A Soft Barren Aftershock

by F. Paul Wilson

  Just as he was thinking how pathetic they were, he reminded himself that once he’d had to wait on line like them. That had been years ago, back in the days when King Kong had been the place. But after he’d been let in once, he’d never stood on line again. He’d taken his chance and capitalized on it. And as time had passed and his status had risen, he’d developed the nightly ritual of picking one or two of the hoi polloi for admission to the inner sanctum of whatever club he was gracing with his presence that night.

  “Everyone is someone. I happen to be Marc.”

  “Which is your table?” said Twin One.

  “They’re all my tables.”

  Twin Two’s eyes bulged. “You own this place?”

  He laughed. “No. Of course not. That would be too much trouble.” And besides, he thought, these places stay hot for something like the life span of a housefly. “I just go where the action is. And tonight the action is here. So you two wiggle in there and enjoy yourselves.”

  “All right!” said Twin One.

  She turned to her sister and they raised their fists and gave each other a gutteral Arsenio Hall salute.

  Marc shuddered as he watched them hurry toward the main floor. They might be just vulgar enough to amuse someone. He opened the door marked PRIVATE and took the narrow stairway up to the gallery. Gunnar, Bruno’s Aryan soul mate, was on duty at the top of the steps. He waved Marc into the sanctum sanctorum of alcoved tables overlooking the dance floor.

  The Manhattan In-Crowd was out in force tonight, with various Left Coast luminaries salted among them. Madonna looked up from her table and waved as she whispered something in a pert brunette’s ear. Marc stuck his tongue out and kept moving. Bobby De Niro and Marty Scorsese nodded, Bianca blew him a kiss, and on and on . . .

  This was what it was all about. This was what he lived for now, the nightlife that made the drudgery of his daylife bearable. Knowing people, important people, being known, acknowledged, sought out for a brush with that legendary Marc Chevignon wit. It was that wit, that incisive, urbane flippancy that had got him here and changed his nightlife. Soon it would be changing his daylife. Everything was falling into place, beautifully, flawlessly, almost as if he’d planned it this way.

  And he hadn’t.

  All he’d wanted was a little excitement, to watch the watchables, to be where the action was. He’d never even considered the possibility of being in the play, he’d simply hoped for a chance to sit on the sidelines and perhaps catch a hint of breeze from the hem of the action as it swirled by.

  But when lightning struck and he got through the door of the Kong a couple of years ago, things began to happen. He’d sat at the bar and fallen into conversation with a few of the lower-level regulars and the quips had begun to flow. He hadn’t the faintest where they’d come from, they simply popped out. The cracks stretched to diatribes using Buckley-level vocabulary elevated by P. J. O’Rourke–caliber wit, but bitchy. Very bitchy. The bar-hangers lapped it up. The laughter drew attention, and some mid-level regulars joined the crowd. He was invited back to an after-hours party at the Palladium, and the following night when he showed up at King Kong with a few of the regulars, he was passed right through the door.

  A few nights and he was a regular. Soon he was nobbing with the celebs. They all wanted him at their tables. Marc C made things happen. He woke people up, got them talking and laughing. Wherever he sat there was noise and joviality. He could turn just-another-night-at-the-new-now-club into an event. If you wanted to draw the people who mattered to your table, you needed Marc Chevignon.

  And his wit didn’t pass unnoticed by the select few who recognized obscure references and who knew high-level quick-draw quippery when they heard it. Franny Lebowitz said he could be the next Tom Wolfe. And LuAnn agreed.

  He stopped at LuAnn’s table.

  “Hiya, Marky,” she said, reaching for his hand.

  Her touch sent a wave of heat through him. He and LuAnn were an item these days. They had a thing going. He spent three or four nights a week at her place. Always at her place. Never at his. No one saw his place. Ever.

  That, he knew, was part of his attraction for these people. They’d taken the measure of his quality and found it acceptable, even desirable. But he was an unknown quantity. Where he came from, who he came from, where he lived, what he did in the day were all carefully guarded secrets. Marc Chevignon, the cagey, canny mystery man, the acid-tongued enigma.

  He suspected that LuAnn genuinely cared for him, but it was hard to tell. She tended to let down her pan ties a lot quicker than her guard. She’d been around the scene so much longer than he, seemed to have had so many lovers—Christ, when he walked her into some of the private after-hours parties he could be pretty sure she’d screwed half the guys there, maybe some of the women too—but she seemed truly interested in him. At least now. At least for the moment.

  She was the one who’d been pressing him to write down his more incisive observations so she could show them to a few editors she knew—and she knew all the important ones. She was sure she could land him a regular spot in the Voice, and maybe Esquire, if not both.

  Thus the tape recorder in his pocket. During the day he never could remember a thing he’d said the night before. So he’d decided to record himself in action and transcribe the best stuff the next morning.

  Nothing so far tonight worth writing down. Hadn’t really come up with anything last night either. No inspiration, he guessed.

  But it would come. Because it was happening. He was happening. Everything coming his way. Esquire, the Voice, maybe an occasional freelance piece for GQ later on. He wasn’t going to be a mere hanger-on anymore, someone who merely knew Somebodies. He was going to be one of those Somebodies.

  But the best part of it all was having LuAnn. LuAnn . . . twenty-eight with the moon-white skin of a teenager who’d never been to the beach, night-dark hair, pale blue, aventurine eyes, and the trademark ruby lipstick. All day long he ached for the sight of her. He couldn’t tell her that, of course. Had to play it cool because Marc C was cool. But, man, sometimes it was hard to hide. Most times it was hard to hide. Most times he wanted to fall at her feet professing his undying love and begging her never to leave him.

  Sure, it scanned like a third-rate Tin Pan Alley ditty, but that was how he felt.

  “Ms. Lu,” he said, bending and kissing her. God, he loved the soft, glossy touch of her lips.

  She jerked back.

  “What’s wrong, Lu?”

  “Your lips. They feel . . . different.”

  “Same ones I wore last night.” He tugged at them. “I don’t remember changing them.”

  LuAnn gave him a patient smile and pulled him down next to her. He waved and nodded hellos in the dimness to the LuAnn-table regulars, then turned his attention to the lady herself. Her eyes sparkled with excitement as she leaned toward him and whispered close in his ear; the caress of her warm breath raised gooseflesh down his left side.

  “I hear you gave Liz’s guy the slip last night.”

  “Liz’s guy?”

  “Don’t be coy, Marc. I heard it earlier this afternoon. Liz had one of her people tail you home from my place last night—or at least try to tail you.”

  Any warmth he’d been drawing from her vanished in a chilly draft of unease. She could only mean Liz Smith, the columnist who’d been trying to get the scoop on him for months now. He guessed she was tired of tagging him with the “mystery man” line when she did a piece on the club scene. Other people had tried to tail him before but he’d spotted them easily. Whoever this guy was must have been good. Marc hadn’t had the slightest suspicion . . .

  “He said you ducked into an old apartment house in Brooklyn and never came out.”

  “Oh, yes . . .” Marc said carefully. “I spotted him shortly after I left your place. He was good. I couldn’t lose him in the usual manner so I led him all the way into Bay Ridge and used the key I have from the owner of this dump there—in the front doo
r and out the back. I always do that when I think I’m being followed.” He rubbed his chin, Bogart style. “So he was one of Liz’s boys. That’s interesting.”

  More than interesting—terrifying.

  “Yeah, she’s determined to track you down,” LuAnn said, snuggling closer. “But she’s not going to be first, is she, Marky? You’re going to take me to your place firstest, aren’t you?”

  “Sure, Lu. You’ll be the first. But I warn you, you’ll be disappointed when the day comes.”

  “No I won’t.”

  Yes, you will. I guarantee it.

  He sat next to her and tried to keep from shaking. God, that had been close! He’d been right on the edge of having his cover blown and hadn’t had an inkling. Suddenly Marc didn’t feel so good.

  “Excuse me a moment,” he said, rising. “I need to make a pit stop.” He winked. “It’s a long ride from Bay Ridge.”

  LuAnn laughed. “Hurry back!”

  Feeling worse by the minute, he headed straight for the men’s room. As he pushed into the bright fluorescent interior, he saw Karl Peaks turning away from the sink, licking a trace of white powder from his index finger.

  “Marc?” Peaks said, sniffing and gawking. “Is that you, man?”

  “No. It’s Enrico Caruso.” Enrico Caruso? Where the hell did that come from?

  “It’s your face, man. What’s happened to it?”

  Alarmed, Marc stepped over the mirror. His knees almost buckled when he saw himself.

  My face!

  His skin was sallow, leaching into yellow under the harsh light. And the left side was drooping, the corners of his mouth and left eye sagging toward his chin.

  My God! What’s happening?

  He couldn’t stay here, couldn’t let anyone see him like this. Because it wasn’t going to get better. Somehow he knew that the longer he waited the worse it would sag.

  He spun and fled past Peaks, turned a hard right and went down the back steps, through the kitchen, and out into the rear alley.

  It had started raining. He slunk through the puddles like a rat until he found an intersecting alley that took him out to West Houston. He flagged a cab and huddled in the protective darkness of the rear seat as it carried him through the downpour, over the Williamsburg Bridge to Brooklyn. Home.

  Doug watched Marc flow back into the bucket, sliding down his arm, over his wrist and hand, to ooze off his fingertips like clear, warm wallpaper paste. A part of him was furious with Marc for letting him down tonight, but another part knew something was seriously wrong. He’d half-sensed it during the last time they’d been together. And tonight he was sure. Marc wasn’t acting right.

  Marc . . . Christ, why did he call this pile of goo Marc? It was goo. A nameless it. Marc Chevignon was someone who existed only when Doug was wearing the goo. He’d picked the name Marc because it sounded classy, like Marc Antony, that Roman guy in the Cleopatra movie. And Chevignon? He’d borrowed that from the label inside some fancy leather coat he’d seen in a men’s shop.

  Somewhere along the way he’d started thinking of the goo as a friend . . . a friend named Marc.

  “What’s the matter, Marc?” he whispered into the bucket when the goo had all run off him. “What’s goin’ on, man?”

  Marc didn’t answer. He just sat in his bucket under the harsh light of the white-tiled bathroom. Marc never answered. At least not from the bucket. Marc only spoke when he was riding Doug. Marc was brilliant when he was riding Doug. At least till now.

  Doug remembered the first time Marc climbed on him, down in the basement, when he’d reached into the plugged drain . . . remembered the heat, the suffocating feeling. He’d been so scared then, afraid he’d been caught in some real-life replay of The Blob, absolutely sure he was going to die. But he hadn’t died. After blacking out for a minute or so, he’d come to on the basement floor, half in, half out of the shrinking puddle. He’d scrambled to his feet, looked at his hands, felt his neck, his face. The goo was gone—not a trace of it left on him. Everything seemed almost normal.

  Almost. His skin didn’t feel quite right. Not slimy or nothing, just . . . different. He ran upstairs to his place, the super’s apartment on the first floor. He seemed to be moving a little different, his steps quicker, surer. Almost, like, graceful. He got to the bathroom and stared in the mirror.

  He’d changed. He looked the same, but then again he didn’t. His normally wavy brown hair was darker, straighter, maybe because it was wet and slicked back. Even his eyebrows looked a little darker. His eyes were still blue but they seemed more intense, more alive.

  And he felt different inside. Usually when he finished a day’s work he liked to get a six-pack, flip on the tube, and mellow out for the night. Now he wanted to move. He felt like going places, doing things, making things happen instead of letting them happen.

  He stared at the reflection for a long time, telling himself over and over he wasn’t crazy. He’d just had some sort of daymare or something. Or maybe fumes—yeah, some sort of fumes bubbling up from the drain had screwed up his head for a little bit. But he was okay now. Really.

  Finally, when he sort of believed that, he staggered back to the basement. Still had to do something with that water.

  But the water was gone. The drain had unclogged and all that was left of the stinking puddle was a big round glistening wet spot. Relieved that he didn’t have to stick his arm down that pipe again, Doug collected his gloves and junk and headed back upstairs.

  In the hall he ran into Theresa Coffee, the busty blond graduate student in 308. He gave her his usual smile—at least he thought it was his usual smile—and expected her usual curt nod in return. She’d caught him staring at her underwear down in the laundry room once too often and had been giving him the cold shoulder ever since. Treated him like a perv. Which he wasn’t. But her underwear, man—looked like it came straight out of a Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog. Whoa.

  But this time she actually stopped and talked to him. And he actually talked back to her. Like, intelligent. He sounded like he had a brain in his head. Like a guy who’d finished high school. College even. He didn’t have the faintest idea where all that talk came from, all he knew was that for the first time in his life he sounded brainy. She seemed to think so too. She even invited him up to her place. And before too long she was modeling all that underwear for him.

  Much later, when he left her, he didn’t go back to his apartment to sack out. He went back to change into his best clothes—which weren’t much then, for sure—and headed for Manhattan. For the King Kong.

  The rest was history.

  History . . . the celebrity friends, the notoriety, the promised writing career, LuAnn, a way up and out . . . history.

  Yeah. History. Only right now history seemed to be coming to an end.

  Doug stared down at the two-gallon bucketful of goo. Cloudy goo. Marc used to be clear. Crystal clear. Like Perrier. What kind of game was it trying to run?

  “C’mon, guy,” Doug said, rolling up his sleeve. “One more time.”

  He slipped his right hand up to his wrist in the goo. He noticed how Marc was cooler than usual. In the past there’d always been a near-body-temperature warmth to it. Slowly it began to slide up his forearm.

  “There y’go!”

  But it only made a few inches before it started to slide back into the bucket.

  “You bastard!”

  Doug couldn’t help being mad. He knew he owed a lot to Marc—everything, in fact—but he couldn’t help feel that he’d been teased along and now he was being dumped. He wanted to kick the bucket over. Or better yet, upend it over the toilet and flush it down to the sewers. See if Marc liked it down there in the dark with the crocodiles.

  “So what’s up, here, Marc? What’s doin’? You gonna put me through the wringer? Gonna make me crawl? Is that it? Well, it won’t work. Because I don’t need you, Marc. I owe you, I’ll give you that. But if you think I can’t live without you, f’get about it, oka
y?”

  For Doug had arrived at the conclusion that he didn’t need Marc anymore. Marc hadn’t really done nothing. Marc just was like the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz. How’d that song go? “Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man, that he didn’t already have.” Right. And Doug was the Tin Man. All that sharp wit and grooviness had been hiding in him all along. All Marc had done was bring it to the surface—and take credit for it. Well, Marc wasn’t going to take credit no more. Doug was taking the wheel now. He knew he had it in him. All the doors were already open. All he had to do was walk through and make this city his oyster.

  “Okay.” He rose to his feet. “If that’s the way you want it, fine. You make plans for the sewer, I’ll head for the Spee.”

  On his way out the door he should have felt great, free, lighter than air. So how come he felt like he’d just lost his best friend?

  “Yo, Bruno,” Doug said as he stepped under the canopy and headed toward the entrance of the Graf Spee. “I’m back.”

  Bruno straightened his arm and stopped Doug with a palm against his chest. It was like thumping against a piling.

  “Glad to hear it,” Bruno said, deadpan. “Now get back in line.”

  Doug smiled. “Bruno, it’s me. Marc.”

  “Sure. An’ I’m David Bowie.”

  “Bruno—”

  “Ay! Fun’s fun, guy, an’ I ’preciate a good scam much as the next fella, but don’t wear it out, huh? When the real Mista Chevignon comes out, maybe I’ll introduce you. He’ll geta kick outta you. Maybe even pass you in. He’s good like dat.”

  “I snuck out the back, Bruno. Now I’m—”

  The piling became a pile driver, thumping Doug out from under the canopy and back into the rain. Bruno was speaking through his teeth now.

  “I’m startin’ to get pissed. You may dress like him, you may comb your hair like him, you may even look sompin’ like him, but you ain’t Marc Chevignon. I know Marc Chevignon, and you ain’t no Marc Chevignon.” Bruno’s face broke into a grin. “Ay. I sound like a president debater, don’t I? I’ll have to tell Mista Chevignon—the real one—when he comes out.”