Part 19 (1/2)

I think a couple of those pretty boys came close to crying, in fact. Even the Mister, over in his corner where Bobby had joined him, looked delighted with me. The little bald guy at the piano was a lot better than the Karaoke tape, seemed to know ahead of time what I was going to do next and never played too loud. He had the biggest d.a.m.n ears I ever saw in my life, I swear they stuck up above his scalp, and maybe they gave him natural perfect pitch or something.

I could tell they wanted more so I gave them ”Hound Dog” after that, and ”Suspicious Minds,” and ”jailhouse Rock,” and the whole time the lady watched me like I was the best thing that had ever come into her life. So then I did ”Love Me Tender” just for her, if you get my drift, real soft and leaning to her the whole time. Her face was s.h.i.+ning like the moonlight.

And I thought to myself, boy, you have made an impression on these summer people! I thought sure I was going to get an audition now.

I could have been up there all night, but it was starting to get late and folks were sneaking out in ones and twos, though I could tell they hated to leave, and then Bobby came up, really wiping tears out of his eyes, and said: ”You'd better give me the mike now, Elvis, we don't want to wear out that voice. Everybody, a big hand for the King!”

The crowd went wild. They applauded and shouted for more, but I smiled real nice and shook my head as I handed the mike back to Bobby, because I could see some other action getting ready to happen. And if you don't know what I mean, you ain't been listening, friend.

The lady held on to me with that look of hers and patted the couch beside her. In the sweetest voice you ever heard, she asked me to come sit and talk with her. I looked quick over at the Mister but he was talking to Bobby, who was nodding and sipping from a bottle of Perrier. You don't have to ask me twice; I was on that couch in two seconds and, I tell you, she was all over me.

Crazy in love with me! You'd have thought I really was Elvis, the way she went on about how beautiful I was. It was almost embarra.s.sing. Nothing was too good for me; she asked if I wanted anything to drink and I told her a plain beer sure would be nice, and d.a.m.ned if she didn't send one of her little girls running off to the kitchen or somewhere to look for one.

In the meantime she fed me all kinds of chips and crackers from this bowl, health food snacks I guess, and they tasted all right but some of them were pretty strange colors and there was no salt at all.

Finally the little girl came back, real apologetic, because all she could find was a real old bottle of something imported, I guess from j.a.pan or somewhere, I couldn't read what the h.e.l.l was on the label and it tasted funny, like flowers sort of.

I'm too smart to complain about a stupid bottle of beer in a situation like that, though. I just smiled and drank and after the first swallow it wasn't too bad anyhow. I got quite a buzz off of it, in fact.

The lady kept talking about how good-looking I was, which was sweet, but I kind of wanted to get the conversation around to my career, and after a while she saw that and she put her arms around my neck and started talking about all the things she could do for me. Big record producers and club owners and all. She had another of her little girls pull off my shoes and give me a foot ma.s.sage, if you can believe that, some oriental pressure therapy thing her guru taught her, and I was sure glad I'd had that shower and borrowed that fancy pair of socks.

I looked around to see if the Mister was catching this act but I couldn't see him or Bobby anywhere, only some of the ugly old folks standing around here and there talking about Italian museums and some prince or other in the south of France, just as though there wasn't nearly an orgy going on right under their noses. But, you know, that's how morality is in Hollywood.

If I'd been able to keep her talking about my singing, I'd probably be in Vegas right now, but that funny beer was making me, you know, susceptible to her charms and all and she leaned in close and began to whisper things in my ear, and where a lady like her learned to talk like that I do not know. She got me so all I wanted was one thing, and it wasn't a recording contract.

We could have probably done it right there on the couch with the pretty- boys looking on, for all those people cared, but I got a little loud and that brought her out of it some, she put her hand over my mouth and whispered that we'd better go to her room. I thought that was a great idea, so we got up and she led me away into that dark old house, not turning on the lights so we wouldn't get caught I guess. Her little girls ran ahead with some kind of colored flashlights, winky bright spots flitting around the old rugs and drapes.

We got to her bedroom and it had this huge antique bed with covers and drapes and hangings all in that Laura Ashby flower pattern, and the moon was pouring in through the arch windows so you could see every detail in the flowers.

”Here,” says the lady, and she opened a drawer and took out a baggie of powder and I thought, oh boy, cocaine! Because, you know, those Hollywood people have it all the time. She shook it out in her palms and turned to me and I put my face down and had a real good snort, and she squealed and laughed, and Jesus I thought my nose was on fire but then it felt great, and she threw the rest of the handful up in the air so it floated over us, glittering and sparkling in the moonlight, and I realized maybe it was cut with something unusual, to glow like that.

I was so ready for action it didn't even faze me any when she had all her little giggling boys and girls peel off our clothes. If she'd wanted one of those kinky scenes like some of those Hollywood people you hear about, I'd have done everybody, that's how worked up I was. Well, not the boys, naturally. I'm all man, don't get me wrong.

I was just sorry to see that fine suit come off-but, h.e.l.l, there was no way she could have told that my underwear came from K-Mart.

Then the rest of them flitted off somewhere and it was just her and me on that flowery bed.

Am I going to tell you what it was like? What do you think it was like? Just sheer poetry, that's all.

She was smooth and... and she was cold and hot all at the same time, and she seemed like she was made out of moonlight. And, oh, she wanted me.

I must say I didn't think much of the Mister, because she clearly had never had as good a time as I was giving her. Whatever kind of cocaine that was, it gave a man staying power like that Spurious Spanish Fly in the magazines. We could have gone on all night. I'm not sure we didn't.

I'm not sure what all happened, to tell you the truth, because what with the cocaine and that funny beer I'm a little hazy on the way the evening ended. The last clear thing I remember was making too much noise again, so she was stuffing something sweet and cool in my mouth.

But it must have been like a movie, I know.

(guess at some point Bobby must have come and warned us that the Mister was coming, and got me up and helped me get my own clothes on and got me out of the house. I don't exactly remember getting back down to my truck-if you want to know the truth, I don't remember it at all, but it must have happened, because the next thing I knew I was waking up in the back of the pickup bed, and the moon was long gone.

So was everybody else.

I sat up, looking around in the washed-out light , feeling stiff in my dirty clothes, and I spit out what was in my mouth-big fat white rosebuds, can you believe it? She must have grabbed them off of a bouquet or something by her bed when I started to yell.

I figured out right then she had only rushed me out of the way so the Mister wouldn't shoot me, so I didn't mind as much as I might have, though I was kind of queasy to think of Bobby getting my pants on me.

And I was real stiff and cold and had a funny hangover, so I had to pull over three or four times to puke on the way back into San Luis Obispo County. I didn't mind that so much, but when it hit me that I'd lost my big break-because I never got her phone number and, well, I'm not sure about how her name is spelled, and anyway movie people have all kinds of security guards and like that to keep people from contacting them, and most of all she might not recognize me not wearing an Armani suit-that's when I started pounding on the steering wheel and caking myself a sorry b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

When I got home, Suellen had already left for work, which I would have been grateful for except she'd left one seriously b.i.t.c.hy note telling me to collect my stuff and get the h.e.l.l out of there before she got back. The way I felt, I didn't care if I never saw her big old b.u.t.t (she was five years older than me, by the way) again. I cleaned out everything that was mine and I almost took the deck off too, but I'd have had to take it apart to get all that wood in the truck bed and anyway I'm a bigger man than that. Let her be petty if she wants to.

But I wasn't looking forward to telling my folks I was moving back in, because I knew my daddy had filled up my room with tools. When I got to their doublewide they weren't home anyway, and Verbal was sitting on the deck having himself a Coors Lite. I didn't feel like talking much, but he wanted to tell me all about this idea he had for big money, which was to raise pit bull puppies to sell to the folks that run meth labs out of their trailers back in the canyons.

That's how dumb Verbal is, because everybody knows pit bulls don't really keep the federal agents away, and anyhow if you mess with the meth folks they'll kill you, and Verbal always tries to mess with somebody sooner or later. I told him that, being real short with him because I had a bad headache, and he just grinned and puked out his eight-inch knife and said n.o.body'd better try to kill him, and I said, ”Those people got guns, you stupid son of a b.i.t.c.h,” and he got huffy and left, and I went inside and lay down on my folks' couch.

I could still smell her. I had been so close to getting out of this town.

Well, I will get out. I have lived my dream and I will live it again. all I have to do is raise some cash, and I've got a plan for that. I'll get enough money for a bus ticket down to Hollywood, and if I can't find her, I'll bet I can track down that Bobby. Of course, I have to save up for one of those Armani suits first.

How? The secret word is recycling.

Did you know you can make good money at that? You can, if you're smart and you work out a system, which I did.

No, listen: the trick is to go out before sunrise on Thursdays, before the recycling trucks come around. People set those open tubs out on the curb and if you're careful and quiet you can help yourself to their aluminum cans! And another good way is to go out Wednesdays, which is when the freebie advertising papers come out, and their delivery people just drop big bundles of them in front of liquor stores and laundromats. You just follow them at a distance, wait until they're gone and pull up fast, then pitch the bundles of papers into the back of your truck and take off. The recycling plants take them no questions asked, and you don't even get your hands dirty.

No, I'm not lazy-that's a lot of work, getting up when it's still dark. Though I like it, kind of; it reminds me of those summer people and especially her, especially when there's some moonlight. And when I get down to Hollywood, you can bet I'll keep late hours! I like that night life.

Well, of course it'd take forever to save up for an Armani suit that way, if that was all I did. But, now, this is the really good part: you take the money they give you at the recycling plant, and then you invest in lottery tickets.

See? I am one smooth operator.

How They Tried to Talk Indian Tony Down.

This happened about ten years ago, out at Tobin Farm.

Back in the sixties, somebody bought Tobin Farm for the purposes of holding a renaissance fair there during the summers. Off-seasons it became a kind of commune for the people involved in putting on the fair. They lived modestly in sheds and trailers scattered on a hundred acres of oak wilderness back of the farm, collecting unemployment between fairs.

They had their own communal security force, in case of problems. Twenty- five years on, though, most of the members of the commune were arthritic and bespectacled and never got up to much in the way of trouble, except for domestic disputes or the occasional DUI Abby and Martha Caldecott lived at the foot of a hill, some distance from the center of the little community. Abby was into Wicca and Martha wrote romance novels, and during fairs the sisters ran a beer booth. Remote as their trailer was, it was cozily domestic. There were bright geraniums in coffee cans. There was a small lawn and lawn chairs. There were plastic party- lights strung from the awning, bright tropical fish. The lights shone out cheerily in the shadow of the hill. It was a dark cold shadow, because the hill was thought to be haunted.

On the night it happened, Abby was was.h.i.+ng dishes after supper and Martha was watching an Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k movie on the VCR (their television reception was oddly sporadic) when they became aware that somebody was up on the hill, whistling.

It was a plaintive whistle, as though somebody was trying to summon a lost dog, and as the sisters conferred they realized the sound had been going on at intervals since that afternoon. It was now pitch dark and past nine at night. Given that, and given the rumors about the hill, the sisters decided not to investigate. Abby made a pan of cocoa and Martha turned up the volume on The Birds. 165 they were sipping cocoa and watching the film when headlights flashed outside.

The sisters sighed and paused their tape. Abby got up and went out to investigate; a pickup truck had pulled into the gravel s.p.a.ce beyond the lawn. Killer Mikey was just getting out.

Killer Mikev had been to Nam, a long time ago, and done very bad things there. He was okay now, though his hands still shook sometimes; but because he was familiar with things like radios and Situations, he had been made security chief for the commune. He stood now doubtfully s.h.i.+ning his maglight up into the trees, announcing into his radio that he had arrived at the location. Abby asked him what was going on and he asked her if she knew what the whistling was. She told him she didn't, and he told her it was worrying All the people who lived up on Sn.o.b Hill, which was the cl.u.s.ter of trailers on the ridge opposite. He had radioed for backup.

As they stood there talking, the whistling came again, and this time right after it a faint little voice cried out Hey, from way far up in the darkness.