The Mammoth Book of Threesomes and Moresomes (54 page)

I didn’t hear what she called me; I started to shout back, “Fuck you, you egoistic bitch.” But all I got out was “Fuck . . .” and then I threw off my head-mic and put my guitar in its stand and started to stalk off the stage. I couldn’t be reduced to calling her names. I had to walk past her to the stairs and, as I did, she pushed me on the shoulder. My arm fl ailed back and connected with her cheek and then she was trying to grab me by the hair and strangle me and bite me all at the same time. Then the road crew, uniformly burly, uniformly imperturbable, were pulling us apart. She’d scratched my arm hard enough that bright crimson blood began to trickle down my skin, lurid on the paleness of flesh that never sees sunlight. And she said, “You ungrateful bitch! Without me you’d still be rotting on your ass in moondust! You’ll never be anything more than a second-rate fill-in back-up stringer!”

I was gone before I heard any more – I didn’t need to. Fact is without her I’d never have been in this band or for that matter ever made it away from suburban Luna. Fact is I mostly believed the rest, too. Sometimes she told me I only had that one good song in me, and sometimes I believed her. We never recorded another one of mine after “Tears”, that’s true. Huiper, the paparazzi, the fan sites, were always making up stories about us. Sometimes it was hard even for me to tell truth from fiction. The legend they tell about me is that I sneaked backstage at a Seekers show on Luna with a demo in my back pocket, and, when she heard it, she fell in love with me. In some versions she is heartbroken over Saffron leaving, and that’s why she swore off men, and fell for me.

The true story is not like that. First of all, Glory’s heart never broke. And second, although I did go to that show on Luna, it hadn’t been my intention to meet her. My own band had just broken up from the force of apathy and neglect. I’d been ready to sell the guitar, maybe move to Earth where my parents wouldn’t have any more say about me, but I decided to spend at least one night forgetting all of that, suped up and dancing like a banshee at their show. It was at the Dome, huge crowd, thousands at the biggest gathering space on all of Luna. It was being simulcast all over Earth, a big event. I was in the general admission section down front where I elbowed my way to the stage. I can only speculate that she saw me then, and liked what she saw. Halfway through their final encore one of their road crew pulled me out of the crush at the front, over the security wall into the tech pit. I couldn’t make out what he was saying but I got the vague idea that I wasn’t being busted but invited to some kind of party. There were some others there, dressed like fans, looking lost too, so I figured we were all either equally safe or equally endangered.

It was a party. A tremendous party at the Lunar Grand Hotel. We were all a part of the entourage and never before had I felt so welcome wearing ragged black denim in the retro-look of the times. We were ushered into a grand ballroom where food and swirling lights were already in attendance as if the inanimate party had already begun. And at some point I recall being near her, Glory, and wanting to tell her something about how much I had enjoyed the show. Maybe I did tell her. Anyway, she led me to the true party within the party, an inner sanctum penthouse where the band members and all manner of miscellaneous wildlings were lounging, boozing, orgying and so on. And eventually she pulled me even deeper into things, and we were in her own room, and in her own bed, in the dimness, as I traced the curve of her stomach by the shine of the glitter there and she breathed hot on my sex and we did not sleep until well into the next morning.

I only remember that night in snatches now. I remember lavender lips and the way she closed her eyes when she kissed me. I kept mine open to watch the way her mouth moved, then closed them as her hand sought deep into my jeans. I remember her left hand seeking between my legs and I imagine that I even felt the callouses on her fingers as she dragged them over my slick clit. I remember being on my back on the expanse of her bed, her body pressing mine down as her tongue hunted in the forest of my bush and I stared at the cleft of her ass, her cunt, pistoning above my face until I reached out with my own tongue. I remember what seemed like hours with my legs over the edge of the bed, and her quick fingers playing over my clit again and again, and sinking her hand into me, first the cone of her fingers, and eventually her entire hand, balled inside. There was probably more, but it has been obliterated by time and drugs and overlayers of bad memories.

It wasn’t until after we woke up that afternoon that she began to ask me about myself. Or maybe I should say tell me about myself. I played guitar, right? And I sang. And I wrote about what was black and dripping in the human soul. “How do you know?” I must have asked, my jaw fl apping as she ran her fingers through my straight black hair and remarked how even my lips were moon-dust pale. And she started calling me Luna right then. She hinted that she was very good at reading people through sex, though of course now I know it could have been the Spark.

Then she told me she wanted to hear me play. She forced the Walker into my hands and made me play. I was too nervous to sing, but I let my fingers go by themselves, through riffs I’d fought with Derel over before we’d both begun to act like we didn’t care about the band or each other. And at the end of the song, the one that would later become “Tears” when I wrote words for it, she did have tears in her eyes and she told me she knew just how it was with me.

There is nothing like making love with your lover’s tears wetting your face. She kissed me then, and laid the guitar aside, and pushed me back on the bed, and it is not like we were wearing clothes anyway. She dragged her cunt along my thigh, hot and slick like her tear-stained face, until she came, and then I flipped her over and fucked her with my fingers and ate her at the same time, until I don’t know how many times she came, piling orgasm on top of orgasm, until she turned the tables and did the same back to me.

That was probably the last time I had been in charge at any time in our relationship. Because when her fingers were still inside me, after my third or fourth orgasm, as she sank her other hand into my hair, she asked me if I was interested in leaving Luna, and joining her as rhythm guitarist.

That’s the real story of how I got whisked away. Because of course I said yes. Had she already passed the Spark to me? I think she had. I think it happened when she fucked me right after I had played. What would have happened if I had said no? Would the Spark have died, and me with it? I just didn’t know. There was too much we didn’t know. I know that through the fire and heat of music and sex and losing ourselves in both she passed it to me, but even ten years later, I knew very little more than that.

Calla and Basil had not had such an initiation from her. They were still waiting.

I should have realized when Saffron died that I might be in over my head. But I was so caught up in her, and in music, in finally devoting my life to someone and something that I enjoyed, that I felt I was born to do, that I didn’t worry about how the Spark worked. It was just the lifeblood that fed us, that kept each of us going, writing, composing, playing. Some nights, when we’d played to a fever pitch, it boiled over, and there were always wildlings around to party with, to soak up that energy and go home tired and exhilarated both in the morning. Groupies don’t know it, but it’s the Spark they are attracted to, addicted to. Maybe they figure it’s just the drugs, or the excitement, they feel it during the sex we have, that thrill singing in their veins. But unless they have music in their souls, it can’t hurt them. It passes through them just like the drugs. It’s only people like me that it takes hold of and doesn’t let go. And Saffron. And Nura and Rose, who were both gone now for years, replaced by a string of studio musicians of Glory’s choosing, until now Calla and Basil . . .

I had started to shiver, there in the doorway, as if the coldness of her flesh was making me chilly. There was also the fact that I was wearing just an old show T-shirt and underwear. I felt cold and empty, and the shaking became worse.

Calla was there, then, dressed in show clothes. Anticipating a press conference, I guess. She wrapped her arms around my shoulders. “Oh, Luna . . .” she started. “Be strong.”

But I wasn’t shaking with sobs. Glory had told me once that the Spark runs its course like a fever – oh sure, it could be years and years, but the hotter it burns the more likely it is to burn you up. At some point it burns out and leaves you high and dry and unable to function.

She had waited until after I’d accepted her offer to spell all that out for me. When she told me, it felt almost like it wasn’t anything that I didn’t already know. Some hacks can go on for ever because they never had it in the first place. But those who really had it . . . I didn’t have to hear her name out the others. The agonizing slow death of Elvis, who staggered on long after the Spark had abandoned him, trying to replace it with amphetamines and sycophants until both failed him. Janis Joplin, whose own insecurities about her talent strangled it and forced her into drugs also. Kurt Cobain. The murderous rampage of the octogenarian Paul McCartney outside Buckingham Palace.

My body was wracked with spasms. And suddenly it made sense to me. The Spark was going to go out for me if I didn’t do something about it. The fl ame needed to be fed, stoked, with music and sex with other people who had it. Was that what killed Saffron, ultimately? Being cut off from her, and being unwilling to share it with others for his own survival? I wished I had known him better. Had he been losing it already, starting to burn out, when he left the Seekers? Had Glory and I been killing each other with the fighting and “creative differences”? The passion had turned to anger long ago, is that what made her burn up or gutter out?

“What happens now?” I asked Calla, who was squeezing me harder now, as I clenched my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering.

I hadn’t meant her to answer, but she did. “Luna, you’re sick. We have to get you to medical.”

“No!” What would they find? The Spark was a secret not even Huiper knew about. Who could I turn to? I had met very few others who I knew beyond any doubt had it. Bowie, still going in his thirteenth decade, reinvented once again. But I didn’t know how to reach him and couldn’t imagine the conversation we would have.

Looking at Glory there on the table, I considered the traditional ways out for a moment. But I couldn’t see myself drowning my “sorrows” in chemicals or crashing my fl yer while “under the infl uence”. I took a deep breath and got the shivering under control for a few moments.

There was really only one choice. Pass the Spark on to Calla or Basil, or die. “Calla,” I said, trying to work up the nerve to say something.

But then Basil was there. “Huiper’s not reachable. We can try him again at four, though.” I looked up to see Calla take her hand, and I suddenly knew the two of them had slept together last night.

No, they were about to. They had each been waiting, hoping, to be the one that Glory took up with when she took up with someone again. Now she was gone, and they could see each other clearly for the first time. They looked into each other’s eyes, a kind of wordless connection strung between them.

They looked up at the first sound of the guitar. I had crawled over to where Glory lay, and slid the Walker from her hands to cradle it in my lap. I had no pick and just used my fingernails to strike a chord, the first of a descending series starting up on the neck and working my way down until it felt right. From there, I fell naturally into a minor key riff, alternating the strum with finger-picking.

I could almost hear the parts that would go along with it, a cello, with a deep, rich bowed voice, and hand drums, a doumbek maybe. I kept playing. There were no words. I didn’t know what to tell them, what I wanted to say about her or me or my life. I just kept playing.

But eventually the song came to a close, as it cycled down and my energy fl agged. When I finished, I saw they were both crying. I laid the guitar aside and went to them, and hugged them.

Exactly how that turned into me kissing Calla, I’m not sure. Her mouth was hot in mine, her cheeks wet and scarlet. Her breath came fast and hard. My hands travelled down her sides, over her hips. I felt her weight shift, as she reached out to Basil. Then she was kissing her, too, and in the back of my head I tried to pause. I had done many wild sexual things since leaving my quiet life on the moon. Some of them had been with Glory, some not. But I did not know what Basil had under her jeans and to some part of me that mattered.

The Spark did not much care for my squeamishness. The pang of fear I felt transmuted into thrill, and then my attention went back to Calla and I felt desire fl are. I pulled her towards me, Basil trailing along like the caboose, on to the smooth, hospital-cornered bed. I began peeling off the clothes she had just put on. Basil took her other side, and very shortly Calla was naked there on the coverlet between us. Basil and I exchanged a look, then each of us took a nipple in our mouths and Calla gasped. In perfect harmony, we each slid a hand up the inside of her legs, teasing her. Then Basil’s fingers cupped over her mons, her labia, and then spread, opening her for me. I used the tip of my index finger to skim the cream from the edge of her vaginal opening, spreading it liberally around her clit. She moaned. I continued to move gently, my touch light, until she ground her hips upwards towards my hand. But she could not move much, as Basil and I kept sucking her nipples, and I lifted my hand away from her.

She whimpered and Basil chuckled low in her throat in response. I played with her lightly until she bucked again and this time I let her impale herself on my fingers, my index and middle fingers curving into her, my thumb extended over Basil’s hand and then sliding between her fingers to where her clit swelled. One of her hands clutched at Basil’s jeans and I gave her a little nod. I had her cunt to myself then, and I took the opportunity to position myself there, my cheeks between her thighs. But as I licked her with long strokes, at first softly but then with urgent energy as her voice rose to a wail, I had one eye fi xed on Basil. Under the jeans she had plain white briefs, with a noticeable bulge. My stomach tightened. Then she slipped those off, too, and I almost laughed with my tongue plastered in Calla’s cunt. Basil’s protuberance was a technocock of some sort, form fitted and wired to her nervous system, rising rapidly in response to the arousal signals her brain was sending. The skin was imbedded not only with millions of nanosensors, but with accompanying lightglow effects. Right now the base was a deep red but the tip was glowing white like an iron left in the fire.