Harlan Ellison - Spider Kiss

It was all over. The show boat had gone ‘round the bend for the final performance. It was enough to make a grown man shatter and bawl—hundreds of thousands of bucks flying South for the duration. Shelly leaned over the sofa, prepared to see Jean Friedel’s throat blue with finger impressions, the eyes wide and staring nowhere, the body twisted where she had fallen. He stared at her for a long moment, swallowing hard, before he realized he was not seeing what he was seeing.

Stag Preston was lying unconscious at the side of the sofa.

“I hit him with a bottle of after-shave lotion,” Jean Friedel said, coming in from the bedroom. She stepped over the remains of a straight chair that had been used to club open the door. “Wrecked hell out of the bottle.” She held it up; it had been shattered at the base of its two-foot stem. Shelly realized the pervasive smell of strong men’s scent hung in the suite.

“ Jee zus epileptic Kee rist, baby, you have just jobbed my meal ticket!” Shelly climbed over the back of the sofa and plopped down, his feet on Stag Preston’s stomach. He lit a cigarette and stared down woefully at the unconscious singer. “ Kee rist!”

“Don’t cry, little man,” Jean said, dropping the neck of the bottle on the rug. She came toward him, sat down with her bare feet on Preston’s thigh. “He’ll survive. He’ll probably want a few of those little Bufferin B’s zonking around in his system, but he’ll survive.” She yawned, moving her head in a short arc as a tired driver might do it after a night turnpiking it behind the wheel. “Who do I have to assassinate to get a drink?”

Shelly puffed out his cheeks and rose. The bar was a shelf in the kitchen. “What’s your reward, Joan of Arc?”

“Has he got branch water in there?”

Shelly rummaged and came up with a half-filled bottle. “Bourbon and branch?”

“Just fine.” He heard the record player click the beginning of its cycle. As he mixed, the saccharine tones of a Jackie Gleason record lofted through the suite.

When he brought her the glass, she was back on the sofa, legs stretched out before her. “None for you?”

He handed over the bourbon. “That’s all I’d need; on top of all the adrenaline I’d have a beautiful case of Seventy-Day Sour Stomach. By the way, thanks a bunch, Rapunzel.”

“For what?” She quirked an eyebrow, then sipped daintily.

“For alarming my ulcers. My specialist’ll love you for it; might even give you a little taste for piecework above and beyond.” He lit a cigarette, his hands shaking slightly. Beside him, the girl smiled thinly.

“Shelly, would you mind dousing some of the light?”

He turned and examined her expression. There seemed to be no ridicule there, no taunting; she had said it very matter-of-factly.

“What is this, prelude to a seduction?” he asked. “The beautiful barefoot seductress, the Jackie Gleason background, and now, ‘Shelly, would you mind plunging us into darkness?’ Come on, Jeanie, don’t tell me I look good to you suddenly?”

She gave him a peculiar smile over the lip of the glass. “Well, it’s not that. Maybe I’m just seeing you differently for the first time.”

“What in the hell is that supposed to mean?”

She let loose the same peculiar smile. “You must have left your apartment in a hurry … your fly is open.”

He started, looked down, saw it was so, and felt himself turning red all the way down to the exposed area. “Oh, Jeezus !” he blurted, leaping and zipping. She was lying back against the arm of the sectional now, laughter coming in short, sharp buffets. He continued to blush, grew angry, flustered, bemused, amused and convulsed, all in the space of a few seconds.

When their mutual laughter subsided, he was slumped against her, and the scent of perfume on her neck overrode the smell of after-shave lotion in the air.

Without realizing, they flowed. Their mouths touched and the drink bounced once on the carpet, spilling in a dark, living stain. “The light … get the light…” she murmured against his tongue, muffled and desperate. He didn’t listen till she had jacked her knee into his side. “Get the light, damn you!”

It was one of those scenes out of a Mack Sennett comedy. Shelly running zigzag about the suite, flipping switches. When he returned to the sofa, he knew she was naked, even before he touched her.

She had done a workmanlike job on Stag. He dozed with childlike abandon till well after the third round.

“Later,” he said, later, “they lay looking into the smoke spirals, wondering at the nature of the evil bond that now bound them.”

“Lovely,” she commented, drawing on her cigarette. “Frances Parkinson Keyes?”

“Aimee Semple McPherson,” he replied. “If you believe.”

She nudged him. “Move over, I’m half on the floor.”

“This is so sudden, Miss Friedel.” He slid sidewise. “You know,” he said, “you’ve got a very hip looking—”

“Forget it, de Sade,” she said cutting him off. Figuratively. “Or I’ll get dressed.” He had the abruptly distressing thought that nakedness offended her … lights off … quick puffs on the cigarettes casting ruby highlights across her breasts … it was a spooky bit. He shrugged mentally, eloquently.

They lay together—though, oddly, not really together, more like two weary travelers off the same road, seeking a moment’s respite before struggling on—not speaking for a short while. Then:

“Okay: I’ve played your little game. Now why me, why tonight?” he asked coldly.

She did not answer for a time, then said, around the cigarette, “I don’t want to destroy your manhood, my lover, but if The Tin Woodman of Oz had walked through that door I’d have stripped the can off him. Your boy Stagorooney does a good job with tooth and claw. Pity he got carried away; we could have made such beautiful music together.”

“Nasty break,” Shelly replied sarcastically. “Sorry he punked out on you while the fires were banked. But what the hell…”

She sat up, began fumbling in the dark for her clothes. He listened to the rustling for a while, then said, “What’s a guy have to do to make your scene?”

She gave him a long pause, again.

“He has to be set.” There was no banter in her tone now. She turned to him, and he could see her face, hard and tight in the feeble glow of the cigarette. “Look, Shelly,” she said, as though about to state a credo, “I’m a girl with lots of wants. I never had it, and I want it. I want everything there is to want. And I want it to be so much that if I don’t want it … it shouldn’t be worth having. If that sounds shallow, then sue me, what can you do me.”

“Guys like me are supposed to talk about ‘The Long View’ at times like this,” he said, reaching out to touch her.

She pulled away. “Stop it. You’re the kind of guy I should make a beeline for, every time.”

“So? I’m available: parties, luncheons, bar mitzvahs, orgies, gas station openings, supermarket closings…”

“I know, I know.” She stopped him. “You’ve used that shtick before. I’m telling you something, Shelly, and you’re clowning with me. This may be the only time you’ll ever hear the truth out of me, so grab it while you can.”

He subsided, realizing she was leveling. “Go on. Tell me.”

“Oh, what the hell. Why bother? I’m a poor little girl from Kalamazoo, Michigan, who found at the tender age of fifteen that she couldn’t keep her pants on. So before too many in big K had sampled the wares I decided to get out and sell it; I’ve always contended charity begins at home.

“Up till now I’ve been a scuffler, and I’m sick of it, Shelly. Really fed to the teeth with guys on the make and rent overdue. So now I play it for all it’s worth. You just happened to get caught in the backlash tonight. Chalk it up to nymphomania.”