Spider Kiss

Sixteen

So he told it. He told it all to himself, in a matter of moments as he walked the little redhead through the wings and up the metal stairs to Stag’s dressing room. He thought about Louisville and Asa Kemp, about that first appearance at the Kentucky State Fair, about the look in Stag’s eyes as they had flown away from Louisville. Shelly even remembered what Stag had said.

He had remembered it all, in that moment. Four full years of it. The creating of a talent, the sneak preview in Cleveland where the A&R men had sensed the talent building in the boy once known as Luther. The first gold record, the rush of success, the drinking and girl trouble, the night he had been slapped by the comedienne (what had happened to her? she’d cut one comedy album and then phffft!). Shelly had brought it all back in an instant of vacant thought; the tour, Trudy Quillan and the beating the Colonel had given Stag; the revelation that Stag had lied about his childhood and the gradual realization on Shelly’s part that he had been rotting for many years. The movie deal, the blackmail after Stag had drunkenly made his pornoflick, Stag’s selling off the chunks of his contract, and finally Asa Kemp’s death, the scene with Ruth Kemp, and Carlene’s leaving. It had all seemed so fast.

Too fast.

Was it possible?

Could it have been?

Four years?

Yes, that’s what it had been. Four full years, in which Sheldon Morgenstern had become a cipher. He had had no life of his own. His every moment had been devoted to Stag Preston. His sex had been CarleneSex, which was none at all. That had been a draining process, not a giving process. Now she lived with Stag, in an apartment the singer had rented and furnished (under Jean Friedel’s grudging supervision; Paul McCobb, Knoll and Saarinen did not happen to be Stag’s taste; he ran more to Kresge, Woolworth and Lamston, so he had dragooned Jean into doing it for him.) Lots of luck to them both. The cobra and the tiger lie down together.

It was a torrent of memory, in that walking time between the alley and Stag’s dressing room. It was all the silt of incidents deposited abruptly in the delta of his mind. He had it all, all of it, captured there, each bit of time and space prismed and imprisoned as though on a slide, about to go under the microscope.

Even the taking of this girl, this abundantly-built teen-ager, to Stag’s dressing room. That had been part of the memory, slipping into the past even as it happened. For it seemed to have happened a dozen other times … and, in point of fact, had happened a dozen times since Stag had come to The Palace…

When Stag had come offstage that first time, the day after Ruth Kemp had gone back to Louisville, he had made his initial request. “There’s a girl in the fifth row down there, Shelly. She’s got black hair in a pixie cut. I motioned to her to come around back after the show. Get her up to the dressing room, will you?”

Shelly had carefully removed the cigarette from his lips, his eyes narrowing; it was all he had been able to do to keep his fist from balling and driving straight into the kid’s mouth. Very quietly he answered, “I’m a stockholder, Stag, not your pimp. If you want to get her, go get her yourself.”

Then Stag had made some penetrating comments about how easy it would be to drop a mention to Winchell or Lyons or Killgallen—oh, very delicately—outlining the switch in residence of Carlene. It certainly wouldn’t kill anyone, but what a helluva lot of snickers and glances askance it could cause in Lindy’s or The Stage Delicatessen. That sort of business could rob a guy of his manhood, muy pronto.

It had been that, partially, no mean threat in a world predicated on how many times a night you could make the scene with a chick. But it had been more. It had been the awkward feeling that his presence might keep Stag from even greater evils. An egocentric thought, Shelly knew, but one that continued to intrude. Stag had been his creation, and thus was his responsibility. It would be too easy to check out now, letting the kid run loose. He had to stay close by and absorb some of the driving shock of the kid’s rampages. He had to get in the way of the pneumatic drill.

So, illogically or not, Shelly had become Stag Preston’s procurer. All these thoughts, four years’ worth of them, as the little redhead followed Shelly up the gunmetal-gray stairs to her idol’s dressing room.

Shelly knocked on the door, but he knew Stag could not hear it. Stag was out on the fire escape, doing another number, giving his “papoose” show that rode on the back of the regular performance in the theatre, helping to empty the seats for a new audience in two hours when he went on again.

Shelly opened the door and hustled the redhead before him. She stood transfixed, staring at God within a few feet of her, his back turned, one foot up on the rowel of the fire escape enabling him to brace his guitar. He was playing “Light a Fire” and comping behind it with broad chords and slides:

It was a gutty, almost burley bump-&-grind treatment with every whump! accented by a thrust and counter-thrust of hips. Down in the alley behind the theatre, the horde went wild, and behind him, in the dressing room, the little redhead did her own private flip.

Just as Stag finished, bowed for the inevitable mad applause from below, and launched into “Warm Baby” (indistinguishable from “Light a Fire” save for the placement of whump!) the phone rang. Shelly ground out the most current cigarette in a coffee cup on the dressing table and put the receiver to his ear. “Yeah?”

“Shelly? Jeanie.”

“Hi. What’s happening?”

“Stag finished the first show?”

Shelly looked out onto the fire escape. “Yeah, I guess you’d call it that. He’s feeding the animals a few scraps off the fire escape now.”

“I’ve got some contracts here from Sid Feller; he wants your signature and Stag’s. It looks like ABC-Paramount’s going to release a two-record Commemorative Set of his gold records, or some ridiculous thing. Will you be there for a while?”

Shelly moved against the wall, shielding his mouth, watching the redhead to make certain she could not hear. “The Marquis de Sade has a new case study going on at the moment,” he said.

“He’s still putting the make on those kids, oh Shelly!”

“Listen, what can I do … ?” He shrugged helplessly.

“Oh, Shelly, can’t you do something? Did you get her up there for him again?” He did not answer. She spoke again. “Did you, Shelly?” Still no answer. Shame rode silently along the wire. Finally: “Oh, Shelly!”

He snapped at her. “Lay off me! It’s a living, isn’t it?”

Her answer was brief: “Is it?”

The tone of his answer had not been the New Shelly. It had been an Old Gimme-Gimme Shelly. “I guess you’re right,” he said. “But at least with me around he can’t take ’em on the rug against their will.”

Stag finished “Warm Baby” at that moment, and took his applause.

“Should I bring the contracts over?” Jean Friedel asked.

“Yeah, I suppose. C’mon over, we’ll wait.”

A third voice broke into the conversation: “Who’s coming over? Who’re we waiting for?” Stag had come in off the fire escape, seen the girl, and heard Shelly’s end of the conversation. Now he had again taken control; a few words and he was in charge.

“Hold it a minute, Jeanie … hey … oh hell, she hung up, Stag. It was Jean. She has some contracts, she’s on her way over. I told her we’d wait.”

Stag looked over the girl critically. Her skin was a honey-tan, and her body was firm, tight, built the way teen-aged girls had never been built when Shelly had been that age and the girls wore colored bobby sox and pennies in their loafers. Stag liked what he saw. He didn’t want to wait for Jean and the contracts, lose any of the two hours he had.

Today was quickie day. Every day was quickie day.

The original Stag Preston was hungry, and felt no need to wait for his dinner. “I don’t feel like waiting. I’m going up to the hotel for a rest.” He turned to the little redhead with the ponytail and the large chest. “Hi, I’m Stag Preston, who’re you?” The smile was straight out of the Crocodile That Swallowed Captain Hook.

She colored and answered softly, “I’m Marlene. I’m President of the Secaucus Stag Preston Fan Club.” She beamed.

Stag turned to Shelly with a questioning glance.

“New Jersey,” Shelly explained.

Ohhh, Stag made a wide head-movement back to Marlene. “Oh, sure, of course! Secaucus, New Jersey. Great town, very pretty.”

Shelly died a little inside as Stag called an industrial town more marshland-and-stink than habitation a “great town.” It was customary when riding the tollways past Secaucus to place thumb and forefinger over nose, and pray. But the busty redhead swallowed the schmaltz and continued beaming.

As Stag studied his prey, deciding what gambit would be least taxing to get the chick up to the hotel room, Shelly studied Stag. In the clean sunlight coming off the fire escape he was quite a different image from the one thrown against nightclub dims or onstage spots. He was no longer the young and vital Stag of Louisville days, or that night in Cleveland when ABC-Paramount Records had first seen him. He drinks too much now, Shelly thought, cataloging what he could see in the planes and lines of Stag’s face. He’s running in company too fast and worthless. And no one can tell him anything. He won’t last past forty; the gaff’ll kill him.

A voice deep inside added, If we’re lucky.

Yet Shelly realized Stag’s popularity had not waned. If anything, it had grown, by the mystic underground communication system of the teen-agers who loved him. Teen-agers just like sexy little Marlene here. A girl who was going to be main course on Stag’s next meal.

“Well, listen … uh, Marlene? Marlene. Listen, I’m a little beat, you can understand.” She nodded on schedule. “And I’ve got to go up to my hotel for about an hour or so, but since I’ve met you I’d like to give you a souvenir, a memento you know, somethin’ personal of mine to keep. How’d you like that?”

Ding ding ding!

Shelly’s eyes rolled up in his head at that one. Had Marlene been anything but a precocious teen-ager, brought up on the saliva of confession magazines, toothpaste ads that guaranteed her charm as well as protection, and a distorted Hollywood view of life in our times, she would have laughed the crude proposal back into Stag’s teeth. But all her sex had been on the sofa in the rec room while Mom and Dad watched the big tv upstairs, or in the rear seat of a compact car while the drive-in movie raged above, so she turned crimson again and nodded agreement.

“Great,” Stag said enthusiastically. “Shelly, you stick here and wait for Jeanie with the contracts. I’ll just walk Marlene over to the—”

“I’m coming along.”

Stag’s face got hard suddenly. “I said you could wait, here, Shelly. I’ll walk Marlene over to the—”

“I’m coming.”

His jaw muscles jumped, and his mouth worked, but he did not repeat himself. More words and it would become apparent that there was something not quite proper in what Stag had suggested, or it might even (Heaven forbid!) convey the impression that Stag was not sovereign of all he surveyed. “Okay, sure, Shel,” Stag agreed with the bite of the asp in his voice.

Shelly wrote a note to Jean Friedel asking her to leave the contracts. It was obvious to Shelly that had Jean not called to say she was coming over, Stag would not have bothered taking the girl to the hotel, he would have made his play here in the dressing room.

They left by the stage entrance and as they emerged from the fire door, Marlene gave a squeal and ran to her friends still clustered and waiting. Stag bolted to the waiting taxi; Shelly lagged—without spoken instructions—for the girl.

“Listen, listen, hey, I’m goin’ over to Stag’s hotel for a souvenir. Listen, you come on along and wait outside downstairs and I’ll get him to wave to you,” Marlene burbled. “I’ll get him to step to the window with me an’ an’ an’ Trudy, hey, you take a pictchuh of us willya, huh?” Her words were excited, tripping, confused in pleasure.

Trudy—the fat girl with pimples—nodded furiously that if Marlene could get Stag to step up to the window and lean out, or onto the balcony or whatever the hotel had, she would be nutty insane wild craaaazy to take a pictchuh!

So Marlene waved, joined Shelly, and got into the cab for the three block ride over to the Sheraton-Astor, the Colonel’s big suite, and Marlene’s souvenir from her idol, Stag Preston.

Oh pretty baby, thought Stag Preston, am I gonna give you a souvenir. Fa-jooomp!

Marlene squealed when she saw the opulence of the suite. The Colonel was out and the place was silent; vulgarly garish in the full sunlight of day, a suite designed for dusk-to-dark-to-dawn living but uncomfortably blaring in the light of day.

Shelly mixed himself a drink, waiting for Stag to make his play, and settled into a chair near the door.

Stag suggested to Marlene she might use one of the bathrooms to powder her nose, in the event of a picture being taken, and when the redhead had swirled into the bedroom the singer advanced on Shelly.

“Hey, listen, guy, what the hell is this?”

“Statutory rape, Stag.”

“Say, listen, get your finger outta my eye, baby. This kid has a set on her like a cow. Don’t tell me she don’t know what it’s all about. If she had as many stickin’ outta her as she’s had in her, she’d look like a pin cushion.”

Shelly sipped at his Scotch. “What’s the matter, Stag, isn’t Carlene keeping you happy these days? You got to take off after every good looking piece that comes in range?”

“Now, listen, Shelly … nothing’s going to happen to her. I promise you. Just grab a quick feel. Hell, I’ve only got—” he consulted his wristwatch, “—another forty minutes before I have to be back at The Palace. I promise not to make the kid do anything she doesn’t want to do. But who the hell are you to stop her if she wants to neck with Stag Preston for a while. Probably the biggest thrill of her life.”

Shelly thought about it for a moment. Actually, the girl was as hip as any chick her age, with her looks and build, would be. If he went in the next room Stag wouldn’t try anything. He’d hear any noise. And so what if Stag did feel her up a little? She’d blush and carry the tale back to the Secaucus Fan Club like a banner:

You know what happened when he hugged me? I mean Stag Preston! He put his right hand here and he was smilin’ all the time, you wouldn’t expect it almost in public but he was so strong, y’know, and when he kissed me I mean he Frenched me and all, y’know, oh God it was the wildest and“

It wouldn’t do any harm, not if there was someone handy in the next room in case Stag got out of hand. And it would keep the animal at bay a little longer, till he could take it out on Carlene. That was safest, letting him release his hungers on a paid—no, stop thinking like that, she used to live with you, stop thinking of her with recriminations, she’s no more a paid whore than … just stop thinking that way. Stop!

“Okay, Stag. You can play your game, but I’m right next door in the bedroom. I hear one peep out of that girl and I’ll be here in a second. So keep it above the belt, baby.” He got up, carried his drink into the bedroom, and closed the door. He did not hear Stag place the chair under the knob and force it tight, effectively locking the door.

When Marlene came out of the bathroom her face was radiant. Stag was sitting on the sofa, and he smiled his best lithographed poster smile. “C’mon over and sit down, Marlene.”

A quick scurry of alarm passed her features, and then she shook it off as she was enveloped by the glamour of the suite, the nearness of Stag Preston. She sat down beside him. His arm went over the back of the sofa. Again the scurrying of frightened feelings. Then he talked to her. Slowly, cajolingly, interestingly, getting nearer.

When he leaned down and kissed her, she was startled at first, not because he had done it, but because Stag Preston, after all Stag Preston, was also human. In a moment, though, she reacted, and it was pleasant. She cooperated.

Right up to the moment he tried to slide his hand inside the front of her peasant blouse. Then she heard the alarm bells and tried to remove his hand. But Stag Preston was not a fumbling adolescent in a movie house balcony. He was Stag Preston, the king of the rock’n’roll singers, a voice in his time, a figure to be contended with—and what was more, he knew how teen-agers thought. He knew this chick wanted some kicks, he knew she was only trying to put him off so he wouldn’t think she was a tramp, he knew there wasn’t a girl built like her in this day and age who hadn’t gotten it somewhere along the line. He knew, because he’d seen them, every day, the little chippies dancing on the tv rock’n’roll shows. He’d seen them flipping their bodies at him. He knew how depraved kids were today.

After all, wasn’t he a kid, and wasn’t he the same way?

Which was what bothered him about the way this Marlene was fighting. She wasn’t making noise … a grunt or a gasp or two, like that, but mostly silently, mostly real intensely trying to pry his hand off her tit. She had him by the wrist, and she strained, her face white with terror—too melodramatic, as far as Stag was concerned. She was putting it on. She was only giving him a hard time, and after all the easy lays he’d had, that only made Marlene more interesting. A little fight always helped to juice a guy up.

He struggled with her.

For a moment there was only the sound of her grunts of exertion, soft uh’s and half murmured please’s as she wrestled with him on the sofa. Then she got her face away from his, her breath pulling deeply, rasping. “P-please, please, Sta—Mr. Preston … d-don’t, uh, p-puh-please…”

“Aw, now sheet, chick! Don’t put me on like that … uh … goddam it, take it easy, stop pullin’ like that, it’s gonna be nice … come on dammit! Knock that crap off!”

He shoved her heavily, annoyed at the way it was going, and that did it. Marlene was not a virgin; Stag had been correct, she had known boys. But they had done it in clandestine ways, in furtive places, and she was a virgin in attitude. It was the 1961 code of ethics. Give it away but only after you’ve convinced your conscience that you love the guy, that he loves you, that it’s wonderful, not quick and sloppy. But Stag was pushing it; the thinking had not been right—the attitude had not been given enough time to switch. She was capable of being made … but not this way. She wavered, and would have relented, soon, but he forced her.

She went back over the line.

It was as though she had never been touched before.

The virgin screamed.

Then she jammed her thumb into Stag’s eye. Her peasant blouse ripped down the front as Stag lurched away, his hand still caught in the thin fabric. It ripped down with a harsh sound and revealed the pink and black lace brassiere she wore. Half-aroused and half-infuriated Stag came back at her, one hand at his eye, the other groping for the girl.

She tried to pull the ripped blouse across her chest, and it only accentuated her body the more. She shouldn’t ’a done that! was all Stag could think, the words crimson against a crimson background emblazoned on a crimson field of blood that backed his eyes. He reached.

He caught her by the ponytail and dragged her up against him, and she got her nails into one cheek, ripping down, leaving three blood-welling furrows and one shorter, shallower one where her little finger had traveled ripping through the skin. Stag howled.

In the bedroom, Shelly heard her first scream, and the Scotch spattered against the wall as he dropped the glass and leaped to the door. He wrenched at the knob and shoved inward but it only bowed slightly, and would not give. He threw himself against it, realizing Stag had barricaded the door, and terror flicked like a running greyhound through his mind as he heard Stag bellow in pain, then the rip of something tearing, and shorter more painful shrieks as Stag did something to the girl.

“Open this door! Open the door, you sonofabitch!" he screamed, slamming his fist against the solid paneling. “Stag! Stop it, stop it you bastard, let her alone! Open this goddam effing door, you stupid rotten—open this DOOR!”

In the living room Stag took his hand from his reddened, watering eye, and wrapped it in the material of what was left of the peasant blouse. He put one hand in the girl’s face and shoved her as hard as he could. The blouse ripped away completely, leaving two huge strips hanging down her back and a fistful of fabric in Stag’s hand. She screamed again, very high, like a bird in pain, and stumbled back against the wall. Red welts appeared on her skin. There was open, unhindered terror in her face. The red hair was flying loose now, the body a hopeless, unmuscled jumble of thrashing legs and arms.

“Stag! Open the door!" Shelly bellowed as he threw his shoulder against the paneling. Unlike the movies where it seemed so easy, he bounced back, a shattering pain in his shoulder. He hit it again and once more rebounded. A third time, a fourth. One of the panels began to bow outward, then split. He launched himself at it again, fanatically, lost in any thought but getting out into the next room where the screams were coming closer together—like labor pains.

Stag advanced on the girl and wrapped his arms around her in a bear hug. She tried to bite him, pleading incoherently now, not giving a damn if he was Stag Preston, out of her mind with horror at the mauling and the blood all over her— but mostly his blood. They wrestled for a moment, stumbling backward, just as the paneling of the bedroom door shattered and Shelly’s face appeared in it.

The publicist took one look and his face went white as the shock wave of violence smashed him. He screamed wordlessly, and ripped at the chair blocking the knob. It fell away.

Stag and the girl caromed off the wall, still locked in each other’s arms, her legs covered with abrasions and blood from where he had tried to wrap his legs about her. They hit the wall a second time, bounced off it and fell back, striking the French doors leading to the balcony.

They crashed the doors open, snapping the delicate tiny lock-decoration and thrashed out onto the small balcony over Broadway. He had a grip on her shoulders, was digging his fingers into the white flesh where the blouse had torn away, and this time all the songs in the world could not win this girl for him.

Shelly reached through and turned the knob, came storming into the living room just as—

Stag tried to pull her close, to drag her back inside, but she shoved against him, as hard as she could; she was redolent of an animal fear that only signaled she had to stay out of his reach. He tripped on his own feet and his grip on her broke … the force of her pushing against him hurled her backward, and she hit the low balcony railing with her buttocks; the force of her fury to remain untouched pulled her up onto the railing and for a moment she flailed there, her arms now reaching for her idol, Stag Preston, to help her regain balance.

He took a confused half-step toward her, even as the scream came silently, filling her eyes with endless wide-open falling, and then the force of her backward fall threw her weight across the railing, and in a flash of legs she went over and was gone.

From where Shelly stood, transfixed, in the middle of the living room, he could hear her screams, all the way to the sidewalk.

It sounded like a ride-out ending to a rock’n’roll number.