“I know Charlie Parker. He’s old school, right?”
“This is Charlie Parker,” said Morgan, as if hushing him in church. Then he quit “Now’s the Time” to play a bit of a haunting bluesy number that sounded vaguely familiar to my ears. I couldn’t quite place it.
Luther was captivated as well. His brow furrowed, he smiled at his friend and said, “Who’s that? I don’t recognise that.” His voice was mildly teasing, as if perhaps it was one of Morgan’s own works.
“That,” said Erica, grinning at her jazz sage lover, “is Duane Jones.”
Her eyes met mine briefly, and she saw on my face how it came back to me, one of the pieces she had casually played on the family piano years ago in high school. Of course.
We were all respectfully silent as Morgan kept playing his old partner’s composition right to the end.
“To Duane Jones,” said Luther, raising his glass in a toast.
“To Duane Jones,” the rest of us echoed.
Morgan played a few more snatches of this or that jazz legend for Odell. Erica and I stood in the kitchen area, leaned against the counter by the sink, watching the men. I knew by now that I wasn’t destined to be one of the breeders, but Luther’s revised status as a parent endeared him even more to me. As bizarre as it sounds, considering how I felt about her, I actually considered him a good match for Erica. I wasn’t about to push them together, but I was curious why Erica hadn’t chased him as she had blatantly chased others. After all, Luther might “want her all to himself” but men will settle for having a taste of Erica before giving her up to rivals.
“He’s smart, he’s responsible—I mean he’s doing his best for that little boy of his,” I said, ticking it all off for her. “He’s mature—”
Erica downed her drink and gave me a patronising pat on the arm. “Mish, I know you mean well, but God save me from complicated men.”
So she was not about to be hung up on Luther Banks. Luther, however, was still very much interested in Erica. After all the analysis and talk about bringing in not just studio pros but real jazz session musicians who could record together instead of laying down individual tracks, we all said our good nights. Odell made his pitch again to see me home or better still why didn’t I have a nightcap at his place? What was the big deal? I told him I had to get up for a meeting. We were milling around, finishing our drinks, and Erica didn’t go for her jacket slung over her chair. She told me she’d see me back at the apartment. I shrugged and said fine, and it was Luther giving her a second curious glance. Watching and not at all happy as she stood next to Morgan, who was already pouring them both another drink.
As the wooden slat door closed the freight elevator, I glimpsed Erica’s hands sink under Morgan’s belt and pull out his shirttails. She was caressing the skin on the small of his back, Morgan smiling and keeping his eyes ahead, a flicker of pleasure there as if the entire evening had been a prelude for this sensual reunion.
He must have caught it just as I did. Luther.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he muttered, and as the freight slowly descended, his eyes gazed ahead, still burning on the image of them together.
I think he was disillusioned with Morgan as much as with her. He had this face…You could paste it on a boy of twelve who catches his father walking out of a hotel with a woman who’s not Mom. Morgan was a teacher, a mentor for him, so that there was always a deference no matter how casual the business conversations or just shooting the breeze. Involvement with Erica shrank the old master down to life-size and made every wrinkle, every mole and crack in that craggy bearded face abruptly visible. He would be touching Erica in a moment. He’d be kissing Erica. The idea of her with Steven Swann was unpleasant, but Luther carried around a private amused disdain for Steven. Erica and Morgan? Too much. All the other men he guessed that she’d been with were abstractions, but Erica and Morgan…It was a screwdriver twisting and burrowing in a knothole in the mind, driving him crazy, the way it could drive me crazy when I stopped to consider it.
“It’s fucking sad, really,” said Luther.
“What is?” asked Odell, casting his eyes warily at me. He had a glimmer of what was going on.
Luther sounded like he was talking to himself. “We’re supposed to be macho and think, wha-hey! Good for you, man, you get yourself a sweet young honey when you’re coughing away in your fifties or whatever. But it’s kind of pathetic. You still look like the girl’s Dad.”
“No one cares about age difference anymore,” I put in quietly. “And you can’t tell me you think that’s such a big deal to you.”
“As a matter of fact, Michelle, I do have strong opinions on it, yeah.” Luther clucked his tongue once more in disgust. “It’s not fucking dignified, man. It just ain’t.”
Summer, and Erica and I had our first flight in a private jet, visiting Steven’s ranch home on the outskirts of Santa Fe, New Mexico, on a long weekend. It was the four of us, really, Odell coming down as my “date.” Steven and Erica had so casually invited him down without asking me first, believing that he and I were on a parallel track of relationship. I said before that Erica told me everything, but by now you must have figured out I never told Erica everything.
Steven plunged thoroughly into his role of playing host, offering nuggets of local history and pointing out the city’s various art galleries. “Here you go,” he said. “The place they once said looked more like a prairie dog village than a capital.” He used his celebrity son status to get us all a tour of the Bonanza Creek Ranch, where Western films were shot. There was Erica and me, two city girls who grew up near rolling green Ontario hills and lakeside skyscrapers, standing around and gazing at white adobe houses and a desert horizon. As we strolled past saloon doors and hitching rails for mounts, Steven remarked, “Hey, I thought every little girl went through a horse-loving phase.” We told him that would be true if we were a couple of white kids who could hit the Bridle Path in Toronto’s very exclusive mansion district.
When we arrived at his gigantic house, he led us in a rapid march past a gaudy lounge, suggesting, “Okay, close your eyes.” The room had the décor of a Tex-Mex restaurant: bull antlers in a plaque, framed “Wanted” posters on the wall, and one of those L-shaped combo couches in a tan colour aimed towards a giant television, plus there was a wet bar with colonial period stools. Ugh. Odell asked if Buffalo Bill threw up in here or something. “I know, it’s awful,” admitted Steven, “but I keep it for photographers from InStyle and other mags.”
Image. The irony was that Steven, the kid with two gallery-showing artists for parents out in New Mexico, really was an American Civil War and Wild West buff. Talking up a storm to us about that great Ken Burns mini-series, and how it was “staggering, man” the ineptitude of the Union generals in the early years and how Crazy Horse was one cool dude. But he kept his interests mostly on his bookshelves and on the racks of his DVD collection. Steven didn’t like the idea of fans knowing exactly what his home looked like, so he had created this showpiece, furnishing it with bric-a-brac of ordinary people’s misconceptions of the Old West.
His real taste in furniture leaned towards the plush but modular, tans and black tones with track lighting and framed artsy photos of Spain on the walls. He had sculptures on glass tables that looked like scale models of Gaudi architecture, all seashells and pebbled stone and curves. There were chairs and stools that picked up on his love of the West, but they were clever designs with period fabrics. Steven always had to be clever.
“Whoa,” I said. “No IKEA chairs or Klimt posters for you, I see.” I thought of my fellow dorm residents at Yale with their wannabe bohemian tastes.
“Please!” laughed Steven. “I don’t do that Swedish particleboard shit. So what are we going to do?”
“It’s your ranch, Hoss,” joked Odell.
“You’re right, it is! Okay. Simon says we get drunk. And then we all get laid.”
Erica flashed a look at me, smiling away,
her eyes shining with half-anticipation, half mild apprehension over what he could have in mind. She had always been uninhibited, but Steven was turning her into his special breed of daredevil. I had flown down, rehearsing in my head a careful speech that would keep Odell from sharing my bed, but our host had just dropped a big hint that he had group sports in mind….
Late. Post-pizza. Post-Tequila, Scotch, gin, vodka and a case of the inexhaustible Drambuie supply Steven was still working on from the catered party. All of us drunk, only two of us—the professional singers, Erica and Steven—able to hold a note in this state, Odell and I butchering the Santana and Rob Thomas hit on the stereo: And it’s just like the ocean under the moon, well, it’s the same as the emotion that I get from you…
Steven declared this our “Wretched Excess Weekend.” With a burst of energy like a kid off his Ritalin, he led us into the pantry. He tossed a big jar of olives like a football to a wide-eyed Odell, a tin of caviar to Erica and a spray can of whipped cream to me. From a cabinet, he brought out a serving tray like a cheese platter of drugs du jour—mushrooms, pot, ’ludes, Ecstasy. Erica set the tone for all of us. “We don’t really need that, honey,” she suggested. “Just light us a couple of joints. Let’s keep it soft.”
It was Odell who scooped up a handful of drugs and stuffed them in his pocket, muttering if not now, later. He pissed me off doing that. “What? You hit a buffet and you stuff rolls and lamb chops down your pants, too?”
“Oh, chill out, Michelle,” he whispered as Steven and Erica danced to the music. “You know our boy gets choice stuff. If you two don’t want to party, fine, but I got other friends, you know.”
I shook my head in disbelief. It never ceased to amaze me how when you get into the circles of the famous or the so-called elite, people could behave out of raw, shameless Id. They acted like they walked out of a cartoon. I got other friends, he said. Translation: And won’t they be impressed when I bring them Steven Swann’s dope. I wanted to tell him: Look, you’ve made it. You’re the head dancer on his tour. And now you’re not content with name-dropping, you need to offer drug samples? He put a couple of things back to mollify me and kissed me on the cheek. I gave him a noncommittal rub on his shoulder.
With the way he behaved, I was surprised he hadn’t hit on Erica yet. “Oh, he has,” she told me when I asked her. It was a while back and he was so obvious, she’d have nothing to do with him. But he’d left her alone after his single attempt, which also baffled me.
“Mish, there’s nothing I can do for his career that Steven hasn’t done for him already, so I’m not useful to him. If a guy wants sex, he’ll stick it anywhere he can.”
“Oh, thank you very much,” I said.
“Oh, sweetie, don’t be like that. Didn’t we both have guys who treated us like that in school? And I can see the boy’s just a stopgap for you, too. It’s so obvious there’s no heat between you.”
Yes, she and Steven had invited Odell, but she claimed it was Steven’s idea, and she couldn’t find a way to cut his good friend out. Guys don’t always pick up on these things as well as women, she said.
“Okay, we’re fed, we’re watered!” Steven was shouting now, holding up a bottle of Tequila. “To the armoury!”
To the what? We followed him into a room of dark wood panelling and display cases. It gave the three of us a sobering jolt. Guns. Lots and lots of guns. Our host was the all-American boy all right.
“These are my babies,” he declared, setting the Tequila bottle down on a small end table. He casually opened the door to one of the cases, and Erica and I traded looks. Shit, shouldn’t he keep these things locked up?
“We got the whole Wal-Mart collection in here,” said Steven, his words only a bit slurred. “Plus, check this out, check this out! These are Iraqi issue—confiscated in the war, man. Plus the best street shit converted to full automatic. And look at this, a plastic M16 gun, only the barrel is metal. They got agents that use this!”
The pop star who wanted to play spy. He was waving the things around, scaring the shit out of us, Odell saying in a voice that got higher and higher, more insistent: “Steve…Steve. Steve.”
Steven, oblivious: “I got Civil War rifles around here someplace.”
“Put the fucking gun down, will ya, man?”
And Steven replied, “Will you relax, Odell? You guys want me to show you my place, I’ll show you my place. Jesus, I’d expect this from the girls, but you’re a guy for fuck’s sake—”
Which was a telling comment, I think.
I watched Erica. She was as rattled as the rest of us but trying to sound calm because she thought this would get through to him. “Please, Stevie, you’re making everyone nervous, babe.”
“Sorry! Sorry, sorry, sorry.” And he placed the weapon back on its display rack.
“Thank you,” snapped Odell.
“Okay, it’s over,” I cautioned him. “Let’s just get out of this room and have another drink.”
“I’m fine, I’m cool,” he assured me, his voice still betraying his adrenaline.
We went back into the living room and all had another couple of shots. I felt the lift again, a silly weightless freedom.
“Here, different toys,” said Steven, and he picked up these white balls we hadn’t noticed before and began juggling with them.
“What are those?” I asked.
But he was giggling away, running into the second lounge back near the kitchen. Odell made a smartass crack that just our luck, they’d be grenades, but Erica and I obediently followed our host. We asked again, what are those things? Steven had that laugh you get because you find your own joke hysterical first.
In a Vegas lounge lizard voice, he announced, “These are luuuuuv eggs!”
And in mid-juggle, he tossed one to me, one to Erica. They were indeed eggs, small plastic ones.
“What are you supposed to do with those, man?” asked Odell.
Once again, the maturity level dropped another ten points to primary school age. Steven’s eyes flicked from Erica to me, and the three of us burst out laughing. Steven pulled out a remote. Erica gave a mild shriek and then laughed again as the egg in her palm vibrated.
“You’ve heard of immobilisers, well, this thing mobilises!” said Steven.
The four of us were really gone now, that giddy I-drink-because-I-think-I’m-thirsty, feelin’-no-pain drunken state. Everybody was talking at once, everybody talking over each other. And Erica, with a coy mischievous glance from me to Odell, unbuttoned her trousers and shrugged them off, ditching her panties as well. There she was with her well-endowed backside and her pussy fur on display, and Odell was gasping, “I don’t believe this shit.” We all watched as she deftly inserted the egg into her vagina. Steven, his eyes coy as well, hit the button. Another squeal from Erica.
“Gimme that thing,” she said, pretending to reach for the remote. “I don’t need you guys anymore!”
All of us were laughing hysterically. And Erica pretended to walk with great difficulty into the living room, asking what’s the range of this thing? Fifty feet, said Steven chasing after her, two triple-A batteries of heaven. Kissing and nuzzling her, stripping the rest of her clothes off as she collapsed onto a scoop-like chair, a mod design with a decorated buffalo-hide cover. You have got to try this, Mish, it is something. Steven tossed the other remote to Odell, but I caught it before he did, trying to make it look like I was teasing. Oh, no, you don’t. And, no, I didn’t. I didn’t want him having that control.
Still hovering in the kitchen as our host and hostess got it on. He tried to kiss me, and I brushed cheeks with him and pointed. There was Steven, stripping off now and on top of Erica. Odell and I both hypnotised but for different reasons, my date for the weekend scarcely believing that Steven would take her right there in front of us. Odell calling out: We having a dogging party here or what? And Steven muttered something about guess so, man, “Wretched Excess Weekend! Whooo-hoooo!” and I saw the star unbutton his Calvin Kleins,
his white cock impressively thick and flush with blood as Erica lay under him, that lovely layer of baby fat around her belly, bringing her knees up with not an ounce of shame. Steven was rubbing himself against her, the tip of his penis running over her clit, timing his amateur electroshock therapy with his strokes. “Mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm—”
He looked over at me with mild astonishment, and I didn’t understand this until I felt the slightest pressure of Odell’s dick against my pussy lips. I was barely conscious that he had opened my blouse. I didn’t recall him unzipping my skirt. My small tits were hanging down, swaying slightly as Odell filled me up from behind, and he was so big he couldn’t get himself all the way in. I was gripping the edge of the counter top already, and I felt pleasure and a twinge of discomfort over his girth. Steven still watching me, hungry over me, and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed him seeing me naked. Odell was nothing, my “beard” who didn’t have a clue, but Steven…This was a change, feeling turned on by a man’s attention. It had been a while. And beyond Steven’s wolf eyes, beyond whatever Odell could do for me was the stimulation of my girl on that buffalo-hide scoop chair. My beautiful love was in her glory, head rolling like a doll’s as the alcohol and the pot lifted her. She didn’t notice us until Steven whispered she should look.
“Fuck, Michelle,” she said, her words slurring, “it’s like a goddamn tree trunk, girl!” And she cackled away, sheer delight at being vulgar. This was Erica. Politically brave and brilliant, caring and generous, with a mouth sometimes like a sailor. “Make ’im bigger, hon.”
None of her attention on me, just on Odell, ramming himself faster and faster inside me to show off while her eyes grew wider, and I looked over my shoulder to see why. I don’t think it was so much that throbbing brown pole, and I admit I’m biased because the sight of it didn’t interest me much, but she liked the pattern of his abs glowing and perfectly defined, the way the sweat rolled down his chest in a cascade of a single line like a tiny waterfall. He was pulling out of me, wanting to turn me around and set me on the counter. Make ’im bigger, hon. And I decided to give my girl a thrill.
Soul Siren Page 13
