Page 10 of Forbidden Dance
Irma punches the buttons to send calls to the telephone in the library storage room.
“You’ll get two calls if you’re lucky,” she says.
“Has Crazy Eddie already checked in today?” I ask.
Irma laughs. “Yeah. Ten minutes of telling me about the Virgin Mary on his toast this morning.”
“He used that one again?” Eddie is eighty-five and loves to find holy images in his breakfast food.
“Yes, he’s recycling,” Irma says. She slings her purse over her shoulder. “I’ll be back in an hour.”
As she leaves, I’m torn between actually doing my work and sneaking a search for Blitz on the Internet. There’s really nothing I do here that has to be done on a deadline. Of course I’m going to look him up.
When she’s out the door, I jerk open her top drawer and pull out a set of keys to the electronics cabinet. It holds the wireless microphone the priest uses during Mass, a projector, and a laptop.
I pull out the ancient Dell and hurry back to the storage room. Then I remember the alarm and go back to the office and set the small console on the door to beep in the back room if someone comes in. I’m supposed to do this anytime there’s no one at the front desk, but it also keeps me from being discovered with the computer.
When I’m safely in the storage room, hidden between two shelving units, I crack open the laptop. It’s not used for much as far as I can tell, but it still connects to the Internet. I’m forbidden from anything like this at home, but my friend Mindy, who is sixteen and also volunteers at the church, showed me how to turn it on and do searches.
I type in “Blitz Craven.” I’m instantly rewarded with dozens of pictures, links, and video clips from his show. Where to start?
There are images of Blitz with all sorts of women. Blond. Brunette. Every skin color and body style. He definitely doesn’t seem to have a type.
There are stills from his show, a stage lit up with colored lights, him dancing with all manner of partners. I recognize some of the dance girls from the shots in street clothes, always on his arm. So he dates the women on his show too, sees them off camera.
I guess I can start at the beginning. I click on the Wikipedia entry forDance Blitz. It says:
An American reality show where the star, Blitz Craven, auditions women to be both his dance partner and his future wife.
Wife?
Whoa.
There are references to theBachelor, which Aurora mentioned, andDancing with the Stars. Apparently they were templates for the new show. Each season ofDance Blitzstarts with twenty-five dancers. Blitz trains each of them to be his partner and eliminates several each week.
At the end of season one, he got down to three girls and decided none of them would do. The show was so popular that he got a second season to try again.
So why was he at a small dance academy in San Antonio?
I see a section titled “Twitter Scandal” and scroll down. Now my heart is hammering.
Just weeks before the big finale to season two, which was supposed to be a live televised event, Blitz’s Twitter account posted a photo of a naked woman with the caption “Ate my dong like a gorilla.”
My face flames. I can’t imagine the Blitz I met saying or doing any of these things.
The woman was one of three final contestants scheduled to be on his show. She filed an invasion of privacy lawsuit. The Tweet went viral. The show’s sponsors pulled out, and every feminist group in the world called for his head on a platter. He apologized publicly, but it did nothing to stem the damage. The network suspended the show indefinitely.
Yikes.
I compare this description of Blitz to the charming man who held out his hand to me and it doesn’t fit. But then, there was the corset in the storage closet. That definitely seemed like a Blitz move.
There’s another tab that draws my eye.
“Censored episodes.”
I click on the link.
It’s a video of the second episode of season two. I glance around the room. I’m at church of all places, watchingDance Blitz. But I can’t help myself.
