throttle the guy but his arms wouldn’t move. “Why? For what possible reason—”
“Do not feel I act out of malice. The suffering mankind will undergo: I accept it without relishing it. It is the only means by which I can attain mastery of the earth.”
“World domination. The same old dream.”
If Zhakharenko caught the allusion, he made no sign of it. “I have read some of your interviews, Mr. Frank. You deplore the falsity of this world. Its neon canyons, its commodified sexuality, its mindless pursuit of fleeting gratification. Surely they are all things to be destroyed.”
“Yeah, well, the devil’s in the details of the destruction, you well-coifed wingnut. Earthquakes, volcanoes, floods. Continents sinking, rivers of flame, demons scourging the earth. Cities converted to crematoria. I may not dig living in an Andy Warhol world, but that doesn’t mean I want to try to survive in a Hieronymous Bosch painting.”
Another minor shrug. “The offer is anyway hypothetical.”
“Screw you. Read your book.”
The attendant wheeled down the caviar cart.
Tom, on the other hand, did not want Orlando to feel good about the situation. He drew back for the widest swing possible and slapped his old partner across the face.
What th—?, Orlando thought. Wasn’t I on a plane a second ago?
“I’ve been waiting to do that for a long, long time,” Tom said, massaging his reddened palm.
Orlando was securely duct-taped to a metal folding chair, just like the ones wrestlers always bash over each other’s heads. The room was anonymously industrial: made of cinder blocks, painted friendly yellow, well maintained. Wooden benches came out from two of the walls. It could have been the dressing room of any stadium The Dogs had ever played.
Tom had put on a little weight. He’d never been a healthy eater, and a modest spare tire now rolled over the waist of his jeans. He’d cut his hair and dyed it blond. A small love patch, also dyed, hung around his chin. He wore a long Pucci-influenced polyester shirt in wild colors, with an eye-harming pattern, open over a black T-shirt. Early-eighties low-cut snakeskin boots topped off the experiment in era-mixing.
“Well, someone really liked Velvet Goldmine,” Orlando said.
Tom belted him again. “There’s no percentage in acting the smart-ass this time, Orl.”
Orlando didn’t know where Kacie or Carlo had been taken. If he had to guess, he’d figure on them being nearby.
“Have you ever stopped to consider that your rage might be a means of compensating for deep-seated feelings of inadequacy?”
This time Tom tagged him with closed fist. Orlando could feel blood pooling on his lip and dribbling down his chin. His head rang like hell and he didn’t have a plan yet, but at least he could make Tom mad, because, when he got mad, he got stupid.
“This Zhakharenko of yours must be quite the sugar daddy, to fly me all the way here on the Concorde just so you can smack me in the mouth.”
Tom leaned in close to talk right into Orlando’s face. His breath was minty fresh. “Oh, that’s not it, you arrogant turd. In a few short hours, you are going to be the recipient of cosmic irony. And cosmic irony is a bitch, Orl, and believe me, there’s no one has it coming more than you, you self-righteous jackass. You thought you could mess me up, couldn’t you?”
“That’s a rhetorical question, right?”
Tom twitched as if tempted to give Orlando another smack. The fact that he didn’t confirmed one of Orlando’s operating suppositions. Tom needed to keep him at least marginally presentable. Which meant this whole thing would end onstage, with mics and guitars.
Tom embarked on a round of manic pacing. Crank, Orlando diagnosed. “You figured I had just that one shot at it, didn’t you? That the stars were only right on that one night, and they wouldn’t be right again for another thousand years. Well, you’re going to see how freaking wrong you can be, Orlando Frank. Midnight tomorrow we hit the rewind button and we go back to that night. Except this time I’ve plugged the holes. You’re going to stand there and watch me, helpless, as I make it happen. And you can forget about launching into the riff from ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ in the middle of the incantation. You can sing ‘On the Good Ship Lollipop’ for all I care, and it won’t do jack to the ritual.”
That fateful gig, headlining at the big reiteration of the peace and love festival, was when Tom had decided to throw open the gates to the planes beyond. He’d insisted on playing a backing track during the final number. Said we should try to capture the sound of the string track from the record, even though they normally didn’t bother when they played the tune live. Orlando had given in on that argument, not knowing the whole point of the backing track was that Tom had digitally implanted an incantation on it. Only dogs and demons were supposed to be able to hear it. But when Orlando saw the crowd going nuts, torching the concession stands, turning the mosh pit into a gladiatorial arena, he knew something was wrong. And some inkling, maybe an instinctive sense for these things picked up by osmosis from his mom and grandmother, told him it was the backing track doing it. Despite the fact he shouldn’t have been able to hear it at all. Tom had obviously programmed the track so that nothing the rest of the band did could obscure the incantation, so long as they stuck more or less to the tune. But a little bit of classic Who, that was not on the set list. Orlando had looked up to see a ripple appearing in the sky, and behind it a glimpse of a malign, dark, and implacable eye. And he’d played harder. And the ripple had gone, and he thought he’d heard a scream of petulant frustration from the stars. The rioting, even a rash of sudden rapes, got covered plenty on the news. But no one outside of The Dogs knew what Tom had really tried that night. He’d slipped away during the chaos, disappearing from Orlando’s s life. Until now.
“Okay, well, maybe you can answer one question that’s been bugging me ever since you split, Tom.”
His mouth warily tightened. “What?”
“What the hell are you thinking? What happened to you, man? I mean, seriously, the end of life as we know it?”
Tom reached into his shirt pocket for a pair of green-tinted, white-framed glasses and perched them on his nose. Moving away from Orlando, he walked over to a corner, where a mic stand stood, leaning up against it. “One thing’s for sure: it’ll put into perspective that punk-ass who shot John Lennon.”
“When you talk, do you register what it is you’re saying?”
Tom’s only answer was a contemptuous snort.
“I mean, that fruitcake on the plane. He seems to have totally detached himself from the reality of what you plan to do. I don’t know how he got to that point. But you, man, we’ve known each other since we were sixteen. And you were acting freaky the few months before that last show, but I had no idea. Tell me, man: what did I miss?”
Tom held the mic stand away from his mouth, and in a feigned interviewer voice, said, “Gee, Tom, what do you think Orlando’s strategy is here?” He moved the mike closer and said, in his own voice, “Well, Bill, I think he’s desperately trying to establish some bogus emotional connection, in hopes that I’ll suddenly bust out crying and repent my savage ways. But what he doesn’t realize is that it’s too, too late...”
Orlando clenched his fists. “So tell me this, then. Who do you really think you’re going to be summoning? Some impersonally destructive expression of non-linear geometry? Kali and Shiva? Good old Beelzebub? Or—I know. Dude, dude. You’re such a pitiful romantic. You think you’re summoning Cthulhu. Don’t you? Straight out of Lovecraft. Cthulhu and all his pals, the whole rugose, multi-tentacled lot of them.”
Tom charged at him, holding up the mic stand’s base as if he was about to bash Orlando’s skull in with it. He pulled himself short, set down the stand, and got back in Orlando’s face. “There’s a lot that’s real in those Lovecraft stories, man. They tell you otherwise to throw you off the trail, man, but I know. I’ve done my research. And Maxim backs me up on that, and you know the kind of stuff he’s capable of.?
?? Behind the green shades Tom’s eyes popped wild. He was close enough that Orlando could see the enlarged pores around his nose, and beads of sweat peeling off him like drops of mercury. “Sure, we’ve known each other since we were sixteen. And ever since we were sixteen and a quarter you’ve been undermining me. Maneuvering yourself just one step above me. Making me your damn sidekick. Well tomorrow night you won’t be able to execute any manic, adrenaline-charged leaps towards rock ‘n’ roll apotheosis. You’re gonna be chained to the frickin stage.”
“Good grief, Tom, you’re quoting the first review we ever got. You’re quoting a review from a campus newspaper.”
“I can quote you the whole fucken scrapbook. Article after article. Review after review. Who’s name was always first, hmm? Who always had his best side whipped out for the camera just when the flashbulb went off?” He had Orlando by the ear and was crushing it between his fingers. Orlando gritted his teeth, so as not to cry out.
“Hey, who fought to make sure you were right up front in every video?”
“When the suits were pushing for you, you, you, the star, star, star?”
“Who made sure you got you co-writer credit on everything?”
Tom’s face went even redder. “And how did that credit read, childhood friend? Frank/Lockhart. Frank/Lockhart. Me always last!” He ripped his