an older woman. Will they dye my hair too? My mother will kill me.”

Rafi Nadir was a study in skepticism when she passed him in the hall. Quickly. But he didn't seem to recognize
the "ballsy little broad" he knew now that she was a
blonde. He recognized something about her though.