Whatever the Impulse

by Tina Amiri

  He grabbed her extended hand and pulled her close.

  “I’m going to join the other party,” Sherri peeped, from the far side of the bed, “….unless you want me to stay.”

  When nobody demurred, she crept back on the bed, beaming with Doris’s implied authorization to have sex with the lead singer of Morning’s Desire—and her female idol.

  “This is cozy,” Doris drawled before Night kissed her. Mirror images in kneeling, his hands clutched her back as though they were iron on powerfully magnetic skin. The wide-open back of her tight dress tricked his senses into feeling her body naked. His cheek pressed against her thick, strawberry hair as her fingers scrambled up the back of his neck, straight into the turbulent sea of his teased platinum, and then she began kissing him.

  Sherri positioned herself behind Night, pressing in so her pelvis became his seat. Her body arched backward as she released thrusts against his rear while her fingers on his chest offered different levels of pressure every time they tweaked his nipples.

  Doris held both of them between her knees as he entered her. She heightened his sensation through the deliberate muscular contractions she strategically delivered around his member. He leaned forward, to take greater control, and Doris melted all the way onto her back. Sherri climbed off the bed and gently kissed Night’s shoulder, and then Doris’s forehead, before she slipped into her en suite.

  They tumbled around one another, in one complete rotation, and although they’d become disconnected, Night now found himself being pulled inside Doris’s eyes. They looked wild, like his, but of a different animal. With his fingers, he touched her eyelids, her lips, her neck. He traced her entire form to reacquaint himself with the softness of a young woman’s curves. When his lips took the place of his fingers, he noticed her skin was fragrant with a trace of vanilla body lotion, yet it became seasoned with salt as he descended some more.

  His hands slithered and locked behind her legs. With his temple against her thigh, he could feel her hot lifeblood pulsing, and when she placed her fingers around his head, he went in.

  Her breathing intensified as his tongue helped him learn about the other sex, but the demands of his own body finally called him back to the surface. She helped him re-enter her, and from there he needed no more assistance. He was fervent, even greedy, as he threw his pelvis, over and over, while she willfully tightened around him again, causing him to arch and almost roar like the tiger he stood in for on stage.

  Fuck…he thought, as though Morgen had planted the word in his mind. He felt so many good contrasting feelings about this all-physical experience: relaxed and exhilarated, content and ambitious. This was so much better than the pitiful existence he’d known in Oregon…so much better than…than mice.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  With his doctor insisting on at least one more week of intensive physiotherapy before letting him leave the hospital, Sandy decided to take matters into his own hands. He didn’t have much time left to capitalize on the success of the Morning’s Desire tour. He reached across his nightstand and pulled the telephone onto his hospital bed.

  “Give me the number for the tabloid, Storm, will you?”

  “Oh yeah, I remember you,” said his old contact, Oran Twaites, when he got on the line. “Are you finally thinking of talking about what really happened in that hit-and-run? With the Dahlsis constantly in the spotlight, your story is worth a lot right now. Perhaps an interview?”

  “An interview would be great,” he growled through clenched teeth. “But I hope you haven’t forgotten about our original agreement?”

  “Oh, yeah,” the man erupted with a derisive flair. “That’s right. I’ll be interested in finding out about your celebrity scoop as well.”

  “I don’t talk for free,” Sandy stipulated, and when Oran Twaites didn’t object to his demand, he continued. “Remember what I said to you last time we talked? I don’t want to be a housekeeper anymore—although my days with the Dahlsis are numbered anyway. But you know what I mean.”

  “Don’t get yourself all worked up. You just keep your end of the bargain, and I’ll keep mine.”

  ****

  Night leaned against his window in the small chartered airplane. “I don’t know why we have to go to Oregon.”

  Beside him, Aden turned his head in the same direction. “Why the hell wouldn’t we go to Oregon? And we’re breaking our record for ticket sales with these outdoor concerts.”

  “It’ll be cold.”

  Aden became testy. “We’ll be under a tent with heaters—and aren’t you the one who’s always fanning yourself backstage or bugging someone to do it for you? Man…what do you got against Oregon?”

  Night shrugged. He glanced around the plane and noticed Doris and Colby comparing drinks and Brandt sitting with their manager, working something out on paper. At that moment, he just wanted Morgen to help him bridge his two lives. Nobody else could.

  “I feel like there’s something wrong.”

  Aden glanced at his watch. “Thanks, asshole. I hope you mean something like you forgot your toothbrush, otherwise, keep it to yourself until on the ground.”

  ****

  Their two concerts in Portland, at the Memorial Coliseum, were jam-packed with fans from both Portland and Washington State. Gin repeatedly cursed his earlier decision to leave Seattle out of the tour.

  While Portland hadn’t conjured up any dreaded memories, Night felt the echo of every last one as he looked out at Salem. He requested a map of Oregon, just to confirm he really wasn’t in his old backyard, but irrespective of the miles from home, every sight closed the distance a little more.

  True to Aden’s description, a giant tent had been erected on a vast field of green. Heaters came on, before the show, but just shortly to decrease the humidity and inject some warmth beneath the broad ceiling. The tent masked a permanent structure. An amphitheater had been modified, and partially soundproofed, for the protection and comfort of the white tiger. An air-bridge connected the two structures. Night came to like this setting with its view of the water. In fact, it exhilarated him to pour his voice into the same air that had once held him mute.

  It seemed as though the whole of Oregon turned out for the first concert. It amazed Night that there could be another concert of the same magnitude, twenty-four hours later. Unlike the other band members, he didn’t feel the need to hit the town after the show. His mind, alone, supplied the entertainment by presenting reruns of his past, only now, he got to watch them through the eyes of a stranger. He spent some time in the amphitheater, playing with the wildcat while the tiger handler stood by and watched.

  “He really likes you,” the man commented as Night waved a branch across the floor, which the tiger chased like a colossal housecat. “He trusts you. He seems to think you’re one of us. He must be a good judge of character—I mean, your band has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for these beautiful creatures, and other endangered animals, throughout your tour.”

  “Thank you,” Night replied. Half a year ago, he wouldn’t have even known about the plight of some wildlife that people referred to as endangered species. Of course, in those days, he also didn’t have platinum hair, six earrings, and eye makeup to showcase his uncanny white-tiger eyes. He then grasped the reality: coming back to Oregon was perfect.

  ****

  On that overcast but mild Saturday in May, Brandt coolly carried out his work before the show. “Your marks are really fading. It’s hard to see them…without good light.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah… But you’re still too damn pale, and that’ll never change.”

  While Brandt perfected his smoky eye effect, Night fantasized about two things. First, he imagined Andrew standing in the audience, devastated at witnessing his success—and then his deliberate snub from the heights of the stage. Second, he imagined Morgen appearing amongst his fans, alive and well, showing him approval—perhaps through a wink…both fantasies separate, of course.

>   After his make-up session, Brandt helped him into one of the most maddening costumes he’d ever designed—the scene bordering on vicious when Night repeatedly mistook gaps in the material for armholes. Over a shimmering white tank, a network of black webbing draped over parts of his torso, and spiraled one bicep, in an asymmetrical design. A tarnished silver belt looped twice around his hips. Synthetic black leather pants and boots offset the blatant glamor of the rest of his costume—because real leather remained a no-no on the Roaring Desire Tour.

  On cue, Night charged onto the stage, in front of the others. He drank in his ocean of fans until their voices reached a zenith, and then he yelled into the microphone: “It’s so great to be in Oregon!”

  He hated Oregon. Even considering the cathartic potentials of performing here, he still loathed the place.

  At the beat, he skipped around the stage before reclaiming the microphone and throwing his voice into the mix. Oregon loved him as it always had when he was only a bartender, but now with a teenage ferocity that didn’t compare. It began to feel like any other concert, and by the third song, he finally connected with his Oregon audience. He kneeled at the edge of the stage, made eye contact, smiled openly, and allowed fans to grab his hands.

  A few rows from the front, he noticed someone pushing toward him. He was not the typical fan sporting new-wave clothes and teased hair, but someone with silver hair, whose attire struck him as glaringly conservative within the scene.

  Night’s hands died on his guitar, leaving the re-intro behind.

  One by one, his friends on the stage peered in his direction and then followed his gaze into the crowd. As the figure dissolved into the gloom beyond the perimeter of his fans, Night picked up the tune and the music swelled…the synthesizer, the bass, and the snare. Night’s voice rushed in as well and the bizarre hiccup in his performance translated into nothing more than a casual interlude at the star’s whim.

  A smile revitalized his performance, but the catalyst was not so pure. In a reckless way, he hoped Andrew had come—his far-fetched but desperate fantasy realized!

  He replaced the microphone on its stand, picked up his guitar, and smugly fingered the frets as he sauntered over to Doris’s keyboard. She grinned as he handed her the guitar and took command of her synthesizer for a virtuoso rendition of Bach’s “Little” Fugue in G minor.

  The crowd went crazy, his break into a classical number unmistakably the highlight of the evening. He trusted Andrew would appreciate the quality of his performance—the intricacies of the piece, not only learned and mastered, but transcended by his once voiceless slave puppet.

  The screaming never wavered as he left Bach and returned to Morgen’s masterpiece, improvising a brazen new medley that combined modern and classical. With electric guitar in hand, he danced to the left of the stage and froze solid. He hugged his guitar as if it could shield him from some emerging psychosis. Directly in front of him, his own face—Morgen’s face—rendered every other fan faceless. Morgen even winked at him, just like in his alternate fantasy of earlier today.

  He could only stare as Morgen pulled a kerchief over his head, pointed to one corner of the stage, and reversed into the mob behind him. That’s when Night realized—the worst of all his surreal nightmares—the collision of his two egocentric daydreams!

  Night reeled forward imagining Andrew crossing paths with Morgen, who had once left him for dead. He turned around to find his band mates staring at him. Under duress, he hoisted his guitar against his hip and persuaded his numb hands to play. He only had to make it to the end of the song and then he could try to take it all in. In the upcoming intermission, he was expected to collect the white tiger, return to the stage, and recite a few wildlife statistics to the audience, but the plan now stood a good chance of being delayed.

  When the song ended, he paused at the steps behind the curtain, expecting Morgen to show himself at any moment. His band members and even some of the crew hounded him for an explanation as to what had happened on stage, but he couldn’t come up with a reply before the stage director accosted him.

  “Morgen, go get the cat! What the hell are you waiting for?”

  Nearly out of his mind, Night slapped his sides and ran behind the curtain, through the air-bridge, into the amphitheater. The animal trainer thrust the handle of the tiger’s chain into Night’s palm and then sprinted ahead of him to join the stage crew already waiting for the star to make his grand entrance.

  Night took a few seconds to pet the giant cat before moving to fulfill his duty, but steps from the amphitheater door, he froze as a terrifying variation of hysterical screaming ignited in the distance, somewhere near the foot of the stage.

  “Morgen?” he uttered foolishly, right before a searing pain drilled through his abdomen, which dropped him to his knees, beside the tiger.

  The garish lights around him faded into an eerie glow and the screeching beyond the amphitheater became muted as though he’d been plucked from the scene and catapulted into cosmic space. With his face hanging only inches above the floor, the tiger began licking his hair, and when he didn’t respond, it resorted to using its teeth to gently tug on the back of his neck. His body lay half deserted as his spirit wavered between it and the open air.

  “Hey…!” called a man’s voice, which made the frantic tiger retreat.

  The mystical link that had flash-formed between him and Morgen snapped as his awareness bounced back. Night lifted his head and found the animal handler anxiously staring down at him.

  “Are you all right, Morgen? What happened to you? It’s utter chaos out front…”

  Night scrambled to his feet and leapt at the door to the air-bridge. He peered through the small, mesh-enforced window when the face of his living nightmare jammed his view.

  Andrew shoved his way in while the handler elbowed past Night.

  “Sir, I’m sure you’re not supposed to be back here…”

  “Hi, I’m from Animal Control…” Andrew quipped, seizing the confused tiger man by the face and slamming his head against the concrete wall.

  Night snatched the tiger’s chain and shuffled backward.

  “Don’t worry, he’ll live.” Andrew shrugged as he turned around. “I’m very disappointed, Night. Aren’t you happy to see your biggest fan in the whole world, Y.F. —Your Father!”

  Night looked away with glacial indifference. “I knew it was you all this time.”

  “Of course you did, Night.” Andrew’s forward amble caused the tiger to arch and growl as its cerulean eyes locked on the potential threat. “Do you see it now? I’m still in control—just as I have been by weighing on your thoughts, every day and hour since you left.”

  Night flicked his gaze up. “Do I look like I’ve been thinking about you?”

  “Undeniably. Look at you…you’re wearing your pitiful mutiny all over your body.”

  Glancing around, Night tried to figure out how everyone could have left him alone. He let the tiger’s chain slip through his hand to its full length. “How did you get back here? Everyone’s going to start looking for me, any second. Where is security…?”

  Andrew chuckled. “I think they’re kind of busy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, they can’t even hold back your crew—let alone the fans—all trying to see the Morning’s Desire lead singer lookalike lying on the grass with a tent stake through his gut.”

  This confirmation pierced Night in the gut for a second time. Nothing in his arsenal of contempt could outshine Andrew’s victory—not if Morgen had been miraculously cured in Mexico, only to meet his demise through the freakish coincidence of both him and Andrew showing up at the same concert.

  “Face it, Night, it’s over! It’s time for you to leave this circus, so say a little goodbye…” Andrew signed three letters in the way of Night’s historic rendition from the day he walked out of the Emerald Shore.

  The atomic blast behind Night’s gaze gave way to a physical eruption as he s
truck Andrew full in the jaw, knocking him against the door. Night dropped the chain and tackled him against the steel surface, but Andrew latched onto a multi-studded earlobe and extracted a shriek out of Night as two earrings ripped through his flesh. The pain made him double over as he tried to staunch the blood streaming down his neck.

  Andrew hustled to thread the tiger’s chain through a bracket on the wall and when the animal lunged at him before he was finished, the chain links jammed tight. Andrew smiled as he calmly advanced, repelling Night into a stumble.

  “Why don’t you just admit it…” Night screamed as the blood in his hand splattered on the ground, “you did it all for nothing! You’re the one who’s pathetic and a freak!”

  “Are you sure about that…?”

  Night spat in Andrew’s face. “You saw me out there! Why don’t you just admit that I won?”

  “Won what, you stupid brat?” The back of Andrew’s leaden hand landed across Night’s other ear. “Are we anywhere near finished?”

  They lunged at one another and the tiger burst into a frenzy, held back only by the seized link. Andrew reveled in mocking both the beast and its master as he swayed forward and tore the thick silver choker from Night’s throat.

  Night struck back crosswise. His knuckles, inside a fingerless glove, ripped across Andrew’s eyeball, forcing him to strike back blindly. Through pinched eyelids and Night’s combative hands, Andrew managed to latch onto a fistful of platinum hair as the stalemate between two chain links suddenly gave way.

  Night’s scalp began to tear, but his brittle yelp was obliterated by Andrew’s multi-octave cry as the tiger plunged both sets of front claws into his shoulders and raked them down the entire length of his back. With Andrew writhing on the floor, Night had clear passage to run, but he didn’t.

  “Yeah, I know… Hurts,” Night taunted, giving the giant cat an affectionate stroke with his trembling hand. “‘But that will go away.'” He spun toward the exit, but Andrew caught one of his ankles and dragged him back, now growling like an animal himself.