Harlan Ellison - Spider Kiss

“Forget it,” Shelly said. “You’ve got only one thing to sell, Tiger, and that’s your voice. Now what’s your problem?”

The boy turned and opened one of the sliding doors to a full-length wardrobe. He considered the sleeves of several sports jackets. “You like this one, Shelly?” he asked, withdrawing a Scotch plaid, Continental cut.

“I’m nuts for it. Now what’s on your mind?”

“Well, I just don’t understand why I have to go on this road tour. Weren’t you supposed to fix up a date for me at The Palace? I mean, I’ve wanted to play there for a long time; I think we’re ready for it.” He let his full lower lip sag petulantly.

“Well, I’ll tell you, Sol Hurok; the Colonel’s running this particular show, and he’s a little perturbed about you slipping and sliding into every gin mill on the Great White Way. He is also, may I point out, bugged by the nickname ‘Stud Service Stag’ which the funny boys over at Lindy’s have handed you. In short, clown, he wants you out of the way for a while, so he can bribe the powers that be into letting your case slide. And it won’t do you any harm to make a little goodwill tour into the provinces. So it’s the road show scene for you.”

Stag considered the publicity man for a long moment. Then—seemingly out of context—he said, “You know somethin’, Shelly, you got to learn to talk to me with respect.”

Shelly’s mouth dropped open. The cigarette clung to his lip. “Whaaat?”

Stag tried to explain, but his self-consciousness showed through. “Well, I mean, I am a star, Shelly, and you talk to me like I was still some snotty kid outta Lou’ville. It doesn’t sound right when anybody’s listenin’.”

In the months that Stag had been away from Louisville, months in which he had sopped up Manhattan customs and glamour, he had steadfastly attempted to lose his Low Southern inflections and vocal mannerisms. For the most part he had succeeded though grammatical errors were still an unnoticed, frequent happening. But when he was being himself, just a little of the old Luther showing, he slipped back and the twang was there, the slur was evident, the rattles, bobbles and roller coaster last syllables protruded. At those times he made a studied, conscious effort to get back to the hip, slick New Yorkese he admired so much, and the effort only made his origins more apparent, embarrassing him. It happened now as he tried to put Shelly in his place.

Shelly pursed his lips around the cigarette in the mock-frustrated facial expression only the Semite can muster properly. Talking to an unseen conversationalist, looking over Stag’s right shoulder as though such a person stood there, he nodded his head softly in further realization of that peculiar expression. “He’s a star, right? He’s a big man in the metropolitan scene, is that right? We bring him up out of the mud and he’s in desperate need of respect. How about that? You hear what he said? He says: Shelly, you talk to me like I was a newcomer and you been around for ages. Did you hear that?” Then, shifting tone and nuance as only exponents of that particular Yiddish mien can, he said to Stag, “Listen, buddy-boy, as long as you keep swilling and wenching, you’re going to get talked to like you were an incompetent. Because, frankly, that’s what the Colonel and myself are beginning to think you are.”

“Aw, now, Shelly…”

“Aw, now, Shelly my ass, tot! That is the reason we are going out of town. We are going to let you cool off a little, let our boy talk to Lyons and Winchell and Marie Torre and the rest and try to get you back in their good graces. That scene with the ha-ha girl the other night was the caper. They want to stuff you and display you on Times Square right alongside the giant wastebasket that says ‘Put Your Dreck Here.’ And in case you haven’t picked it up yet, dreck is an old Irish word for garbage. We kikes stole it along with the Holy Grail, just after we spot-welded J.C. to the cross.

“All this bad press is bound to hurt us unless we can get you out in the grass-roots scene and let the kids see you’re still the same, sweet teen-aged Stag Preston they all know and adore. Do I make my point, Lochinvar?”

Somewhat mollified, Stag turned and walked out of the room, escaping the blunt unkindness of Shelly’s words. When the flak-merchant came out of the bedroom, into the huge living room of the suite, Stag was staring out the window, down into Times Square. The Colonel had had French doors built onto the tall windows, opening onto a small balcony. It was seldom used, save in the summertime when even the air conditioning in the suite was unable to make the inhabitants comfortable. The tiny breeze brought in off the balcony was humid, soot-laden and slow-moving, but its emotional, therapeutic value was limitless.

Now Stag stared out through the French doors, across the little balcony, and down to the cavorting gnats bumping and rushing and strolling in Kandinsky patterns. “I guess you’re right, Shelly.” He said it very softly, and once more Shelly felt that whatever cockeyed compulsions corrupted this boy from time to time, he was, essentially, a pretty good, a highly swinging kid.

“Listen, Stag,” he said, reassuringly, walking to him and winding an arm around his shoulders, “don’t let it bug you. This trip will be fine. You’ll be headlining a bill with some pretty big people, you’ll get to see parts of the country you haven’t played, we’ll make a pile, and there’s bound to be some good-looking tail all along the route. So cool it, howzabout?”

Stag turned and, gradually, the smile over which millions of women had dream-sex fantasies, boyish, clean-cut, God-what-a-doll—broke out. Then they had a drink together.

Later in the day, Stag had half a dozen more. Assorted.

Have you ever tried a Pink Squirrel mixed with a Singapore Sling?

Joe Costanza brought him back to the suite, upside-down, across one of Joe’s big, Sicilian shoulders. He deposited him at Shelly’s feet and said:

“I started pushing a hack in this town when I was sixteen. My old man died on the street, some kind of a kidney thing, I believe they called it nephritis. They called an ambulance and took him to Bellevue. In those days they didn’t have as advanced methods as today. He died on the way, or maybe he was dead when they found him; I don’t know. You ever see Bellevue, Shelly? It’s a big, ugly, depressing red brick thing … looks like it was made for the dead, not for the living. I had to go down and identify him. That was my junior year in high school, my last year, the way it turned out. I had to go lie about my age and get a hack license. I pushed a taxi in New York for fifteen years, summer and winter … hell, I remember back when they only had three doors on cabs, so the driver could carry big trunks up in the front seat; it got cold in the winter. Then I get a break; I get into the promotion racket and my sister can stop teaching school, get married, settle down in Jackson Heights; things start to swing for me; my wife and my kids stop postponing meals, and I got time to take up bowling, learn how to ski … you know I went out to Squaw Valley on my vacation last year? I’m a pretty fair skier. I’ve got loot in the Manufacturer’s Trust on the corner of 43rd and Fifth Avenue, I got a car; my wife has a car; my kids have cars, and I’ve even been known to smile at people who push too hard in the revolving doors of this great New York hotel.”

Shelly stared at him, bewildered.

“Hello,” Joe Costanza said, his big square face hardly crossed by any emotion at all.

Shelly said, slowly, “I know the entire, dull story of your bourgeois life. Why me?”

Joe Costanza pointed at the prostrate form of the great Stag Preston. “I like my life the way it’s built. This kid is going to knock out the pilings from under; unless you open a can of whup-ass on him, Shelly. I hear the road to the poorhouse is paved with bad actors. Did you ever drink a Pink Squirrel mixed with a Singapore Sling?”