Daniel Abraham - Inside Straight

There were always women waiting, nat or joker, whatever he wanted. Only …

Grady was grinning and applauding as he strode into the room. “Hey, KA!” The Voice said loudly. “You look happy—you snag a blow job on the way back?”

Grady ignored The Voice. “Great show, boys. That’s all I need to say. The promoters are contentedly counting the ticket sales, and the label tells me that Incidental Music for Heroes shows up as number-one on Billboard next week. Numero Uno. It doesn’t get any better than that. So congratulations all around, eh? Don’t need to say more.” He clapped his hands again. He looked at each of them as if he were counting bills in his wallet. “All right, here’s the schedule. Wake-up call is at noon, and the limo will be at the hotel to get us to the airport two hours later. It’s Berlin tomorrow night, then London, then right on to New York—the label’s added Cleveland, Dallas, and Denver to the American tour. Boys, Joker Plague is hot. Hot. Enjoy the ride.” He grinned again. “And speaking of rides …”

He went to the door and opened it. “Come on in,” he said to those waiting outside. He gestured sweepingly toward the band. “Entrato. È tempo di celebrare …”

She had the face of a cat and her skin was blanketed with silken fur mottled like an orange tabby, but the body was very much a young woman’s. The name she’d given Michael was Petit Chaton —little kitten—and she was French, not Italian, having followed the band from Paris. She was beautiful, even in sleep. Michael could swear she was purring as she slept curled under the covers. He slid his several arms from under her, stroking her face gently with his top hand: yes, she was purring; he could feel the vibration in his fingers. He slipped out of bed and, naked, padded into the other room of the suite. The clock said five A.M. local time, but Michael’s internal clock was blurred by travel and he wasn’t sleepy at all. He picked up the remote and turned on the television set, tapping the mute button, since he knew about a half-dozen words of Italian. The channel was still set to the news where he’d left it, and Egypt evidently remained the big story, as it had been for a few days now. He watched the images flickering by: jokers with heads that he vaguely recognized as those of Egyptian gods; jerky, confusing footage of a battle; bodies strewn across a sand-rippled landscape; and …

Curveball.…Kate.

Michael sat up abruptly, entirely awake now. The camera panned away and he cursed doubly, since fucking Captain Cruller was standing next to her, looking like he hadn’t slept in a week, the scarab that had possessed him sitting under the skin of his forehead like the world’s largest pimple. Fortune was talking to someone off-camera. Michael fumbled for the mute button, but he couldn’t hear Fortune over the Italian translation. The camera panned back again, showing Kate, Ana, Lohengrin, Holy Roller, Fat Chick, Hardhat, Toolbelt, Simoon, and Bugsy all clustered around Fortune, with desert in the background and what looked like a dam structure in the middle distance. Michael watched only Kate. She was solemn, her face dirty with a streak that might be dried blood along one cheek. She looked like she would collapse the moment the camera was turned off, as if it were only force of will keeping her upright. They all looked the same way. And Kate was standing right alongside Fortune. He saw her fingers link with his as the camera panned back.

Light shifted in the room as the program went to a split screen, with a commentator speaking on the left while on the right was promo footage of King Cobalt from American Hero. “… King Cobalt morto. …” the commentator intoned, and the last word jumped out at him. Morto. He could figure that one out. Michael suddenly knew why King Cobalt’s picture was on the screen.

He felt as if someone had punched him in the stomach.

The scene switched abruptly to a reporter interviewing a crocodile-headed ace who looked like he’d just stepped from a mural in a pharaoh’s tomb, standing outside one of the restored temples.

Another shift, and a new reporter was placing a microphone in front of the fierce scowl of the Righteous Djinn, the former strong right arm of the Nur and now the primary weapon in the new Caliph’s arsenal. He glared into the camera as it focused on him, and Michael found himself scowling back.

“Fuck,” he said aloud.

“If you would like.” The answer came in French-accented English. Chaton was leaning sleepily against the doorway to the bedroom, illuminated by the shifting light of the television. Her belly was cloaked in soft orange, her tail curled lazily around a knee, the end of it flicking restlessly. “But you left our bed.”

“Can’t sleep,” Michael told her.

A shrug and a smile. “Bon. Then—”

“Not right now. Go back to sleep. I’ll be in later.”

Her gaze drifted over to the television. “The problems in Egypt? That is bothering you? You know them, oui? From American Hero ? ”

He didn’t answer. With his middle left hand, he tapped at one of the tympanic membranes on his chest—a low, steady dhoomp-dhoomp-dhoomp that reverberated through the room and his body. The sound was somehow comforting. Chaton finally shrugged and padded back into the bedroom. A few minutes later he heard her purr-snore again.

“Michael, you’re a great guy,” Kate had said with her soft, quiet voice, not long after they’d met. “But I don’t think I’m ready for this.” He started to protest, but she cut him off with a smile. “Maybe when this whole thing is over. When we’re not so distracted.”

But it would never be over. The cameras would always be there for both of them, no matter where they were or what they did. And Fortune…goddamn John Fortune had somehow managed to say the right things that she wanted to hear. Kate saw Michael as the lightweight, the entertainer, the womanizer.

He’d slept with a dozen of the contestants and staff of American Hero after his stupid affair with Pop Tart, after it was apparent that Kate was never going to forgive him for the slip. It was stupid and he knew it, but if she thought of him as the slut rock star, then he’d play the role to the hilt. The tactic earned him the response it deserved. After he’d been “drafted” by the Diamonds, after Fat Chick had been voted off the show, after the show had revealed that he was sleeping with Tiffani, he’d tried again to patch things up with Kate and she had stared at him as if he were a stranger. When he’d persisted, things were suddenly flying at him very hard and very fast, and he was too busy ducking and shielding himself to make any reply at all. The other Hearts took judicious cover.

“You’re an ass, Michael!” Kate shouted in the midst of the barrage. “Go bang your drums!” A vase exploded on the wall nearest him, scattering water and petals and china shrapnel and leaving a hole he could have put his head through. “Go bang your groupies, too!” A pencil caught him on the ass, punching through his jeans and embedding itself point-first in his buttocks. He gave up trying to cover himself and retreated entirely. He heard glass hit the wall beside the door and shatter. “Stay away from me!” he heard her say as he fled.

Fortune was serious; he had a vision that included more than CDs and concerts and screaming fans, even if that vision was driven by the goddamned bug inside him. Fortune was also dangerous. Michael felt that instinctively; but Kate…Kate didn’t see him that way, just as he felt she couldn’t see beyond the persona of Drummer Boy.