Tempter (6 page)

Chapter Nine

“Looks like your friend drew a good crowd.” Charlie gestured to the knot of people clustered on the curb outside the Gris-Gris Club.

The usual mix of uptown college students and French Quarter habitués were loitering on the street corner, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer from plastic go-cups. Each group was trying hard to look hip, with the Quarter Rats doing the better job.

Jerry nodded in agreement. “Seems like Alex has become a cult rock icon, like Chilton and Iggy. Most of these kids weren’t even in kindergarten when
Crash and Burn
was released! Jesus, look at ‘em! They make me feel like an antique!”

“They don’t exactly make me feel like a spring chicken, either,” Charlie laughed. “I can’t believe I’m going to turn thirty this year!”

“I know what you mean. I keep having these recurring nightmares I’m back in high school and have to take a test, but I haven’t studied all semester and I don’t know what room it’s in. But then I notice I don’t have any pants on. Stop giggling! It’s true! I wake up in a cold sweat!”

“You’re terrible, you know that?” she laughed.

It was good to see her smile. So far they’d managed to get through dinner at the Gumbo Shop without mentioning Tony. And, even better, at least as far as Jerry was concerned, neither had she brought up anyone new. He slipped his arm around her shoulder, and was pleasantly surprised she did not shrug free.

A curly-headed young man with black widow spiders tattooed on his forearms was taking money at the door. Jerry refused to let Charlie open her purse. “My treat,” he said with a wink.

The elevated stage stood at the back of the club and was high enough off the floor that those near the bar could get a good view of the band. Several people stood clustered near the bandstand while others lounged near the bar, their eyes fixed on the stage.

“Good turn out. Lot better that I expected. You know, this reminds me of the old days, back when I used to help Crash set up their shows in the gym. Only a lot more, uh…”

“Cool?” Charlie suggested.

“Yeah,” he said with a chuckle. “You want a beer?”

“Sure. Just let me go to the ladies room before there’s a line, okay?”

Charlie leaned against the sink as she freshened her make-up. Humidity had a way of screwing with her mascara. As she studied her handiwork, she speculated on whether or not she would finally go to bed with Jerry. He was such a sweet guy, not to mention intelligent, artistic, and well read. He also knew how to make her laugh. And she knew he was in love with her. He would be nice and stable and wouldn’t get into all that macho ego-trip bullshit. She had to be nuts to pass him up. Yet there simply wasn’t any sizzle between them.

Charlie knew Jerry was the kind of boyfriend her parents would approve of: nice, respectable and safe. Just like the Atlanta suburb they lived in. Her parents loved her very much. They wanted her life to be as secure and untroubled as their own, where everything was predigested and sanitized for their protection. Charlie adored her folks, but she would rather die than end up like them.

Still, she might sleep with him anyway, just to get it out of the way. She didn’t want to ruin their friendship, but she was afraid Jerry might give up on her altogether if she didn’t go to bed with him sooner o later. Sex with him might help, and then again, it could very well ruin things completely.

Why couldn’t guys like Jerry just be friends? Why did they have to drag sex into it?

“What’s the house like?” Rossiter asked anxiously.

“Same as it was two minutes ago,” Paulie rumbled. The husky African American rested his forearms on the neck of his bass, his head tilted in Rossiter’s direction.

Paulie always wore a pair of extra-dark sunglasses, even indoors and at night, because he pulled an open bottle of bleach off the kitchen table and onto his upturned face when he was two. Rossiter had no doubt that if the Paulie had kept his sight, he would have ended up playing pro football instead of electric bass.

“Don’t sweat it,
mon ami
,” Hoo-Yah grinned. “We got a good house.”

Arsine sat in a dented metal folding chair, his drumsticks keeping time on the dressing room’s worn brick face. “Any hot women out there?”

“Tons of ‘em!” The Cajun replied.

“I hope you’re talkin’ figuratively, not literally,” the drummer chuckled.

The Gris-Gris Club’s owner, a sixty-year-old hippie with a bottlebrush beard, stuck his head into the room. “Y’all ready? I’m gonna go ahead and announce you.”

“Sure thing, Cap’n. C’mon, Paulie, I’ll lead.” Arsine put himself in front of the bassist, who placed his right hand on the drummer’s shoulder. “Okay, we got four steps to the door, then we’re turnin’ right…”

Hoo-Yah paused to look at Rossiter. “You feelin’ okay, ace?”

“Yeah. I’ll be there in just a second.”

Rossiter stared into the mirror over the sink. His skin looked like wax paper. The sweat seeping from his armpits felt like refrigerated maple syrup. He should have done more than one line of coke. The Johnny Walker wasn’t doing that much good, either. If his guts cinched themselves any tighter, he’d look like a termite. Both hands were trembling now, fingers drumming nervously against his thighs. He couldn’t go on stage like this. He was going to blow lunch all over the audience. Wouldn’t that look great as a write-up in
Rolling Stone
?

He grabbed the half-empty whiskey bottle off the makeup table. His hands were shaking so badly there was no way he could pour it in a glass without getting it all over his shoes. As he lifted the bottle to his lips, he caught a glimpse of something moving deep inside the mirror.

Rossiter lowered the bottle and stared at his young doppelganger standing behind him. He suddenly realized that the room in the mirror was different than the one he was standing in. In fact, he was pretty sure it was the dressing room at the Super Dome. Rossiter had seen it only once before, when he went backstage to say hello to Mick last year. In the mirror there were tables heaped with flowers and buckets of iced champagne.

His doppelganger walked to a door at the back of the mirror, then turned to look at him. Rossiter realized with a start that the doppelganger was no longer young, but the same age as he was, dressed in an electric blue suit that shimmered like the skin of an exotic lizard. The doppelganger winked a ruby-red eye at him and disappeared through the door in the direction of the chanting stadium that awaited him.

“Alex! C’mon, man! What’s keeping you?”

Rossiter blinked and the reflection in the mirror turned back into the Gris-Gris Club’s dismal dressing room. He turned to smile at Arsine. “Sorry...nerves...”

“It’s cool, man; I know where you’re comin’ from. You okay?”

Was he okay? Rossiter was surprised at how good he felt. It was as if all the cocaine in Colombia was surging though his veins. He could tie tigers together at the tail. He could snap oaks in half with his bare hands.

“I feel great,” he grinned. “Let’s go and kick some butt!”

He’d almost forgotten what it was like to be in front of an appreciative audience. He couldn’t get over the way they applauded when he took the stage. The crowd was too young to have seen Crash in its hey-day. Hell, most of them were probably toddlers when
Blood Moon Rising
was released. Still, this did not diminish their enthusiasm. It was like going to bed with a woman who loved you after years of bought sex; it was good, hot, and over before he could fully savor it.

When the band finished its last set, the crowd whooped and stomped their feet until the band returned for an encore. Then the audience wouldn’t let them go for another three songs. Rossiter closed the show with
“Sour Milk Sweetheart”
and for one delirious moment it felt just like 1991.

Afterward, Rossiter smiled as he sat in the dressing room and wiped the sweat from his face, the vision of the Superdome’s dressing room still shimmering behind his eyes.

“Alex?”

He turned to stare at the man standing in the doorway. He was Rossiter’s age, with thinning, sandy hair and wire-rim glasses. The man glanced around the cramped confines of the converted supply room that served as the dressing room, shifting his weight about nervously.

“Uh, I don’t know if you remember me—“

Rossiter’s face suddenly split into a grin. “Jerry! Jerry Sloan! My God!” He stood up so fast he knocked over his chair. “I can’t believe it! Christ, it’s been years!” The two men embraced, pounding each other on the back. “Let me get a good look at you!” Rossiter held his old school friend at arm’s length, taking in his extra poundage, encroaching male-pattern baldness and crow’s feet. “You haven’t changed a bit!”

“You, too, man.” Jerry laughed, although he was secretly shocked by Rossiter’s hollowed cheeks and red-rimmed eyes.

“What are you doing here?”

“I
live
here. Moved here after college.”

“No shit? You still painting?”

Jerry’s smile faltered for a second. “Sorta. I teach out at the University.”

Just then there came a polite cough from the doorway, followed by a feminine voice. “Ahem! Jerry, aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?”

Jerry slapped his forehead. “Where are my manners? Don’t answer that! Alex, I’d like you to meet Charlotte Calder.”

When Rossiter saw the woman standing behind Jerry it was all he could do to keep his jaw from hitting the floor. Sloan had come up in the world! The blonde poured into the designer jeans and French-cut designer tee was light years from Myra Nolan and her coke bottle glasses.

“Charlotte, this is Alex Rossiter.”

The blonde smiled and extended her hand. “Call me Charlie.”

“My pleasure,” Rossiter replied. Her hand was cool and white in his, like a piece of fine china, and it lingered in his grasp a heartbeat too long. He met and held her gaze. Charlie blushed and looked away, but not too quickly.

“It’s been a long time since we saw each other,” Jerry laughed, oblivious to the silent exchange between Rossiter and Charlie.

“Over fifteen years.”

Jerry turned to Charlie, one arm hooked over Rossiter’s shoulder. “You know what this guy did? He dropped out his junior year to be a rock star, right? So the old fucks that ran the school said he couldn’t come to the prom. Well, the minute the suck-ass band the school hired took a break from playing covers, I go outside to sneak a smoke and there’s this guy here, sitting in the parking lot on the hood of this brand new Jaguar, with a cigar box full of reefer and a sheet of blotter!”

Charlie smiled and chuckled dutifully. Jerry failed to notice that her eyes never left Rossiter while he was relating the anecdote.

“This calls for a celebration!” Rossiter exclaimed. “Jerry, why don’t you run out to the bar and snag us a pitcher? Tell the manager it’s for the band.”

“Just like old times, right?” Jerry chuckled.

“Except back then we weren’t old enough to drink--legally, that is!”

Charlie moved aside to let Jerry by. She smiled politely at Rossiter but tried not to meet his gaze.

“So...how long have you and Jerry been dating?” he asked.

“Oh, we’re not together,” she replied quickly. “We’re just friends. I met him in art class a couple of years ago.”

Rossiter nodded and smiled. So, Jerry hadn’t changed that much, after all. The boy still couldn’t put the make on a chick without waiting for Hell to freeze over. Rossiter remembered when he set Jerry up with a groupie willing and able to suck the chrome off a trailer hitch, only to discover his friend had spent the entire night talking about art or some other crap.

“I, uh, really liked your show.” Charlie cringed when she heard how lame she sounded, but she didn’t have any idea of what else to say. Rossiter laughed and thanked her for the compliment. Charlie felt her cheeks grow hot. She had never met a real rock star before. Not even a no-longer-famous one. Still, from what Jerry had told her about his friend, she hadn’t expected the number of people who turned out to hear the band, so maybe Rossiter
was
still famous, after all.

“You’re a beautiful woman, Charlie.”

He was smiling at her. He looked better when he smiled, although the brooding quality was undeniably sexy, too. There was a rugged sensitivity to him she found attractive. He came across like a bad boy in need of looking after by a good woman.

“It’s sweet of you to say so,” she replied shyly.

“I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true. Hasn’t Jerry ever told you you’re beautiful?”

“No,” she lied. “Not really.” She stepped closer, her heart beating fast. His musk mingled with the dressing room’s funk of old sweat, marijuana, and spilled whiskey, creating a primal, sexual scent all its own.

“Then he’s a bigger dumb-ass than I remember.”

Rossiter reached out and pulled her to him. The tip of his tongue pressed against her lips, and she opened her mouth to accept it. His other arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her tight against his body. She could feel the hard lump of his sex pressed against her pelvis.

“I got the beer—!”

Charlie didn’t have to look at Jerry to appreciate the hurt in her best friend’s eyes: she could see it in the dressing room mirror. She turned to face him, but did not step clear of the circle of Rossiter’s arms.

“Jerry—let me explain.”

He backed away, still holding the pitcher of beer in one hand. As he turned to leave, his way was blocked by a tall, thin black man wearing dreadlocks.

“Is Alex in there?”

“He’s about to be,” Jerry snapped angrily, shoving the pitcher into the drummer’s hands.

The man with the dreads had to turn sideways to keep the beer from splashing onto his clothes. “Hey, watch it!” he yelled after Jerry’s rapidly retreating back.

Rossiter stepped out into the hall, his leather jacket draped over one arm, a blonde on the other. “Don’t mind him,” he told Arsine. “He’s just some guy I knew in high school.”

“Then you must have gone to school with some real assholes,” Arsine sniffed. “I just came back to tell you the van’s packed up.”

“Why don’t you and the others go on ahead? I’ve got a ride.”