Bugs (26 page)

‘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.

Fred dreamed he was in a dressing-room. The smell of makeup was overpowering. George C. Scott sat before a lighted mirror, rehearsing a certain line over and over: ‘I will be with you on your wedding night.’

Fred jumped awake. ‘What happened?’

‘We fell asleep,’ said Honesty.

He remembered. ‘I told you I felt relaxed with you.’

‘I’m sorry Mom’s being a bitch, Fred.’

‘No need for you to be sorry. Anyway, she did promise me this would be the last time. Guess I’d better finish getting ready and go find her.’

Honesty looked him over. ‘You’re kind of a mess. Lipstick’s smeared, garter-belt’s all twisted. Let me help.’ She examined one of the clips on his garter-belt and found it badly bent. ‘This’ll never close like this. I need some pliers to straighten it. No, wait …’

She leaned over and gripped the wire with her teeth. At that moment, the door opened, and Moira walked in.

‘Virtual response, we could term it. The totally unpredictable vibration underscoring the limousine lift-off of life. … Graphic non-metal caution, sure, only what if …’

‘Uh-huh.’

The General and Rain were now against the railing of the minstrel gallery. They might have been visible from below, but Fellini, having finished the pitcher of Martinis, was not seeing well.

‘An unleashed transform …’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Metalife equals metal life.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘One more thing about the curled hazards of unanimity, it soon won’t matter what we think.’

‘Uh-huh. Uh-huh.’

Rain, too, seemed to moan agreement: ‘Yes. Yes.’

‘We stand on the boulevard of grapefruit methodology. I don’t want to think about no frivolous crystallinity, I mean Christianity. Unleashed and transformed.’

‘Uh-huh. Uh-huh.’

‘Yes. Yes.’

And another moaning arose, too, a rhythmic moaning that came from no human throat, but from the nails that had been holding the railing in place. In one orchestrated moment, there were screams of ecstasy and collapse, as the loving couple came crashing through, unleashed and transformed, falling to meet the soft waves of couch as they met the waves of sound surging up from below: ‘Oh, the gyring! The joystick of it! The transform has been unleashed, we are surging towards the future wave, towards a peaked impact with
now
. Totally.’

‘What was that crash?’ Fred asked.

Moira shrugged. ‘Probably another part of the decadence. I just wish someone had told me there was going to be an orgy; I’d have dressed for it.’ She looked pointedly at Fred’s garter-belt and stockings.

‘It isn’t how it looks,’ he said. ‘I was just putting on this stuff for – for a laugh, and Honesty was helping me with the suspender-belt.’

‘I wonder who helped you with the lipstick? It’s all over
your face and neck.’ Moira sighed. ‘Why bother explaining? This is really none of my business.’

‘No, really. I had this other suit. Where is it? It was right here. Maybe it’s in the wardrobe.’

‘None of my business. I really came in to find Hal. He was giving me a –’

Fred slid open the wardrobe door to reveal Ratface Hallicrafter Porch, dressed in a powder-blue suit with black velvet lapels, no shirt, no shoes, and pissing into a high-heeled shoe.

Moira made a sound of disgust. ‘I guess I don’t need to wonder where Hal is.’

This time Ratface had the sense to drop the shoe and make his escape.

‘Moira, really, this isn’t an orgy. It’s –’

‘I guess I’ll be going now. Before someone crawls out from under the bed.’

‘No, wait,’ Honesty said. ‘There’s a few things you should know before you go.’

‘Psst. You need help, young man?’

Hal peered into the car at a plump man with owlish spectacles.

‘I guess so. Lost my car keys.’

‘Let me give you a lift.’

‘OK, thanks.’ Hal got in. ‘My name’s Hallicrafter.’

The owlish man introduced himself as Nigel Hook.

‘Been visiting the Fellinis, have you? Strange couple.’

‘Boy, I’ll say. They got drag queens there, and people who steal your clothes, orgies all over the place. And that Mrs Fellini is kind of a whore.’

‘I see.’ Hook cleared his throat. ‘Of course, in a sense, all women are fundamentally whores, wouldn’t you agree?’

‘Sure. Right on.’