Everybody Scream! Read Online Free Page A

hinted to Del about doing a duet. Somehow Del had ducked his good friend’s first album, but how could he do that again? The first album hadn’t sold very well. Rusty, all friendship and fun aside, was actually asking his friend to help him make some money and strengthen his self-supporting projects. Del had been hoping that Rusty wouldn’t be offended if he wrote a song or two for him instead. He just didn’t want to put his voice out there again just now. He wasn’t ready.
    He’d try to push Rusty into recruiting some of the other members of the old band for guest appearances. They’d do it–they were all good friends. Del still saw them all, though not very often, and seldom more than one at a time. That is, except for Tex. Even the others all shunned Tex Plano now. Not that some of them might not still care for him, but they didn’t dare aggravate Del. Tex, the percussionist, had been Del’s friend and a band member from the beginning. That was why, when he found out that he’d been fucking Sophi for several months, he nearly wanted to kill him. Literally kill him. But he didn’t, and he didn’t even fire him, and that wasn’t even why Del didn’t want to reassemble the group. Del never went to Tex with his gun to threaten him, as he had fantasized, and he never had to speak to him–Tex backed off by himself like a naughty dog when Sophi told him that Del knew about them. Del was polite to him. The others were polite, but that was it. When Del admitted his feelings to his then-manager David Hellmich, Hellmich told him he should have followed through and killed Tex. No one would prosecute a star, they could make it look like defense anyway, and the publicity would juice up his drooping career. Del had fired Hellmich not long after that, and his new manager knew best to just concern himself with seeing to the royalties.
    Ah, summer. The last drops from the faucet, tonight. No more blasting light, blasting music, blasting noise, blasting life. No more distractions from the things that nagged him.
    Yet he didn’t want to follow the carnival south this year. No, it would be too crazy to try to sustain the fun he’d had this season. But more than that, despite the uneasiness, he just didn’t want to keep running. He didn’t know what else he planned to do once he tired of resting, but...he was trying to open up to possibilities.
    He shut the shower off, dried, stepped out, shaved. He heard the kitchen radio go on, but took his time in finishing. Tucking his damp towel loincloth-like around his waist, Del padded out into the kitchen. Sophi was there at the table. She was slumped over a steaming black coffee as if to unblock her sinuses, chin in hand, elbow propped, in a white terrycloth robe, a cigarette unfurling its lazy ghost serpents. Her eyes, a feline light green with naturally heavy lashes emphasized by makeup, appraised him, even after all these years making him uneasy until he knew what was behind them. Maybe alcohol, still, from the look of the weighted lids, but not necessarily. Her eyes were always a little narrowed, making them more piercing, though more so now with the smoke and the clouds of sleep still dispersing. Their heavy brows were peaked in the middle. Her hair was a thick tousled mass, rich and weighty even to the eyes. Del knew from the sight of it (let alone the feel) why women in some cultures were compelled to hide their hair from men so as not to distract and beguile them. Her nose was pointed at the end–no dainty upturned item–but not one of the big, mannish, asymmetrical “ethnic honkers,” as Sophi called them, popular with models now (which some models even acquired through surgery). Her lips were tight and firmly drawn, sealed, the lower lip thrust out beyond the upper a bit, and her jaw was squared. When she smiled (though she didn’t now) she seldom parted her lips to show her teeth.
    “Good morning,” said Del.
    “Mm.” Her voice was as dark as her hair; husky.