Spider Kiss (32 page)

"Uh, hey, Mario, what's good … give uh, give him the Tornado Special, huh. You like that, you think, Shelly?" He looked appealingly at the publicity man.

Shelly did not want a drink, especially not one of the cloying Southern bourbon drinks with too much mint, too much spice, too much greenery; not even in a hurricane lamp mega-glass with umbrellas. But he nodded a yes.

Mario scuttled off like ambulatory pastry from a cartoon, and Stag grinned with familiarity at Shelly. The alumni in the fraternity house. Unsure, trying to relate, trying to capture a piece of someone else's past.

"Listen, Shelly, I want to tell you something, y'know."

He was leaning across the table.

The French cuffs peeping from his sleeves were moist with humid sweat-stain, sootiness, frayed. The links cheap.

Shelly nodded imperceptibly. "What?" he asked.

"Y'know, I'm not finished, Shelly. I mean it. I mean, really. You know when they cut me up they thought I was done, they thought that. But they didn't know, Shelly. They didn't
know
I could come back.

"I can sing, Shelly! I can sing.

"I'm better than ever. You know? I mean, like I sing different, because they cut my cords pretty bad, but I worked out, I sang and I learned to do it all over again. I lived all over for a long time, and I got myself back in shape. I can sing, Shelly, all I need is one damned break, just one little push, one little thing, you know, and I can make it bigger than before."

What was there to say? What do you tell a blind man? That he can see? Do you tell a leper his toes can be stitched on again, just give me a real big Singer Double-Bobbin? Shelly only nodded and smiled patronizingly, mouthing words like, "Gee, that's swell, Stag. I'm really happy for you."

The boy's expression changed with the instant mercurial instability of the true, practicing paranoid. "So you think I'm bullshittin' you, huh? You think I'm conning you, trying to make a touch. Well, listen, Big Man, I want you to just stay there. You just
sit
there. I want you to hear me … just
sit
… now
damn it, sit
there, and I'm gonna let you hear if I'm boning you."

He got up and moved quickly through the tables to the curtained archway, disappeared into it, and Shelly rose to leave fast, and Shelly sat back down heavily, and Shelly waited, because Shelly had to wait, because he
had
to wait —

Mario brought the drink. He pushed it away, ground out a cigarette butt in the already reeking, filled ashtray; and he lit another, and he waited.

The broad finished suffering.

The lights dimmed and a hollow P.A. voice announced:

"The Rampart Club Is Proud To Introduce That Star Of Stage, Screen, Television And Records, The King Of The Rock'n'roll Beat, The One, The Only, Special Attraction To The Rampart Club, The One And Only … Stag Preston!"

The spotty applause was suffocated by the imperious comping of the trio, then the spot went on, and it was five and a half years before, the stage of The Palace, in New York, and there he was again.

It was terrifying.

It was the same recurring nightmare.

Stag Preston, with guitar and with face and with the same stance, except now it was more matured, more deliberate. And he began singing.

He had regained his bravado. It was all there, again. The song was something low, something vaguely dirty, with heart and movement, though. Something he was doing specially for Shelly that said, I was at the bottom, and I made the top, and then found out the bottom had been the middle, because then I really hit bottom, and this is what it looks like, from the floor, from the underside. I've seen it all, I've even eaten the corrupt flesh of it; cupped here in my hands, want a look? Just a peek? All right, here, look!

It was all that, and a great deal more.

It was the voice of Stag Preston, grown larger.

Deeper.

More meaningful, because now it was more than the trickery of someone who has eidetic feelings, who emulates others' suffering or triumph or courage or cowardice, others'
true
emotions. It was something he had been and suffered through, and come out better for having learned.

If anything, Stag Preston was more commanding when he sang.

He can still do it, he can still charm them
, Shelly thought, with a flash of sudden fear.

All he needs is a break, one little shove, that's what he said. Now as a professional talent scout, as a man who knows what will play, can he?

When he was seven years old and his tonsils had been removed, Shelly had been under ether on the operating table and had heard someone say his name, "Shelly," and in his unconsciousness it had seemed to be reverberating down and down and down a long hall, a corridor, endlessly. It was that way now, as the answer came back to him, up and up that long corridor, lost till now, lost since he was seven, the word of unassailable truth.

And the word was yes. Yes yes yes yes yes …

Over and over again, beginning, in fact, to reverberate within his mind, the answer was unarguably Yes, Stag Preston can do it again. All he needs is that one-handed push.

He is something larger than life when he sings.

Even standing in front of a brain-dead, rowdy, inattentive, hungover derelict crowd in a shitty strip joint, in front of the roughest audience imaginable — make-out artists, hookers, tourists, winos, psychos, perverts, Shriners, screamers, loud old ladies, deadbeats without honor and drenched in boredom and cynicism — a Roman Coliseum crowd that wanted bare tits, bear-baiting, and disembowelments — he had a potent holding power with his voice. How he had done it, slashed that way, Shelly could not imagine. But he had done it. He had trained himself to sing around the broken areas. He commanded, he ruled, he
subjugated
that rabble.

Shelly felt his mouth beginning to water. There it was, the power, the inarticulate monarchial
power
that Stag had always possessed. The rabble
listened
. No matter how stupid or blasé or tone-deaf, they heard him. Not just between their ears, but in the marrow, in the DNA of dead fingernails, to the roots of their pubic hair. Like a prime number, Stag Preston's necromancy stood alone, undimmed by space or time or previous condition of servitude. There it was, that damned talent, ability, artistry, conjuration … whatever the hell it was, there it
was
. And Shelly felt his mouth actually begin to water.

Somehow, by dint of work and sweat and naked rage at having his kingship wrested from him, the naked hunger for revenge, for the sweetness that came only with getting back everything taken from him … and more … a bit more than the best, the top, the ultimate, a bit of
lagniappe
… Stag Preston had done what legions of Olympic athletes could not do, what armies of showbiz-hungry starlets could not do, what pantheons of rejected gods could not do: he had managed to transcend disaster, had bared his fangs and chewed his way out of defeat, had clubbed and eviscerated and smashed in the skull of the Just Desserts life had visited on him. He had pissed on the floor of Heaven. He had beaten God. He had throttled Justice and all those concepts of evil-gets-its-comeuppance. Stag Preston had managed to train his damaged vocal cords. He had screwed the odds and transcended disaster, had shaped his own destiny once again.

He wasn't as wildly infectious as before, but he wasn't a kid any more. Shelly watched as that rabble in the strip joint became one with Stag, watched as they paid the price and he
owned
them.

There wasn't a sliver of doubt in Shelly's mind that Stag could be huge again, bigger than before, because not only did he have that genuine magic not even pukey music critics could attack, but now he had the potential for being the Very Essence of The Comeback Kid. His story was sensational. Down, all the way down. Cut and sliced and flushed. But back! Back again and better than before, more mature than before, stronger than before because of his travail, his tragedy, his pitiful fall and determined, anguished rise. Not a sliver of doubt: Stag Preston could be on top again, more powerful and important than before … and all he needed was that one tiny break. That gimme-a-shot that he wanted more than his soul, or his posterity, or a light to guide him through the darkness.

Not a sliver, shard, scintilla of doubt, because Shelly was there seeing how the rabble listened, absorbed, just purely
dug
it. Fingernails, palates, to the roots of their hair.

Stag could be back … and Shelly could go all the way.

He was one with the rabble, he was part of that single giant ear that was tuned only to Stag Preston, part of that gestalt the singer created when he worked a crowd. Shelly was one with him again, once more in the bear-pit, down there with the rabble that loved Stag, wanted only to be ear-fucked by him till the end of eternity …

And then the Angel of Truth touched Shelly Morgenstern with her magic wand. In a heartbeat, the Good Blue Fairy sprinkled him with mind-awakening dream-dust, and he knew in that instant the true nature of the epiphany he had been seeking.

The rabble.

He had thought of them as the
rabble
. The herd. The pig crowd that could be bought with a song. He had become one with Stag Preston, indeed. He had thought through Stag's mind, had seen through Stag's eyes, had reviled the rest of humanity as the rabble, just as Stag did.

In that Angel of Truth, Blue Fairy, Delphic Oracle clarity Shelly understood exactly how dangerous Stag really was. Because Stag owned
him
, had always owned a piece of him, the
best
piece of him. He despised what he had done, what he had become in Stag's service, because he was no better than the monster he had served.

His mouth stopped watering at the potentiality of success greater than before. His mouth went dry.

He gulped at the Tornado that had sat unnoticed on the table, but the dryness in his mouth remained. He sat there ashamed to his soul, frightened of his thoughts and desires, petrified with horror at how close he had come, how easy it would have been, how much he wanted it.

Stag was that part of him that had succeeded, that had transcended life and capacity and insecurity and even tragedy and the hot blood of his own destiny. Stag was that part of the failure named Morgenstern that could not be intimidated. And he wanted that Mr. Hyde to rule, to subjugate the rabble.

If he could have cried, if he'd known where to search inside himself for the purity that would permit tears, he would have dropped his face onto his forearms and cried like a coward.

But he was trapped inside Shelly Morgenstern and didn't know where to find the key to let himself out of solitary, to find that purity that permits absolution.

And Stag was riding out the end of his song. He chorded a finish and left the small stage with the audience of drunks and slatterns and boastful bullies and insipid tourists banging glasses, tapping swizzle sticks, clapping hands, whistling with little fingers in the corners of mouths, cheering and hooting and begging to be allowed to rejoin the great meat gestalt again!

Stag had intended a demonstration. He had provided the parting of the Red Sea during the Second Coming as a prelude to The Rapture and Armageddon.

Stag plowed through the hands trying to touch and congratulate him and made it to Shelly's table. He leaned the Gibson against the wall and sat down. Looking smug. Stag ruled. He hunched toward Shelly and the smile of power, of satisfaction was there, just the way it had been so long ago. He wasn't a shadow, nervous, unsure, unable to gain the right feeling for the situation. Stag ruled. He had done the one thing in this life he was able to do better than anyone else, and now he wanted to throw it at Shelly.

Just as he had, almost ten years before, in a hotel room in Louisville, Kentucky. He was older; he was wearier; but he was still Stag Preston.

"Well … ?" He grinned imperiously. "Didn't I tell you?"

Shelly smiled and felt his gut constricting; the kid was going to say it. Don't say it. Please, don't say it, I may not be strong enough, it's been a hard fight, I don't want to re-enter that arena. I'm not strong enough to fight them off any more. The animals still prowl, they just don't like my brand of flesh. Please …

"You gonna help me, Shelly?"

He had asked, was asking again:

"You gonna help me get outta here, get back on the track? We can make a mint, Shel baby. I know I got it again. I've been workin' the toilets for about eight months now, just seeing if I could put myself in shape, and I'm ready. I'm really ready. Whaddaya think?"

Answering was difficult, he was so frightened. It would be so easy. So terrifyingly easy. Was this the way the bombardier had felt as he sighted on Hiroshima in his Norden, got ready to send that first hell bomb on its way? Was this the feeling:

Chilled clean through.

Empty of everything but fear.

Unable to answer but trapped by eyes dark as pencil points. Was this the way it felt to know you could destroy the world with the flick of a finger?

He heard himself talking …

"Listen, kid, I think you've got it better than before. Sure, I'll give you that break, Stag. I've got to make it now, but I won't leave town till I talk to you again. You just wait, kid, you just wait …"

You just hold your breath.

You just sit and stare.

You just keep cool, I'll be back.

And somehow, he was getting out of there. Somehow he was getting out of the line of those two radiating beams of black light from Stag Preston's eyes. Somehow he was stumbling over chairs in his rush, and ducking under the velvet cord before Mario could unhook it. Somehow he was out into the cool and humid and sweaty neoned street, striding quickly away and around a corner and down a block and around two more fast corners in case he was being followed for more words, more glances, more pressure.

Finally, on a side street in New Orleans, down in an eddy in the swamp of life, Shelly Morgenstern stopped, and leaned against a building, and drew in breath raggedly. He pulled out a cigarette and his lighter, and joined them the way they had been intended.