Jazz Funeral
jaw was something Nick had seen enough times to last him several lifetimes. In fact, he sometimes thought he had open-mouth karma. Maybe he’d been a dentist once.
It wasn’t a pretty sight. It was a truly ugly sight.
“Holy shit!” said Christie’s dancing partner, and Christie squealed, “Nick Anglime!”
Nick was pissed. He said, “Audrey, why the hell did you do that? Did I do something you didn’t like?”
But Proctor was pulling at his elbow. “Nick, we got to get out of here.”
He was right, oh so right; and they were just a bit too late. He should never have stopped to tell Audrey off. She grabbed his sleeve as he turned to go. And other people, having heard Christie’s squeal, turned toward him.
Audrey said, “I’m sorry. Hey, listen, I’m really sorry. Were you going to ask me to dance? Did I blow that? Just tell me—did I blow it?”
He couldn’t deny who he was. That would make him look churlish. The best thing, he’d learned by experience, was to be polite, Britishly polite, polite to a fault, but keep moving. “Audrey,” he said, “I think you’re a delightful girl and it’s been lovely meeting you.”
He put out his hand to shake. She took it in two wet, sticky paws and said, “You called me Audrey.”
“Only because it’s your name,” he said, and extricated his hand. Proctor was clearing a path.
He heard his own name, louder than the music, being carried on the afternoon breeze, traveling like news of war: “Nick Anglime, Nick Anglime, Nick Anglime …”
People Magazine had once called him the most famous American, had compared his celebrity to that of Elvis if he’d lived. Elvis had probably never been out without a brace of bodyguards in his life.
And people called him self-destructive.
Nick had chosen not to live his life that way, had become a near-recluse instead.
People pressed at him now, closed in, asking for autographs. Some of them, having no paper available, wanted him to sign their hands or wrists. “I’m sorry,” he’d say with a disarming grin, “I don’t sign body parts,” but he did sign some people’s programs. He and Proctor threaded their way.
It was going okay, maybe a little slow, but they were making progress, until he felt a hand close on the flapping sleeve of his Hawaiian shirt and start to tear it.
“Oh, shit!” He’d been here before. Things could turn nasty.
Proctor’s hand closed on the other hand. It was a woman’s. “You let go of me,” she yelled, in that unbelievably irritating accent the yats had.
“Okay,” said Proctor, holding on. “Okay. It’s going to be all right. You just let go of my friend’s shirt and everybody’ll be happy.”
Instead she used the distraction to press closer to Nick, press her sweaty body next to his. She put her head down and before he could budge, bit him. Bit him on the neck.
“Goddamn!”
Nick’s first impulse was to turn around swinging, but he couldn’t, the woman had his sleeve and Proctor had her arm. Failing that, he sent his elbow behind him, hard. He couldn’t help it, it was pure reflex. She still had her teeth in his neck.
“Ow!” She pulled away, releasing his neck, releasing his sleeve, but with her right fist she began to beat him, raining blows on his shoulder and the back of his head. He tried to duck, tried to get away, and Proctor tried to block the woman, but the crowd surged. The smell of Dixie beer was beginning to escape from people’s pores. Nick was aware of the same sick panic he’d once felt when a rock audience had rushed the stage.
Because they all wanted a piece of him. That was what the whole autograph thing was about, the whole thing of getting him to talk to them for a minute—they wanted a piece of him metaphorically, and how much imagination did it take to extend the metaphor? Early in his career he’d had dreams of being hung up on a stick like a scarecrow, and pecked to death by tiny birds, thousands of them, that landed all over him.
“Police! Step back, everybody. Leave the man alone.” It was a woman’s voice, a familiar voice, the voice of the big cop who’d just humiliated his woman. A few minutes ago he’d hated her, now her voice was a nightingale’s.
“Everybody be cool. Everything’s okay, just give the man some air, that’s all. Hey, Mr. Anglime. How’s it going?”
She walked over and put her arm through his, cool as you please, a good-looking babe in business clothes, could have been a publicist
Weitere Kostenlose Bücher