The Blue Room: Vol. 1 (2 page)

          “Not Neve. Roni.”

          “Oh.” Who hadn't slept with
Roni? It was a rite of passage, like bar mitzvahs or your first beer.

          “Don't you have any family
loyalty? Don't you ever think with your brain, instead of with your...”

          “I like to think I'm a
creative thinker. Besides, I have the Blue family genes. Not like Dad didn't
cuckold a bunch of sorry husbands in his day. May the best man score and all
that.”

          “But
Roni
.
” I
hate it
when my brother makes me feel guilty. It's almost like he's morally
superior or something. “It's like sleeping with the devil.

          “But you beat me to that
already, didn't you?” I played the cards I've got, and that card needed to be
played.

          “Before she got with Dad!
And even then it was a mistake through and through.” Danny mops the sweat from
his brow. The man knows how to look brooding and serious even when he's
screaming his lungs out. What a drama queen.

          “It's not like I even knew
she married our dad!” I feel I have a point. “She turns up at the club this one
time – I mean, I can't keep track of who Dad marries. They all look the same,
act the same, talk the same, walk the same. It's not like he asked us to the
wedding. I don't do a background check on every girl I get with to see if Dad's
also had her.”

          “You're disgusting. Don't
you even bother getting to know a girl before...”

          “Don't be so high and
mighty with me! Before you were a lovesick puppy you were just as bad as me.
Maybe worse.”

          “I've changed.”

          Sure he has. Or better say
been
changed.
By one Miss Neve Knight.

          “Everything I do now is for
love.”

          “Oh, go write that down in
a song.” I can't listen to this BS any longer.

          “Already did.” Danny's in
my face now. “Just try and give me a reason to fire you, little brother. Just
try.”

Chapter
1

Terrence

         
I
like it when Danny gets angry. Always did. To see that smug
little face scrunch up in anger, to see those bright blue eyes blaze in the old
Blue way. Someone like Danny Blue doesn't rage easy. Brooding, of course, but
that's whole 'nother thing entirely. Danny Blue could brood for days and
wouldn't get a single rise out of me. It's what he does, normally. Locks it all
up inside. All that rage, all that heartbreak, all that feeling. Even when I
deserve a good kick in the jollies, Danny Blue doesn't oblige. He just clenches
up his heart like a fist. But that's Danny for you. Never wanting to give
anyone else the satisfaction of seeing Danny Blue lose control. But not this
time. That much, at least, I'm certain of. Danny's coming close –
thisclose
–
to losing it all. His mind, his heart, his temper. And I'm enjoying the heck
out of it.

          All my life, Danny's been
the good boy. The favored son. The one born to the only woman Clarence Blue
ever really loved. Not like my mother. That good-for-nothing trash whore –
that's how Daddy dearest used to refer to her. A pin-up model who had the audacity
to age out of my dad's preferred age bracket, just when he moved up a tax
bracket or two. How dare she, right? And my daddy never forgave her for it, nor
for the millions she took with her when she finally upped and left one morning
over the morning papers. We all saw the front page headlines: Clarence Blue –
spotted with starlet. But that was many moons ago – and many wives ago.

          Not that it mattered when
it came to Danny and me. Our relationship was always that of the Cain and the
Abel, the beloved and the despised. Clarence may have pretended to be
disappointed in Danny Boy, may have pretended he couldn't stand the sight of
that dark rosebud mouth of his – his mother's mouth – but deep down he loved
the boy, loved him like he loved the woman he'd lost, like he loved his own
flesh. Danny Blue was sired by the man my father was once, once upon a time.
The man that knew how to love. The rest of us – we were all bastards.
Illegitimate children. Sure, we were Clarence Blue's kids – at least the DNA
tests said so, when they came back – and you've got another thing coming if
Clarence Blue didn't insist on a DNA test for every potential progeny that came
out of every starlet's belly – but not in reality. None of us were born to the
Clarence Blue back when he was a real person, a person in love, a real man: not
an ice-cold statue, a shadow of his former self. Luckily, most of us – I
assumed – were born to cocktail waitresses, strippers, people who wouldn't make
a fuss. Not one of his wives – or concubines, I should say. Just me. But that
didn't make me Clarence Blue's
legitimate
son. I certainly wasn't the
son he wanted. The flesh of his flesh. The bone of his bone. And so my father
never loved me.

          But Danny – oh, boy, that's
another story. Danny was the apple of my father's eye. But for all that, he
didn't have what it took. The Blues Empire was handed to him on a silver bloody
platter – but Danny was too squeaky-clean to grease the wheel. He's an
innocent, you see. Likes to eat oysters and drink champagne, but doesn't want
to know how the sausage gets made. Doesn't know that the big business comes not
from our shiny luxury hotels or the deals made in the boardroom over
skyscrapers and nightclubs, but here. In the bedroom. Reeking, filthy, smelling
of sex. Here, where the businessmen make the real deals – over the naked
buttocks of a stripper, dusted with blow. Here, where you could get blackmailed
into signing away your fortune to my father – just by being caught with the
wrong lips thrusting against your groin. Here, where desire made you lose your
mind, your marbles, your millions. I knew how the game worked. And I knew how
to play it. Fortunes aren't made on oil or steel. They're made on flesh. All
the oil in the world can't make up for the scent of a woman's sweat.

          Danny never understood a
word of that. He always held himself as so much better than the rest of us, so
much purer, so much more deserving of affection and love. But when he's got the
rage in his eyes and the rumbling of thunder, that blazing in his belly – then
you know the truth. He's no better than I am. Not a single solitary fucking
whit. I guess that's why I love making him as angry as I do. I guess that's why
I love goading him on. Because it's proof: hard, solid, eye-bulging proof, that
Danny Blue is no better than I am. No more deserving. And if Daddy Dearest
loves him more, that's nobody's fault but his own. That's the sickening chance
in the universe. That you can be loved so much – and not even deserve it.

          Everyone loves Danny, after
all. Like Neve. That sweet little number. It's not just that she's pretty – you
can get a dozen dimes for a dime a dozen, if you know what I'm saying – this is
Hollywood, after all. She's got something else. Some inner strength. A
sharpness. I think if you showed her this business, let her get her hands
dirty, she'd run it well. She knows what it takes to survive in this town.
Which really means: to thrive, because only the lion, the tiger, the king of
the jungle is the winner. Everyone else, even just half-a-rung lower on the
ladder to success, is a loser. And you know what that means, don't you? They
get eaten alive.

          Now, Roni. That was a
different story. Roni wasn't just about the sex to me. It's true, when I first
met her, I didn't know she was my father's latest slam piece. But I'll be
honest with you for a second. It wouldn't have made a grain of sand's worth of
difference if I had. In fact, once I found out, it made it all the sweeter to
have her squealing and moaning in my bed. It meant I had something that my
father didn't. I had something he couldn't have. After years of underestimating
me, of telling me I was worthless, of telling me I'd never measure up, my
father had finally lost the one thing to me he thought he could never lose: a
woman's touch. Screwing Roni was like sticking it to my father, once and for
all.

          At least, it was. Until I
found out about her and Danny. Found out she had a thing for Blues men: that
she wanted to create a matched set. Get all three of us inside her. And maybe I
wouldn't have minded so much if I hadn't cottoned on that she loved the
bastard. Really loved him, in as sick and twisted a way as a girl like Roni was
capable of loving. And that's what got me. Right between the ribs – slice-like.
That even Roni, who couldn't love anyone, could love him. More than me.

          I'm not going to say I
hated my brother. I loved him – in my way. I just wish he could fall on his
stupid face once in a while, you know? And you wouldn't feel any different – if
you were me. In fact, you'd feel exactly the bloody same.

          “I'm trying,” I say to him.
“Believe me.” Like I had to convince him not to fire me. Like I had to grovel.
“I'm bringing in new acts all the time. Look at that girl up there. Singer,
stripper, whatever. She's riling up all the patrons. She's just what we need,
here. Someone fresh. Someone virginal.”

          Danny looks disgusted.
Still had that self-righteous little smirk on his face. “Honestly, I don't know
why we still have this place. Just because it's dear old dad's pet project...”

          “Pet project?” Danny didn't
understand a thing.

          “It's twisted, Terrence.”

          “It may be twisted, but
it's brilliant. A private club so elite its membership registrar might as well
be the Who's Who of the world. Who knew so many of the world's most influential
people were also the kinkiest, the most depraved, the most...well, I guess
maybe you'd assume so, wouldn't you?”

          “But just because we have
to manage this place, Terrence...”

          “What?”

          “It doesn't mean we have to
be like them! It's all fantasy here. But it's like a drug. You become addicted
to it – but at the same time, Terrence, it'll pull you in so deep. You can't
afford to get addicted to it. The sex, the smell, the feeling – it will take
over everything you do. Especially since you're around it all the  time. I'm
worried about you, Terrence. The patrons, they only come here once in a while,
to play-act at living this life. But you, Terrence. You're
in
it. You're
in it bad and you're in it deep. And whatever sick, disgusting fantasy you're
acting out with Roni – you need to quit it, now.”

          “Why?”

          Danny pretends not to hear
me. “And that girl on stage --”

          “Yeah, the
virgin
.”
I like the sound of the words on my tongue.      

          “Virgin or not, Terrence,
you'd better take care of her. Make sure she doesn't get abused by some of the
rougher patrons around here. She's not a pro – she doesn't know what she's
doing. She doesn't even know what kind of a place this is, does she?”     

          “It's Hollywood.
Every
kind of place is this kind of place.”

          “You don't know that.”

          “I bet she does.”

          “They'll eat her alive,
Terrence. And this place – it'll eat you alive, too.”

          I can't believe my ears. I
remember back when Danny was worse than me, when he slept with more girls, took
more drugs, did more everything. I remember when he was so deep in the hole it
was me who had to drive him home, me who had to pour cold water on his face,
give the girls some hundreds in an unmarked brown envelope and send them home
with a promise on their lips never to tell another living soul what they had
seen him do.

          “I just want to go home.”
Danny's brow is covered in sweat. “I just want to get back home to my
girlfriend, sit on the couch, watch some TV, relax. Be with the woman I love. 
Get away from this place, from this sickening atmosphere. I don't want any part
of this.” He sighs so heavily. “So everything we talked about. You clear?”

          “Good and clear.” My voice
is clipped, a mockery of professionalism. The way I bet he thinks his sounds.

          “Now, I'm heading home.”

          “But...” I can't stop
myself. “Don't you want to hear whom I've booked for next week's performance?”

          “Whatever it is,” Danny
doesn't even stop to look at me. “It had better be good.”

          I can't resist a grin. Here
it is. My ace in the hole. “Oh, it is. It definitely is. Even you would approve.”

          “Uh-huh...” Danny turns to
go.

          “The Never Knights. Next
weekend.”

          Danny's mouth opens wide
with shock. I love how it looks. “How? What? Why?”

          “Ask her yourself.”

          That's all I say as I close
the door in his face.

Chapter
2

         
U
nfortunately, my victory doesn't last for particularly long.
No sooner have I taken in the joyous sight of my brother's shocked face, his
mouth agape, gaping like a goldfish that had been lifted into the air, then a
knock sounds at the door.