Have Spacecat, Will Travel: And Other Tails

by John G. Hartness

  She sits alone

  watching Pat & Vanna

  and answering all the hard questions on Jeopardy

  as faceless medical terms

  become people for her.

  As she sits alone

  weeping for catastrophic strangers,

  the atheist prays.

  5

  Don’t Stop Believing

  We need to talk. The text message flashed onto my phone’s screen in the middle of “We Will Rock You,” right as the drunken crowd really got into all the stomping and clapping. Good timing, for once, because I just had the back light LEDs flashing in time with the beat, so I only needed one hand to push the bump button controlling that group of lights. I picked up my cell with my right hand, keeping my left on the button tap-tapping away with the claps and stomps of the audience, and tap-tapped a little of my own on the screen.

  Not now. Working. I hit “Send” and focused my attention on the stage. Jared was through the third verse now, and Lily was leaning on the whammy bar as her big solo came up. I hit the bump for the high sidelight and called the followspot in on Lily as she stepped downstage and dropped to one knee right in front of a stunned frat boy who looked like he just won the lottery.

  I didn’t blame him. Lily was smoking hot tonight, not just in her playing but looking good, too. Her black hair was cornrowed back into a ponytail, and a yellow tank top stuck to her dark skin with sweat from where she’d been tearing up rock classics for the past hour. She was long-legged, leather-clad sex in platform shoes, and I knew firsthand that her legs were strong enough to snap that frat boy’s neck if he was lucky enough to get between them. Spoiler alert: he wasn’t.

  I called into the mic for the spot to fade on a three-count as Jared stepped into the beam of light coming from high stage right as the band shifted into “We Are the Champions.” Lily threw me a tiger grin back to my position at front of house, and I blushed a little. At least I thought it was to me. It was just as likely to be for Peter, the sound guy, as it was for me. Damn guitarists. They’re almost as horny as drummers. But nothing on a bass player.

  My phone flashed again, and I dropped the board into a static cue for most of “Champions.” It’s a great song but doesn’t take much on the part of the lighting director. I just set a special in place for Jared to stand in, put some blue lights on the back truss, and keep the rest of the stage dim. A long shift to purple over the course of the song, and I’m covered. I looked at the screen.

  How many more songs? This is important. Of course, it’s important. It’s not like he texts me at ten-thirty on a Saturday night to tell me to pick up milk on the way home. Good thing, since we’re only halfway through a nine-month tour. I think the milk would spoil by then. But what would I know? I don’t drink milk.

  Just finishing Champs, I tapped. Bat out of Hell, Baba, Flash, Satisfaction, then encore DSB. 45, then 2 hrs. for load out. I glanced up to see Jared hold his arm high on the last notes of “Champion,” and I took out everything but the backlight blues as the crowd applauded.

  I looked over at Peter and nodded. He pressed a button on his console and slid a fader up, and the motorcycle roar that signaled the beginning of Meat Loaf’s classic “Bat Out of Hell” roared through the speakers. I slid up four faders on a four-count with my right hand while I pulled two more down on a six-count with my left, switching the lights from a soothing blue to a glaring red. Arik smacked the cymbals as Lily slammed the first chords of the song, then Terrence hit the piano, and we were off to the races.

  Once we hit the first notes of “Bat,” the rest of the set took all my concentration. Dawn, and whatever pain in the ass errand she had for me, would just have to wait. And wait she did, for a hair over three hours, because not only did we go through the whole set list, but the kids in the audience were fired up enough to demand a second encore, which of course Jared gave them. Easy for him to do, since he was going to go take a shower and smoke a bowl while me, Peter, and Carrie led the crew of four locals in tearing down our gear, loading it all into the 24’ rental truck and under the bus before we got to take a break.

  I didn’t mind, though. The guys were on fire, and the crowd was into it. So when Jared stepped up to the mic after the last bow and belted out, “Dayyyyy…after day…” and I knew we were about to dive into a Violent Femmes second encore, I didn’t mind. I just put my fingers back on the faders, popped my neck, and made the lights dance like I do six nights a week for The Spectacular Fantastics, the best party cover band on the east coast. At least that’s what our press packet says, and on nights like this, I’d be hard-pressed to argue with the overpriced PR company Jared paid way too much money to get glossy band photos and a bunch of prewritten tweets.

  But three hours later, when I was drenched with sweat and really, really tired of wiping cheap beer off my lighting cables, I was far less sanguine about that second encore. We slammed the door closed on the truck, and Peter and I finally got our shot at the green room beers and a hot shower. Except I had to take a rain check on the beer and give short shrift to the shower, because I had to call Dawn back.

  I toweled my hair dry, slid into a clean pair of jeans, a tattered Sex Pistols t-shirt, and put on my purple Chuck Taylors on before I picked up the phone. Yup, six messages, all increasing in the level of frantic.

  Sorry, I typed. Load out took longer than expected.

  “You have got to get a better crew,” Dawn said as she walked into the dressing room I shared, in theory, with Lily and Carrie. Carrie was already asleep on the bus, and Lily was somewhere with someone, but Dawn couldn’t have known that.

  “Don’t you ever knock?” I asked. I knew the answer was “no,” but I wanted her to admit it.

  “You’re alone, and even if you weren’t, I’ve seen it all before.”

  “You haven’t seen my all before, and I’d like to keep it that way,” I snapped.

  “No worries, Red,” she said with a predatory grin. “You’re not my type. I don’t date good girls. Now get your bag. We’ve got a problem.”

  I grabbed my duffel from the corner and followed Dawn as she turned and strode out of the room. “I’m not a good girl,” I protested. “How can I be a good girl? I tour with a frickin’ rock and roll band!”

  “You’re a good girl, Kels,” Dawn said over her shoulder. “You know how I know?”

  “How?”

  “Bad girls don’t say ‘frickin’. Now come on, we’ve got a succubus to find.”

  Crap on a cracker. A succubus. They’re smart, and mean if you get between them and their food. And their food is usually an unsuspecting man who they’re trying to have sex with, so they get a little testy about being interrupted, even when you try to explain what’s going on. I started humming to warm up my vocal chords as Dawn led me down the hall behind the stage and out to her waiting car. I yelled at Peter that I had a date and I’d catch up with them before they rolled out in the morning. He gave me a big thumbs up as I went through my mental catalog of songs to think what would help me weave the best spell to destroy a soul-sucking sex demon.

  Oh yeah, that’s my other gig. When I’m not the lighting director for The Spectacular Fantastics, I’m also Kelsey Winter, Songmage.

  “Where are we going?” I asked Dawn as I slid into the passenger seat of her rental. I assumed it was a rental, because I’d never seen it before, but for all I knew, she had a fleet of cars, motorcycles, and SUVs that she rotated through whenever she felt like it. Tonight’s ride was a black Escalade with seats soft as butter and loads of that new car smell. I pushed buttons on the big display in the middle of the dash until I found a classic rock station on satellite radio and settled in, clicking my seat belt around me.

  I noticed Dawn’s sly grin as I nestled the strap between my breasts and glared at her. “Kiss my ass, Dawn. I am not a good girl.”

  “Sure, sunshine, keep telling yourself that.”

  “I just don’t want to listen to the beep if I don’t wear the belt.”


  “Uh-huh.” She didn’t say anything else, just put the Escalade into drive and pulled out onto the deserted streets. I looked over at her as she drove, waiting for her to give me some details on the target. Dawn wasn’t so good with the details, preferring to keep all the important information hidden behind her sparkling green eyes.

  “You going to tell me where we’re going, at least? It’s after two. Where the hell are we going to find a succubus that’s still hunting at this hour? I would think any monster worth her salt would be bedded down with a nice snack by now.”

  She turned to give me a grin, her perfect teeth gleaming in the light of the dash. “Well, there are only a few places left open at this hour. Where do you think a succubus would hang out in the middle of the night?”

  “I don’t know, Dawn, I’m not a sex demon. Since you seem to be the expert on the subject, why don’t you fill me in?”

  “I’ll give you a hint. You won’t need to provide your own songs, but you might be limited to things with a grinding backbeat.”

  I thought for a second, then groaned. “Oh, come on. You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “Nope.”

  “I hate those places.”

  “I know. I also don’t care. It’s where the succubus is.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I stole a police report. There have been three mysterious deaths in the parking lot within the last month. All men, all seemingly in good health for their age, all succumbed to heart attacks.”

  I didn’t ask how she got the police report. Dawn wouldn’t tell me anyway. “I stole it” was as good as it was going to get regardless of how much I pushed. “You know heart disease is the number one leading cause of death in the U.S.” I really, really didn’t want to go to the strip club.

  Dawn really, really didn’t give a single shit. She never did, she just pointed me in the direction of something that needed killing, then swooped in after all the bleeding was done to clean up most of the mess. I owed her, though, so I just played along like a good little guided missile. Even when she guided me into the garish neon-fronted doublewide that made up Ezmerelda’s, apparently the one topless joint in Fayetteville, Arkansas, that stayed open past three in the morning.

  I’ve been to some seedy clubs before. You don’t tour with a cover band without playing some dumps. And it’s not like this was going to be my first strip club, either. There had been more than one bachelor party for a drummer, or bass player, or sound guy during my time on the road. But never in my life had I seen a strip club in a mobile home before. This was something truly special, and not in a good way. The wheels were still on Ezmerelda’s, apparently just waiting for the inevitable crackdown by the police, or the CDC. There were a dozen or so cinderblocks plopped on the ground to make a rickety set of steps, and a blinking pink “OPEN” sign in the window.

  The winner, at least from the outside, was the “Ezmerelda’s” sign. Alternating pink and blue neon, it wasn’t just a simple name sign. Oh no, this was redneck rare gas art at its finest. The capital “E” was blue, with a pair of pink breasts capping each hump of the letter, blinking on and off in pink neon. The apostrophe was the tip of a devil tail that curled up from the “s” at the end of the name and flicked on and off alternately with the e-boobs. It was neither funny, nor titillating, which summed up my prior experience with “gentlemen’s clubs” in just a few words.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” I said, gaping at Dawn.

  “Nope.” She tried, I’ll give her credit for that, but the corner of her mouth just wouldn’t stay level. She was enjoying this all the way down to her black little heart.

  I sighed. “Give me some cash.” I held out my hand.

  “Are you broke?”

  “I’m always broke. You know that. And even if I wasn’t, I’m not paying my own way into Jethro Clampett’s strip club. You want me chasing a demon in the world’s sleepiest sex club, you’re at least buying me enough alcohol to disinfect myself from the inside out.”

  She handed me a folded wad of twenties and parked the SUV at the end of a row of bonds-colored pickups and battered Honda Civics. It didn’t surprise me that there weren’t a whole lot of station wagons and minivans in the gravel lot. It also didn’t surprise me that two of the trucks were rocking side to side as I walked past them to the door.

  I pulled open the flimsy metal door and was assaulted by a wave of overdriven bass cabinets, flashing lights, and cigarette smoke. It was almost enough to make me turn around and bolt back to the safety of Dawn’s Escalade, but I knew I couldn’t do that. No matter how distasteful I found the place, and no matter how much I wanted to strangle the DJ, if there was a demon on the premises, I had to deal with it.

  A giant of a man with a shaved head and skin the color of milk chocolate smiled down at me, one gold tooth gleaming in the disco lights. “Nah, sugar. You way to pretty too come in here. These hillbillies ain’t got enough money to get you naked, the dope is too harsh to get you mellow, and the boys is too ugly and old to get you interested. What you doing at Ezzie’s on a shit night like tonight?”

  I smiled up at him and held out a hand. “I’m just looking for a little excitement. I heard this was the place to find a late-night party. You gonna stand there between me and my good time, sexy, or you gonna help me in the door?” I laid on a Southern accent that wouldn’t have been out of place on an episode of Designing Women, and the giant doorman shook his head at me again, taking my hand.

  “No charge for you, beautiful. You make this whole place look better just walking in the door.”

  I patted him on the cheek and slipped by him into the cramped room, making sure to give my butt a little extra wiggle as I walked over and leaned on the rickety bar. The bartender was a trim man with a sour expression, a brush cut, and a mustache that looked like it belonged on either a broom or a porn star, I couldn’t decide which. “What you want?” he growled at me, not meeting my eyes.

  I cleared my throat. “You can’t even see my boobs through this shirt, jerk. So quit ogling my chest and get me a Bud Light.” I slapped a twenty on the bar, and he made it disappear. He came back a minute later with an opened bottle of cheap American lager and sixteen dollars in change. I picked up three fives and left him a buck. He never took his eyes off my shirt as he slipped the dollar into an empty pitcher sitting on the bar.

  I turned to lean my back on the bar and take stock of the room. It didn’t take long. There wasn’t a whole lot of stock to take, and it certainly wasn’t on the rise. There were maybe a dozen round tables littered across the room, with armless chairs sporting cracked vinyl seats in dark red and green. Two skinny girls who looked like they should be home studying for Algebra danced in front of grinning men who could have been their fathers, or their creepy uncles, more like it.

  One skinny tweaker in a stained white tank top leaned on the edge of the stage, fanning dollar bills onto the stage between the spread legs of a brunette with big boobs, a fluorescent yellow thong, and a disinterested look on her face. If you’d walked up and told me she was doing complex math equations in her head, I would have believed it. That’s how little attention she was paying to the panting meth head between her thighs.

  Nobody in the room looked like they had much in the way of sex magic going on; it was more like they were all going through the motions. They had a part to play, and they went about their roles dutifully, but without much fervor. There was an overall pall to the room that lay over everything, like a wet blanket weighing down the place’s energy.

  I twirled my fingers behind my back, reaching out to the strains of Warrant’s “Cherry Pie” that blared from the cheap sound system. I felt the magic in the music tingle, first in my fingertips, then send a mild electric shock through my whole body. Everything about me tightened as the magic filled me. The hair on my arms stood up, and my nipples perked up against the inside of my sports bra. Not for the first time, I was really glad I have boobs like a twelve-year-old boy. Anythin
g bigger would really be a pain in the ass in my line of work. I wouldn’t wear a bra at all, most days, but when the magic brings the girls to attention, I like to have a modicum of protection from the prying eyes of those around me. I swear, sometimes I think guys have nipple magnets built into their retinas.

  I caught the bass line, clicking my fingernails together in time, then spread my fingers wide as the song hit the bridge. My little identifier spell whizzed around the room, unseen to human eyes, but a bright blue-white glow in my vision. It careened off tables, bounced off walls, skimmed the ceiling, and generally danced around the room like Tinkerbelle on a coke bender until it finally came to rest in a far corner of the room, hovering over a couple that had been hidden by shadow until my mystical beacon stopped in midair over the head of the only hot woman in the room, who was performing a very close lap dance on a man who looked like he was about to either come or go blind, or both.

  She was stunning, easily the most beautiful person I’d seen in weeks, and I get all kinds trying to use me to get together with one band member or another. Every once in a while I even get hit on, but it’s not the norm. No, usually they’re trying to get with Lily or Jared, either wanting a taste of Lily’s exotic beauty, or wanting to corrupt Jared’s innocent baby-boy good looks. But this chick was something special. She wasn’t some guitar groupie who just wanted a walk on the wild side, she was an eleven out of ten stunner, and she was blowing the mind of the poor nebbishy bastard currently focusing his entire attention on her boy shorts-clad booty.

  I locked eyes with the succubus, because there was no way in any of the Hells that this woman wasn’t the demon I was hunting, and she gave me a smile that made me tingle in a whole different way. Her caramel skin glistened with either body glitter, magic, or just old-fashioned sweat, and her long black curls fell almost far enough down her chest to obscure her teardrop breasts. Almost, but not quite. She had legs that went on for days, wrapped in fishnets that led up to a pair of lacy black boy shorts. That was all she wore, just a pair of hose, underwear, and heels that could be classified as deadly weapons. And a smile. Holy mother of Christ, that smile said that it knew every single dirty thought I’d ever had (and there have been a lot of those) and she was willing to help me live them all out, right now, right in the middle of the floor of this nasty-ass strip club in the middle of damn nowhere, Arkansas.