But what really bothered him, now, was that Laney, and Klaus and the Rooster too, had thought that the projector was important, really important, and now here he went, Rydell, limping willingly along beside this killer, this man who evidently worked for whoever it was was after Rydell’s ass, and probably after the projector as well, and he was just going along with it. Sheep to the slaughter.
“I want to go in here a minute,” Rydell said.
“Why?” “See a friend,” Rydell said.
“Is this a bid for escape?”
“1 don’t want to go with you.”
The man regarded him from behind the thin crystal rounds of his glasses. “You are complicating things,” he said.
“So kill me,” Rydell said, gritting his teeth as he slung his weight around and staggered past the smokers by the door, into the warm loud
beer smell and crowd energy Creedmore was onstage with Randy Shoats and a bass player with sideburns, and whatever they were playing reached its natural conclusion at just that point, Creedmore jumping into the air as he let out a final whoop and the music crashed down around him, the crowd roaring and stomping and clapping. Rydell had seen Creedmore’s eyes flash flat and bright as a doll’s in the stage light. “Hey, Buell!” Rydell shouted. “Creedmore!” He shouldered someone out of his way and kept going. He was a few feet from the stage now. “Buell!” It was just a little thing, the stage, maybe a foot high, and the crowd
– wasn’t that thick. Creedmore saw him. He stepped down from the stage. The singer’s pearl-button cowboy shirt was open to the waist, his hollow white chest gleaming with sweat. Someone handed him a towel and he wiped his face with it, grinning, showing long yellow teeth and no gum. “Rydell,”
he said. “Son of a bitch. Where you been?” “Looking for you, Buell.”
203 The man with the knife put his hand on Rydell’s shoulder. “This is unwise,” he said.
“Hey, Buell,” Rydell said, “get me a beer, okay?”
“You see me, Rydell? I was fuckin’ Jesus’ son, man. Fuckin’ Hank Williams, motherfucker.” Creedmore beamed, yet Rydell saw the thing that was waiting there to toggle into rage. Someone handed Creedmore two tall cans, already opened. He passed one to Rydell. Creedmore splashed cold malt liquor down his chest, rubbed himself with it. “Damn, I’m good.”
“We can be too easily contained here,” the man said.
“Leggo my buddy there,” said Creedmore, noticing the man for the first time. “Faggot,” he added, as if further taking in the man’s appearance and seeming to have difficulty placing it in any more convenient category of abuse.”Buell,” Rydell said, reaching up and grabbing the man’s wrist,
“want you to meet a friend of mine.”
“Looks like some faggot oughta be kilt with a shovel,” Creedmore observed, slit-eyed and furious now, the toggle having been thrown.
“Let go of my shoulder,” Rydell said to the man, quietly. “It doesn’t look good.”
The man let go of Rydell’s shoulder.
“Sorry,” Rydell said, “but I’m staying here with Buell and a hundred or so of his close personal friends.” He looked at the can in his hand. Something called King Cobra. He took a sip. “You want to go, go. Otherwise, just kill me.”
“Goddamn you, Creedmore,” Randy Shoats said, stepping heavily down from the stage, “you fucking drug addict. You’re drunk. Drunk and ripped to the tits on dancer.”
Creedmore goggled up at the big guitar player, his eyes all pupil. “Jesus, Randy,” he began, “you know I just needed to get a little loose-”
“Loose? Loose? Jesus. You forgot the words to ‘Drop That Jerk and Come with Me’! How fucked do you have to be to do that? Fuckin’audience knew the words, man; they were singing along with you. Trying to, anyway.” Shoats rammed his callused thumb into Creedmore’s chest for 204 emphasis. “I told you I don’t work with diz-monkeys. You’re toast, understand? Outta here. History.”
Creedmore seemed to reach far down into the depths of his being, as if to summon some new degree of honesty, in order to face this moment of crisis. He seemed to find it. Drew himself more upright. “Fuck you,” he said. “Motherfucker,” he added, as Shoats, disgusted, turned and walked away.