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Stag s dressing room. It was all the silt of incidents deposited abruptly in
the delta of his mind. He had it all, all of it, captured there, each bit of
time and space prismed and imprisoned as though on a slide, about to go
under the microscope. Even the taking of this girl, this abundantly-built
teenager, to Stag s dressing room. That had been part of the memory,
slipping into the past even as it happened. For it seemed to have happened a
dozen other times ... and, in point of fact, had happened a dozen times since
Stag had come to The Palace... When Stag had come offstage that first time,
the day after Ruth Kemp had gone back to Louisville, he had made his initial
request. .There s a girl in the fifth row down there, Shelly. She s got black
hair in a pixie cut. I motioned to her to come around back after the show.
Get her up to the dressing room, will you?. Spider Kiss by Harlan Ellison
197 Shelly had carefully removed the cigarette from his lips, his eyes
narrowing; it was all he had been able to do to keep his fist from balling
and driving straight into the kid s mouth. Very quietly he answered, .I m a
stockholder, Stag, not your pimp. If you want to get her, go get her
yourself.. Then Stag had made some penetrating comments about how easy it
would be to drop a mention to Winchell or Lyons or Killgallen.oh, very
delicately.outlining the switch in residence of Carlene. It certainly
wouldn t kill anyone, but what a helluva lot of snickers and glances askance
it could cause in Lindy s or The Stage Delicatessen. That sort of business
could rob a guy of his manhood, muy pronto. It had been that, partially, no
mean threat in a world predicated on how many times a night you could make
the scene with a chick. But it had been more. It had been the awkward
feeling that his presence might keep Stag from even greater evils. An
egocentric thought, Shelly knew, but one that continued to intrude. Stag had
been his creation, and thus was his responsibility. It would be too easy to
check out now, letting the kid run loose. He had to stay close by and absorb
some of the driving shock of the kid s rampages. He had to get in the way of
the pneumatic drill. So, illogically or not, Shelly had become Stag Preston s
procurer. All these thoughts, four years. worth of them, as the little
redhead followed Shelly up the gunmetal-gray stairs to her idol s dressing
room. Shelly knocked on the door, but he knew Stag could not hear it. Stag
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was out on the fire escape, doing another number, giving his .papoose. show
that rode on the back of Spider Kiss by Harlan Ellison 198 the regular
performance in the theatre, helping to empty the seats for a new audience in
two hours when he went on again. Shelly opened the door and hustled the
redhead before him. She stood transfixed, staring at God within a few feet of
her, his back turned, one foot up on the rowel of the fire escape enabling
him to brace his guitar. He was playing .Light a Fire. and comping behind it
with broad chords and slides: .Light a fire in my heart, I want to burn for
you. Don t need matches, just your kisses, I want to burn for you. I got a
(whump!) Fever of love (whump!) Smolderin for you (whump!) so Light that
fire in my heart, I wanna wanna wanna burn for you!" It was a gutty, almost
burley bump-&-grind treatment with every whump! accented by a thrust and
counter-thrust of hips. Down in the alley behind the theatre, the horde went
wild, and behind him, in the dressing room, the little redhead did her own
private flip. Just as Stag finished, bowed for the inevitable mad applause
from below, and launched into .Warm Baby. (indistinguishable from .Light a
Fire. save for the placement of whump!) the phone rang. Shelly ground out the
most Spider Kiss by Harlan Ellison 199 current cigarette in a coffee cup
on the dressing table and put the receiver to his ear. .Yeah?. .Shelly?
Jeanie.. .Hi. What s happening?. .Stag finished the first show?. Shelly
looked out onto the fire escape. .Yeah, I guess you d call it that. He s
feeding the animals a few scraps off the fire escape now.. .I ve got some
contracts here from Sid Feller; he wants your signature and Stag s. It looks
like ABC-Paramount s going to release a two-record Commemorative Set of his
gold records, or some ridiculous thing. Will you be there for a while?.
Shelly moved against the wall, shielding his mouth, watching the redhead to
make certain she could not hear. .The Marquis de Sade has a new case study
going on at the moment,. he said. .He s still putting the make on those
kids, oh Shelly!. .Listen, what can I do ... ?. He shrugged helplessly. .Oh,
Shelly, can t you do something? Did you get her up there for him again?. He
did not answer. She spoke again. .Did you, Shelly?. Still no answer. Shame
rode silently along the wire. Finally: .Oh, Shelly!. He snapped at her. .Lay
off me! It s a living, isn t it?. Her answer was brief: .Is it?. The tone of
his answer had not been the New Shelly. It had been an Old Gimme-Gimme
Shelly. .I guess you re right,. he said. .But at least with me around he
can t take .em on the rug against their will.. Spider Kiss by Harlan
Ellison 200 Stag finished .Warm Baby. at that moment, and took his [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]