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On the inside, I'm a poet
for tealc_spoo
Author's Notes: Thanks: - Woolly_Socks, most rocking of beta buddies and guardian of sanity;
Papajoemambo and Shadowkitty, cheerleaders and braver than I for doing Nano;
Torakowalski, waiting in the wings and being available in spite of a quizillion other things;
Sprat, Mistress of Ceremonies and voice of sanity in the face of a giant plot bunny.
No Thanks:
My ISP for eating all my emails with the beta copies attached; GMT for putting the deadline in such an odd position.
On the Inside, I'm a Poet
Kowalski / Turnbull NC-17
Singer / Songwriter Alternate Universe
Part I
Adrift in a world of my own
I play the game but to my real shame
You've left me to dream all alone
-- Buck Ram, The Great Pretender
Renfield Turnbull looked around a hotel room as featureless as the Canadian tundra. There was a generic print on the wall above the bed and the usual courtesy clutter by the television. He felt colder and lonelier than he ever did back in Inuvik. This trip was already strange; normally it was singers who sought him out. And he would come and spend a couple of weeks at the Jenkins ranch or at Sarah McLachlan's beautiful Vancouver apartment.
He needed to know the person he was writing for, it didn't work. Sure, he sold songs to people he'd never met, or at least Benton sold them on his behalf and paid him the licence money. But hearing his songs sung with a teen pop-poppet with a voice two octaves too high ground his mind into dust. All the way through his flight, the girl behind him was listening to Walking in the Sky on an endless loop.
What if he couldn't make this work? He'd only had a week to examine Mr Kowalski's back catalogue and somehow he couldn't see this passionate man handing over the creative reins. Every song on those disks was written by R Kowalski. The slick businessmen at Family Records might say Kowalski played covers, but Renfield knew that the odd Rawhide and Money Can't Buy You Love didn't count. What counted was that every one of those songs came straight from the heart and Kowalski didn't want a midwife getting into the equation.
The cab from the airport was driven by a singularly rude man, who seemed to know more about Renfield's back catalogue than even Benton knew. The name on the license papers tucked in the sun visor said the man's name was Pike, but the man claimed it was Florence. Renfield signed an autograph and, dazed, walked into the brightly-lit hotel. When he saw the dark haired doorman in his red uniform, it was like something had walked over his grave. He'd told Benton that he needed to get away and this gig had fallen like some gift from heaven. He was free from the cloying atmosphere of Inuvik. He needed this, so why did it feel like Inuvik -- and Benton Fraser -- had followed him the whole way? Perhaps it was all bad omens -- his layover in Toronto had not been what he expected -- or perhaps it was just a sense of general malaise. Perhaps he had just left things too long and the toxic passivity of his restrained life was more than his body could remove without symptoms.
Dear Lord, that made Renfield sound like some addict. And maybe he was, addicted to whatever he could get -- a smile, a glance, an almost perfect working relationship -- but it was like being addicted to coffee, nothing harder, and it made him feel irritable and slowed down. And the more he consumed, the worse it shredded away his nerves from the inside and poisoned him insidiously. It was a pathetic addiction and Renfield knew it. He spent his days sucking down tiny little scraps of something that could never be and never was. His heart beat so slowly and so painfully that this was what he needed - a shot of adrenaline - everything the city had ever represented to him. A larger dose because he had left things way too long. No longer Toronto and its familiar haunts -- no more seeing Mark in every reflection, no more strange fraternal protection from excess -- but new, fresh ground.
In Chicago he could spread his wings and perhaps linger awhile and taste all the delights that were not left to him in the ordinary mundane world. No, all he had to do was cut the chord that bound him to Inuvik and all it represented and he could have this forever. It was not as if he could not survive on his own, whatever the image he might care to project, he could cope -- and thrive -- in the city. He was not Benton Fraser and maybe that was a tragedy for them all, one greater than the one that had bound them together since before Renfield had been born. All this was fancy, making his torments greater and too loud to be real; it was his skill, his profession, to take words from the heart and feelings from the soul and somehow make them more real and more potent than any other brew.
His notebook rested snug in his jeans' pocket. After the apathy and boredom of the flight and the unbearable loneliness of a city he once knew. Toronto had moved on -- and why not? It was hardly as if it went into some state of stasis when he was gone -- and he was left alone in his motel room to drink substandard hot chocolate topped up with whatever was palatable in the mini bar. The expense could go hang; he needed to feel something and all he got was a hollow heart and a record-company expense account to pander to his every inadequacy. He had considered the cable channels, but doubted there was anything to his taste and regardless that was the sort of expense that disturbed his new employers. He just eked out his silent hunger and promised it sustenance in the windy city.
And he was already aflame, the starved fire inside him seizing upon the new and rarefied atmosphere of Chicago. If nought else, he could work here, he could do great things, greater things than he could ever achieve at home, or in Vancouver, or Austin. Once the twitching and tremors were finally subsumed, he could do anything he pleased, be anyone he pleased, and set his wings loose and just fly.
He was trying to take in everything of his overwhelming new environment and imagining a hundred new ways to rend it down to the language of the soul. He was like a smoker caught in the net of a non-smoking world, trying to belie the obvious signs of -- his what? -- his compulsion, his addiction, the slow burning high? He was too noticeable -- his journey from the airport had taught him that -- and he tried to blend into the alien world of the hotel lobby, its floor more slick and perfect than any Zamboni could achieve. He wanted to loose his rocks upon the floor and watch them enter the house with absolute precision. His world was alive with opportunities and he could only imagine what he looked like as he desperately cast his eyes downwards as if in some childish charade that if he saw nobody then nobody could see him. It was nothing like that afternoon, playing with Benton and Mark, when he really thought himself invisible.
Without Benton and Mark, without Inuvik; maybe he really was invisible with all the attendant horrors and joys that it brought. Maybe here was the place where he could set himself free from his burdensome identity rather than just "put an antic disposition on" only to remove it at the end of the game, at the final whistle, before exiting the rink for the mundane torture that was his life.
The hat he'd bought on his last excursion into the States -- Yellow Springs -- nestled in his duffel like a bird of freedom or a feather from the wing of an angel as Renfield considered the advantages of being an invisible man.
Part II
Right. Right. Like you can't go forward until you go backward. Like I tried to run away from my past, but you can't do it, cause it's in your skin, it stays with you. You gotta retrace your steps to figure out how you got here.
-- Ray Kowalski, Eclipse
Stella. It began with Stella.
At least, Ray thought, everything should begin with Stella.
Maybe everything began with Stella and, before that, everything had begun with a car. A 1967 Pontiac GTO, fresh off the lot and the black paint mirror-perfect. The moment Ray saw it, he was in love. He just sat on the sidewalk transfixed. The older kids -- who normally would have a car like that up on cinderblocks and stripped down sooner than you could say lickety-split -- stayed away scared of this scrawny undersized kid with eyes like saucers. Ray's dad had to go find him come supper. When Damian Kowalski had found his son, he asked what was so special. Ray told him he wanted a car like that.
That will take a lot of your pocket money, injun, Ray's dad said.
That was why, come the year where Ray was packed off to dance class, he was the only kid in the neighbourhood with a bank account. This was why he was in the bank, with Stella, when Marcus Ellery tried to make his bid for big money.
As far as Ray was concerned, that was where everything began. Hell would freeze over if he gave Ellery the fucking credit. He didn't have the GTO anymore. Stella told him to sell it when times got tough. Sure, Ray sold it to Sandor but they both regarded it as security on a loan, and one day Ray would get his dream machine out of hock, but for now it was gone.
So, what did Ray have left? Stella.
He also had a guitar and a turtle, but the guitar didn't count and a man left only with his turtle is a very sad thing indeed.
Ray might not be as sure about everything as he used to be, but he knows that everything began with Stella. There wasn't anything else that it could begin with.
Ray didn't know what was beginning, let alone why it was beginning, or how it would turn his life upside down. So, you can forgive him for thinking that whatever the hell was going on since Joey Paducci left town was about Stella. After all, Stella was the one who was all hot for this thing with Family Records.
Technically, this had begun a couple of weeks ago with the note that greeted Ray when he went to talk to Joey about royalties. And it had been Stella who told Ray to chase up the money. Ray knew Joey. As far as Ray was concerned there was no way he'd lean on Joey. Ray knew that Joey would get the money to him as soon as he could. It might be a couple of months late, but there were compensations. Ray wasn't proud, he took session gigs to make ends meet and Joey could get them like pulling dimes from thin air.
Stella had spent the afternoon sitting at Ray's breakfast bar with a pencil on her lip going through Ray's accounts. Ray was a sucker for Stella when she was like that. Divorce or no divorce, Ray had always been a sucker for Stella, period. Stella knew that, just as she knew when Ray would try and fight things out. A smile always disarmed him. She'd told him that he needed to save two month's worth of rent money before the hockey season started and the bars stopped booking him on Saturdays.
Ray felt kind of bad about keeping things from Stella. He knew there were places that would book him during hockey season. Places where the game wasn't any you'd see at the Olympics or the Super Bowl. The game was all about getting what you needed. The spectators were also the players, watching for somebody who would make their hearts beat faster.
He couldn't tell Stella. Everything he did felt like he was cheating. If not on Stella, then it was cheating on himself. Even if Stella was okay with the sex and the - you know - then she would tell him that. She would rag on Ray for the way he treated himself; they way he settled for second -- maybe even third -- best. He didn't eat right, he made coffee with water from the faucet, and his clothes had been old and tired long before he raided Goodwill for them. She would tell him that he needed to push himself, that he needed to get himself some aspirations, that... Ray didn't know. The whole conversation would mean a trip down Route 666 and all the way to hell.
He would lose Stella for sure and if that wasn't a description of hell then Ray didn't no what was. Without Stella, all there would be was Ray, a turtle, and a fistful of plectrums. Without the warmth of Stella -- still somehow greater than all the warmth he could steal or beg at the Asylum -- he would be forever frozen. As it was, he lived in the embers of what they once had, sleeping in their bed and trying to find the warmth where Stella once slept.
But at the end of the day, Ray still had a choice. He could take Volpe and the boys up on the offer and play the gay circuit or he could do midweek gigs at Borders. He could have his soul sucked out until he became living wallpaper or he could keep his soul and burn coldly in hell. He knew which one would make better music. And music was the one point -- the one thing -- that Ray understood, the only thing he got a hundred and ten percent and he needed music.
He had tried it the other way -- no more music -- stripping it down to all he did was play in the darkness of the bedroom when he couldn't sleep and it just didn't work. Something started to eat him up inside, he started bugging out and just losing it. He couldn't do it again not least because there was one big ass roadblock in the way. The only thing he could do even half as well as music was tune engines. And after what he had done -- helped get Levon accepted on that music scholarship -- Ray knew he couldn't get by doing oil checks over at Devlin's garage. And Devlin was a big man, everyone paid attention to what he said and nobody would be stupid enough to offer Ray a job.
But, what mattered about Levon was that he would never need to come back and spend his time checking over cars and beating out panels for Devlin. He had a future mapped out away from gangs and garages. He could come back in a couple of years play for the orchestra with Stella's guy. Stella wanted to know why Ray couldn't do that for himself -- build some beautiful future -- she didn't understand that Ray had used up all the future he had long ago. And they say you can never go home again. He couldn't call it quits and start over. He wouldn't know where to start and time didn't run backwards like it did in the movies. He had made his decisions and he was done.
Ray was looking at what he had left now he was all futured out. There were things he could do, like odd jobs and painting apartments for his landlady but eventually he would have to suck it up and ask Volpe to please give him the gig he had offered Ray two years ago. Maybe Ray could tell Stella that he was waiting tables or collecting glasses. Ray didn't want to do it, and not just because he'd have to lie to Stella or risk her walking out the door and never coming back.
He valued what got at the bars; he was just a guy looking for a good time. He could steal warmth and passion and insulate himself against the cold reality. Ray was a skinny guy; he needed all the insulation he could get.
Only, if he ended up doing gigs on the gay bar circuit, he could kiss that goodbye. He'd be on some ratty little stage, trapped in the spotlight and unable to see the guys in the shadows. He'd have to sing against the noise. And all he'd ever get again would be groupies. Ray wanted, needed, to pretend that the guys he met there at least liked something about the package. He wasn't bad looking, skinny, but he had good hair and a wicked smile. He could talk for five minutes and pretend they had a connection. And it might, for a while, drown out the way his heart searched for the connection that Stella used to have with him.
Stella was the taste in Ray's mouth, the smell in his hair, and there in the clubs he could drown her out for a while with smoke, dirty kisses, and lust. He could drown out his craving, like eating Spam when what you want is that fancy ham you can see through. Without Stella, Ray was forever starving, and the little pieces of affection he could find were like candy. A sugar rush before the hunger returned. The emptiness always returned.
Ray didn't want to be alone with his turtle and the shadows in the small dark apartment. Stella was light like a star. Once he'd called her his Star Girl and his awkward smile was outshone by hers. Stella was all Ray had, all Ray had ever had since that moment in the bank. Without Stella, he would be afraid, naked, the boy who pissed his pants in front of the big bad bank robber.
Ray didn't want that, so he had headed round to Joey's. It wasn't until rang the bell that he noticed the note on the door. Notes weren't unusual, Goat Music ran on notes. There were notes telling folks that Joey had gone across the street for a bagel. There were notes about studio time. There were notes left with Ray's landlady about sales and money. The last one proved that Joey was nowhere near as dumb and nave as Stella thought. Paducci knew that landladies needed reminding about income that would eventually come their way.
In this business, everything is about notes. Most other businesses, they were about green notes with pictures of dead presidents. Joey liked to wax lyrical about how his business was about notes that hung in the air and tugged at your heart. He dreamed there were notes that came from the soul and worked their way out through words and music. It was a nice dream. Ray dreamt that dream too; it was why he didn't want to be some big name filling stadiums, he didn't want to be some corporate drone humming the tune of money.
Ray would have dreamt his life away if it weren't for Stella. That's why he needed her. If it weren't for Stella, Ray would have gone nowhere. He'd be in his old neighbourhood washing cars for dimes and nickels. He would have grown up to work with his dad at the Union Stockyard. He would have never grown beyond what happened after polka class. He would still be in that bank, stinking of piss, and clutching desperately at his pass book. He'd still be some terrified kid with bad hair and worse glasses.
Stella had taken Ray places. When she gave up music classes in disgust at the sheer subjectivity of it, she gave him her guitar. When she got him into college with her, he played it in a haze of cigarette smoke and sorority parties.
Without Stella, Ray would never have woken up. He'd have still been sleeping away. Never growing old and never waking up. There were, though, days when that sounded mighty nice. Sleep forever, warm and safe even as they turned the power off to his apartment, sleep and never wake up.
The note that greeted Ray when he came to talk about royalties and money to keep him in guitar strings; that note was out of key. Ray didn't need any special classes to know that. He didn't need books and scales. The sound jolted Ray out of his dreams entirely. It was like fingernails down a blackboard. It made Ray's eyes itch on the inside. And this note was loud, because it wasn't just for Ray; it was for everyone else that worked with Joey, from Sandor to Stanley Smith who delivered the pizza.
Part III
Think about the things that we should have done before
The way things are going the end is about to fall.
We took the wrong step years ago
-- Hawkwind, We Took The Wrong Step Years Ago
Stella was no longer playing with a pencil on her lips. This had turned into something more serious, something outside the familiar rhythm of being Ray's manager. It was as the words on the door and the letter in her hand were some mantra that unlocked the future that unfolded in front of her eyes. She had the knowledge to make Ray a better life and she had the power to make him follow the path, sing the song, dance the dance. It was just that he was stubborn, that he needed work, and that it took so long; that it had eroded her calm and measured tones to a burning point of frustration.
Stella didn't dream like Ray, she wrote plans and followed them to the letter. She could work things out coolly and rationally. Somewhere under the skin, she was a born lawyer. She'd gone and followed Ray's dream and tried to make it work, because she was twenty years old and crazy in love. Now, she was thirty-five years old and had fallen out of love with Ray a long time ago. She loved Ray, but she wasn't in love with him, wasn't crazy about him.
All Stella wanted was to wake Ray up from his sleep-walking life and set things straight so she could go back to the beginning. That day in the precinct with Ray in a pair of overlarge sweats found in the locker-room by a kindly desk sergeant, she'd told him: Stick with me and I'll make it okay.
She'd been making it okay ever since. Stella was carving her own future now, retracing her steps and starting over. She was back in Law School with a musician boyfriend. Only this time, the boyfriend worked as hard as she did. They were pulling in the same direction. Only Ray was holding her back in the nicest way possible, but he had to be set free to make his own future. She was like a conservationist, who had for years reared a strange and rare creature and had found it a beautiful unspoiled habitat and out of love needed to dissolve the bonds of love, care and affection that once tied them.
Ray was like a goat, hard to drive, stubborn, and prone to butting heads. The last time they went out for dinner, to a low-rent restaurant where every meal was an adventure because the owners didn't speak English and you had to point to dummy card menus and pray. There had been a poster above Ray's head, a Chinese zodiac with all the years arranged in spirals. It was more like a clock and the one thing she remembered most about that meal wasn't the Ray looked at her as he waited for her to realise that she didn't want to divorce him, it was the poster. Ray had been born in the year of the Goat.
What Stella didn't know was that it was the Vietnamese zodiac, not the Chinese, or that she needed a new pair of contacts. Neither of these things was important, all that matters was that Stella was unsurprised to find that Ray had been, or so it seemed, born in the year of the Goat. A few weeks later, fed up after a month of nagging headaches, she had gone to her optometrist and been prescribed new contacts. They cured the headaches, but didn't do anything to remove the goats.
Stella's life had been full of Goats; Ray had driven one, worked with one, and probably was one. She was fed up with them eating her clothes and devouring her house plants. It had been fun while it lasted, a cigarette-smoking bad boy with oil smeared on his forehead, chilling out at parties and playing the guitar. The audience adored Ray and maybe that was it, that Stella wanted approval so much that she'd settle for getting it second hand.
But now she had realised what her teenage self had not. She could find approval wherever she looked and at finer quality, what she needed was not approval but the satisfaction that comes from becoming the best at what she did. And that never had been managing Ray, a role she fell into half asleep and drowsy from frenetic love making. She was getting her life together again; no more clothes from Goodwill, no more smoky clubs or letches of bar managers. She had reconnected with the path that everyone had known she should have taken, the one picked out for her and matched to her abilities and her emotional needs. She had returned to law school and was knocking students ten years younger dead. There had been talk of Sherri O'Neill herself wanting to take Stella under her tutelage; the most experienced expert on entertainment law knew that Stella could see under the skin of the twilight world of music and dance. Her time with Ray hadn't merely been a diversion, but a specialisation, a long term study, a doorway to greater and newer things...
In Stella's opinion Ray didn't cope with change well. It had been a month since Ray had been standing on that doorstep trying to take in the note and he still hadn't come out of his funk. He couldn't see the doorway for all the baggage that he carried like a pack horse from pillar to post. The apartment looked neat enough - Ray's manic energy and nerves saw to that, every time she came, he was tidying - but under the surface was a mire of an accumulative life. There were gig t-shirts and lucky underwear. A clock that didn't work on the wall and somewhere in the desk a long abandoned microcomputer Ray used to produce his fliers on with the aid of Joey's photocopier and an industrial sized paste pot.
Part IV
An awkward moment is a thing to be savoured,
Not unlike obscene telephone calls
-- Headstones, Above Ground Swimming Pools
Ray was beginning to think that Stella never dreamt at all. That all their time together was just waiting it out until something better came along. He had to admit that Stella was being good about it. Ray hadn't met Vecchio and they were keeping it that way. They'd taken their life together and split it between two boxes and never looked inside them. It was like Schrdinger's cat. The one that was always alive and dead at the same time.
The little bit of love they still had, that was the tape on the boxes, keeping everything safe, making everything some kind of normal. Stella still did Ray's accounts and organised his bookings some, she still answered phone calls at oh-dark-oh-thirty. Sometimes, Ray could kid himself that she wasn't really gone, back to college and the life she should have had. The one that her family had all lined up until some kid saved her from a bank robber.
Their voices were a cold war and they could go only two ways; glasnost or mutually assured destruction. Ray saw the closed door of Goat Music, like he was locked out of his life. Stella saw a window Ray could climb through and find himself in a palace. He'd be safe forever in the palace and Stella wouldn't have to worry about him again. It would be somewhere he could grow into a new, better Ray Kowalski.
"Ray." Ray recognised that voice, the no-nonsense tone that told him to sell the GTO and give up cigarettes. This time he wasn't going to give in. The car and the smokes didn't change who he was. He wasn't going to roll over and change for Stella.
"...Listen to me, Ray." Stella was hanging on to the shreds of her patience, she was going to ruin her nails hanging on like this, but she wasn't going to just let this drop. Ray had opportunity and a better life all laid out on a plate and he was insisting on existing on take-out and pizza.
"I think you should think about this. Step back and think like an adult. Stop crying because your glass is half-empty. There is a jug right in front of you and you can pour as much lemonade as you need. Family Records didn't have to step in for Joey, they didn't have to keep his clients, but they have... and more than that they want you to do well."
Ray's mind is still standing on the stoop a month ago. There was a note, no, an actual notice, all official and typed and everything. Underscoring it all like the mother of all periods there was an inky blur that might have been Joey's signature before the windy city had turned rainy. Things had come up on the East Coast.
Stella wasn't expecting this. Ray was passionate; he shouted, swore and threatened to kick people in the head. The only place he wasn't loud was in the bed, too busy nuzzling at Stella's breasts and slipping fingers down to the slickness between her legs. Stella felt the flush coming, burning red over her face and clashing with her lipstick. She was professional. She had to keep it professional, there was no other way she could handle it. She was telling Ray to take a step back, but she'd taken two forward already.
Ray noticed Stella's nervousness but thought that she was finally seeing his point of view. He didn't want to be some airbrushed icon manufactured by an army of sound technicians, corporations and publicists. He wanted Stella to understand why his heart suddenly felt two times too heavy and the air wanted to stay safe inside Ray's lungs.
Joey's mother was sick, really sick, and he needed to head out to Philadelphia to help her. He didn't know how long it would be before he could return; he didn't know for sure that he would return. He'd thought long and hard, but he couldn't keep Goat Music running with just a telephone. It would be letting people down.
That bit Ray did understand. He'd let people down through no fault but wanting to be himself. His father never talked to him. His mother telephoned him from Arizona at Christmas. Stella had walked out the door and never come back. He thought when he'd headed out from college and into music; he thought that Stella would always be at his side. But he'd never been the man she really wanted. He'd tried to change. He loved Stella, he would saw off pieces of himself if it made her stay one moment longer. Except, he couldn't stick bits on, he couldn't add to his hand, he couldn't take up a card and score that perfect twenty one.
Ray might meander around and fly like he didn't have a care in the world, but Stella had her feet on the ground. If the ramshackle life Ray lived as a professional musician had taught Stella anything, it was that you couldn't build a home on dreams. You needed strong foundations. Ray wasn't getting any younger; he needed to start thinking about his future. His finances were not the mess they would have been without Stella, but they were hardly sturdy. Stella thought Ray needed to compromise. He was all or nothing, he thought he was Steve McQueen, and what he didn't realise is that he needed a safety net. He couldn't live hand to mouth on gigs.
"Ray, you need to realise that Family Records didn't have to take you on. They could just have wound Goat Music up and given you what you were owed and you'd never record again."
Joey wished them all the best and had asked Mr Zuko over at Family Records to handle any outstanding business.
Ray knew something stank. It didn't sound like Joey, strip away the legalese and it still didn't sound like Joey P. It had no rhythm; it was like bagpipes droning endlessly. There was no... action. Ray didn't have a better word for it. It had no spark, no pizzazz, no style. It might as well have been the instructions on bachelor special television dinner. Something stank, something left this bitter taste in Ray's mouth, but you can't fight smells or tastes. There was nothing concrete here and he just wanted to hit something.
When Ray put his fist through the drywall, Stella calculated the deductions from his rent before surprise even registered. She hadn't seen Ray like this for a long time. After she left, she'd carefully scripted their encounters. She would arrive, be offered coffee and set to work on Ray's money. Ray would fuss around the lounge trying to look productive. He kept on trying to tidy a room that looked like a still life. Eventually, he gave up and went to the john. By the time she'd finished, he'd be towelling the water out of his hair and she would admonish him on the subject of keeping two months' rent in savings lest something happen.
Ray didn't have insurance, however much Stella left booklets on the breakfast bar and tried to suggest that he got a regular day job. He made ends meet with odd jobs, and some of them were odder than most. As Ray talked to her, trying to tie her with words -- somehow keep her from leaving -- she heard the strangest things. Looking after pineapple plants for Sandor because his partner, Tony, couldn't stand the sight of them. Driving some guy called Ian all the way to Canada because this Ian guy thought that mobsters and aliens were out to get him.
Ray might sometimes sing cover versions. He chooses them carefully and let the world know that money can't buy you love. Stella desperately wanted him to realise that you can't live on love. Last month, fresh from the shower, he looked desperately skinny. She'd slipped some chicken broth from the deli over the road into the refrigerator as soon as she'd heard the water running.
"Ray, you've got two albums to your name. They sold well, but they sold nowhere but in Chicago. Family Records wants you to record that third album, they want you to succeed." Stella was putting her all into words. She was going to be a lawyer, she could do this professionally, a good lawyer had to be able to persuade people. She could win people with the right words and tie the law into a knot the defence team can't untie. She was good, and she wasn't just relying on that, notch it up a couple of notes, turn back the clock, and you'd have had the voice that told Ray everything was going to be all right.
Pain was blossoming like a flower in Ray's hand and mind. Adrenaline was making everything clearer, needle sharp in a way glasses could never replicate. He could feel the buzz welling up inside him. "Stella." He needed her to look at him, really look at him. "I'm not working with some songwriter to make junk food muzak for the masses. That is not me. Not. Me."
"Ray, they're prepared to invest in you. What's the harm in meeting this song-writer and just throwing a few ideas around? It might work for you, and if it doesn't, all you've lost is time." Stella realised that she sounded like her mother. Turn back the clocks and you'd find the same voice telling her about violin lessons, dance class, guitar lessons, pre-law... It was endless. The only difference is this is for Ray's own good. Nothing to do with rounding things out and making Stella into her mother's idea of a dream debutante, a gold coast girl born from old English money.
Stella has never needed to walk around with a book on her head. She wished she could communicate this to Ray. It's not about what you do; it's about what you learn, and what learning can do for you. In both her interviews for Law School, her body language was perfect, she radiated confidence and professionalism. Two things that Ray "I Suck" Kowalski could do with, even if just to get into his head that he isn't doing bar owners a favour, he's doing and job and needs paying for it. And no, credit at the bar doesn't count.
"Ray, at least have a look at where this would take you." Ray might claim to be a good driver, but he never looks at a map. Stella could still remember the monotonous road-trips to gigs in Springfield and Peoria. At least Ray had figured that it wasn't realistic with rising gas prices and unrest in the Middle East. The fact that he'd sold that stupid car helped some. Stella couldn't believe she'd got him to do that.
"It leads to muzak, Stell. I don't want to make music you can sell tampons with. I want to make music I can feel here." Ray thumped his chest with the hand that didn't go through the drywall and made heart-beat motions like Bugs Bunny. Why couldn't Stella understand? It was like dancing with his voice. It was like dancing with his soul and then being straight-jacketed into competitions and regulations. It was like a thousand steel-sharp rules cutting away at his soul. Ray loved Strictly Ballroom and mourned that he could never persuade Stella to dance these days. She might be a bit wooden sometimes, but when the music seized her and she looked into Ray's eyes... it was like magic, it was like looking into her soul like a mirror.
"What about On the Waterfront, Ray?" Stella barked. It wasn't meant to go like this. She could persuade Ray to do anything once and then another time just to check that he liked it. Why couldn't she make it work now? She was surprised at how cutting her voice sounded. "It sold great, but only in Chicago. Imagine what you could do with a release across all 52 states and territories. Ray, that song is beautiful. You can't call that tampon music!"
"That was a once off. Every guy is allowed one ballad about his father issues. It's in the union charter, uh, somewhere, the music union or something..." Ray was getting twitchier and twitchier, he could feel it start to throttle the words before they left his lips, no, before they left his brain. He couldn't do this; sell asinine ballads from here to eternity. That song was a ballad because it meant something. Music without meaning was soul killing. He might as well get an office job and be done with it. Corporate drone. Thing.
Ray finally found what he was reaching for. "Routine is the silent killer, Stella, and I don't want to be silent." It should have been funny; the way the words were choking him up inside, but the words twisting up inside Ray made his fingers itch. They remembered the frets and the strange friction of metal strings. The words were waiting there for the strings to bleed them out. He needed to let them out, but he couldn't now, not with Stella here. He'd shown her all his vulnerabilities, he couldn't show another wound. Stella was like salt, stinging, pure and white like snow. She'd long since melted away his heart, but Ray no longer felt like showing it.
Part V
Ten seconds, ten years. Chemistry is chemistry.
-- Ray Vecchio, You Must Remember This
Ray didn't have any words left; they'd been driven out by the feeling, the burning desperate feeling he remembered from when he first saw Stella. The first time he really saw Stella. Then the silence was broken by hamming on Ray's door. The words, I didn't think we were that loud flitted through Ray's mind. What kind of irony was it that only now he and Stella were divorced and not having sex -- even if Ray turned up on her doorstep with an entire flower shop and an especially composed song -- that folks started to complain about the noise? He didn't think their sex life had been that bad. And with that thought, Ray was once again submerged in thoughts that had no words and a sorrow that knew no name. Everything in the room reminded him of the pain of losing Stella, the emptiness that felt like he had never held Stella, the edge of fear that came with a country with no boundaries and no landmarks.
Stella peered through the spy hole and got a fish-eye view of Ray Vecchio. Stella gathered up her coat in her arms, the fake fox collar silver against her chocolate pants suit. She only meant to loose the door chain to let herself out. She didn't expect Ray, her new Ray, to nearly fall into the apartment, breathing fast and his eyes darting around the room.
He'd arrived early, parking the Riviera by the door of the apartment block. A woman darted across the street in a raincoat, followed by a swift lithe dog, some kind of greyhound. He had time to wait, so he reached the music lying on the back seat and had a read-through. It was easy stuff, he could do this in his sleep and Welsh knew it. The local television company wanted to get noticed by the great and the good and apparently, sponsoring a concert was the way to do it. And there was an understanding that there might be some soundtrack work sent their way as well. It wasn't Tchaikovsky, but it was money.
It was simple stuff, but absorbing, and it wasn't until he glanced at his watch that he noticed that Stella was fifteen minutes late. Stella was never late, she had beautiful timing, and it was like he was in love with a metronome. He waited by the door of the block and followed an old lady with a Pomeranian inside. He spent a couple of minutes scanning the names on the mailboxes. One look at the aged cage elevator told him to check his life insurance was paid up. Ray wasn't the kind of guy to run up stairs, but this was Stella. He didn't know much about this ex, beyond Stella thought he was a bit of a flake.
He pounded on the door only to fall through when Stella opened the door. He took in the skinny guy in jeans and an undershirt. Shit, they must have rowed about something; but it was obvious who lost. Ray knew he was bad for being glad that Stella won. Kowalski looked like somebody had run over his dog. And then turned around and run over it again. And then put in a box marked pizza and left it on the doorstep.
Ray had closed the world in around himself like it was a blanket fort. He wanted to hide, so he crept inside his head and tried to ignore the panting Italian who'd just fallen into the kitchen. If Stella had been after a better model, then how much did it suck that Ray was beaten hands down by a bald guy with a suit fetish? He finally found words, but they'd had the life sucked out of them like they had got eaten by vampires. "Stella, your date's here."
Vecchio didn't know what to say. He had to say something or that would be rude. "Hi, Kowalski. Nice place. Love the bicycle." He didn't know how the last sentence got there, he really didn't. It was like something his brother-in-law brought home, like a no-questions-asked leopard print negligee. Stella stared at him. Ray shrugged, "Well, uh, it's a nice bicycle." And now Stella's ex is going to think he's an insensitive dork. When really, Ray got it, he'd stop eating and hide if Stella left him. Except Ma would feed him up and not take no for an answer and Frannie would storm his bedroom looking for her score.
"Ray," Stella said, then, taking in Vecchio's confusion, she turned to her first Ray and added, "Ray, I've got to go now, I have a dinner appointment. I know you don't like it, but just go, go along tomorrow and if you don't like the guy, give me a bell and I'll tell the record company that you have creative differences. Okay?" She didn't expect Ray to say anything to that, she'd known Ray for too long and she wasn't disappointed.
Ray tried for the faintest flicker of a smile and failed. "Yeah. Whatever. Have a nice dinner, Stell. You, you treat her right or I'll kick you in the head. Okay?" He wanted to sound light-hearted but he failed. He wanted to make Vecchio think he was kidding, or exaggerating, but what came out was the bald truth. He would kick Vecchio in the head if a single hair of Stella's was out of place and God help him if Stella phoned Ray in tears.
It wasn't as if Ray Vecchio didn't know musicians, he knew volatile musicians. He'd even talked the timpanist down from one of the higher balconies. And that was just about the way the triangle player ate peanuts through rehearsals. He hadn't met one that sounded so... defeated. The only fire came in the threat to kick him in the head. It was clear Kowalski still had it bad for Stella and Ray felt sorry for him. Ray at least had a steady income, a salary; he wasn't some gig-playing guitarist. The world wasn't going to fall apart if he played lacklustre piano for a couple of weeks because his girlfriend had upped and left him.
Maybe sometime he should ask Stella if it was a good idea to invite Kowalski around to watch a game or play pool in the den. Get him out of his hole some. He could ask his cousins if any of them needed a guitarist. Kind of unlikely, but it might help the guy get back on his feet. He waved goodbye, unsure of what to say.
Stella and Ray Vecchio walked down the stairs in silence. They both avoided conversation and kept their thoughts to themselves. Ray was waiting for Stella to bring their unexpected meeting up. Stella, for once, didn't know what to say. She was trapped between lawyer-coolness and the half-remembered heat of passion.
On the front step, Stella grasped Ray's hand and pushed him against the wall. She devoured his mouth desperately. She needed this. She had to have this. She had to remind herself what she had now. For a moment bafflement and surprise showed in Ray's green eyes, but then his mouth opened beneath hers, warm and wet. Stella could still taste his toothpaste being slowly overwhelmed by the taste of Ray and sweetness and promise. Ray's eyes had closed as he clutched at Stella's back.
Ray Vecchio could feel Stella's tongue press against his own and her lips were softer than his Armani silk shirt. He hadn't expected this; Stella was so decorous and sensible. He could feel the cold brick snatching at his greatcoat like architectural Velcro. He blinked away a single tear and closed his eyes. The sadness of Kowalski was lost in this bitter-sweet passion.
Stella had chosen her moment. She so desperately needed this, this contact, to remind herself that it was no longer about her and Ray. She needed to warm her heart turned cold by fighting in the apartment. It was like the apartment was wracked by a blizzard and she had hypothermia of the heart. She had just about held out as they walked down the worn stairs, but, now on the doorstep there was nobody to see and nobody to hear.
Ray Kowalski looked out of his apartment windows as he lit candles, struggling to keep the darkness shadowing his soul away. He couldn't see Stella. He tried to tell himself it was because they -- Stella and Vecchio -- were waiting on the ancient elevator. Or Stella had been caught in conversation by his landlady and was being grilled about the state of his finances. After five candles, he saw them walk out onto the sidewalk. They weren't even touching, which was weird, because Stella was a touch-junkie. Maybe Ray was projecting, still unable to see where he ended and Stella began.
Stella felt a warm glow in her heart as Ray opened the door of the green sedan for her. She sat back in the leather seat and put her purse on the back seat covered with scores and a box of chocolates she chose not to notice. Ray got in and pulled out into the night. The streetlights were like fireflies and the venerable heater got to work, filling the car with velvet warmth.
Part VI
You gotta push through the cold and the pain and keep moving
-- Ray Kowalski, Call of the Wild
Got to keep moving just like I've been told,
It's a wonder I made it this far
-- HDRC, Sail Away
Ray stared out of his window, frozen, candle smoke curling around him like spider-webs. Ray never wanted his name in lights, he was satisfied with candles. He didn't want to burn too bright. He didn't want to burn white hot and high like a falling star. He didn't want to fall. Ray kept his aspirations low; it was the best way to avoid falling. It didn't sound like Stella or Family Records understood.
Ray wasn't after a power-trip. The lights were out and he was standing in candle-light. He was so cold. He was cold without Stella. Ray never wanted the adoration of millions, he'd settle for the adoration of Stella, his parents, the people who mattered to him. Now Joey was gone and all Ray had was his turtle and maybe Sandor.
Ray breathed out, slow and steady and kind of zen. He let his shoulders drop and the tension poured out of his body. He fixed himself a finger of whiskey and sat back on the loveseat. His legs were splayed out and gangly. Nothing had ever changed, really. Stella was just a twenty-year blip and Ray was alone and cold again. Sure, his parents had tried to understand him at first, when he started playing the guitar and ditched polka lessons, but they were less understanding when he dropped out of college to sing for his supper. It wasn't as if Ray ever needed polka lessons, the dance was in his soul. Dancing feet peeped out from beneath the rug; Ray wasn't going to get his deposit back. He could win on the dancing, but he could never conquer college.
The smoke from the candles was calling out to Ray, flipping switches in his brain. Ray wanted a cigarette; it was an absolute want to which not even Stella compared. This was a craving; want without the self-doubt that dogged Ray's every step. Not that Ray could see it that way; it had been a part of him too long. He just wanted the simple high of a smoke in his lungs. Pleasure almost as strong as the high he got performing.
Now, that was one solution to his problem, one way to warm his single-serving bachelor life. He grabbed one of the local papers on the breakfast bar and went through the listings. Somebody somewhere some bar, they must have an open mike night. Part of Ray just wanted to play, to let the pain out of his soul and reap the adoration of the crowd.
But.
Stella.
Ray didn't want to think of Stella and how she would share her warmth with a skinny Italian clotheshorse. But she's there, over his shoulder telling him he shouldn't do for free what he did for money. She told him no more freebies. And however much Ray's instinct was to fight, he just didn't want to struggle any more. He didn't want word getting around to Stella that he was doing free slots; he'd be booked at Borders for months if she found out, and if she was really angry, she'd send Ray to Starbucks. She'd only give him the address and the horror would only set in once he was on the sidewalk outside with teenage girls drinking their lattes.
And cigarettes are bad for his voice. While sounding wheezy and crap might get him out of this dumb ass situation, he didn't want to screw with his rep. Whatever Stella thought, Ray gave a hundred and ten percent to the music. It was the only thing he was good at any more. It wasn't as if he could be a good husband, or a good provider, or a good car owner. Ray missed the goat, another night like this and he would have driven out of the city and headed down the highways until he had to sleep.
Sure, he could get the el over to Sandor's, but what was the point? Having to borrow back his dream machine just wasn't a pretty thought however you worded it. He pulled himself upright like a puppet with its strings cut and danced an awkward shamble around the sitting room. He bumped the dresser and the ornaments and tchotchkes jangled like broken bells. He listened to the music in his head, listened to the guitar he played in his mind and lost himself in the music and the dance. He didn't have to worry about the audience; he could make the staccato tune last forever. He could kick the universe in the head.
Ray was felt the tension drift away and his feet got lighter until he was just gliding across the floor. He heard his voice singing, the song's Shut up or I'll Kick You in the Head. It made Ray remember what Ray could do without Stella, dirty dancing in even dirtier clubs, bumping and grinding. The taste of smoke lingered on Ray's tongue as he realised what he could do. Ray would get his nicotine fix from second hand smoke and scratch a different itch already.
Part VII
Well, you know. It's so romantic
-- Frannie, Heaven and Earth
Francesca Vecchio was driving her bug across town. She had the most exciting news and the astrology kit was totally worth it, even if Ma didn't like the crystals she'd set up around her bed. She had a little icon too, just to make her mother feel better, but she knew it's the crystals that are doing it; she's hadn't had a bad day singing since... well, since the last time her voice cracked at rehearsals and Mr Gustafson told her to rest it. That had totally blowed. Ray said she was just getting her brassiere in a twist about nothing, but what if Elaine -- Besbriss, mezzo-soprano -- got botulism from her prawn salad at lunch and Frannie wasn't there to be her over-study? It didn't bear thinking about.
Part VIII
The coin hits the wishing well
-- HDRC, Friends of Mine
Renfield had bought a travel guide at the airport. He'd also bought some bubble gum, but this was not pertinent at this juncture. He wasn't going to be in town long but Martha Fraser always said that proper preparation prevents poor performance. This was why he'd asked the guy he knew at the Record Exchange in Toronto to look for anything that might help on his assignment.
His layover there started well, with a bootleg of Ray Kowalski at the Ride Forever bar. It went less well when it turned out that Todd had since gained a boyfriend and Renfield spent the night alone in the Travel Inn, his only date with his right hand in a shower with inexhaustible hot water. He wasn't somebody to mire himself in thoughts of chastity and pollution, but he had never felt that clean. Orgasm was a white hot point quickly washed away. It was pared down to an abstract, all clean lines and no emotion.
He could have stayed there. Perfect clean highs with no complications. But - you wouldn't think it - but Renfield needed the complications, something to hold onto. Every imperfection something he could squirrel away for his return to the famine that was his life in Inuvik. After one disastrous encounter, he wrote off rig men, lumberjacks, and migrant workers. As a student in Toronto, Mark had encouraged him to explore himself and others. He needed that bite of true emotion under his pleasure. It didn't matter what form it took, he was as happy with jerking off in a cinema -- with Mark, it was almost innocent -- and picking up a hospital porter who let it all hang out on the weekend.
Even Benton -- especially Benton -- would agree that it was a natural function of human sexuality. That it was chastity that was the unnatural state and the only truth could be found in passion. Renfield had found himself sitting back on a mattress -- trying to smoke a cigarette, because that was what his teenage brain told him he should do -- and looking into the guts of the universe and seeing the words that sung... The aboriginal people of Australia believed the world was sung into being and there were times when Renfield was so close he could almost comprehend it. Not that it was the reason for his activities away from home -- the understanding of the universe, which he could get as well from a sweat lodge or some strange concoction Benton had found in a battered book of self help medicinal distillations. People tended to forget that our immediate forbears considered cocaine and laudanum medicinal -- but it was one of the compensations for sating his appetites.
He didn't know what he was looking for tonight, but he trusted fate -- a strange thing considering the events of his life -- to provide to him. And if all else failed, there was the intellectual stimulus of the assignment with Kowalski to look forward to, not a mere pretext, but also... What Renfield had heard of his work was more than fascinating, there was something he saw beneath it and he wanted to peel away the letters and find the man under the words.
It had taken him a while to find what he wanted in the guidebook; it was hidden under "Alternative Chicago". He'd picked the first listing in the book. The first cab he flagged wouldn't take him where he wanted to go. Some men would have given up then, but Renfield was a patient man. Waiting for a second cab, he hummed the first few bars of Too Young to Die under his breath. The one song he'd never sell. Nobody would do it justice. And there! A cab! Fate does provide.
Part VII Continued
I can see the stars from a million miles
Are you out there somewhere?
-- Single Gun Theory, From A Million Miles
So if you can't say something untrue, please don't say anything at all.
-- Vecchio, Pizzas and Promises
A guy in a battered leather jacket and a cowboy hat stepped right into the road and Frannie had to swerve. She hit her horn in frustration and carried on. She just had to tell Stella what she'd found out. Frannie had got the location of her brother's date from Maria with the help of a big pack of Reese's Peanut Butter Kisses. Maria was expecting her third baby and had a huge craving for peanut butter, chocolate, and pickle. She was on her own with the last one, though, who'd heard of bribing people with pickle?
Ray was never sure where to take girls. So he went with the classics, nice food, fine wine, and class. He was fortunate in that this assessment coincided very closely with Stella's wants. Something she had missed in her life as a Kowalski was the fine dining she had grown up with. Ray Kowalski had grown up on solid Polish cooking and tinned soup and sandwiches. Leaving home, Stella had stepped into an alien world of student cooking and foodstuffs she couldn't pronounce. Here, everything was perfect.
There was some kind of commotion at the door, which didn't surprise Ray much; this was a very popular restaurant. He thanked god that he'd gone to school with the Maitre d' and then found that he had thanked god too soon. Frannie. What was his sister doing here, on his date? Whatever his Ma might think, Ray didn't need a chaperone. Come to it, Frannie would not be a good choice as a chaperone; she'd spend the time reading out the steamier parts of Sword of Desire to get everyone in the mood.
Frannie was smiling like she had won the lottery. "Stella. I've got to tell you something." Ray was wondering why his sister wasn't talking to him and dreading the thought that she might bring up the accidental hamster-i-cide. She tended to do things like that at odd moments. At lot of what Ray knew about the unknowable nature of the workings of the female mind came from Frannie. Any other time, he might be glad. He could even get women who hated him on sight to go on a date. Hell, he'd got Louise StLaurent from the box office to go on a date. It was what happened on the date that often went wrong.
Up until now, his relationship with Stella had been a fairy tale romance. Even the home by midnight bit and coffee which really was just coffee were really kind of classy. -- Vecchio men went for classy women, his mother ate cheesecake with a fork and that was the moment his old man realised that she was the woman for him-- Frankly he found the whole no-sex-yet thing kind of a relief. And nobody had been turned into a pumpkin. And now, Ray's sister had turned up in a very upmarket Italian restaurant and was making squealing noises. It was enough to make Ray yearn for mice, frogs, and magic spinning wheels. They made a lot more sense.
Frannie noticed Ray was looking at her funny. Did he think her skirt was too short again? Men, they always say one thing and mean another. Ray claimed to be a connoisseur of fashion, yet he never liked Frannie's outfits and bought her clothes that were fuddy-duddy and in which she would never be seen dead. Anyway, Frannie had the most awesome information and she had to tell Stella.
Before she had met Ray's sister, Stella had no idea that people could talk so fast. One of the waiting staff appeared at Ray's elbow. Stella raised her eyebrows as if she could communicate by semaphore. Frannie misinterpreted Stella's eyebrows as interest in her as-yet-undivulged interesting news. And at the same time, Ray's buddy Paulie from high school asked if the young lady needs a seat.
Ray snapped, "No, my sister does not need a seat, because she is going to stop crashing my date this minute and go home." It's in the genes, you know you're a Vecchio when you fight all the time and love each other to pieces.
"Ray." Frannie wanted to jab him with her elbow, but Ray was sitting down and Frannie never said she was good at the whole spatial thing. Ray ended up coming perilously close to his dinner to avoid getting poked in the eye. "It's important. You see," Frannie turned her attention to Stella, "I cast your horoscope with the dates you gave me and," Frannie paused, trying to draw out the suspense only to find there is none to draw, she couldn't figure why, it was so exciting and romantic, "You are going to meet a tall, dork stranger!"
"Uh, Frannie, I gave you my ex's details, he isn't good about long term planning and maybe I thought, this might help him some." Stella cursed herself, first for telling the truth and secondly for doing something so silly. So much for being a nice normal level-headed person, Stella wondered if it was communicable. Ray wanted to tell her that he thought it's great that she's treating his family, well, like family and the family that shares its problems shouts loudly but they love each other. Plus, Ray was beginning to find the way Stella cared about Kowalski cute in some unidentifiable way.
"Oh, that's okay. He's going to meet a tall, dork stranger!" Frannie grinned. Her news was still awesome. That it wasn't Stella was just a small detail, and this way, her bro might just get a girlfriend who stuck around. For some reason, they tended to dump his ass after he brought them home.
"Frannie, just one small thing, you meant tall dark stranger, didn't you?" Ray was trying to give out signals that said; yes, he knew his sister was crazy. His sister rolled her eyes.
"No, lamebrain, it said dork, I checked." Because, yes, she did check, she'd spent half an hour checking the booklet and then made Maria read it to make sure. She'd read it twice and passed it on to Tony, who read it all with his finger trailing the words and his lips silently forming the sounds. Maria had sat back claiming that pregnancy had been doing strange things to her brain. While Frannie was sure a tall dark stranger was just what every girl needed she was glad that she saved Stella from having a dork stranger.
"Now, can we get on with our dinner? I'm sure Stella will phone Kowalski and tell him when she gets home." Ray thought that ended it, and Frannie would go home and bug Tony or something. Actually, Frannie was planning to organise a baby shower for Maria, she just needed to get the name of a good plumber.
Part IX
A man with style is man who can smile
-- Ray Kowalski, Asylum
The lunatics were once again out in force at the Asylum. Practically every queer guy in town could be in here, but there was no sign of Volpe. Ray let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. Volpe, who was always telling Ray to call him Andreas, was forever on at him to do some gigs down at the club. Ray really didn't want to do them - no change there - but he was kind of worried that Volpe might take advantage of his emotional turmoil. Ray didn't mind being taken advantage of in other ways; Volpe wasn't bad looking once you ditched the ego and he had this thing for full-body hugging.
Ray got a club soda. If he wanted to end up dead to the world, he'd do it at home. It's cheaper and there's always somewhere warm to sleep and you don't have to worry about puking in cabs. He leant back against the bar and just people watched for a while. The bar was kind of like those posh restaurants where you can go and pick out a fish in a tank and then eat it. Ray never liked them, it seemed mean and fish weren't far from his turtle and the man who eats Ray's turtle gets a second course of Ray's boot. Ray had picked out his beat-up boots with all the straps and rings.
Everyone deserves the chance to dress like they are twenty years old. Especially if your dress sense sucked back then, this is a do-over, a second chance. You are in a room full of people who think you're as hot as you think you are. So, you can push the boat out, try eye-make-up and leather pants so tight that folks can't just see what side you dress but your pulse too.
Part X
Happiness is haunted
You don't get what you need
And you don't get what you want
-- Headstones, Come On
The music was like a heart beat, pumping life around the room, the dancers like blood cells dragged in the undertow. Renfield could feel it travelling up through the soles of his boots. He'd left his jacket at the cloakroom. Beyond feeling incredibly self-conscious, he knew he'd done the right thing. The heat in here was cloying; sweat came off the bodies of the dancers like waterfalls. It shone like dew in the morning sun, like the ice fields beneath the aurora. The smell made him think of sweat lodges and visions of rutting caribou that pranced deadly before his eyes. He had been a child then, he didn't understand, now he could feel it in his blood.
It wasn't as if Renfield was some ingnue, some cosseted child shaded from the light of the world. He lived in a world of primal forces, glaciers that carved the world and a never-ending night. Stars were a compass and the ice below his feet was a map, he knew the texture of the wind and the howling of the dogs. In Inuvik, there was no time and no place to hide children from the savage realities of life. He heard the words of the adult and saw the unguarded actions of men and beast and he learnt. He had watched his brother hold Benton close in the barn, he saw them stroke each other to ecstasy. At once his heart was open and rent in two. He saw what he wanted and what he could never have. He approximated it in action and words. His college experience was nave and rough, but he could see the shape of things well enough to creep away from the apartment one night for his secret assignations with the skilled needle of the talented Mr Trent. He started avoiding hockey practices, telling Mark he never had the edge that Benton had, let alone that of Mark. He was as clumsy on the ice as he was in his exchanges with his fellows
Mark had been relentless -- he knew of the sadness at Renfield's heart, even if he did not know it was of his building -- and he urged Renfield onwards, tried to set him up on dates with men so ill-matched it was almost hilarious. Not that Renfield passed up on the opportunity for physical solace; his was a world of half lit darkness and the cold warmth of brick walls. He had observed the social mores of his environment and imitated them perfectly. He could get now what he wanted, but what he needed and it was enough. The hunger in men's eyes did not usually intimidate him as much as entice him. Like an la carte menu held before a starving man.
Yet he was venturing into new territory here and he was more than a little discomforted. Normally only his most intimate acquaintances saw him like this. He was naked before them, wearing only jeans and a pair of sturdy boots. He thought of hostelries with no-shirt no-service signs back home, almost wistful for the uncomplicated masculinity and aggression. The hat was almost an after-thought. Drinking one night with Tracy Jenkins, she declared the thing Renfield's lucky hat and swore he scored every time he wore it. Dwight -- on the sidelines -- had muttered something about queers that did not bear repeating and made Renfield glad they were in Vancouver not at the ranch in Texas.
The buzz had suddenly dropped; Ray could hear himself think under the beat of the music. He noticed the guy at the other end of the bar, leaning over to speak to the barkeep. With the crowd and everything, all Ray could see was his firm, denim-clad ass. Something called to Ray and he started working his way up the bar. These weren't your standard jeans, not around the Asylum anyway, these were proper working jeans, with stains and patches almost faded to pure white. And the boots were hiking boots, none of this fetish shit, boots that probably went climbing mountains and fording rivers. It was as hot as hell. Ray wanted this bad, shame because every other guy in the bar must feel the same way. They had to feel the same way; anything with a zip code would feel the same way. And then, Ray saw them. It had to be some trick of the light, or somebody had spiked his club soda. The guy with the jacket with chains got out of the way.
Ray had a tattoo of his own. Champion spark plugs, to remind himself what he was and because he was seventeen and dumb. Despite that, it was a good tattoo. Ray had seen much worse and knew a couple of guys whose tattoos outlasted their sweethearts. He wasn't sure what to think about those tribal band things that the kids wearing getting now. They just weren't his thing. Neither were all the Japanese letters he'd started noticing at gigs. How did they know what they said? Ray might have been, by this point in his life, rather apathetic to his own tattoo, but he thought it fit well enough. He liked to tell himself he was, you know, at least a little bit of a champion, and if he started wondering how he got where he is now, he just had to look at his shoulder. He liked it enough to wear wifebeaters and short-sleeve shirts.
Black wings glided down this guy's back, they dived from his shoulder blades to below his belt. Ray wondered where they ended, if they ended at all. These weren't fluffy little wings; they were the full works, the whole enchilada. Ray didn't know much about birds, but he was pretty sure that these were text book wings. He could see every feather and the veins branching off the quills. There weren't done by just any tattooist, these were done by a master and sure as heck hadn't been done drunk and seventeen. They must have taken days if not weeks. Ray couldn't do that, couldn't be that strong, Ray knew that. That kind of determination and the certainty needed to see it to the end scared Ray.
But what was most gorgeous about these wings wasn't the technical feat of a tattoo going all the way down the guy's back, or the stamina it required, it was the way they moved with his back. The way the feathers shifted with the muscle, they were in tune with his breath, moved with his heartbeat. Somewhere deep inside Ray, he knew he had to stay back, he knew that the wings could unfurl at any moment and this angel could take flight.
And for all Ray knew he still could not tear his eyes away. The wings weren't just beautiful; something about them tore Ray up inside. Ray couldn't see his face hidden behind the brim of a straw cowboy hat. His arms were toned and everything made Ray think of a stable hand straight from heaven. Ray was tempted to go home right now. He wasn't going to meet anyone who would even compare and guys like that could have anyone. Guys like that don't go for skinny Polish guys trying to hold back the years with eyeliner and ball-bearing bracelets.
Ray would go home and beat off with those wings in his mind, he would imagine his new fantasy warm against his back, a hand reaching around Ray's body and jacking him off slowly and sweetly. The only reason to stay was to see the angel's face. Ray was trying to tell himself how dumb this was and he was in a bar and everyone was horny and willing. He wasn't that bad looking.
The smoke in the air was making Ray crave a cigarette. There were toothpicks on the bar and he wanted an excuse to look at angel-guy. He could get a pick to chew, and then go and find himself some easy company and suck and get sucked, and then be home for the late night horror movie and a date with his fist.
Part XI
Let's get him in here and mess with his head
-- Ray Kowalski, Dead Guy Running
They look so serious, and they tell me this is it
And I light a match to another bridge
-- Headstones, Blowtorch
Renfield felt strangely exhausted, he had made the effort to get to the bar and now he was at a loss when he should have been reaching out and taking what he wanted. Perhaps his experiences in Toronto had coloured his memory of the mores and social niceties of such establishments -- nostalgia was a powerful enemy and could drive songs into the ground if one was not careful -- he was sure that barmen were more effusive and companionable. Especially when he made it known that he was more than willing to wait until the end of the shift and help collect glasses and then collect the barman. What was it with tonight, what should have been a simple taste of freedom and elation was churning up so many memories that Renfield was almost overwhelmed and breached?
It remained that the barman was clearly one of the most ill-tempered and brusque of his species. It might be that he had lost the ability to speak in some freak accident or was a victim of selective mutism, but Renfield's carefully worded enquiries and requests for a drink were met only by grunts. Renfield was trying to work out what lay at the roots of his own uncharacteristic nervousness. Normally, he was the type to just jump into the ice hole and embrace whatever faced him. His reticence his first summer back from university so disturbed Mark and Benton that they pulled him into the water and then attempted to divest him of his clothing. He had been afraid of their possible reactions, and had thought about it much over the long weeks of appointments with Trent, and he still struggled to explain what was in his heart.
His fears were unjustified. They remembered and they knew. Perhaps they knew even more clearly than Renfield by dint of being that much older. Benton said that it made his otter-inflicted scar look quite paltry and lacking in significance, and Renfield and Mark had the good grace not to mention that it had never been anything less than legendary. Mark had insisted that Renfield took him to the shop and had a triangle tattooed on his shoulder, just a simple line, reminding him that they would always be they three together. It was that, he said, or a Three Musketeers candy bar and he figured Benton would never forgive him for that.
This relationship had proved to Renfield that his fears -- except the half remembered foreboding the morning the Inspector came to visit -- where oft unfounded and were more the consequence of a mind that considered every permutation before putting pen to paper. He had the mind of a chess player melded to the soul of a poet. He waged wars with words; he could sharpen them until they cut like blades of ice.
He had but two choices here, he could pursue a conversation with a man who had no desire to enjoin one and was significantly less than pleasing on the eye or he could survey the room and observe not only his potential partners for the evening but watch how they conducted themselves and hopefully not make too much of a fool of himself. He could feel the pressure of eyes upon him as he still hesitated.
At that moment, Ray sneaked in front of a guy wearing some kind of kinked out uniform, all straps and red vinyl. He had kept telling himself that it was only to grab a toothpick and perhaps a glimpse of angel-boy. He might have pressed in a little close, wanting to steal what he could from these seconds, some memory of the way he smelt, or the warmth of his skin. It wasn't like this was a polite joint or anything; nobody used words like decorum when talking about the Asylum.
Ray didn't expect to be stared in the eye by the object of his erection. Blue eyes that reminded Ray of gasoline on wet asphalt looked into his. He was chewing gum, not a straw, but that didn't matter, all of it just added to the fire stealing away Ray's thoughts. Sandy blond hair sneaked out from beneath the hat and the smile was the most genuine thing Ray had seen in years. It was if every other smile was a Miller Lite smile, a "have a nice day" smile, and this was a gourmet smile that cost more than Ray earned in a month.
Renfield had steadfastly refused to acknowledge the possibility that he might have a type, despite close questioning not only from his family -- Benton and Mark, and even Buck Frobisher, who took a strange avuncular interest -- but from casual acquaintances and fellow doyennes of the music business. Some would take such a multiplicity of similar opinions as proof, but Renfield was determined that it would not be the case. Yes, some of the men had dark hair and blue eyes, but that only reflected the make up of society at large. It had nothing to do with the burning eyes of Benton Fraser or his dark hair.
Yet, it had everything to do with the fact that Benton was immutably off limits. Renfield hoped Benton didn't realise that, that he had camouflaged and suppressed the desire that kept him in Inuvik and led him to help build White Wolf Records. None of the others had caused such a visceral attraction.
Not until now. Renfield came face to face with an insouciant crooked-toothed smile and eyes filled with reckless abandon. .
Part XII
And this one is for the Green Hornet and Superman
-- Hugh Dillon
Ray had more than his share of awkward meetings; but double booked gigs were nowhere near the same ballpark. His erection was trying to break through his zipper and the pain-pressure was the only thing stopping Ray from losing it then and there. It seemed the other guy didn't know what to say either. One thing Ray had learnt long ago was that when car mechanics were concerned, there is no such thing as too much grease. And what was talking except the grease that got Ray from one gig to another? It can't be hard, can it, to come up with something to say while the other guy's dick is trying to shake hands with your own? Ray slipped the toothpick in his mouth, it felt dumb to keep it in his hand and nobody walks around carrying a toothpick. Self-consciously, he took a couple of chews.
Renfield was fascinated by how this fellow's smile remained confident even though his eyes betrayed an underlying nervousness. They flickered from the bar to Renfield's face to the club behind them. Renfield fancied that the eyes spent the longest amount of time on his visage, even though it was a rampantly egoistic thing to think. Renfield was surprised to find himself lost for words.
Ray figured that once he got his tongue untied he might be in for a chance. In the mean time, Ray tried to take in everything about the guy. The pink flowers on the crown of the hat were not normal cowboy wear. Even if the closest Ray got to cowboys was Rawhide, he knew that. For cowboy fetishists, Ray figured that the hat was a passion killer on a par with his third grade teacher. Luckily for Ray, it wasn't a turn off for him. Tonight might be the night when Lady Luck finally paid up.
Renfield wasn't sure why he did it, shifted the gum in his mouth and blew a bubble. Maybe it was some repressed infantile desire to show off, maybe it was because for the first time since he was a teenager, Renfield didn't know what to say. And speaking of teenagers, the last time Renfield had felt this hard was under the covers in the bedroom he shared with Mark.
There was, Ray thought, no way this ought to be hot. He was blowing a bubble, the gum getting stretched thinner and thinner around air. Ray knew this, sure as he knew Green Lantern comics and hockey cards. But he had never found it so damn hot. His new friend had pretty lips, not to say they were girlie or anything, but they sure were pretty. Spread open and wet, how could Ray not think about them? His toothpick just hung there, it had long lost the competition for hottest thing to do with your mouth. Ray could think of hotter things than this, but he didn't want to burst the guy's bubble. He could think of hot perfect kisses, wild and hard like he couldn't get enough; strawberry flavour lips and a hot tongue fighting his own. Ray didn't think it could get much bigger and things that got bigger were among Ray's favourite things even with the way his cock ached. If his cock got any harder, it would burst like the bubble gum across his cowboy's face. Ray had forgotten that the stuff got everywhere.
Renfield licked the gum off his face like a true sensualist. He could feel his companion's eyes on him, warm and easing away his awkwardness like rubbing sore muscles. He had no idea what he looked like. No, he knew what he looked like, decadently swiping his tongue around his face, gathering up every piece of sweet-sticky taste. It tasted strange and vaguely chemical. What Renfield really wanted to taste was salt, sweat, and musk.
That was so very hot and it seemed that all the blood going to Ray's cock had addled his brain some. The last words he was expecting came straight from the schoolyard. "You know, you swallow that and you'll tie your gut up in knots." Inwardly, Ray cringed while his inner third-grader wondered if this guy could lick his own nose.
Renfield stared into his eyes, they were so very blue, blue like the ocean and Renfield wanted to dive into the water and swim. Instead, he found himself making small-talk on autopilot. Martha Fraser had been like a second mother to him, and he had picked up some of the family's tendency towards vacillation. "That's an urban myth put about by janitors to stop you gumming up floors." However, he was much briefer and to the point than any true Fraser could be. Renfield was something of an optimist and reined in his mouth, hoping he hadn't said anything too destructive to this budding friendship. It felt like time stood still for a moment and the din of the club fell silent, as Renfield searched his mind for something more appropriate to say, but all he could think was how his erection felt so delicious and this man's eyes so electrifying.
"I'm St- St- Stan- Stanley," Ray stuttered. It's true, he's back in third grade and the cowboy's looking at him like he gakked up a greenie and waved it in his face. The cowhand must have been a long way from home, Ray figured. He didn't know the rules of this game. Ray did, he got himself a lot of experience real fast and not all of it was greatness. He wouldn't have got Volpe's attention so fast if he had known the law of the jungle. If Ray was Tarzan, then this must hive been Jane. Jane was a cowboy name, just about, John Wayne was really Marion. "It's like in the movies; nobody gives their real name here, unless they want trouble." Ray twitched. "And trust me, you don't want trouble, it ain't worth it."
Renfield figured he knew more about trouble than this `Stanley' suspected, but said nothing, because he was having trouble saying anything at all. He was somewhere between breaths, between heartbeats, and there the moment had stretched itself out thin, like gum stretching around air.
Ray understood, really, he did. He knew that feeling, the one where you can't think because all the blood has run to your dick and all you have in your brain is a thousand little blue movies running and one word trying to bust itself free. You can feel the shape of the word, you know it's there, but the power's out, you can't see the word, can't see it at all. So Ray tried to help some, only the moment Ray suggested "Bubbles" the name "Dean" came out like a thunderous sneeze.
Ray hadn't really meant it. He really didn't mean to do it. And now it was all over except for the bit where he jacks himself half-drunk on despair and disappointment.
Bubbles Dean. "Bubba Dean" On reflection a much better name than Renfield Turnbull had ever been. The newly-minted Bubba didn't want to even consider what name that Stanley was escaping. Something worse than Renfield, he warranted. He took Stanley's hand and gently led them out of the crowds and into the coolness of the night. He'll have to go back for his coat later. He doesn't want to hide right now.
Ray had followed in a daze and now he was outside and the cold was taking a little off the heat of his erection. He's breaking through the hypnotic haze of the club, only to be pushed up against a wall and pulled back into seething chaos.
Bubba could feel the cold wetness of the sidewalk seeping through the knees of his jeans. He didn't care, there's always another pair of jeans. They always take the punishment he throws at them, dirt biking under the Texan sun, running and wrestling through the arctic summer. He could throw them onto the rocks; it would not change a thing. And now, Bubba threw himself into the seething waters of passion. He could smell piss and alcohol in the alley, but that was far away from where he was now, breathing in the scent of leather and musk, just resting his head on Stanley's trembling thigh. He watched his breath condense in the air and put a shine on the leather that Bubba can almost see his face in. Stanley was a mirror of Bubba's desires as Bubba batted away eager hands and leans in closer and takes the zipper in his teeth.
Ray thought he was going to stroke out unless things got moving, but the cocky look in Bubba's eyes as he grasped the zipper in picture-perfect teeth was the hottest thing Ray had ever seen. He could barely wrap his mind around it. He had scored himself an angel and that beautiful sinful mouth promised warm and heat. He shivered as Bubba paused for a moment and leaned back to take off his hat like a seriously dirty dancer. The hat, with its incongruous flowers, was barely on the ground before Bubba closed in again.
It was cruel but necessary, the hat would only fall off or block the view and Bubba so wanted to see Stanley's face as he took him in deep. The zip undone, Stanley's cock was already leaking copiously at the tip and Bubba ran his thumb over the slit and then liked it clean. Warmth and salt on his tongue, Bubba fisted the root of the cock and started to lick it, swirling his tongue as if he was painting a map of an unknown constellation and with each swipe getting closer to heaven.
This was torture, plain and simple. Ray could see Bubba looking up at him, his eyes blazing as he licked Ray's cock clean of pre-come, warmth chased by the cold of the night air. Steam rose from a grate across the alley, giving Bubba the appearance of really having wings. Ray desperately tried to jerk forward, his hips snapping, but Bubba held him firm and tightened his grip on Ray's cock.
Delicious sounds were coming from Stanley's mouth, groans and jerks of frustration as Bubba decided to slip his lips over the end of Stanley's cock, he paused a moment before slipping further up the shaft until he was meeting his own fist. Bubba swirled his tongue and his cheeks hollowed as he sucked. Soon he had a rhythm going, bobbing up and down, and Bubba could suppress his desires no more.
Bubba lifted Ray's hand from the brick wall and place it at the back of his head. Every part of Ray's body felt like it was on fire with sensation, his hand felt like it was in a forest feeling every blade of grass grow. Every second lasted years as he suddenly felt the dam break and Bubba's fist left the root of his cock.
Bubba gave in and relaxed, letting Stanley's cock hit the back of his throat and letting it glide downwards until his nose rested in hair that smelt of lust and skin and Stanley's head loomed like the face of god at the limits of his vision. He waited for the inevitable reflex, he wanted to feel this, he wanted to be taken, and as Ray began to thrust jerkily and his fingers coiled tightly in Bubba's hair. Bubba was overwhelmed and heat spilled from his cock only to be followed moments later by the flood in his mouth.
That was incredible, Ray had a moment of sheer bliss before he noticed he was still holding Bubba's head tightly to his cock. He pulled back to see a lust-tinged smile and the pupils of Bubba's wide, dark eyes. It didn't seem Bubba minded. He was still in dreamland, it seemed, as Ray stammered apologies and tried to indicate that he wanted to reciprocate, wanted to make this thing even between them.
Bubba blinked and what had been formless noise coalesced into Stanley's exhortations. He picked up his had and rose unsteadily to his feet. "I don't need any help, Stanley" he said with a smile before he leaned in to kiss Stanley's cheek. Hands gripped into his hair and pulled his mouth to meet Stanley's lips and they opened with Bubba's slightest touch.
There were rough lips and the slightest touch of stubble as Ray plundered Bubba's mouth and tasted himself on his tongue. It didn't taste bad at all. Ray just wanted that warm heat forever, it was everything he craved and he didn't want this to end. He just pushed closer and was pleased when he felt Bubba's hands hold him tight. He could hear the blood roaring in his ears as he flew higher and higher on endorphins.
It was like Icarus, when he flew too close to the sun. One moment and everything was warmth and heat and impossible growing hardness, then with the wail of sirens in the distance, Renfield crashed to earth, his illusions dashed like glass on the rocks. He pulled back, still entangled in Stanley's arms. The discordant wailing came ever closer. Perhaps it was the way the sound bounced off the multitude of buildings, but Renfield couldn't tell if was coming nearer. There's a burst of noise as the club disgorged a crowd of revellers. He needs to recover his coat, or it will be a long cold wait for a cab.
Ray was kind of angry, he was enjoying that and then the guy gets spooked by a little noise. Okay, the people from the club, Ray doesn't mind being a free show, but he gets that his cowboy might have been born different. The small sensible part of Ray's brain -- the Stella synapse -- whispers that being the floor show is so not a good thing. It was about to pat Bubba on the back for that mean save, just as Ray swung, not decided whether to embrace the man or hit him.
Stanley , if that is indeed his name, he's already told Renfield that it isn't. Stanley staggered slightly, as Renfield looked upon him with eyes that hold both hope and trepidation. "Will I see you again?" It didn't matter if Stanley says no, not really, since Renfield will see him in every dream and every mirror. Renfield will relive this moment a hundred thousand times, and it each time it will be like this, perfect and immutable.
Ray didn't know what to say, he didn't know his own mind and his mind was miles behind him. "Maybe," he growled with a mixture of sex and anger. And then he swung out into the night and started walking. And he never looked back; for fear that this would all disappear if he did. He was walking out of heaven into hell, an inversion of the Orpheus myth even crueller in its bleak reality.
Part XIII: A message from Santa
And when the clocks on the wall struck the midnight hour
They jumped into a fire -- Donovan, Little Tin Soldier
Dear recipient,
I hope you are not disappointed. I was myself somewhat surprised at what your prompt awoke in my mind. I had an entire epic planned - Duck Boys, Sandor, and a record executive whose offers you would be wise not to refuse - only to come to a crossroads. I had 50,000 words written and I could either try to hurry to reach the conclusion and run the risk of bad writing and rough edges or try and pull back and present you only with a self contained segment and a promise that the rest would follow. Circumstance and the advice of our wise archivist, Sprat, suggested the latter. I hope you are not disappointed. Yours faithfully, Santa
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