“Are we swans?”
“What now?”
“Do we mate for life? Is there just one swan out there for each of us?”
“Sheel, sweetie, could you ask me some other time when I’m not looking at Mötley Crüe?”
Tiresias Richardson was, in fact, looking directly at Mötley Crüe. Two of them, at least, the blond and one of the tall brunettes. swaying loafs of bread the both them, and surrounded by chickies–“Look at all the chickies in here,” Big-Dicked Sheila had smirked when they slid into their half-moon booth–but not as many chickies as they had been surrounded by five minutes prior, as one of them had slid under the table to service the tall brunette Mötley Crüe. Which was the point of the Rainbow Bar & Grill. Try getting a blowjob under the table at Hamburger Hamlet; they’ll 86 your ass no matter how your last album charted. What kind of treatment was that for a Rock Star?
The Rainbow had been opened in 1972, and cleaned in 1981; it was the kind of place where the waitresses chewed gum. Smaller than you’d imagined–everything in Los Angeles was smaller than you’d imagined–and tight down the aisles in between the tables with the charred red banqueting. Framed photographs frescoed the walls: dead assholes, and assholes you kinda recognized, and David Lee Roth with his mouth wide open because he was secretly a muppet, and that guy looks like a mayor or something.
Everyone in L.A. was dead, or an asshole, or a secret muppet, or the mayor.
It was getting on towards midnight, the yelling hour. People speak at ten pm, and murmur at three am, but they yell at midnight, desperate to make themselves heard over the jukebox. Nighttime is either real quiet or real loud. The busboys had their tubs, and the barbacks humped their kegs, and managers watched viciously to make sure the nobodies weren’t becoming aspirational. The menu featured Italian food, and the bathrooms were multi-purpose.
The waitress brought their drinks; she was a waitressy waitress, curvy and friendly and otherly-adjectivial. Black-haired and worried about her rent–maybe a kid, maybe a drug habit, something to feed–a WAITRESS, man, just like they used to make ’em in Detroit in the old days, before Carter gave back the Panama Canal. Jack and Coke, Jack and Coke, Heineken. Precarious Lee wasn’t much of a drinker, and if he couldn’t have an Arrow, he’d have a Heineken. There was a sign on the wall, white with red letters and a negatory pictogram: NO SMOKING, and under that a whole bunch of city code whatnot. Waitress dropped a black plastic ashtray on the table. Sheila gave a Camel to Tiresias; Precarious had his own, and a Zippo. The top went TINK went it opened and FFT when the wheel sparked against the tiny red flint. He lit Tiresais’ smoke PHWOO and then Sheila’s PHWOO and then shut the lighter CHACK and opened it TINK and FFT and PHWOO. Precarious wasn’t superstitious, but he didn’t go out of his way to walk under ladders, either.
The day hit the women all at once. They had been contracting themselves out as assassins and getting framed for murder and being kidnapped since a little after lunch, without even the smallest of naps; they were bushed.
“Go ask Mötley Löu if he’s got any coke,” Sheila told Tiresias.
“Isn’t his name Vince?”
“Fuck him. I’m calling him Mötley Löu. Go ask him for some coke. You’ll probably have to blow him. Tirry, go blow Mötley Löu for some coke.”
“We could just buy some like humans.”
“Where’s the story in that? Go blow him.”
“No one has to blow Mötley Löu,” Precarious said, and slapped his tweed briefcase on the small table. POP POP went the latches and he came out with a test tube, pyrex, with a black rubber stopper atop and a white non-rubber substance within. “Mine is better than his, anyway.”
Sheila looked around the room without looking like she was looking around the room, reached across Tiresias, took the tube, palmed it, scooched out of the booth, walked right, waitress pointed back the other way, turned around, walked left, bathroom.
Bigwigs and cheap wigs and semi-prostitutes and dipsos leaned up against familiar walls; fat boy with daddy’s wallet standing under a fern, he’s got his eye on a cockeyed brunette with an autograph book in her purse; off-duty cop sitting with an undercover cop, each trying to make a case on the other; that fellow won three Grammys and enjoys rape; drummers in leather pants with aspirations above their thrones: solo albums and lead vocals and first in line for blowjobs; A&R guys with sharky eyes and heads for numbers; drug dealers in the wainscoting; Jews in cowboys boots; an ancient song-plugger everyone called Calendar; a Heisman runner-up; teenies with long, thin legs at the bar drinking whiskey sours and smoking long, thin cigarettes; Sandy and Sandy Leverton (“You only have to learn one name!”) who were in touristing from Reading, Pennsylvania, and were the only people in the building without herpes; a reporter from Spin Magazine; a process-server in mufti; Lemmy.
“Why’d you even take the briefcase from the guy in the first place?”
“Improv training. I just responded ‘yes, and.'”
“That’s a terrible fucking habit,” Precarious said.
“It turns out that it was not the right strategy for the situation, no.”
“And then you didn’t leave town.”
“When?”
Precarious set his beer down.
“When? At any fucking time. At any fucking time during this whole clusterfuck of a day that you two have wandered through.”
Tiresias set her Jack and Coke down.
“Don’t take a tone.”
“Under the circumstances, a tone is appropriate.”
“I heard a ‘young lady’ at the end of that sentence.”
“Then you’re hearing voices, because I didn’t say it.”
“The tone did.”
They both picked up their drinks, drank.
The stereo was plump and forceful, and the speakers were hidden and legion. It was a balancing act, though, the playlist. The Rock Stars who came in wanted to hear their latest chartfuckers, but not too many; it would look like they were trying too hard, and Rock Stars didn’t try. They simply were. Add in the fact that multiple bands would be in on a given night, and the deejay position starts looking like the guy who moves the planes around on an aircraft carrier. The safest bet was to play Thin Lizzy, but Thin Lizzy was not playing. It was The Snug.
Live at Absalom from ’74. That was the fourth record, the one that salvaged their career. The first three–Snug, Snugger, and Pussy Comitatus–hadn’t done the numbers, and the band couldn’t get on the radio, partially because guitarist Johnny Mister enjoyed punching program directors. They could take it to the stage, though. The motherfuggin’ Snug, man, live and in New York and Chicago and Houston, but fuck that shit, man, fuck that big city shit, The Snug was coming here–fuckin’ HERE, man–to Dothan, Alabama, or Minot, North Dakota. Or the Yack Arena in Wyandotte, Michigan. If you had electricity and some teenagers, then The Snug was coming on by. Killed ’em live, but the records wilted in the bins and so they threw a Hail Mary. Tape the live show. Homecoming show. Man, you never heard a crowd roar like that. The album hit #3 in America, and #7 in England.
(All that remains of the live performance is Dave Ronn’s bass on the song Sex Lake; everything else was re-recorded at Hyperion Studios back in Little Aleppo a few weeks after the show. What fans need to remember is that, in the heat of the Rock and Roll moment, a note might be missed or a lyric flubbed, Or a lead guitarist might be so drunk he can hardly stand, or a vocalist might spend half the set neglecting to sing the songs in favor of challenging audience members to fights. Or the drummer might have a broken wrist. These things happen, and there are no refunds. So you re-record the instruments just a little bit. Also, the cheers were flown in from a Rolling Stones bootleg. Other than all that, The Snug: Live at Absalom is a journalistic record of what took place that evening.)
Holiday Rhodes was at the bar, and so they were playing his songs.
The bathroom was not as bad as Sheila had imagined; perversely, this disappointed her. There must be a German word for this feeling, she thought, as she complimented a stranger’s shoes and walked into the stall, kicked the door closed behind her with her yellow Converse sneaker, dug the test tube from her pocket. It was almost full, and not with bar coke: this was Rock Star coke, wholesale coke, upstairs coke at Nicholson’s place. Pinkish in this light, whitish in that, and sprinkled with speckles of light. Sheila didn’t have her wallet or any credit cards, so she folded a hundred up to chop out two sloppy lines and then rolled the same hundred up FNORF FNARF and all of the coke landed in her throat and heart and cock; she spread her arms wide like a heroic chicken.
“Precarious fucking Lee,” she wheezed.
Stopped up the tube, unrolled the hundred, both went back into the front pocket of her tight, tight leathers–posture, how is my posture, she thought, nobody fucks a sloucher–and out of the stall to the sinks with the mirror where she checked her nose and complimented another stranger’s shoes, and back into the restaurant.
The bar was in between the bathroom and the table, and there was a song playing.
You’re not an angel,
But you’ll do.
And we’ll never get to heaven
Not on these wings.
No, you’re not an angel,
But you’ll do.
It was the last track on the album, and the closing number for The Snug’s shows back then; they’d all crowd around the mic at the front of the stage, and put their arms ’round one another, and find their key quick enough. Sweaty white boys with casual cigarettes–well-earned, anyone would say–singing an old gospel tune for the kids out there. Send ’em home sweetly. Or maybe it was country. Johnny Mister said he learned the song from a black man named Scatback. The rest of the band was positive that was racist nonsense, but it was a good melody and only assholes turned up their noses at good melodies. The band didn’t end their shows with that song anymore, just a quick rag through Johnny B. Goode or some other moldy oldie and off to separate limos and staggered arrivals back at the hotel so no one would have to share an elevator with anyone else.
“I like that shirt.”
“You should see what’s under it,” Sheila said automatically, then recognized who she was speaking to. “Holiday Rhodes. You’re the Pride of Little Aleppo.”
“You a local girl?”
“I’m the localest fucking girl that ever lived, Holiday.”
Holiday was wearing more eye makeup than Sheila, which was a feat, and a red crushed-velvet suit. Beatles boots. When his face was perfectly at rest, he had no lines in his face. Too many rings. The famous hawk nose, so often the subject of cartoons in Creem magazine. Still wearing his hair long, blond, silky. He offered Sheila the stool next to his, and she hopped up.
“You aren’t old enough to have been at this show,” he said, pointing at her shirt. It was from the second tour, the ’72 tour, the one that asshole wrote the book about, the one where everyone kept getting arrested and kids kept getting garroted and there was that riot in El Paso, the one that chubby-cheeked Getty heir overdosed on, the one with the Iguana Moment, the one where all the receipts got stolen in what was universally acknowledged to be an inside job, the one with that chick in Wisconsin who ate marshmallows out of everyone’s assholes, the one the film crew–Jesus fucking Christ, whose idea was it to bring along a film crew–tagged along on, the one when Jay Biscayne’s luggage consisted of beer and a chainsaw. Back when you could have some fucking fun in America.
“You don’t look old enough to have been at this show,” Sheila answered. Flirting is just sexed-up lying.
“Well, now I’m glad you sat down. Lemme buy you a drink.”
“Don’t stop there. Buy me a car.”
Holiday ignored her and looked for the bartender, caught her eye.
“Honey?” (Holiday Rhodes called female bartenders Honey.) “Whatever this lady wants.”
“The lady wants everything.”
“In terms of alcohol.”
“Two shots of the best tequila you got.”
“Oh, I’ve sworn off tequila,” Holiday shook his head.
“They were both for me.”
He laughed, and showed off his dental work. His teeth were white and even. One of The Snug’s biggest superfans was a dentist, Dr. Neil, and he had done over all the boys’ smiles. Prescribed them a ton of shit over the years, too. Didn’t ask much. Tickets. Backstage passes. Little bit of recognition in front of his date. Not too much to ask for total access to the powers and privileges of dentistry. Smoke all ya want, drink all ya want: Dr. Neil would fix ya up. And then there was the laughing gas…
The bartender set the two glasses in front of Sheila.
“You sure?”
“Positive.”
“Pussy.”
She put the first one back PAP the glass set on the bar, and the second PAP the glass next to it, and burped hot through her nose and said,
“Saint fucking Peter, it’s unbelievable how fucked up you have to be to deal with being in Los fucking Angeles. You got a smoke?”
He didn’t, so she bummed one from the woman behind her at the bar FTT PHWOO and swiveled back to face Holiday and said,
“I have heard so many stories about you.”
“They’re all true.”
“They say you dosed the President’s dog.”
“They say that?”
“They say you’re a Satanist.”
“Never met him.”
“They say you’re illiterate.”
“I’ve read that.”
“They say you’re from the Upside and majored in Sociology at Harper College.”
“They’re damned liars.”
“We have everything under control.”
“Young lady–”
“There it is. Told ya so,” Tiresias pointed out.
“–you were in a dead Nazi’s basement not an hour ago. Remember that?”
She did, but instead of acknowledging the fact, she took a drink.
“You have literally, fucking literally, nothing under control right now. You and Tweedlefuckingdumber–who should have been back by now and is most likely talking to the exact wrong person–can’t even see control from where you are. You have the clothes on your backs.”
“We’ve got, like, 40 grand.”
“You got a car? You’re in Los Angeles. You gotta have a car. You have a car? No. The car is at the crime scene.”
“Precarious–”
“No. Wait. Not the crime scene. You car is at the scene of the previous crime. The crime before the last crime.”
“–I don’t need your shit right now.”
“Penultimate. The car is at the penultimate crime scene. Half the city is looking for you, and you have no car and you have no guns.”
“Do you have a gun?”
“Don’t question my patriotism.”
Which made her laugh, more of a snort, and then so did he just a little, and both leaned backwards into the half-moon booth, wrists resting on the table with the smoke from their cigarettes rising, mingling, becoming one, dissipating with only a stink left.
“They’re made from metaphors,” Sheila said, pinching her Camel and peering at it thought slitted eyes. “And tobacco, I guess.”
“I’m gonna guess your name, “Holiday said, ignoring her.
“Bet you won’t.”
“Christina.”
“Nah.”
“Candy.”
“Noooo.”
“Lola,” he said, and put his hand on her knee; Sheila smirked and noticed his nails were manicured and his band wasn’t playing on the stereo any more–Christ, they really had put on Thin Lizzy, was everything okay or was this some secret sign like when the deejay cued up White Christmas in Saigon–and Sheila remembered what it was she hated about Los Angeles: everyone was so fucking clever, and needed you to be aware of the fact.
So she put her hand on his knee–velvet was so impractical, but mmmm–and looked in his eyes, real deep-like, and said,
“Strike three.”
“Am I out?”
“Catcher dropped the ball. You get another shot. You want another shot?”
He nodded at the bartender and pointed to the empty glasses in front of Sheila.
“You didn’t even give me time to answer.”
“I had a feeling.”
“A feeling deep inside?”
“Oh, yeah.”
And she ran her hand higher up his thigh, on the outside, on the flank.
“I gotta call you something.”
“What do you wanna call me?”
“I wanna call you all sorts of things.”
“Oh, yeah?”
And they were leaned in towards one another, Sheila was almost falling off her barstool, foreheads close. Her hand was rising higher along his leg and the bartender set down a shot of tequila. She leaned over the bar and said to Holiday,
“It’s 12. You wanted me to tell you when it was 12.”
He forced his head towards her and said,
“Thanks, Honey.”
“What’s at 12? You got a curfew?”
He came back to her and said,
“My attendance is required at a party. Show biz bullshit.”
“Ooh, whose party? Anyone famous?”
“Some rich old asshole in Holmby Hills with a ridiculous name. Can’t quite remember it.”
Their foreheads were almost touching and their breath intermingled, dissipated. Neither of their hands were where they should have been.
“Buttermilk?”
“Yeah, that’s it. You know him?”
“I’m a friend of the family.”
She brushed her lips against his, the lightest contact possible, just molecules. It was amazing how much attention one could pack into such a small space. The world disappeared–the Rainbow included–and her cupid’s bow caught on his, held, released with a shudder and Sheila made a noise like uhh and then sprang back onto her stool, slapped down her shot WHAP the glass back on the bar, and she bounced to her feet and clapped Holiday Rhodes’ thighs with her palms and said,
“Stay right here.”
“Where are you going?”
“Never ask a woman her age,” Sheila called over her shoulder as she strolled away from him–she was an expert at walking while she know someone was looking at her ass; it threw most people off their perambulatory rhythm–and rounded the corner, avoided a waitress, complimented the waitress’ shoes, smiled with all her teeth at Lemmy, rounded another corner, slid into the half-moon booth with the red banqueting where Tiresias and Precarious Lee were still arguing.
“What about the Tommy Amici thing?”
“Not all my fault.”
“A goodly portion.”
Sheila slapped her hand on the table and said,
“You two shut the fuck up.”
The two of them shut the fuck up.
“I have a plan. We leave here right now and go back to the rich bitch’s house. There’s a party there tonight, so they’ll be letting everyone in. We go in there and get the chick and the old fuck in a room and play ’em off each other. Or blackmail them, whatever. We’ll get ’em to get the cops off our backs and we can shake some more cash out of ’em, too.”
Tiresias and Precarious were silent for a moment, and the only thing you could hear was Thin Lizzy.
“Sheel, I think that’s a great plan.”
“That’s the dumbest fucking idea I’ve ever heard.”
“Regardless, we have to leave here right now,” Sheila said, and lifted her hand off the table to reveal around three hundred bucks in 20’s. “I kinda pickpocketed Holiday Rhodes.”
“AAAAHahaha! I love you, sweetie.”
Tiresais hugged her shoulder, and Precarious grabbed his briefcase off of the floor.
“Was stealing from the guy absolutely necessary?”
“He was presumptuous.”
“Out the back way.”
Sheila and Tiresias scooched across the vinyl and then they were following Precarious Lee–Sheila left the money on the table for the waitress–towards the back door and into the parking lot where his 1971 Dodge Super Bee, yellow as a coward, sat waiting and BRRRAM out onto the Sunset Strip and into Los Angeles, which is so very far from Little Aleppo, which is a neighborhood in America.
Recent Comments