Chapter Five

" Suzie, do be a love and whack this evil little Kinder Egg into the Grand Canyon for me. " Chris handed Susan a 5-iron. It was near dawn and she, Chris, two band members and an arty black-and-white photographer named Rudy were sitting atop the tour bus in lawn chairs, sipping Benedictine and taking turns trying on silvery-orange nipple tassels that Chris, back in Las Vegas and crashingly drunk, had purchased from an off-duty lap dancer for $500.

" Okay, guv, " said Susan, " but we'll never know what the little toy was inside the egg. "

" That's the point, you evil, evil girl, " replied Chris. " Is the eggy-weggy properly teed up? "

" Chris, your London vocabulary is really driving me crazy. "

" Be that as it may, I repeat, is the eggy-weggy properly teed up? "

Susan checked the foil wrapped chocolate egg perched on a Marlboro box. " Ready for action. "

" Okay then, Sooz, it's time for whackies! "

Rudy, sensing a trophy, slunk into a shooting angle behind Susan, then in tassels, while Chris called out, " Wait! Your tassels are a mess. " With the fingertips of one hand he held her nipples in place while using his other hand to rake the tinsel. " There. "

" Thank you, husband. "

" We Brits are so dominant, so forceful. "

" Sun's almost up, " called Nash, the drummer.

Susan moved into position. Far across the vast geographical sore, the first chinks of sunlight were breaking through the horizon's rock. Susan shouted, " Foreplay! " and walloped the Kinder Egg with such force that it vaporized and fell into the canyon as a mist. Rudy's flash coincided with the sunrise entering into her eye, and she wasn't sure which was which. The photo was a winner: faded child star now in second bloom as rock-and-roll mama.

" Ravishing, " said Chris.

" You liar. You just like me because I got you a green card. "

" You just like me because I let you sing backup vocals on tour. "

" That's not true. I love you for the 10K a month you put into my savings account. "

" You just love me for the manliness of my member. " Chris dropped his trousers and wagged his hips back and forth, establishing a lewd pendulum as the crowd on the roof shrieked in unison.

And so went life ontour. Susan was alpha road-rat on the North American tour of Chris's band, Steel Mountain, the highly caste-conscious temporary family fueled by drinking, smoking, copious drugs and arcade games inside buses that stank of the ghosts of a hundred previous bands.

Susan married Chris two years after the network canceled Meet the Blooms, and her TV career vanished in a puff of dust. Her then agent-manager-lover, Larry Mortimer, phoned her with news of the cancellation while she was in Guam shooting a Japanese commercial for a lemony sports beverage called Pocari Sweat (" Hey team—lets Pocari! " ). Larry was getting bored with TV and had just entered the world of rock management and had connected Susan to Chris.

The match had its pluses and minuses. Chris had money and Susan did not. Her earnings from her years in TV had been squandered and lost by her mother and stepfather, a fact that she had laboriously kept out of the media. Also, Chris was gay, information that would surely have given surprise to his head-banging musical constituency. Above all, Susan was still in love with the Catholic, divorce-phobic Larry Mortimer. While once it had been easy to find reasons to be around Larry, now Susan needed a better pretext—marrying Chris to land him a green card restored her to Larry's inner-circle. The green-card deal with Chris seemed like just the ticket, and for a while it worked. But when Chris wasn't touring, he lived. in London. Susan stayed in California, the partnerless weeks and months adding up across the years. She lived by herself most of the time, in Chris's Space Needle—like orb atop a pole that had the distinct aura of having been handed down from a long succession of emotionally adolescent, newly monied entertainment people. It had filthy shag carpets in long-discontinued colors, appliances that probably hadn't worked since the dawn of TV dinners, and the impending sensation that the Monkees would pop in through a window at any moment and burst into song. In the Space Needle, Susan realized that the phone really didn't ring too often, and when it did, it was for Chris. Any scripts Larry sent her were for titty flicks. Their phone calls were many: " Oh, come on, Larry. We can do better than this. How hard can it be to land a TV movie? "

" You're rock and roll now, Sue. You need to be aYoung Mom for TV movies. You know—two kids—those new minivans people are driving. Fridge magnets. People read about you and

Chris and the rest of those gorillas trashing a Ramada on a tour and it scares them off. "

" I'm unbankable, Larry. Say it. "

" You're crazy. I send you a dozen scripts a week. "

" Slashers and titties. "

" That's not true. They're entry points. "

" Entry to nowhere. I'm stereotyped as either the sucky little Bloom daughter or the slutty rock bitch. "

" I'm not going to have this conversation, Susan, because it goes nowhere. "

" Don't hang up, Larry. "

" Take acting lessons. Karate. Put on that blue lace number you wore for me down in Laguna Niguel and give Chris a peek. It's so hot, he'll switch. "

" You liked that negligee? "

" Liked? Ooh—Susan. "

" I looked hot in it? You didn't act like it. "

" I've got worries. "

Larry went quiet. After a while, Susan said, " Can you come over tonight? "

No answer.

" Good-bye, Larry. " She slammed down the receiver and it rang almost simultaneously; she picked up the phone and barked, " Hello. "

" Suzie, if you're going to be such a shit about a simple little ringy-dingy, then I needn't waste my time here. "

" Hey, Chris. Larry's being a jerk. Where are you? "

" At a chic little Kensington soiree, and it's so lofty I feel faint. I'm hiding in the library right now. "

" Whose party is it, Chris? "

Guess.

" I'm not in the mood to—"

" Think 'palace. ' "

" No! "

" Yes. "

" Oh God. Oh God. I can't believe I'm going to ask you the question I'm about to ask: what's She wearing? " Susan's preoccupation with Larry's dwindling role in her life, for the moment, was deflected. " Steal me a pair of Her shoes and I'll never de-alphabetize your tapes ever again. "

⇐ Предыдущая 1 2 3 456 7 8 9 10 Следующая ⇒