Thrust (4 page)

"Stacy?" he asked.
 
"Was there ever a little girl named Stacy?"

Turning his head, Shake shut his eyes and tried to make it go away.
 
Sometimes it worked for him.
 
He looked back and Chase was still staring grimly, waiting for the answer.
  

"Yes."

"There was a car accident, right?"

"Yes."

"Quit saying it like that, Shake."

"Like what?"

"Like the way you were."

"Sorry, man," he said, without being sorry at all.
 
Disappointed and distracted, like he was going to run outside waving his hands about his face, yelling about the strange guy to the cops.
 
Wonder how it'd go if the first cop was Sgt. Connor, his red hair curling out from beneath his police cap.
 

"So what happened to her?"

"Don't you know?"

"I think I do, but I need to hear you say it."

"Why?"

Another good question.
 
It helped to find validation when somebody almost as
freakyass
as you happened to agree.

Shake got up off his couch.
 
The busted spring in the cushion let out a nasty clank of metal on metal, and the fuzz on his arms drifted off and spiraled to the carpet.
 
He put on one of those faces he used to make all the time when he was
Babawanda
Mugwanda
.
 
Down with the Man.
 
Pigs eat shit.

He said, "She died too, Gray.
 
In the accident.
 
The one you caused.
 
Right after you saved her from her daddy.
 
Remember the little dead girl?"

Chase had it now and said, "Oh yeah."

T
heir names, printed violently in red and black smeared marker, on the poster hanging in the front window of the Narrative Bone Palace:

PERFORMING TONIGHT: SHAKE SUNSHINE JR.

& GRAYSON CHASE

LET THE WORDS ABSOLVE AND REDEEM YOU

And below it, on the concrete and nearly hidden by the wind-swept trash, two pair of ladies' panties, pink and purple.
 
You didn't know whether to be impressed or disgusted.

To the opposite side of the door was another overly-designed placard, this one made from a fairly recent photo of them, with a stippled effect so they were blurred along the fringes.
 
Fading into one another, black on white, surging like tidal foam.

They had their arms around one another, Shake with his head angled and giving the slow long squint. Chase with the corner of his mouth drawn back just enough to imply an embarrassed grin, the same face he had in grade school photos, the high school year book, chess club, his mug shot, the jacket of his first collection.
 

Both of them dissolving outward and dovetailing together into a funky haze, suggesting friendship, cosmic love, maybe even sex.
 
It was the kind of symbolism Chase used to enjoy before C-Block.

He scanned the room.
 
Jez
wasn't anywhere.
 
The stragglers clung to the corners.
 
Their gazes sort of clashed and skittered, guys scoping the drunk chicks, moving in.
 
If this wasn't polite society they'd already be whipping out their johnnies and marking off their territories.
 

Chase could see the one everybody wanted: big, goofy smile, teased hair caroming over her ears, jaunty chest straining against her yellow blouse, with a pretty nice tight bottom in her black leather micro-skirt.
 
She hadn't come in for the show, must've wandered off the street looking for another drink after escaping somebody's clutches down the block.
 

She was going over in her seat and some dude propped her there with his palm flat between her bony shoulder blades.
 
A growl eased loose from another guy nearby.
 
A touch could cause a death match at 1am.

It was late, the last hour of the desperate soul, when you had to get laid to keep from becoming a ghost.

Timmy
Wiggs
held court with his usual post-slam gathering of drunken neo-beatniks lined up at the bar.
 

Two in sunglasses talking too loudly about Proust.
 
An underage wisp of a blonde fey girl waiting for someone to make the trip into the city worthwhile.
 
A couple of
goth
chicks who'd wandered into the wrong bar a while back but liked what they'd found, for whatever reason.
 

Three more women fixated on Shake Sunshine Jr. hoped he'd come around after the show.
 
Chase wondered which of them might still have their panties on.
 

And behind them, looking on, depressed and a little too kinetic, stood Jasper Cox, who had a lot of talent as a writer but was too hooked into the themes of his small dick and his dead father.
 

Timmy wore black chinos to go along with the silk shirt and bow tie he always left loose around his neck, easing among the dim lights back there behind the bar.
 
Colors thrown from liquor bottles splashed against the side of his neck.
 
Green, yellow, like week old bruises.
 
He had an accommodating aura that made everyone feel settled and welcome, talked with his hands a lot, animated but not in-your-face.
 
The burn scars never made it into the topic of conversation, you couldn't really track them with his arms waving in the air.
   

At fifty, he still held himself like a man only half that age—solid, mature, but not really adult the way your parents were adults.
 
You'd never imagine him living in the suburbs, mowing his lawn, talking to life insurance agents.
 
A lot of youth and wild party nights remained into the trenches around his eyes.
 
The face was poised, mostly unmarked, not entirely handsome yet well-refined.
 
He had a toothy smile and a boisterous laugh you could trust.
 

It made you want to stand near him, think of him like a big brother
mack
-daddy who'd take you to ballgames, let you drive his pimp mobile around the neighborhood.
 
He kept his hair short but a few curls flitted out around his ears so that he looked like a Roman senator.
 
Some silver had worked in at the temples and straight up the middle, but that torso retained the perfect V-shape of a sportsman who had never fallen from grace.

He drew his chin back when he caught sight of Chase, unsure of what might be coming next.
 
His
pecs
flexed and he checked around the room to see if there was any other trouble approaching, if he was going to have to knock anybody else to the floor, dive over them and protect the pretty girls with his own body.
 

It grieved Chase that his friends always had that same sense of wariness whenever they saw him, like he had a bomb strapped to his chest, the numbers counting down.
 

Timmy met him at the far end of the bar, away from people.
 
Chase stepped up and Timmy poured him a ginger ale, the intent clear.
 
Stay back a little.
 
Don't be doing any
flippy
shit.

"Heck of a night," Timmy said.
 
Saying it with dismay, really saying oh Christ, the hell you doing here.
 
"You sure you shouldn't be at home with your shoes off, relaxing with a grilled cheese sandwich, watching the Playboy Channel?"

So—was that how they thought of him when he got behind closed doors?
 
Holding a box of tissues and jar of petroleum jelly, covered in shredded cheddar?
 

"You think that might calm me down some?"

"Well, no," Timmy admitted, a touch guilty.
 
"Now that I reconsider it, maybe not.
 
You think about hitting the Korean massage parlor over on Broome?"

Everybody always thinking he had to pay for it.

The sales table, where all the books written by the various slammers were stacked in orderly piles of mostly equal height, had empty spots where Shake's and Chase's poetry collections had been.
 
At least they went—no matter what happened on stage, the work managed to get out there where it belonged.
 
He did a quick calculation.
 
Sixty copies sold.
 
"Looks like a good night."

"If you want to call it that, I'll go along.
 
Be better with some Korean fingers working into your lower back, don't you think?
 
Running deep into the hamstrings, with the incense rolling over you?"

"I meant for sales."

Timmy shrugged and gave the full wattage smile. "They were confused by you.
 
They wanted to see if you had any answers on the page."

"Jesus," Chase said, "now they'll really be flustered."

"Maybe not.
 
Your stuff is pretty accessible in your books.
 
But the stage show?
 
That's a little different."

"Tonight anyway."

"Yeah.
 
So, you okay?"

"I'm fine, Timmy."

"You sure?"

Chase looked at him.
 
"You got a question you want to ask?"

"No, not really.
 
Well, maybe."
 
Checking the bar to see if anybody needed a drink.
 
"See, I watched your seams opening wide out there, like you were under a rib spreader."

Damn, Chase thought.
 
Nice image.
 
He wanted to write it down.

Timmy thumped his own chest for effect, the deep resounding thudding almost echoing in his muscles.
 
"You just putting the crowd on?"

"No."

"It wasn't a gag?"

Now they were at the point when Chase either lied, left it up in the air, or just kept repeating himself.
 
He tried to put a glimmer of mischief in his eyes, make it seem like he knew what he was doing every second.
 
He let his face glide into a grin.
 
"I'm all right."

"Ah, good, glad to hear it."
 
With pursed lips, Timmy wagged his head.
 
"Okay.
 
Then.
 
Let me give you a bit of advice.
 
Don't play Shake.
 
You aren't Shake and you shouldn't try to be.
 
Do your own act."

"Sure."

"You know what I'm saying?"

"Sure.
 
They only want the words to absolve and redeem them."
 

Chase still didn't know what the hell it meant, but it sounded like it should be profound, have some real significance.

Timmy pulled a face as if he'd just been asked to perform some ungodly act on a lower life form.
 
He hated cryptic shit like that too.

The chatter ended and everybody except Jasper glanced over, waiting for the second act, some new kind of nuttiness.
 
This was the crowd that didn't clap, the ones who threw a dare in the air.
 
Who wanted to take him down because the words hurt too much, or not enough.

The Proust guys crimped their faces and glared because Chase wasn't Proust and didn't want to be.
 
He figured they'd hit the door in a minute, followed by Jasper, who idolized Chase in a strange fashion but was disappointed that he didn't wear tweed.
 
Jasper's world was still soft.
 
As a junior in college he was mixing up academia with the overwhelming grandeur of literature.
 
It had happened to Chase too when he was twenty-one.
 

Jasper's role at the Narrative Bone Palace was still hazy, but it would become clearer soon.
 
Chase felt it as he watched the kid.
 
There was something there.
 
Sometimes you just know it.
 
Jasper raised his glass in mock salute and stumbled into the Proust boys as they spun from their seats.
 

The milieu shifted into one of delicate aggression.

People always wanted to take you on because of what you'd written, or hadn't.
 
The capacity to cause outrage kept Chase kind of high, and he didn't have to do a damn thing except—

Well, except.

It was true.
 
They'd cut your carotid if you didn't cover enough ground.
 
The puppies and mountains.
 
The beauty of birth.
 
Global warming and homosexual prejudice.
 
Racism, fascism.
 
The Holocaust.
 
Viet Nam.
 
If it wasn't sexy enough, if you didn't use the hammer words like cocksucker and cunt.
 
If you didn't tell enough about yourself, if you gave them too much about your mama.
 
You had to be ready for anything.