"Harlan Ellison - Spider Kiss" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

From the wings he was being watched by a pair of dark eyes. The man slouched
against the flats, a cigarette dangling from a corner of his mouth, burning
but forgotten. He was easily as slim as the singer, but there was lacking the
wiry command inherent in every line and muscle of Stag PrestonтАЩs body.
Rather, this man was quick-looking. Almost feral. His eyes were set back
under thin but dark eyebrows, and he watched the entire scene. He was shorter
than Preston, no more than five feet seven, and his clothes hung on him with
good style, unlike the clinging form of PrestonтАЩs flamboyantly fitted garb.
Sheldon Morgenstern, publicity man, ace flak-merchant of the Stem, bodyguard
and handmaiden to the hottest talent in the game, inveterate chainsmoker and
decrier of the human soul, stood silently watching his meal ticket. There
was a singular lack of expression on his tanned, planed face. But his eyes,
though dark, were a-swim with flickers of emotion. Spider Kiss by Harlan
Ellison 13 The ash lengthened on his cigarette, as he drew deeply, split
among its gray folds and dropped, dusting his jacket front. He swiped at the
debris absently. The cigarette burned on, unnoticed. Sing, kid, he thought.
Yeah, sing. Behind him, the many nameless busymen who always infest
backstages stood silently, listening to Stag Preston. Though their
expressions were not those of the girls out front, still they were being
reached, they were being held by this boy in his modern jesterтАЩs motley. It
was that way with anyone who listened to Stag Preston. He was that peculiar
phenomenon, the natural talent. He was uniquely Stag Preston, with no touches
of Sinatra or Presley or Darin in him. He was an electric thing on a stage, a
commanding personality that instantly communicated itself. That was
one-tenth the reason he had become the most valuable musical property in the
business, inside four years. Just one-tenth. Four years. Shelly Morgenstern
lipped the butt from his mouth and ground it underheel, shaking another from
the pack without conscious effort. He lit it and the brief lighter flame made
the stage manager wince: smoking was prohibited in the wings, so close to
the highly flammable scenery. But this was his PR man, and godlings could
ignore mere mortal rules. Four years. Shelly Morgenstern stared at the
tilted, arched body as it made a one-step, two-step in slightest beat to the
guitarтАЩs music. Stag Preston had it, all right. There was no question about
it. He was DestinyтАЩs Tot. Up from nowhere, with a Spider Kiss by Harlan
Ellison 14 handful of doubloons. Nothing to sell save that which no one
else had to sell. A voice, a manner, a look, a pair of hands that could
innocently warp forth innocuous backgrounds to subtle oral pornography. That
was all he had, yet when those components were joined and bathed by a
spotlight, or trapped and grooved on an LP ... he was more. Henri de
Toulouse-Lautrec had once said, .One should never meet the artist; the work
is always so much better than the creator.. That, Shelly Morgenstern mused,
was more true of Stag Preston than it had ever been of anyone. Four years.
Shelly Morgenstern watched as Stag Preston finished his final number. There
would be no curtain call. Stag would announce a .little private show. around
back in the alley under his dressing room window, and the stampede would
start out of the theatre. That, they had found, was the only way to cleanse
the theatre of its prepared-to-stay-aneternity- with-peanut-butter-sandwiches
horde. The turnover had been slow till they had employed the old Martin-Lewis
dodge to empty the theatre. How they followed him; they loved him; how they
ached to touch his lean, hardrock body. It was sick, Shelly was certain of