Sucker Bet

32

The scene at the Virgin store got ugly fast.

Nigel’s turn on the drums had been advertised in the newspaper and on the radio. The crowd had come to get a taste of the old-time mayhem that only he could produce, his wild-eyed, manic intensity one of the few lasting images of the cocaine- and booze-injected rock and roll of the early eighties.

The record promoter tried to defuse the situation by grabbing the mike and telling a few bad jokes. Someone in the crowd threatened to kick his bonded teeth down his throat. Candy ducked out the back door and circled the building. The pink limo was parked out front, but she was not sure she wanted to be associated with it.

Instead, she started walking to the Delano and immediately regretted it. She was dressed like a streetwalker, and cars did the slow crawl down the street, a few male drivers waving handfuls of bills, trying to entice her to jump in.

Candy cursed them, and Nigel for reducing her to this. It was one thing to be a whore. It was something else entirely when the man you loved made you feel like one.

Her stilettos left puncture wounds on the Delano’s wood floors. The Rose Bar sat off the lobby, an unfriendly space with muted lighting.

“Where is he?” she demanded of the bartender, knowing that it was to the bottle that her lover had surely run.

Polishing a highball glass, the bartender pointed in the direction of the bungalows. Candy stormed out.

She had to pass through the patio restaurant to reach the bungalows, and a couple she’d chatted with in the pool now avoided making eye contact. Why had she let Nigel talk her into wearing these horrible clothes? It made her so angry, she wanted to kill someone.

The bungalow was empty. Nigel’s clothes sat in a pile on the bathroom floor, his bathing suit gone. She changed into a bikini, then searched for something sharp to plunge into her lover’s heart when she found him.

A few minutes later she did. He was sitting on the shore a hundred yards from the hotel, a bucket of Shiner Bocks by his side, the incoming tide splashing on the soles of his feet. His body was big and milky white, his back covered with curls of graying hair. Shielding his eyes from the sun, he stared up at her.

“With that?” he said.

Candy looked down at the hotel corkscrew clutched in her hand.

“You’re going to kill me with that?”

No one was around. Yes, that was exactly what she was going to do.

Her lover shook his head. “Be serious, my dear.”

She halved the distance between them, wondering how he’d look with the corkscrew sticking out of his ear. Oblivious to the danger he was in, Nigel patted the blanket.

“Sit,” he said.

“Fuck yourself.”

“Please.”

“You think I wouldn’t do it?” she said through clenched teeth.

“Not if you thought you were going to get caught.”

She looked up and down the empty beach. “Caught how?”

“There’s a young fellow from the hotel sitting in the bushes, smoking a joint. When I’m finished with these beers, he’ll take the bucket to the hotel bar and get a refill. It’s called the deluxe service. I pay for it.”

The intoxicating smell of reefer floated above the salty air. She threw the corkscrew against Nigel’s back, then marched over to the palmetto bushes and saw the employee sitting in the sand, having a little fun. He was jet-black, from one of the islands, and Candy stuck her hand out.

“Give me that,” she said.

He obeyed, and she took a monster hit, then handed it back to him. “Thanks.” Then she walked back to where Nigel sat.

“Feel better?” her lover asked.

Candy helped him polish off the remaining Shiner Bocks. The tide was coming in, and their suits quickly filled with sand. A fresh bucket of beer appeared. Nigel opened two.

“I’m from Middlesbrough,” he said. “It’s a factory town in the north of England, known for its mills. I used to work in one, dying white lace. I learned from my father, who learned from his father, who didn’t graduate the sixth grade. My father was a little better: He made it through high school.”

He clinked his bottle against hers, his eyes swimming. “So did I. And vocational school. But I still went to work in the mill. One of those stupid family traditions, I suppose. Not that it was a bad life. Just horribly dull. On weekends, I got drunk in the pub.”

Candy was on her third beer. The sun was hot; tomorrow she’d be as pink as a lobster. She looked into Nigel’s face. She was still mad at him. “So?”

“I’m getting to the good part,” he said, wiping his mouth on his wrist. “I knew these blokes who had a band. They called themselves One-Eyed Pig. I would go to gigs with them, help them set up. They paid me in beer.” He smiled, the bottle inches from his lips. “One day, the lead singer, Troy, calls me up, says he has a problem. The band’s drummer quit. Troy offers me the job.”

“And a star was born,” she said sarcastically.

His eyes narrowed. “Not really. I don’t play the drums.”

“Very funny.”

“I’m not a musician. Troy wanted me to fake it for a gig in the next town. I would pretend, and they would play a tape.”

“How do you pretend to play the drums?”

“The drumsticks were made of Styrofoam. No sound.”

A big wave came in and knocked her back a few inches. Nigel, a hundred pounds heavier, was unaffected. She scampered back to her position.

“The gig was in this huge dance hall,” he went on. “At first, I was scared, but then I realized that this was the only time I was going to get a taste of being famous, so I jumped around and did crazy things with the sticks and made a complete horse’s ass of myself. The crowd was mostly dopey kids. They loved it.

“There was a record producer there. Bloke named Flash Summers. Liked to wear outrageous designer clothes and have an underage girl hanging on each arm. He signed us up on the spot.”

“But you don’t play.”

“It didn’t matter. Flash loved me. Said I was the greatest natural showman he’d ever seen. He wrapped his arms around me, said he was going to make me famous.”

Another wave came in. Nigel held Candy’s hand so she was not dragged backwards. They were big hands, yet also soft and gentle. “The band was born that night,” he said. “Flash knew it, the crowd knew it, and we knew it. We cut our first album the next week.”

“Who played the drums?”

“A studio musician they hired.”

Candy stared out at the endless stretch of blue. She had seen Nigel play, remembered it as clearly as what she’d had for breakfast. The AIDS concert in New York’s Central Park. She’d watched it on TV, Nigel’s maniacal solo piercing the still night air. That couldn’t have been a recording.

“But I saw you play,” she insisted.

“Where?”

“On television, from New York.”

He took the empty beer bottle from her hand, replaced it with a fresh one. “Another hoax, I’m afraid. After the album went platinum, we were expected to tour. Flash knew we couldn’t do concerts with a tape and survive, so he put this drummer in a hollowed-out amplifier directly behind me. He would play, and I’d fake it.”

“In an amplifier?”

“He was a dwarf. Flash found him in the Tom Thumb circus.”

Candy put her hand over her mouth. “Cut it out.”

“I’m serious,” he said. “Guy could play any instrument. Sing, too. He’s out in Vegas now.”

“Doing what?”

“A mean Elvis Presley impersonation. He wears one of those white leather outfits with all the lace. Calls himself Elfis.”

Candy didn’t see the monster wave roll in. As laughter poured out of her mouth, it hit her in the face, and she went under.

“I want to ask you something,” she said after they burned up the sheets with their lovemaking.

“No,” he mumbled, his face buried in the pillows.

She shoved him playfully. “Come on.”

He rolled over on his side. “What?”

“Why do you hang out with guys like Rico? What is it going to get you, except in trouble?”

He thought about it for a while, his finger tracing a heart in her bare midsection.

“Do you know what it’s like to have everything handed to you, and you didn’t do anything to deserve it?”

Candy shook her head no.

“It sounds great,” he said. “And in the beginning, it is. Like one of those great Charles Dickens tales about a young boy being mistaken for a prince and given the run of the castle. It’s fun, but then it starts to wear thin. You’re not the person people think you are. The person you really are, you can never go back to being. It’s like dying, and waking up in someone else’s bloody body.”

He touched her chin, then managed a faint smile. “I hang out with guys like Rico for the same reason that I gamble. It makes me feel alive.”