Spider Kiss by Harlan Ellison Read Free Book Online Page B

Brown?"
    Shelly nodded. "At least we'll have good rooms. No money in this, but I suppose it's good relations. Any plans for Louisville, Colonel?"
    Freeport pursed his lips, shrugged the question away. "Well, Shelly, we'll see, we'll see."
    They followed the red cap to the line of waiting cabs and settled themselves for the ride into Louisville. "The Brown," Shelly advised the hackie. When the bags were loaded, they pulled away, and he settled down, closing his dark eyes. Freeport continued to squint, even in the absence of sunlight. He mopped at his face and neck constantly, with nervous, spastic motions. "Cursed state," he muttered once.
    Shelly considered what Freeport had told him about this untimely, uncomfortable trip to Louisville. The taxi, weaving down the expressway, was so close Shelly felt as though he was knotted into a bag, and the cab smelled faintly of urine. It added to the ease of contemplating what Jack Freeport had said about misplaced loyalties.
    Because of the lack of foresight of his parents, some fifty-three years before, of having resided in Cadiz, Kentucky, on the day of his birth, Freeport was — at least technically — a native son. Despite the fact that the family had been recouping drastic financial losses and had moved back to Savannah three months after Freeport's birth, the Kentucky State Fair committee had still seen fit to call on him to judge their abominable talent show.
    After all , thought Shelly, first comes Sol Hurok, and then comes my big twenty thousand dollar a year meal ticket, Colonel Jack Freeport .
    Savannah, New York, Cannes and London.
    Amen.
    So we are in Louisville, Kentucky . Shelly dropped the thoughts like pigeon excretion. Navel of the nation. And we are preparing to judge a Talent Show (cast of thousands … all nonentities). While back in New York that damned jazz show needs a shot of digitalis, in Chicago the poetry readings are drawing about as well as a Sunday picnic at Buchenwald, and in L.A. the Go-Kart races are about as popular as an acrobat in a polio ward .
    Everything was dying on the vine. And here we sit warm and cuddly on the same vine, in Louisville. Say one for me, Agnes, we'll all be in the soup line tomorrow .
    "But well-dressed," he murmured under his breath.
    "What was that, Shelly?" Freeport turned from the view outside the taxi.
    "Nothing, Colonel. Nothing at all," he answered, without opening his eyes. Not a damned thing, Massah .
    Beyond the cab, the red loam of a housing project-in-progress swept past like a raw, naked wound in the arid flesh of the land.
    As they pulled into the center of town, Shelly sat up in the seat, and tried to shrug some composure — lost during the flight and this heat-assault since the airport — into his wilted frame. It didn't do much good. It was no use; he resigned himself to a weekend of heat, boredom and too-sweet martinis.
    Fourth and Broadway. The Brown Hotel.
    The bags were carried by an old man whose black pants had two distinctive attributes: a red stripe down each leg, and several hundred thousand wrinkles. A butter stain adorned the uniform tie.
    Colonel Jack Freeport marched through the lobby, signed in with a maximum of notice while Shelly limply autographed a check-in card, and made the sanctity of his suite without undue delay. Once in the air-conditioned sanity of his room — separated from Freeport's by a sitting room of unparalleled dinginess — Shelly stripped off his jacket, shirt and tie, threw them across the bed, and bare-chested, crucified himself before the cool air ducts of the big Fedders.
    "Shelly," the call came from Freeport's room, "let me have the attaché case."
    The flak-man ran a hand through his dark hair and retrieved the leather case from where he had dumped it on a big Morris chair. He carried it through the sitting room and into Freeport's bedroom.
    The Colonel was stripped to fancy nylon shorts, dark socks and shoes, the garters tightly clinging to thick, hairy legs.