by Drew Stepek
“Hardcore sucks.”
Being an asshole from Los Angeles, I had become very aware of trendsters trying to out-cool each other. I was no stranger to playing the “I know more fresh shit than you” game. I had rolled my eyes daily at followers, pretenders and posers. That was my thing. However, it seemed that the citizens of Austin took this art to intergalactic levels. If something came from someone else’s mouth, it was automatically deemed lame by their “everyone is fringe” society. Every day must have been a chore to decide what the next dope music genre, fashion trend or sociological school of thought was on deck. Thankfully, I wasn’t dumb enough to announce that I was from L.A. It was, after all, the poser capital of the universe in the mind of Austinites; therefore, super lame.
I didn’t want to walk into another painful conversation like the ones I had with the head shop burnout or that lonely, sad doorman, so I simply shot her a thumbs up and said, “Thank you.”
She returned my gesture with a peace sign. “Deuces.”
Satisfied that was the most cordial invitation that I was going to get into the club, I walked toward the curtain. The noises of Clyde Craft and the Whiskey Brothers grew louder. I crossed the threshold of the curtain and walked into a world of beards, beanies, and blue-collar beers. I took a few steps and almost instantly shit my pants when some jackass in cords and a ripped-up cardigan loudly whistled his approval to Clyde and the boys.
He saw me looking at him and pointed to my shirt, then mimed smoking pot with his whistling fingers. High as Fuck, he mouthed.
“Right on,” one of his buddies added.
Three girls started a conversation next to me. They all had the same extra-black hair dye, tattoos and piercings look, making me think of Joan Jett. However, as a collective they represented tall and lanky, short and stubby, and finally big and burly. They looked like action figures that represented different female body types, just with the same paint job. I noticed that they were passing a joint between them. I guessed that they hadn’t gotten the strict instructions from the bouncer outside that drugs weren’t allowed in the club.
“It’s him,” Slim Jett said as she pointed to the far corner of the patio.
“Are you sure?” Jumbo Jett responded.
“He’s hot,” Shorty Jett added.
I walked over to them. “Who are you all talking about?”
Jumbo flipped her hair. “Not interested.”
“Ewwww,” Slim said.
Shorty stood on her tiptoes and continued to look across the room.
I licked my lips. “I just wanted to know if you were talking about Stephan Rodderick. I’m supposed to meet him here.”
Shorty looked me up and down. “Star fucker.” She exhaled a huge cloud of pot.
“Fan boy,” Jumbo said.
Slim Jett walked away.
The others followed.
“I love rock ‘n’ roll, too,” I hollered at them.
Slim Jett flipped me off without turning around.
A bouncer walked over to me.
“Let’s be cool, man. The ladies are here to see the band.”
“Copy that.” I shot him a peace sign like the hostess in the front room. “Deuces.”
He walked over the bar and said something to the pigtailed and overly-bearded bartender. He pointed at me and then signaled keep an eye on that guy with his fingers and his eyes.
I waved back and clinched my teeth together for a big smile.
The bartender started to wave back as if he’d just made a new friend when the bouncer slapped his hand down. A glass broke across the room and the bouncer left the bar to check it out. The bartender pointed to his own shirt and then to me. Me too, he mouthed. He bent down behind the bar and then returned with a Tall Boy can of Schlitz. He put it on the bar.
I walked over and grabbed it. “Thanks man,” I said.
As the fiddle squealed on the stage, nearly crippling me, he put out his hand. “Ten bucks.”
I reached into my pocket and threw a bill at him. “Keep the change.”
He lifted the bill to the light. “There’s no change here. You gave me a ten.”
I grabbed the bill back and exchanged it for a twenty.
He took it, put it in his pocket and said, “Thanks.”
I waited for a second and then asked, “Where’s the change?”
“You told me to keep the change.”
“That was when I gave you the ten.”
“There was no change for the ten.”
I took a barstool. “Fine. Keep the change.” The bartender left to serve other douchebags and I turned toward where the girls were pointing. Even though they didn’t seem like the star struck-types, Rodderick was famous. I’ll bet they were surprised to see him out and about at a bar so soon after the story of his overdose came out.
I surveyed the bar. I can’t imagine that Rodderick would have stood me up, especially since I had to answer for all of Linnwood’s stupid mistakes in a city where he hadn’t earned respect.
I didn’t see him but then again, I only had a vague picture in my head of what he looked like that I saw on billboards all over L.A.
The bartender came back. “You lookin’ for someone?”
“Funny you should ask,” I said. “Is Stephan here?”
“Stephan who?” He flipped up a bottle of whiskey out from the cooler behind the bar.
“You know. That actor from those vampire movies. Stephan Rodderick. I’m supposed to meet him.”
Surprisingly, he gave me a straight answer and pointed across the patio. “See him?”
“I think so.” I looked in the direction he was pointing. “What’s he wearing?”
“Black cowboy shirt.”
I looked around the bar. Ninety percent of the bar was wearing black cowboy shirts. “Little help. I don’t see him.”
He reached over the bar. “See that girl dancing with the flowers in her hair?”
I looked over. Some hippie was spinning around near the middle of the dance floor.
“Yeah, for sure.”
“Now look just to the right and you can see the back of his head.”
Squinting again, I saw a black-haired head bobbing around attached to a black cowboy shirt with red roses around the collar. “Got him.” I put out my hand to shake the bartender’s. “Thanks buddy.”
He walked away. “Have a good time, stalker.”
And to think, I thought, I’d met someone in Austin who wasn’t a complete asshole.
I tapped the bar with my palm and headed over to Rodderick. I didn’t feel like a dead man walking. Rodderick chose The Settler’s Inn for a reason. I pumped myself up. If he did indeed know who I was, then he also knew that I was a complete badass. I clenched my fists, moved my shoulders around and then rubbed them with my hand like I was entering a boxing ring. I needed to assure myself that he didn’t want to start a conflict with what was left of Los Angeles. I supposed that if he wanted confirmation of my ruthlessness that I could take total credit for spreading RTL all over the parking lot. Even though it would be less than a half-truth, he could choose to believe me or Linnwood. Linnwood, of course, being the punk trying to move in on his territory.
I reached his table and tapped him on the shoulder. “Stephan?”
He turned his head, smiling and gave me a “just a minute” signal with his finger. He had black bobbed hair with one white streak lock that hung over his large horn-rimmed Ray Bans. His face was perfectly chiseled behind the glasses. His nose was long and thin, leading to his plump lips. His long feminine eyelashes blinked over his crisp green eyes as he passively entertained one of his fans.
Then, he turned back to a conversation that he was having with the short Joan Jett chick.
“Like I was saying.” She shot me a rude stare. “Into the Darkness was the first book I read in the Nightshayde series.”
He cupped his hands over hers. “But that was the third book.”
Her gloom and doom facade was instantly washe
d away by the excitement of the mesmerized tweenager still lingering inside her after all these years. “I know, right? Anyway, I made my mom take me to a bookstore that night and buy me all the rest of the books. I didn’t sleep all weekend.”
“Well, the author thanks you.”
She turned her hands over to connect better with his greatness. “But you were L. Byron. I know you’ve heard this before, but you were born to be him.”
I stretched my shoulders again and cracked my neck, then placed my right hand over my left near my crotch. I wanted desperately to plug my fingers in my ears, but I didn’t want to come off as uncool.
“You better be there for the final movie next month,” he said as he tickled the inside of her hand.
“As if I’d miss it, Stephan.” Her eyes lit up. “Can I call you Stephan?”
“Call me Steph,” he said. “That’s what my closest friends call me.”
She started giggling, almost convulsing. It was as if he just jammed his fist into her ass and licked her neck.
I looked across the bar and saw Jumbo and Slim enviously looking on. I smiled at them as I continued to pump myself up. Slim gave me the finger again.
Rodderick saw it and he turned back to me. “Just another minute.”
“I have seen every one of the movies at the midnight showing on opening night,” she confessed. “I know it seems stupid, but I really feel connected to you. Since I read that first book, I’ve felt like I’m Amethyst Rose.”
“Hamster Fist Rose,” I joked.
She looked at me again and snarled. “Loser.”
Furthering his connection, he slid his hands up her forearms. “It’s not stupid,” he said. “The thing is—”
Tears started to well up inside of her heavy-lined eyes as if she thought he was going to propose to her. She swallowed as her eyes shimmered, becoming wider and wider every second that he hung on that beat.
“The thing is that you’re more beautiful than Amethyst.”
She blurted into nervous laughter that couldn’t be registered by a Richter scale. I was starting to think that Steph was truly a traditional vampire. He had this girl completely under his spell. I guessed that if I looked at the seat of the chair she was sitting in that it was drenched.
She took her hands from his caress and pulled back the collar on her shirt. “Will you sign my neck?”
He pulled his head back and looked at me dumbfounded. “Should I sign her neck?”
I think I was also under his black magic spell. I didn’t respond.
“RJ?” he asked again.
He knew my name!
He knew my name!
“Should I sign her neck?”
I froze.
He turned back to Short Stack. “It seems as if my friend RJ here is just as taken with your beauty as I am.”
She looked at me and grunted. Switching channels from a prince taking off his shirt to a pig taking a dump didn’t agree with her. “Perv,” she said.
He stood up and took off his cowboy shirt, revealing a wife beater underneath. While wrapping the sleeves around his waist, he pulled a Sharpie out of his leather pants. “Oh, come now.” He handed me a beanie. “Can you hold this, buddy?”
“Sure,” I said. I wanted to call him Steph but I didn’t think that I had established myself as one of his friends yet.
He moseyed around the picnic table to the moonshine jug beat of Clyde Craft and the Whiskey Brothers and took the cap off of the pen, putting it in his mouth. “What’s your name?”
“Shelby.” She closed her eyes, sensually shifting her pink-streaked hair off of her neck and ran her tongue around her lips in a circle.
Rodderick bent over and slowly wrote his name between a neck tattoo of a sheriff’s star and flower. “I don’t usually do this, Shelby.”
She exhaled like she was about to have an orgasm, seemingly feeling every stroke of the pen from the tips of her hair to the ends of her toenails. After he was finished signing, he kissed the spot where he signed. Shorty’s body seized. After a pause, she reached out to touch his abs but he had already turned around and headed back to his seat. Jumbo and Slim giggled from across the bar. They should have been so lucky.
Stephan sat back down. “I’m sorry to cut our talk short, Shelby—”
She opened her eyes and frowned like a baby.
He put out his hand to say farewell. “But, unfortunately my friend RJ and I have a lot to talk about.”
She continued to sit across from him, enchanted. “I wanted to tell you that we—” she pointed to the other Jetts, who waved. “Well, we hope you’re doing okay.”
He scratched at the light stubble on his cheek. “Don’t believe everything you read, Shelby. I’m going to be fine.”
He was right. For someone who had just OD’d on heroin, he sure looked like a million bucks. He was going to be fine.
Shelby got up from her dream encounter and blew Stephan a kiss. He caught it in his hand and then blew it in front of his face. She walked back to her crew in a daze. They lit up in excitement.
He pointed across the table. “Take a seat, RJ.”
I sighed. “Do I have to sit over there?”
He signaled to my pal, the bartender, by holding up two fingers. “Why do you ask that?”
I pumped my fists again, playing it cool. “Because I don’t want to go sit in a bucket of Shelby’s pussy juice.”
“Hilarious.” He placed some earplugs in the middle of the table. “I guess my sources were correct about you. Take a seat.”
I walked across the table from him and wiped my hand on the bench. It was dry. I think. I sat down, grabbed the ear plugs and quickly put them in my ears. Anything that would help ease my bluegrass-induced headache would have been perceived as an olive branch at that point.
He put out his hand. “Nice to meet you, RJ.”
I returned the gesture and shook his hand. “Nice to meet you, too. Thanks for the plugs.”
“No worries. I know how intense this type of music can be to our ears.”
I pointed to the Jetts, who were still whispering and giggling. “Does that happen to you all time? Chicks ask you to sign their bodies?”
“Yeah. They’re mostly pigs like that one. I like them a little younger, if you know what I mean.”
I looked at Shelby. She couldn’t have been over twenty-five.
He winked at me. “You know what I mean.”
“Ummmm, I think I do.” I flicked at my knee under the table. “I don’t mean to be a dick, but are you a molester?”
He waved my assumption away. “Oh, God no. Why would you ask that?”
“Forget it. My bad.” I didn’t want to let on that I was there screening him to be Pinball’s temporary guardian. “You told me that you liked them younger.” Eldritch vouched for this guy and I had to believe that he knew what was the right thing to do.
The waitress in short blue jorts came over and dropped off two bottles of beer. “Here you go. As you ordered them, Steph.”
I looked at the bottles. They were dark and I smelled warm blood mixed with the hops. I picked it up and turned it sideways, making sure I wasn’t imagining things. “How did you do that?”
He took a drink. “Do what?”
“How did you get them to put blood in the beer?” I took a drink, as well. It was awesome.
“This is my bar.” He smirked. “They brew the house beer to my standards.”
I licked some fermented blood off my chin. “I thought this place was Linnwood’s idea.”
“Right,” he began. “I told him to have you meet me here. He said he was sending you in good faith.”
“So, you’re not pissed about the RTL situation?”
“Why would I be?” He looked genuinely confused. “I want to recruit the BBP to run the coke in Austin and they got rid of the RTL. I hated those bitches. Always skimming off the top. They were worst drug dealers in Austin and they didn’t even really work for me.”
“What a
bout the Chaplins? The McCoys?”
He crossed his hands on the table and moved in closer. “What about them?”
“I’m the one who took them out.” I stopped flicking my knee. I puffed up my shoulders.
“Good. You did me another favor.” He twirled the Sharpie with his fingers. “Those losers did nothing good for me. Bottom of the food chain, RJ. Bottom of the food chain.”
“Eldritch told me—”
“Eldritch? Ha. Gimme a break. That tool is out here? Hilarious.” He tapped his chest and quieted down further. “Do you think that someone in my position would bother myself with a weird theater fag and a bunch of inbred, zombie scumbags?”
“I don’t know. That’s the way it was run in Los Angeles. All vampires worked for Cobra. All vampires had different assigned zones where they could deal and kill.”
He opened up his arms. “Look around you. Does this look like L.A.?”
I looked around. Two hipsters were sharing a small ceramic bowl and blowing smoke into each other’s faces. “Kind of.”
“Look.” He took a hard rip off of his beer. He sounded angry. “I don’t know what you’ve heard about me, but I’m a celebrity and I am also a businessman.”
“Are you a vampire?”
“Oh, come on. You and I both know that neither of us are vampires. Are we the same? Yes. But I know what we really are.”
“I know what we are, too.”
“I’m guessing you got a peek at the record’s room before you burned down the church?”
My toes curled up inside my boots. “How do you know about that?”
“I know everything about us.” He grinned. “I also know that you didn’t take out the McCoys. The Minutemen did.”
“How? Were you there?”
“I know it because everyone in Austin works for me.”
I pushed out the bench to stand up.
He lowered his hands. “Sit down, RJ.”
I hesitated and then returned to my seat. “The Minutemen are like The Cloth, asshole. They want to exterminate all of us.”
“Let me guess.” He rested his head on his hand. “Eldritch told you that.”
I didn’t respond.
“They work for me. They are my private security. They help me keep order around my city.”