Vic Daniel 6 - As she rides by

sale of sheet music, which, obviously, cannot be the case today.”
    “Cannot and is not, mate,” Tom said. He picked up a handy pine cone and rolled it across the table to his partner, who promptly rolled it back.
    “What else don’t I know...” I mused. “Don’t know nothin’ about agents and managers and personal managers, let alone song pluggers; don’t know how records are actually recorded and then put onto vinyl or tape or compact discs, outside of what I’ve picked up watching my dream girl, Sandra Dee, her buxom chum, Annette Funicello, and Fabian in all those Beach Party epics.”
    “Know who I met once?” Jerry said, a faraway look in his big blue eyes. “Ann-Margaret.”
    “Big deal,” I said. “I met Tuesday Weld once but I don’t go around bragging about it.”
    “I met David Bowie once,” Tom said wistfully. “Didn’t work out, though.”
    “But I was once a gofer for a pop star,” I said. “Back east, in Evanston , where I grew up, when I was no longer a youth but not yet a man.
    “Actually, bodyguard was more like it. He was a local kid. I knew his sister Chris slightly because she used to go out with my brother and that’s how I met him. I was with him a year, a year and a half, in Evanston and then Chicago , then the deluge arrived for both of us.”
    “How come?” Jerry asked.
    “Tell you some time, maybe,” I said. And maybe not; I’ve got a few memory lanes I don’t mind meandering back down again from time to time, but I also have a few I’d just as soon leave unretrodden, thanks. Such as, very briefly, this charming scenario: Concert. Bikers, two. Black leathers, swastikas, chains, beards, gloves, tripping maniacs. Displeased by the phrase “speed is for sissies” in a lyric, leap up on stage. Smash drum kit. Bodyguard in wings to the rescue, as city cops on duty at gig either out front of house cadging free tickets or backstage playing Old Maid. Valiant Bodyguard wrestles one biker to ground. Drummer, lead guitar, and bass guitar pile atop. V. B. slings biker two off the stage, incurring one knife wound and one broken wrist. Biker two lands on his head, breaks neck, and later croaks. V. B. does just under two years in Evanston Pen, learning how to lose at chess, how to read words more than one syllable long, how to avoid being anyone’s sugar, and how to work a metal lathe without losing too many fingers.
    “What I do know about,” I said, “is fetching. Scoring. Making fried chicken runs and booze runs. Lifting and toting million-pound amps with doped-out, hungover roadies in greasy T-shirts and hundreds of keys, and those were just the clothes horses. Carrying a concealed weapon illegally. Losing at gin. Keeping a ducktail slicked back.”
    Jerry said, “Victor. What you don’t know you can rapidly learn. I know a bit, so does, despite appearances, Thomas here, and so does Rickie. Our old manager’s in town; he knows the whole management side and his old lady’s a lawyer, she knows that side. It’s not all that complicated, as an example of which one only has to look at the number of extremely rich morons in the business.”
    “Now, now,” Tom said. “Remember, bitterness leaves frown marks.”
    “See, Victor,” Jerry said, “Thomas and I are exceptionally chary right now. Or wary, if you prefer.”
    “Or highly suspicious, if you prefer,” Tom said.
    “The last time we climbed aboard the musical merry-go-round we did rather well, if I do say so myself,” Jerry said.
    “But when it was all over, when the carousel ground to a halt and the circus moved on without us, we arrived back in England with the grand total of nine thousand dollars between us.”
    “And twenty cents,” said Tom.
    “This was after five years of working our buns off, remember,” Jerry said. “As we alit from the tourist class section of the monoplane, we turned to each other and we vowed, never again.”
    “OK,” I said. “So what’s the problem?”
    “I shall come to that,” Jerry said. “So we went our separate ways. Marriages and children—in his case a great many of both—soon followed. Then one fateful day the phone rang. Hollywood was calling. Have you noticed that it is rather difficult to hang up when Hollywood calls?”
    “I’ve never had any trouble,” I said. King whimpered in his sleep briefly. The cat in the eaves rolled over on its back and opened one yellow eye cautiously, then the other. When it saw that King was sleeping away, it