“I—I don’t know. Get on the horn or something …”
Nobody was doing anything about it. Volos sang on—he probably did not even know what was happening out beyond the stage lights. The security people had apparently scaled down their priorities from “crowd management” to “staying alive.” Mercedes did not see them trying to fish the fainters out of the audience. He did not see them at all. If that paragon among assholes, Texas, had been there, he would probably want them to stop the concert, he would probably be riding in on a white horse about now, firing silver bullets into the air. But Texas was gone, and Mercedes was glad. And the show blazed on.
Volos, onstage with his black wings and his burning passion and all his fatal charisma, swung into “Before I Die”—
Goddamn him, he wouldn’t die. Ever. Because there were people down there willing to die for him. Look at them. A girl, her face near his feet, squeezed against the stage rails so hard that all the air was pressed out of her, she couldn’t even squeak, her ribs were caving in, and old Donne was right about the euphemism he used for sex, the look on her face was just the same, blank-eyed and beatific, as she either came or expired, Mercedes didn’t know or much care which—and in that moment truth screwed him, pointed and hard, and this was what truth said: People would never do that for him.
Nobody was ever going to sob and faint and risk being trampled for him. Nobody was going to scream when he smiled. Nobody was going to remember him and keep him alive forever. Nobody was going to worship at his altar or lie down for him and die. Never. There on his perch he stood, seeing it all happen for Volos, and it was never going to happen for him. He knew that now. Because there was something in Volos that he, Mercedes, just didn’t have.
Shit, it hurt.
The lights went out.
“Hey!”
“Fuck it,” the light man replied in strangled tones, “I gotta do something.”
“Certainly. Do something, why don’t you?” Mercedes felt his way to a chilly metal seat, started to giggle, then laughed aloud, it hurt so queer.
Volos’s voice came over the mike: “What the fucking hell?” Burning Earth fumbled for a surprised moment, then stopped playing. In the relative silence that followed, the screams of the crowd flew like starlings, unmistakably cries of pain.
“What’s happening?”
“It’s the holocaust, Volie!” Mercedes shrilled across the darkness. Maybe the black angel heard him.
Probably not. Better not. There had been a phone call from Brett, one worth concentrating on. Better forget what he had just been thinking. There might yet be a chance for Mercedes Kell to reach the stars.
Backstage, afterward, Red had the shakes and had to lean against the wall, not talking. Nobody was talking much. Nobody was getting changed or showered or packing equipment either. Everybody was just standing around, waiting for who knew what. There was something very strange flying in the air of the place, and it was not just rumors, though there were plenty of those too: a dozen dead, over a hundred injured … The houselights were on and the police were clearing the arena. Outside, ambulances had gathered like those screaming demon birds, whatever the hell they were called, like vultures, waiting for souls. Thank God Angie was not there, had not been there, had not seen or been mixed up in any of this. She had stayed at the hotel, taking care of her sick kid. Probably an excuse. The kid was okay, as far as Red knew. Probably she was keeping away from Volos, like everybody else today.
There he stood, his face stony, his wings still black as a hit man’s heart, and nobody was going near him. Partly because of that afternoon; everybody had liked Texas, so nobody liked what had happened between him and Volos except maybe that bitch Mercedes. But mostly because of that night, the way Volos had thrown off sparks as he sang. He had been awesome, scary. People were afraid of him.
Shit. The guy was one incredible hell of a front man. Gonna go down in rock history. Somebody had to talk to him.
Red pushed away from the wall and wobbled over to him, shaking worse than ever. Said, “Hey, you want a drink, Volos?” Red wanted one himself. With irrational fervor he believed and hoped there was a bottle back in the dressing room somewhere.
“No. Thank you.”
That was not so bad. Red chanced a straight look at this guy and began to wonder. Black meant more than just evil or anger. It was the color people wore when someone they loved went and died.
Red said, “You all right, man?”
Volos surprised him with a snort of unfunny laughter. “All right? How?”
“I just mean …” Red swallowed. “I just mean, is there anything I can do?”
“No. I do not think so.”
Bink butted in, now that Red had gone ahead and taken the first risk. Red and Bink got along fine, but Red had to admit the guy was kind of a dork. Pushy, always shoving himself into a hole. A lot of bass guitarists were like that. It was hard to lick a good riff if you were a bass, because you were always two strings short of a full set. Bink proved this now by thrusting his jaw to within a few inches of Volos’s hard face.
“What the hell you trying to prove, big shot? I guess you think we enjoyed your fun and games? You think we like being scared shitless?”
Volos said nothing. His stare looked distant, barely focused on the bass man. Red was the one who complained, “Bink, shut up.” He had stopped shaking and felt not so much scared any longer as weary and disgusted. The concert had been bad enough, and now here was this second-fiddle hot dog talking like third-rate TV.
Bink slewed around and growled at him, “You shut up. You’re too goddamn nice. Somebody’s gotta tell it like it is around here.”
“For Chrissake, you sound like a cop show.”
Bink had already turned back to Volos. “Hey. Wings! I got something to say to you. You listening to me?”
Volos looked at him. This apparently was response enough for Bink, who upped the volume a notch and went on: “You think you’re hot stuff, don’t you? Well, maybe you are, but I don’t have to put up with it. Don’t you ever do that again, you hear me? Don’t you ever get an audience that worked up again, or I—”
Volos hit him.
It wasn’t even a good punch, just a childish sort of sideswipe that knocked Bink down rather than smashing him flat. But it was so sudden, the rattlesnake strike without the warning rattle, that Bink lay blinking on the floor, and Red stood stupefied. Somehow he had had this idea of Volos as a gentle person really, a pussycat, no matter what the guy did onstage, but now—one minute Volos had been standing there brooding or whatever you want to call it, and the next minute he had turned into a goddamn special effect, some kind of horror-movie thing with wings. Red knew why Bink didn’t get up, and it wasn’t because the guy was hurt or chicken. It was because right now, looking at Volos, a person couldn’t move.
Volos said, not even loudly, “Don’t you ever tell me what to do.” Then wheeled away and crashed out the backstage door within a few strides, and nobody tried to stop him.
Great. Oh, just awesomely wonderful. There he went, off on his own in the mood he was in, out where the fans and cops and reporters were. Red could see the headlines now: Volos Arrested for Assault. Winged Freak Out of Control Ravages City. Twenty Dead, Two Hundred Injured at Burning Earth Concert.
Of course, hell, that was just the sort of thing that was expected from rock superstars. Volos Fires Security Head, Decks Band Member. The fans would love it.
“Jesus,” Bink panted from the floor.
“I told you to shut up,” Red chided him, not unkindly. He put down a hand, helped Bink stagger to his feet.
“Jesus Christ,” Bink elaborated. “Scare the shit outa me. What the hell is that guy?”
“He’s just a guy,” said Red roughly. The question frightened him. Just for a moment as Volos had swooped out the door amid a rustle of black and stormily lifted wings, Red had caught himself thinking something like “dark angel” or “avenging angel,” as if Volos could really be�
��no. It was a mistake even to think it. One of the scariest things about being an artist was knowing how many artists of all kinds went crazy and killed themselves. Red had thought about this a lot, and he believed he had a handle on the reason: Artists went off into Never-Never-Land, and then they went off the edge. So it was important to keep a firm grip on reality. More than just important—it was vital, a matter of life and death.
Volos walked through the stage-door crowd as if it were fog, got past the reporters with a scowl and a glare, found his way to an empty street. Stopped to sigh. The brief conversation with Red had helped him a little. He could feel his wings turning from black to a rainy slate-blue. From rage to melancholy.
Anything I can do? Red was a truly nice person, but no, there was nothing he could do. Not while the guitar player, like nearly everyone else, still thought his lead singer wore colored contacts and worked his wings with some sort of concealed wiring.
Grudgingly, Volos had come to accept, though not understand, how most people had to think these things. He had only three friends who knew him truly: Angela, and Mercedes, and—
Two, now. Angela and Mercedes.
Angela seemed to be preoccupied with her children. She would be angry with him if he knocked at her hotel door and woke them. Mercedes had gotten out of the arena the first minute he could. Volos knew better than to go back to the hotel looking for him. He knew where his ex-lover would be. Wings sagging, he walked through the dark streets in the dirty part of town to find Mercedes.
As always, he looked around him as he walked, because he loved seeing whatever the mortal world put in front of him; there was a strong fascination and a strange comfort in human transience. This time he noticed a crooked weathervane, a fogged front-yard gazing globe, and an empty house with its porch roof gone to rot and moss. In the dirt-filled gutter grew wild snapdragons, and amid the yellow spikes nested something softly gray-blue, a feral parakeet, hidden from sight of anyone not so tall as Volos. Probably not noticed even by those who had the height to see. City humans, Volos had observed, generally walked with their eyes turned to the pavement, as if looking for money.
In his mood he found talking to birds preferable to dealing with people. He greeted the parakeet, “Hello, little brother with wings the same color as mine are right now. What are you doing there?”
It replied very softly through its beak, “Just waiting until the cold weather comes, when I will die.”
“Huh. It sounds much like what I am doing. Are you sorry you escaped, then?”
“No! No, it is well worth it.” The parakeet grew excited and stood up, fluffing its feathers. “It is far better to die in freedom than to live forever in a cage.”
“I think so also. Little brother, can you tell me where the Boystown is around here?”
“Pardon?”
“The gay bars. Where are they?”
“Gay as in many colors, like butterflies? Bars?”
“Never mind.”
“Whatever they are, how would I know?” the bird huffed. “I am just an accidental.”
“So am I.” Or at least that was what he felt like. “Thank you anyway.”
Eventually he had to ask the young men in kerchiefs and ponytails, the ones holding down the street corners, before he could locate the gay bars. Not caring about the way they looked at him. Not caring what anybody thought. Let the gossip columns print what they wanted, let people think what they wanted. A lot of people already thought the worst.
Mercy never had to ask anybody where to find his action. Definitely he was not an accidental.
And there he was, badgering the bartender because he couldn’t get Corona beer with a twist of lemon. “I can put a lemon slice in a Beck’s for you,” the bartender was saying.
“It’s not the same,” said Mercedes bitchily. “In L.A.—”
Every head in the place turned as Volos came in. “Volie!” Mercedes exclaimed, jumping up and hurrying him right back outside again, to the deserted sidewalk under a vapor lamp. “Vo.” Keeping his voice down, an excited and slightly drunken conspirator. “Brett called. Great news. I been trying for hours to get a chance to tell you.”
Volos said, “Have you heard about Texas?” He knew Mercy had to have heard about Texas. But Volos wanted to talk about Texas, he needed to talk about what had happened, though it made his chest ache even to say the name.
“Certainly I heard. Good riddance. Vo, MGM called—”
“You saw what happened tonight?” He knew Mercy had to have seen. “They say people were killed.” Killed. Killed meant dead long before the frost. No coming back, no second chances.
“So they were killed, to hell with them. Volie! MGM wants to talk about you doing some movies for them. Sort of like the Elvis Presley movies. They want you to be in pictures, Vo!”
Volos shook his head as if shaking off gnats. Orange streetlamp light seemed to buzz around his head as badly as insects. “Did Texas tell anyone where he was going?” he asked.
“Never mind about him, Volie! Think about being a movie star.”
“I don’t want to be an actor.” He turned and walked away.
“You don’t have to act. They really just want you to sing and kiss girls. Volie, they want you so bad they’ll do whatever you say.” Volos had veered from the sidewalk to the middle of the benighted street, and Mercedes hurried along at his side, talking fast. “They’d give me a part if you said the word. Make me the director if you want it that way.”
“I just want to be a singer,” Volos said to the dark sky. Whispered, almost. Because of yellow streetlight fog he could not see a star. Did not like stars. Was looking for them anyway. Could not find one. God, when had it gone so wrong? His friend of friends abandoning him, people dying at his feet, how had it come to that?
At his side Mercedes panted, “Volos, you’re crazy! You can’t let this pass. Think of the press it’ll get you. Think of the money.”
“I don’t care about any of that.”
Mercedes cried out in what sounded like real anguish, “Volos, I care! This is the big break!”
The street was paved with brick. Or cobblestone. Volos stopped where he was, feeling at it with his boot toe, but did not look down. Instead he stared at Mercy. “What big break?” he asked.
“My chance—” Mercedes swallowed the words, tried again. “Your chance to be immortal.”
A strange thing about darkness and the dead of night and the blue tinge in the wings. Sometimes they let eyes see more clearly than by day. Volos was seeing himself that way. Accidental? By his own doing. He had intended himself into being, he was a self-willed thing, an amateur mortal who had fucked up. He pondered Mercy, seeing a rather small man with the taste of vinegar always in his mouth. How could it be that Mercy did not care if people died to make Volos money and fame? But it really seemed he was that way. He was empty, so hollow it was no use telling him anything, for the words would echo and echo, yet not be heard.
“I was immortal already,” Volos said finally. “It is not worth being dishonest for.”
“You got to be kidding. You’re really not going to—”
“No. I am really not going to do it, Mercy.” He turned his back again and strode on. Once more Mercedes trotted at his side.
“Volie. Please. Don’t say no right now. I caught you at a bad time. Sleep on it at least, all right?” His voice brightened like a ferret’s eyes. “Would you like to sleep? I got some H.”
“No,” Volos said. “I think I have been sleeping too much. I think I have been missing things.”
“Volie—”
“Go on back to the bar, Mercy.” He lengthened his stride and left Mercedes behind.
He wandered in the night, noticing again as if for the first time how brown brick smells of sunshine even at two in the morning, how electricity hung from its crosses does not weep but sings, how television glows glacier-blue through the venetian blinds of the second-story bedrooms where couples were watching the late-night videos
they did not want the kids to see and maybe making love. He felt bereft. He wanted Angie terribly, but knew he must not awaken her. In the morning he would kiss her and talk with her about Texas.
Turning a corner nearby, a taxicab caught him in its headlights, jerked to a stop, backed up, and came barreling toward him. Volos stood, resigned to whatever was happening now. But it was not bad. The cab stopped short of hitting him, and Red got out.
“There you are, man.” Red paid the cabdriver thirty dollars and sent him away, then came to walk by Volos’s side. He kept his voice soft and even, but Volos could hear some sort of strain in it. “I been looking all over for you.”
“Why?”
Red hesitated, then came out with what Volos could tell to be truth. “Worried about you! Didn’t know where you were, what you were gonna do, the way—” Evidently Red did not want to say it more plainly, that Volos had been hugely fucking up. “The way things been going.”
They walked in silence for a run-down block. Then Red added, “Things ain’t as bad as people were saying, Volos. We’ve got the official word from the police now. Three dead—I mean, that’s bad enough, but it could have been a lot worse.”
“How many hurt?” Volos asked.
“A few dozen.”
Speaking of hurt. “How’s Bink?”
“Fine! Bink’s got a thick skull. You couldn’t kill him if you came at him with a ball-peen hammer.”
“Angry at me?”
“He’s not gonna quit or anything like that, no.”
“But he is angry.”
“A little.”
“It is all anger today. Has anybody heard from Texas?”
Red looked away, stared down at the pavement. Typical human. “No.”
They walked past an Art Deco gas station with pink tile trim, and a little brick restaurant shaped like a coffeepot, complete with a sheet-metal spout. “Smoke comes out of that metal part in the wintertime,” Red remarked. “They got the furnace venting through it. I remember from the last time I went through here.”
Metal Angel Page 20
