Harlan Ellison - Spider Kiss

“All that guff you fed me about your old man and the dope and your mother and the orphanages … I figured any slob who went through that deserved a lot of breaks, but brother, you’ve used up all your turns. You can turn in your soul now, fella. You smell bad.” He turned to walk away and felt the hand on his shoulder only an instant before he was spun, and the fist drove into his stomach.

It was the only blow.

Shelly doubled, all air exhaling, and tumbled over onto the carpet, on his side. Stag stared down at him, then brought back one Italian loafer and kicked him solidly in the groin.

Pain groped for Shelly, found him, and for a moment he was certain he would faint. Above him he heard Stag mouthing words. “You high-talkin’ sonofabitch!” Stag snarled, “I’d tell you any damn thing to keep you on my side. That was crap just like you’re crap.

“My old man was like any other old man, and my old lady was too dumb to stop me from robbin’ her purse when I needed the dough to get away. I’d do anydamnthing to get away from them self-made, pious assholes, and you’d better know I’ll do the same to stay where I am. You just ain’t sharp enough, Shel-baby, to know when someone’s snowin’ the ass off you.”

The pain receded. There were greater pains. Shelly felt, all at once, like crying.

“And now that I’m big time, sucker, you can shove it. And if you don’t like it, you can sell your thirty percent and get the fuck away from me.”

Shelly stared up at the boy. He saw very clearly the face of the boy, not as he had deluded himself into thinking it looked, but as it really was. The face of the … the … creature he had helped create. He was stung and bled dry by his naiveté in actually believing what he had wanted to believe—that there were any sparks of decency in the boy. All at once he knew how Einstein must have felt, or Victor Frankenstein, or the obscure Chinese who had first invented gunpowder. He knew what it was to feel responsible for turning loose something hideous.

Check out? Forget the boy? Let him shift for himself? That was no longer possible. He was responsible. He had molded Stag out of inert matter, and now it was his job to stay handy, to mitigate the evil Stag could turn loose on others.

(And somewhere in him, the Sheldon Morgenstern who had himself prowled and eaten in Jungle York reminded him:

Your investment is at stake.

Carlene will leave you.

You’ve grown accustomed to the good life.

What will you do on your own … you aren’t a hot shot kid any more.

You aren’t your brother’s keeper.

But it was a voice from someone else, someone dying, who had occupied this Sheldon Morgenstern’s body with him. A voice from a life before Stag Preston had knocked him down and made him see the truth, unglossed with greed. He heard that voice.)

But he just lay there, watching the boy’s retreating back. Stag stopped at the door and turned. Everyone was making exit speeches these days.

“Take care of yourself, Shelly. See you later. I got a date with one of these Sands chorus girls. Get back to ya later, sweetheart.”

Then he was gone, and Shelly lay there enjoying his pain and his penance.

Trudy Quillan had not been as young and simple as she had looked. Or perhaps it was simply that contact with Stag had hardened her. She would not accept Freeport’s first two offers of settlement in Stag’s name. She jacked them ten thousand dollars higher, gave ten percent to Golightly (who gladly signed the release Freeport’s lawyers drew up), and went off to Pennsylvania by jet to find the Good Doctor there who would scrape and cleanse her.

Shelly did his work as he was expected to do it, and no mention of the affair was even breathed to the Hedda/Louella/Sheilah set. The matter faded, from everyone’s mind but Shelly’s who had noticed something:

Stag had had difficulty raising the money to pay Trudy Quillan and Golightly. His spending had been catching up with him, and while it was nothing that serious, a few more peccadilloes and Stag might be working for a small salary from his stockholders.

After the Sands engagement they made short work of San Diego, San Francisco and waded through a hard four days in Los Angeles, aware constantly that they were being watched by the Eyes of Movie Town. Freeport grew pensive, distant, cautious. Stag grew more arrogant, skittish, as he was discovered by the night-flying wastrels of the area, and smug toward Shelly, who did his work, kept his own counsel, and took to drinking Mexican hot chocolate in espresso houses along the Strip.

The status remained quo.

Waiting.

When the time finally came for talks with Universal, Freeport went into them—Shelly saw it—the way Roosevelt went to Yalta. Banks of lawyers, accountants, statisticians, recorders and secretaries followed the Colonel, Stag (who insisted on being present), and Shelly into the offices of Milt Rackmil, head of Universal. It took three days, and in that time thirty-five butcher’s pads of scratch paper were consumed, fifty-nine pencils were worn to nubs, eight hundred and nine cigarettes, cigars, pipes and hookahs were smoked, one tape recorder blew a fuse, three gallons of coffee and other assorted beverages passed down throats, innumerable suspicious glances were cast, and not one curse word was used.

When the smoke cleared, everyone was happy. Both sides thought they had pulled a grand coup on the other. What neither side realized was that there had been three sides in the affair. Theirs, ours, and Stag’s.

During the third week of shooting, Ruth Kemp’s letter came for Stag. The months of preparation for the filming of Rockabilly had been so crammed with early risings and late takes that the time had passed without Shelly’s noticing it. Stag had been effectively put out of commission insofar as night life was concerned by the very rigors of his schedule. A week of screen tests (which, not having been taken before the contractual talks, led Shelly to believe Universal’s spotters had been watching Stag for some time, and knew he had a well-developed stage presence), a week of costumes, makeup, sittings before the publicity cameras, interviews with the hennaed harridans from the fan magazines, “deportment talks” with the high brass, all these (and back through the gantlet again) combined to whisk the time away, and dull both Stag’s and Shelly’s interest in extra-curricular endeavors.

As though magically, a script appeared, and Shelly stood in awe of Stag as the boy disappeared for three days, no one knew where though nails were chewed to the quicks, and returned with a solid working memory of the entire screenplay. Everyone was amazed at his quick study, and a memo came down from Olympus praising him.

Stag said nothing, acted as though he had been getting “into” scripts all his life.

Shelly appeared on the set daily, appeared at the reading rooms, showed up at walk-through and blocking sessions, and soon knew the script himself. He was of the (silent) opinion that Rockabilly would not give the producers of Black Orpheus or Paths of Glory any heartaches. Avant-garde, it wasn’t. Chopped liver, it wasn’t, either, but only by the barest margin.

The screenwriter assigned to the project had made a sizeable income and a residence in Coldwater Canyon on the strength of forty-eight “B” melodramas alternately extolling the merits of various gangsters and life in The Big City. It was competent hackwork. From the outset, it was obvious the sole redeeming facet of Rockabilly was its star, young and scintillant Stag Preston. The director, the producer, the Senior Toady, everyone agreed they had something hot here. Whatever Stag had on stage, in person, it was not lost on the screen. And by the studious application of shadow to the face (much in the same manner Joan Crawford had been shadowed), the hardness of Stag’s features was diminished. The cruel set of the mouth was retained; the masses liked their gods with a touch of what they thought was strength.