Black House (Page 40)

Oh no. Sandbagged by the bitch. She’s a fine-looking bitch, but a bitch is still a bitch. Pete stands where he is for a moment, thinking that maybe if he ignores her, she’ll go away.

Vain hope.

"Pete."

He turns. There is Rebecca Vilas, current squeeze of the big cheese. Today she is wearing a light red dress, perhaps in honor of Strawberry Fest!, and black high-heeled pumps, probably in honor of her own fine gams. Pete briefly imagines those fine gams wrapped around him, those high heels crossed at the small of his back and pointing like clock hands, then sees the cardboard box she’s holding in her arms. Work for him, no doubt. Pete also notes the glinting ring on her finger, some sort of gem-stone the size of a goddamn robin’s egg, although considerably paler. He wonders, not for the first time, just what a woman does to earn a ring like that.

She stands there, tapping her foot, letting him have his look. Behind him, Charles Burnside continues his slow, tottery progress toward the men’s. You’d think, looking at that old wreck with his scrawny legs and flyaway milkweed hair, that his running days were long behind him. But you’d be wrong. Terribly wrong.

"Miz Vilas?" Pete says at last.

"Common room, Pete. On the double. And how many times have you been told not to smoke in the patient wings?"

Before he can reply, she turns with a sexy little flirt of the skirt and starts off toward the Maxton common room, where that afternoon’s Strawberry Fest! dance will be held.

Sighing, Pete props his mop against the wall and follows her.

Charles Burnside is now alone at the head of the Daisy corridor. The vacancy leaves his eyes and is replaced with a brilliant and feral gleam of intelligence. All at once he looks younger. All at once Burny the human shit machine is gone. In his place is Carl Bierstone, who reaped the young in Chicago with such savage efficiency.

Carl . . . and something else. Something not human.

He — it — grins.

On the unattended desk is a pile of paper weighed down with a round stone the size of a coffee cup. Written on the stone in small black letters

is BUTCH’S PET ROCK.

Burny picks up Butch Yerxa’s pet rock and walks briskly toward the men’s room, still grinning.

In the common room, the tables have been arranged around the walls and covered with red paper cloths. Later, Pete will add small red lights (battery powered; no candles for the droolers, gosh, no). On the walls, great big cardboard strawberries have been taped up everywhere, some looking rather battered — they have been put up and taken down every July since Herbert Maxton opened this place at the end of the swingin’ sixties. The linoleum floor is open and bare.

This afternoon and early evening, the moldy oldies who are still ambulatory and of a mind to do so will shuffle around out there to the big-band sounds of the thirties and forties, clinging to each other during the slow numbers and probably dampening their Depends with excitement at the end of the jitterbugs. (Three years ago a moldy oldie named Irving Christie had a minor heart attack after doing a particularly strenuous lindyhop to "Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree with Anyone Else but Me.") Oh yes, the Strawberry Fest Hop is always exciting.

Rebecca has all by herself pushed together three wooden flats and covered them with a white cloth, creating the basis for Symphonic Stan’s podium. In the corner stands a brilliantly chromed microphone with a large round head, a genuine antique from the thirties that saw service at the Cotton Club. It is one of Henry Leyden’s prize possessions. Beside it is the tall, narrow carton in which it arrived yesterday. On the podium, beneath a beam decorated with red and white crepe and more cardboard strawberries, is a stepladder. Seeing it, Pete feels a moment’s possessive jealousy. Rebecca Vilas has been in his closet. Trespassing bitch! If she stole any of his weed, by God —

Rebecca sets her carton down on the podium with an audible grunt, then straightens up. She brushes a lock of silky chestnut hair off one flushed cheek. It’s only midmorning, but the day is going to be a genuine Coulee Country scorcher. Air-condition your underwear and double up on the deodorant, folks, as George Rathbun has been known to bellow.

"Oi thought you’d never come, me foine bucko," Rebecca says.

"Well, I’m here," Pete says sullenly. "Looks like you’re doing fine without me." He pauses, then adds:"Foine." For Pete, this is quite a witticism. He walks forward and peers into the carton, which, like the one by the mike, is stamped PROPERTY OF HENRY LEYDEN. Inside the box is a small spotlight with an electrical cord wrapped around it, and a circular pink gel that is meant to turn the light the color of candy canes and sugar strawberries.

"What’s this shit?" Pete asks.

Rebecca gives him a brilliant, dangerous smile. Even to a relatively dull fellow like Pete, the message of that smile is clear: you’re on the edge of the gator pool, buddy; how many more steps do you want to take?

"Light," she says. "L-I-G-H-T. Hangs up there, on that hook. H-O-O-K. It’s something the deejay insists on. Says it gets him in the mood. M-O-O — "

"What happened to Weenie Erickson?" Pete grumbles. "There was none of this shit with Weenie. He played the goddamn records for two hours, had a few out of his hip flask, then shut it down."

"He moved," Rebecca says indifferently. "Racine, I think."

"Well — " Pete is looking up, studying the beam with its intertwined fluffs of red and white crepe. "I don’t see no hook, Miz Vilas."

"Christ on a bicycle," she says, and mounts the stepladder. "Here. Are you blind?"

Pete, most definitely not blind, has rarely been so grateful for his sighted state. From his position below her, he’s got a clear view of her thighs, the red lace froth of her panties, and the twin curves of her bu**ocks, now nicely tensed as she stands on the fifth step of the ladder.