Spanish Disco (13 page)

He nodded.

“You have to say ‘I do’ or ‘yes’ or something,” said Elvis.

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Well, then by the powers vested in me by the state of Nevada and Elvis Presley above, I now declare you man and wife. Hit it, Earlene!”

With that, an eighty-year-old organist with a dowager’s hump started tapping her foot and plunking down on organ keys. Her senile husband in a pale blue polyester suit threw rice at us and shouted “Happy New Year,” and Elvis began to croon “Love Me Tender.”

“Go on, kiss the bride,” Earlene nodded at us. And with that, Johnny Acid grabbed me close to him and planted one right on my lips. In that instant, I knew I’d made a massive mistake.

I’d married Johnny Acid because my mother hated him. My father, wisely, assumed Johnny was a “phase.” But Mother hated him. Hated him so much that she told me she had lost ten pounds since I started dating Johnny and had to double her Valium dosage. This endeared Johnny to me more than diamonds.

It’s hard to say, in hindsight, what Mother found most repulsive about him. The fact that he and his band Dog Vomit earned no money and they all slept in a one-room walk-up near St. Mark’s Place with a bathroom down the hall and roaches so big you could saddle them up and take ’em for a rodeo ride. His white-bleached Mohawk. That he had pierced his left cheek and wore a dog collar. The leather jacket. The engineer boots with chains.

I told myself I saw past all that. I saw John DeAngelo, nice guy from Brooklyn. I saw him before the name
change and spikes and piercings. He was, in fact, a gifted musician and a brilliant poet. His lyrics, if you could get past the screaming guitars and groupies, were art. I told myself I liked his art. But in fact, what I liked was Johnny Acid’s cock.

Johnny Acid was endowed. Well-endowed. And he rocked my world. He had a beautiful face beneath that Mohawk. He had a face like an angel Michelangelo would paint. And I believed I loved him. I loved the way he sang as if I was the only one in the room. I loved that he wrote songs for me. I loved the way he moved on stage. He was sex.

I met him at a literary party he crashed with a writer friend of his. We talked. Sparks flew. We made plans for dinner the next night. He came back to my apartment after-wards, and we made love. Only it was fiercer than that. He devoured me. He pulled me to him,
into
him. We pulsed together. It was white-hot fury and lovemaking all rolled into hair-grabbing ecstasy. And after that I was hooked. Johnny Acid was my love drug, and we made love at least three times a day, including quickies on my lunch hour.

Okay. So we were a decidedly odd-looking couple. Me the girl in the velvet dress at the Christmas party, the diamond earrings my father bought me dangling from my lobes. And Johnny, the one with the Christmas ornament hanging from his ear and the T-shirt of Santa Claus flipping the bird that read “FUCK CHRISTMAS.”

But I loved him. I thought I did, at least and in direct proportion to how much my mother hated him. The more
Valium she took, the more I called her and regaled her with stories of just where his tattoos were and what they said. I could not have asked for a more beautiful relationship.

And then Johnny asked me to marry him. I was completely shocked, but he showed up at my place with an actual ring. Not a diamond, but a plain gold band engraved with the letters “MPOFYAD,” standing for “My Princess Out-Fucks Yours Any Day.” A private joke. Guess you had to be there. And I looked at the ring, at dear sweet Johnny. And I heard the word escape my lips.

“Yes.”

He grabbed me. We made love. I felt my heart racing, but I told myself it was the orgasm. It was actually something akin to panic.

Vegas was my idea. I figured if I came back and told my father, he’d just nod and go along with it. I was his princess first, after all.

And so, that’s how I came to stand before Elvis and make the biggest mistake of my life.

I became Mrs. Acid.

My mother upped her analysis sessions from three times a week to five.

My father drank two stiff martinis and hugged Johnny. He tried to tell himself he’d gained a son.

Lou and Helen sent us a Waterford vase that easily set them back a grand, but said nothing.

And the whole thing was over within three months. I had the marriage annulled. Like it had never happened. Only it had, and I hurt someone. Poor Johnny. He holed
himself up in a friend’s studio and wrote forty-eight songs about me in a flurry of genius. He dumped Dog Vomit, renamed himself John Dillinger, recorded himself as a solo act, and became famous.

I launched a career.

He still keeps in touch. Calls me from Japan where he’s the hottest thing since sumo wrestling. Calls me when he plays New York and gets me backstage passes. I always tell him I can’t go. It feels pretty naked to be sung about.

I think about Johnny a lot though. I cannot be trusted. Not with Michael’s heart.

It took me thirty-four years to learn that love isn’t what’s between your legs but what’s between your ears. And that brain of Michael’s is about the most endowed IQ I’ve ever come across. And every time I even think about going to England, all I have to do is turn on the radio and hear, “She Killed Me Again,” by John Dillinger.

Aka Johnny Acid.

Aka the cock that roared.

15

M
orning dawned. I faintly, in the recesses of my sleep, heard Roland and Maria in the kitchen. I sank deeper into my pillows. Around eleven o’clock I finally felt brave enough to face the Florida sunshine and Louis O’Connor. It was time, I decided, to let Lou know about the poem.

“West Side Publishing…”

“Good morning, Troy. Let me talk to Lou.”

“Sure thing.”

I waited while a Bach concerto played in my ear.

“Lou O’Connor.”

“Miss me?”

“Miss you? I’m ready to kill you. I expected to know page count, cover art, pub date. You’re leaving me in the dark.”

“Hmm. Well, funny you should mention all that, Lou, because straight up…the book isn’t publishable.”

“So fix it.”

“Well, it’s slightly more complicated than that. The best triage in the world can’t fix this. It’s a poem, Lou. Actually, let me be more exact. It’s a 792-page poem.”

I heard an exhalation that sounded like the air rushing out of my Bozo the clown balloon when my mother pricked it with a hat pin because she was angry that I wouldn’t wear the party dress she picked out for me.

“A…poem?” His voice squeaked. “Cassie, you can’t be telling me this.”

“You think I should be the only one with an ulcer in all this?”

“Well, you better brace that ulcer for another shock. Cassie, honey? Promise me you won’t yell.”

“I never make promises I’m not sure I can keep.”

“I was so excited about all this—his book—that I kind of offered him an advance.”

Now it was my turn to sound like Bozo.

“What does ‘kind of’ mean?”

“In this instance, it means I did.”

“You told me you didn’t.”

“I figured I’d more than recoup it.”

“Please don’t tell me how big. I don’t think I could take it.”

“Big. Very big, Cassie. If this thing falls flat, we could be selling books out of the trunks of our cars.”

“Fuck.”

“That’s kind of what I was thinking.”

“Hold on, Lou. I hear something outside my room.”

I got up and opened my bedroom door. There sat a rabbit on his haunches, licking his paws and thumping his back foot occasionally. I didn’t know whether it was Pedro or José, but he hopped into my room and proceeded to poop on my carpet. How fitting, I thought.

“Lou? Don’t you find it a little…corrupt of Roland Riggs to accept a big advance for something he knows can’t sell?”

“Maybe he thinks it can.”

“He’s not that out of it. He may be a hermit, but he’s a hermit who watches
Wheel of Fortune
every night. He knows what’s going on in the world.”

“There’s more.”

I looked at the poop pellets on the carpet and braced myself.

“I offered a sizable retainer to Tom Gans.”

Tom Gans was the tiniest PR agent in New York. He was five-feet, two-inches tall but had the distinction of being the world’s biggest sphincter. And he knew PR.

“Lou, not for nothing, but at the time you retained that asshole, we hadn’t even seen the manuscript yet.”

“A fact I am now quite painfully aware of, thank you.”

“I’m going to try to get your advance back.”

“But he delivered a manuscript. That’s what the contract asks for.”

“It’s dirty pool. God damn it, José—”

“Who?”

“Never mind. It could be Pedro.”

“What’s going on?”

“A rabbit’s looking at me right now, Lou. Do you hear how ridiculous this all is? Because I hope that thick Irish skull of yours is hearing me. Really hearing what’s going on.”

“Kid? I got some more bad news. Of a personal nature.”

Pedro/José pooped again, as if ordaining my destiny.

“Your mother came by the office looking for you.”

I said nothing.

“She looked good. Let me tell you, $100,000 of plastic surgery wears well on her—”

“Sure, but when her skin snaps in two from being pulled back so tightly and her implants implode, I’ll be laughing.”

“Ahh…the joys of mother-daughter love. Well, listen, I told her I would let you know she came by. Also, I went to see your dad last night. Just to make sure he was okay while you’re gone and while that vampire of an ex-wife is prowling around.”

My father and Lou were friends. They were passing acquaintances when I was younger, and when I started working for Lou, they had a long talk at a company Christmas party and suddenly, my Dad had a pal. They lunched together regularly, and Dad and I were always part of the O’Connor Christmases and Thanksgivings. When Helen died, my father visited Lou every day for a year and didn’t let Lou give up. When my father started getting forgetful, Lou was the one who first made me stop denying what was happening. I remember how he took me out along the beach, and we walked until both of us had exhausted ourselves numb. And then he told me, firmly, that we had
to find my father someplace safe, someplace where they would know how to take care of him until the end—because with Alzheimer’s the end can be a long way off. Lou helped me find Stratford Oaks. Nothing but the best. But when my Dad really started deteriorating, Lou stopped visiting. I asked him about it once, and Lou started to cry. Not sloppy crying, but just a shuddering of the shoulders. So I had always left it at that.

“You visited him?” I asked softly.

“Yeah. He looked good.”

“Did he recognize you?”

“Not at first, but then he remembered a few Christmases and that time you bought him the first-edition copy of
The Glass Blowers.
And the time he and I spent St. Patrick’s Day in that pub on 94th.”

“I’m glad you went. That means a lot to me, Lou.”

“I also gave them a heads up that if they let the rottweiler with implants in to see him, I’ll bust some balls.”

“Eloquent.”

“Another thing…Michael Pearton is telling me that he is completely annoyed that you’ve gone off to see another author when you won’t go to England—and he’s done five books with us. So if we’re not bankrupt in a couple of months’ time, I think you should go and smooth over his ego.”

“It’s not his ego that he wants smoothed.”

“Yeah, well, that part is none of my business.”

“Look, Lou, let me get going. I have to talk to Roland Riggs.”

“Don’t punch him or anything.”

“You’ll never let me live down that time I decked Carl Gussbaum.”

“He didn’t know what hit him.”

“Right, because he was too busy pinching my ass and trying to cop a feel.”

“Call me later.”

I hung up and stared at the rabbit. The little furball was trying to eat the cord to my lamp. I tried to shoo him away, figuring frying Roland’s rabbit was not the best way to enter negotiations. Finally, I had to lift him. He licked me.

“Don’t try to win me over. There’s poop on my carpet.”

I opened the door and put him out in the hall. The house was silent, except for the squawking parrot downstairs shrieking “Big money, big money,” in a voice that sounded remarkably like Pat Sajak’s. I figured I’d dress and go hunt for Roland.

In my room, I pulled out my robe and looked at the little picture frame I had placed on the desk. My father and I, many lifetimes ago, it seemed. Me grinning and missing my two front teeth, he in a Brooks Brothers shirt, tie loosened, glasses down at the tip of his nose, laughing at the camera.

I once did a book on voodoo. A high priestess wrote about how to cast spells so that your heart’s desire would fall in love with you. While working on the book, I casually asked if she could cast bad spells on people.

“Sure honey, but you don’t want to mess with the dark side.”

“In fact, I do,” I said. I proceeded to tell her about my mother, and she proceeded to give me a surefire spell to make her lose her looks. I had to create a little doll of my mother, using something—material—that had actually belonged to my mother. I rummaged through an old box I had in storage and sure enough found a Hermès scarf that had once been my mother’s. I must have borrowed it when I was in high school during one of the rare weekends I saw her. I laughed with delight when I found it, and soon I had a Hermès-clad voodoo doll. I cast my spell. The very next week, a dye job went bad, and my mother lost most of her hair. Her husband bought her an expensive wig and took her to Paris so she could get over the trauma. I put the doll away, certain I would use it again. I still e-mail the voodoo priestess. She has her own Web site—www.cast-yourspell.com. Never know when someone like her will come in handy.