Bugs Page 18

  ‘You want me to wear the Ringo costume, I suppose,’ he said.

  She seemed to notice the flatness of his tone. ‘You don’t sound very enthusiastic.’

  ‘Should I do?’

  ‘Be here at six.’

  He put on the Beatle wig, the floral shirt, ridiculous tight suit and multiple rings. The total effect was nothing like Ringo Starr or any other living creature. What did she mean by ‘special evening’?

  The taxi-driver said: ‘Is that a Beatle wig? I like the Beatles.’

  ‘You look young for a Beatles’ fan.’

  ‘Hey, my mom and dad met at a Beatles concert. You could say I owe the Beatles everything.’

  Fred did not say this.

  ‘Buddy, I forgot something at the office. Sorry, but I’d better make a phone call, get somebody to bring it out.’

  ‘Sure. I found this great bar. Why don’t we stop off and have a couple while you phone? Anyway, give the little woman time to work on her dinner. Just take this next exit and I’ll direct you.’

  Sturges Fellini steered his Porsche down the exit. ‘I just hope she remembered it was today. We switched some things around on the calendar.’

  ‘You worry too much.’ General Buddy Lutz said it again as they entered the bar. ‘You worry too much, Sturge. Take life as it comes. Go with the flow.’

  Spotting his glittering uniform, a waitress hurried over. ‘Hello again, General! What’ll it be?’

  ‘The flow the turbulence –’

  ‘I’ll order the vodka Martinis, you make your phone call.’

  Hallicrafter Porch was about to leave the office when his phone rang. Though he was under no obligation to answer it, his natural rat-like curiosity got the better of him. It was Fellini.

  ‘Hal, can you do me a favour? I need a report called “Lead Time Estimates”. Should be on the secretary’s desk. Could you bring it to my home?’

  ‘No sweat, Sturge. Give me your address.’

  After he’d hung up, he said: ‘Of course he has to live out there with the Senators and bigwigs. So I gotta drive for an extra hour, just because he forgot something.’

  Moira, in the next cube, said: ‘What’s the problem, Hal?’

  He told her. Moira tried to think of some way of making it better. She liked Hallicrafter Porch. Oh, all right, she didn’t like him, but she tried to understand him. Everyone else misunderstood him. They called him Ratface and pushed him around. Now here was Sturge Fellini doing it.

  ‘I was going to ask you for a ride home,’ she lied. ‘My car won’t start.’ She pretended to have a bright idea. ‘I know – why don’t I ride along with you? Then you’ll have company, and I’ll have a ride.’

  ‘Great.’ His smile of rat-like gratitude was pathetic. But he quickly suppressed it. ‘You pay for the gas.’

  The Fellinis lived in a new, large, tree-shrouded house with what seemed to Fred an excessive number of architectural talking-points. From the street, he could see a cantilevered deck, balconies, round windows, arched windows, clerestory windows and a round tower. No doubt the flying buttresses were out of sight on the other side. He adjusted his velvet lapels and assumed his scouse accent before ringing the doorbell. The front door had a fanlight. It was a wide double door, just in case any seventeenth-century ladies wearing wide panniers came to call.

  ‘Oh, aren’t you cute?’ said Rain.

  ‘Ta, loov.’

  ‘But never mind – we’re changing things. I’ve got a new personality for you. Come and see.’

  She led him through the living-room (with its high-vaulted ceiling and minstrels’ gallery), through the dining-room (clerestory windows), upstairs to a small tower-room.

  ‘My daughter Erica’s room.’

  ‘Your daughter.’ He looked around at the walls, sprayed with violent graffiti and overlaid with posters of Sid Vicious, Fuck O’Rourke, and other wholesome heroes.

  ‘Don’t worry, Erica seldom comes home these days. We respect each other’s privacy.’

  On the bed lay an odd assortment of clothes: a school hat, white stockings, suspender-belt, long wig … Wig?

  ‘Oh, no. No. Rain, there are limits.’

  ‘I’ve always liked Boy George,’ she said, grinning.

  ‘No, no, no.’

  ‘Come on, be a sport. The English are famous for their good sportsmanship.’

  ‘Not this time.’

  ‘Come on, humour me this one last time, OK? Then I’ll never ask again, I promise.’

  ‘But not the make-up.’

  ‘Yes, the make-up. What the hell kind of Boy George would you be without the make-up? Do the eyelashes and everything.’

  ‘Not the suspender-belt. Does Boy George wear one of those?’

  ‘You mean the garter-belt? Well, Boy George may not wear one, but you will. Do it right, and we’re quits. OK? OK?’

  He reached for the wig. ‘Don’t watch, then.’

  ‘Don’t mind me, I’m going to take a shower. Oops, there’s the door.’

  ‘Mrs Fellini?’ The rat-faced young man handed Rain a sheaf of papers. ‘I was supposed to bring this over. From the office.’

  ‘Oh. Well, that’s very kind of you. A very long drive. Heliport, is that your name?’

  ‘Hallicrafter, ma’am. Or just Hal.’

  ‘I’m afraid Sturge isn’t here. I’ve got to rush, but why don’t you help yourself to a drink before you go?’ She pointed out the bar.

  ‘Thanks.’ In a moment, Hal was sipping his favourite drink, a large crême de cacao, and sitting in the deep pillows of the couch. He gave hardly a thought to Moira, sitting out in the cold car. It always paid to make a bimbo wait and get anxious. Make her more co-operative on the way home.

  He looked at the high vaulted ceiling, the minstrel gallery. What a place. Be fun to look around. After pouring himself a second creme de cacao, he crept upstairs. The sound of a shower told him where the lady was. Nice thing about these thick carpets: you could move around quietly. What a place, round windows and everything. You could work it out – Fellini was doing all right for himself.

  Moving on the soft pile down a narrow corridor, Hal found one door slightly ajar. He peered in at a chilling sight.

  A man was sitting at a dressing-table putting on lipstick. He already wore false eyelashes and white stockings.

  The shower stopped. In quick rat panic, Hal fled back along the hall. But as he reached the head of the stairs there was the noise of the double front door closing. Hal opened a door at random – a hall cupboard – and slid in.

  ‘Next week I’m flying down to Houston to look at manufacturing facilities,’ Fellini explained. ‘Here, just sit down and I’ll make us a pitcher of vodka Martinis.’

  ‘Got to make a pit-stop,’ said the General. He threw his hat on the coffee table and headed for the stairs. What he really wanted was to catch Rain alone upstairs, maybe half-dressed. A couple of drinks always made him think of Rain.

  ‘Of course a lot depends on our press campaign. You know, a newspaper is a knowledgeable nightmare, whose function is to keep us asleep.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ called the General from the stairs.

  ‘But what we have to do is open the floodgates of unbalanced orthodoxy –’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Now Buddy, who was in the upper hall, could hardly hear him droning on. A door opened and Rain came out, wrapped in a towel.

  ‘Oh! It’s you. You startled me.’

  ‘God, baby, I’ve been thinking about you night and day.’

  ‘Is that the radio on downstairs? That droning?’

  ‘Might as well be. Come here.’

  ‘No. Stop it. I don’t want you to get the idea you can just wander in any old time like this, just because I gave you a key. Suppose Sturge came home and found us like this?’

  ‘I guarantee Sturge will not come home.’

  ‘All the same …’ She allowed herself to be pulled into his strong embrace. The towel sagged, then dropped away.

  ‘Hee,
hee. Those medals scratch.’

  ‘They’re supposed to.’

  ‘Is that a gun in your pocket,’ she said, quoting Mae West, ‘or are you just glad to see me?’

  ‘Both. Jeez, Rain, this is –’

  A pale apparition appeared at the end of the hall. ‘Rain, I’m ready – Oh.’ Before Buddy could focus on it the apparition vanished. In the dim twilight from the clerestory window, he could not even make out which door it had slipped through.

  ‘What the hell was that? Was that your daughter? In a garter-belt?’

  ‘Um –’

  At that moment, Sturge’s voice rang out from downstairs. ‘Are you listening, General?’

  Rain became visibly pale beneath her excellent tan. ‘I didn’t know he was home,’ she whispered. ‘He’s not supposed –’

  Buddy called out: ‘Uh-huh. Be right with you, Sturge.’ He gave Rain another squeeze. ‘Don’t worry. Once he gets talking, he don’t really notice much, does he? I mean, it’s almost like we’re alone.’

  She pulled away. ‘Meet you in a few minutes. I’ve got to get dressed.’

  The pitcher of Martinis was nearing the halfway mark when the General came back downstairs. Without pausing in his monologue, Fellini filled a glass and handed it to him.

  ‘I’m gonna get drunk if we don’t have dinner pretty soon,’ he said. ‘But, anyway, I was just saying this is the shattering of old values like the uncivilized needlework of detransformation, or a limestone bibliography of new metalife!’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘No guesswork about it. Does this room seem kind of floating to you? Does to me. Never liked this room anyway; ridiculous vaulted ceiling costs a fortune to heat, ridiculous menstrual, minstrel gallery what use is it? What was I saying? I was saying detransformation, that is the key. Detransformation. Let the deconstructionists have their day, eh, General?’

  Only by now it wasn’t the General but two other people, his daughter Erica and a dumpy middle-aged man, who seemed to be passing through.

  ‘Hi, Dad. This is my friend, Nigel.’

  ‘Hi, Erica. Hi, friend Nigel. Nigel, how do you stand on detransformationalism? As a public policy? When we are sitting in the middle of a black hole of meta-innovation, what else can we do? I ask you. Because every high-impact innovation invokes the collapse of old values, no? The infosphere is vicissitized …’

  Moira looked at her watch in the failing light. Seven! No wonder she was getting cold. How long did it take to deliver a report? And he wouldn’t dream of asking her in to wait in the warm bright house. All the lights and people, it seemed almost like a party. First Sturge and the General, then a young girl and some old man. And everybody just walked in.

  Rain had put on a short robe when she came in to see how Fred was doing.

  ‘You look adorable, Georgie.’

  ‘Go ahead, laugh. Who was that in the hallway with you? The light was so bad – looked like a doorman.’

  ‘Jealous?’

  ‘I just want to get this over with. Have your giggle and –’

  ‘I’m not laughing,’ she said. ‘You are scrumptious. I’ve got to have you. Let me mess you up.’

  She bent him backwards across the bed, nuzzling and biting, smearing his lipstick. Then she reached a hand under his miniskirt, to see how he was responding.

  ‘Mom, what are you doing in my room? And who’s this – hey, it’s Fred!’

  ‘Hello, Erica,’ said Rain. ‘Who’s your friend?’

  ‘Honesty!’ exclaimed Fred. ‘This is your room?’

  ‘Mom, you promised to stay out of here. Oh, this is Nigel. Hook, my friend.’

  The short dumpy man shook hands with Rain, but merely giggled at Fred.

  ‘Glad to meet you, Mr Hook,’ said Rain. ‘Sorry if we’re in your way.’

  ‘Not a bit of it. We’re all civilized people.’

  ‘But, Erica, how do you know Fred?’

  ‘Mom, puh-lease just go to your own room?’

  ‘I’m going, I’m going.’

  ‘But leave Fred for a minute. I want a word with him.’

  ‘I give up.’ Rain flounced out.

  Fred said: ‘I don’t understand. Honesty is Erica?’

  ‘Erica is only the name they call me,’ she explained. ‘But never mind about me – what’s with you? I didn’t know you were into TV.’

  ‘Your mother’s idea. Part of her fascination with the kinky English.’

  ‘I know. That’s partly why I asked Nigel here to come home with me, because he’s English. I figured he could cheer her up. You know how she loves the accent. Kind of like Masturbates Theater, only live.’

  Hook kept shooting coy looks at Fred and giggling. Finally, he said: ‘Honesty, you didn’t tell me you had a lovely sister.’

  ‘Time for you to go, Nigel.’ Honesty pushed Hook towards the door. ‘You go entertain Mom or something. I need to talk to this guy.’

  When they were alone Fred explained the Boy George outfit. ‘I’m afraid your mother has a hold over me. She can get me fired if I don’t co-operate.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. It helps just having someone to tell about it. Honesty, you’re about the only person I feel I can talk to.’

  ‘Me, too,’ she said. ‘It’s like having a big sister.’

  ‘If anyone else said that … But I feel really relaxed with you.’

  ‘Me, too.’

  They lay side by side on the bed, watching the violent posters and talking, talking.

  The pressure on Hal’s bladder was unbearable. He had to pee if they killed him for it. He eased open the cupboard door a crack. A hard-looking man in uniform pacing the hall. Rows of battle ribbons. Hal eased the door closed again and felt around on the cupboard floor. Maybe there was some container …

  Moira had to get out of the car and go to a street-light to see her watch. Quarter to eight! And her toes were getting numb with cold.

  Up at the house, she noticed, another guest was arriving for the party. This one was a tall square-shouldered guy with a long overcoat and a ski-mask. Like everybody else, he just walked in.

  So why shouldn’t she just walk in?

  ‘I sometimes wonder. Are we victimizing the joyous virgin metal, bending it to our foliated gyre?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  The General was still charging around upstairs, trying to find Rain. It was as though she’d vanished into some secret passage in this damned house. He tried opening doors at random. Now and then he would go to the minstrel gallery, look down at the top of Sturge’s head, and throw down an Uh-huh or You could say that. But why bother? The guy was listening only to himself.

  ‘We face a kind of mexican dilemma of categorical noise.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘The very ideas of thinking, doing – how can we avoid redefining them? Redesigning them? What’s our category? If a descending florida lifestyle flickers over the metal domain, who are we to carp?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ General Buddy Lutz opened a cupboard door and looked down.

  ‘What the hell?’

  A rat-faced individual was kneeling on the cupboard floor, pissing in an overshoe.

  The General pulled his gun. ‘Get up! Get up, you disgusting pervert. Or I’ll kill you where you are.’

  ‘I can expl –’

  ‘Shut up.’ The General debated his options. Gunshots would spoil the mood. People would get scared, run around wringing their hands. Then the police – an evening ruined, because of one overshoe freak. The alternative was to lock up this pervert until later.

  ‘Come with me. And move goddam carefully, perv.’

  He found an empty storage-room with a key in the lock, and directed the fetishist inside. ‘Now strip.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Everything off. Throw it all out here. Move!’

  The General checked the room, to make sure there was nothing – newspapers, curtains – the freak could use for clothes. There was only a small window
with a big drop below. ‘Catch you later, perv.’

  Buddy turned the key on him and went back to the minstrel gallery. Rain joined him there. As they stood in an alcove just out of sight of the living-room, Buddy put his hands inside the robe. The hands began to move to the slow rhythm of Sturge’s voice.

  ‘… unleashing a fountain of khaki brazil language experience, reploying us. Replaying us. Right?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  Catch you later. Hal knew that if he stayed in this room he would be murdered. General Lutz was the kind of guy who liked to have burglars make his day. Hal saw himself dead and no one mourning. They wouldn’t have Ratface to push around any more.

  Looking out the small window, Hal saw what he had to do. He had to climb out and edge his way along a tiny ledge to the next window.

  It was not until he got outside that he saw how foolhardy the whole scheme was. Cold air hit his naked back, making it hard not to shiver himself off the ledge. The tiny ledge itself was really only a strip of wooden moulding, with no guarantee that it would hold him. Still, he edged forward. What was the alternative? Catch you later.

  Then he was there, sliding the casement open, climbing in. Quietly, because now he saw the room was occupied by two sleeping people. The transvestite on his back, his lipsticked mouth open and snoring. The lipstick now smeared. Hal was startled to see that this drag queen was his boss, Fred Jones! Talk about perversion! No wonder the General was worried!

  Beside Jones, slumped half over him, was a young woman – very young, maybe under age. It made Hal chuckle to think of the blackmail possibilities. If only he had a camera!

  A shiver reminded him of his own vulnerability. He looked around for clothes. On a chair he found a weird kind of suit. Light blue with black velvet lapels. As he was examining it, Hal heard someone fumbling at the doorknob. He grabbed the suit and fled to the wardrobe.

  He heard footsteps in the room. Odd shuffling footsteps. An old man? He heard the girl wake and say: ‘You.’ He couldn’t make out the muffled reply.

  God, get me out of this. Don’t let me spend the rest of my life hiding in closets. As soon as he uttered this silent prayer, Hal realized he had to pee again.