Skeletons (20 page)

Weird, too weird.

And nobody having parties! Up in those hills, and all the houses dark. What the fu! Boners, boners everywhere, and not a drop to drink! The
Stoli's
half-gone on the seat beside me. Hey, I'm even ready to share that with somebody!
Geldorf's
house dark, Henley's house dark.

Then at the next house—
bammoo
!

What light in yonder window breaks!

And does break, as I watch, glass shattering, a lamp out on the lawn,
boomp
, cord trailing behind.

I lower the window a fraction of an inch, listening....

Ah! The magic sound!

Laughter!

Into the driveway, through the open gates, bucko.

Haven't I been here before? It looks vaguely familiar. Long driveway, lots of bushes—
boo
! I keep waiting for a boner to jump out, but maybe they haven't climbed this high into the hills yet. And this one is on a hill. Around and around the driveway goes, winding around this
friggin
' magnificent house.
 
Stone, up to the cupolas. Red tiled roof, lit from the corners. Landscape by Mario. Swimming pool, tennis court, huge guest-house-looking building. Kiss the tips of your fingers, a beautiful job.

Exactly what I wanted, and would have had in a couple of years, if not for
friggin
'
Carl Peters and his
friggin
'
ax.

Later, Carlo.

Look at that parking area!

Beautiful, beautiful. Now I know I've been here before. But who? I would have remembered. As
plotzed
as I am tonight, I must have been more
plotzed
then. Must have been with Rita, zipped in the front seat. Snatches (including hers) came back to me, a long, long night, four or five parties, this was the last stop, me hardies! Rolled out of the car onto the parking tarmac. The world spun. I remember laying there for a while, staring at the roof, the lights lighting the roof. Did I go in?

Who the fu cares. In now, grab the
Stoli
!

Lock up?

Nah.

I'm not too steady, Eddie. Let me stop a moment, lean against this here hood. I
know
that car. Bobbie
Zick
, Chin Records.

Is this his house?

Me hardies, argh, I do believe it are.

Aargh
, for real.

That's me, throwing up on the hood of ol' Bob's Mercedes. Think he'll mind? Nah. ol' Bob's got ten 'r '
leven
of 'em. Plenty of Mercedes. Heck, this must be his deli car, make a run for a quart of milk, gram of coke. Coke-mobile, maybe.

Ol' Bob.

In now, Zelda?

Now
I know. Fitzgerald's place. F. Scott. And the crazy wife. Bob
Zick
was bragging about what a steal it was, only nine mil, they said it was haunted by Zelda's ghost or something. Ol' Bobbie, always looking for a bargain. And I just barfed on his car.

I hate the
frigger
, he's got too much money. Oh, well.

Maybe . . .

Stop the puke presses! I wipe my mouth with my sleeve, rub the sleeve on Bob's car. Revelation! I'll ask ol' Bobbie for a job! Didn't he try to hire me away from Roundabout once? I know, Rita told me, flagrante
delicioso
. Tried to buy my contract from ol' Carl, to manage a band called . . . Grapevine! That was it, Grapevine! They had something, too, could have gone on with a little work. The way they ended up, white fellas doing the black shuffle and turn, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles style, just didn't work. They had one hit, I think, "Heal You":

Oh, baby,

You're just so fine (oh, baby) You're in my
dre-eams

All the
ti-ime
. . . .

Not bad. But needed work.

Lots of work.

From me!

Bobbie baby, I'm coming!

He likes
Stoli
, doesn't he? Doesn't everybody? I know he likes coke. Least he did three months ago. But you never know with these
Hollywoods
, they see Jesus overnight, and
bammo
, they're off this, off that. No drugs, no
alc
, no sex, no meat. Communion with fruit— remember that one? Pyramid power. Reincarnation. But-
termilk
baths. Save the whales, no nukes, power to the people, give peace a chance, jump off a bridge for Jehovah's Witnesses. Love your neighbor, put up bigger fences. Shit, I hated the sixties.

And seventies.

And eighties.

But love them nineties!

Bobbie, baby!

Bring the coke anyway.

So, away from the car. Whoa, the world she spins. Stand still,
Rog
, let the focus mechanism kick in. Jeez, I smell like puke. Let's stumble to this here bush at the end of the parking area. Nice smell to those blossoms, maybe they'll take the smell out of my sleeve. Rub-a-dub-dub

Is that a pile of dust I see?

Uh-oh.

Up goes the radar again. I've seen piles like that all night. The double dead. Dance backward,
Rog
, one-two, one-two

A hand on my shoulder.

"Taking your job with the Vomits seriously I see, Roger?"

I know that phony-Brit voice!

"Bobbie, babe!" I say, spinning around.

And look right into the eye sockets of a boner. "Whoa!" I shout. But ol' Bobbie he's got me good and tight. I can see his face now surrounding the skull, just barely, a ghost's grin on ghost lips.

Then he lets me go, and I fall to the ground like a puppet. I wait for the smash on my head, the bullet through my heart, the kick, the punch. I mean, these boners automatically hate our guts, right?

But he just yawns, turns, and walks back toward the house.

"Got any coke, Roger?" he asks.

Inside, there's a bone party!

"Bone Party"! I can see it now, new TV show, Saturday mornings after the cartoons. Little stage, big podium with a clock backdrop, couple of leg bones for clock hands keeping track of the half hour of fun. Ol' Dick Clark in skeleton drag spinning the hits: and all them young baby boners dancing
dancing
dancing
! I give it a seventy-eight! It's got a great beat, and I can rattle to it! "Bone Party, USA"!

Yeah!

And damned if that's not what we've got on view here. Seems everybody got dead, but nobody stopped the party. If you whacked the pillows on the couch, coke would puff out like dust, that's how much partying has been done in of Bobbie's pad.

And the party's not done yet.

Jeez, I see some dead people I knew when. At first it's just a bunch of wild boners dancing, but if you look real close, you can see faces: half the Rolling Stones, a couple of Eagles, various video jockeys. A couple of these bozos actually wave to me as I walk through.

"
Yo
,
Rog
."

"Hey, Garbage man, how's it hanging?"

"
Roggie
, babe!"

Don't they know they're dead?

And then surrealism rears its ugly head higher, and the music pauses ... before a Vomits CD comes on! Whoa!

The party goes right on. A boner turns to me and says, "Way to go, Roger Dodger!" The song is "On You," the B side of the Vomits first hit, made it to twenty-one itself, and Brutus's guitar thrums three heavy times, sounding like "Wild Thing," before Randy
Pants's
voice comes in high, almost screeching:

If you won't go

On me,

Then let me go

On you . . .

 
Shakespearean-sonnet material, and I stand there, a little dazed by the whole gig.

But now Bobbie
Zick
is waving to me across the room, near the CD player. While I'm trying to make nice gestures, thanking him for putting on the Vomits on my behalf (even if I wish they were dead), he makes a gesture of his own for me to follow, and turns, mounts the stairs.

I follow like a lapdog, of course.

I mean, if I was going to be dead, I'd already be dead, right?

And the Roger-radar, amazingly, is quiet.

Up the stairs, Roger Dodger!

Bobbie's in his office at the end, door open. I pass other doors, bedrooms mostly, but an occasional bathroom, I hear moans, grunts. Now it's coming back to me, that first time I was here. Rita and I used one of these bedrooms. I try to imagine bones screwing. Just doesn't work for the imagination. I mean, they're boners, pun intended, but I just can't see them getting it on.

Bobbie's in his chair, leaning back. It's the kind of office you'd like to have: stereo and video racked floor to ceiling, posters, a big hanging thing behind his desk with the Chin Records logo—a big chin, vaguely reminiscent of a famous rock star's—painted on in Day-Glo colors.

"Close the door, sit down," he says.

"Sure, Bobbie!"

What I really want to do is ask him how a schmuck from Cleveland, Ohio, ended up with a British accent, and why he spells his name B-o-b-b-i-e.

Being in the business, I already know the answer: Why not!

"Hey, Bobbie," I say, sitting down. I put my briefcase on my lap, set the
Stoli
bottle on his desk.

"Excellent, old boy," he says, taking the
Stoli
, unscrewing it, dropping some down.

Into nothingness. The skull jaw opens, the bottle sits against the ghost lips, but when the vodka gets to the lips, it just ... disappears.

He catches me gawking, says, "You get used to it, believe me."

"Yeah," I say.

"So, Roger!" he says, putting the
Stoli
down. In front of himself, I notice. I also notice he's now looking hard at my briefcase.

"Oh, you bet, Bobbie."

I open the case, open the bag, cut out a line for him on his blotter. Lots of credit-card edges pressed into that blotter, old boy.

Again with the weirdness: the coke gets snorted, disappears, the skull smiles as he leans back in his chair, sniffing.

"Nice," he says.

I line some out for myself, to be polite, and say, "Yeah, it's not bad."

"So I hear Carl Peters dumped your ass," Bobbie says.

He's timed it so the powder is just up my nose, so I almost sneeze my brain out through my nostrils. I lean back in the chair, holding my sinuses with my palms, trying not to die.

"So, yeah," I squeak out.

"He always was a fool."

Immediately some of the coke goes where it can do some good, and I'm feeling much better.

"You can say that again," I say.

Bobbie pauses, partakes of the
Stoli
bottle.

He puts it down again in front of him and says, "So how would you like to work for me? Remember my offer?"

"I remember," I say, trying to act cool. "Grapevine, right?"

He leans back in the chair and laughs. "Them? They're long gone. Dead, so to speak."

"Oh," I say, not knowing how the hell you answer something like that.

"I'm talking about something much better than that. A whole West Coast thing. Management."

Me? He's saying this to me?

"I have to say," Bobbie continues, "I thought about you from the beginning for this. I thought to myself, if anybody gets through this mess ... intact, it'll be Roger Garbage."

"Gee, thanks, Bobbie," I say, "I think."

"What I need is . . . a go-between, if you follow me. Let's call it insurance."

"Uh, Bobbie . . ."

He's stopped for some more
Stoli
. Apparently the dead can drink, because when this bastard's done, there's only a finger of the stuff left in the
friggin
' bottle. He points to the briefcase.

I cut him another line, and he pulls it.

"I say again, old boy, that's nice."

Again he leans back in his chair, puts his bone hands behind his bone head, smiles. "You still don't know what I'm talking about, do you?"

"Not . . . really . . .

He laughs. "Don't you get it? Don't you see that when the dust settles, so to speak, only one bunch of us, your people or mine, will be in charge?"

"The thought had occurred to me, Bobbie, but mostly I've been running for my life the past twenty-four hours.

"Exactly!" He stands up, stretches. "And running from what?" He points to himself. "Us! You see, we're probably going to take over the world!"

He snatches up a remote control from his desk, swivels toward a huge TV screen set into one wall, snaps it on. There's a news logo in the bottom right-hand corner, and a reporter is wailing on excitedly about some battle or other. Blurry video, a lot of buildings, rubble in the street, piles of dust. It looks like a hundred other places until the camera pans way back and the Chicago skyline, or what used to be it, is outlined against a sickly looking, smoky orange sky and the shoreline of Lake Michigan. The Sears Tower has a couple of bites out of it, and the Standard Oil Building is mostly gone. A lot of planes are buzzing around and there's gunfire and some louder booming noises.