Grey (26 page)

"Go ahead!" I dared him. In that instant, I didn't care. I wanted him to blow us up with a stupid punch.

"Don't ruin this for me!" he said, through clenched teeth. "I've got this whole thing working
lardly—
don't fuck it up! Shit-face bastard licker, can't you just shut up?"

"Excuse me!" chimed a hospitality girl covered with melted lemon ice cream, "What volume would you like, sir?" She held out my helmet and smiled.

All around the others were putting on their safety helmets. The ones right in front were given clear plastic to cover themselves. I told her, "As low as possible."

She flicked rocker switches on the back of the helmet, handed it to me, and then moved on to Walter. Meanwhile, Father had slipped on his helmet, turned away again, and folded his arms over his chest.

As I slipped on mine, I felt my hands vibrating. But I was ready. I was just action now—a tiger, ready to make my leap.

On stage, Erik was back on script. "I've got something I know you're gonna love—Alüminüm Anüs.
The
Ültra band of all time!" The crowd roared. He made an angry face, and then, as if taunting the audience, and like he did in his horrible channel movies, shouted, "You stupid bum cums! You plastic cunts! You spoiled brain cakes! I don't think you're ready!" The crowd howled. "Are you? Are you really ready?" The seventy-three thousand shouted back
yes
. "No!" he waved a dismissive hand. "No, you're not ready for Ültra!" They answered again, louder. "I mean real Ültra! Not that fake crap, but real, genuine, certified Ültra. Alüminüm Anüs Ültra!" Now they were in a frenzy. Erik's carbonate plastic smile flashed brilliant white. "Okay then! Maybe you
are
ready! Maybe you're ready for a new song from their unreleased epic,
Pulverized Entrails
."

As if he had disappeared without a trace, Erik was gone. The spotlight that had illuminated him ebbed away until the PartyHaus was pitch-black. For several moments, everything was still. Then the crowd began shouting.

– Give it to us!

– Bloody our ears!

– Make me pee red!

– Hiro, you lousy bastard, flatten me!

Father stood, pumped a fist in the air and said, "I'm gonna try!" as if happy for any attention other than mine.

A naked man walked to the middle of the stage. Another, dressed in black, stepped beside him. The man in black was holding something, a stick maybe. In the darkness, I couldn't tell.

The first man's face slowly came into focus on the giant screen behind them, where before Father's pie charts had flown like giant insects. He was handsome with a proud nose, dark green eyes, and full lips. What struck me was how vacant, neutral, and nothing was his expression. It was the gaze of those perverted sculptures in the dungeon.

The two men just stood there, so I leaned toward Father again, and said, "I know what you did."

With his right hand, he tried to shush me away like a housefly.

On stage, the man in black spun around and wielded a ball-peen hammer at the head of the naked man. We saw the blow in close-up on the screen and with the impact of metal against skin, came the recognizable blast of the colossal Ültra drum. The beat was hard and powerful, like a solid smack in the face.

I held still for an instant, as if any additional force would set off the nitrocellulose. Then I moved into the chair for Elle, and scooted it behind Walter, hoping his body might shield me.

When another hammer blow hit the naked man, I could see how the force rocked his head and neck and sent him wobbling. A line of blood ran from the top of his scalp. Another blow brought another enormous thud of drum and a thick spill of blood flowed across his eyes, which made him blink, as it must have stung. Gradually the hammer's rate increased and with each hit came the same solid thud. Blood streamed over his eyes, nose, and mouth. I felt terrible for him.

Finally, a blow cracked his skull open and when it did, the head exploded and sent out a detonation of sound so loud, it made the floor bend and twist. It swatted the drinks from the table and blew the shrimp loops into the air like confetti. Had I not been behind Walter, I'm sure I would have gone up in flames.

In an instant, the stage was filled with more than a dozen drummers attacking the black and chrome munitions drums that sat before each like rocket launchers. The sound was a continuous roar, like a hurricane, a train, and a never-ending series of exploding bombs. Father and the lettt brothers grabbed our table to keep it from buzzing away. My chair began to rotate counterclockwise and Walter's started going in the opposite direction.

In the crowd behind us, people were standing, screaming, and waving their arms. Some were ripping off their clothes. Others began fighting—throwing punches and slamming their elbows into each other's ribs. Amid the chaos, the only words I could make out were
love
,
disgust
,
vomit
, and
agony
.

Hospitality girls, now in safety helmets, rescued Walter and me and locked our chairs to the floor. They cleaned the broken glass and wiped up the fallen snacks.

Beneath Father's silvery visor, I saw him mouthing along to the words as he pounded his fists on the table and thrust his hips. Jenni, beside him, held her arms in the air, where the percussive thuds shook them like twigs in a cyclone.

After a chorus of what sounded like
torture in your bowels
, the song crescendoed. As squealing feedback shattered lights and cracked several of the glacierlike structures on stage, I slipped off the chair and hid below the table. Around us, I saw several people grab at their ears as if in pain. Farther back, a man's helmet cracked open and his exposed head lasted just two seconds before it imploded into a bloody mass and his limp body crumpled to the floor.

The song finished with a series of yellow and green explosions that sent one of the drummer's arms—still clutching his percussion hammer—spinning into the seats.

Then it was over. The shaking and vibrating stopped. The smoke cleared. The crowd roared. Erik Heimlick dashed back on stage. Blood dripped from his mouth, eyes, and ears. "The beautiful dead Ültra child of your nightmares has thus spoken!" he screamed.

The crowd began chanting something that sounded like
hard horn—lard corn
.

Father tore off his helmet, ran up the stairs, and threw his arms around one of the singers. "Fuck," he said, tearfully, "I needed that!"

Walter took off his helmet and glanced at me with a fearful frown. "Too loud," he said.

His nose was smashed and bleeding. "Walter," I said, shocked that I would have to tell him, "your nose is broken."

Looking down cross-eyed, he grasped the bone and wiggled it back and forth.

"Don't do that!" I said, revolted.

Leaning in, he smiled. "The aru takes all pain away."

"You better go see one of the hospitality girls."

"Michael," said the director, sitting on the edge of Father's chair, "you look fantastic in your suit. Love it!" As he spoke, he peered all around, as if pleased with his work. With a nod, he added, "Come with me. It's time."

Father was on stage still hugging and shaking hands with Anüs. And after I told Walter to have his nose checked again, I followed the director as we headed to the black door at the side of the stage.

Taped-down wires covered the floor. Assistants shouted orders and questions and ran in all directions. "Damn it! I'll be right there!" replied the director to his screen. "Back in a second!" he told me, before he dashed off.

A woman almost ran into me. Then two men carrying a big metal drum rushed by. Afraid of being blown up, I stepped beside the clear sound baffles that lined the stage.

"And now," I heard the announcer intone, "please stand, scream, and join me in welcoming the implausible host of the best and most popular celebrity interview channel show—with a very naughty and nautical theme—yes, it's Milo Holly from
Celebrity Research Yacht!"

Across the shiny icelike stage, Milo in his whites and captain's hat skipped down the far stairs. He looked like he was trying to imitate a carefree boy returning home after the last day of school. When he came to the front of the stage, he grasped the large silver mike and screamed, as if he had just lost his mind, "We're charting a course for even more implausible Ültra!"

Behind the baffles, the crowd roared like a huge passing Bee Train. After Milo droned on about himself and RiverGroup, he introduced the next band. "With implausible pleasure, implausible pain, and implausible implausibility, I give you the greatest Ültra band since the last one on this very stage, the stark-raving hot Dark Cästle of Poünd!"

From all three staircases came the members of the band, wearing the same sort of bizarre pirate costume as Father, with short-sleeve jackets, shirts with big flopping orange sleeves, and overstuffed codpieces. Instead of Father's wooden sandals, though, they wore huge, black rubber boots that were a half-foot thick and made them waddle like ducks. A man with a bumpy, misshapen skull wheeled in an enormous, black harp with a human skull atop the column. Another man had a metallic electric cello strapped to his chest and played the strings with a blowtorch. Still another held a pneumatic saxophone that vibrated in his arms like a jackhammer. The rest played rocket and mortar drums. The last to come on stage—the leader, I guessed—who looked like he had just come from an emergency room, with tubes running from his mouth and nose, wore a curved, florescent green keyboard around his waist, like a peplum. As he screeched lyrics, the giant video screen lifted away to reveal the jet-powered organ I had seen them constructing before. When the leader began playing runs on his keyboard, fifty-foot flames shot from the pipes.

They were loud, but not unbearable behind the baffles. When I turned to see if I could find the director, fifteen feet back, in the shadows beside a stack of blinking electronics, stood a man in a black suit and glasses.

I started toward him and the closer I got, the more I was sure that it was Father's freeboot. His gristly skin was the same. So was his hole of a mouth and his single nostril.

"You damned bastard," I said, "I hate you." He didn't move a molecule. Behind his dark glasses, I couldn't even tell if he was looking at me. "You hear me? Get out." He still didn't move, and it was like the arteries in my body weren't filled with blood anymore but gasoline. I pulled my arm back to whip it at him.

"Michael!" said the director, grasping my arm just before I brought it forward. "What's going on?" His breath was salty and sour, his eyes, wide and concerned.

The anger I had felt slowly became dismay and horror. I had just about blown myself up. It was the same madness I had felt when I'd screamed at father minutes before. The freeboot was gone. I worried that father had brought him here to kill me.

"Hair and makeup," enthused the director, as if he were afraid something was wrong with me. "We're ready for you! You all right?"

"Yes," I said, stepping back. "Sorry. I—I was confused."

"Drink too much carrot?" he asked, with a nervous smile.

"None," I said as I glanced about, wondering where the freeboot had gone.

The director led me behind the stage were it was quieter and fewer people ran around. Crates of machines, amps maybe, sat humming, their green power lights throbbing to the distant beat. Then he stopped suddenly and I bumped into his back.

"Oh no!" he said. "We're not supposed to see you!"

Before him, stood Elle. Her face was again pink, her nose black. Her hair was the same white-blonde seafoam and protruding from it were two rounded pink ears—maybe pig or raccoon. The material of her huge, white wedding gown was shiny, stiff, and awful, like polyurethane. On it hung a dozen glassy, undulating red and orange spots, each five inches wide. Her eyes were big with surprise. "Oh, look at you," she said, her voice squeaking, "you're the
bestest
of the
bestest!"
After one of her tittering jungle-bird giggles, she grabbed one of the polka dots from the front of her gown, held it up, and said, "Look, my cervix agrees!"

As the director dragged me away, while telling a gaggle of assistants to get her back to wardrobe, I decided that those polka dots had been camera views of her insides. I felt nauseated and wanted to go wash my hands a dozen times. We came to a row of black fabric tents not much bigger than outhouses.

"Could be bad luck, that," chuckled the director, as he turned to me. "They say it's a bad omen to see your bride before the ceremony." Opening the door to one of the tents, he said, "Go on in. Take a seat. Relax and refrigerate! Someone will be with you."

The room was five-foot-square. In the middle, an inflatable orange chair sat before a navy stand where I saw a multitude of hair products, makeup, and various face and neck stretchers. On top of the stand was a large square mirror with red, blue, and violet vanity lights all around.

For a minute, I stood looking down at my nitrocellulose suit. Like I had done before, I ran my hands over the material and watched it fluoresce, like instantly rusting and unrusting metal.

Sitting, I closed my eyes and thought of Nora, her dark eyes and her full lips. I imagined her in her dressing room getting ready. She would be watching the show on a small screen while her coiffeur, makeup artist, and fashion consultants helped her dress. They probably assumed she was going out. Maybe she told them she was having a cream coffee at the SunEcho, or attending a silence concert of Love Emitting Diode.

No, I decided, she was not watching. She would be keeping an eye on the clock and at maybe two in the morning, she would ask her people to go. Sitting alone before her black and white iMirror, she would take a tiny sip of poison from a black goblet. She'd only have to wait for a few beats before the chemicals stopped her heart, and like a powerless space capsule, she would drift forever into the cold and black.

Taking the vial from my pocket, I held it to my chest. Please, Nora, I thought, reconsider. Go on and forget about me. Live another life.