Weird Tales - Summer 1990

by Vol. 51 No. 4

  "At the school, in the gym."

  "This is the eighties, Soul."

  "Damn, you're right." He turned on his megawatt grin, dropped whatever bothered him in the shadows behind it, changed moods like changing costume between sets.

  Blipping the accelerator, toying with the power at her daintily slippered toes, Michelle circled the country club grounds twice. Enjoying the car, show­ing off, drawing a crowd outside with the T-bird's roar — and terrified to pull up at the door. Robbie might be there.

  Yet she wanted him to see her with her heartthrob of a date.

  And there under the entry awning he stood, staring, with blond punk Apryl on his arm. Michelle saw him the mo­ment she pulled up, feeling adrenaline surge turn her to neon in her red dress, waving like a movie star at everyone but him.

  She greeted friends as Soul parked the car: "Hi, Tiffany. Hi, Denise. Hi, Nicole."

  "Hi-Michelle-who-is-that-GUY!"

  They squealed like pigs when they found out, then mobbed him and asked him for autographs on their gowns. With rakish deejay wit he refused, making his way through them to Mich­elle. He put his arm around her bare shoulders and walked her toward the music. Passing Robbie and his Ape, she gave them a killer smile.

  Into a ballroom decorated with bal­loons and crepe paper in her school colors, red and white. "Some things don't change," Soul remarked. "Dance?" he asked her.

  "Of course." Though she had never been a confident dancer before.

  He made her look good just because she was with him, as she had known he would. He moved like a tropical god, savage, exalted, instinctive. And it was live music, hip-thrusting arm-pumping heartbeat music, rock classics plus the throbbing big-city pulse of more recent tunes. And though strapless beauties were panting all around — and though in a general way Soul was aware of them, Michelle could tell he was — he looked mostly at her, and not like some­one who was doing anybody a favor. His eyes had gone soft as blue candleflame.

  "Which guy is Robbie?" he asked once, and she pointed out Robbie and Apryl dancing near the edge of the ball­room. He said, "He dumped you for that?" and made her smile. Across the dance floor Robbie's eyes had met hers, tense, unhappy. She tried not to glance at him again.

  At the punchbowl between dances, once more she asked Soul, "Why are you doing this?"

  "Drinking this awful stuff? I'm thirsty."

  "Smartass, you know what I mean. The dinner. Letting me drive. Being here. Being so nice when I know it has to go against your nasty nature. All of it."

  He hesitated, then said, "Can't you feel it, Mike?"

  "Maybe. Feel what?"

  "Magic in the night. Innocence. Young love. They're always in the air thick as honeysuckle perfume on prom night."

  She danced with him more and had never felt so desirable. At some time she went to the restroom. In her stall was an ancient graffito, maybe from another prom night two decades before, scratched deep: "Jim Morrison will come again." She remembered that after­ward because it seemed strange in ret­rospect how she had noticed it that night, mulling over the inscription about Morrison the Lizard King before she went out to rejoin her strange rock an­gel of a date and watch the crowning of a prom king and queen.

  Then the slow dancing started. Softly Soul gathered her in so that her head lay on his shoulder, so that she felt his warm breathing just like that of a real human being on hers. So that they danced heart to heart.

  A dance later his hand had slipped down her snugly zippered back just to her coccyx, pressing a little. His hips tilted toward her. Her red satin belly felt what was happening under his tux­edo slacks, and she did not try to stop it. Against his hard black broadcloth shoulder her lips moved, smiling.

  "Awright, break it up!"

  Jerking upright, she thought at first it was one of the teachers, or a chap-erone. But most of them turned a blind eye by this time of night. In fact it was someone far younger and angrier: Rob­bie, standing spraddle-legged with his thin fists balled to fight.

  "Get the fuck off her!"

  Soul stood half a head taller than him, outweighed him by maybe forty pounds of muscle. "Are you cutting in?" he asked with courtesy meant to scald.

  "I'd like to cut your —"

  "Robbie!" Michelle wanted to slap him for acting like an asshole in front of everyone. "What are you trying to prove?"

  He ignored her, saying to Soul, "I guess we all know who thinks he's Lord of the Fly."

  So he'd heard the song. Suddenly Michelle felt half sorry for him. But only half. Silencing Soul with a hand on his arm, she said, "Robbie, for God's sake get out of my face. You don't own me. Go back to Ape."

  "Apryl got mad and went home an hour ago." Robbie was talking straight to her and only to her, all his anger gone, only worry and vehemence left.

  "Michelle, c'mon, let me take you some­where. Listen, you gotta blow this guy. He thinks he's big stuff. You know what he wants."

  Soul gave a single snort of unper­turbed laughter.

  "Michelle, please." Robbie was beg­ging her, he was pleading, and she could hardly believe it; entreaties were not his style. "I know you're smart. Think what you're doing. This guy'll hurt you and never even notice."

  Though no longer angry, she told him, "You had your chance, Robbie. Butt out."

  "Michelle —"

  "Hey, Robbie." With two careless fin­gers Soul pulled a packet of white pow­der from his tux breast pocket. "You seem to be a nice kid." Just the slightest leer on nice. "Here, I'll make you a peace offering. This is for you to get lost with." He slipped it into Robbie's rented cummerbund, patted it. At the sight of the stuff Robbie's face had changed. He looked dazed, unfocused.

  "I want you to remember I tried," he said to Michelle.

  Suddenly she was furious at him again, this time because he was giving up. "Get out of my life, Robbie Diehl!"

  She turned her back on him. Soul pulled her into his arms. "Lady in Red" was playing, and they were slow danc­ing, swaying to the music. The crowd on the floor was thinning as couples slipped away, and Michelle felt scared and daring and alive all over, thinking about what was next. She belonged to none of the cliques; she had not been invited to a party, a bonfire. She would be on her own. Out in the country some­where, probably.

  "Ready?" Soul asked her softly.

  "Yes."

  In the white rumbling Thunderbird she snuggled against him and thought about how he had kissed her already to get it out of the way. About how his lips had felt. About him. About who the Hell in fact he was.

  She said quietly into the silence, "You're all of them. Elvis and Buddy Holly and oh, I just don't know, all those guys who did sex and drugs and rockandroll and died young."

  He said just as quietly, "Not Buddy Holly. He was different."

  "But the others."

  "Yes. Morrison and Hendrix and a hundred others who burned out fast." He kissed her hair. "Lay your head in my lap if you want to."

  She did, curling her feet up on the seat, feeling the hard muscle of his thigh swell against her cheek as he worked the accelerator. The boning of her dress had begun to hurt her; she could hardly wait to take it off. She said into the darkness under the dashboard, "You're still rebels. You're supposed to be dead."

  "Don't think so much." He turned into a dirt lane and slowed the T-bird, stopping in the shadow of a woods. She sat up, then when he came to her door got out to walk with him. He put his arm around her. Over the other he car­ried a blanket he had brought out of the trunk. Quite a Boy Scout. Prepared.

  "Moonlight," he murmured as they came out of the woods into a luminous hilltop meadow.

  "Has it been awhile?"

  "Yes."

  "It's hard for you to be real? When you're on the air you don't bother with the body?"

  "Shhh." He hushed her by taking her elbow, turning her toward him and kissing her.

  A different sort of kiss, this. Just as expert, but far more urgent. Like his dancing, it was potent, primal and ut­
terly confident. With equal confidence his hands took charge of her shoulders, the arch of her back, the tilt of her breasts. And she wanted him. She wanted him. She wanted him never to stop, what girl would not want a dream lover like Soul for her first time, and there would be no condom, no danger of anything — yet the part of her that never stopped thinking, thinking, saw everything about him in that ecstatic moment as a whole, a pattern, and she knew with panicked gunsight clarity that he had to stop.

  "Soul." She pushed him to arm's length; her voice was a whisper, almost a sob. "No. Don't make me love you."

  He obeyed her. In the moonlight she could see his beautiful face, shaken. His hands reached toward her head, did not quite touch it.

  "Michelle." His voice, a breath like hers. "Shel." No one had ever called her that. "Who's making who love who?"

  "Listen." She stepped back. "Just lis­ten to me. I figured it out, why you came. Prince in a white car. Gave me gifts. Carried me away to fairyland." She was crying without noise, the tears shining on her face. "It's love you want, isn't it? You crave love like a junkie. Growing up the way you did, it made you compulsive, a gambler for love. Doesn't matter whose. Could be any­one's. Mine will do."

  "Shel —"

  "You know girls like me, the plain ones. You know what you can make me do."

  "Shel, what are you thinking? I would never hurt you!"

  "I know that!" She stamped her foot, anguished, wishing she could sing to him what she needed to say; words alone were such clumsy plodding things. "Soul, I know Robbie's wrong. Some people you might hurt. Not me. Don't you see? It's not me I'm trying to save. It's you."

  He grew as still as the night.

  "A few more kisses and I would love you, adore you, worship you — and isn't that what has always destroyed you?"

  She had thought it out until she could almost see it happening: the superstar singing his heart out in his terrible need, love me, love me, and the many lovers tearing at his clothes, his face, his hair, drunk and riotous on wine of his sacrifice, wanting to eat him like communion bread, swallow him whole. But he would go on singing, love me, love me, until finally in despair of ever loving him enough the lovers would cry Crucify him, let him die.

  Soul turned half away, staring off into the west. After a while he said faintly, "It's not the love itself that fin­ishes me. It's — the hunger."

  "Can you separate them?"

  "No. Desire in me, it's like a monster. Never gets enough. It's a fire that feeds on itself."

  "Until there's nothing left."

  "Yes." He turned to her with a stark look. "Why do you want to save me? I've never wanted to save myself."

  She stood with the tears drying on her face. "Because you're beautiful," she said. "That's all." Hoping he would always be beautiful and knowing he would never be wise; he would never change, never grow, never learn. Knowing that for his own sake she must not let him touch her again.

  "You're very different," he said softly, scanning her as if to memorize her. "You see through me. I've never met anyone like you."

  "I almost blew it," she told him. "I think you'd better take me home right away."

  He reached into a pocket, handed her something that jingled like money: his keys. "Take the Bird and go," he said. "I'm not as strong as you."

  "You want me to just leave you out here?"

  "I'll fade in a few hours. So will the T-bird. Better hurry. I want very much to kiss you." He kept his hands clenched at his sides.

  She left, turning once to wave good­bye, looking back once more when she got to the white car. He stood on the hilltop in the moonlight, watching steadily after her.

  Driving, she grew conscious that she was shivering, and covered her shoul­ders with the maribou wrap that had lain all night abandoned by his gear­shift. Back home, she parked the car around the corner from her house but kept the keys, hiding them in her eve­ning bag as she walked to the door. Her corsage, she noted, had wilted. All the lights were on, bright; her mother was waiting up for her.

  "Where have you been? The prom ended two hours ago!"

  "Just driving around and talking, Mom."

  "You should have called. I've been worried sick you were with the wrong crowd. Did you hear about Robbie?"

  Robbie?

  "They had to take him to the hospital. He thought there were lizards crawling on him. Cut himself all over with a ra­zor trying to get them off."

  Robbie —

  "Some kind of dope he took drove him screaming crazy."

  Oh, Robbie.

  "I didn't know Robbie took drugs. You are not to see him again, Michelle, do you hear me? I don't want you going near him anymore. I'm so glad you found a nice boy to take you to the prom tonight. Did you have a good time, dear?"

  She pleaded weariness, went upstairs and got out of the red gown, leaving it on the floor. Then she lay on her bed but did not sleep. When dawn started to light her room she got up and picked up the gown so her mother would not yell at her, and emptied her fancy eve­ning bag. The Thunderbird keys were not there. Sometime they had dissolved into air.

  Before her parents were up she called the hospital. No, it would not be pos­sible for her to see Robbie Diehl. She could send him a card care of the psy­chiatric ward. His condition was stable. No, he was not expected to be released anytime soon.

  She went back to bed, keeping her eyes closed when her mother opened her door to offer her breakfast. Since she had been up late her parents ate and went to church without her. She did not have to deal with them until Sunday dinner, when she told them as little as she could.

  In early afternoon her phone started to ring. Tiffany, Denise, Nicole, all sounding shocked and pale. No one, least of all Michelle, wanted to talk much about the Soul of Rock and Roll; it was all Robbie, Robbie, Robbie who would never be the same. Midafter-noon, dazed, Michelle found herself lift­ing the receiver yet once again and this time listening to Apryl sobbing.

  "It's —all —my —fault."

  "No, Apryl, not really." Michelle had little use for Apryl, but truth was truth. Apryl had not given a packet of white powder to Robbie.

  "You don't know," blurted April be­tween wet sounds. "I made him — take me to the prom. I told him I'd — I'd k-k-kill myself if he didn't —"

  Robbie, you sap, why did you fall for it?

  "— so he did. But you're the only one he — he cares about. You were — you were straightening him out, and then I had to come along and mess him up again. If I'd just let him alone none of this would have happened."

  In a weird way that was true. If Rob­bie had taken her to the prom he would never have met the Soul of Rock and Roll.

  Sundays were always long. So peace­ful, quiet, smiling, virtue-imbued. This was the longest Sunday of all. Michelle avoided her parents, wore her oldest jeans for comfort.

  That evening at nine sharp, as if an alarm had gone off, she shut herself in her room and turned on her radio.

  "HEL-lo, lovers, this is the Dedication Hour, and the Soul of Rock and Roll is ready to hear you bare your hearts."

  She would never in all her life forget that voice.

  "And for once I'm going to bare mine." His tone changed, in that cha­meleon way he had, completely. "To­night every love song I play is dedicated from me to Michelle."

  She waited, listening, lying on her bed with one hand to her lips. Knowing he wanted her to call him. Knowing what would happen when she didn't.

  He took all the usual syrupy requests — with something less than his usual mouthy flair, she noticed. He sounded subdued tonight. Muted, like an old guitar. She pictured him out there in the night somewhere, in a metal tower, suspended in a limbo between earth and sky. Bodiless in darkness.

  "Michelle," he said into that dark­ness, "the last song tonight is all for you. If you're listening, Shel, or even if you're not, this is yours alone. Straight from the Soul."

  Lady you see right through me

  You get to me

  You undo
me.

  Lady I've never felt so melted

  Never been so broken into

  As by you

  My Lady of Love.

  Like "Lord of the Fly," it was not a song she had ever heard before. She had an idea where they both came from. If all those blaze-of-glory-gone-by rockers could get together enough juice to ma­nipulate telephone wires and airwaves and generate themselves a wet-dream body, they could get together enough to make music. She imagined they had one Hell of a band.

  The song faded into ads. Her phone rang.

  Knowing her parents were planted on the sofa and would not answer it, she let it ring four times, until the first yell sounded from downstairs, before she answered it.

  "Hello?"

  "Shel."

  It was him, as she had known it would be, and it would take maybe one more hour together for her to fall in love with him. And not too many days after that for the finiteness of her love to destroy him by way of his infinite need. She said quietly, "Yes, I was lis­tening."

  "Shel, I mean every word of it. You've got me down on my knees. I've never — nobody's ever understood me before, nobody's ever played it straight with me the way you do. Please. I've got to see you again."

  Had to see her again or he'd live. And living was growing. And he couldn't have that, could he?

  He said into her silence, "Shel, I'm begging you."

  In the shadows behind her eyes she heard Robbie screaming. She said, "All right. Yes."

  "Milady. Thank you."

  "Come tomorrow, Milord. Be Axl Rose, okay? In a new Corvette. Candy-apple red."

  She would skip school in the wanton spring weather. As Robbie lay strait-jacketed and sedated in a darkened hos­pital room, somewhere out in the ho-neysuckled countryside she would take the Soul of Rock and Roll and unzip him utterly.

  Before she went to bed Michelle painted her nails scarlet. V

  SWAN'S LAKE

  by Susan Shwartz

  Denied even the small luxury of a maudlin binge, the tutor Wolfgang had drunk himself sober while the sailors spent the night dragging the lake. Now, clouds scudded over the rising sun. It looked pale and impossibly remote. Wind rose and scattered great white feathers of spume onto the rocks. Toll­ing from the lake, bells echoed from castle to cliffs and down to the village. The lake's surface teemed with tiny boats on which tiny figures moved si­lently, heavily. They lowered the great seining nets, raised them, then lowered them again and again. Each time, their movements were more and more hope­less.