Black Glass (26 page)

Four paces more, and then the load-up entrance of the nightclub ... where a stocky steroid-bulky bouncer with short flaxen hair stepped into the doorway, lighting a cigarette.

“You don’t look like you belong,” said the bouncer, squinting against smoke. He was young, and somehow that went with the moving tattoo of a striking cobra on his chest, bared under an open leather jacket. The tattoo on his chest striking ... drawing back. Waiting. Striking ... drawing back ...

“I’m Danny Candle’s brother. He’s performing here tonight.”

“Then you’re the guy I’m specifically not supposed to allow in here, so be a good old wanx and fuck off.”

Candle thought it unwise to pull his gun. Showing a gun led to too many repercussions, in a place like this. He looked the bouncer over, and decided this prime chunk of thug-flesh was
into some form of martial arts, maybe kick boxing: it was there in the cockiness, and in a particular way the bouncer balanced on his feet, a trigger-like poise that suggested his confidence was in more than his heft. But that could make him predictable, and predictable is vulnerable.

“Sure thing,” Candle said. Then he made a deliberately clumsy swing at the bouncer’s head—not really trying to connect. Counting on the man’s martial arts reflexes.

The bouncer reacted like Candle figured, with a sneer and a left-hand block, tilting back, putting his weight on his left foot, raising his right leg, right knee cocked, boot aimed for a kick—

But Candle had already stepped left, and braced—and he grabbed the bouncer’s kicking foot, lifted it up hard, throwing his opponent off balance. The bouncer went pitching backwards, grunting, onto his back, wheezing as the air whooshed out of him.

Candle stepped through the door, waited as the snarling bouncer rolled over and got to one knee, preparatory to rushing—then Candle slammed him under the chin with the heel of his right hand, a short sharp shock: a move he’d learned from Rina. The big man’s head snapped back, and then forward, and he fell on his face at Candle’s feet.

Out cold.

Candle looked around, saw this back hallway was empty—there was a thumping noise and a roar from the direction of the stage—and he dragged the bouncer to a janitor’s closet, wedged him into it, cuffing him from behind with a pair of LP cuffs obtained the same place he’d gotten the scanner: Gustafson. He pulled the bouncer’s backstage pass off, put it on himself, found a wedge used to hold doors open, used it to jam the closet door shut at the bottom. He closed the back door, and went down the narrow hall toward the main hall. He glanced down a cross hall, behind the stage, and saw Spanx following Danny and someone he couldn’t see clearly—a woman? All three moving away from him down the narrow passage, Danny and Spanx carrying their instruments.

Candle considered running down there, grabbing Danny right now. But he’d make Danny furious if he stopped him from
performing—from collecting his gig money. Let him have his show and his pay. Grab him after.

He turned toward the main room, slipping past a puzzled techie watching the backstage door. Edging quickly into the crowd, Candle felt the combination of sick despair and thrill he always experienced at rock shows. At shows like this, where people heard the music the old fashioned way, from amplifiers on the stage instead of through head implants picking up wifi transmissions from the performers, the atmosphere was more or less the same as it had been, in rock clubs, for generation: Milling people chattering with one another in a dim, compressed space, the décor both ironic and earnest; canned music throbbed as the jostling crowd, drinks clinking, waited for the live show. Electricity building in the air waiting to be discharged, like a battery overcharged with energy.

His father had been a band manager, his mother an aspiring singer; she’d become a groupie, then a wife and management partner. And by inexorable degrees an alcoholic. As a child, Candle came into the clubs and concert halls with his parents—in some places it was technically illegal, but his mom somehow got him in because it was almost the only time he could spend with them out in the world; and in a place where they weren’t hung over, weren’t bickering; weren’t as likely to just walk out.

But he’d been scared and lonely in places like this, too. Sitting backstage with his mom and some self-consumed rock star, stomach clenching when his dad would come back from the bathroom, wiping his nose, grinning, winking at him, chattering from blue mesc or crystal meth or synthcoke or yex.

Candle felt that clenching now, looking around.

The club was called Black Glass for more than one reason. The obvious one was that the room was made of one giant piece of black glass—actually it was hardened, dark-tinted transparent plastic—roughly shaped like a cavern, but with the cornerless walls in fold-shapes like rumpled cloth. The stage was shuttered by three successive movable walls of translucent blackened “glass,” instead of curtains. Like looking through three sets of dark sunglasses. Before the show, dark figures of the performers could be seen, just blur-edged silhouettes. That one silhouette was Danny,
his hunched shoulders and explosive hairstyle unmistakable.

In the audience, infrastoners with movable tattoos, animated Cat Hats, opaque eye cusps, grinned and whispered; some stood in corners and tried to look cool. Re-Ravers, semi-nude, bodies painted, danced to the house music. Pagoths milled, wearing simulated fur, animal skins, charcoaled eyes, much piercing, some with long streaked hair, others with scalp-up sculptures of cartilage-shaped like gods and dragons and online game creatures, fixed to their skulls like articulated Mohawks. Glum, silent corner-boys, in their shapeless hoodies, sagging army pants, heavy boots. The Elegant Dub contingent, in tight fitting retro suits with blazers, white shirts skinny ties, clustered disdainfully together, amused by the other cliques. The audience faces were mixed race, mostly, with only a few real blonds, even fewer truly black African-Americans. Danny had always had a cross-genre appeal, Candle reflected; he had managed to balance electronica, stoner rock, hip-hop, grime, and worldsounds, transitioning from one to the other, culminating in almost perfect fusion. The music unified by a rapid, steady beat and the ironic intonations of his voice.

The place definitely made Candle uneasy. His parents had ruined it for him. He supposed he might have found some other way to get past that bouncer—a stiff bribe would have been wiser—but he’d enjoyed taking him down. It was like he was punching out the club itself. And maybe Dad too.

Candle kept moving, as if looking for friends in the crowd, kept his face mostly turned to the stage, but glancing around, discreetly watching for drones. He caught a silvery flicker up near the ceiling. A medium-sized flying camera—smaller than the one Rina had bashed, larger than the one he’d found on the wall. The small ones were prone to getting lost or broken in large crowds.

Suddenly the background music faded and the walls concealing the stage began slowly to draw back, slotting into the stage wings; first the outer wall of darkened plastic-glass, letting the audience see the performers a little more clearly. And when that translucent wall started drawing back, a drumbeat thudded from the band. Then the second wall drew away in the other direction, and they could see the band a little better; but they were
still hidden behind the third wall of dark glass, and they were already playing, Danny playing guitar, Spanx on bass, the third guy providing hand-triggered rhythm and percussion. He could just make out their faces ...

Then Danny started singing, and the third wall drew back and the crowd erupted in hoots, and cheers and “Woot!” and clapping and people holding up their palmers, screens alight, to make a constellation of electronic greeting, as if the social electricity in the room was translating into digital light. Candle felt the clenching in his gut become a twisting. There was his little brother, at last.

“Danny,” he muttered.

The performance wound its way through a roughly ascending arc of energy. There was no puttering about between songs—Danny couldn’t abide that, and once when Spanx distractedly fiddled with his bass Danny kicked him in the ass. The audience laughed, Spanx pretended to be offended, then the beat-jock started the pulsing sample and Spanx spun around and started playing and another song started. The energy built, the varied crowd became a unity around their focal point: Danny Candle.

The music hammered away. Danny sang a peculiar, whimsical lyric, something like,

Candle kept slowly moving, keeping tall people and any obstacle he could find—a fold in the rippled glassy walls—between him and the birdseye. But they were getting hard to avoid. More than once someone in the audience spotted them, took a swipe at them. People generally hated flying cams.

Now Danny was on another cut, singing something about a box in his head ...

Just at the end of the encore set, Candle saw a silver flicker draw near, overhead. He decided it was time to use the blur bandage. He turned his back, took the blur bandage from a coat pocket, unpeeled the backing, pressed the swatch to his right cheek bone—it was camouflaged as a band-aid. It’d set up a field that’d blur any cam looking at his face. But it had a fiber battery that wouldn’t last long so he’d kept it back till now. And while it would conceal his identity, the blur, in a crowd full of crisp faces, could draw attention to him.

And there—at the edge of the crowd, looking around. Halido. And some other thugflesh prick with him.

Candle went quickly to the backstage door, waved his stolen pass at the puzzled, bearded stagehand, slipped past, and was waiting in the dressing room when the flushed, triumphant Danny arrived. The smile faded from Danny’s face as he stared at Candle. Then he shrugged and put away his guitar.

“Glad you’re out, bro,” Danny mumbled.

“Like you didn’t know?” Candle said. “You knew. Good set, by the way. You look like you feel good about it.”

“Why wouldn’t I feel good about a good set?”

“It’s just that–”

“Oh, I know: get a natural high from music. I remember that speech.” Danny sat in a creaking chair, poured himself a drink from a bottle sitting on the dressing table. “You want a drink? Brought my own brandy.”

“Sure.”

They drank some Hennessey as Spanx and Ronnie stowed gear. Spanx mumbled something about seeing about the money and Ronnie mumbled about getting a drink at the bar. They vanished
and Candle was alone with his brother. Canned music thudded murkily, masked by the intervening walls, from the main room.

Finally, wondering how long before Halido showed up back here, Candle said, “You weren’t there. Said you would be.”

“Okay. Sorry.”

“I figure you knew I’d find out you were using again and–”

“Yeah okay, fine, whatever. You want another drink? If not—I’m gonna change and get my money and get the fuck out of Dodge–”

“No you’re gonna shut up and listen. Four years, my mind downloaded—my body walking around—taking orders—You know what they did with my body?”

“No, ‘Saint Rick’, I don’t.”

“”Neither do I. That’s the fucking point. And all I asked you to do was not fry your brain anymore. But from what Zilia tells me–”

“You’ve seen Zilia? How is she?”

Candle cleared his throat. Should he tell him? Later. “She’s okay. She’s good. She’s ... she wanted her money. But I think I got her to drop that.”

“Rick—if you’ll think back, you’ll remember, hode, I didn’t
ask
you to be a fucking martyr for me.”

“You’d have done hard time. I knew I’d get a break. And as for asking me ... everything you do asks for help, kid.”

Danny’s face contorted and he threw the drink. Candle ducked; the glass added a new web of cracks to the mirror and distorted magic marker graffiti on the mirror so that it went from reading, FUCK YOU IF YOU DON’T LIKE MY IGGY COVERS, to FUCK YOU IGGY OVER.

Danny got up, squatted by his guitar case, snapped it shut, his back to Candle. Then he seemed to sag in place. He went to his knees, his shoulders hunched. His voice was hoarse when he said, “I don’t fucking know. I’m sorry. I tried for a long time. Zilia can tell you that for a couple years there, almost three ...”

“We can try again, Danny,” Candle said gently. “Relapse—so what, it’s part of the journey, man. You can get over relapsing. But you need time away from all the temptations. We’ll get the fuck out of Dodge together. We’ll hit Highway 1 up the beach, you’ll
get some distance from the V-rat nest. One of these days you’ll feel confident enough, you can get back into performance. I’ll find you a new agent. But you got to stay close to me.”

Danny rocked back on his haunches, ran his fingers through his hair. “Rick ... we can try. I guess I can trust you. I don’t know how I can trust anyfuckingbody but ... see, I’m not gonna make it, man. It’s like ... like if you’ve got a table, and one leg is cracked, if you put something heavy on it, that fucker’s gonna break down. And bust whatever’s on that table. And I’m that table. Going to break, you put anything on me. I don’t want to bust down and and fuck up everything for you, man. I ...” He took a long breath. His voice was ragged, almost inaudible as he went on. “... I got a busted part that won’t hold anything up ...”

“People mend, Danny. I’ve got some to do myself ...” Candle hesitated, wondering once more if he should tell Danny about Zilia. But that might be too much weight on the table, right now. He’d tell him when things were more stable. “What
else
you got going, Danny? Come on, look at where you clicked at. Rooftown? Living in a roof shack? And still blowing your resources on scum like Rack Nidd? What you do at his place—it’s the lowest form of partying, Danny. Because V-ratting is something you do all alone. Even if you’re wired to somebody. It’s not like real contact. You see an image of them—it’s not like you’re really with them. It’s isolating. Like Dad–”