Harlan Ellison: Spider Kiss

The scars were covered with a heavy layer of No. 2 theatrical makeup, and the hair worn longer over the ears to cover one free-sliding furrow that rode onto the cheek. But the mass of them just under the right ear, covering the underside of the chin, the back of the neck where hair would not grow, these stood out in bold, pink rat-tail relief. Good enough for men with limited budgets. His hair was thinner now, combed over a little, for camouflage.

Stag Preston had healed badly on the surface; how had he done inside?

“What’s shaking, kid?”

The boy was looking at him intently, almost ferociously, with open hunger. “Shelly Morgenstern.” It was a prayer. “Jeezus, it’s you. I thought for, for a minute it was maybe a gag, a thing, y’know, but Jeezus, it’s, it’s you.”

“Yeah.” Shelly laughed nervously. “So how goes it?”

Stag spread his hands like the wings of a small bird. “Not to complain.”

Shelly nodded and waved broadly at the joint around them. “This isn’t much.”

“Not much,” Stag agreed. Then added, “Jeezus, it’s really you.”

It was getting awkward. Shelly had wanted something … he wasn’t quite sure what … a feeling of import? A feeling of some change, something happening that would form a great epiphany to his world-view: see the boy, get a bit more of “the message,” the way it really was. But nothing was happening. Stag was sitting there with a peculiar, almost worshipful look on his face, and it was starting to smell embarrassing. It was like a reunion with an old buddy whose interests are now totally divorced from yours, and the empathy is gone. It was absurd. But he was trapped, hooked, there.

“Well, listen,” Shelly said, half-rising, “I’ve got some people down on a promotion, I’ve got to get back to them, so you take it—”

“Hey, now, wait a bit, hey wait.”

Stag was suddenly galvanized, intent on holding this together till it was done; but not yet, wait a bit, come on; just a few more minutes till I get up the nerve. “Listen, I, uh, I want you to hear something. I been training myself, and uh, hey I know—” He rose, looked around, spied the pear-shaped man and yelled over the brassing, booming music of the trio backing the stripper, “—Hey! Mario! Hey, Mario baby, c’mere.”

He sat down, smiling to reassure, a surprise just ahead of us if you’ll sit a minute, huh, just hold on. The pear-shaped maitre d’ put down an empty glass on a passing bus-boy’s tray and maneuvered to their table and waited for Stag’s word. It was obvious he wanted to serve the singer, didn’t feel put upon.

“Uh, hey, Mario, what’s good … give uh, give him the Tornado Special, huh. You like that, you think, Shelly?” He looked appealingly at the publicity man.

Shelly did not want a drink, especially not one of the cloying Southern bourbon drinks with too much mint, too much spice, too much greenery; not even in a hurricane lamp mega-glass with umbrellas. But he nodded a yes.

Mario scuttled off like ambulatory pastry from a cartoon, and Stag grinned with familiarity at Shelly. The alumni in the fraternity house. Unsure, trying to relate, trying to capture a piece of someone else’s past.

“Listen, Shelly, I want to tell you something, y’know.”

He was leaning across the table.

The French cuffs peeping from his sleeves were moist with humid sweat-stain, sootiness, frayed. The links cheap.

Shelly nodded imperceptibly. “What?” he asked.

“Y’know, I’m not finished, Shelly. I mean it. I mean, really. You know when they cut me up they thought I was done, they thought that. But they didn’t know, Shelly. They didn’t know I could come back.

“I can sing, Shelly! I can sing.

“I’m better than ever. You know? I mean, like I sing different, because they cut my cords pretty bad, but I worked out, I sang and I learned to do it all over again. I lived all over for a long time, and I got myself back in shape. I can sing, Shelly, all I need is one damned break, just one little push, one little thing, you know, and I can make it bigger than before.”

What was there to say? What do you tell a blind man? That he can see? Do you tell a leper his toes can be stitched on again, just give me a real big Singer Double-Bobbin? Shelly only nodded and smiled patronizingly, mouthing words like, “Gee, that’s swell, Stag. I’m really happy for you.”

The boy’s expression changed with the instant mercurial instability of the true, practicing paranoid. “So you think I’m bullshittin’ you, huh? You think I’m conning you, trying to make a touch. Well, listen, Big Man, I want you to just stay there. You just sit there. I want you to hear me … just sit … now damn it, sit there, and I’m gonna let you hear if I’m boning you.”

He got up and moved quickly through the tables to the curtained archway, disappeared into it, and Shelly rose to leave fast, and Shelly sat back down heavily, and Shelly waited, because Shelly had to wait, because he had to wait—

Mario brought the drink. He pushed it away, ground out a cigarette butt in the already reeking, filled ashtray; and he lit another, and he waited.

The broad finished suffering.

The lights dimmed and a hollow P.A. voice announced:

“The Rampart Club Is Proud To Introduce That Star Of Stage, Screen, Television And Records, The King Of The Rock’n’roll Beat, The One, The Only, Special Attraction To The Rampart Club, The One And Only … Stag Preston!”

The spotty applause was suffocated by the imperious comping of the trio, then the spot went on, and it was five and a half years before, the stage of The Palace, in New York, and there he was again.

It was terrifying.

It was the same recurring nightmare.

Stag Preston, with guitar and with face and with the same stance, except now it was more matured, more deliberate. And he began singing.

He had regained his bravado. It was all there, again. The song was something low, something vaguely dirty, with heart and movement, though. Something he was doing specially for Shelly that said, I was at the bottom, and I made the top, and then found out the bottom had been the middle, because then I really hit bottom, and this is what it looks like, from the floor, from the underside. I’ve seen it all, I’ve even eaten the corrupt flesh of it; cupped here in my hands, want a look? Just a peek? All right, here, look!

It was all that, and a great deal more.

It was the voice of Stag Preston, grown larger.

Deeper.

More meaningful, because now it was more than the trickery of someone who has eidetic feelings, who emulates others’ suffering or triumph or courage or cowardice, others’ true emotions. It was something he had been and suffered through, and come out better for having learned.

If anything, Stag Preston was more commanding when he sang.

He can still do it, he can still charm them , Shelly thought, with a flash of sudden fear.

All he needs is a break, one little shove, that’s what he said. Now as a professional talent scout, as a man who knows what will play, can he?

When he was seven years old and his tonsils had been removed, Shelly had been under ether on the operating table and had heard someone say his name, “Shelly,” and in his unconsciousness it had seemed to be reverberating down and down and down a long hall, a corridor, endlessly. It was that way now, as the answer came back to him, up and up that long corridor, lost till now, lost since he was seven, the word of unassailable truth.

And the word was yes. Yes yes yes yes yes…

Over and over again, beginning, in fact, to reverberate within his mind, the answer was unarguably Yes, Stag Preston can do it again. All he needs is that one-handed push.