Now that the manuscript for the latest and brand newest of Ralston books was presented to his majesty hot off the typewriter key-stroked assembly line, Andrew wondered how high the book would fly.
Not how high it will fly with the public, the millions of fans returning time and again to flip their millions of coins into the addicting story-snack machine that was Ralston Cooper. That was a given.
Andrew wondered how high it will fly with Ralston himself.
More often than not, Andrew found himself anticipating Ralston’s own appreciation for the latest written work rather than the public’s. Ralston's appreciation was personal, considering how he was the one Andrew was truly writing for. That, and considering how Ralston was the only person besides Andrew who knew of their joint little secret, how he was the only one from whom the true author could directly receive credit as well as praise.
At least, the only human being.
Ralston always seemed to lack any true appreciation, which by now was just as dandy as a lost cause, almost as much of a lost cause as true respect.
For some reason, however, Andrew wondered how high the book will fly with Ralston, this latest book, more than ever, more than he had ever wondered with any previous work.
Something else concerning this particular book bore a wonder, too:
Andrew could not at all recollect even a fragment of memory as to how he finished the damn thing.
Nor could he remember anything at all about last night, about today, about where he was, what he was doing throughout that missing time. The only reassurance he had was in how he’d so readily accepted his circumstances when he awoke early that evening.
And how he at last completed another blood-tingling chiller for Ralston.
Yet still, there was something not quite right.....
***
Andrew made his way past the swarming obstacles of Ralston-mongers and bar maggots, past Abbott and Costello at the front entrance, past the cashier and turnstile and the dawdling line of Crow Job integrators flowing at their painstaking leisure down the carpeted steps along the lengthy wall mirror. It was a strange and familiar task to make his way inside, strange with the crowd, familiar, as he’d made himself a semi-frequent bar maggot there, though usually he did not drink anything harder than a Coke and a smile, over the couple of years he’d been residing at the apartment complex down the street. The club workers knew him fairly well, and more importantly knew he was with Ralston, knew he had a table.
The Crow Job was always a dive, and as dives go, it was uncommonly frequented with the likes of such a crowd, not to mention a crowd to any extent; it was always simply a corner neighborhood drunkard hangout, with cheesy live wanna-be bands every weekend and jukebox jingle jive every other day. God knew why Ralston chose such an atmosphere. Perhaps it was those countless times he and Andrew visited the bar after countless visits Ralston made to Andrew’s to check up on Ralston’s very reason for being. Perhaps it was due to Ralston’s half-drunken vows to Andrew at the bar that someday I’ll turn this hell-dive into a goddamn premier landmark.
Andrew seated himself at the table reserved for him. It was a table off-center from the forefront of tables, resting at the edge of a wizened dance floor and across from the band’s stage. He shared this table with two others, two others who he neither despised nor was fond of, circumstantially, with respect to his mood and to their attitudes.
To Andrew’s right sat Jessica, Ralston’s druggy/groupie/intellectual-wanna-be girlfriend of three some-odd years, and to her right and across from Andrew sat William Behn, Ralston’s rather stocky agent of many years, who would just as soon fuck Jessica as solicit one of his client’s works despite his melancholy long-term marriage, and despite his forty-seven years of age to Jessica’s twenty-two.
Andrew’s life and experiences with life had turned him from an oddball introverted outcast and into a mildly unsociable misfit. Dealing intimately with a companion as surreal as Bari since childhood tended to foster such an impact on one’s personality. Needless to say, Andrew was in many ways uncomfortable with this sort of overwhelming environment. He couldn’t help it; he reacted to the spotlight like a vampire to the sun. Where attentions were drawn, Andrew liked being out of the picture, at the back of the class, behind the scenes.
This was the story of his life. And here he was at a front table, in the line of attention’s fire, and behind the fire of everyone’s attentions.
Yet, still, the man behind the scenes.
Jessica had immediately greeted Andrew with a hi and a hug as he sat down. William Behn stretched his hand across the table for a quick deathgrip handshake before Andrew had the chance to remember how Behn’s off-target grip always fucked up his fingers.
“Jesus...” Andrew yelped. Somehow, he always yelped Jesus afterwards.
“What kept you? What took you so long?” the portly Behn asked him rather festively. Then, “Ralston finished his book.”
“Do you have it?” Jessica perked.
“I have it being photocopied, in the back office.”
“Where’s my photocopy?” she wined. “He never lets me read anything ‘til it’s finished, and even then you get it first. And I’m the one who fucks him!”
“I’m the one who gets him the money....”
“Which book?” Andrew replied soulessly in question, half absently, half purposely, wholly in languished disinterest. Whether Behn or Jessica ever picked up on these vibes Andrew never could really tell, nor did he ever really care; he watched the two of them sip their drinks and laugh and return the greetings of acquaintances pausing to chat or kiss ass.
They were interrupted by a young college woman attempting to solicit a manuscript treatment to Behn right on the spot, who was clearly aware of who she was. The agent barked a shrewd wrong place, wrong time, in response, then quaked his belt-swallowing beer belly in a chuckle which gave him the appearance of a don’t-give-a-shit pencil pusher in a wife-bought sports suit and tie.
“Gets me hard just to think a young love-dove like that’d ride me like a water ski to get in print,” he remarked to Andrew, coolly tilting in a half-lean against Jessica’s bare shoulders. Then, leaning further, he whispered to Jessica, “Ralston’s not the only one you put out to, if you count dreams...”
“Fuck you.” Jessica told him half absently, used to this sort of thing from him.
Jessica sniffed and motioned for a barhop, her right knee bobbing with the spasmodic energy of a bucking bronco in anticipation of her love-God’s performance, a troublesome reaction for any wishing to conceal a nasty crystal meth habit.
Andrew’s first drink arrived as the first band member emerged from an open doorway hidden behind a mega amp to the stage’s side, another following, then another, a sweaty stoner quartet unfazed or at least unresponsive to the growing fevered applause. Andrew could almost hear the curses mouthed by the remaining bar regulars slouched over in their stools as they studied the bar table surface beneath lowered scowls.
Sound checks, cymbal tapping, tinkering pecks on string and keyboard provided the soundtrack for Andrew’s last chance to leisurely observe the crowd before the house lights dimmed and the stage lights beamed. His bias disposition to anything feeding Ralston’s ego melted against the ease of carefree contagion, and he relaxed and even chuckled to the tasteless sexism of William Behn’s insistence that all women writers wanted his cock for a contract, and that writers’ girlfriends such as Jessica particularly longed for a hunk o’ he-man hose.
This time Jess paid him no attention. She fussed to reposition a white bra strap exposed by the cut-away collar gap of her sweatshirt.
The house lights dimmed, the stage lit up.
The show was about to begin.
***
“And here they are, the band you’ve all been waiting for, Ralston Cooper and Squid Friction!!!”
“Funny, all my life I’ve thought everyone was watching me, and here I am, looking out, and finding it’s true, that everyo
ne is watching me....”
And with that, a gen-u-ine original sparkling Ralston Cooper novel quote, Ralston began his gig.
And he was bad.
At least, to Andrew, he was awful.
But the crowd cheered nonetheless, because he was their hero. Their patron saint of literary horrordom. A pop-cult figure a la carte, served piping hot right before their eyes. And Ralston Cooper carried the role with all the swiftness and ease of the countless cells carrying fresh intakes of varying uppers and downers through his beer-diluted bloodstream.
Andrew had never known Ralston to be any good at anything, let alone music. Except of course making himself look good. But Ralston always held high the dream of being a talented and popular musician one day. Tonight came to prove that the only reality spawned by that dream was that he was popular; he could never ever be a successful musician nor harbor any true talent beneath his mock-writer mask.
All this appeared easy to tell with this sort of crowd, for among the exuberant fans were those ho-hummers here and there who seemed neither impressed nor amused. Andrew was certainly one of them. So were the crowd misfits whose dates insisted they’d come with, the ones who never cared to read a Cooper novel or scarcely any novel at all, the ones only remotely acquainted with the author’s works by lack of interest.
And then there were the journalists and media what-nots to the right of the stage; they seemed to be the least impressed with the budding rock star wannabee.
Except for one particular woman seated alone among them in the back row.
She seemed to be watching Andrew....a quick glance here, another glance, then a quick dart elsewhere, another glance....
Her knee was bobbing, much like Jessica’s knee energy spasms, only with her it was to the rhythm of Ralston’s band’s high energy rock beat ones. She sat upright, almost dancing there in her seat, almost dancing like the dozen or so dancers congregating to the miniscule dance floor before the stage, right in front of Andrew’s front table. Andrew thought minutely of how the several table-and-chair settings including his were added over the dance floor space to accommodate the club’s maximum capacity.
An Autumn aura swirled about her, this media-woman, from her deep dark-toned features and down to her very attire, which together with her gaze cried out notice me, notice me Andrew.
And Andrew noticed.
But then, as he noticed, her table and seat were at once vacant, and she appeared suddenly before him, and asked him to dance.
No one had ever asked Andrew to dance.
Ever.
Needless to say, William Behn and Ralston-girlfriend Jessica were cheering him on.
So he stood up, clasped her hand, and went into the throng of dance-floor bop-meisters.
***
More than anything, even more than awful, Ralston’s music was loud. His band, Squid Friction, a group comprised of a drummer, a keyboardist, lead and rhythm guitars, was a typical house band ensemble and so much so, it was cliché.
And there stood Ralston, front and center and caressing a mike stand, having just before emerged from the side stage entrance enthusiastically and leaping in mad theatrics to where he stood now. The songs he sung were for the greater part original and expressly for himself and Squid Friction, with the exception of a few old rock favorites and a Doors classic.
It didn’t mix well, a band clearly of first-rate studio musicians and a lead singer who could barely carry a tune. And the lyrics Ralston often forgot made matters worse all the more.
Though few fans seemed to care.
And neither did this woman who danced before him, as Andrew tried to follow,.
Andrew could never seem to find within himself the courage to walk up to a woman and ask her to dance, particularly in places like this. Knowing this, it was of course inconceivable for a woman, any woman, to walk up and ask him to. Let alone a luscious dreamscape like this woman.
They danced to some hypertensive number apparently entitled Chocolate Chimp Nipples. They didn’t talk while they were dancing; they simply danced as the others danced around them, around and about within the confined space of the dance floor, Andrew striving to contain the bothersome if not painfully evident tendency to pore over the remarkable vision before him. He could not escape the lure of her beauty nor the reality of her pervading presence there, the sexual heat of the way she moved and swayed and rode the air with her hips, the way he found himself craving to touch her and to follow the range of black print swirls down across her autumn dress and over her breasts and down to the hem of her skirt, to bury those hands beneath the material and around the elastic of imagined black nylon straps.
Within an instant he found himself all too aware of the embarrassing bulge behind the fly of his trousers, and a burst of eruption in turn drew his attentions to the suggestive cheers of William Behn at the table a few dancers beyond. He caught a glance of the empty seat where Jessica had been, and his eyes darted momentarily away from the dark-skinned stranger to scan the dance floor for Jessica’s face. His fear of attention made him unsuccessfully avoid the gazes of table-dwellers and festive on-lookers, but as his stance shifted he could not avoid their spectative vista.
This was a welcomed distraction; it diverted his nervousness and tamed his hard-on. For the time being.
He wondered if he should speak, should say something to her. He wondered if she would say anything to him. He worried over how long the newness and excitement would last, if it would extend past the dance, if it would die as would the music of the song which drew this woman to him.
It occurred to Andrew that perhaps his situation was nothing more or less than a lucky gesture from a woman whose lack of a companion for the evening wasn’t about to confound her prepossessing urges to dance. If this was the case, there was no denying the delightful compliment in the lady’s choosing Andrew and by venturing halfway across the room in order to do so.
Yet there was something about her, about her choosing him, about the way she looked at him, how she drew herself closer to him and even closer still. Andrew looked upwards, casting his gaze towards the stage and upon the spotlight-bathed celebrity showcase of Ralston, and discovered the mock singer/writer staring in attentive amusement right back at him, at him and then at the attractive morsel of a partner sharing Andrew’s dance space.
There was something about her, something curious and familiar, and as the threat of the song’s ending reared its prospective head, Andrew forced a stutter of dialogue for fear of never again having the opportunity.
“I see you’re with the press over there. You’re here by yourself?”
She seemed pleasantly set aback by the sudden question and widened her smile. “What?” she tossed her voice above the music, then, “I’m here with the press. I’m with a magazine. Actually, it’s a newsletter. But I’m here to have a good time more than anything. Even if I have to let loose by myself.”
“I hardly ever dance,” Andrew admitted.
“You gotta speak louder,” his partner shouted.
“I don’t dance very much.”
“I haven’t danced in ages. I hardly get the chance anymore. How’d you hear about this?”
“The concert? I knew about it probably before most anyone else did. “I see Ralston all the time. More often than I’d like....”
“You’re friends with him? Can I throw a few questions at you?”
Andrew resisted the freshly dreadful web of insight seeping into his restless self-confidence upon the notion of Ralston-mania being responsible for this woman’s actual intentions. A repeated glance towards the portly beast of Ralston’s agent gave Andrew the suspicion that this dance was indebted to the agent’s company at Andrew’s table; Behn turned away any and all who approached the table with the unnerving recognition of who he was. This gossip-sleuth was probably the smarter of the litter, hitting on Andrew instead.
He’d rather shun those thoughts, he admitted to himself.
There was something about this
woman, and for all he knew she was hitting on him for simpler reasons.
For all he hoped.
The music stopped, the number was over. And so was the dance, so were his expectations.
Until she pointed out her lonely press table and how she could sure use a dose of company, if only he’d excuse himself from his friends and join her for a little while.
Fuck her intentions, Andrew rested the issue with the immediate clasp of her hand amidst the thunderous applause for Squid Friction’s chimp nipple song. Any diversion from his “friends’” company was a slice of paradise.
And, by the suggestive stew of wanton lust stirred by the slice of paradise diverting him away from the dance floor and into the direction of press tables, Andrew could care less what she wanted him for.
For heaven’s sake and all the saints, meet someone....
....tonight may very well be a night of nights....
It bothered Andrew: Bari and those trivial prophecies of hers.
***
A shabby grey shape shifted, watched in patient surveillance and with such tamed anticipation as can only be found among the damned baring a scheme to redeem themselves.
Such schemes were among the damned tonight.
And such schemes made them patient.
They learned to be so, and it was a lesson as twisted and as unbearably torturous as the very lives they had come to lead, as was the manner in which they destroyed other lives in turn.
The shabby grey shape drew no attention to himself, sat still and silent except to calmly scratch his brillo pad beard and the razor blade wounds healing and irritated beneath it. Draped in the overcoat of a street pauper and perched atop a bar stool at the far corner of the bar, against the wall and opposite the stage, he sat and gazed out alertly into the Crow Job night crowd like a jackal deliberating the advent of a kill.
The Everborn Page 10