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"I'm sorry, sir," the youth murmured. "We don't serve hard liquor. Can I get you a
hot cider?"
Saints preserve us, hot cider! Parker would have laughed, only it was bad for his
ulcer. That Lipson kid had been so enthusiastic about this place! Well, he nodded
imperceptibly, he'd learned his lesson. Last tip he took from that quarter of the
"in" people.
"Can I maybe get a Heinekin's?"
"Not on tap, sir.*'
"That's all right," said Parker thankfully. "A bottle will be fine." The waiter
vanished.
You couldn't rightly say the stage lights came on. Rather, the section of club that
served for performing became slightly less stygian than the rest. Then the band
he used the term advisedly moseyed out on stage.
With the possible exception of the lead guitar, they were as sad-looking a group
as he'd ever seen. Lead guitar, bass, drums, and yes, it had to be, a xylophone, for
God's sake! He almost smiled. Maybe the quiet evening would present him with a
chuckle to go with his good beer.
Sam Parker, if you haven't guessed by now, was an agent. Not undercover, but
theatrical, which was
177
WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE . ..
harder on body and soul. One of a multitude of busy ants, forever scrounging the
ashcans of talent. Occasionally an ant died. Then he was casually dismembered
by his fellows and carried into the hill to be eaten. Sam had come close a few
times, but so far he was still intact and out among the scavengers. He was very
observant, was Sam. So he didn't miss the unmistakable aura of expectancy that
had settled over the audience. For this schlock group? This skeletal collection of
insensate clods? Something didn't smell right. He found himself getting just a
teensy bit excited.
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Well, the drummer killed that when he started things. Sam resisted the
melodramatic gesture of putting hands over ears. It was no worse than the
performing pups. But if this kid had a real rhythm in his body he was preserving
it for his death throes.
The bass was next, fumbling at his strings like he was sorting soggy spaghetti.
Worse and worse. The xy-lophonist Sam still hadn't recovered from that
joined in. Or rather, he started playing. What he played bore no relationship
rhythmically, melod-icaUy, harmonically to the bass or drummer. Sam was
ready to go, but he'd only started the beer. He shut out the disaster on stage and
tried to concentrate on the music in the bubbles.
The lead guitar shuffled up to the single mike. There was one sad spotlight, which
might have been a big flashlight on a string. He had a face like polished
sandstone, full of lines that shouldn't have appeared there for another forty years
yet. Straight black hair cut off at thin, bony shoulders was caught up in a single
rawhide headband. He wore faded blue jeans, faded from heavy use and not
modish bleaching, a stained flannel shirt, and boots whose leather had merged
forever with caked earth and gray clay.
A colorless, tired, dead personality, washed up at the age of twenty-four, maybe
twenty-five.
Only in the eyes, something. Eyes, pieces of fine old obsidian... and Gorgon's hair
for fingers.
178
Wolfstroker
It didn't take a song, or even a stanza for Sam Parker to know. Those long young-
old fingers came down and gentled on the strings, the left hand rose and curled
vinelike about the top. A finger moved, touched the electric guitar, which made a
sound. Near the back of the room a girl moaned.
~ His name was Willie Whitehorse, and he played like a god.
Sam Parker sat up straight in his cider-damp chair and leaned forward, wheezing
a little. It didn't matter that the drummer couldn't carry a simple beat. It didn't
matter than the bass had hands like wrought-iron shovels. It didn't matter that
the xylophone player ignored the others for his own private limbo. It only
mattered that Willie Whitehorse played and sang.
Sang about what it was like to be like the brown eagle, to be alone. Sang how love
was like snow-melt on hot winter days. Sang about smooth rocks and small
crowded bird bowers and fresh green holly sprigs, about the crusty feel of tree
bark under your palms and the smell of dry firewood and old histories. Sam
Parker missed a lot of it, but he missed none of the crowd.
When the black-eyed singer sang- happy, the audience laughed, and strangers
nudged their neighbors. When he sang sad, the cynical students cried. When he
sang angry, just a little, there were frightening mad mutterings from the far
blacknesses of the club, and somewhere a glass broke.
He was skinny and tired and all alone up there. But there was something in him
and in his music that reached out and toyed with the souls of those who listened;
grabbed and twisted and tweaked and hung on tight, tight without letting go, till
it had flung them twice round the white moon and back again.
Yes, it even touched Sam Parker. And for thirty-five years nothing, absolutely
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nothing had affected Sam Parker. But there was a strange wildness at work here
that passed the ramparts erected by decades of Dorsey
179
WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE . . .
and James and Lombardo to tantalize the little man slightly.
And right at the finish there was something that frightened him just a little. It
went away fast and he forgot it soon enough, for now. As he watched Willie
Whitehorse, for just the shortest odd second there was no guitar in those thin
arms, no guitar but instead a vapory gray outline. Like one of those things
everyone sees out of the corner of their eyes and aren't there at all when they turn
to look at them. A funny outline that had four legs and a tail, in those arms. Four
legs, a tail, sharp pointed ears, long snout clustered with coconut-pale teeth, and
two tiny eye pits of red-orange that burned like wax matches.
Beer and bad lighting, of course, and Sam Parker forgot it quick.
After a while the musicians and applause drifted away and the stage lights
followed. Sam sat staring at the empty place for a few minutes, thinking. Then he
tapped his vest pocket, heard the faint rustle of the blank contract he always
carried there. He liked to joke about it, his "soul" contract. If the Devil ever
presented Sam with an offer for same, he wanted to be ready for him. Know
better what he was getting and Satan might try to back out of the deal.
"Another beer, sir?" Sam blinked and looked around. The waiter was back at his
side, as sleepy and tired as before.
"What?"
"Would you care for another drink, sir?"
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