The Frumious Bandersnatch Read Online Free Page A

Jonah.
    Jonah was as gay as a bowl of daisies.
    This was okay because he only came across that way when you were talking to him. Lisping and all, and sort of limp-wristed, a total caricature of a fag.
    â€œWhy do I have to be black?”
    And a little limp flick of the wrist.
    Cause you unfortunate, amigo, Tamar should have said.
    Jonah hadn’t done any talking on the video, and he certainly wouldn’t be doing any talking tonight, either. Even Tamar herself wouldn’t be talking until after the record played and they danced to it. Then she’d do the interview with Channel Four, and whatever other interviews she had to do with all the press people out there, and then they’d call it a night and hope for the best.
    The video had premiered last night on all four music channels during their prime-time debut spots—
    â€œI meant why does the beast have to be black?” Jonah asked.
    Another philosophical question.
    He was sharing the main stateroom as a dressing room with her, but that was okay because he was gay, and she didn’t mind if he saw her naked boobs. She was half-naked in the costume, anyway, which she guessed was the whole point of the video, to expose herself as much as possible without getting arrested. She had to admit that she somewhat enjoyed all that screaming and yelling whenever she made a personal appearance, part of which she knew was for her voice—she really felt she did have a very good mainstream pop style and a very good vibrato besides—but part of which was for the way she shook her considerable booty, muchachos.
    â€œSo?” Jonah asked.
    One hand on his hip.
    Pouting little look on his face.
    He was perhaps six-feet-two-inches tall, with a dancer’s firm abs, and strong biceps and forearms from lifting girls considerably heftier than Tamar, thighs like oaks, an altogether wonderful specimen of a man, but oh what a waste! He had good fine facial features, too, a pity they’d been covered by all those masks he had to wear on the video, and would be covered by masks tonight as well—not the same masks, of course. They’d used maybe ten or twelve different masks during the shoot, so that it looked like the Bandersnatch was changing form each time he—or it, more precisely—violated her or tried to violate her, rape or attempted rape as the case may have been, who knew? All these videos were supposed to be somewhat mysterious and murky, like adolescence itself, thank God that was behind her.
    She was glad her video wasn’t about a black guy going to jail while his chick moped around looking mournful and forlorn. She was glad it wasn’t about a drive-by shooting, either, which a lot of the rap groups thought was entertainment. One of the Bison veeps had wanted the title song on the debut album to be something called “Raw Girls,” and he’d suggested that they shoot the accompanying video in a high school locker room, with all these young chicks, white, black, Latino, coming in and stripping down to their underwear as they got ready for a soccer game. Tamar had gone directly to Barney Loomis to tell him she wouldn’t do any video that looked like a G-rated version of Debbie Does Dallas, and she wouldn’t sing any song called “Raw Girls,” either.
    Tamar knew exactly what she wanted to be.
    Tamar knew exactly where she was going.
    Â 
    â€œ SORRY TO BOTHER YOU, sir,” McIntosh said. “Everything okay here?”
    Standing on the bow of the police launch, Officer Knowles was playing the boat’s spotlight around the chest of the man at the wheel of the Rinker. Something they taught you when you began training for the HPU. Unless the suspect was a known perp, you kept the light out of his eyes. Courtesy, Service, Dedication. That’s what the decal on the side doors of all the police cars in the city said. That’s what it said on the side of Harbor Charlie’s cabin, too. Courtesy.