The weight lifter pulled the black glove back for a roundhouse into Rydell’s face. And smiled.
Rydell tried to shake his head.
Faintest look of surprise, maybe confusion, in the other’s eyes, his face. Then nothing. The smile gone slack.
The weight lifter went suddenly and very heavily to his knees, swayed, and crashed sideways to the gray timber deck. Revealing behind him this slender, gray-haired man in a long smooth coat the color of old moss, who was replacing something there, the lapel held open with his other hand. Eyes regarding Rydell through gold-rimmed glasses. A deep crease up each cheek, like he smiled a lot. The man adjusted his beautiful coat and lowered his hands.
“Are you injured?”
Rydell drew a ragged breath, wincing as the rib seemed to grate. “Rib,” he managed.
“Are you armed?”
Rydell looked into the clear, bright, unmoving eyes. “Knife in my right pocket,” he said.
“Please keep it there,” the man said. “Are you able to walk?”
“Sure,” Rydell said, taking a step and almost falling on the weight lifter.
“Come with me, please,” the man said and turned, and Rydell followed. 188 CREEDMORE was into the climax of his number before Chevette spotted God’s Little Toy cruising past overhead. The bar, like a lot of the spaces here on the original deck, didn’t have a ceiling of its own, just the bottoms of whatever floor areas had been erected above it, with the result that what passed for a ceiling was uneven and irregular. The management had at some point sprayed all that black, and Chevette might not have noticed the floating camera platform if its Mylar balloon hadn’t caught and reflected the stage lights. It was definitely under human control and looked like it might be jockeying to get a close-up of Creedmore. Then Chevette spotted two more of the silver balloons, these parked up in a sort of hollow created by a discontinuity in the floors above.
That meant, she thought, that Tessa had gotten someone to drive her back to the foot of Folsom. Then either she’d driven back or gotten a lift. (She was pretty sure Tessa wouldn’t have walked it, not with the balloons anyway.) Chevette hoped the latter, because she didn’t .want to have to try to find a space to park the van a second time. Whatever Tessa was up to here, they were going to need a place to sleep later.
Creedmore’s song ended with a sort of yodeling cry of brainless defiance, which was echoed back, amplified into a terrifying roar, by the meshback crowd. Chevette was amazed by the enthusiasm, not so much that it was for Creedmore as it was for this kind of music. Music was strange that way though; there were people into any damned thing, it seemed like, and if you got enough of them together in one bar, she guessed, you could have a pretty good time.
She was still working her way through the crowd, warding off the odd grope, looking for Tessa, and keeping an eye out for Carson, when Creedmore’s friend Maryahce found her. Maryalice had undone a couple of extra increments of bustier, it looked like, and was presenting as very ample indeed. She looked really happy, or anyway as happy as you
189 46. PINE BOX can look when you’re really drunk, which she definitely and obviously was.
“Honey!” she cried, grabbing Chevette by the shoulders. “Where have you been? We got all kinds of free drinks for our industry guests!”
Maiyalice clearly didn’t remember Chevette having told her that she and Tessa weren’t A&R people, but Chevette guessed that there was quite a lot, usually, that Maryalice didn’t remember.
“That’s great,” Chevette said. “Have you seen Tessa? My friend I was here with? She’s Australian-”
“Up in the light booth with Saint Vitus, honey. She’s getting Buell’s whole performance on those little balloon things!” Maryalice beamed. Gave Chevette a big, lipstick-greasy kiss on the cheek and instantly forgot her, face going blank as she turned in what Chevette supposed would be the direction of the bar.
But the light booth, now, she could see that: a sort of oversized matte-black crate tacked up against the angle of the wall, opposite the stage, with a warped plastic window running its length, through which she could see, quite plainly, the faces of Tessa and some bald-headed boy with mean-looking slitty black glasses. Just their two heads in there, like puppet heads. Reached, she saw, by an aluminum stepladder fastened to the wall with lengths of rusting pipe strap.