Strange Days: Fabulous Journeys With Gardner Dozois (27 page)

Elvis shuddered and took a lurching step backward, his eyes glazing over. He shook his head, looked foggily around the lobby, glanced down at the gun in his hand as though noticing it for the first time, then holstered it absent-mindedly. “Time’s the show tonight?” he mumbled.

“About eight, Mr. Presley,” Blemings answered, smiling. “You’ve got plenty of time to relax before then.”

Elvis looked around the lobby again, running a hand through his greased-back hair. “Anything to do around here?” he asked, a hint of the old sneer returning.

“We got a real nice bar right over there the other side of the lobby,” Blemings said.

“I don’t drink,” Elvis said sullenly.

“Well, then,” Blemings added brightly, “we got some real nice pinball machines in that bar too.”

Shaking his head, Elvis turned and moved away across the lobby, taking his entourage with him.

Blemings went back to his office.

J. P. Richardson had unpacked the scotch and was going for ice when he saw the whore. There was no mistaking what she was. She was dressed in garish gypsy clothes with ungodly amounts of jewelry about her neck and wrists. Beneath a light blouse her breasts swayed freely—she wasn’t even wearing a bra. He didn’t have to be told how she had earned the mink coat draped over one arm.

“Hey, little sister,” Richardson said softly. He was still wearing the white suit that was his onstage trademark, his “Big Bopper” outfit. He looked good in it, and knew it. “Are you available?”

“You talking to me, honey?” She spoke defiantly, almost jeeringly, but something in her stance, her bold stare, told him she was ready for almost anything. He discreetly slid a twenty from a jacket pocket, smiled and nodded.

“I’d like to make an appointment,” he said, slipping the folded bill into her hand. “That is, if you
are
available now.”

She stared from him to the bill and back, a look of utter disbelief on her face. Then, suddenly, she grinned. “Why, ‘course I’m available, sugar. What’s your room number? Gimme ten minutes to stash my coat and I’ll be right there.”

“Room four-eleven.” Richardson watched her flounce down the hall, and, despite some embarrassment, was pleased. There was a certain tawdry charm to her. Probably ruts like a mink, he told himself. He went back to his room to wait.

The woman went straight to the hotel bar, slapped the bill down, and shouted, “Hey, kids, pony up! The drinks are on Janis!”

There was a vague stirring, and two or three lackluster men eddied toward the bar.

Janis looked about, saw that the place was almost empty. A single drunk sat wall-eyed at a table, holding onto its edges with clenched hands to keep from falling over. To the rear, almost lost in gloom, a big stud was playing pinball. Two unfriendly types, who looked like bodyguards, stood nearby, protecting him from the empty tables. Otherwise—nothing. “Shoulda taken the fat dude up on his offer,” she grumbled. “There’s nothing happening
here.”
Then, to the bartender, “Make mine a whiskey sour.”

She took a gulp of her drink, feeling sorry for herself. The clatter of pinball bells ceased briefly as the stud lost his ball. He slammed the side of the machine viciously with one hand. She swiveled on her stool to look at him.

“Damn,” she said to the bartender. “You know, from this angle that dude looks just like Elvis.”

Buddy Holly finished adjusting his bow-tie, reached for a comb, then stopped in mid-motion. He stared about the tiny dressing room, with its cracked mirror and bare light bulbs, and asked himself,
How did I get here?

It was no idle, existential question. He really did not know. The last thing he remembered was entering his hotel room and collapsing on the bed. Then—here. There was nothing in between.

A rap at the door. Blemings stuck his head in, the stench of his cigar permeating the room. “Everything okay in here?”

“Well,” Holly began. But he went no further. What could he say? “How long before I go on?”

“Plenty of time. You might want to catch the opener, though—good act. On in ten.”

“Thanks.”

Blemings left, not quite shutting the door behind him. Holly studied his face in the mirror. It looked haggard and unresponsive. He flashed a toothy smile, but did not feel it. God, he was tired. Being on the road was going to kill him. There had to be a way off the treadmill.

The woman from the hotel leaned into his room. “Hey, Ace—you seen that Blemings motherfucker anywhere?”

Holly’s jaw dropped. To hear that kind of language from a woman—from a
white
woman. “He just went by,” he said weakly.

“Shit!” She was gone.

Her footsteps echoed in the hallway, were swallowed up by silence. And that was
wrong.
There should be the murmur and nervous bustle of acts preparing to go on, last-minute errands being run, equipment being tested. Holly peered into the corridor—empty.

To one side, the hall dead-ended into a metal door with a red EXIT sign overhead. Holly went the other way, toward the stage.

Just as he reached the wings, the audience burst into prolonged, almost frenzied applause. The Elvis impersonator was striding onstage. It was a great crowd.

But the wings were empty. No stagehands or go-fers, no idlers, nobody preparing for the next set.

“Elvis” spread his legs wide and crouched low, his thick lips curling in a sensual sneer. He was wearing a gold lamé jumpsuit, white scarf about his neck. He moved his guitar loosely, adjusting the strap, then gave his band the downbeat.

Well it’s one for the money

Two for the show

Three to get ready

Now go cat go!

And he was off and running into a brilliant rendition of “Blue Suede Shoes.” Not an easy song to do because the lyrics were laughable. It relied entirely on the music, and it took a real entertainer to make it work.

This guy had it all, though. The jumps, gyrations, and forward thrusts of the groin were stock stuff—but somehow he made them look right. He played the audience, too, and his control was perfect. Holly could see shadowy shapes beyond the glare of the footlights, moving in a more than sexual frenzy, was astonished by their rapturous screams. All this in the first minutes of the set.

He’s good,
Holly marveled. Why was he wasting that kind of talent on a novelty act? There was a tug at his arm, and he shrugged it off.

The tug came again. “Hey, man,” somebody said, and he turned to find himself again facing the woman. Their eyes met and her expression changed oddly, becoming a mixture of bewilderment and outright fear. “Jesus God,” she said in awe. “You
are
Buddy Holly!”

“You’ve already told me that,” he said, irritated. He wanted to watch the man on stage—who
was
he, anyway?—not be distracted by this foul-mouthed and probably not very clean woman.

“No, I mean it—you’re
really
Buddy Holly. And that dude on stage—” she pointed—“he’s Elvis Presley.”

“It’s a good act,” Holly admitted. “But it wouldn’t fool my grandmother. That good ol’ boy’s forty if he’s a day.”

“Look,” she said. “I’m Janis Joplin. I guess that don’t mean nothing to you, but—Hey, lemme show ya something.” She tried to tug him away from the stage.

“I want to see the man’s act,” he said mildly.

“It won’t take a minute, man. And it’s important, I swear it. It’s—you just gotta see it, is all.”

There was no denying her. She led him away, down the corridor to the metal door with its red EXIT sign, and threw it open. “Look!”

He squinted into a dull winter evening. Across a still, car-choked parking lot was a row of faded brick buildings. A featureless grey sky overhung all. “There used to be a lot more out here,” Janis babbled. “All the rest of the town. It all went away. Can you dig it, man? It just all—went away.”

Holly shivered. This woman was crazy! “Look, Miss Joplin,” he began. Then the buildings winked out of existence.

He blinked. The buildings had not faded away—they had simply ceased to be. As crisply and sharply as if somebody had flipped a switch. He opened his mouth, shut it again.

Janis was talking quietly, fervently. “I don’t know what it is, man, but something
very weird
is going down here.” Everything beyond the parking lot was a smooth even grey. Janis started to speak again, stopped, moistened her lips. She looked suddenly hesitant and oddly embarrassed. “I mean, like, I don’t know how to break this to ya, Buddy, but you’re
dead.
You bought it in a plane crash way back in ‘59.”

“This
is
‘59,” Holly said absently, looking out across the parking lot, still dazed, her words not really sinking in. As he watched, the cars snapped out of existence row by row, starting with the furthest row, working inward to the nearest. Only the asphalt lot itself remained, and a few bits of litter lying between the painted slots. Holly’s groin tightened, and, as fear broke through astonishment, he registered Janis’s words and felt rage grow alongside fear.

“No, honey,” Janis was saying, “I hate to tell ya, but this is 1970.” She paused, looking uncertain. “Or maybe not. Ol’ Elvis looks a deal older than I remember him being. We must be in the future or something, huh? Some kinda sci-fi trip like that, like on
Star Trek?
You think maybe we—”

But Holly had swung around ferociously, cutting her off.
“Stop it!”
he said. “I don’t know what’s going on, what kind of trick you people are trying to play on me, or how you’re doing all these things, but I’m not going to put up with any more of—”

Janis put her hand on Holly’s shoulder; it felt hot and small and firm, like a child’s hand. “Hey, listen,” Janis said quietly, cutting him off. “I know this is hard for you to accept, and it is pretty heavy stuff ... but Buddy, you’re
dead.
I mean, really you are . . . It was about ten years ago, you were on tour, right? And your plane
crashed,
spread you
all
over some farmer’s field. It was in all the goddamm papers, you and Ritchie Valens, and . . .” She paused, startled, and then grinned. “And that fat dude at the hotel, that must’ve been the
Big Bopper.
Wow! Man, if I’d known
that
I might’ve taken him up on it. You were all on your way to some diddlyshit hick town like . . .” She stopped, and when she started to speak again, she had gone pale. “. . . like Moorhead, Minnesota. Oh Christ, I think it
was
Moorhead. Oh boy, is that spooky . . .” She fell silent again.

Holly sighed. His anger had collapsed, leaving him hollow and confused and tired. He blinked away a memory that wasn’t a memory of torn-up black ground and twisted shards of metal. “I don’t
feel
dead,” he said. His stomach hurt.

“You don’t
look
dead, either,” Janis reassured him. “But honey, I mean, you really
were.”

They stood staring out across the now-vacant parking lot, a cold, cinder-smelling wind tugging at their clothes and hair. At last, Janis said, her brassy voice gone curiously shy, “You got real famous, ya know, after . . . afterwards. You even influenced, like, the
Beatles . . .
Shit, I forgot—I guess you don’t even know who they
are,
do you?” She paused uncomfortably, then said, “Anyway, honey, you got real famous.”

“That’s nice,” Holly said dully.

The parking lot disappeared. Holly gasped and flinched back. Everything was gone. Three concrete steps with an iron pipe railing led down from the door into a vast, unmoving nothingness.

“What a trip,” Janis muttered. “What a trip . . .”

They stared at the oozing grey nothingness until it seemed to Holly that it was creeping closer, and then, shuddering, he slammed the door shut.

Holly found himself walking down the corridor, going noplace in particular, his flesh still crawling. Janis tagged along after him, talking anxiously. “Ya know, I can’t even really remember how I got to this burg. I was in L.A. the last I remember, but then everything gets all foggy. I thought it was the booze, but now I dunno.”

“Maybe you’re dead too,” Holly said, almost absent-mindedly.

Janis paled, but a strange kind of excitement shot through her face, under the fear, and she began to talk faster and faster. “Yah, honey, maybe I am. I thought of that too, man, once I saw you. Maybe whoever’s behind all this are
magicians,
man, black magicians, and they conjured us all
up.”
She laughed a slightly hysterical laugh. “And you wanna know another weird thing? I can’t find any of my sidemen here, or the roadies, or
anybody,
ya know? Valens and the Bopper don’t seem to be here either. All of ‘em were at the hotel, but backstage here it’s just you and me and Elvis, and that motherfucker Blemings. It’s like
they’re
not really interested in the rest of them, right? They were just window dressing, man, but now they don’t need ‘em anymore, and so they sent them
back.
We’re the headline acts, sweetie. Everybody else
they
vanished, just like they vanished the fucking parking lot, right? Right?”

“I don’t know,” Holly said. He needed time to think. Time alone.

“Or, hey—how about this? Maybe you’re
not
dead. Maybe we got nabbed by flying saucers, and these aliens faked our deaths, right? Snatched you out of your plane, maybe. And they put us together here—wherever here is—not because they dig Rock—shit, they probably can’t even
understand
it—but to study us and all that kinda shit. Or maybe it is 1959, maybe we got kidnapped by some time-traveller who’s a big Rock freak. Or maybe it’s a million years in the future, and they’ve got us all
taped,
see? And they want to hear us, so they put on the tape and we
think
we’re here, only we’re not. It’s all a recording. Hey?”

“I don’t
know.”

Blemings came walking down the corridor, cigar trailing a thin plume of smoke behind him. “Janis, honey! I been beating the bushes for you, sweetie-pie. You’re on in two.”

“Listen, motherfuck,” Janis said angrily. “I want a few answers from you!” Blemings reached out and touched her hand. Her eyes went blank and she meekly allowed him to lead her away.