Spider Kiss

Thirteen

Rockabilly was completed and in the cans ten days ahead of schedule. The Gods Upstairs threw a cast party at which Stag was gifted with a solid gold cigarette case and lighter, his first name tastefully spelled out in rubies on the face of it.

Leslie Parrish kissed the boy several times, but for the most part smiled briefly, politely. The director made a short speech about how they had accomplished more in Rockabilly than they had set out to do, chiefly because of their friend the star,

Stag Preston; the producer ventured a darkling hint about Academy Awards, and the hint was chased by impressed oooh’s and aaah’s. Stag found it necessary only to smile and bow and wink knowingly during the proceedings—until he was able to break away to ball an extra, a short girl with pixie black hair named Marcie, from Joplin, Missouri.

The film was sneak previewed in five locations simultaneously: The State Theatre in Kalamazoo, Michigan;

The Varsity Theatre in Evanston, Illinois; The Boyd Theatre in Philadelphia; Radio City Theatre in Minneapolis; The Esquire Theatre in Stockton, California. There had been some talk of letting word slip at The Manor in San Mateo, California—word that Stag’s first picture would be screened there—but the studio decided not to rig the results with a horde of teen-aged admirers. The sneaks went off as scheduled and when the cards had been returned, no one doubted they had a star and a money maker.

Even the most critical moviegoer—in this case a “Cinema Reviewer” for a college newspaper visiting a girl friend in Stockton—hailed Stag as (quote) That seldom-seen phenomenon, the personality that endears, excites and visually leaps off the screen (unquote).

Then followed two weeks of tour cross-country, banging the tympani for Rockabilly (which oddly enough, was getting the sort of puff that removed the picture from the category of “teen-age rock’n’roll ditties” and lent it serious attention).

Stag was heavily exposed: via tv interviews, in fan magazine pieces, at women’s luncheons, across the high school circuit, during record shop appearances and benefits, and he appeared, with fanfare, as a feature of half-time ceremonies at the Dartmouth-Harvard game. It was to his credit that the catcalls from Ivy Leaguers too sophisticated to accept Stag as anything more than an adolescent idol—were sparse and drowned under by applause and “gimme a locomotive!”

When the night of the premiere arrived, the De Mille Theatre was the brightest jewel in all Times Square. Father Duffy’s statue winced and averted its eyes; too much neon, too many cerulean minks, too much voltage in the air.

The beaverboard portraits of Stag that rose seventy-three feet above the De Mille marquee showed the boy in an artist’s conception that was a cross between Horatius at the bridge and The Little Dutch Boy Who Stuck His Finger In The Dike.

Stag arrived with his co-star on his arm. Miss Parrish smiled briefly, politely, and was borne inside after the radio interviews.

One hundred and fifty-eight minutes later, as the audience poured out onto Times Square, Stag, Shelly, Freeport, Joe Costanza and an amorphous mass of hangers-on found they had left America and were residing in Valhalla.

Stag Preston was a hit. Not just a success, for that was a status that both Shelly and Freeport had known … but a hit … an unqualified smash … a state where everything touched turned to U-235. There was the feeling, a sort of tension in the air, a very noticeable difference in the way people looked and the way the lights blinked, and the way everything had a crystal ring in its tone. There was no contesting it, because it couldn’t be defined by science or emotion or any other yardstick. It was like God or Goodness or the odor of a bakery. It was success, and the top of the ant-hill, so why think about it, why not just swing with it? It was there; you could sense it even before the columnists told you you’d been right. And the amorphous mass grew as the bandwagoners arrived.

They made it to Freeport’s suite—Shelly noted with momentary uncertainty that Carlene was present—and sat waiting out the graveyard shift … the first papers with reviews of Rockabilly. There was too much nervous laughter, too many handshakes and assurances that “you got it made, kid.” It was a leech throng, satiated with its own need for luxury and surroundings of achievement. Shelly despised them intensely, seeing them now as an outsider, realizing he had been umbilically joined to them, might still be, but was in the process of cutting the cord.

Carlene made of herself a remote island on the other side of the room for most of the evening, chattering with whoever paddled into her lagoon. They felt no need to talk to each other; he knew which bed she would occupy that night. It was very much like the relationship of a couple married thirty years.

Finally, the newspapers arrived.

A rush was made for the entertainment sections, and the business of absorbing, shifting, and reading another began. In twenty minutes, with shrieks across the room of, “Jeezus on toast, do you see what Crowther said?” and whoops of elation, the verdict had come down from the pundits.

A composite might have read like so:

After the current spate of greasy-haired, wailing, no-talent teen-agers who have given us a surfeit of insipidness, the announcement of The Current Conqueror’s appearance on film did not stir this reviewer. However, last night at the De Mille Theatre, Stag Preston made his acting debut in a bit of persiflage titled Rockabilly and the result was just short of incredible.

After dispensing with the banal plot (poor boy from Down South makes the Big Time and loses his Soul), the songs gauged to pre-puberty intellects and the rather pedestrian performances of the supporting cast, we are left only with Mr. Preston and his talent.

Happily, this is more than enough.

Stag Preston is definitely not another squawker-turnedactor. He has a remarkable grasp of matters thespic, a very sure comedic touch, and a personality that at once commands

and repels. This critic views Mr. Preston as a troubling shadowy resonance of that vitality and je ne sais quoi, that salt-lick of anti-social renegade behavior only briefly glimpsed, yet deified, in James Dean. But there is much more than the surly restlessness of a Dean in Preston. The singer has a driving personality dichotomously self-destructive yet vastly appealing. His manner with essentially carbon-copied dialogue from endless ‘B’ movies is miraculous; nuances, subtleties, depths we usually only see in the best imported films.

Even when singing, in an area of music long lost to maturity and any depth of perception, Stag Preston manages to capture a sensitivity that marks him a performer of rare gifts. This is Stag Preston’s show, from first to last, and he runs it with assurance, skill and verve.

As they say in the trade, he plays like a baby doll. Give this one 3 1/2 stars, and cover any side bets about Oscar nominations.

That might have been a composite review. And, in point of fact, with the exception of the final paragraph, one columnist wrote it just that way. Stag was a hit.

Rockabilly was a hit.

“My Sad Dog Heart"—the ballad Stag sang in the picture— was a hit.

Shelly paid himself a stock dividend—the Mercedes was rebored. Again.

Stag bought his own music publishing company, and spent whatever profits the enterprise might make in the next eighty years on a free-for-all party that caromed between The Plaza,

The Stork Club, a rented mansion on Long Island and a villa in Coldwater Canyon, on the San-Fernando-Valley-side-of-the-hill, California.

The party went on for five days, and Stag was forced to turn over half the bills to Freeport’s Hollywood accountants for payment. Freeport had them paid, but noted the total expenditure in a little green-leather notebook he had begun carrying in his jacket pocket.

Stag began going on the town with a group of smaller-name contract players and starlets, a few bogus-titled European expatriates, a wealthy playboy with a penchant for sports cars and heavy drinking, and various easy-lays attracted to the neon glitter set. They soon became known as “The Ginchy Set.” Shelly tried to keep a close rein on Stag, but when he was surrounded by his devotees in “The Ginchy Set” it was virtually impossible.

One night they left Googie’s after a wild round of hot fudge sundaes, went off into the Hollywood Hills in their identical Dual-Ghias (or Porsche Speedsters, for those who wanted “in” but hadn’t yet built the marquee-name to afford the more exotic vehicle), and only four escaped when Stag and the others were arrested for holding a “chickie-run” against an electrified fence.

Shelly was able to get Stag out of jail after only three hours of incarceration, but it seemed no warning to the singer. Three nights later Shelly was again called to bail Stag out. The boy and three starlets had been arrested driving through the center of Los Angeles; this had not upset Shelly until he had learned the charge was Indecent Exposure, abetted by minor charges of Inciting to Riot, Insulting an Officer of the Law, Assaulting an Officer of the Law, Running a Stop Light, Driving on the Wrong Side of the Road, Reckless Driving and $1906 damage to the plate glass windows and showcases of the gift shop into which Stag had piled the Dual-Ghia.

Trial was set for the 18th of the following month.

Before it came to a jury, Freeport had had charges dismissed. That cost money. The figures went down in the small green-leather notebook.

Finally, it came to a head. It had to end, and Shelly knew Freeport would see it end this way and no other; he had worked for him for too long to expect anything else. It happened, however, a bit more messily than Shelly would have imagined.

Porter Hackett was glib. However few charms he possessed—aside from the sheaf of bills omnipresent in his wallet at all times—glibness was his most endearing.

Two memorable things were said of Porter Hackett. The first was that he could sell sandboxes to Bedouins, and the second was that he had rubber pockets so he could steal soup. The first was improbable, and the second he had discarded early in life as being improper for a cultured con-man.

Porter Hackett was thirty-two years old, looked twenty-six, had been run out of every major city on the Eastern seaboard and was steadily working his way inland when he was added to the entourage of a wealthy but aging ex-actress who was having nymphomaniacal difficulties with her menopause.

This daughter of Eve, in an attempt to scuttle the demands of the flesh, imported Porter Hackett and several other young studs to her Beverly Hills home and settled down to alternate rounds of gimlet-drinking and erotic acrobatics.

She, inevitably, collapsed and died of plumbing difficulties, leaving equally-divided shares of her estate to the quintet of young rakes—Porter Hackett included—who had serviced her. Financially afloat at last, Porter Hackett began to live as he had always wanted to live. As a man-about-town.

Shelly, using the untranslatable vernacular of his people, would have termed it living like a mensch, like a somebody, like with class, with moxie.

Since Porter Hackett was not a mensch, he substituted glibness and money.

In a short time he became a familiar in the haunts along L.A.’s Strip, at cocktail parties in Beverly Hills, in the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel. He was one of those familiar names linked with the barely-famous in Skolsky’s column. Or the fan magazines.

And eventually, he became a member of “The Ginchy Set” of Stag Preston.

“It’s going to be a quiet little party, Stag.” Porter Hackett grinned across the car seat at his passenger. “It’s just a few guys and a few broads. We’ll have us a ball.”

Stag allowed a slow leer to foam up on his face. He was not easily duped; he knew Porter Hackett was a leech; he knew Porter was running through the money he had been left by a wealthy old aunt (rumor had it she might have been whacked by Porter) and needed famous or influential friends to keep him going. But Porter knew all the wettest people, and he had a memorably weird way of making fun out of boredom. Stag allowed Porter Hackett to fawn over him, seeming to allow Porter to use him, as long as the returns were worthwhile.

Tonight, for instance, Porter had picked him up at the Bel-Air and had even stalled off Shelly, who had wondered where they were going and whether it might be worthwhile to tag along, to insure his investment. Porter had applied the grease; and though Shelly had been aware he was being conned, after ten minutes of Porter Hackett’s verbal gymnastics it seemed the lesser of two evils: pretending they weren’t potential seismic temblors, just happily letting them trot off like The Rover Boys, with big bucks and hellfire festering in their pockets.

And now they were on their way out to one of Porter’s obscure hangouts, where a weird group would do weird things. That was the value of Hollywood to Stag. The strange scenes to be made. For a boy from Louisville who had been everywhere, done everything, it was only the strange scene that brought on the kicks now.

Stag glanced across and was disturbed by something in Porter Hackett’s face (something other than Porter’s nose, which he genuinely loathed); whatever it was, it was gone in an instant. But during that instant he saw something more than the puffy features, watery blue eyes, grotesque schnozz, and overfed good looks of little Porter Hackett. Perhaps it had been a satanic gleam of crimson along the fleshy cheeks—like two rosy poisoned apples—reflected off the dash lights.

Perhaps it had been an involuntary tightening of the muscles serving Porter’s full, sensuous mouth. Perhaps it had been a gleam of stealth in the otherwise inoffensive blue eyes. Whatever “tell” it had been, whatever tic of body language or facial insight … it unsettled, disturbed him. With success and almost regal treatment by the highest and lowliest alike, Stag had acquired a deeper, more sophisticated sense of distrust— of everyone—than that which had festered in him when he had been more provincial and socially maladroit. He knew more people now, knew more kinds of people now … and was more suspicious. Of everyone. And though he put up with Porter Hackett (for whatever value in return there might be) he knew the guy was a fuckin’ parasite, no way to be trusted. Still …

They had stopped at several bars along the Sunset Strip— including Dino’s, remarking as always that 77 was not only not the office of private detectives, it wasn’t there at all—and Stag was feeling a bit smashed.

He knew he was bugged, but not why. The night, perhaps. The tension he had felt ever since Ruth Kemp had written that letter … sometimes he thought about old Asa. He hadn’t been a bad guy, but he was always whining, always pushing, always trying to suck up to Stag by trying to do for him. It made the boy shiver to think back. They were dark, fleeting thoughts. He ignored them, turned his mind back to Porter Hackett, who is also a pretty good guy, even though he’s a sneaky bastard, and I can’t trust the sonofabitch as far as I could drop-kick him, but old Porter-Worter isn’t smart enough to give me any real aggravation unless I let him do it to me, and since I don’t want him to do it to me, he can’t. That’s what. And I don’t care if Porter the Sporter borrows a few C’s from me from time to time, I mean what the hell, he’s all the time fixing me up with action, so who am I to complain. I mean, it’s more than that bastard Morgenslop’ll do for me. I’m gonna have to lay it down to him. When I want him to fetch me a broad, toot-toot, then he’s gotta do it. Otherwise I’ll have ’im blackballed in the trade, that’s what I’ll toot-toot do. And that Carlene of his, that’s another scene. Toot-toot.

“Hey, Stag-baby.” Porter Hackett pulled the emergency brake forward and clicked off the lights. “We is here. Dis de blace.”

Stag looked up and for a moment it was as if everything swam under a film of fleshy plastic. Like the oily skim on the gefilte fish Shelly had tried to get him to eat one afternoon at the Stage Delicatessen back in New York. Everything had twin shapes, superimposed one on another, and he had to blink to realize he was not deranged, but only momentarily fogged by moisture in his eyes, and by the smoggy night, and by the peculiar blue spots playing across the front of the huge Moorish mansion.

He opened the door on his side and stepped out.

The house was built along the lines of a decaying castle, rotting as it settled, like a bad tooth. It was massive, dark and altogether bizarre, bathed in deep blue by the strategically-placed spot on the great front lawn.

“You’re kidding, of course,” Stag said to Porter.

The shorter man laughed—a bit too violently considering the depth of humor in Stag’s words. Stag gave him a bemused and disgusted sidewise glance. “You know, sometimes you really are a drag, Porter.”

Again, Porter Hackett laughed. It was his bit. His shtick. He couldn’t afford not to laugh. They walked toward the front door of the house. From within, Stag could hear the squeal of female voices, a shatter of crystalline hysterical laughter. A bit of a dream shattering.

He grinned down at Porter Hackett.

“We’re gonna have us a time, Porter-boy!” He threw an arm across the shorter man’s shoulders. “Yesindeedsir, we gonna have us a bawl tonight, sweetie!”

Porter Hackett had an entirely different meaning as he looked up into a cashier’s check for one hundred thousand dollars and grinned. “You can bet on that, baby!”

Glib. That was Porter Hackett.

Somewhere Stag could hear the musical, lulling whirr of a movie camera grinding. But he was too busy to concentrate on it. He was all addled and muddled and befuddled and warm with pleasure. He was stretched out on top of just about the ginchiest chick he’d ever seen. A loose-mouthed doll, with hair all blonde and combed close to the head and pulled down into a braid off one side of her small, exquisite head. The girl had a name—Stag was sure of that—but he didn’t know it. Her eyes were very small and he could see the blue smoke in them, if he peered close.

But they were drawn down and half-closed with passion, and opened only a fraction each time Stag thrust down into her.

He could hear sounds. They were fine sounds. Cool sounds. The girl was making them, over and over, and he liked the sounds, trying to match them. Someone said, “Move the mike in a little, ah, that’s got it; sweet!” But Stag paid no attention. The girl was smooth and warm all over and he had this heavy thing on his back and it was himself, pressing down into the blonde girl. He loved her, he really loved her, she was so warm and all.

A while or so later, or so he thought, a while later, he was with another girl … she had very black hair and it was all loose and he put his hands through it and draped it over his face so he was hidden in a little hut of nice silky black, but someone said, “Get his face outta there, we gotta see it, for Arnie to … that’s got it, now keep him faced around like … ah, yeah … swing!”

So Stag swingadingding and the weight on his back wasn’t himself anymore, it was guess who! The blonde again and all three of them were there having a wonderful time and there were smooth things to touch and little hard things to touch and everybody was swinging warm and swinging wild.

Stag had a wonderful time.

Until he was back outside with a sour stomach and a buzz of Christmas tree lights that bubbled inside his head, getting into Porter’s car once more, and one of the girls who was in the car said, “What’ll we call it, huh, honey?”

So Stag listened because this was ’mport’nt, wasn’t it. And he heard Porter, his sweetie bubbie glib Porter Hackett answer with a twinkle in his voice. “Well, this is his magnum opus, this’s his finest effort to date, and we got a name for it.”

And the girl asked again, annoyed, and a little tipsy herself, “So whaddaya gonna call it … c’mon!”

Porter laughed in the back of Stag’s head, and answered simply:

“We’re going to call it STAG!”

It fit.