Harlan Ellison: Spider Kiss

GASOLINE FUMES

NO SMOKING

DANGER!

the younger man had forked a cigarette from his lapel pocket and had wedged it between his lips, firm in a corner of his thin-lipped mouth.

Even inside the terminal building of Standiford Field the heat was monstrous. The big man stopped abruptly and leaned against the wall. He mopped at the perspiration on his jowls. “Shelly,” he said snappishly, “give me one of those cursed tablets.”

The ferret jammed the attaché case between his feet and fumbled a small plastic vial from a jacket pocket. Unsnapping the lid he tumbled a pale blue tablet onto his palm, and extended it to the older man. “Water fountain up the line, Colonel,” Shelly said, jerking his head in the direction.

Laboring under his bulk—not fat, just girth—Colonel Jack Freeport (Savannah, New York, Cannes and London) made it briskly to the fountain, popped the tablet onto his tongue and washed it down with irregular gulps of water, managing to avoid spilling on his jacket.

“I’ll see to the bags,” Freeport said, straightening. “You call George Wharton at the State Fair Headquarters, and under no circumstances are we to be bothered by their sending some incompetent down to drive us. I want to get cleaned up and rested from that cursed plane ride, without having to meet anyone.” He waved an imperious hand in the direction of the phone booths. Then he moved off toward the baggage claiming area.

Shelly stared after the imposing figure of Jack Freeport, and the muscles along his lean jaw jumped. For an instant he felt like a toady. He had felt that way before. He disliked the feeling intensely. Then remembrances of debts, his unpaid balance on the Mercedes-Benz, what it cost to maintain Carlene … and the twenty thousand a year Freeport paid him … came back to him and he struck off for the phones.

He dropped the attaché inside the booth, against the wall, and slid onto the seat. From a list of numbers in his wallet he dialed a downtown Louisville exchange, and waited. Traffic moved past the booth in both directions.

When the dial tone broke and the husky feminine voice said, “Kentucky State Fair Headquarters,” he was not quite prepared, and for an instant fumbled his silence.

“George Wharton, please,” he said finally.

“Whom shall I say is calling?”

“Colonel Jack Freeport.”

There was a soft, furry click and silence at the end of the line. Shelly flicked ash from the dwindling cigarette in his mouth, without removing the butt from between his lips.

Another click and a voice said, “Jack! When the hell’d you get in, boy?”

“This is Sheldon Morgenstern for Colonel Freeport, Mr. Wharton. We’re at Standiford—”

Wharton blustered forward with his interruption: “I’ll have a car right out there for you, fella, just hold on a min—” He turned away from the mouthpiece and shrieked at someone, “Teddy! Teddy, get your coat on and take the Buick. Freeport’s at Stan—”

Shelly cut him off with a loud, “ Hold it, Mr. Wharton.”

George Wharton came back to the receiver from the Land of Speedy Activity. “No trouble, no trouble at all, Mr. Morgenstern. Have a car out there in fifteen minutes. We’ve got a bunch of hangers-on around here, anyhow. They don’t do a damned thing all day but mooch from petty cash. Let me send someone out for you.”

Shelly was adamant. “Don’t bother, Mr. Wharton. Colonel Freeport is a little tired from the flight and wants to go directly to his hotel. Where have you booked us?”

“The Brown, but—”

“We’ll take a cab to the Brown, then. The Colonel will give you a ring from the room when he’s settled. Is there anything on for tonight?”

Wharton sounded unhappy, but answered, “Just a dinner, but that isn’t until nine or nine-thirty. Say are you sure—”

Shelly felt the conversation had exhausted its meager limitations and said, “All right, then, Mr. Wharton, we’ll call you as soon as we’ve gotten settled. Thanks a lot. Goodbye.” He dropped the receiver without waiting for a reply.

Freeport was already leaving the baggage area, the suitcases going on before under the arms of a red cap. He turned as Shelly approached, and a questioning expression bent his features.

“What did he say?” he asked.

Shelly lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of the one before and answered, “He wanted to send out a car; I told him we wanted to make it on our own.”

Freeport snorted. “They’d take us down to the Headquarters and before I’d even gotten a bath—some Momma would have her little Agnes tapping and bawling at me. These cursed talent contests are all the same. Where are we staying, the Brown?”

Shelly nodded. “At least we’ll have good rooms. No money in this, but I suppose it’s good relations. Any plans for Louisville, Colonel?”

Freeport pursed his lips, shrugged the question away. “Well, Shelly, we’ll see, we’ll see.”

They followed the red cap to the line of waiting cabs and settled themselves for the ride into Louisville. “The Brown,” Shelly advised the hackie. When the bags were loaded, they pulled away, and he settled down, closing his dark eyes. Freeport continued to squint, even in the absence of sunlight. He mopped at his face and neck constantly, with nervous, spastic motions. “Cursed state,” he muttered once.

Shelly considered what Freeport had told him about this untimely, uncomfortable trip to Louisville. The taxi, weaving down the expressway, was so close Shelly felt as though he was knotted into a bag, and the cab smelled faintly of urine. It added to the ease of contemplating what Jack Freeport had said about misplaced loyalties.

Because of the lack of foresight of his parents, some fifty-three years before, of having resided in Cadiz, Kentucky, on the day of his birth, Freeport was—at least technically—a native son. Despite the fact that the family had been recouping drastic financial losses and had moved back to Savannah three months after Freeport’s birth, the Kentucky State Fair committee had still seen fit to call on him to judge their abominable talent show.

After all , thought Shelly, first comes Sol Hurok, and then comes my big twenty thousand dollar a year meal ticket, Colonel Jack Freeport .

Savannah, New York, Cannes and London.

Amen.

So we are in Louisville, Kentucky . Shelly dropped the thoughts like pigeon excretion. Navel of the nation. And we are preparing to judge a Talent Show (cast of thousands … all nonentities). While back in New York that damned jazz show needs a shot of digitalis, in Chicago the poetry readings are drawing about as well as a Sunday picnic at Buchenwald, and in L.A. the Go-Kart races are about as popular as an acrobat in a polio ward .

Everything was dying on the vine. And here we sit warm and cuddly on the same vine, in Louisville. Say one for me, Agnes, we’ll all be in the soup line tomorrow .

“But well-dressed,” he murmured under his breath.

“What was that, Shelly?” Freeport turned from the view outside the taxi.

“Nothing, Colonel. Nothing at all,” he answered, without opening his eyes. Not a damned thing, Massah .

Beyond the cab, the red loam of a housing project-in-progress swept past like a raw, naked wound in the arid flesh of the land.

As they pulled into the center of town, Shelly sat up in the seat, and tried to shrug some composure—lost during the flight and this heat-assault since the airport—into his wilted frame. It didn’t do much good. It was no use; he resigned himself to a weekend of heat, boredom and too-sweet martinis.

Fourth and Broadway. The Brown Hotel.

The bags were carried by an old man whose black pants had two distinctive attributes: a red stripe down each leg, and several hundred thousand wrinkles. A butter stain adorned the uniform tie.