Spider Kiss

by Harlan Ellison

  Freeport nodded to Mandle, who made a thumb and forefinger circle, still grinning boyishly. Then he went behind the rigged curtains, and the sounds of guitars tuning, squawking saxophones, a set of traps floated out to key the high school crowd higher.

  Shelly leaned over to Freeport. “I’ll take a look in on the kid. See how he’s doing.” Freeport nodded, his eyes straight ahead. This was payoff time for the Colonel, and his stomach was erupting. Shelly withdrew a bottle of capsules from his jacket and pressed it into the older man’s hand. Then he rose, excused himself, smiled at Sid Feller of ABC-Paramount and moved toward the swinging doors to the locker rooms.

  The locker rooms had been set up as dressing rooms and Shelly passed down the rows of metal lockers noting the half dozen groups or individual talents Mandle had managed to suck into this benefit.

  Luther was alone in the last row.

  He was sitting disconsolately on a bench, clad only in socks, shorts and T-shirt. His hands down between his knees. The expression he wore was one of expectation, not nervousness. Shelly lit a cigarette and stood behind the boy, studying him.

  Stag Preston sat there. A shadow, a flicker, a hint of Luther Sellers remained, but now it was Stag Preston who looked out of the dark, hungry eyes. It was someone new, a creature of comment and gold dust and wishful thinking. But it breathed, and it moved, and it was real.

  “Scared?” Shelly said, softly. He realized as he said it that he hoped it was true; there had to be a chink in the armor somewhere. But even as Stag Preston’s head came up and around, Shelly knew it wasn’t true. The hard, wanting gleam was still there, shining dully.

  “Hi, Shelly,” Stag answered.

  “Scared?” he asked again, by rote.

  Stag Preston’s face twisted in the semblance of a smile. His voice sounded far away, bemused, preoccupied: “No, not scared, just thinkin’.”

  Shelly sucked on the cigarette. “About what?”

  “Oh, about this ‘n’ that. Thinkin’ about Lou’ville and gettin’ outta there…’bout what I was, what I’m gonna be.”

  What are you going to be, Stag; what? Shelly thought.

  “You haven’t come that far yet,” Shelly said.

  Stag Preston looked at him sharply. “Oh, man, you don’t know. You just don’t know! I’ve come all the world away. I’ve made it out, I’ve busted loose, an’ I ain’t—I’m not goin’ to stop till I’ve got it all. All of it. You’ll see.”

  Shelly crushed the cigarette underfoot. Perhaps this was the moment of truth. Perhaps this might be the story Shelly had suspected might be there. He’d wet-nursed this kid for weeks through all the training, all the publicity preparations, but had gotten no closer to him. Maybe this would be the moment when he could work up some warmth for Stag Preston.

  “You really want to make it, don’t you, kid?”

  Stag nodded. There was a softness in his smile now. “Ah sure do, Shelly. Ah never wanted anythin’ so much in all my life. You don’t know how bad I had it…really bad…”

  Shelly sat down on the bench beside the boy and lit another cigarette. His dark, searching eyes probed Stag Preston’s face, looking for some things. For an instant he thought he found them.

  “Tell me, will you, Luther? Tell me what you can, how about it? I’d like to know. I mean, we’re…friends now, as much as business partners. We should know about each other.”

  The boy toyed with his full lower lip, worrying it with his teeth. Then he pursed his lips and nodded okay. “I s’pose you’re right. I never told anyone what it was like, mostly maybe because nobody could do anythin’ about it.”

  Shelly waited. A silence.

  Beyond the locker room doors the sound of a combo striking up broke the hush. The show was beginning; but Stag Preston was the smash finale, so they had time—perhaps too much time. Shelly listened.

  “I’ll tell ya about my father, Shelly. That’s the important part. My old man was a gas, Shelly. He was the end, the livin’ end. He came outta the oil fields—Burkburnett, Texas, how about that—and joined the Army, spent about eleven years pushin’ stripes up his arms. Then he got mustered out at Fort Knox, met my old lady and decided to stay in Lou’ville. Except what he never told my old lady was that he’d been sick once, overseas somedamnplace and they’d put him on narcotics, some kinda junk I don’t know, and he’d got hooked. That was why he got mustered outta the service. He was a real junkie. Spent ev’ry cent he made packin’ in the dust.

  “Finally he pulled off a good one…got my old lady on the stuff. It’s like when one of ’em has it he wants to give it to evr’ybody in sight. So my old lady got turned on, and one day the court just sent me off to the Home, took Pop and my old lady away and that was it.

  “I busted out, made it on my own, and that was when I met the Kemps—” he stopped, remembering his final encounter with Asa Kemp and his wife. It stopped him. He subsided. Finally, he added, “I don’t want no pity, no handouts. I can make it on my own; I always have. I can make it, all I need is the chance.”

  He stared up at Shelly with a mute pleading…and still that diamond glint of something else.

  Shelly felt pity nonetheless. Father a junkie, mother obviously so helplessly in love with the man she stood still for anything, even to becoming as sick as her mate. The kid a product of orphan or reform homes…no love…no direction…no friends…yes, there was room to admire and respect and love Stag Preston. If it was possible to cut away the hungry desire, the fat on his soul, then it might be possible to strike up a rapport with the naked, lonely child that remained.

  Shelly put an arm around the boy, squeezed his shoulder. “Take it slow, kid. You’re going to crack-em-out completely tonight.” He punched Stag lightly on the biceps and rose to go.

  Stag Preston’s eyes were moist, and they looked at Shelly with a fierce friendliness. Shelly moved to leave.

  “Hey, Shelly…?”

  He paused, turned. Stag was still staring at him.

  “Thanks, Shelly.”

  He winked, turned and walked back out through the swinging doors.

  On the stage the TempTones were belting out a song whose lyrics perhaps only Lumumba could decipher. In the front row the A&R men were bored. Sid Feller of ABC-Paramount was the only one making a valiant effort to stay awake; he kept blinking rapidly, opening his eyes very wide every few seconds. Finally, in desperation, he began rubbing at an eye, murmuring, “Damn contact lenses itch,” to Joe Goldberg of Prestige Records. Goldberg nodded, stifling a yawn. The Colonel had his eyes closed. Shelly stepped out through the gym’s side exit to have another smoke.

  Up there, the stars. Down here, another one getting ready to go nova. Shelly Morgenstern lit up, drew deeply, and pondered absolutely nothing at all. Except maybe the inner workings of hatred, and how foolish it was to become part of that mechanism. To hate Stag was folly; he was a kid, simply a kid. He wasn’t the ogre Shelly had begun to envision, endowed with the cunning and ruthlessness of an animal. He was a lonely, unhappy kid with a lousy background and a drive to succeed that seemed out of line next to the torpid desires of most people. But he wasn’t a monster. Not at all.

  Shelly lipped the butt a final time, snapped it away. It hit the gray expanse of the basketball court, showered lovely orange sparks in a wide fan, and was carried away by the ground breeze. Shelly sighed once, deeply, and looked at the stars.

  The ethical structure of the universe. How does it apply to you and me…you and I…Adelaide’s Lament…a community theatre in Ridgewood, New Jersey…a girl in the bushes with a best friend…she had to put a cat out for the night while the neighbors were away …thoughts.

  He caught himself. Stream of consciousness is all right if your name is James Joyce, but if it’s Sheldon Morgenstern, keep them thoughts on Carlene (whom you are keeping, but whom you have not seen since before Louisville), on the Mercedes-Benz (which you are paying on, but haven’t driven since before Louisville), on the kid in there who is climbing into his Conti
nental suit, this very moment (a kid who has taken up your time completely, since Louisville). Thoughts. The bane of the working classes.

  Shelly sighed again, turned to the gym door and swung it open. His foot was in the air when the final thought—completely divorced from the others—came through:

  Jeanie Friedel.

  Bam!

  Just like that. He saw again the look Stag Preston had given her at the contract-signing. It had been the glimpse of another face entirely. Someone else’s face. The odd and strange and unfamiliar. Then Shelly stepped through into the gym.

  For comparison, Mandle had collared the local Cleveland talent, a singer named Bubba Walthers; a kid who had come up with a mild success that Paul Anka had covered after its fourth week on the charts (and had gone over 3 of a million with it). That had been Bubba Walthers’s sole claim to fame; still, he was a local hero. And good comparison for what was to come.

  Walthers finished his number, took a smattering of applause that was more reminiscence and lost glory than fervor, and bowed off the stage.

  Then Mandle came on again. His face was so well-scrubbed Shelly thought he might have done it with a Brillo pad.

  He took the mike in both hands, bending the stand toward himself, and a tone of such sincerity, such camaraderie suffused the gym that even the A&R men sat a little straighter. Sid Feller said to hell with it, popped the offending contact lens out into the palm of his hand, rubbed his eye till it watered, and proceeded to cleanse it by putting it on his tongue and washing it with saliva. As Mandle went on, the Am-Par A&R man pulled up his eyelid and snapped the invisible hemisphere of optical glass back in. Satisfied, he settled back, an expectant tilt to his head. If there was anything here, he was going to get it on paper; he caught the female executive of one of the other majors staring at him, gauging him. He intended to beat her out. Mandle was still talking.

  Whatever it was that Bob Mandle said, in announcement of the mystery guest, Shelly did not hear it; only that all-pervading warmth filling the gym. Mandle snapped his fingers, the combo struck its intro notes—monotonous, infectious, basic—and the curtain swept back to reveal Stag Preston.

  “Boys will be boys,” Sid Feller murmured, sizing up Stag Preston with a cool, promoter’s eye.

  “Here he is,” Mandle pontificated, “Stag Preston!”

  It was a mixture of disappointed ah’s and damn’s from the youthful crowd, intermingled with applause. The great American tradition of applauding anything, by habit, not merit.

  Then Stag Preston came on:

  Like Gang Busters…

  Like Attila the Hun…

  Like Quantrill and all his raiders…

  Like Stag Preston under full steam and I’m goin’ all the way and get outta my line of fire because this is it, baby, it with nitro!

  He belted out “Car Hop Angel” with a drive that won the kids immediately. It was a good number, combining all the demanded idiosyncrasies of rockabilly, but with style; a little—not too much—imagination; room for vocal tricks; and enough leering suggestiveness in the phrasing to make the hipper ones titter. He went over. Big. Very big.

  When he broke, and slid to one knee for the finish, they came up out of their seats as though electrocuted. They stamped and screamed and demanded more, banging their hands together and whistling, clapping the seats of their wooden chairs, hooting. The A&R men’s jaw lines hardened; Sid Feller let a vague smile tilt at the corner of his mouth.

  The combo began a soft comp, swaying in on the opening bars of Stag’s flip-side record, “I Don’t Know You Anymore.”

  They settled back to silence, bright-eyed, letting him prove himself again.

  He sang. Lord, how he sang, Shelly thought, later.

  He sang with something more than his gonads. He sang with his…what the hell, use it…his heart. He sang so that every pimply-faced adolescent in that audience knew he was singing about him…about her. About the great affair that had just ended. About the tears in the back seat. About the look of youthful desire. About experiments on summer beaches with the others around the fire toasting the marshmallows, unaware. He sang about every sloppy, inept, melodramatic relationship indulged in by every fifteen, sixteen, seventeen-year-old there. He had it down pat. He had it all right there, and they took it from his extended hands. They didn’t bother to examine it…the smell and the sound and the tough touch of it was right.

  When Stag Preston finished that number, his success was a foregone conclusion. The A&R men did not stay for the nine more songs he sang, nor for the fifteen encores.

  Fifteen encores, and when he left the stage, the name Stag Preston no longer brought ah or damn to the teen-aged lips. It was the beginning of the underground whisper campaign so necessary to a rock’n’roll singer’s success. Shelly knew it by heart, knew every inch of the self-devouring tapeworm of mouth-to-mouth promotion. As a small time DJ, before his path and Freeport’s had crossed, he had experienced the dynamiting done by flak-merchants. Now he knew what he had to do.

  While Stag and the A&R men and Freeport cavorted vocally (Kid, you’ve got it knocked! You are only the greatest!) in the locker room, Shelly sought out The Ringleaders.

  Only Shelly thought of them that way. To Dick Clark they were “his regulars,” the kids who made up the nucleus of his studio audience…the kids who carried the word in phone calls, letters and mimeographed fansheets to other fanatics all over the country. To Anka or Bobby Rydell they were “the kids,” the group from which these teen-idols had but recently risen, and to whom they returned for the most easily identifiable praise and the subversive spreading of fame and adoration. To Shelly they were a million unpaid, deadly effective little PR men and women, scuttling around the countryside without pay or prestige—and with so much power the mind boggled at the concept. The hard little blonde with the kohl around her eyes who showed up every day on American Bandstand; the three Italian boys who boxed in the Golden Gloves and when they weren’t working on construction gangs organized fan clubs for half a dozen press agents; the bespectacled, scrawny girl in Bayonne, New Jersey, who spent all her money on a lithographed poop sheet about Elvis Presley, distributed free to anyone who would send her a four-cent stamp; hundreds of them, the ones who held the reins of influence in their adolescent paws. The ones who swayed public opinion without anyone’s realizing they were doing it. The ones who fed the gossip to local papers, who wrote letters to tv shows demanding their favorite; the dedicated, lonely, stardust-covered ones who would be appalled at the suggestion of accepting the tens of thousands of dollars to which they were entitled for public relations work that could never be done half so well by twenty-grand-a-year men.

  These were the line troopers.

  These were the informants, the stringers, the busy-bees.

  These were the ones Shelly Morgenstern sought out, in that audience, while Stag Preston cinched his future behind the scenes. This was Shelly’s job. Sew them up. Make them feel Stag Preston was one of them, was them in fact. So the postcards would go out the next morning or even that night:

  Dear Trudi,

  Tonight I heard a great new star. You got to hear him. His name is Stag Preston and he is dreamy. He has only made one record and it isn’t out as yet but when you hear it you will flip on account of he really has that beat. His name is Stag Preston and his song is I Don’t Know You Any More and on the flip side there is Car Hop Angel which really is swinging. I just had to write you so you could tell all the kids in San Francisco. That is about all and how are things with you? Are you still seeing Frank or is that off?

  Love,

  Francine Hasher.

  And within a few days the record shops would begin to receive calls for Stag’s pressing, the radio stations would find they were being besieged for a record they had never heard about, the jukebox gangsters would find there was interest in someone named Stag Preston, and how about maybe we buy a piece of this kid, he smells like he’s gonna be a mover.

  Then the record
s would begin to flood out. Whoever did the release would have worked the artists and the photogs and the printing plants overtime to get the flyers and the poop sheets and the labels and the special 45 sleeves ready.

  And then…

  And then…

  Shelly Morgenstern heard the faraway clicking of an adding machine. All those bucks, all that line, a real fine taste—to pay off the Mercedes, to keep Carlene happy (he put the thought of her long, smooth body out of his mind; not now, I’ll tell you when), to get him as far away from the roots and soul of Sheldon Morgenstern as possible.

  Mandle had given him a list of half a dozen Ringleaders. He sought them out and drew them aside, playing them like instruments, letting the scent of fame wash over them…

  “You’ll be the first Stag Preston fans in the country. Stag’s going to be up there with the biggest of them, and you kids can help. How’d you like that?”

  “We get regular letters from Paul Anka when we push his records,” one sharp-eyed girl remarked.

  Shelly grinned becomingly. “Honey, Stag is a demon at writing letters. And he’s got a bug for taking pictures all over the place. He’ll not only send you letters, but some good pictures, too.”

  They purred.

  “Bob Mandle will be plugging Stag from now on; he thinks he’s great, kids, and we need your help, too. Now how about it?”

  They didn’t sing the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” but they might as well have…they were Shelly’s gang. He owned them. They were, in the parlance, in his pocket.

  If you like carrying grenades with the pins pulled.

  SEVEN

  Within a month “I Don’t Know You Anymore” had passed the million mark. Stag got his first gold record, and not at all oddly, the color reflected back from it by his eyes was also gold. Everything he touched with his vocal cords turned to gold. It was not unusual for a hard-pushed talent to get one big hit, perhaps follow it with a second, not quite as socko, but it was obvious this was not the case with Stag Preston. He was not a flash in anyone’s pan. He was a solid property, a talent with something new, something essential, something special. His second record was done by Hollywood songwriter Sammy Fain, the title number from an “A” picture, The Thundering Land (with Burl Ives, Robert Mitchum, Sal Mineo, Shirley MacLaine and a cast of thousands—mostly nonentities). The flick grossed several million, and not a little of its success was due to Stag Preston. His rendition of “The Thundering Land” b/w “The Midas Touch” (a title Shelly considered apropos as all hell) netted him a second gold record. It passed a million and was last seen heading out of sight.