Tommy wasn’t happy, though. We’re not makin’ enough, he says. We gotta go all the way, he says. We need another gimmick, he says, like it isn’t already gimmick enough. So he starts tryin’ to talk Jay into changin’ his face, for Christ’s sake, like some clown in Florida did, but Jay told him to shove it.
So Tommy comes up with something else. The memorial concert, right? In Memphis, on August 16, the anniversary of the day The Man died. And the whole time Tommy’s explaining this to Jay and me and the rest of the band, I keep hearin’ this ka-ching like a little cash register in Tommy’s head, and seein’ those dollar signs in his eyes again.
But we all say sure, we’ll do the job, and then we don’t think any more about it. Except for Danny Palmer, the bass player we picked up right about the time Jay changed the act. I’m not gonna do it, Dan tells Tommy. I’m quittin’.
This is a big surprise for all of us, you know, ’cause everything’s been goin’ along okay and the money’s good and Dan’s a good bass player. Tommy’s not worried at all, though, ’cause he figures what the hell, we got a good gig, we’ll pick up another bassman, no sweat. Which was true, of course. But there was something else about Danny Palmer that bothered me personally.
So I ask him, hey Daniel, how come you’re splittin’?
And at first it’s like, well, I got this other gig lined up and I’m kinda tired of all this, you know.
But I’m gettin’ nothin’ that sounds like the truth. Come on, man, I said. Be straight with me. So he tells me.
He’s scared. He’s scared, and he doesn’t know why.
Scared? I say. Scared of what?
I don’t know, he says.
And I don’t know what to say to him.
Then he says, it’s like this. Those people and Jay and Tommy and the rest of us. Then he stops and looks at me real funny.
Do you know what necrophilia is? he asks.
No.
He tells me about it, and how what we’re all doin’ is sort of foul and scary and definitely not right. Something bad is happening, he says.
And I laughed.
Then he got sort of mad and split and that’s all there was to it. But it still bothered me, even though I didn’t really think about it much until later on.
Anyway, we picked up Bobby Redman, who was Jay’s cousin, to play bass, and went on ahead, gigging like before. There wasn’t any reason for me to think there was anything wrong, no matter what Dan Palmer might tell me. Besides, he was forgotten almost as soon as he was gone.
And all day on the 16th things were fine. There were a lot of people in town, you know, and the show’d been sold out weeks in advance, so we’d booked a second one and that one sold out, too, just like Tommy figured it would. Jay was feelin’ good and loose and we were all okay.
That afternoon Jay and Bobby and I went out to the mansion, where The Man was buried. We fell in with the crowd, which was really big—that’s no surprise, I guess. But I got that same feeling I’d had before, you know, that sad and heavy kind of load, and I looked over at Jay and he was lookin’ at the grave, and his eyes were real glassy and he was pale. So I said, hey, man, let’s get outta here, and Jay just nodded and we split.
We went to the theatre and back into the dressing rooms and Jay was real quiet for awhile. Then, after a bit, he’s okay again. Bein’ at the mansion got him down, he says.
Pretty soon the rest of the band shows up and Tommy’s back there with us and we’re gettin’ ready to go on and he’s pattin’ us all on the back and tellin’ us how great we are and how great Jay is and all. Then it’s nine o’clock.
The house lights go down and everybody except Jay hits the stage, which is pitch black. Then the p.a. starts in with “Also spracht Zarathustra”—you know, “2001.” That finishes, and we break into the opening bars of “C C Rider,” and the crowd is already up.
Then the spotlights are on and sweeping over the crowd and the stage, and WHAM, there’s Jay leapin’ in from stage left, and he’s shakin’ and throwin’ kisses to the crowd. And he’s got ’em, man, he’s got ’em. The place is absolutely nuts.
We ran through that set, and each song had ’em yellin’ louder than the last. But it’s real strange. Like it’s not even Jay anymore, but it really is THE MAN HIMSELF, and they want him so bad. It was like lyin’ on a beach, you know, and lettin’ the waves wash over you, and we could feel that want just like that, man, up on stage. And Jay was “on” like I never seen him “on” before.
We closed the show with “Girl Happy,” and that crowd was just insane when Jay ran off with the rest of us. Tommy was right there in the wings, and he claps an arm around Jay’s shoulder and starts to lead him away toward the dressing room. I could see Tommy’s head bobbing up and down, and could imagine that little cash register going ka-ching all over again. But Tommy knows his stuff, right? He knows to let that crowd build up to a point where they’re gonna explode, and then let Jay come out by himself and do his solo and really kill ’em.
I looked down at my watch and saw it wasn’t quite 10:15. Plenty of time for the encore, and then clear ’em out and set up for the second show. Plenty of time.
They cut the house lights.
The applause and the yelling was enough to shake that whole damn building like it was an earthquake. It was black out there again, and they started to hold up lit matches and cigarette lighters, and it looked like torches or stars against a night sky. That’s when I heard the scream.
It came from behind me, from somewhere backstage. I squinted at Bobby, who was next to me in the dark. Did you hear that? I asked him.
What? he says.
That scream, I say.
Jesus, he says, they’re all screamin’.
From behind me I heard somebody hiss that Jay was comin’. I turned around, and he shuffled past me real slow. I reached up to pat him on the back, but something stopped me. And I noticed a smell.
It was real sweet and sort of sickening, like if you go into a flower shop and open one of the refrigerators, where they keep the roses and the carnations and all. It was almost enough to knock me over.
It was still dark when he walked to center stage and picked up his guitar. He played the first chords to “Love Me Tender,” and all of a sudden, it was so quiet. It was like being in a church.
Then he started to sing.
I’d never heard Jay sing the song like that before. Usually he did it real well, which was why he saved it for an encore. But this time it was different.
It was more than good. It was incredible. It was pain and fear and loneliness and crying and every sad thing you ever felt in your life, or could ever imagine.
And nobody in that whole place could make a sound, except for the man on stage. Nobody could even move.
He finished the song, and the place was dead silent until he put the guitar down and started to move off toward the wings.
Then it all broke loose.
We were there waiting for him and whooping, and ready to hug him and congratulate him. But when he got close enough and Bobby started for him, something froze all of us, and he walked right by like we were statues. He went down the hall backstage toward the dressing rooms, but didn’t go into his. Instead he kept right on going, down the dark hallway toward the stage exit door.
Then it was like somebody turned on a switch and we could all move again. I started to run after him and called his name, but he was a good twenty feet or so in front of me by the time he reached the door. He was right under the red exit sign.
Then he turned around. He looked at me, but only for a second.
Then he was gone.
They told me later that they found me there by the exit, after they’d looked into the dressing room and seen what was left of Jay and Tommy. At first the cops even wanted to arrest me, but it didn’t take ’em long to figure out that I couldn’t have killed them. I just couldn’t have.
At the inquest the coroner gave an “official” report, and called it a “
murder-suicide.” He said that Jay and Tommy died between 10:15 and 10:45. He said that it must’ve been closer to 10:45, since witnesses testified that Jay didn’t finish his encore until almost 10:30.
But I’m the only one who knows that they died at 10:15. And I’m the only one who can tell them that it wasn’t Jay who did that last encore.
But I won’t.
FOOTSTEPS by Harlan Ellison
The close of 1980 saw the publication of Harlan Ellison’s Shatterday (Houghton Mifflin), an important fantasy collection to rank alongside his other milestone collections, Deathbird Stories (1975) and Strange Wine (1978). Shatterday, Ellison’s thirty-eighth book, includes several stories which have appeared in previous volumes of The Year’s Best Horror Stories, in addition to his stunning semi-autobiographical fantasy, “All the Lies That Are My life.” An anthologist of note, as well as author and critic, Ellison has edited the controversial Dangerous Visions, Again, Dangerous Visions, and the long-anticipated Last Dangerous Visions. Born in Ohio in 1934, Ellison rose through the ranks of science-fiction fandom and transcended the parochialism of that genre to become a major modern writer. He currently resides in the Los Angeles area.
Paris is again the setting for “Footsteps” (do you really want to tour Europe after reading this anthology?), and Ellison’s account as to how this piece was written is itself a fascinating story.
Author’s Introduction
This is my most recent story. Its a little more than six months old. I wrote it between the hours of 12:00 noon and 7:30 p.m. in the front window of a bookstore in the St. Germain section of Paris on Wednesday the 14th of May, 1980.
Like Georges Simenon before me—who sat in a glass case in the window of Gallimard in Paris earlier this century (and if anyone happens to have the specific date, I’d be most grateful to receive that information) and wrote an entire novel in one week—thereby validating for lesser lights like myself the act of creating in public—I have now created before the milling throngs not only in Boston, Los Angeles, Metz (France), San Diego, London, and New York . . . but in Paris.
Simenon is gone now, but I smile to think of following in his footsteps.
The circumstances were interesting, as well as the venue. Because the journalists of Paris—television, magazine, and newspaper—were skeptical of the undertaking (hadn’t they heard Simenon had done it?) and suggested it might be a put-up job, that I would either use a story already written or plot one completely the night before, I set it up in the following manner, to insure the authenticity of spontaneity.
The owners of the bookstore—Temps Futurs at 8 Rue Dante—were to think on the subject they wanted me to write about. They were to devise a basic starting point . . . a love story, a pirate adventure, a fantasy about water sprites, whatever . . . and not until I walked into the store with my trusty Olympia portable were they to tell me what the subject of my day’s labors would be. When the journalists heard that, they said it was impossible to work that way, that Artists did not create in such a fashion.
When I came into Temps Futurs, Stan and Sophie Barets had me set up with a platform in the window, a heavy board laid across sawhorses, a chair . . . and Perrier.
I arranged my typewriter, paper, pipe and tobacco, my correction fluid, pens, Typit keys, and Perrier, had them put on the store’s stereo system a cassette of Django Reinhardt . . . and I waited for the word.
Stan, looking sheepish, told me that during the preceding evening, when he had been trying to think of something fresh and clever for me to use as a starter, he had received a phone call from a Parisian disc jockey who called himself The Werewolf. The deejay had said if I would write a story about a werewolf, he would give the bookstore publicity all through the day and night on the radio.
And so Stan said, “I want you to write a story about a she-werewolf who is a rapist.” And one of the store’s clerks, hearing that, added, “And she should have long, blond hair.” And Sophie chimed in, “And it should happen in Paris.”
My response was not quite dismay—but something very like it. For originality, it was both wanting and overabundant. The idea of werewolves, male or female, was ground pretty well worked over. But adding rape to it, rape of males by a female, which is virtually impossible, was almost too original to work with. The blond hair was no problem, but this was only my second trip to Paris; I barely spoke the language, and I didn’t know the city at all well enough to use it in the story with any authenticity.
But I’d agreed to the terms of the endeavor, and so I said I’d do it. The mind began to function in that way I call writing, a mode that employs cunning and duplicity worthy of a Presidential candidate trying to avoid taking a position on a touchy subject.
For instance: who said the female had to rape males?
And: the bookstore is filled with Parisians who do know the city; isn’t that a handy reference library for proper geography and background?
Not to mention: didn’t I read somewhere that sadists who brutalize their love partners found that the penis became engorged at the moment of greatest pain or death? Was it Sade? Gilles de Rais? Sacher-Masoch? Oh, what the hell, who’s to contradict, how many snuff film experts can there be out there?
So I got the basic idea for the plot, and I started writing. And through the day the journalists came and buzzed around and took their pictures, and I signed books for visitors and answered silly questions and listened to Django and smoked my pipe and drank my Perrier . . . and I wrote. The story before you.
For her, darkness never fell in the City of Light. For her, nighttime was the time of life, the time filled with moments of light brighter than all the cheap neon sullying the Champs Elysees.
Nor had night ever fallen in London; nor in Bucharest; nor in Stockholm; nor in any of the fifteen cities she had visited on this holiday. This gourmet tour of the capitals of Europe.
But night had come frequently in Los Angeles.
Precipitating flight, necessitating caution, producing pain and hunger, terrible hunger that could not be assuaged, pain that could not be driven from her body. Los Angeles had become dangerous. Too dangerous for one of the children of the night.
But Los Angeles was behind her, and all the headlines about the INSANE SLAUGHTER, about the RIPPER, about the TERRIBLE DEATHS. All that was behind her . . . and so were London, Bucharest, Stockholm, and a dozen other feeding grounds. Fifteen wonderful banquet halls.
Now she was in Paris for the first time, and night was coming with all its light and all its promise.
In the Hotel des Saints Peres she bathed at great length, taking the time she always took before she went out to dine, before she went out to find passion.
She had been startled to find the hotels in France did not provide washcloths. At first she had thought the chamber maid had forgotten to leave one, but when she called down to the reception desk the girl who answered the phone could not understand what she was asking for. The receptionist’s English was not good; and French was almost incomprehensible to Claire. Claire spoke Los Angeles very well: which was of no use in Paris. It was fortunate language was no barrier for Claire when she was ordering a meal. No problem at all.
They made querulous sounds at one another for ten minutes till the receptionist finally understood she was asking for a washcloth.
“Ah! Oui, mademoiselle,” the receptionist said, “le gant de toilette!”
Instantly, Claire knew she had hit it. “Yes, that’s right . . . oui . . . gant, uh . . . gant whatever you said . . . oui . . . a washcloth . . .”
And after another ten minutes she understood that the French thought the cloth with which one washed one’s body was too personal to leave in a hotel room, that the French carried their own gants de toilette when they traveled.
She was amazed. And somehow mildly pleased. It bespoke a foreign way of life that promised new tastes, new thrills, possibly new highs of love. What she thought of as transports of ecstasy. In the night. In the bright light of darkness.
She lingered a long time in the bath, using the shower head on a flexible metal cord to wash her long blond hair. The extremely hot bath water around her lower body, between her thighs, the cascade of hot water pouring down over her, eased the tension of the plane trip from Zurich, washed away the first signs of jet-lag that had been creeping up on her since London. She lay back in the tub and let the water flow over her. Rebirth. Rejuvenation.
And she was ferociously hungry.
But Paris was world-renowned for its cuisine.
She sat at a table outside Les Deux Magots, the cafe on the Boulevard St. Germain where Boris Vian and Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir had sat in the Forties and Fifties, thinking their thoughts and sometimes writing their words of existential loneliness. They sat there drinking their Pastis, their Pernod, and they were filled with a sense of the oneness of humanity with the universe. Claire sat and thought of her impending oneness with selected parts of humanity . . . And the universe was of no concern to her. For the children of the night loneliness was born in the flesh. It lay at the core of the bones, it swam in the blood. For her, the idea of existential solitude was not an abstract theory; it was her way of life. From the first moment of awareness.
She had dressed for effect. Tonight the blue sky silk, slit high in the front. She sat at the edge of the crowd, facing the sidewalk, her legs crossed high, a simple glass of Perrier avec citron before her. She had not ordered pate or terrine: never taint the palate before indulging in a gourmet repast. She had avoided snacking all day, keeping herself on the trembling edge of hunger.
And the moveable feast walked past
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