Devilcountry (18 page)

His wife would never speak to him directly
again, not for more than a few minutes at best.  She left almost
immediately. Two weeks after the album’s release he received his first residual
check for close to a million.  Instantaneously, he had become a
millionaire.  Later that day after ingesting a massive dose of heroin and
cocaine through his left nostril he had a nervous breakdown in the shower where
he and his soon-to-be-ex-wife had made love repeatedly in the past.  These
were some of the purest
love-making
sessions he would
ever experience.  Because of their schedules they would both meet in the
shower somewhere between six and six fifteen A.M. each day.  For ten
minutes they would whisper, laugh, touch, hold, penetrate and release. She’d
whisper in his ear, “Go for it rock star.”  He wasn’t a rock star.
 He was short and stocky.
Balding in his early twenties
and too ugly to rock publicly.
  But he was able to play just
about every instrument created better than anyone else.  
Able to write an entire album’s worth of material usually for other
people.
 He knew he’d never be famous but he didn’t care.  Her
calling him a rock star while they held each other under a crappy
water-pressured apartment shower was the ironic blast of energy he required
each day.  But above all things he needed the sound of her voice.
 
Telling him things.
 
Anythings.
 
In truth, he needed nothing else.  

He sat under the shower of their crappy two
bedroom apartment, alternating between crying hysterically, laughing and
thinking about how to spend the residuals check that was still in it’s
couriered envelop on the bureau dresser.   He was rich, on the
A-list.  Every band wanted to work with him, regardless of cost.  He re-married
twice, both of them loud mouths.
 
Now
divorced and living alone up in the hills. He liked the soundtrack that the
Devilcountry hills provided.  Ambient, peaceful, birds, coyote howls,
hawks, the occasional shitty car that was usually lost.  Sound was his
world.  

Finally, that morning almost ten years to the
day after she had left she was standing in his office.  Hand delivering
papers for him to sign.  She wanted her maiden name back.
 
Needed his signature in triplicate.
“Press hard.” She said through a familiar smile.
 
He signed and sighed simultaneous. She
turned to walk out after polite goodbyes. No stories from her, barely any
talking.  But all smiles.   
Her body and soul
still stunning.
 Her voice still soothing in a way no one else’s
could be to him.
 
He sat behind his
desk.
 
He allowed himself to cry for
fifteen minutes.
 
He then had his
assistant order him sushi that he would not eat while he made four phone calls
to have the three friends he still talked to from childhood come over for
football.
 
As they made their
entrance into his home later that day, he embraced them telling them each about
what he experienced earlier.
 
All of
them talking and making him laugh.
 
Helping him heal. Now he was paying for the pizzas.

“Don’t fuck this up, it’ll end when it ends, but
don’t, I repeat, DON’T fuck this up.”  He said as he stared out at Randi
who was still bobbing her head gently to the music.  He then turned around
sharply.  “Yes?”

“Yes sir.”

“Go away.”  The record producer turned
away, slammed the door.  Rick was alone on the porch.  He stood
silent staring at Randi.  He could hear the producer from behind the door.
 “Food’s here… they ate the cake again!”

Rick walked back to the car.  Slowly.
 Trying to process.  Randi was still listening to the demo.  She
was banging her head, eyes closed, deep into the music.  She wanted to
strip to it.  Rick paused for a moment, even though it was pitch black
outside a beam of light radiated from the car, lighting the way.  They
would go back to The Big Pizza sit and he would do as instructed. She’d talk
for hours telling him her whole story.  He sat there, amazed. Mouth shut,
listening.  She was a mountain of ideas.  Even though she liked his
music Rick was done with it.  His entire focus would be Randi.  He
thought about the canyon.

He had gotten lost in those hills, and now he
was found.

THE SANDY BEACH

It
was big.  Powerful.  It overwhelmed me.  Like I’d been preparing
for this moment my whole life, and I still wasn’t ready.  I felt like a
hack, a poser, an intruder, I felt warm; I heard the ocean, a seagull, the
pounding of waves.

There’s Carin.  She’s a teenager.  She
is like Marilyn Monroe.  The blond hair was striking.  
In peak form.
 Swept back with a twist tie in it.
 She had on short-shorts only a teenager could pull off, and thongs.
 She was walking arm in arm with a man, older, long hair, wearing a tweed
blazer with a brown turtleneck, a scarf, tan slacks, barefoot.  
The out-of-work-actor- type.
 He was absurdly hunky.
 
Artsy and fartsy.
 Surely, she wasn’t
falling for this guy’s act, was she?  He was definitely leading the dance.

 
         
 
It is a lazy day at the beach.  
Looks like the Hamptons.
 Clouds linger.  It is
slightly overcast.  No one else is there.  The temperature is
perfect.  It is afternoon.   They stop about ten feet in front
of me.  They kiss as the waves crash nearby.  Holding each other’s
arms around shoulders.  They decide to sit.  They begin to kiss
again, deeper this time.  His towering frame sits above her.  He runs
a hand through her hair.  He turns over onto his back.  He grabs her
hand and kisses it.  She starts rubbing his frame.  She can feel his
defined physique beneath the cotton shirt.  Slowly she works her way down
to his waist.  
Then below the beltline.
 He
takes his hand and places it over hers.  They make deep eye contact.
 She smiles at him, playfully.  She was crossing into new territory.
 He knew it.  He would be absolutely gentle.  He moves her hand
lightly over his tan slacks.  There isn’t much material so the hardness
comes right through.  Slowly her hand starts to rub back and forth over
his midsection.  She feels a lion beneath still safely locked up in its
cage.  She keeps rubbing it back and forth, slowly, exploring the area
with both her hands.   

 
         
 
“You know, when I saw you in my acting
class I knew you were special,” he said to her.  He had a low, throaty
timber to his voice.  She blushed. He continued, “You are so talented
sweety, I think you definitely have what it takes
....take
it out.”

Oh,
dear God.  Aren’t visions supposed to be of Jesus or of Muhammad Ali
telling me the cure for cancer?

She unzipped him.  She had never seen one
in person before.  It was standing at attention.  Six maybe seven
inches in length.  She touched it with her fingers.  
Timidly at first.
 Made a swirl with her finger around
the tip.  It twitched in her hand for a second, which startled her.
 Then she smiled.  The texture was different than she’d anticipated.
 It was smoother. Hard but the skin gave it some alacrity.  She moved
her hand ever so slightly over it back and forth.  He breathed out.
 She stroked the knob, ran her fingers over it gently at first; she saw as
she moved her hand back and forth her teacher’s gaze would soften.  His
control would relinquish. His head fell back. His eyes closed.  She put
her free hand on his chest and could feel his heart banging.  She pushed
down on his torso, making him sink back into the sand.  She was in control
now, and she liked it.  She worked her hand back and forth, building a
rhythm, doing a dance.  With every pump she could feel power drain from
him and into her.  She felt free. She felt strong.  She felt
invincible.  She no longer feared her father getting drunk and beating the
crap out of her.  She no longer worried if her mom was all right up in
Heaven.  She no longer wanted to cut herself with a kitchen knife.
 She no longer felt insecure about her body.  She could see herself
as a big star.  
The center of attention.
 A
queen.  Her acting teacher started to moan.  It startled her for a
second.  It was a fairly unmanly sound for a guy well over six feet.
 She laughed a bit to herself and stroked him harder to quiet him down.
 She needed complete focus.  She needed to shut him up.  
To be in control.
 She knelt down and whispered in his
ear,  “You like that, baby?”

“Oh, God, yes…don’t stop…”

 
         
 
“What if I do?”

 
         
 
“Please, baby, don’t.”

She smiled.  She loved what she was doing.
 The control she had.  She wouldn’t stop.  She was bluffing.
 She loved the feel of his cock in her hands.  She never wanted it to
be taken away.  It was hers.  She had never done anything like this
before and wondered why she had waited so long.  She was seventeen and
finally free. Her hand became a blur and her eyes widened.  Her teacher
moaned like a schoolgirl.  “Oh, dear God!!”  His eyes closed and his
whole face contorted.  He blasted his load all over her hands, shocking
Carin, who was unsure of what just happened.  At first she thought she had
hurt him, but his body surrendered underneath her touch.  His cock
softened as his sauce covered almost all of her hands and part of his stomach.
 She had aimed the blast away from her soiling his turtleneck but as his
orgasm subsided so did her feeling of emancipation.  She wanted more.
 So much more than any acting teacher could give her.

 
         
 
“Not bad, kid!” Her head turned to look
behind her and we were in a management office.  
Twenty
floors up, in Manhattan.
 She was two years older and was a
completely filled-out, gorgeous young woman.  
A woman
with ambition.
 She was holding the script to a movie in her hands
with her parts underlined.  A scene partner stood nearby.  She had
just finished her audition for the film that would make her career.  She
would play the abused trophy wife of a boxer who buys an insurance policy for
her husband then hires a hitman to kill him.
The Postman
Knocked Me Out
would be directed by an Academy Award Winner, who was
sitting on the couch next to her manager
.  Both of them smiled
crookedly as they sipped Black Label scotch.  

 
         
 
“FOR GOD’S SAKES LOOK OUT!!!!!!!”
screamed a party guest, as Carin whirred around right as the director, now her
live-in boyfriend, smashed through the backyard in his brand new Porsche 914
and into the pool.  She jumped in after him and got the door open,
bringing his drunken body afloat and onto the deck of the pool.  She saved
his life and he will repay her by beating her up and screwing a supermodel friend
of hers.

 
         
 
“Hey, gorgeous!  Felicia’s
gonna
wash you up and then we’ll see what we got. Okay?”
said Cousin Freddy.  

“I’ve got a totally huge audition today, so you
gotta do me good, Freddy!”

 
         
 
“Oh, I’ll do you good.  Now get over
there and wash up.”

 
          
I
look over at myself getting my
Bar Mitzvah
haircut.  Carin passes
by with Felicia.  The smell of Carin entrances me, my father, everyone.
 It was Freddy’s cut that helped Carin get the role of Amelia Earhardt’s
lover and got her back on the A-list after her last boyfriend, a producer, had
black-balled her. “Hey, baby!” She turned around.  It was Dickie.
 Smiling.  She smiled back.  They were onset for
Ode To Uta.
 Dickie’s smile seemed off.  She swore she could smell a foreign
scent on him.  They embraced.  She turned away from him and stared at
the painting in her bathroom that was a gift from the acting coach.  She
stared at it from beneath.  As if she were in a hole.  
Sunlight eeking through only in slight chunks.
 
Night closing in.
 The
hiss of
serpents nearby make
her shudder.  
The sounds of
Gino’s shitty video game echoing.
 Wishing she were back on that
beach.  Alone.

 
         
 
Now it was I, staring at a painting in
her bathroom, drunk out of my head, feeling washed-up, used, abandoned, and cheated
on.  I stumbled backward, knowing what I must do.  My Excalibured
hair-doo long gone, but in its place a courage whose origin I knew not filled
me up and made me invincible.  I did not question.  I composed
myself.  Felt sober but allowed myself to drift back into an inebriated
state.  I descended back into the snake pit Carin had once again fallen
into.
Unsure, yet perfectly willing.