Shuteye for the Timebroker (9 page)

Billy looked wistfully up from his copy of Melville’s
The Confidence Man
, which he had been about to read to the womandrake. It hardly seemed worth it now. The beautiful words would probably only cause the plant to wince and shudder. He would just have to wait out these last couple of weeks of filming—which coincided with the last weeks of the plant’s development—and hope that when the strangers left, his bride would be OK.

Getting to his feet, Billy headed back toward the Mowbray mansion, wondering what troubles today’s filming would bring.

Entering the manse, he wasn’t even surprised when he nearly stepped on the newt that was shrilly screaming at Landisberg, “This is the last time I do anything you tell me to, Luke!”

* * *

Billy had survived. He prided himself on that. Although he couldn’t have said how he had done it, he had outlasted the filming, which had wracked Blackwood Beach with unprecedented turmoil.

He had endured the countless shouts of “Hey, Weed,” which was what the cast and crew had begun to call him toward the end.

When Goodnight—prevailed upon to summon up actual ghosts for one portion of the film—had accidentally brought back the spirit of his rival, Andrew Mowbray, and begun a titanic magical battle with it, punctuated by loose bolts of green lightning, Billy had emerged unscathed, although he had been caught right in the middle of the fighting.

When the Viking-like Skandik brothers—they of the immense appetites—had kidnapped both Natasha Kaprinski and the ancient Dame Shabbycough, and Billy had been called upon to effect a rescue, he had somehow accomplished the release of the ravaged actresses without getting his head split by one of the Skandiks’ picks (which they always kept by their sides).

When the temperamental and anti-establishment veteran actor, George C. Coates, had learned that the Film Academy was considering him for an Oscar for the role of Judge Pyncheon—on the strength of rumors alone—and had disgustedly stalked off the set, it had been Billy who had found him consoling himself with a bottle at Emmett’s Roadhouse and convinced him to return.

And when Murray Roydack, in a pranksterish mood, had, despite repeated warnings, swum out to Big Egg and been plucked from his perch by the angered humanoid fish-god beneath it, it had been Billy who had run for Milo Musselwhite and ferried him out in a rowboat, whereupon the town coordinator had convinced his distant ancestor to release the actor unharmed.

Yes, taken all in all, it had been quite a rough two months. Billy doubted if he would ever enter another spring with exactly the same idyllic feelings he had once brought to the season.

But now it was over at last. The stars had all left as each finished their scenes. Today, the crew had restored the Mowbray manse to its former decrepitude (no one could figure out how they took down the big elm) and departed. Finally, Landisberg himself had been chauffered off, with Freddie Cordovan blusteringly accompanying him, as the fat man tried to weasel out word of the director’s next project.

As for the town’s payment for hosting the filmmakers—well, it had come, after a fashion. The whale, after being reduced mostly to bones by the elements, had finally been hauled out to sea by the Coast Guard. The aroma still lingered, though, and there was talk of having to replace all the sand on the beach. Middenheap Mile had been paved, but in such a shoddy manner that it was already deteriorating, and everyone knew that by the end of the next winter the road would be almost as bad as before. And regarding the money the newcomers had, as promised, injected into Blackwood Beach’s few stores—as any Blackwooder would tell you, it was only money, and could hardly compensate for seven weeks of mass confusion.

Luckily, thought Billy, his special project had not fared as badly as the town. The womandrake was now over five and a half feet tall and fully mature, as Billy had discerned from many timorous peeks. It seemed psychologically whole, too, no longer reacting so violently to Billy’s readings. He hoped that it would recall nothing of the filming that had been such a pernicious prenatal influence.

And today—today was the first day the plant might be expected to open. Billy was ecstatic. He hardly believed his longtime dream was about to come true. Since planting the seed, he had been careful to distance himself, thinking of his mate as “it,” never knowing if something would go wrong and prevent the expected birth. But now, he dared to mentally say the crucial pronoun. She was almost ready!

Striding happily through the once-again deserted yard around the Mowbray house, Billy came unexpectedly upon a familiar figure.

Luke Landisberg stood there alone, a smile on his enigmatic features.

“What are you doing here?” Billy asked, trepidation knotting his stomach. Had the film been lost or destroyed? Was the entire project about to start all over again?

“I just wanted to be in on the climax, Budd. From the moony way you’ve been acting, I knew your lady friend was about to emerge, and I wanted to see her. After all, I helped keep the rest of the crowd away from her, you know. I issued strict orders about staying out of the woods, right after I learned what was going on. Although I must admit, I did visit her a few times myself, when you were otherwise occupied.”

A pang of inexplicable jealousy shot through Billy when he heard this, but he suppressed it as unworthy. Instead, he chose to concentrate on Landisberg’s good deed of helping to keep his secret.

“Well, why not?” Billy said, forcing himself to be generous. “Come on, then.”

Together, the two men walked to the clearing.

Just as they entered, the birth occurred.

The big glossy leaves, heretofore encapsulating the growing woman, lost all their rigor and fell away into a flaccid pile at her feet. The woman was revealed in all her naked green and golden glory.

Billy’s breath caught in his throat. She was just as he had pictured, yet more than he had ever dreamed of. He completely forgot the presence of Landisberg in the exaltation he felt.

The woman opened her eyes. With a tentative motion, she snapped her pedal umbilical stalk and stepped out from the collapsed leaves.

Billy held up one hand toward his garden-girl. She focused on the movement and took a step forward. Then, without a moment’s hesitation, she sprinted and launched herself—

—into Landisberg’s arms!

“Oh, Luke,” she exclaimed in a melodious voice, “all those scripts you read me sounded so thrilling! And the contracts! Not to mention your reviews! Take me with you to Hollywood!”

Landisberg encircled the waist of the green woman with one arm. “Sure thing, honey. I’ve got just the vehicle for the start of your career. It’s an old book by some sci-fi guy named Williamson.
The Green Girl
. You’ll love it.”

“I can’t wait,” said the treacherous womandrake. “Let’s go!”

And so they did.

When Billy was finished crying, he started to think.

An outsized tubful of this special soil brought to his greenhouse, where conditions could be more carefully controlled; another letter to Thompson and Morgan; a few months’ work after receipt of the seed—

Happiness was just a retake away.

I am uncertain how younger people today regard pop stars. Are they seen as mere shills for the various products with which they are commercially associated? Are they seen as clowns and jesters fulfilling a societally mandated position? Are they seen as commodified rebels? Are they seen simply as working stiffs doing a job like any other? Are they seen as “artists,” special beings aloof from the masses of fans? I suppose any and all of these guises could be applied to different performers at different times nowadays.

But what I do know is that back in the 1960s, for a brief shining moment, certain rock stars were veritable louche and embraceable demiurges to their listeners, manifestations of larger cosmic forces at play, conduits through which glory flowed.

That’s the mythos I’ve tried to capture in this tale of an unrecorded meeting between Eric Clapton and Janis Joplin.

Slowhand and Little Sister

They called him Slowhand with a certain irony, because when he played his demon half-alive guitar (“This weapon kills fascists” was burned on the neck) his fingers disappeared in a blur, pealing out squalling notes at the speed of light, and because those same string-ripped and -calloused fingers had kept many a woman on the edge of coming for up to three and a half hours.

That record had been set nearly a hundred years ago, back in ’69, with the world-famous groupie Pamela Des Barres. Slowhand’s roadies had started selling tickets during the second hour of the digital engagement. By hour three, there was a crowd of fifty people in the tiny motel room where it was taking place. Slowhand was holding a joint in his free hand, taking an occasional slow toke, and staring up at the ceiling. The hand between Pamela’s legs barely moved. But she was writhing and groaning nonetheless. All the spectators could tell she was trying desperately to climax. But Slowhand wouldn’t let her. It was kinda mean, his toying with her that way. The girl was overmatched. But she knew what she was getting into, and anyhow it wasn’t like Slowhand was abusing her. Midway into hour four, the joint burned down between Slowhand’s pinched thumb and index finger, he swore, jerked away, and set Des Barres off. And that was all she wrote.

Slowhand’s skin was pasty white, from playing all night under deficient illumination in seedy smoke-curdled clubs and sleeping all day.

He had had a major drug jones for twenty-five years, had Slowhand. Heroin and coke were his substances—not of choice, but of necessity. They helped him endure life when he wasn’t playing. He could handle more smack and blow than any human had a right to, and still live. Everyone knew it was due to his guitar. The creature in the shape of a guitar sustained Slowhand and siphoned off the drugs from his system.

One legend said that the guitar had been crafted by Les Paul under the influence of LSD as he sat inside a pentagram. Other legends made it older than time. Some said it had belonged to Django Reinhardt, the gypsy genius. Others said that it came out of Africa with the slaves, and could only be possessed by a sharecropper’s son. Then there were supposedly witnesses who had seen Slowhand sell his soul to the devil at a crossroads at midnight, in order to be rewarded with the instrument. The legend on its neck seemed to link it to Woody Guthrie. However, if the guitar had existed in acoustic form, it had somehow mutated to fit the new era, since its body was now clearly solid.

Whatever its ultimate provenance, when Slowhand strapped on the instrument he visibly grew stronger. Some nights he’d be so weak and shaky-legged he’d have to crawl onstage or be carried on by his roadies, an oxygen mask pressed to his face. But no matter what condition he arrived in, as soon as he clamped the guitar against his midriff and jacked in, he’d stand tall and swell up all godlike, looking to the audience like some earth-visiting deity from the same heaven that had supplied Van Morrison’s vocal cords.

There was one school of thought that claimed the guitar actually extruded feelers into Slowhand’s body. Whether that was true or not, Slowhand’s style onstage was not to flail around like other famous guitarists, but to stand composed in one place, with the golden-stringed instrument held tightly against him.

At age forty-five Slowhand showed few or no signs of growing older or tired, or of stopping. A lot of people said the guitar was supplying him with eternal life. Others claimed it just wasn’t done using him yet. Oh, some sour folks swore they could detect Slowhand resting on his laurels, taking it easy, not pushing himself, using fellow players to carry the weight, letting his fingers rest, thus making his name not ironically antithetical to, but sadly synonymous with, his skill.

To these detractors Slowhand would usually turn a disdainful blue gaze cold as a Detroit winter on the unemployment line and rip off a chord or two that would reduce them to jelly …

* * *

They called her Little Sister because she was anything but. Oh, maybe one time she had been somebody’s actual little sister, but that period was lost in the past she had never cared to hold on to. We could picture, if we wanted, a scrawny twelve-year-old always tagging along with her big brother when he went over to play the drums for a friend’s garage band. Pigtails and a pudgy sunburned face (even then she had a tendency to put on weight), overalls whose bib front covered a flat chest, untied sneakers, and maybe a bandage on her elbow. Told to sit in the corner and keep quiet. Unnoticed until one day, when the boys were striving to master some old blues standard they’d heard secondhand off an old 78, Little Sister; unbidden, opened her mouth and started to wail.

Turned out Little Sister had been spinning all her big brother’s records in secret, absorbing all the intonations and phrasings of the departed great ones—Smith and Holiday, for example—and of the still living soul-belters, Big Mama Thornton and Wanda “Fujiyama Mama” Jackson, say. (We’re reconstructing, remember.)

But she was no mere copycat, even from the start. This Little Sister had a fire in her belly, a hardscrabble soul, loads of pure talent. Even on that first day, the boys could sense it. They nearly dropped their instruments at first, when they heard that voice pour out of Little Sister. But give them credit, they recovered and continued playing. Little Sister’s voice urged them on. (Two decades later, those boys, now men, would often wake up sweating in the middle of the night, their wives asleep unsuspecting beside them, remembering Little Sister’s wordless yowl, which had gone straight to their crotches, or wherever it was they kept their souls.)