Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders

  “Huh?” Surprised, Eric turned.

  Where the wall of designs had been, a glowing picture of a church with a light behind it’s steeple filled the wall—which Eric only realized now was a screen of some sort. Hundreds of people stood before the church.

  Superimposed on the tableau were the familiar red letters:

  REMEMBER CALIFORNIA

  Behind him, Cassandra said, “You wanna hear what they got to say for themselves?”

  Eric glanced back at her. “Yeah…“

  —and a woman’s gentle voice declared, “This is a message for all good, American Christians.” (Though what Cassandra had done to turn it on, Eric had missed.) “Please, make your donations for the recovery of the great state of California through the New Order of Holy Luminescence, founded by Father Goldridge Hanover. That is the only way you can assure that eighty percent of your donation will be used to establish Christ’s Mission in the Garden of Eden State of California. We know that you are dutiful, Christ-fearing Americans, all of you, and that you, no more than I, want selfish godless Jewish influences, Muslim evil, Buddhist devil worship, and Catholic paganism to reach its dangerous tentacles into that broken and wounded land that cannot fight back with the word of Christ, unless you are very careful about how you spend your money. So, once again—”

  From the back, the tattoo needle ceased buzzing. Tank called forward: “What you turn on that bullshit for—?”

  “It’s somethin’ Eric wanted to hear,” Cassandra said loudly.

  Tank grunted. Again, the needle began its buzz.

  “That’s okay,” Eric said. “I heard all I wanted, anyway. Thanks Cassandra.”

  Eric had no idea what she did, if indeed Cassandra did anything, but the wall sized screen returned to the display of eagles, dragons, dolphins, flowers, lotuses, vines, butterflies, stars, birds, beetles, clouds, skulls, and flames.

  “Any time, honey. When next you come, maybe we can do a little more work on you—make you even prettier for that sexy boyfriend of yours.”

  Eric laughed—and left the store.

  By that evening, at the turn in the stair, someone had drawn a skull-and-cross-bones on the “C” in CALIFORNIA, and over the next month, in ballpoints and in felt tips, airplanes and swastikas and the schematic genitals of both genders began to cover green and red.

  Two years later, in Chicago, a high-fashion house caused a scandal by using the same coloring and lettering for its advertisement of a line of cameras, computers, briefcases, and (the ones that twisted everyone out of shape) one-piece topless bathing suits for women and women’s open evening jackets. Outcries of tastelessness hogged the front pages of two or three papers for two or three weeks. (Remember California…? The implication—wholly erroneous—was that the style had started there prior to the Bombs.) Six months after that, though, a few people grumbled, nobody seemed to object when a line of camping gear appropriated the logo—and began to run advertisements of people tramping through the recognizable ruins of the western countryside, with signs saying REMEMBER CALIFORNIA in the background.

  Neither Eric nor Shit ever knew about those particular turns in the history of advertising imagery nor in the debates about them. By that time, though, since the defaced poster in its frame halfway up the theater steps had gotten ripped almost in half, Eric had pulled it out, thrown it away—and, basically, felt better now that it was gone.

  * * *

  [74] SHIT CAME OUT the lobby door, to where Eric was leaning beside the booth, because it was a little early for the after-work crowd to be buying tickets. “Hey—come on. I gotta show you somethin’.”

  “What?” Eric asked.

  “I gotta show you. I ain’t gonna talk about this one.”

  “But I should be in the booth, sellin’—”

  “Come on! It’ll just take a couple of minutes!”

  Standing up, with Shit’s rough hand on his shoulder, they went back through the lobby. To Eric’s surprise, Shit turned aside for the steps up to the first balcony and began to take them two at a time. “Come on up here.” Eric followed.

  When they entered the back of the balcony, Shit turned aside. “This is too high for you,” Eric whispered. “You don’t like comin’ up here.”

  But Shit led him around the back of the waist-high wall, before which the seats, mostly empty, rolled down beneath the slope of the balcony above, with its supporting beams, to the rail. “Right. I don’t. But I gotta show you this. You’ll like it, too.” They walked down through the arch into one of the lower boxes. “Come on,” Shit whispered. “Hunker down.” Dropping to a squat, Shit held out his arms and duck-walked forward toward the box’s molded railing.

  Eric started after him. “I ain’t afraid of fallin’,” he said quietly, to explain why he was still upright.

  Shit looked back up at him. “It ain’t about fallin’. It’s about someone seein’ ya. Get down!”

  “Oh…” Eric dropped to squat-walk after Shit, who had reached the curved wall surrounding the box. (Today, no chairs stood in any of the boxes—though one of the regulars had left his sleeping bag wadded against the wall. It smelled musty.) Shit put his hands on the inner wall, pushed himself up till his chin was over the edge, leaned his head forward and whispered: “Look on down over that—you’ll see ’im.”

  Joining Shit at the rail, Eric did the same. “Why are we doin’ this—sneakin’ around like a pair of kids in our own goddam movie theater? Shit, this nigger better have a dick bigger than goddam Haystack.” He pushed himself up further.

  “It ain’t no nigger,” Shit whispered. “He’s a white guy—”.

  “I meant ‘nigger’ in a manner of speakin’. Like you and me.”

  “Well, I didn’t. Look on down—he’s practically right under us. In the orchestra, about three seats to the left. He ain’t too far from the wall light. You can see him real clear. But be fuckin’ quiet, huh?”

  Eric pushed up and looked at the empty orchestra seats below. A youngish, muscular fellow, with a mop of curly hair—blond, it looked like—slouched back in his seat almost directly below. He’d slipped his shoes off. One socked foot was propped up on his toes on the seat back in front of him. The other foot was over the back, hanging down into the chair in front. Eric saw that his jeans were opened and rucked six inches down his thighs. He wore no underpants. Respectably hung, he slanted up and to the side. His hands were joined under his chin—Eric could just figure that one out from the high vantage. As Eric watched, his cock levered up and flopped over to his other thigh. Then, seconds later, it raised again, by itself, and flopped back.

  “You ain’t gonna tell me now you got me up here to watch some cracker flop his dick left and right—Shit…? Like I ain’t seen that maybe fifty times before in the last six months…?” Looking aside, he saw sweat beading Shit’s forehead where, between his knuckles on the rails, his mouth was slightly parted, as his face leaned over the rococo gilt.

  Beside him Eric heard Shit’s rough breath.

  Eric frowned. “Shit, you’re scared to death! Come on, let’s go back down. You don’t have to be up this high. You’re gonna get that vertigo—”

  “Shhhush…!” Shit whispered. “It’s probably gonna take him a few minutes to do it again.”

  Again, Eric looked forward and down.

  The fellow had taken hold of himself with one fist and was pulling it slowly, overhand.

  “He gonna do it soon, now. I seen him do it four or five times already.” (So it wasn’t shootin’, Eric figured. Or was it…?) “That’s why I run out after the last one to get you—”

  Eric took a long breath; then, with the hand nearest Shit, he reached over to massage Shit’s shoulder. “Relax, there—you ain’t gonna fall. I ain’t gonna let you fall. Really, this ain’t so high up. It ain’t no more’n twenty feet. Hey, if you did fall, you’d just crack a leg or an arm—”

  “Shhh,” Shit whispered again. “I know I ain’t. But my body don’t know it. Just watch.”
br />   “Okay, I’m watchin.” Two-and-a-half, three minutes dragged, and Eric’s attention shifted to the images intertwining on the screen…

  Then Shit whispered, “There he goes.”

  Eric looked down. The young guy raised his head a little and, with a thick middle finger, closed off his left nostril and snorted into his palm.

  It was loud enough to hear up here.

  He moved his hand over, so that his thumb closed off the other side of his nose. Again he snorted into his palm. Now he held his hand out before him—he was sitting close enough to one of the sidelights so that you could see something glistening in a labor-hardened palm. Below Eric, the young man looked around, first left, then right. But no one was closer than ten or fifteen seats away. He dropped his face and gave a big lick across his hand, first one way, then the other; then he must have scraped it with his bottom teeth. Then he ran one and another finger into his mouth.

  Shit turned his head toward Eric’s arm. “Oh, fuck…!” Eric felt Shit’s wet forehead press his bare shoulder. (That day he’d worn a shirt with the sleeves torn off.) A moment later, Shit’s arm gripped Eric’s back. “Oh, Jesus, that is so fuckin’ hot…”

  “Damn,” Eric said. “Yeah, that’s pretty good. It’s got me hard. But you’re carryin’ on like some straight guy sneakin’ his first a peek at a woman pushin’ her titties into her bra, Shit!”

  His forehead still against Eric’s arm, slippery with perspiration, Shit whispered, “I seen him do that five times now. He must got a cold or somethin’, ’cause that boy’s snottin’ up a storm. You know—” Shit chuckled—“the first time I seen him do that, I was comin’ up from cleanin’ the bathroom in the downstairs lounge, just walkin’ up the orchestra aisle, when I looked over and caught him at it. I came in my damned jeans. I’m not kiddin’. I swear it. I had to sit down in one of the seats, there—so I could stop quiverin’ and get to breathin’ again.”

  “Did you see how old he was?”

  “I don’t know,” Shit whispered. “Twenty? Twenty-one? He got sumpin’ wrong with his face, so it’s hard to tell.”

  “Yeah…” Eric chuckled. “But that means you could be his daddy.”

  “Awww—” Shit grimaced—“please don’t say that!”

  “Now don’t tell me that bothers you…?”

  “It don’t bother me.” Again, Shit grimaced. “But I figure it might bother him.”

  “Come on.” Eric pushed back from the box wall. “Shit, ain’t nothin’ so hot you got to scare yourself crazy, hangin’ over the edge of this damn box. Let’s go down, where you can be comfortable.”

  “Okay.” Shit backed from the wall on his knees, then turned. “But I’m comin’ back here to watch him do it again in ten or fifteen minutes. So I can beat off.” Now he took Eric’s hand and pushed it down between his legs, where a bar ran diagonally under the lap of his work-softened jeans.

  Eric squeezed him, then stood. Shit leaned back and stood up. too. They started up the balcony’s side aisle, by ancient arches, some of which were nailed over with plywood. Finally they reached the entrance to the stairway. “Did you say anything to him, yet?” Eric asked.

  “The second time I saw him do it, I went and sat about three seats away from him.”

  “What happened?”

  “He’s funny. He don’t care if somebody sees him jerkin’ off, but he don’t want nobody to catch him at the real hot stuff. I was about to say somethin’ friendly, and thought I’d dig out a finger full of my own and eat it for him, so he’d know I was…you know, like him. Only soon as he saw me do it, he got up, stuck his feet in his shoes, and moved off to the other side of the theater.” Shit chuckled again, then glanced back at Eric. “He got some kinda harelip, what they sewed back together. That’s why I wasn’t sure how old he was. One of his eyes goes off a little. Actually, he’s pretty good lookin’. He could be thirty, even thirty-five…And the lip thing makes him sorta cute.” Shoulder to shoulder, they came down the curving stair. (Eric realized he hadn’t seen the man’s face at all.) “It’s funny. You see somebody who does something that really turns you on, and the next thing you know, everything about ’em looks good. Once he moved, I figured he was kinda skittish, so I got up—and three minutes later, he was back. He really likes that seat. I mean, it’s clear he’s lookin’ for a blowjob, wavin’ his dick around like that. Hey, whyn’t you go and over and suck him off? Then, when you got him busy, I’ll come by…and just watch and maybe say somethin’ friendly. Tell him we could be snot buddies, if he wants. That way, maybe he’ll let me have some of his—or have some of mine—while you’re…what’d Dynamite used to call it, when he’d suck on us while we was sittin’ in the bed, eatin’ each others’…? ‘Encouragin’’ ’im. That would be real nice. I know it’s a little late, and the regulars gonna start comin’ in just a bit, so you’re gonna be busy in five minutes. I should’ve got you before. But you don’t even have to do it today—”

  “Suppose he leaves?” They walked out into the lobby.

  “Naw, he’s permanent. I been seein’ him in here for three days now. He’s been there for two nights. So he’s gotta be homeless—or real horny. He ain’t no local guy. I’d’ve recognized him if he was from around here. The first night when I went out to bring back a pizza for the guys upstairs, I mean, before I realized he was anything special, I stopped and give him a slice. And Dr. Greene done brought him a sandwich yesterday. I hope he’s one of the California fellas.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause they’re so much more grateful when you help ’em out. It’s easier to get nookie off ’em. You know that.”

  “Come on, Shit. Don’t you think it’s unfair takin’ sexual advantage of somethin’ like that?”

  “Nope,” Shit said. “You just get to know ’em a little faster. That’s all.” He snuffled, dug a forefinger in his nose, pulled it out, looked at what it carried, started to eat it, then offered it to Eric. As he pulled his finger from Eric’s mouth, Eric found himself thinking it would be nice to try the new guy.

  “So you already been feedin’ him. Funny,” Eric said. “And I didn’t even notice he was here. Probably ’cause he was white—” Halfway across the dingy marble, Eric stopped. Shit stopped, too, with a questioning look. Then, frowning, Eric said, “You know, Shit? I just figured somethin’ out about you.”

  “Huh?” Shit said. “Figured what out?”

  “You’re a damned snow queen!”

  “What?”

  “At least about snot eatin’.”

  “You mean, somebody who only likes white guys? Me? Hey, you know that ain’t me. I fuck every damned nigger in this place. I got my eye peeled for ’em when they come in. And I mean nigger as in black—like me. The reason I like this place so much is ’cause we got so many black guys in here, three-to-one over the crackers. More than half the white guys I end up leavin’ alone, anyway, unless they come after me. Sure, I wanna be friendly—maybe eat that kid’s boogers with him. See if he wants to eat some of mine—or yours. But it ain’t like I wanna move him in with us. When Dr. Greene was in here suckin’ his dick yesterday—now there’s your snow queen; he always goes for the white ones in here first—I overheard them together talkin’ afterwards—and the harelip’s a damned motor mouth. I mean, he’s as bad as Big Man used to be and ain’t as smart. He didn’t never shut up! Not once. I know that much about him already. Hey, now what I would like is for us to get ourselves our own nigger. A nice young’n. A chunky one, I mean—and brainy. Like you, there. That way I could listen to the two of you talk back and forth and learn stuff. So even if I am a snow queen—which I think is a real laugh—you don’t gotta worry about it none.”

  “Shit, I know you love fuckin’ black ass—and you’ll suck on anything if you think it’ll make the asshole attached to it loosen up a little, black or white. You’d suck off a motorcycle tailpipe if you thought it would make it easier to stick your dick in the gas tank. But we been takin’ care of this place here a
lmost five, goin’ on six years. Durin’ that time, three booger-eatin’ black fellows, at least that I seen, have come in here. Remember, one of them was that older guy—two of them was here for a few months each, and one of them just in and out? And I seen all three of them doin’ their nose pickin’ and finger suckin’, and I had a nice, casual thing with all three of them. I told you about all of ’em, too. And what did you say? It was, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s interestin’.’ Maybe you went to look. Or done it once or twice with em.”

  “What do you mean? I fucked ’em all—ten or twelve times, at least one of ’em there. He was real good, too.”

  “Only then some poor harelipped white 3B refugee comes in here, chowin’ down on what’s supposed to be goin’ into his snot rag, you’re ready to throw yourself at ’im over the damned balcony!”

  Shit had his superior look. “Well, if I’m a damned snow queen—which I am not—maybe you so busy wantin’ to be a nigger you done forgot you are a snowball, after all, Blondie. Hey? Ain’t you figured it out, yet? All I am is a you queen. Or anything that’s halfway like you.”

  “Well, I know that…”

  “You sure?” Shit’s disgust fell away to reveal the mocking smile beneath: he slid an arm around Eric shoulder. “You really sure?”

  “Yeah, I—”

  “So suppose your nigger dirt ball gets a little hungry? What you gonna feed ’im? You gonna feed him a finger full of that good white boy snot, or is you gonna let him eat his own or run around after what he can get in a damn place like this…?”

  “Oh, come on, Shit—”

  “Hey.”

  They reached the lobby.

  “You got five people out there, by your booth, waitin’ to get tickets.” Shit nodded toward the glass doors. “You better get your black ass on back to work.” Shit halted and scratched his crotch. “Hey, that motherfucker got me all horny. Hold up a minute. I wanna piss in your mouth. Go on squat down in front of me.”

  “Here in the lobby? Where the guys lined for tickets outside can see—”