Spiral

Joplin.”
    ”That Bette Midler in The Rose, she did a better-than-okay job, but Very’s the closest I’ve ever seen. The sex-kitten looks of a Spice Girl, but the voice, the voice...”
    All I could think was, Thirteen years old.
    Veronica Held gyrated through the rest of the tune, the lyric a poorly rhymed stanza of barely disguised sexual desire for a teacher, her hips grinding against the microphone she rubbed along her thighs during the instrumental sections. After a crescendo of wail and music both, the screen went to snow again.
    ”I didn’t recognize the song, Mitch.”
    Eisen gave his breathy grunt as he pressed another button on the remote and swung back around to me. ”I’m not surprised. It was one of the new ones Spi wrote for the comeback.”
    ”Not very good lyrics.”
    ”No, but what do you want from an eighth-grader?”
    I stared at him. ”You’re not serious.”
    ”So, okay. She had a tutor the last few months, not a real school and classroom, but—”
    ”Wait a minute. Veronica wrote those lyrics?”
    ”Yeah.” Eisen seemed surprised now. ”Like I said before, Spi was the music guy, and O’D wrote the words.”
    ”And Veronica replaced O’Dell?”
    ”Hey, they’re not so bad, John, you compare them with the current crop of crap out there. Nothing you’d mistake for Paul Simon or Carole King, maybe, but—”
    ”I also don’t remember hearing about any ‘tutor.’”
    ”Hearing about? Shit, man, you already met him.”
    ”Who?”
    ”Very’s tutor. Tranh.”
    That stopped me a minute.
    ”Hey, John, you okay?”
    ”Fine.” I gestured toward the now-dark screen. ”Was Veronica always like that?”
    ”Like that ‘cock-tease,’ or like that ‘bitchy’?”
    ”Both.”
    Eisen pursed his lips again, the rug doing its little glide on his forehead. ”Depended on the circumstance.”
    ”Meaning?”
    ”Meaning—look, I gave you Rock-’n’-Roll 101, let me give you the same about Very. She knew how to use it better than most women I’ve ever met, and believe me, you’re the personal manager of a rock band, you’ve seen them all ages and sizes.”
    ”Use what?”
    ”The hint of sex, John. You might say Very was ‘mature beyond her years.’ She knew what worked with her father, and her grandfather, for that matter.”
    I felt myself starting to bristle, tried to keep it out of my voice. ”Nicolas Helides?”
    ”Yeah. Oh, I don’t mean the real thing, like incest or whatever. Shit, man, I protested the war back then like everybody else I know, but with the old man financing the comeback, I finally got to know him a little, and you got to feel sorry for the guy. Was a stand-up hero over there, what I heard.”
    ”You heard right.”
    ”Meanwhile, back in the states, his one son—Spi, now—goes druggie on him and runs away from home. His wife’d already turned up her toes giving birth to the other son —David—who turns out to be a fucking zombie. And then he marries a—”
    ”I’ve met Cassandra Helides.”
    ”Then enough said about her, except that after the old man stroked out, she got worse. But even Cassie could take a lesson from Very. The little vixen knew just how high turn up the candlepower, get her own way about things.
    ”Go on.”
    ”All right.” Eisen settled back into the big chair. ”Very could light the super-bitch candle for Spi, the super-sweet candle for the Colonel, and the super-student candle for Tranh, though I can’t say I ever saw that. She could even get that David to come out of his shell a little, which I did see once or twice.
    ”How?”
    ”I was there, John, in the house.”
    ”I meant, how did Veronica get David ‘out of his shell’?”
    ”Oh. Well, she’d get him to show her his computer stuff, and play on it.”
    ”I always thought kids knew more about computers than adults.”
    ”Most times, I’d agree with you. But David—you know computer nerds, right?”
    ”A few.”
    ”Okay, David’s a computer... zombie, like I said before. He stays in his room most of the time, and his father’s house just about all of the time. The poor schmuck’s whole world is that computer setup. Have him show it to you.”
    I made a mental note. ”Back to the day of the party?”
    ”Okay.”
    ”What happened after Veronica made that scene with her grandfather?”
    ”When she sang him the ‘come-fuck-me’ song?”
    ”Yes.”
    ”All hell broke loose. I remember Spi and Jeanette running after Very. I’d had a few