Everybody Scream! (32 page)

Well, he was exaggerating in this, though. Another performer, these very same people might do it. But if Del Kahn burned his forehead with a cigarette the arena would probably gasp out in shock, because that wasn’t the Del Kahn they knew. They had an image of Del Kahn locked in a cell in their minds. It was unthinkable that Del Kahn might cry after a fight with his wife. That Del Kahn might want to play a villain in a movie, a dream of his, when everyone saw him as a heroic figure. The pedestal his publicity people, the media, his audience placed him on, in fact, became for a time so dizzyingly high he wanted to climb down from it but couldn’t. There had been times when he had wanted to admit in public that he cheated on his wife, had taken young teenagers to bed, whatever other blackness he could dredge up and vomit out, just to shatter the prison of his guilt and feel human.

On the other hand–yin/yang–he loved the adulation.
Fed
on it. The feeling was most strong in an arena, when he was surrounded by them–
thousands
of people all around him, one man in the middle of a tornado of enthusiasm (his band, though much loved, seen merely as an extension of him), thousands pouring positive energy down on him, all simultaneously focusing love and gladness on him, a blasting light, giving him the energy critics then marveled at, to run around the stage exultant, dancing and leaping and clowning. It was like their energy mirrored back from him, because they had chosen him the mirror of their lives…

Now gone. All gone. They had all left him like thousands of wives losing interest except for maybe a vague fond memory, finding bright new lovers. Why shouldn’t he mourn that? Why shouldn’t that hurt in the very fiber of his soul? It was like an addicting drug wrenched away. A job lost. A child dead. As if Sophi had divorced him.

Del picked up the discarded porn magazine. One of the articles advertised on the cover, so glossy it felt slimy, was “A Summer Guide to Gashes!” He paged through it but his mind was elsewhere as his eyes trod the anonymous flesh.

How had he lost them? Why had he lost them? The questions haunted him always, as if he were the parent of that lost child, wondering,
if I hadn’t let her walk to the store alone
…the husband wondering,
if I had paid her more attention
…

On the one hand, making new music in the newest style, like the relentless showman Zodiac Jones, could win new, young fans, a fresh audience, but they weren’t familiar with the old work.
Too
new. Too trend conscious. On the other hand, one could stay the same. This could be a positive thing, if personally stifling–in that, in this world of constant speed and change and uncertainty, it was reassuring to have something solid and consistent to rely on. Children might die and marriages break up but the music of this person stood strong like a fantasy father. And Del had been that reassuring father for others to love, a voice of encouragement, urging people to find their strength. Until he changed, and his reliable near-constant optimism eroded to an introspective solemnity, and even bitterness at life with its sins against its children.

But couldn’t he have sacrificed his desire or need to express these feelings, or express them instead in a book of poetry or such, and instead dig deep for some morsels of unsullied happiness to be placed under the spotlight for the sake of others? Didn’t people know the sins inflicted on them by life well enough? Wasn’t it happiness they sought to know better–happiness that was the rumored thing they wanted to hear about, as Vikings might have sung of Valhalla?

Yes, yes, of course all this. But most performers already sang chiefly of happiness. There was no shortage. He had to be true to himself. It always returned to that uneasy conclusion.

“I’m sorry, Del, but that song
sucked!
”

Del had somehow heard that one shout amidst all the cheers and applause. It had been an arena. He kept mostly to the front, of course, as there was only a comparatively small crowd behind him, but he did run to the back of the stage to play directly to them also. The voice came from the floor, in the first rows. At the height of his fame, no one in the first three or more rows was a teenager in a Del Kahn tour shirt. He saw business suits, high fashion, jewels, he smelled their perfume of money and drugs. Images stuck in his mind, snapshots in his scrapbook. Of a grim little man and his stiff, prim wife standing in the second row like rock in a sea which bobbed and wriggled, clapped and danced along with him. Of two homely men in expensive clothes in the front row, one obnoxiously drunk and melting all over his date, both dates tall shapely blondes in tight black dresses, one with her midriff revealed, the other with a hole revealing one entire breast.

A friend had once watched him from the fourth row and in a conversation about the concert told Del about the five youngish, well-dressed men without dates who had occupied the row ahead of him (all tall and all directly in front of this shortish friend, as fate would have these things). Before the concert began they had stared way up behind them at the people in the furthest seats near the ceiling. “Look at the ants,” one laughed, waving. One said, “Can you believe some poor bastards stood in line eight hours for tickets?” They had paid, probably, five to seven hundred munits for these twenty munit seats.

“I’m sorry, Del, but that song
sucked!
” The shout came from the third row, it seemed. Close. It had been a new song, not yet recorded. Now, Del didn’t ask for blind reverence. But still, he thought about this jeer, the five fashion boys on the town, the two young business men with their whores, the grim little man and his stiff little wife. They probably couldn’t name one song off of any of his first three albums. He was hot, he was an event, they could tell their friends they had scored six hundred munit seats the way they might brag about a painting they had bought (though they didn’t actually
love
it), or about some high class drug they’d acquired. Del hated them. He wished he could have had them teleported right out of their seats and traded their places with the kids behind his back near the arena ceiling. Those kids knew the words to his most obscure songs, danced and clapped wildly. He loved them all the more for the venom he felt toward those others primarily directly up front. He played over their heads, ignoring them as he would his security guards.

If he played such an arena now, stuck to all his old popular favorites, who would show up? Was it too late, had his old loves remarried? The idea was too scary for him to implement. Right now.

He ached for the old harmony. There had been a unity, a focus stronger than in a church. That harmony with them had been his harmony with himself.

A harmony with Del, but had the audience members been in harmony with
each other?
One clapping man might accidentally bump into another and their grins would turn into instant snapping glowers of defensive warning. Had he ever done anything to bring them closer together than just physically? He could only hope.

Looking up at the myriad faces in his mind’s eye, indistinguishable ant faces, he thought of the high percentages of those who murdered and wondered how many killers or future killers had grinned and applauded him in those arenas. Hundreds and hundreds at a time, in a place like Paxton or Miniosis. Murderers for whatever reason, offensive or defensive. Millions of them, maybe, had bought his albums.

But Del had never killed a man. Despite the statistics. He had lived an insulated life for much of his adult years, safe behind the walls of his profession, his guards. He still had guards, in a way, but not specifically. Not like before.

He saw Sophi in his mind. Somehow he was losing her, too, he felt sometimes–like now. He had changed, and in changing had done something to alienate them from each other. His most loyal fan of all, and still he could lose her.

But was that something he had done to alienate her really such a mysterious something?

He tossed the skin mag away from him into the darkness. The Screamer rattled above, the hurricane of light and music whirled around this still eye, the DJ’s recorded ravings chanted mindlessly. Del felt sticky and disgusting under his clothes, and decided he must take a shower immediately before checking back with Noelle at the security trailer. He wasn’t in such a hurry to rejoin her anyway. His previous desperate enthusiasm now drained from him, he even hoped she would be gone when he got there.

The group Johnny Bland and His Girl Friday Mona Blasé played their latest song
Exploring Your Cavern of Love
on the car radio. This was not so remarkable a coincidence, as nearly any popular radio station at this moment might be playing a song appropriate for Fawn to lose her virginity by.

Fen had deftly broken into this large car. In her weak-legged excitement Fawn had no room for concern. The possibilities of being caught or simply seen by passing people were just minor distractions. Fawn swooned moaning under Fen as soon as they entered the back seat, and wrapped her legs around him as he ground his pelvis against her pelvis through their clothes, grinding his mouth on hers. She didn’t resist when he fully undressed her; she helped pull his shirt off. He was big inside her but didn’t hurt going in, her maidenhood gone and a small trail blazed already by her love bug, and she was drenched with preparation.

Now she held his intense, working nakedness against hers, her long white legs clenched around him. She was in bliss, didn’t care about sperm; Heather had given her a pill before heading off with Wes Sundry deeper into the dark sprawling parking lot. She wanted those sperm inside her, dying glorious kamikaze deaths. She gulped down her own enclosed smell, too desperately hungry to be self-conscious.

“Oh…oh…I love you…I love you,” she chanted, her writhing under him mounting.

She was lucky that she climaxed first, bucking under him. A moment later he groaned shakily, drove a few times with extra violence, his stabbing coup de grace, and then melted heavily over her as if unconscious. Whether he would have immediately kept on going for her sake was questionable. The entire actual sex act ended a moment before the song by Johnny Bland and His Girl Friday Mona Blasé ended. He was still inside her. Fawn kissed her soporific lover’s neck and smiled as she listened to the next song begin–
Fuck an Angel
, by Bruised Lips. It was a wrenching teen ballad. She forgot about childish joys, of dolls, of friends, games, dismissed such memories of happiness, by thinking to herself that she was the happiest she had ever felt in her life.

Smiling, she moved her eyes to the window at their feet and cried out, gripping Fen. A man was out there gazing in at her. How long? Now that their eyes met he rapped on the glass. Fen twisted around and out of Fawn, cursing, hurting her legs heedlessly.

Muffled voice. “Open up–security.”

“What do you want?” Fen dragged his pants to him. “This is our car.”

“I don’t care, open it.”

“Let my girl put her clothes on!”

“Open it
now
.”

“You
fuck
,” Fen hissed under his breath. Fawn clawed on the floor for her panties. She heard Fen open the door. She heard a
poof
sound, then a second, and a wetness spattered her back. She lifted her head, swept aside her curtain of red hair.

She cried out again, but not too loudly. The gun muzzle was only inches from her face. It smelled burnt. Through a thin blue mist came the unfamiliar face of Johnny Leng, and compliantly Fen slipped rubbery to the floor to make room. Fawn didn’t look but peripherally caught sight of darkness splashed on his nakedness. She began making incoherent sounds. But not too loudly. She backed nakedly against the door but didn’t attempt to open it.

“Shhhh,” Johnny advised pleasantly, pulling his door shut behind him. It might take a while to build to a third climax after Sophi and Heather, but he could take his time now, and Sneezy was out there leaning against the car to keep watch, smoking a cigarette.

“I’m not with him, I’m not with him,” Fawn sobbed hopelessly.

“Sorry, but you were. And now you’re with me.”