Black Leather Required

by David J. Schow

  She toasted the week that had passed since Walter had stopped breathing.

  Her fingers moved to his lips, pushing the corners up to form a smile, which stayed exactly as she had arranged it. They made love every day, sometimes more than once, at all sorts of hours. Their shared bed had transformed into a domain whereupon JJ's sexuality had finally caught fire and burned hot.

  Walter had grown warm again, all on his own. She could feel tiny movements, fervid activity just beneath the tight skin of his belly. His perma-plaqued smile asked nothing of her. It is an unspoken contract that lovers permit each other their humanity–their smells and body functions–so the stench in the bedroom was a minuscule cost.

  Ignoring the insects, JJ wrapped herself up in the man of her dreams. And in her dreams, there were no insects, and everything was perfect at last.

  Last Call for the Sons of Shock

  Blank Frank notches down the Cramps, keeping an eye on the blue LED bars of the equalizer. He likes the light.

  "Creature from the Black Leather Lagoon" calms.

  The club is called Un/Dead. The sound system is from the guts of the old Tropicana, LA's altar of mud wrestling, foxy boxing, and the cock-tease unto physical pain. Its specs are for metal, loud, lots of it. The punch of the subwoofers is a lot like getting jabbed in the sternum by a big velvet piston.

  Blank Frank likes the power. Whenever he thinks of getting physical, he thinks of the Vise Grip.

  He perches a case of Stoli on one big shoulder and tucks another of Beam under his arm. After this he is done replenishing the bar. To survive the weekend crush, you've gotta arm. Blank Frank can lug a five-case stack without using a dolly. He has to duck to clear the lintel. The passage back to the phones and bathrooms is tricked out to resemble a bank vault door, with tumblers and cranks. It is up past six-six. Not enough for Blank Frank, who still has to stoop.

  Two hours till doors open.

  Blank Frank enjoys his quiet time. He has not forgotten the date. He grins at the movie poster framed next to the back bar register. He scored it at a Hollywood memorabilia shop for an obscene price even though he got a professional discount. He had it mounted on foamcore to flatten the creases. He does not permit dust to accrete on the glass. The poster Black leather Required is duotone, with lurid lettering. His first feature film. Every so often some Un/Dead patron with cash to burn will make an exorbitant offer to buy it. Blank Frank always says no with a smile . . . and usually spots a drink on the house for those who ask.

  He nudges the volume back up for Bauhaus, doing "Bela Lugosi's Dead," extended mix.

  The staff sticks to coffee and iced tea. Blank Frank prefers a nonalcoholic concoction of his own device, which he has christened a Blind Hermit. He rustles up one, now, in a chromium blender, one hand idly on his plasma globe. Michelle gave it to him about four years back, when they first became affordably popular. Touch the exterior and the purple veins of electricity follow your fingertips. Knobs permit you to fiddle with density and amplitude, letting you master the power, feel like Tesla showing off.

  Blank Frank likes the writhing electricity.

  By now he carries many tattoos. But the one on the back of his left hand–the hand toying with the globe–is his favorite: a stylized planet Earth, with a tiny propellered aircraft circling it. It is old enough that the cobalt-colored dermal ink has begun to blur.

  Blank Frank has been utterly bald for three decades. A tiny wisp of hair issues from his occipital. He keeps it in a neat braid, clipped to six inches. It is dead white. Sometimes, when he drinks, the braid darkens briefly. He doesn't know why.

  Michelle used to be a stripper, before management got busted, the club got sold, and Un/Dead was born of the ashes. She likes being a waitress and she likes Blank Frank. She calls him "big guy." Half the regulars think Blank Frank and Michelle have something steamy going. They don't. But the fantasy detours them around a lot of potential problems, especially on weekend nights. Blank Frank has learned that people often need fantasies to seem superficially true, whether they really are or not.

  Blank Frank dusts. If only the bikers could see him now, being dainty and attentive. Puttering.

  Blank Frank rarely has to play bouncer whenever some booze-fueled trouble sets to brewing inside Un/Dead. Mostly, he just strolls up behind the perp and waits for him or her to turn around and apologize. Blank Frank's muscle duties generally consist of just looming.

  If not, he thinks with a smile, there's always the Vise Grip.

  The video monitor shows a Red Top taxicab parking outside the employee entrance. Blank Frank is pleased. This arrival coincides exactly with his finish-up on the bartop, which now gleams like onyx. He taps up the slide pot controlling the mike volume on the door's security system. There will come three knocks.

  Blank Frank likes all this gadgetry. Cameras and shotgun mikes, amps and strobes and strong, clean alternating current to web it all in concert with maestro surety. Blank Frank loves the switches and toggles and running lights. But most of all, he loves the power.

  Tap-tap-tap. Precisely. Always three knocks.

  "Good," he says to himself, drawing out the vowel. As he hastens to the door, the song ends and the club fills with the empowered hiss of electrified dead air.

  Out by limo. In by cab. One of those eternally bedamned scheduling glitches.

  The Count over-tips the cabbie because his habit is to deal only in round sums. He never takes . . . change. The Count has never paid taxes. He has cleared forty-three million large in the past year, most of it safely banked in bullion, out-of-country, after overhead and laundering.

  The Count raps smartly with his umbrella on the service door of Un/Dead. Blank Frank never makes him knock twice.

  It is a pleasure to see Blank Frank's face overloading the tiny security window; his huge form filling the threshold. The Count enjoys Blank Frank despite his limitations when it comes to social intercourse. It is relaxing to appreciate Blank Frank's condition-less loyalty, the innate tidal pull of honor and raw justice that seems programmed into the big fellow. Soothing, it is, to sit and drink and chat lightweight chat with him, in the autopilot way normals told their normal acquaintances where they'd gone and what they'd done since their last visit. Venomless niceties.

  None of the buildings in Los Angeles have been standing as long as the Count and Blank Frank have been alive.

  Alive. Now there's a word that begs a few new comprehensive, enumerated definitions in the dictionary. Scholars could quibble, but the Count and Blank Frank and Larry were definitely alive. As in "living"–especially Larry. Robots, zombies and the walking dead in general could never get misty about such traditions as this threesome's annual conclaves at Un/Dead.

  The Count's face is mappy, the wrinkles in his flesh, rice-paper fine. Not creases of age, but tributaries of usage, like the creeks and streams of palmistry. His pallor, as always, tends toward blue. He wears dark shades with faceted, lozenge-shaped lenses of apache tear; mineral crystal stained bloody-black. Behind them, his eyes, bright blue like a husky's.

  He forever maintains his hair wet and backswept, what Larry has called his "renegade opera conductor coif." Dramatic threads of pure cobalt-black streak backward from the snow-white crown and temples. His lips are as thin and bloodless as two slices of smoked liver. His diet does not render him robustly sanguine; it merely sustains him, these days. It bores him.

  Before Blank Frank can get the door open, the Count fires up a hand-rolled cigarette of coca paste and drags the milky smoke deep. It mingles with the dope already loitering in his metabolism and perks him to.

  The cab hisses away into the wet night. Rain on the way.

  Blank Frank is holding the door for him, grandly, playing butler.

  The Count's brow is overcast. "Have you forgotten so soon, my friend?" Only a ghost of his old, marble-mouthed, middle-Euro accent lingers. It is a trait that the Count has fought for long years to master, and he is justly proud that his English is intelligible.
Occasionally, someone asks if he is from Canada.

  Blank Frank pulls the exaggerated face of a child committing a big boo-boo. "Oops, sorry." He clears his throat. "Will you come in?"

  Equally theatrically, the Count nods and walks several thousand worth of Armani double-breasted into the cool, dim retreat of the bar. It is nicer when you're invited, anyway.

  "Larry?" says the Count.

  "Not yet," says Blank Frank. "You know Larry–tardy is his twin. There's real-time and Larry time. Celebrities expect you to expect them to be late." He points toward the back bar clock, as if that explains everything.

  The Count can see perfectly in the dark, even with his murky glasses. As he strips them, Blank Frank notices the silver crucifix dangling from his left earlobe, upside-down.

  "You into metal?"

  "I like the ornamentation," says the Count. "I was never too big on jewelry; greedy people try to dig you up and steal it if they know you're wearing it; just ask Larry. The sort of people who would come to thieve from the dead in the middle of the night are not the class one would choose for friendly diversion."

  Blank Frank conducts the Count to three high-back Victorian chairs he has dragged in from the lounge and positioned around a cocktail table. The grouping is directly beneath a pin-light spot, intentionally theatrical.

  "Impressive." The Count's gaze flickers toward the bar. Blank Frank is way ahead of him.

  The Count sits, continuing: "I once knew a woman who was beleaguered by a devastating allergy to cats. And this was a person who felt some deep emotional communion with that species. Then one day, poof!

  She no longer sneezed; her eyes no longer watered. She could stop taking medications that made her drowsy. She had forced herself to be around cats so much that her body chemistry adapted. The allergy receded." He fingers the silver cross hanging from his ear, a double threat, once upon a time. "I wear this as a reminder of how the body can triumph. Better living through chemistry"

  "It was the same with me and fire." Blank Frank hands over a very potent mixed drink called a Gangbang. The Count sips, then presses his eyelids contentedly shut. Like a cat. The drink must be industrial strength. Controlled substances are the Count's lifeblood.

  Blank Frank watches as the Count sucks out another long, deep, soul-drowning draught. "You know Larry's going to ask again, whether you're still doing . . . what you're doing."

  "I brook no apologia or excuses." Nevertheless, Blank Frank sees him straighten in his chair, almost defensively. "I could say that you provide the same service in this place." With an outswept hand, he indicts the bar. If nothing else remains recognizable, the Count's gesticulations remain grandiose; physical exclamation points.

  "It's legal. Food. Drink. Some smoke."

  "Oh, yes, there's the rub." The Count pinches the bridge of his nose. He consumes commercial decongestants ceaselessly. Blank Frank expects him to pop a few pills, but instead the Count lays out a scoop of toot inside his mandarin pinky fingernail, which is lacquered ebony, elongated, a talon. Capacious. Blank Frank knows from experience that the hair and nails continue growing long after death. The Count inhales the equivalent of a pretty good dinner at Spago. Cappucino included.

  "There is no place in the world I have not lived," says the Count. "Even the Arctic. The Australian outback. The Kenyan sedge. Siberia. I walk unharmed through fire-fight zones, through sectors of strife. You learn so much when you observe people at war. I've survived holocausts, conflagration, even a low-yield one-megaton test, once, just to see if I could do it. Sue me; I was high. But wherever I venture, whatever phylum of human beings I encounter, they all have one thing in common."

  "The red stuff." Blank Frank half-jests; he dislikes it when the mood grows too grim.

  "No. It is their need to be narcotized." The Count will not be swerved. "With television. Sex. Coffee. Power. Fast cars and sado-games. Emotional encumbrances. More than anything else, with chemicals. All drugs are like instant coffee. The fast purchase of a feeling. You buy the feeling, instead of earning it. You want to relax, go up or go down, get strong or get stupid? You simply swallow or snort or inject, and the world changes because of you. The most lucrative commercial enterprises are those with the most undeniable core simplicity; just look at prostitution. Blood, bodies, armaments, position–all commodities. Human beings want so much out of life."

  The Count smiles, sips. He knows that the end of life is only the beginning. Today is the first day of the rest of your death.

  "I do apologize, my old friend, for coming on so aggressively. I've rationalized my calling, you see, to the point where it is a speech of lists; I make my case with demographics. Rarely do I find anyone who cares to suffer the speech."

  "You've been rehearsing." Blank Frank recognizes the bold streak the Count gets in his voice when declaiming. Blank Frank has himself been jammed with so many hypos in the past few centuries that he has run out of free veins. He has sampled the Count's root canal quality coke; it made him irritable and sneezy. The only drugs that still seem to work on him unfailingly are extremely powerful sedatives in large, near-toxic dosages. And those never last long. "Tell me. The drugs. Do they have any effect on you?"

  He sees the Count pondering how much honesty is too much. Then the tiny, knowing smile flits past again, a wraith between old comrades.

  "I employ various palliatives. I'll tell you the absolute truth: Mostly it is an affectation, something to occupy my hands. Human habits–vices, for that matter–go a long way toward putting my customers at ease when I am closing negotiations."

  "Now you're thinking like a merchant," says Blank Frank. "No royalty left in you?"

  "A figurehead gig." The Count frowns. "Over whom, my good friend, would I hold illimitable dominion? Rock stars. Thrill junkies,, Corporate monsters. No percentage in flaunting your lineage there. No. I occupy my time much as a fashion designer does. I concentrate on next season's line. I brought cocaine out of its Vin Mariani limbo and helped repopularize it in the Eighties. Then crank, then crack, then ice. Designer dope. You've heard of Ecstasy. You haven't heard of Chrome yet. Or Amp. But you will."

  Suddenly a loud booming rattles the big main door, as though the entire DEA is hazarding a spot raid. Blank Frank and the Count are both twisted around in surprise. Blank Frank catches a glimpse of the enormous Browning Hi-Power holstered in the Count's left armpit.

  It's probably just for the image, Blank Frank reminds himself.

  The commotion sounds as though some absolute lunatic is kicking the door and baying at the moon. Blank Frank hurries over, his pulse relaxing as his pace quickens.

  It has to be Larry.

  "Gah-DAMN it's peachy to see ya, ya big dead dimwit!" Larry is a foot shorter than Blank Frank. Nonetheless, he bounds in, pounces, and suffocates his amigo in a big wolfy bear hug.

  Larry is almost too much to take in with a single pair of eyes.

  His skintight red Spandex tights are festooned with spangles and fringe that snake, at knee level, into golden cowboy boots. Glittering spurs on the boots. An embossed belt buckle the size of the grille on a Rolls. Larry is into ornaments, including a feathered earring with a skull of sterling, about a hundred metalzoid bracelets, and a three-finger rap ring of slush-cast 24K that spells out AWOO. His massive, pumped chest fairly bursts from a bright silver Daytona racing jacket, snapped at the waist but not zippered, so the world can see his collarless muscle tee in neon scarlet, featuring his caricature in yellow. Fiery letters on the shirt scream about THE REAL WOLF MAN. Larry is wearing his Ray-Bans at night and jingles a lot whenever he walks.

  "Where's old Bat Man? Yo! I see you skulking in the dark!" Larry whacks Blank Frank on the bicep, then lopes to catch the Count. With the Count, it is always a normal handshake–dry, firm, businesslike. "Off thy bunnage, fang-dude; the party has arriiiived!!"

  "Nothing like having a real celebrity in our midst," says Blank Frank. "But jeez–what the hell is this 'Real' Wolf Man crap?"

  Larry gr
imaces as if from a gas pain, showing teeth. "A slight little ole matter of copyrights, trademarks, eminent domain. . .and some fuckstick who registered himself with the World Wrestling Federation as 'The Wolfman.' Turns out to be a guy I bit, my ownself, a couple of decades ago. So I have to be 'The Real.' We did a tag-team thing, last Wrestlemania. But we can't think of a good team name."

  "Runts of the Litter," opines the Count. Droll.

  "Hellpups," says Blank Frank.

  "Fuck ya both extremely much." Larry grins his trademark grin. Still showing teeth. He snaps off his shades and scans Un/Dead. "What's to quaff in this pit? Hell, what town is this, anywho?"

  "On tour?" Blank Frank plays host.

  "Yep. Gotta kick Jake the Snake's ass in Atlanta next Friday. Gonna strangle him with Damien, if the python'll put up with it. Wouldn't want to hurt him for real but might have ole Jake pissing blood for a day, if you know what I mean."

  Blank Frank grins; he knows what Larry means. He makes a fist with his left hand, then squeezes his left wrist tightly with his right hand. "Vise Grip him."

  Larry is the inventor of the Vise Grip, second only to the Sleeper Hold in wrestling infamy. The Vise Grip has done Blank Frank a few favors with rowdies in the past. Larry owns the move, and is entitled to wax proud.

  "I mean pissing pure blood!" Larry enthuses.

  "Ecch," says the Count. "Please."

  "Sorry, oh cloakless one. Hey! Remember that brewery, made about three commercials with the Beer Wolf before that campaign croaked and ate dirt? That was me!"

  Blank Frank hoists his Blind Hermit. "Here's to the Beer Wolf, then. Long may he howl."

  "Frost," says the Count.

  "Fuckin A." Larry downs his entire mugful of draft in one slam-dunk. He belches, wipes foam from his mouth and lets go with a lupine yeehah.

  The Count dabs his lips with a cocktail napkin.

  Blank Frank watches Larry do his thing and a stiff chaser of memory quenches his brain. That snout, the bicuspids, and those beady, ball-bearing eyes will always give Larry away. His eyebrows run together; that was supposed to be a classic clue in the good old days. Otherwise, Larry is not so hirsute. In human form, at least. The hair on his forearms is very fine tan down. Pumping iron and beating up people for a living has bulked out his shoulders. He usually wears his shirts open-necked. T-shirts, he tears the throats out. He is all piston-muscles and zero flab. He is able to squeeze a full beer can in one fist and pop the top with a gunshot bang. His hands are callused and wily. The pentagram on his right palm is barely visible. It has faded, like Blank Frank's tattoo.