Private Screening
Page 9
Lord felt a kind of sadness; the day seemed so long that cross-examining Parnell must have happened the day before. Which day, he tried remembering, had he last made love to Marcia?
Perhaps that would help things.
The next morning would be filled, he recalled, by Danziger. Watching Christopher’s dreamless face, for the first time Lord let himself think about giving it up.
“Tomorrow,” he promised his son. “I’ll spend time with you tomorrow.”
He went to find Marcia.
As they left, Alexis hugged Stacy. “We’ll watch for you on television.”
Stacy kissed her. “We’ll be back. Really.”
Alexis looked pleased. “I hope so.”
From behind her, Parnell nodded, then said, “We’d better let them go, Alexis.”
Jamie shook his hand, then began walking Stacy toward the limousine. When she turned to wave, Alexis was halfway down the steps.
The limousine was ringed by shadows, reporters, and Secret Service. Another shadow stepped from the darkness—Nat Schlesinger. Jamie bent close to him. “Put someone in touch with whoever that judge is,” he said quietly. “I don’t want problems from this.”
“Senator!”
Jamie’s head snapped up. “We’re running late,” he called. As he and Stacy hurried to the limousine, Nat opened the door.
Stacy slid in. A lone man caught Jamie. “Just one, Senator. Do you think your opponent’s slip on nuclear weapons is like Romney’s admission that he was ‘brainwashed’ on Vietnam?”
Jamie turned. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said carelessly. “In this case, I think a light rinsing would be sufficient.”
The reporter laughed. Hastily, Nat stepped in. “Jamie’s tired—for God sakes, don’t print that.”
Smiling, the reporter turned to Jamie. “You owe me.”
“Always.”
Jamie got in the car.
Nat closed the door behind him. Jamie propped his elbow against it, staring out. As they pulled from the driveway, Stacy saw Alexis waving in the faint glow of a porch light. Arm around her shoulder, Parnell looked not at the limousine, but at his wife.
“Well,” Jamie said. “That’s done.”
Stacy gazed past him. “She looks so fragile. Like a butterfly in a box.”
“Does she?” He glanced at his watch.
Stacy felt her stomach tightening. “Don’t worry,” she said. “John’s on top of it.”
They passed from streetlight to streetlight, accenting the hollows of his face. “God save me,” he murmured, “from frustrated, ambitious men.”
“John?”
“This man Lord.” Jamie kept watching the dark. “Norman Mailer once told me that everyone thinks they can write. The truth is that everyone thinks they should be president. But what does someone like that lawyer know about living in the media?”
“It could have been worse, Jamie. At least he was quiet.”
“You heard it, didn’t you?”
“It doesn’t matter.” She breathed in. “The thing that bothered me was Chinatown.”
He lapsed into silence. When he spoke again, it was in the tone of a man remembering something he once had heard. “The definition of a fanatic,” he said to the window, “is someone who goes on when he can’t remember why.”
Fretting with her bangs, Stacy let this pass. It was 9:15; she was late.
“What did Romney say about Vietnam?” she finally asked.
“That he’d been brainwashed into supporting the war.” Facing her, Jamie’s eyes glinted. “It was probably the most honest thing he said. Nixon killed him with it.”
Stacy tried to picture the concert. “There’s a guy on the crew,” she said at length. “John doesn’t say much about it, but he thinks Vietnam fucked him up.”
“He’s probably right.” Jamie’s gaze returned to the window. “I’ve met with some veterans. But they’re not organized enough to have any impact. What can I do if nobody gives a damn?” He stared moodily into the darkness, his question foreclosing all others.
Stacy turned from him.
In her mind, she could ear them yelling “Sta-cee.” But she saw no image of stepping through the curtain; it still bothered her that she could not write the song.
12
BEHIND the curtain, Carson felt like a pair of ears and eyeballs.
On the other side Secret Service ringed the stage; feet stomped the concrete floor; fans snaked to the toilets for a last snort of coke; deejays and distributors clustered by the ramps. Carson heard and saw them on his nerve ends.
“Sta-cee.…”
The luminous dial of his wristwatch read 9:25.
It was 12:25 in Columbia; Cathy was sleeping.
“Sta-cee.…”
Daylight.
A suicide mission so golden boy can look good. Damone isn’t there; in the sun he and Capwell won’t pass for Vietnamese; they’ve napalmed the trees so there’s no cover now.
“Sta-cee.…”
Leeches stick to his feet.
“She’s giving me good vi-brations.…”
They’ve changed the tape.
The sonofabitch is listening to his Beach Boys albums.
“Sta-cee.…”
Fucking parasite; thank God she was sleeping.
“She’s giving me ex-ci-tations.…”
Capwell’s blood on his hands. Palsied fingers.
“Sta-cee.…”
Fumblingly, Carson opened the journal and read the poem he had finished:
Feeding the camera
Hair golden, spirit dead
Time circles back to you
A bullet through the head.
Hands trembling, he put a bullet in the Mauser.
The limousine stopped at the rear of the Arena.
The loading dock seemed pale yellow, dim light coming from inside. The Secret Service men waited. When one of them opened the door, Stacy heard the cry echo from above.
“Sta-cee.…”
Jamie stepped with her up the ramp, into the bowels of the Arena. In a cocoon of Secret Service they waited for the freight elevator. Metal boxes were stacked crookedly around them; Stacy saw a motorcycle by the catwalk.
“Sta-cee.…”
They crowded into the iron cage. As it groaned upward, past two levels of cement walls and catwalk, their call for her grew louder. She noticed Jamie’s faint, ironic smile.
The elevator lurched, stopping at one side of the darkened stage. Their sound came through the curtains.
She was not ready.
Curtis waited with a flashlight. Waving them forward, he shined it at their feet. “Band’s in the tuning room,” he murmured.
“Sta-cee.…”
They followed the beam of light. At its edge, she noticed a form slumped beneath the telephone. Was somebody else sick, she wondered, but had no time to ask. As they reached the dressing rooms a door closed behind them, muffling the sound.
In the tuning room, Greg Loughery, her bass guitarist, was squinting at his instrument. The keyboard player, Leon Brennis, grinned at them. “I was getting ready to stand in for the senator,” he told her. “John’s in your dressing room.”
Jamie shook his hand; Stacy thought he had the bemused air of a grown-up playing with kids. She hurried to the next room.
“Sta-cee.…”
She closed the door behind her.
Damone turned from the mirror. “Trying to remember how I looked without a beard,” he said dryly. “How’re you feeling?”
“I can feel them in my stomach.”
“At least they’re out there.” His smile was teasing. “Remember that club you played in Oakland?”
“Sure.”
“You’ve put more than years between then and now.” He pointed to the adjoining bathroom; a blue silk blouse hung from the door. “I figured no tank top tonight. So I ran the shower till the wrinkles steamed out.”
For all of his sardonic toughness, Stacy thought, the almost femin
ine sensitivity was more remarkable. “What would I do without you, John?”
“Your own blouses.” Walking over, he touched two fingers to her face. “Do good, Stacy.”
As the door closed, she saw that he had opened her suitcase and makeup kit and placed them on her dressing table.
She’d be all right—she wouldn’t think about it.
Hastily, she undressed; standing naked in front of the mirror, she wondered if she looked too thin. She felt the crowd on her skin now, their vibration through the floor and walls, like the tremor of a distant earthquake.
“Sta-cee.…”
She could hear it again, faint but clear. She forced herself to sit. Carefully, ritualistically, she touched her lips with Vaseline so that they glistened and then traced the outline of both eyes with kohl, until the young boy she imagined sitting in the most distant row could see them.
“Sta-cee.…”
Standing, she slid her jeans on. They were tight; the blouse was satin cool on her skin. She had the taut, explosive feeling of facing a new lover.
Opening the door, she beckoned to Jamie.
He looked tired. “What’s up?”
“Forgot to tell you which song’s your cue. Do you know ‘Love Me Now’?”
“Uh-huh.” For the first time in hours, he grinned at her. “It’s time for a confession—I’ve got the tape. See, I really did like your concert.”
She kissed him.
“‘Miles to go,’” he murmured, “‘before we sleep.’”
Turning to the band, Stacy said, “Let’s do it.” They ambled toward the stage.
Stacy turned in the door of the tuning room, quickly smiling at him. Then she was moving back down the corridor, between the guards who lined each wall.
“Sta-cee.…”
The stage was dark. Seeing her, Jesus pulled some light switches on the wall.
On the other side of the curtain there was a hush, as if the crowd had swallowed its own sound.
Curtis appeared with the flashlight. Single file, the band moved ahead of her to the platforms for their keyboard, drums, the two guitars. They stood behind their instruments like figures in a wax museum.
“Okay,” Curtis whispered.
Stacy noticed the same slumped figure standing, as if she had awakened him. Then Curtis was leading her forward, flashlight moving across the wires and wooden floor to the curtain, until she stood behind it. Handing her the microphone, he whispered again, “Good luck.”
She heard his footsteps retreating across the stage. Then the only sound came from the other side of the curtain, low and expectant and immense.
Together, Stacy thought, they might make a president.
She closed her eyes, breathing in. For a moment, familiar yet more frightening, she wished she did not do this. Then she burst onto the stage.
Spotlights cut into her eyes. She froze, stunned and almost blinded, engulfed in their animal roar. Arms raised like pistons from the crowd; mouths screamed for her; streams of colored light darted through the smoke and haze and black, intersecting in split-second rainbows, then flashing to the far corners of the arena where more people stood, caught in their beam. It was dark and vast. The crowd on the floor, oozing and colloidal, stretched until she could not see it; a two-tiered oval of seats surrounded her, more people standing, shouting, screaming so the rafters echoed. Projecting downward, suspended above the crowd on a four-sided screen, was the giant image of her face. Her lips glistened; her eyes were large and round. Stacy saw that she was smiling.
“Sta-cee.…”
The curtain split behind her.
The stage was a sudden blaze of light. The band tore into the metallic opening snarl of “Equal Nights”; the crowd screamed its recognition; Stacy sucked air deep into her lungs.
She began singing:
“I’ll take freedom
You take my nights
Long as you can face me
When I turn out the lights.…”
The answering cry, frenzied and primal, drew her to the front, whipping the cord of the microphone as hands reached out for her. She felt the power of the music in her lungs, felt it course through the sound system and echo back to her until she was part of it, changing her nervousness to a surge of crazy energy she loved them for. As if drawn by some magnet, she began to stalk back and forth across the stage. It vibrated with the crowd and amplifiers, like a current running through her. At the corner of her vision, she saw the TV cameras, Jamie’s cameras, following her as she moved. High above the outstretched hands, her four-sided image moved with her. Her song cut the dark like a laser.
She stopped moving.
Utterly still, voice now pure and high and solitary, she slid into the plaintive beginning of “Reruns at Midnight.”
“Slivers of fantasy
On childhood’s screen
Scared for believing
What I’ve already seen.…”
The crowd was hushed.
She felt close to them now; their faces, upturned and silent, watched hers. Her eyes shut.
In the song, a city-worn woman watches television with a man who once had left her. It is night; the screen is silver; the man asks to be her lover again. She does not trust him, or wish to be alone. At last, as a romantic TV series from her childhood flickers on the television, she gives in to promises she’s heard before. Stacy could see and feel it.
She finished.
In their silence, caught like a breath, she eased into the opening of “Love Me Right.” Her eyes were still closed.
The only instrument was the keyboard, a soft, hesitant few notes. Slowly, in the crystalline voice of a girl, Stacy began:
“Darling, love me, if you can
I can’t wait, can you understand
Ash is the fire of yesterdays
You’ve got to play me as it lays.…”
The band broke loose.
There was a trip-hammer drumbeat; then Stacy’s voice took off with the pounding rhythm of both guitars:
“Learn that the fire
Lives through lovers
Before the fire
Turns to dust.
Don’t make the fire
Give me others.
We’ll make the fire
Burn for us.…”
They screamed for her.
Now they were undulating, needful, pushing toward the stage. Stacy paced, wheeling, shouting into their faces, then imploring them closer, barely conscious of being just beyond their reach. The crowd was clapping, dancing, transported. From the rear, it thrust a dark young man on its shoulders, ever closer to the stage, as if as a sacrifice to Stacy. The fetor of sweat and dope and bodies mingled; the arena smelled like sex.
“Learn that the fire
Lives through lovers.…
We’ll make the fire
Burn for us.…”
Her blouse was soaked through. The dark-haired boy was thrown shoulder to shoulder, reaching toward her, crying out until she heard him, “Fuck me, Stacy.…”
Stacy grinned at him.
He threw up his arms, laughing and ecstatic, and fell into the crowd. Waving, jumping, screaming, they seemed to pass beyond control. For a moment Stacy wanted to be part of them.
Then, as suddenly as the muted opening had become a shouted cry for love, her voice fell. Only the keyboard stayed with her. In a smoky, soft near-whisper, she finished:
“You know the fire
Lives through lovers.
This night the fire
Burns in us.”
There was silence, a hush. They were hers.
“Sta-cee.…” A lone voice, calling from the rafters. Stacy shaded her eyes. “Hi,” she said.
Laughter, then cheers.
“Sta-cee.…” More voices shouting now, until they came together.
“Sta-cee-e-e.…”
She stood, still and alone, the focus of their energies. Her heart pounded. Behind her, Damone darkened the stage.
&nbs
p; In the circle of light, she held up one hand.
“Kilcannon,” she said softly.
There were scattered murmurs of his name.
“Kilcannon,” she repeated.
They picked up the cry. “Kilcannon.…”
Her voice grew louder, more insistent. “Kilcannon.”
“Kill-cannon.…”
Stacy looked up at the screen. On the stage behind her, walking from a cluster of bodyguards, was Jamie.
“Kill-cannon.…”
Jamie moved forward. Their cry rose to greet him.
“Kill-cannon.…”
As Jamie reached her side, she raised her hand again. In a soft, clear voice, she said, “United States Senator James Kilcannon.”
Their fingers touched.
From the curtain’s shadow, Carson watched them.
With a dazzling smile, Stacy turned to Kilcannon. They stood in an intersection of two spotlights, as if suspended above the dark. The crowd blessed them with its cheers.
Carson’s hand tremored.
The bodyguards could not see him; he could not see Damone.
“Kill-can-non.…”
As Kilcannon stepped forward, Carson closed his eyes. In her bed, in a house that he would never see, Cathy was sleeping. The stage shook beneath his feet.
“Kill-can-non.…”
On the other side, Carson heard the whine of a cameraman filming.
“Kill-can-non.…”
There was blood on his hands; the camera kept whining. Over and over, they repeated it, banks of sound rolling over him, echoing, merging into each other: “Kill-cannon.… Kill-cannon.… Kill-cannon.…”
Carson’s eyes opened.
Kilcannon raised his head, smiling as they called for him. His hair seemed golden.
Stacy stepped aside, giving him the crowd. Beneath their roar, Carson heard more cameras.
“Kill-cannon.…”
He took one step forward, the Mauser slack at his side.
The cheers became a shriek.
He did not hear them; his eyes fixed on the target, twenty feet away. Like an automaton, he moved forward to complete his mission.
One clear shot.
Fifteen feet now. The escape route opened in his mind: thirty seconds down the catwalk to the motorcycle, into the night. He raised the Mauser, bracing his wrist with the other arm.
His target turned, mouth falling open.
Carson froze.