“Billi! When are you going to grow up!”
“Billi,” she chided, gracefully running her hands up her sides, admiring her cleavage, then looking at her former girlfriend. “When are you going to grow up?”
“Jonathan? Tell him, would you?”
“Tell him!” Blair roared. “Tell him! No, Chris! Now it’s tell her!” She pulled the halter down, exposing her perfect, upturned breasts, hidden only by a yellow, translucent bra. Spotswood froze. He’d seen those breasts before. Many times. They belonged to Cassie, his former…
“Billi, you’re insane!” Christie cried.
“I know I’m insane!” she screamed back. “Why the fuck do you think I did this!” She undid the knot of her blouse, turning to face Spotswood. “Don’t you just love `em, Jip?”
“Jonathan, tell her.”
“Yeah, Jip, tell her,” Blair repeated, pausing to look at each of the three individually. “Tell me how fucking crazy I am, just like all of Christie’s friends do. She tells them all to think I’m a freak. She told Mick to think that and she told Dave to think that and she told Andy to think that, and now she wants you to think that.”
“I, uh, uh… ”
“Do you think it was easy for me to get up on that stage last night, Jip, in front of four billion of the human beings on the whole fucking earth? In a fucking miniskirt? Do you think you could have handled that? You think you would have had the balls to do it?”
“I, I… ”
“Spit it out,” Blair ordered, then smiled, glancing at Christie and snapping her head. “Christie has.”
“You need help, Billi,” she said.
“Ohhhhhh,” Blair cooed, continuing to look at her accuser. “Little change of mind, huh, Chris? What’s that cute little French phrase you like to say? What is true under the lamp light is not always true under the sunlight?”
“Billi, don’t.”
“Afraid your Pure as a mountain spring reputation might lose some of its luster?”
“Billi, don’t. You’re just trying to hurt me. Please, don’t.”
“Hurt! You don’t know the meaning of the word!”
“I know plenty about it!”
“What do you know about it? What do any of you know about it!” No one replied. She settled on Spotswood, taking a breath then walking to just a few feet from where he was standing. “You seem like an objective observer, Jip. Why don’t you decide?”
“I’m, I’m sorry, Billi,” he stumbled, unable make any sense out of what she was talking about. “I’m just not up for it.”
“Want me to get you up for it?” she grinned, taking a step closer, her right hand shaking as if to banish a cramp. “This hand’s done a lot since I was ten years old.”
“Leave him alone, Billi,” Christie ordered.
Blair turned to face her, her hand rising slowly into a point, the same one she used on stage. “You started this, Chris. Now let me finish.” She returned her gaze to Spotswood, hand dropping to her side. Spotswood stared. She was one of the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Of course, St. Honore started out with a some great material before the scalpels came out. Billy Blair was one of the most beautiful men he’d ever seen. And Christie, he believed, from the first time he saw them together, resented that fact. What did Blair mean when she’d said that she started this? Why was it that Christie kept changing her stories, changing her moods, changing from the Christie he used to know into a model he’d just met.
Blair’s hand began to rise slowly from her side, finally coming to rest on Spotswood’s shoulder. Here she was, the woman who was, at least this day, the most talked about woman on earth. What were there? Seven or eight billion people, half of them women? And here she was, right in front of him, enhancements and all. If he raised his hand, he could touch them. The most talked about breasts in the world, just a motion away. What were there? Seven or eight billion in the world, and these were the most famous.
He stared into her eyes. Practically all the bright blue was eclipsed with pupil, the diameter of the circle being too wide for the bright room. It was drugs, or insanity, or both gazing back at him. But whatever it was, it was gorgeous. St. Honore knew how to build ‘em.
“Do you think I’m crazy, Jip?”
“I’m, I’m really not up… up for it, Billi.”
“That wasn’t always the case now, was it? So do you think I’m crazy, Jip?” she asked again, the tip of her tongue tapping her canines a few times, her fingers methodically pressing down on the tense muscles of his shoulder.
“Billi, please,” Christie said. “Leave… ”
“Shut up, bitch,” she warned, not shifting her gaze; not even blinking. “Let me get a response out of our friend.” She was used to people watching her. She, at least the night before, was the most watched woman in the world. She was famous that night, more famous than anyone in the world. Spotswood remained in a trance, fascinated with the vision standing in front of him. Fascinated he’d finally found the flaw - a small twitch, an insignificant tick of her left eye.
“Do you hear the voice? Do you hear it, Jip?” she smiled, the rubbing harder and slower.
“No, Billi, I don’t.”
“It is as clear as a fucking bell,” she continued, raising her other hand to the opposite shoulder, massaging it in unison with the first.
“I just can’t hear it.”
“Do you believe I hear it?”
Spotswood thought a moment. “Yes, I believe you hear it,” he replied, hoping it would end the interrogation.
“Do you know what the voice just told me, Jip?”
“No, I don’t.”
“It just told me what to wear this afternoon, when I go up to Claude’s, when we watch the tournament in his suite. Do you believe me, Jip?”
He thought back to the comment Stonetree had made about Bernardini coming to Las Vegas in search of people hearing voices. “Yes.”
“It’s very, very sexy. Claude bought it for me, whatever it is.”
“Whatever it is what?”
“Whatever it is he bought me. I’ve never seen it, but the voice told me it was very sexy, that Claude wanted me to wear it. You understand, don’t you?”
All he understood was that she was out of her mind. “Do you know what color it is?”
“How could I know what color it is if I’ve never seen it?”
“Perhaps the voice told you,” Spotswood continued, that of a concerned teacher addressing a prize pupil, his hand gently reaching to the halter top and pulling it up a bit. Knotting it.
“No,” Blair smiled. “The voice just told me it would be there, in my room, for me to wear for Claude this afternoon.”
“And you’ve never seen it but you know it’s there because the voice told you?”
“Of course!” Blair laughed. “How else would I know it’s there, if I’m here?”
That at least made a little sense, Spotswood thought.
“Billi,” he finally said, motioning toward the couches. “How about you sit down with me and talk about the voices? I’d be very interested to know more about them because I know somebody who’s maybe got a line on them.”
***
Polata and Bernardini sat down beside each other in the Master Control glass cubicle after the engineer manually locked the door, checking it twice. Then as an additional measure, Polata clicked a few switches then working a slider, began changing the panels from crystal clear to light grey, then blue, then silver - finally settling on an almost charcoal black the two could easily see through but which from the outside blocked any witnessing.
“Please excuse my rudeness,” Bernardini smiled, “but might I ask how much it would cost to have something similar installed in my private office?”
“Seven.”
“Seven what?”
“Seven figures.” Polata paused to let it sink in. “Speaking of expensive material, could you hand me the magic thread? Maybe we can coax some information out of it.”
&n
bsp; ***
In less than five minutes, Spotswood had no doubts that Blair was in fact hearing voices, and that for some reason the voices weren’t being fabricated via mental illness but instead being sometimes received as errant AM radio transmissions from a faraway station might be on a frigid night in the dead of winter. Excusing himself, he made his way to one of the pair of opulent powder rooms, locked the door, activated his transphone and dialed in to Security.
“This is the Bracket,” Leslie answered. “How can we help you today, Mr. Spotswood?”
“Hi, Les. I was wondering if… ”
“Before we take care of your wondering issues, please accept my congrats on the job you did last night, the concert broadcast. Absolutely spectacular.”
“Thank you.”
“So tell me what you were wondering about.”
“I was wondering if you could tell me if a Mr. Charles Bernardini is on the property, and if he is, where I could find him.”
“I probably could, but I’d need… the Director would have to give me the okay… and he’s not currently taking calls.”
“This is really, really im… urgent.”
“Is it a potential emergency or physical threat?” She paused. “Just say Yes.”
“Yes.”
“Hang on a sec.”
***
Spotswood and Denny were about to leave when there was a loud knock at the door. Christie asked who it was and a Pakistani voice answered he was a porter delivering the case of deodorant somebody ordered. She unlocked the door. Stanton stepped in and closed it quickly.
“What’s shakin’, guys?” he asked. “Billi here?”
“Yeah,” Christie responded. “What’s up?”
“Anybody else here?”
“Mick?” Christie said, gesturing about. “You got a gig with the census bureau now?”
“Anybody else?” he asked again, a concerned look on his face.
“No. Something wrong?”
Stanton turned back to the door, locked it at the knob and then with the clasp above it. “Might have a little problem,” he replied, fooling with the third security device at eye level.
“What’s wrong?” Spotswood asked.
“Might be nothing,” the drummer replied. “You sure nobody else is here?”
“Mick,” Christie sighed.
“Right,” Stanton replied. “Just might be a slight misunderstanding.”
“Mick!”
“Right,” he said again, stepping to peek into the living room, then easing back. “Dave called me a couple minutes ago. Downstairs. From Eric’s room.”
“And?”
“And Eric and Joey Clams and Cart and Stevie are down there.”
“So what?”
“So they’re playing Standoff! and doing a shitload of dariole and Stevie’s getting pretty far out on the wire.”
“So what else is new?”
“What’s new is that, well, I guess it’s not new, but Stevie’s takin’ a lot of shit about that little scene last night with Billi and he’s packing.”
“Packing?” Spotswood asked. “Like a gun?”
“Right. And I don’t want to see any of that stuff that went down in Galveston.”
The Galveston story was a big one, probably Santagomez’s biggest: the one he’d never forget or never remember. It started early one morning at a club in the city, a club which Choke - The Cobras once called home. Santagomez and the band showed up to catch the newest rising stars in the city, Panzer Division, around the time that everyone knew Choke and his snakes were old news. The former big things decided they wanted to do an impromptu set for the audience but the crowd, the Panzers and the manager of the club wanted nothing of them. There were words, then heckling, then a scuffle. Santagomez and his posse were tossed out, the guitarist collecting a fat lip from a female bouncer who held a fifth degree in karate. The next morning, she was found dead in an alley near her apartment, shot twice in the face with a high caliber handgun.
No witnesses came forward saying they saw the shooting, though some heard it. The weapon was never found, although a subsequent search of Santagomez’s house turned up a box of .357 magnum shells, six of them missing. Also found was a large amount of dariole and a bloody towel. He was charged with the murder, but the indictment was later dropped when the judge ruled all of the evidence seized in the search was taken with a defective warrant. A week later, the guitarist was badly beaten by the brother of the bouncer then a week after Santagomez was released from the hospital, the brother disappeared, never to be seen again.
“And he ain’t saying real nice things about you, either,” Stanton added to Christie.
“What’s Dave doing down there?”
“Leaving.”
“What should I do, Jonathan?”
“Get Billi out of here, for one.”
“I think he’s right, Chris,” Stanton added. “Maybe call Security and send them to Eric’s room.” He paused. “Shit, I don’t want to get Eric in trouble, though.”
“Why don’t you go down… ”
“No, Chris. I’ll call, but I ain’t going down there.”
“Christie?” Spotswood said. “How about you explain the situation to Billi then after we run an errand, I’ll take Denny back up to, I mean down to our room, and you can come down there and we can noodle it through.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
“Mick?” Spotswood asked, turning to his friend.
“Thanks, buddy,” Stanton smiled, holding out his hand. “Me and the Mrs. got a graduation party to go to back in Louisville. Plane leaves in an hour. Good seeing you. Stay in touch from now on, huh?”
Spotswood shook it. “I will. Say good-bye to Cammy McStanton for me.”
“Right.” Stanton turned to Christie, hugging her quickly. “Remember. Next Wednesday. Ten sharp.”
“Andy’s or… ”
“Andy’s.”
“I’ll be there,” she replied. And Stanton left.
***
“Richie, as the players take their seats and as we wait for the referee to bring in the board to let these champions get on their way, choose their ten tiles and wait for the bell, calling them into the center of the ring...”
“A one hundred million dollar first prize, winner-take-all ring, Phil.”
“… I know you’ve been waiting for a spot where you could give us, oh, maybe a fashion review of some kind about how these players look today. Something changed between yesterday afternoon and this afternoon, something which, if it’s any indication, is going to make yesterday’s rounds look like a walk in the park on a Sunday afternoon.”
“Well, it is a Sunday afternoon out here in the desert… ”
“... at this luxurious, extraordinary facility, Prism, owned and operated by the man who brought this game to the world, who has become a part of the world psyche, Franklin Potcheck. And if you want to talk about a show, folks, I hope you all got to see the opening of Oasis, the magnificent showroom here at the hotel, and that historic concert featuring the Battle of the Bands between CCBBA and Pandora’s Obsession. And let me remind all of our viewers that due to an overwhelming response to that broadcast, and I want to tell you the lines are still jammed with folks asking when they’ll be able to see a repeat of that concert...”
“Phil? They’ve got this special district in Amsterdam where you can go and if you’ve got the correct change, you can see or do almost anything you could imagine. I spent a weekend one weekend waiting for a, I don’t remember, some gymnastics meet. But I’ve never seen anything like the results of that stunt performed by the former Billy Blair.”
“Richie, please, just let me finish this thought.”
“And there were some Finnish women there, too. They had just about everything you could imagine, but a man’s got to have his deck shuffled wrong if he’d go off and...”
“Fox, though a special arrangement with our sponsors, will broadcast in its entirety, the phenomenal concert in it
s entirety tonight, yes, that’s tonight, at ten Eastern, nine Central, and ten out on the West Coast. If you were not fortunate enough to see it last night, please, call out for some extra popcorn and get set for a show the likes of which we’ll never, I think, witness again, here, exclusively, on Fox.”
“Well, of course you’re not going to witness it again, Phil. How many guys you figure want to take a couple weeks off to have someone chop off the old...”
“We’re going to cut away for just a moment, but we’ll be right back to cover the final round of the winner-take-all, one hundred million dollar Standoff! World Tournament, here, exclusively, on Fox.”
“But… ”
“Please stay tuned.”
***
Denny watched from Master Control’s entrance as Spotswood approached the silver enclosure where he’d been instructed by Polata to meet. After rapping twice on the door, it opened with a click. “This better be important,” the proprietor said as his guest stepped in.
“Chuck?” he began. “David mentioned to me... this was yesterday when I was talking to him… he said that you’d told him something about coming out here that had to do with people hearing voices. Is that right?”
Bernardini cleared his throat but said nothing.
“We’re busy, Jip,” Polata put in.
“Let him finish,” Bernardini said. “Why do you ask?”
“Because I’ve… I know somebody who’s hearing ’em and I need some help calming her down.”
“Her who?” the engineer asked.
“Billi.”
The man just shook his head.
“Tell me everything you know,” Bernardini ordered.
When Spotswood finished his report, Polata and Bernardini exchanged knowing glances. Polata motioned for him to take a seat then raised the volume on the screen showing the Tournament coverage.
***
“Richie. Here we are. The bottom of the ninth, the final minutes of
the last quarter, the tenth frame. Game, set, match.”
“I’m sure glad I’m up here and not down there. What a pressure
Weekend at Prism Page 32
