Killer Calories

watching Disco Diva.
    It was Lou Hanks.
    So involved was he with the dancing figures on the screen that he didn’t see her approach. While a younger—and Savannah had to admit, absolutely beautiful—Kat Valentina danced across a flashing, checkered floor with a stunning Dion Zeller, Lou watched with rapt attention. Tears flowed down his face. Occasionally, he dabbed at his nose with a wad of tissues.
    Standing there, watching the famous dance sequence, Savannah could understand why the movie had become a cult classic. Although the plot was nonexistent and the acting dreadful, the choreography had been original and refreshing, and the moves blatantly sexual and provocatively executed by Kat and Dion.
    They had been a magnetic couple, exuding sensuality with every graceful, seductive movement.
    Around the world, women had watched and fallen hopelessly in love with Dion. And males from the ages of eight to eighty had lusted after Kat Valentina.
    Obviously, the man sitting on the leather sofa had never gotten over her either. He seemed the total opposite of the callous jerk beside the pool with Bernadette the night before.
    Long ago, Savannah had given up the notion of trying to figure people out. The human mind was simply too complex to be filed in a box labeled “Good” or “Bad.”
    Rather than intrude on his private moment, she turned to leave. But from the corner of his eye he saw her. He jumped, startled and more than a little embarrassed.
    “I didn’t mean to disturb you,” she said. “I just heard the music and... well...“
    He picked up the remote control and jabbed his thumb at one of the buttons, turning the volume down a few notches-“It’s still pretty good, isn’t it,” he said, in between blowing his nose.
    “Yes, it’s wonderful. It brought back some memories.”
    “Good ones?”
    “Some of them.” She shrugged and laughed. “Sorry, but there were a lot of jerks on the scene at that time, with a lot of tired pickup lines.”
    “I know. I was one of them.” He patted the sofa beside him. “Here, have a seat. I promise not to ask you about your sun sign.”
    She decided to join him, wondering again at the change in his demeanor . He seemed almost human. But then, looks could be deceiving. If nothing else, she had learned that during the disco era.
    He pointed up to the screen, where Dion was twirling Kat around him, her full red skirt flying, showing her long, shapely legs to their best advantage.
    “She was doing that the first time I saw her,” Lou said as he reached into his pocket and pulled out pack of cigarettes. “It was in a disco on Forty-second Street in New York . I came in that night with another woman, but left with Kat.”
    Savannah recalled, years ago, having seen pictures of Kat Valentina in the tabloids with her manager/husband Lou Hanks. Lou had been the quintessential disco-scene hunk at that time—white suit and shoes, gaudy printed shirts unbuttoned nearly to his navel, and a zillion gold chains hanging low on his hairy chest.
    Now, Lou the Disco King was an overweight, middle-aged nerd in a baggy golf shirt and plaid Bermuda shorts.
    But on the front of those tabloids magazines, he had been gazing at his movie-star bride with adoration. And sitting on the old sofa, staring at her on a television screen, he wore the same love-besotted look.
    “I fell hard for her,” he said.
    “I can imagine.”
    “She was the only thing I ever really cared about. This place... everything... it was all for her.”
    He took a deep pull on the cigarette, and Savannah wondered at the contradiction of the owner of a health spa smoking. “I had stopped,” he said, as though reading her mind. “Drinking, too. Until, well, until this week. When... it... happened, I knew I was going to start one or the other. I figured smoking would get me in less trouble.” He patted his ample belly. “And it has fewer calories.”
    Since Savannah wasn’t sure what to say, she sat quietly and waited for him to continue. He seemed to want to unload; she was eager to listen and learn what she could.
    “It wasn’t all roses and light, you know,” he said, hitting the fast-forward button on the remote. He advanced to the next dance number, then slowed it to normal speed and watched, still spellbound. “She was a spoiled brat. But I was the one who mostly spoiled her, so I guess it’s my fault.”
    “It can be difficult when fame and fortune comes to some’ one so early in life,”