Harlan Ellison: Spider Kiss

Stepping closer, the head-top became only the top of a head that topped a shrunken, yellowed body barely in the same species with Morgenstern. “Where can I find—uh—” he consulted the slip of paper, “somebody named Luther?”

“Luther?” The room clerk sighed resignedly. “Wait a minute.” He reached across with a foot and jabbed a red button on the board. “He’ll be right down.”

The little man continued to stare at Shelly from dark eyes with yellow rings under them. “Is my monkey bothering you?” Shelly asked.

“What?”

“The one on my back.”

The clerk looked disgusted. “Comedian,” he mumbled. Shelly lit a cigarette, staring at those obscure places in every room that seldom command attention: the juncture of ceiling and wall, ornate filigree along the upper walls, worn spots on the seedy rug. I should have gone with Freeport to that business conference. Couldn’t have been any worse than this .

The elevator sighed open, and a tall, thin kid with too much hair came out. He wore a faded blue bellhop’s uniform, and the most monumentally bored expression Shelly had ever encountered.

The boy walked to the check-in desk. “George-O,” he said, and the balding dwarf jerked a thumb at Shelly. “He asked for ya,” George-O said. The boy turned to stare at Shelly. His eyes narrowed.

Morgenstern could see the question process-server ? in the gleam of them.

“Yeah, you want me, Mistuh?” The accent was a flat Kentucky modulation. Neither cultivated nor overly rough on the ear. But there was the sound of I’ve-been-around in it. Shelly dumped ash on the rug.

“Bartender over at The Brown told me I might find some action here; told me to ask for Luther. You Luther?”

The boy nodded. “What ’chu aftuh, Mistuh?”

The way he said it was very much like rolling out a brochure. With listings under J for junk, B for broads, Q for queers and G for shuffle them. “I heard there might be some poker hereabouts,” Shelly said.

Luther studied the man before him with casual carefulness. Then, reassuring himself by means of those nebulous signs and auras known to the hungry ones on the fringes, he nodded. “Yessuh, big man, we got a little game goin’.”

Shelly made a negligent motion with his hand. “Lead the way, son.”

Luther shied at the word “son” and his dark eyes narrowed. “Stakes goin’ five, ten, twenny-five, big man, you figuh you can stand the action?”

Shelly dropped the butt on the rug and ground it in with his heel. “You figure on making your steering money talking me to death in this lobby?”

The bellboy turned and re-entered the elevator. Shelly followed him, watching the swaggering, self-contained way the boy walked. Loose. He had indeed been around. There was something hard, something coolly dangerous about Luther.

The elevator door closed and the machine started up. Then Luther flicked out the lights.

“Hey! What the hell is this ?” Shelly backed into a corner, seeing himself being rolled by a teen-ager.

Luther’s soft voice came out of the darkness. “Stay loose, big man. This’s just so’s you don’t know what floor you’re on. We don’t want no trouble from The Man.”

The elevator whined to a stop (How did he know when they’d reached the correct floor, Shelly wondered?), and Luther reached out through the opened door, and clicked another switch. The hall went dark beyond the elevator car: “C’mawn, big man,” Luther said, taking Shelly by the arm.

A sharp fear clutched Shelly Morgenstern as the boy hustled him down the hall. This could be the easiest sucker trap in the world. Pow! We never saw no New York bigmouth, Officuh; he musta got rolled someplace else. Musta been seven other guys, Officuh. We all clean around heah. Oh, this could be so sweet a set-up.

Luther reached a door and rapped on it three times, quickly, waited, then twice again, slowly.

The door opened, and Shelly knew he was all right.

The card-players’ smoke was thick enough to butter on bread. He fished a five out of his pocket; Luther took it.

He entered the room, Luther falling in behind, and saw the big green-topped poker table, surrounded by six men, three of whom wore expensive suits. This was no rigged roll set-up in any case. The game might or might not be fixed … that was another matter. It would take some careful scrutiny.

“Stay loose, big man,” Luther said, and elbowed past, opening a side door and disappearing beyond.

A florid-faced man with a tie too thin for his fat, too bright for his pink eyelet shirt, got up from the table and extended a hand to Shelly. “Name’s Walter Swatt,” he said jovially, “do me a favor and don’t make any cracks about getting the Flit.” He chuckled, and the men around the table smiled lamely, as though this was their five hundredth exposure to the remark.

“Sheldon … Lewis,” Shelly answered, grinning just as widely. “In town for the Fair, thought I’d like to play a little friendly poker.”

Swatt led him to the table, and the men scooted around to leave an open space, quickly filled by a chair Swatt pulled up. “This’s the place, Mr. Lewis. We’re all local businessmen, get together here every week for a little game. Whyn’cha sit, y’hear?” Shelly plopped into the chair.

The sound of a guitar drifted to him in the momentary silence of the pre-shuffle. He turned toward the sound; the small room where Luther had disappeared.

Swatt caught the glance, said, “Oh, that’s just the kid, Luther. We let him practice in there, he’s a good kid. Sings, plays a little. Ain’t too good, but, well … what the hell … you know.”

Shelly nodded. “Hey, deal me in this hand.”

It only took him seven hands to establish that the game was neither rigged nor very deadly. Despite the stakes, which were high for a “stranger game,” the other players were open-faced and easy to out-maneuver. He began winning steadily, but not outrageously. It was a friendly game.

With the solving of the puzzle of the players’ methods and the gradual disinterest that comes with knowledge of superiority in the game, Shelly found himself listening more and more to the peculiar strains of music coming from the little side room.

After a while, he excused himself from the table, pocketed his winnings with the promise of returning shortly, and went to the side door. He hesitated a long moment, hearing the rhythms of back-country blues coming from the room; then he knocked sharply.

The players looked up, then returned to their hands.

Luther’s voice, muffled, offered him entrance.

Shelly opened the door and saw a room as yellow and bare as a monk’s cell, the only furniture being a slat-back chair and a washstand with a pitcher of water and a glass on it. “Somethin’, big man?” the boy asked, looking up from the steelstringed guitar. It was a cheap guitar, but there was whiteness around the boy’s knuckles as he clutched it tightly to himself. He looks like he’s afraid someone will rip it away from him , Shelly thought suddenly.

“I heard you playing,” he said.

“Sorry if ah was too loud. I’ll cool it,” the boy answered, surliness in his tones.

“No, you weren’t too loud,” Shelly replied. He leaned against the wall and lit a cigarette.

“Then what’s the mattuh?”

“Nothing, just wanted to hear you play,” Shelly admitted.

The boy set the guitar behind the chair and looked up from under his awning of auburn hair. “I don’t play for nothin’, Mistuh.”

“Well, I’m not about to pay, Elvis,” Shelly retorted. The boy started at the name, his eyes narrowing down.

“Why don’t you get the hell outta heah, big man, an’ let me be? You wanted to play some pokuh, so I brought you up, whyn’t you g’wan back out theah?” His fists were white with suppressed fury.