The Stingray Shuffle Read online

  The Sapphire Room held forty dark nightclub tables, each with its own tiny cocktail lamp. Two keyboards sat onstage, facing each other.

  Rock groups are notoriously lax about protecting names and trademarks, which often revert to record companies. By the time the reunion tours roll around, all bets are off. If you’re lucky, you might see a band missing only the lead singer. If not, you get half of Chicago. If you’re really unlucky, you’ve paid to get in the Sapphire Room.

  An emcee walked onstage with a microphone. Behind him, two men in tuxedos sat down at the opposing keyboards.

  “May I have your attention? It is with great pleasure that I introduce Dave and Jeff on the Dueling Wurlitzers….” The pair began playing a rousing number. “Ladies and gentlemen, the Sapphire Room is proud to present Bad Company!”

  Jeff leaned to his microphone. “…I feel like makin’—what do I feel like makin’? Can anybody out there help me?—that’s right! love!…I feel like makin’ love, oh yeah!…”

  Three tables got up and left.

  Bad Company finished their concert, roadies packed up the Wurlitzers, others began setting up for the next act. They unfurled a silk banner. “The Great Mez-mo, amazing feats in mesmerization.” A sinister eyeball gave off lightning bolts.

  Preston Bradshaw Lancaster took the stage in a blue velvet tuxedo and powder-blue shirt with ruffles. Soon, four volunteers sat in a row of chairs across the stage, a family, their heads slumped to their chests. Disneyland T-shirts.

  The forty nightclub tables now held exactly three people; one was passed out. Welcome to show business.

  Preston snapped his fingers, and the family of four awoke and looked around disoriented.

  “Have a nice nap?”

  They nodded.

  Preston walked around behind the chairs and put his hands on the father’s shoulders.

  “I sure am getting hungry,” said Mez-mo. “I could really go for some noodles.”

  “Quack, quack, quack,” said the dad. Two people in the audience cracked up. Dad looked confused.

  “Yes, sir,” said Mez-mo. “I think I could eat a whole plate of noodles!”

  “Quack, quack, quack.”

  “Thanks, Dad.” Mez-mo took a couple steps and put his hands on the mother’s shoulders. “Mom—the Great Mez-mo would like you to go to the blackboard and write the numbers one to ten.”

  She walked across the stage and began writing with chalk. “1, 2, 3, I like to swim out to troop ships…” Two people laughed again; Mom looked around.

  “Thank you, Mom,” said Mez-mo. “You can take your seat…. Oh, by the way, would you happen to have a spare paperclip?”

  She looked down. “Dammit!”

  Mez-mo handed her some paper towels, and Mom began wiping invisible dog poop off her shoes.

  “Sonny,” said Mez-mo, putting his hands on the shoulders of a nine-year-old butterball. “What’s your name?”

  The boy thought he was saying Benny, but instead he answered, “Agent X-18, the Dreaded Mongoose.”

  “And Mr. Mongoose, do you know who your assigned targets are today?”

  The boy nodded, and Mez-mo handed him a starter’s pistol.

  “Mr. Mongoose, did you know I just bought a new telephone?”

  Benny got up from his chair and began firing blanks at his parents. “Die, you bastards!”

  “Hey,” the father yelled at Mez-mo. “That’s not funny!”

  “Not as funny as, say, noodles?”

  “Quack, quack, quack…”

  “That leaves just you, little lady.” Mez-mo put his hands on the teenager’s shoulders. “What’s your name?”

  “Jessica.”

  “Jessica, did you ever learn to play the harmonica?”

  Her eyes got big, and she put a hand over her mouth. “Oh, my God! It’s Brad Pitt!”

  The Great Mez-mo walked to the front of the stage and raised his hands for the room to hold down its non-applause.

  Behind Mez-mo, the parents were growing angry over the shooting incident. “What gives you the right! This is the most outrageous…!”

  “You’ve been a great audience!” said Mez-mo. “And now I have to order some noodles on the telephone and clean my harmonica with a paperclip.”

  Benny opened fire again on his parents, who quacked and wiped crap off their shoes. Jessica jumped up and down next to Mez-mo, begging for his autograph.

  “…Thank you and good night!”

  Mez-mo ran down the stairs on the right side of the stage, slapping hands tag-team-style with the next performer coming up the steps, Andy Francesco, the Pickpocket Comedian.

  Preston headed down the hall to the Flash in the Pan Restaurant.

  “There he is! The Great Mez-mo!” someone yelled from the corner booth. “Oooo, oooo! Don’t look in his eyes! He has supernatural powers!…”

  Preston turned toward the voice. It was Spider, the one-armed juggler. Preston hated Spider. He hated them all—all the other performers. Look at them, sitting there so smug in that booth. Wearing the same fancy blue velvet tuxedos, the snap-on bow ties hanging from their collars, elbows over the backs of the seats. Preston still couldn’t believe he had been reduced to associating with these losers. After all, he had a Ph.D. in hypnosis.

  The corner booth was their turf. Big and curved, shiny red vinyl, it was where all the performers waited while the other acts were onstage, comparing notes, trying out new material, drinking coffee, smoking, maybe ordering a steak when it started getting light out.

  “Scoot over,” said Preston.

  The guys slid around to make room, Spider; Bruno Litsky, America’s Favorite Jay Leno Impersonator; the Saul Horowitz Tribute to Vaudeville; Frankie Chan and His Incredible Hand Shadow Revue; Xolack the Mentalist; and Bad Company.

  “How’d it go tonight?” asked Saul.

  “Like fuckin’ death out there,” said Preston. “I need a smoke.”

  Bad Company handed him a cigarette. Xolack gave him a light. The waitress refilled coffee. “Can I get some eggs?” asked Preston. “Not too runny.”

  “Maybe if you worked on your script,” said Spider. “The way you weave the hypnotic trigger words into the conversation—seems a little forced.”

  “The script’s fine,” said Preston. “The script’s perfect.”

  “It’s a perpetual non sequitur,” said Spider. “You’re talking about wanting a bowl of noodles, then you have to borrow a paperclip and answer the phone. If I’m in the audience, I have to ask myself, where the hell is all this going?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my script!” said Preston.

  “It doesn’t make any fuckin’ sense!”

  “Oh, pardon me, Mr. Entertainment, Mr. ‘I can juggle with one hand. Everybody, look at me!’”

  “I’ll kick your ass with this one hand!” said Spider. “Let’s go!”

  Spider jumped out of the booth and stood next to Preston. “I know what you’re thinking. ‘He’s just got one arm—I can take him!’” Spider began bouncing on the balls of his feet, throwing quick left jabs in the air. “You want a piece of me? I’ll fuck you up!”

  “Sit down, Spider,” said Preston. “I respect you as a performer and a man.”

  “All right, then.” Spider tugged his left lapel defiantly and sat back down.

  “I think he’s right about the script,” said Frankie. “What you need is a good story line.”

  “No!” said Preston. “No story! It’s just a goddamn hypnosis show!”

  Frankie turned to his left. “What do you think, Xolack?”

  Xolack shrugged and went back to bending spoons with his hands against the edge of the table.

  Sparse applause filtered down the hall. Spider nodded at Bruno. “You’re up.”

  Bruno Litsky, America’s Favorite Jay Leno Impersonator, stood and straightened his suit. “How do I look?”

  “Not remotely like Jay Leno. Break a leg.”

  Andy Francesco, the Pickpocket Comedian, cam
e back to the table.

  “How was it out there?”

  “Fuckin’ oil painting. Give me a cigarette.”

  Frankie passed him a Winston. They heard a punch line down the hall: “…sounds more like a night out with Bill Clinton and Charlie Sheen!”

  The waitress arrived with Preston’s eggs and another pot of coffee.

  “Did anyone read where Steppenwolf’s coming to town?” asked Frankie. “Man, I love Steppenwolf.”

  “So what? It’s not really Steppenwolf,” said Spider.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ask Bad Company over there.”

  “What are you getting at?” Jeff said defensively.

  “Nothing that everybody here doesn’t know already.” Spider lit a cigarette and threw the Zippo on the table.

  Preston stabbed his egg yolks with a corner of toast. He picked up his fork, stopped and looked at it, then checked the rest of the utensils around the table. “They’re all bent…Fuckin’ Xolack!”

  “Are you vaguely implying we’re not Bad Company?” asked Jeff.

  “No, I’m saying it directly,” said Spider. “Watch my lips. You’re not fucking Bad Company.”

  “We played session on one of the albums,” said David.

  “In the studio.”

  “That counts.”

  “Sure it does. In your little make-believe rock ’n’ roll castle.”

  “You son of a bitch!” David jumped up to slug Spider, but the other half of Bad Company grabbed him. “Are you nuts? You can’t hit a guy with one arm!”

  “Is that so?” said Spider. He sprang out of his seat and began bouncing around next to the table again. “Let’s go! You and me—right now!”

  “Knock it off!” yelled Preston.

  “Make him take it back,” said Jeff.

  “No, he has to take it back,” said Spider, still bounding in the aisle.

  “Everyone’s going to apologize,” said Preston. “Then we sit down and act like fuckin’ grown-ups…. You first, Spider.”

  “All right,” Spider said reluctantly. “I’m sorry I even brought it up. If it’s that important to you, you’re really Bad Company.”

  “Damn straight we’re Bad Company!” said Jeff, nodding and leaning back in his tuxedo.

  “Your turn,” Preston told Jeff.

  “Sorry,” said Jeff. “I’m sure you have a helluva left hook…”

  “That’s better,” said Spider, sitting back down.

  “…But your right’s a little weak.”

  “That’s it!” Spider dove across the table at Bad Company, knocking over ice-water glasses and ketchup bottles before the others pulled him back down.

  “Look at this mess,” said Frankie. “Waitress!”

  “My wallet! My wallet’s gone!” Preston patted his jacket and pants pockets, then stopped and stared across the table. “Give it!”

  The Pickpocket Comedian grinned and handed Preston his wallet.

  Preston snatched it out of Andy’s hand and stuffed it inside his jacket. “Very fucking funny!”

  “The Little Mermaid,” said Frankie.

  “What?”

  “That’s got a good story. You could use new hypnotic code words like enchanted and sea horse…”

  Preston lost his appetite. He threw a bent fork down in his plate and pushed it away.

  “Frankie, try to stay up with the class,” said Spider. “That was six fuckin’ subjects ago.”

  “I didn’t know it was closed.”

  “Just work with us, okay?” said Spider.

  “Will you guys shut the fuck up! You’ve already ruined my breakfast!” yelled Preston. “I can’t believe I’ve been reduced to associating with you people. I have a Ph.D., for Chrissakes!”

  “What are you saying? Because I have only one arm, I’m stupid, too?”

  “I’m just saying it’s the same shit every night. Frankie starts up with The Little Mermaid, and you and Bad Company knock over all the drinks, and thanks to Xolack and his spellbinding silverware tricks, I can’t take a bite of eggs without almost putting my fuckin’ eye out!”

  Bruno Litsky came back to the table.

  “How was it?”

  “Like a goddamn wake,” said Bruno. “Cigarette me.”

  “Frankie, you’re up.”

  Frankie went down the hall and climbed onstage for his hand-shadow rendition of The Little Mermaid.

  A gaggle of young girls entered the restaurant.

  “Hey, Preston,” said Andy. “Isn’t that girl on the end the one you had onstage tonight?”

  Preston turned around. “So it is.”

  He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled across the diner: “Harmonica.”

  The girls turned around. One of them began shrieking. She ran over to the corner booth and begged Preston for his autograph again.

  Preston stood up and put his arm around Jessica’s shoulder. “I think that can be arranged. Let’s go back to my suite.”

  He winked at the other guys as he led her away from the table, toward the men’s room.

  Bruno shook his head.

  “What’s the matter with you?” asked Spider.

  “There’s a line you don’t cross,” said Bruno, pointing at Preston and the teenager. “That’s just not right.”

  “It’s not right because you’re not getting it,” said Spider.

  “Speak for yourself,” said Bruno.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “What does what mean?”

  “Oh, I know what you’re thinking. ‘He’s only got one arm—I’ll bet he doesn’t get any.’”

  Preston held the men’s room door for Jessica. Nobody inside except one guy playing a slot machine over a urinal.

  “Wow!” she said. “I’ve never been in a presidential suite before. This must cost a fortune!”

  Preston pushed open a stall. “Let me show you the bedroom….”

  Preston Bradshaw Lancaster had gotten nine women pregnant. That was by his own count. Who knew the true total? That Preston—such a life-giver. Maybe that was why he was against abortion.

  The first pregnancy—and again, this is all inexact science—came during his junior year in college. Preston was working on his undergrad in abnormal psych when he became fascinated by the subject of hypnosis. He soon learned the technique itself really wasn’t that difficult; the trick was finding the right personality type, someone in the twenty percent that researchers had identified as highly susceptible to mesmerization.

  He walked around the lobby of his dorm approaching women, swinging a pocket watch. “You are getting sleepy.”

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “This is for a class project.”

  “Get away from me, you pig! I’m studying!”

  Preston went to the next woman.

  “Get lost!”

  To his benefit, Preston couldn’t take a hint. He figured it was all in the numbers. He waited until a party, when everyone had been drinking. The first woman laughed but let him try anyway. She went under quickly. Preston led her to his room. He swung the pocket watch again. “You want to have sex with me.”

  Even under hypnosis, the woman laughed.

  It happened three more times at the party, three different laughing women. Preston had hit a wall, the so-called Svengali effect. He couldn’t get them to do something under hypnosis that was against their nature in real life, and having sex with someone like Preston was against the universal nature of women everywhere.

  Preston thought about it and read his textbooks. Something in the espionage chapter caught his eye, the way the CIA and KGB liked to turn the tables during hypnotic interrogations, making the subject believe they’re from the other side in order to uncover double agents. Preston decided to tinker with the scenario.

  The next party. A woman was in his room. A watch swung. “I’m Richard Gere.”

  Bingo.

  Preston couldn’t believe the amount, quality an
d unusualness of the sex he started getting.

  Two months later, back in his room. “I am Robert Redford—”

  A knock at the door.

  “Go away.”

  More knocks.

  “I said, go away! I’m doing homework!”

  “It’s me, Becky. I have to talk to you. It’s an emergency.”

  “Damn it!”

  Preston opened the door a crack.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  “You can’t be.”

  “I am.”

  “It wasn’t me.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “Your word against mine. Who knows how much you sleep around?”

  “I was a virgin.”

  “Trying to trap me in marriage? I know what I’m worth! Don’t think I can’t see through this.”

  “I don’t want to get married. I need an abortion. I don’t have any money.”

  “Oh, so this is about money! You have sex and now you want me to pay. There’s a name for women like you.”

  “I need two hundred dollars.”

  “Go to hell!”

  He slammed the door.

  Becky began calling, and knocking again.

  “Stay away from me!”

  She didn’t. Preston got nervous. Two hundred might just be the start. And what if she had the kid? There could be child support, no end in sight, and all because she was fucking around.

  Preston went to his parents, who called their minister. They met in the family’s living room.

  “Son,” said the reverend. “You have to tell her you’ll marry her.”

  “But I don’t want to marry her.”

  “Don’t worry, son,” said the preacher. “You’re not marrying anyone. This is just to prevent her from having an abortion.”

  “Preston,” said his father. “The minister and I have already discussed this. There’s no point in letting some bimbo ruin your life.”

  “You have a bright future,” said the preacher. “We’re not going to let this woman destroy it. We just need you to make her believe you’ll really marry her.”

  “Say whatever you have to,” said the father.

  “Just string her along until the third trimester, when it’ll be illegal,” said the minister.