Silver Elvis
Michael Ramberg
The girl on the sofa kept talking and Bob watched from the doorway’s shadow, the room’s dim lights glinting from his sunglasses. Toby studied each flash as if the flare on his dark lenses could reveal as much as an eye flicker or furrowed brow. No such luck. And the girl. Nothing special to anyone, just another flash-bulb blond in a plaid raincoat, her name and origins existing only in rumors that drifted across the room like the zig-zagging smoke from the cigarette she waved for emphasis. But the entire so-called party, a mild mid-afternoon affair in a forgotten quarter of the Village, watched in rapt interest as she talked on and on about how she’d been to the Factory the day before.
Some of Andy’s new work was on the walls: cow heads on multi-color backgrounds, like a silkscreen herd gazing down on the scene. And of course it was like everyone said, that the walls and ceilings had been wrapped in tinfoil and/or painted silver like it was some huge movie screen and they were all in the movie.
– It was so glamorous, she said. Then she said, Ooh, ooh. They still have that couch from that movie. And they were using it again: there were two naked men on it, kissing. Each other. And they were *filming* it.
Toby checked on Bob again, who was still shoulder-slouched against the door frame tapping his own cigarette to a cold stubbly ash. Bob was getting worked up, seething at the chick’s fascination with that freak Andy. Not five minutes earlier Bob had been the gleaming folk-song king of the universe, his name tattooed on every chart and the whole music industry waiting for his next move, and now with the mere mention of Andy’s circus down the road Toby could sense the room’s buzz changing and Bob’s mood drifting toward the dark and paranoid.
– Who is she? he said.
– Dunno, said Toby.
Bobby N., Bob’s friend and co-conspirator, said She’s some princess of industry. Her dad manhandles capital at one a them major banks, I think.
Bob said, Socialite princess down from her chambers to poke her nose into the homes of the harlequins and carny barkers she imagines living under the rocks of her castle grounds.
– Yeah, said Toby.
– I’m sick of these princesses, Bob said. He sucked at the near-dead cigarette, its tiny spark growing with his inhalation. He said, Andy ain’t so much. Don’t even paint his own soup cans. But these chicks come out and it’s blah Andy this, blah-blah Andy that, super cool blah-blah Andy.
– That Andy, he’s some kinda guy, Toby said.
– Plus he’s a poof, Bobby N. said. The whole crowd out there.
– She’s the third one this week.
Toby said, You ever been there, Bob? I thought I heard you been to the Factory.
– Yeah I been there. They wanted to film my face for one a them, he calls them screen tests, but it was a full-on hare-brain shuck. Three minutes of the camera ticking away and Andy’s queer assistant Gerard saying Sit still, I said, but then I got so bored I broke it up with some eye-pops & tongue-sticking face-mugs and the whatta-ya-have. Yeah, Gerard and Andy didn’t like it. But I said forget it, I been filmed plenty already.
Toby told him it sounded like a drag, but didn’t say he wasn’t sure how it would be if you were famous and someone else famous wanted to make a film about you.
Bob said, Yeah the whole scene. It wasn’t much but Bobby keeps going back.
– It’s a honeypot for twist and speed, Bobby N. said. It’s crawling. Speed just jumps into your pocket, and the skirts’re all hopped up and surrounded by good-looking poofs. Easy pickings. It weirds Bob out, all the homos, but I don’t care. They can do each other all day long. More women for Bobby.
– What’s that dopey look, Bobby? What’s that chick-licking grin about? You snag some Edie? You been snitching Edie pie from Andy’s windowsill?
Bobby N.’s shaky eyes fixed on Bob, the sleepy grin expanding, and he let out a wheezy giggle. He said, Edie’s the sweetest berry on the vine.
They broke down into wheezy chuckling giggle fits, like two strung-out kids at a birthday sleepover. Toby watched, smiling himself though it wasn’t that funny except to Bob and Bobby N.; they were like brothers in their own world sometimes with their jokes and code words. Bob was the first to come out of it and he wiped an eye and sucked at his cigarette and turned his attention back to the blonde and pursed his lips. He looked around at the party and Toby could tell he was itching to get out.
– Why we here? Bob said suddenly.
– I dunno, Bobby N. said. Someone knows someone who said something was happening somewhere, then said maybe here.
Bob looking like he wanted to leave and Toby stood watching for clues as to how much. Bobby N. maybe wanted to stay, he knew, since Toby’d seen him a few minutes earlier chatting up a girl with cat’s-eye glasses and a nice rack. Bobby N. could work a party like a bigmouth kid bobbing for apples; he always came up with something. Toby asked if he should round up the crowd. They’d arrived with Bob’s entourage; musicians and poets and some girlfriends and some guy with a camera, it would probably be a quarter of the room if they all left.
– So she got to see Andy, Bob said, insistently poking Toby’s chest with his cigarette hand, a fountain of ash and sparks leaping from the tip. – That ain’t much of a story. Half the world’s wandered in there, I was there myself. Unless she jollied his roger, I don’t want to hear about it.
– Jollied his roger, yeah, said Toby. That’d be a story.
– Sad thing is she comes in here gives the whole room a hard-on for that creep.
– You jealous? Bobby N. said.
– What I ain’t is a garbage can for his rejects. Why’d you say we’re here?
– Suppose God wants us here, Bobby N. said. Existentially speaking, in a manner.
– God’s a drunk, said Bob. Let’s go.
– I’ll round up the crowd, Toby said.
– Nah, forget that. Bobby you and me, let’s go. Toby, you wanna?
– Sure. Where we going?
– We’re gonna get a cab.
– You wanna get some burgers maybe? Should I round up the guys?
– Nah, I said leave the crowd here. Let’s hit the road, the three of us. I think we should go talk to Andy. Tell him we’re not the beach for his low tide.
Outside, the city shimmered in the grey light of a three-day rainfall. Toby watched Bob move over the slick street to the curb where he stood waiting for a cab, one booted foot tapping the pavement. Then a cab rounded the corner and slid to a stop at his feet, as if summoned by Bob’s presence, and some strong feeling welled up in Toby’s chest from the sheer joy at being witness to Bob. You could watch him as he tramped the city underfoot, as he climbed in its cabs and enthralled its women; you could be in the world with him but you’d never be of the same one. He’d first seen Bob on a Baltimore stage two years earlier. Bob stood alone, a skinny prophet in dockworker rags channeling truths gleaned from some unknown realm through that dull guitar and his twisted voice rattling off Bible-like screeds of justice denied and forthcoming apocalypse and love like shipwrecks on a nightmare sea. Toby’d watched in a trance; he’d only thought he was a folk musician but the likes of Bob had never shadowed his conceptions at all. He went home and re-doubled his efforts to learn guitar and sing, and when he felt ready, that he’d mastered the master’s cadences and memorized all the licks, he packed up what he figured he might need and north he went.
He got off the bus in Manhattan and found a tiny flat where he lived like a squatter and at nights he stalked the coffee houses and folk clubs, jangling his tunes and singing with a Bob-like groan until one day there was a man who said come to this party later because Bob would be there, Bob the man himself, on a break from his farm in Woodstock where he was putting a new album together. This guy said Bob would probably get a kick out of the kid who looked and sang like Bob and Toby said fine, acting cool and distant like he was the one doing the big favor saying Yeah, man, maybe I can squeeze it in. And so here he was, one week later, a full-fledged camp-follower of the Woodstock sage, his days drenched in amphetamine showers and soft small-fingered women shadowed by reefer fog, Bob plus all the churn of Boblings in the wake of his fame.
But now it was only the three of them, he and Bobby N. and Toby, squeezing into a raggedy cab and Bob giving the driver an address and then they sat in the back, the three of them smelling of wet leather and spilled drinks and rancid cigarette smoke, Bob in his black glasses lighting up another one, careful with his long fingernails.
Toby said, So, Bob this kind of rain isn’t so bad, is it?
– Reminds me of my childhood in the Oklahoma desert, Bob answered.
And Bobby N. said, Yeah, yeah, snowed all the time in Antigua.
Then they were off, playing the confusion game. They could banter like this indefinitely, swapping misinformation like bubble gum cards, bad facts piling up like peanut shells in a movie theater. Sometimes, like now, Toby felt clever enough to join in, or bold enough not to mind making a fool of himself. So he said, I was in a hurricane once. In, in … Idaho. Yeah. Butte, Idaho.
– Ain’t no tornadoes in Boise, Bob said.
Before Toby could answer Bobby N. told Bob he’d been there in the wrong season and then they were off and riffing, building a solid wall of chatter with no chinks for Toby to stuff what limp wit he could muster.
Soon enough anyway they were at Andy’s Factory, where Bob and Bobby N. stepped out of the cab into the drizzling rain while Toby paid the driver. The Factory was in a brownstone on East 47th, a melancholy building near the YMCA. The modest exterior had been marked up by Andy’s decorators: the steps had been painted silver, plus the sconces were topped with silver-stripe globes. A bedsheet painted with the words Event Tonight had been hung from a fourth story window to flutter in the breeze. A lone woman sat on the stoop in a plaid skirt, languidly smoking dope. Looking closer Toby noticed an earnest homespun quaintness plus a distinct five-o’clock shadow. She/he smiled and winked and Toby looked away.
– Looks like amateur night damn near wiped this place out, Bobby N. said.
– Better watch yourself. This here is the A-train connecting Sodom to Gomorrah.
– I seen some of their movies, Toby said. My uncle had magazines with pictures of naked women kinda like what they film. Uncle Dook had enough decency to keep them hid from the women folk, though.
Bob said, Don’t worry, Toby. We’ll keep your cherry safe.
The rain had lessened during the cab ride but they kept their collars turned up as they climbed the silver staircase and slipped inside. In the beat-up foyer a skinny guy in a tight black shirt gave them a hazy once-over, then cast a huge speed-laced smile on Bob, eyes jumping in his gaunt head. He said, Webeenexpectingyouman.
–What? Said Bob.
– Weheardyouwascoming sohereIamwaiting gorightupman,ohman ohman ohman…
– You been expecting us? Bob said.
– Ohyeah Icantbelieveit, man … thisisso … glamorous!
– Guess someone phoned ahead, Bobby N. said.
– Theysaidyouwascoming andsaidgowait sohereIam Icantbelieveitsyou yourmyinspiration really Iwritesongstoo listenlistenlisten …
The speed-freak made some melodic mumblings as he helped Toby pull open the elevator door. He stood gazing as Bob rose in the elevator and Toby noticed the man had at some point cut his hand deeply enough that a rivulet of blood snaked down his finger and dripped onto the floor.
– Hailtheglamorousgentlemen! The guy said as they rose above him, and then he was gone and when the elevator doors opened they were in a silver cave, light reflecting off the silver cabinets, silver walls, and silver floor.
Toby figured Andy must have been in that group over there, a group silhouetted by movie lights on tripods focused on a couch where two shirtless men were playing cards. One of them held a banana he was stroking idly with a thumb. A girl, Edie it must have been, Girl of the Year, blond goddess of what Bob’s entourage had wholeheartedly condemned as Andy’s crappy jerk-off movies, stood outside the cluster. Her eyes were fixed on Andy’s hands as they fidgeted with the equipment, then she looked up and flicked her gaze around the room. Smoke streamed from her mouth as she pulled a cigarette from her lips and looked around, her gaze stopping when she saw the three of them, then her eyes widened when they met Bobby N.’s. She cocked her hip to one side and stretched her hand out and knocked ash to the silver floor, then came over.
– Hey Bobby, she said. They kissed open-mouth for a few seconds before Edie pulled away and even standing still looking at Bob and Toby she seemed to be dancing, her pose like a Broadway dance pause in the moment before the number started up again.
– You’re Bob, she said.
– Bob, yeah that’s me, said Bob.
– I love your new songs. I love it you started playing rock ‘n roll. Because you can’t dance to folk. It’s all, you know, serious.
– My songs, yeah. I like your shoes. And only then did everyone look down to see her feet were bare, but there was a laugh in that, too. She laughed like that was the joke, and Bob smiled and looked up at her from under his brows like a child and she smiled back at him, dreamy and soft. Everything Bob ever said worked out, one way or another. Then Bob looked over to where he’d seen Andy and said, He gonna make me wait all day?
Edie gave a graceful shrug and pressed herself against Bobby N..
– You know I was here before, he did the same thing. Miserable sad-sack that time too when I sat for that movie. Don’t suppose you’ve seen it.
– No. I only heard you wouldn’t let him draw your … male member.
– My member’s not a joiner. Invitation only.
Edie winsomely shook her head in confusion, shyly bit her lower lip, briefly buried her head in Bobby N.’s chest. Uh-uh, she finally said, some sound to show she was still aware of the conversation but just barely.
– He gonna do something with my film or not? Blow me up, maybe? Silkscreen me?
– No. Maybe. I don’t know what he’s going to do.
She straightened up, keeping her huge brown eyes anchored to Bob’s. A narrow scar dented the bridge of her nose like the sign of some constant sorrow she was ever more weary of bearing. Without Toby noticing she’d lit another cigarette that she brought to her mouth, her tongue peeping out to guide it in as she brought it to her lips. She said, He probably won’t do anything with them. He’s been taking four or five a day. Strangers come in, he films them. Famous people come in, he films them. He only shows them at parties, and then he, like, shows three or four at a time, all overlapping. There’s no way of knowing who’s who. That way, it’s art.
Bob’s look some combination of shock and disdain she found funny somehow because she smiled again and laughed, then stopped as quickly as she’d started.
– It does sound kind of cruel, doesn’t it? She furrowed her eyebrows. She leaned in, spoke in a whisper saying, Andy doesn’t care what’s cruel. He just wants to make things people haven’t made before. Everything. Easy things anyone can do, he wants to do them first so everyone else who comes along, he did it already. Stupid movies, mass produced portraits. Before everyone else does. He’s an artist.
– He’s a pusher.
– No, he doesn’t even do drugs much. Makes his hands shake.
– Nah, not drugs. He pushes ideas, people, things. Buttons, man. He’s a pusher. He’s pushing you so good you don’t even know.
– Some of us don’t care if we get pushed. She lapsed back into her thousand-yard stare, then said, You know, do you ever want to I mean, just leave the world for a little while? Just, you know, be dead for a week or two and come back … I think death wouldn’t be too bad if you could just come back once in a while and check on things. Like Andy. He can be dead when he wants, and then it’s like he comes back and shows us what he found out there, where the dead people are.
The Factory was filling up; word had indeed made it around the city & the newcomers plus regulars milled about in expectation of Andy and Bob meeting. They’d heard all the rumors of the tension between them and here it was, a blood feud in silver, like the Greeks at Troy waiting for Hector to confront Achilles they stood in eager anticipation of the sport to come. But still Andy stood fiddling with his camera, making a show of his nonchalance.
Bobby N. stepping in now said, Edie, we can get you in real movies. Movies with real directors and real scripts … He slipped an arm around her waist and held her there while she snugged her hips against his thighs.
– I hate real scripts. Andy lets me write my own lines.
– Edie, you could do that in a real movie. Something that will be shown in real theaters. Bob knows people. Pennebaker. What’s that other guy’s name?
– It would be like being dead to Andy, she said. I could leave for a while, do something else, and come back to him.
– Yeah, that’s it.
– But he’d be so sad, you know. You don’t get it. I’m, I mean, his only real friend. If I left he’d be crushed. Because he’s not normal, you know. He has hangers-on, assistants, actors. People who can get something out of him. I mean he doesn’t have any friends except me. He’s lonely. Here he comes, you’ll see.
And sure enough Andy was on his way. He sauntered, loose-limbed but awkward like a scarecrow marionette with its strings crossed. He carried the Bolex camera in his slack white hands and flung his head back to clear a strand of the silver wig from his eyes, then kept his head back to keep the hair in place and stood staring down his nose at Bob.
– Oh, Bob, he said, Oh, Bob dar-ling. Are you still here?
– I just rolled in.
– From the portrait, the lingering stink of that failed portrait, that’s what is still here.
– I figure that’s probably the best one you did all year. I hear you hid it in a box somewhere.
– Will you let me draw you this time? Please, can I draw you?
They stood glaring through their sunglasses in the silver darkness, and suddenly the room filled with a light that ricocheted around the walls and when the flash was gone they turned and saw Andy’s pet photographer Nat with his camera already moved five feet and crouching low to set up for the next shot.
– I never got my sitting fee, Bob said.
– I don’t pay sitting fees, Andy said, one ink-stained hand swiping at his shock-wig.
– That thing I sat for a few weeks ago. I hear you’re just throwing them in boxes. Maybe you show them, maybe you don’t.
– Art’s a tough game, Andy said. I probably showed it at a party or two. Gerard might know. Gerard!
– Maybe for payment I’ll just check out the posters, see if there’s one I like, man.
Andy cocked his head but stayed silent.
– I see you have an Elvis. He pointed at a big silver canvas with two images of Elvis silk-screened over each other. Elvis in a still from some western he shot a year or two earlier, wearing one big leather belt and another gunbelt that rides lower on his infamous hips. There’s two of him, half overlapped, each holding a gun; two guns four belts. Bob said, I almost got one of those.
– I didn’t know you were a collector.
– I cut one out of Life magazine instead.
– Hey, guys, Nat shouted, Turn around a bit.
And they turned & then they noticed it was a definite crowd behind them now and the Factory’s space seemed half as big, filled as it was with the jittery, bug-eyed curious. The movie was done shooting, all the equipment had been packed away and people were standing on the couch for a better view. There were people here from the party Bob had left; the big blond who’d been so proud to have met Andy stood sullen next to some guy with his hand around her waist, a tongue in her ear. Bobby N. and Edie were holding hands in the corner and there were women in glitter make-up and some weirdly out of place man in a grey suit with some woman dressed like the first lady in a wool skirt-suit and fur stole over her shoulders. There were shaggy-haired men and flop-hatted girls, artists and actors and hangers-on, and everyone was watching Bob and Andy under the Elvis like maybe they’d spotted Jesus and Buddha throwing horseshoes at the Met.
They turned to look at Nat, who said No no and gestured with his hands; Bob moved a step, then Andy moved a step until it seemed the two Elvises had pointed a gun apiece on Andy and Bob looking at each other through Elvis and finally Nat snapped a picture, then another one, then a third, though Andy seemed distracted through the last one and before a fourth could be snapped he was halfway across the Factory, pissed off & shouting, Gerard! What are you throwing away?
Gerard turned around and held something up: a Polaroid camera.
– Busted. Good thing we got a spare.
Andy said, Put the busted one in the box. The time capsule.
– Andy, it’s busted… He made a motion to put it in the trash.
– Ge-rard, no! Said Andy. In. The. Box… Then, to Bob, he said, People want to throw things away, I don’t understand it. I’m so sad about throwing things away. Someday I’m going to keep everything.
Gerard stood holding the camera, waiting to see if Andy had more to say. Then he pulled a banker’s box from a silver shelf and shuffled the camera in alongside whatever else was in there.
– That’s right, Gerard. There is no trash. You remember that, right?
– It’s busted, man. Why’s it gotta go in the box?
– Because someday someone will open that box and wonder why the hell I put in a busted Polaroid. And they can’t wonder if it’s not there. So put it in the box like a dear and shut up. Did you not notice we have guests?
– He’s a genius, said Edie, suddenly at Toby’s side and whispering in his ear and her breath sweet like berries in cream she said, Can you see it now, his genius?
– I seen that movie, Toby said to Edie. He pointed at the Elvis as she pushed her body against his but didn’t seem to notice he was there even as her heat moved into his skin. He said, I seen that movie. It’s the one where he played the cowboy.
– I’ve been in films, Edie said. I’m an actress.
– He was awful in that movie, said Toby.
Meanwhile Bob was going on with Andy: So I wonder could you help me out, he said.
A cocked head, silent pale Andy leading him on.
– Al, my manager. He said he liked it.
– How wonderful.
– He’d just love it, I came back with that Elvis for him.
– Well it’s a fine piece. It goes for five hundred.
– Yeah. My manager, he’s got this sofa. Best piece I ever set my ass on. I keep saying gimme that sofa. Pay you three, four hundred for it.
– I don’t follow.
– I come back with Elvis there, he’d trade me straight up.
– Well that piece goes for five hundred, but maybe you could…
– Sit for a portrait, that’s what I was thinking. Which I already did.
– I was thinking send your agent down here and you could get the couch as a finder’s fee. I’ll even charge him four hundred, on the condition you get the couch.
– Andy. Andrew. Mr. Warhola. Please. I’m here right now. I’ve sat for a portrait that most likely never got out of the can. My time’s gotta be worth something. And I need that couch. I may be a family man someday, gotta have something for the wife to sit on.
Andy and Gerard stared at each other, then stepped back and stood in a whispering huddle. Toby watched carefully for signs, noted only that Andy’s ink-stained hands were stroking the crotch of his pants. Soon they broke the huddle and Gerard said, How would you feel about letting Andy draw your penis? Would that be a fair trade?
They stared at each other across a silence like the heart of a tombstone in the desert. Gerard said, Andy feels this is more than fair. The film was a previous transaction for which all accounts are closed, as far as he’s concerned, and this Elvis will surely appreciate beyond the value of the couch you will trade it for.
– Nobody draws Little Zim.
– A picture then. A Polaroid.
– Man, your lens ain’t wide-angle enough even if I let you.
Bob and Bobby N. had one of their co-conspirator laughs at that as Bob shook his head, then after casting a glance around locked his eyes on Toby. He said, Hey here’s a plan. Take this guy’s dick. He ain’t using it.
Toby heard himself make some noise but stifled it out of confusion. Edie next to him giggled.
– Plus he sings just like Bob. Knows all the words to his songs and everything.
Andy’s group retreated to the huddle, this time pulling in Edie and Toby’s side went cold from where she’d been pushing herself. They gabbled a bit like hens in the dirt and Edie glanced at Bob, giggling. They all turned their heads to Toby’s crotch with its fading Edie-tent, then returned to their gabbling. Then they broke it up and came back, Andy sniffling and tossing his silver bangs off his wire-rimmed glasses.
– Andy thinks the kid’s will do, Gerard said.
– Looks like you’re in showbiz, kid, said Bob.
Toby looked around again at all the faces: Edie giggling, Gerard smug. Andy, after a brief giddy smile, retreated to a boredom like he’d seen this every day for the past thousand years. Bob was leaning one elbow on a file cabinet, that smirk on his face like none of this had anything to do with him.
– C’mon, buddy, said Bobby N.. Let’s drop ‘em.
Gerard was adjusting a camera, the replacement Polaroid for the broken one in the box.
– What? Toby said. Here?
– Nah, we’re going to Boise, Bobby N. said. He turned to Gerard and said, The kid told me he’s got a hurricane in his pants.
– Ooh, fabulous, said Andy.
– Want me to help? Edie said.
– Oh God no, said Toby. He was completely flaccid now, spooked by the crowd that stood by confused but curious and waiting for the next act. Toby turned his back to them and motioned for Gerard to move the camera. He unbuckled his pants, opened the fly, and dropped his trousers and waited for the picture to be taken, listening to the comments moving back and forth, an Ooh, baby followed by a That’s a hurricane awright and a female voice saying Oh, isn’t it just dar-ling. Bob when Toby looked only raised an eyebrow and took a drag from his cigarette. He rubbed an eye and shook his head and then there was a flash of the camera and Toby said, You done?
– One for safety, Gerard said, popping off another. Toby pulled up his trousers. He buttoned and zipped and buckled as Gerard ripped the Polaroid from the case and set it on the shelf to develop.
– You done good, kid, Bobby N. said.
Bob looked up at the painting and down at the Polaroids developing beneath it and then so did Toby, then back at dark Elvis foreshortened on the silver canvas, guns a dark smudge in his blobby fist.
– It’s yours now, sir, Andy said. Enjoy the couch.
Fifteen feet apart and their eyes met for less than a second, Andy, zen-Master, his face deadpan against Bob’s perma-smirk. But Toby caught the look that went between them as whatever conflict they felt between them was resolved, the score tallied, the game over. Bobby N. moved Toby out of the way to get at the painting and hauled it off the wall. It was too big for him to hold alone so he set it on the floor right away and then he’s telling Toby to grab the other end and saying to Bob, We’re getting out of here, right Boss?
– Yeah, we’re done.
Gerard pulled the backing from the photograph and showed it to Edie. She nodded. He looked around for Andy, but Andy was gone somewhere and Bob was leaving, Toby and Bobby N. behind him carrying the Elvis. Gerard looked at the picture again and around at the crowd staring some at Bob and part at wherever Andy went and the rest just milling around in the silver womb. So with a paper clip Gerard hung the Polaroid to the wall where the Elvis had been and went back to work.
Outside the station wagon was double-parked on the avenue, and the party that had followed Bob to the Factory was tumbling down the silvered stairs and piling into its cargo area. Soon there were a dozen people in there talking and smoking up a blue choking cloud, the front seat reserved for Bob. Toby carrying the picture by its wood frame said, What do we do with big E, here, Bob?
– Lash it to the roof, it’ll keep the rain off.
But it had stopped raining and the skies had cleared and a brilliant New York blue sky emerged from the muck that had covered the city for the past three weeks. Bob stared up at the sky and patted his pockets and furrowed his brow. Ah, Lordy me, he said. I forgot my sunglasses.
– I’ll get them, Toby said.
– Yeah. I gave them to Edie.
Inside, on the wall where Elvis had hung, he saw the Polaroid hung by a paperclip stick-pinned to the wall. Andy had gone back to work on the movie and Edie, when he tracked her down, couldn’t remember holding Bob’s sunglasses.
– I don’t know, she said. Hey, is Bobby with you? I wanna see Bobby.
– Bobby’s with the car.
– You, she said, leaning in close. She touched his face, then cupped his neck in her soft hand and kissed him, her warm lips and gentle tongue sweet like candy. Genius, she said. He reached around to hold her and lose himself in her but she pulled away, straightening her hair.
– I don’t have his glasses, she said, and then she went back to Andy.
When he came out he saw the station wagon driving away, Bob in the passenger seat wearing the sunglasses he’d sent Toby back for. They were two blocks away and speeding up, the silvered canvas lashed cockeyed to the roof and shining brilliantly in the afternoon sun, blinding passersby the whole drive down Third Avenue.
-- End --
(c) 2010 Michael Ramberg
Licensed under Creative Commons - free to redistribute but not for profit, and without changes. I reserve all rights. Thanks for playing fair.
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