Harlan Ellison: Spider Kiss

She ignored the slap. “Is it true?” she asked.

“Is what true?”

“About that kid falling out the window.”

“Correction: balcony.”

“Balcony, then. Is it true?”

“Why?”

“Because I have to know !” she howled, infuriated by his fencing.

“So you can check out and find another nest high above the city if this pigeon’s about to be gobbled by the hawks?”

“Is. It. True?”

He grinned maliciously. So there was a part of him that still gave a damn about the hipster life. “Yeah, Princess, it’s true. But don’t worry, we’ve got it hushed. It won’t interfere with your dinners at The Four Seasons.”

She bit her lower lip in concentration.

“Well, so long, Mommy. Your baby boy’s dattaway.”

He was halfway to the door when she said to his back, “He’s all finished, Shelly.”

Shelly turned. “How do you know?” There was fun and games, and there was seriousness, and Carlene’s intuition (compounded of a sensitive feeling for the scene and its warm air currents, and tips from knowledgeable friends) was seldom wrong. It was past time for fun and games; it was time to dig her closely. “How do you know?”

“I know,” she answered cryptically. “He’s had it. You can’t keep what happened today quiet. It’ll get out.”

“Not if we keep the columnists and fan mags in our pocket.”

“There are other voices, and much louder,” she said.

“I don’t believe it; not in this country, anyhow.”

“You’ll see,” she assured him, turning and finding her way to the bedroom. The words hung behind her mystically, almost a pronouncement of doom, and they bothered Shelly more than he cared to admit.

He was certain she was not soothing Stag in that bedroom. She might be checking the condition of her luggage, but she sure as hell was not soothing Stag Preston.

It was like a brush fire.

It began very slowly and in no time at all was completely out of control. Attendance was down at The Palace all the rest of that week. It was actually possible to get seats.

Fan mail assumed a different tone. A questioning tone, without really asking any questions. There were fewer requests for photos.

A copy of a photo, mailed from Secaucus, reached Shelly. It showed Stag and the dead girl, Marlene, thrashing on the balcony, but it could have been interpreted as Stag had related it to the police. There was no return address on the envelope. No amount of private detective pressure or investigation could uncover who the girl was, or who had taken the pictures. And there were more. One arrived each day, five in all. One of them was an out-of-focus blur that could have been a body, falling toward the camera. Another showed a man looking down from the balcony.

There was no letter attached to any of them. There was no hint of blackmail. It was simply FYI—For Your Information. Shelly began to shake.

Stag took no notice. He was above it. He had bigger things to worry about. The “syndicate” of little merchants had gotten in touch with him, and with Shelly. There was going to be a stockholders’ meeting.

But the wind was rising. It told in the little things:

Stag had to wait for a table at The Harwyn Club.

They were evasive at the record company about things like the sales curve on the new album, when the next cutting session would be, whether Sid Felder would take it, what promotion was swinging with at the moment. Little things … things that had always been Am-Par’s business, of course, but which they had gladly shared with Stag and Shelly.

Carlene disappeared. There was a rumor she had found a playboy from the Dominican Republic and was yachting south.

All the tables were reserved at the Stork.

Stag’s tailor presented his long-standing, glad-to-put-a-star-like-you-onna-cuff-Mr.-Preston bill.

Stag stopped drinking heavily, tapered down and down and finally abstained altogether.

Cabdrivers no longer turned around to ask, “You’re that Stag Preston, ain’tcha?”

To Stag the air was hot, close, barely moving.

But for Shelly, it was a swift current, chilling and eddying and heading out to sea. He went to the stockholders’ meeting with trepidation.

He needn’t have felt trepidation, for the “syndicate” of small merchants was just that. Money was a self-conscious garment to them. Tiny operators with Yiddish accents, Italian hand gestures, Polish sets to their eyes and lips, uncommunicative, questioning, altogether charming and friendly. They made their wishes plainly known.

No more boozing.

No more wenching.

No more bitching.

And lots of money into the group kitty. They addressed their property in his presence as “Stag” or “Mr. Preston” and called him “the property” in his absence. Shelly had seen these men on Mott Street, had known their inflections and their desires back home—they had been friends of his father. These were the men who ran the shops in the lower middle-class sections of the town with signs that read GOING OUT OF BUSINESS! POSITIVELY LAST DAYS! all year through. They were the ones who felt the tomatoes and the melons before they bought them. They were the men who backed quick operations, who sliced in and up and out like a switchblade.

The promoters.

The men who cut the ends off their cigars rather than throw away a chewed stub.

The entrepreneurs.

The men who sold when the market was five points higher than when they’d bought.

The schlock operators.

The men whose teeth, when bared, were not fangs but more rodent-like, who could never be cornered nor put out of business; for there was always a slipperiness to them, a small time, niggling eel quality that carried them from quick operation to short change maneuver, and who hit only below the belt, because little men can reach no higher.

Though Stag Preston may only have sensed it, Shelly knew it to be a fact. When Freeport had pulled out, the operation known as Stag Preston, Incorporated, had dropped instantly to the minor leagues. And the wind was rising.

The decision was not demanding enough, on a deeper level. Had he not made a small fortune, wisely invested, and had he not been assured that he would never again have to pound the Manhattan pavement to make a buck, and had he not been guaranteed that he would never again miss a meal or have to wear last year’s topcoat, it might have meant a great deal more.

But Shelly had made his pile from Stag; he had gained a large measure of financial security; so it was still a matter of inner turmoil, or more closely: how ethical he could afford to be.

The vindictive strain in his conscience said, Sure you can

afford to be righteous and get out! Certainly. You’ve got

yours; I’m all right, Jack. Let’s see how honest you’d be if you

were broke and the payment was due on that hot rod of

yours. Now you’ve made it and you’re suddenly developing a

streak of ethics. Hypocrite! Charlatan! Fink! As soon as

there’s trouble, you grab and run. Creep!

Was that the case? Had he milked Stag for all he could, used him till the bank book bulged, and then on the first discordant note split for the hills? Was he still the phony hipster with ideas of fame and fortune predicated on the cut of a suit, the turn of an ankle, the size of a tailfin or the push of an engine? Was he still the animal? Was it only a momentary relapse that had convinced him this life was a pit?

How much was he fooling himself? And if he was pulling a fast one on himself, how empty a gesture would it be, to drop Stag’s contract? Would it be the smart thing to tag along further, pull as much loot as he could out of the scene, then sell short like Freeport? Who, after all, was looking out for Number One?