His sophomore college year had ambushed him—a few too many beer parties and rehearsals and band gigs at fraternity houses, and he had walked into the physics final exam knowing with sudden hollow fear that he was not going to pass. And the tough old Lit professor had failed him for spelling mistakes. Flunked two courses out of five—that had put him out.
His father and mother had tried to be kind and understanding but through the brave pretense Mitch could see their crushed bitter disappointment. His father had got him a job in the real estate office. Mitch had tried but he couldn’t face them every day seeing what they were thinking: twenty-one and a failure. He had run away, baffled and hurt. He would become a success, build up a band of his own, make records and money. He joined a band in New Mexico, swingers, and then had come the months in jail, and now this.
He supposed he ought to start thinking about where he would go. To another town, maybe, check in with the musicians’ union local and see if anyone was hiring. He had enough for a bus ticket to Salt Lake or Las Vegas. Then too he could always wire his father for money and go home to Cleveland. But that would be admitting he had failed again. He didn’t want that. He didn’t want to say a word to them until he could show them he had made a success of himself.
He crushed the cigarette out underfoot, got up and took the cased electric guitar from the corner and put it on the bed beside the suitcase. That was everything he owned. The sight of it sagging on the dilapidated bed turned his sense of dismal depression to fear, a sudden lonely sense of panic. A dry taste like brass on his tongue, an urgency in his groin. He remembered how, when he had been twelve, his father had taken him duck-hunting on the remote north shore of the lake. In the cold wet dawn his father had left him in a blind and moved away to a farther blind beyond earshot or sight. For hours Mitch had been convinced his father had got lost, forgotten where he was, forgotten about him entirely. He had felt the terror of being lost and alone.
He jumped when his door latched open. Floyd Rymer, in the door, gave him a dry look and said, “Know what you need?”
“A lock on my door?”
Floyd started to speak but then his eye fell on the cases on the bed. “Well, now,”—sarcastic—”what’s this?”
Mitch said reluctantly, “I’m clearing out.”
“Just like that?”
He needed to talk fast. “Look, we’re not doing each other any good, are we? I’m just a fifth wheel the way things are—you can get bookings a lot quicker if you cut back to three men and anyway I’m getting sick of this hot country. I think I’ll head north and see what I can pick up around Vegas or Tahoe.”
“You won’t have any luck. It’s a slow summer everywhere—they’re all buying jukeboxes and Muzak because it’s cheaper than live musicians.”
“I’ll take my chances, I guess.”
“Then take them with me, Mitch.”
“Why?”
“Believe me, you’ll do far better with me.”
“It doesn’t look that way from here. Anyway I’d think you’d be anxious to get rid of me.”
Floyd said, softly so he would know it was important, “I need somebody around here with a level head on his shoulders.”
Floyd pushed the door shut, hooked the chair over to him and sat down cowboy fashion, legs astraddle the back of the chair and arms folded across the top. “Besides, you know too much. Suppose you get picked up for vagrancy and decide to earn brownie points by turning me in? I can’t very well afford to let you do that, now, can I.”
“I’d have to implicate myself to turn you in. With my record that’s hardly likely.”
Floyd had a dry quizzical smile. “Do you want to know why I pulled off that liquor-store thing?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes, to me. I did it because I wanted to make sure it would work. I wanted to be sure I could get away with something like that. And I wanted to see which way you’d jump.”
“So?”
“It was a rehearsal,” Floyd said. “A practice scrimmage to warm us up for a bigger ball game. Is that a spark of interest I see in your eye? That’s good because I’ll need your help to pull it off.”
“I don’t think I even want to hear about it.”
“Of course you do. If you don’t find out what I’m talking about your curiosity won’t ever let you alone.” Floyd got up abruptly, shoved the chair away and reached for the door. “Come on, Mitch,” he said, in a voice gone suddenly flat and hard.
As he started toward the door, it occurred vaguely to Mitch that never once in his life had he wanted anything, or wanted not to do anything, badly enough to fight for it.
He didn’t fight Floyd. He went with him down the hall to Georgie’s room.
C H A P T E R Three
They were all gathered in Georgie’s room. Mitch thought it looked like a cell meeting in a lunatic asylum.
Georgie Rymer sat curled on the far corner of the bed, a tense gaunt shape in the shadows. He wore a candy-striped shirt and a necktie made of a raccoon tail. He had long hair, girl-long, down to his shoulders. Georgie’s upper jaw poked forward, giving his mouth the look of a gopher with two big front teeth showing. The trivial moustache on his upper lip failed to give him the toughened appearance it was intended to provide. Georgie was blowing his nose when Mitch came in with Floyd. He didn’t look up. He had an unbreakable facial apathy that indicated he was high on a recent dose, half freaked out.
Theodore Luke stood close against the girl, frowning, earnestly scratching his buttock with stubborn determination. He wore only a T-shirt and drawers; he was a hulking brute with thick hair on his arms and legs. The back of his head was flat and he had let his hair grow very long not because it was the fashion of the moment but because it helped conceal his face. Theodore’s face was distorted and crippled—asymmetrical and cauliflowered where plastic surgeons had grafted on an ugly imitation in place of an ear he had lost in an automobile wreck at the age of seven. His right eyelid was partially paralyzed; it tended to droop—he couldn’t keep it altogether open or altogether closed, not even when he was asleep. It revealed an opaque, gray-clouded eye, blind and not coordinated with its mate. The face had made it inevitable that Theodore learn to be a deadly vicious fighter and he had learned early in childhood how to hate murderously. But from some amazing reservoir of talent Theodore had dredged the rare ability to play the drums softly and with intricate delicacy.
Right by Theodore stood Billie Jean Brown, leaning against the wall with one hand clutched in her hair. She was sensuous and spider-waisted. The sweep of her eyebrows was emphasized in dark pencil but her face was nondescript, pouting and dull. She was a creature of sensation. Her feet were flat and her breasts were just beginning to sag; she wore nothing under her thin print dress. Mitch doubted she owned any underclothes.
Theodore crowded close against her and put his hand inside the front of Billie Jean’s dress. Her eyes closed and she made small gutteral sounds.
Mitch made a face and looked away. Floyd was beside him, just inside the door, standing the way he often stood on the bandstand when he sang: relaxed like a crooner, one hand in the pocket, a lidded lazy smile, casual glance roving the audience. There was no denying Floyd possessed a magnetic charisma. He had the grace and self-confidence of a decathlon champion. Just now, amused by what he saw, he seemed in no hurry to call the group to order. Billie Jean and Theodore were oblivious to anything but themselves; the girl’s dumpling face was closed up happily. One hand tangled in her hair, the other propped impudently on her hip, she surged her plump young breast up full into Theodore’s palm. Sweat rolled freely along Theodore’s grotesque face, filled with a rubbery leer of sensual pleasure. Moving languorously, Billie Jean slipped her hand into the fly of his shorts.