Chapter Forty-Eight

Night found me back at the Inferno, dressed so no one I knew could spot me, hopefully. And I meant No One. Especially not Snow.

I didn't go to Deja-Vous. The boss man knew everything that happened there.

Estate sales for older folks often sold funky wigs as well as potty chairs, useful for Halloween. So tonight I wore a glossy head of synthetic cinnamon-colored locks, straight and shoulder-length. I'd rustled up some stretchy double-knit nineteen-sixties slacks and a glittery tube-top, and then added gray-tinted heart-shaped sunglasses to subdue the color of my eyes.

I avoided the Inferno Bar and my pal Nicky to cross the dance floor toward the concert stage. I waved my ticket and struggled forward an hour before the show to stand packed with the other Snow groupies in the mosh pit.

The stage was six feet above the seats. Watching the stage from up front was a literal pain in the neck, but the groupies around me were percolating like happy little coffee beans, wired and jumping up and down to survey the bare stage and the instrument layout, to glimpse a roadie moving a mike or placing a water bottle. A lot of them were done up like Goth girls. Purple-and-black witchy wigs, tats, chains, leather, sunglasses rendered them unforgettable, but anonymous. Whatever their fashion statement, all the women sighed and swooned at anything alive on that stage, no matter the gender. Everything was a buildup to the entrance of the Seven Deadly Sins and its lead singer.

"My girlfriend's made it," a wild-eyed blonde next to me said to no one in particular.

"With Cocaine?" a woman behind me gurgled.

"She got the Kiss."

"Ohmigod! When?"

"Two years ago. After the Live Again! concert. She's in the downtown club. I've been coming for three months straight now but I've never gotten close enough to the stage to see more than his hair."

I was impressed. "You must have moved to Las Vegas."

I was met by a circle of shocked gazes.

"Oh, yeah," an older woman said. "We all do. You're not a confirmed Cocaine fan unless you move here to see every one of his performances."

"But your jobs-?"

"They have McDonalds everywhere, honey."

"Don't tell me you didn't move here for him?" another one demanded.

"Well, I did move here-"

I was about to say for other reasons, but these crazed women had no other reasons. If they had known the silver "love beads" around my vintage sixties neck came from the hair of the love object himself they would have torn me apart for souvenirs.

I wanted to feel superior to these obsessed groupies but I was beginning to wonder if maybe there wasn’t something wrong with me to be immune to their idol. Well, mostly immune. And there was something wrong with me. I'd always suspected it and now was coming to admit it. Part of that something was good and strong, and part of it maybe was not very good, and also strong.

Even with the armor of my reporter's cynicism, even with having seen and spoken to-been touched by- Snow up close and personal, I was beginning to feel the fever. The jittery, longing, excited group mania. My feet should have been hurting from standing on carpeted concrete for so long, but I was hopping from burning sole to sole like the rest of them-young, old, and in-between-hopping and hoping and shivering with belly-deep excitement.

"It's him!"

"He always comes on last, idiot! That's only the guy who puts all the different guitars in place."

"The tabloids say he's screwing Lust."

"No, she's boffing some record mogul."

"She's craaaaazyy,” wailed a fan.

"If it's anybody in the band, it's Envy. All that evil green costuming."

"That why you're wearing poison green tonight?"

I had to fight to keep in the frontlines, which I needed to do to be seen as a major Cocaine freak. Personally, I'd never gotten the point in writhing around for the attention of some unreachable star. I thought briefly of Ric, who was plenty sexy without having to sell it, and was squeezed back a whole row in position when I didn't concentrate on keeping my hard-won place, so I had to elbow forward again.

These fevered close quarters were forging a mob. When the band members strode on stage one by one, everybody jumped up to see them. I found myself pushed forward into the second row. Oh, good. We'd be able to see their feet and feel their sweat.

Then the fireworks started. I saw the giant dragon heads descending. Wasn’t that in Revelations? The Devil coming down as the Dragon? Snow the Devil? Somehow I didn't think so. Or maybe so. As he slid down the head of one of the dragon's two heads to the stage in his patented entrance, I felt my silver beads elongate into a long strand, circle my throat once like a choker, then dangle into a long loop down between my breasts to my belly button. Every bead was as cold as ice. Or sleet. Or Snow.

The distraction allowed the surging groupies to push me another three rows back. Damn it! This groupie routine required the chutzpah and concentration of being in an estate sale line.

I wormed my way forward as the instruments warmed up to ear-splitting level. I was back in row two, where I wanted to be: too far to be swept up in Snow's Brimstone Kiss, right in the middle of the action to register on the minds of the Cocaine groupies, to be seen as one of them. To join their club and pick their brains. What was left of them.

The music revved up. It was overwhelming down here in the mosh pit. My bones vibrated to the beat. Every time some nice hefty middle-aged lady tried to squeeze me out of my row I pushed back, with interest.

Time ceased. It was all deep bass vibrations and amped-up raw rock music. Snow looked cool in his open Byron shirt and seam-splittingly tight white leather pants. I had to admit he was a riveting performer, his voice hard-driving sandpaper on the hard rock stuff, then slow, low, and sincere on the ballads. Right. That's when the women switched from screaming that drowned out even their idol's voice to moaning and swooning.

It was a long two-hour set. For me. During the intermission, the women babbled all around me, their milling tension holding me upright when I was about ready to sit down on the cold concrete to rest my bones and eardrums. Except I'd have been stomped.

The second set went much faster, Lust and Envy bracketing Snow with their colorful writhing forms. By then I didn't envy them their proximity to the kingpin and I was as incapable of feeling lust as a loaf of Italian bread.

After the encore, I was embraced by the hysteria and a wave of screaming and pushing women as Snow bent to the mosh pit to sweep up a few lucky fans for the Brimstone Kiss. Didn't that name imply the Devil? Wickedness sells. Or pseudo-wickedness.

I fought to keep my second tier position and actually glimpsed the idol up close. He wore numerous white silk scarves around his neck, the better to snare the chosen groupie. One swooped up the woman in the poison green outfit. The scarf lingered behind, the only material token of her Brimstone moment.

Everyone around me was surging forward. The mob was literally pushing me up, like a buoying wave. My God, I was next in line! A loop of silk chiffon snared my neck. I was pushed up, up toward Snow's ice-god face and hair. No! I was here to infiltrate the fans, not ace them out. I grabbed the sides of the scarf, feeling a cold slither as the silver necklace became a wrist to elbow bracelet on my right arm. I stared into a tiny reflection of myself on curved black mirror shades. I felt my mind, my essence yearning toward my medium, silvered glass.

The scarf slithered around my neck, ebbed away. I fell back hard, aware of glittering black sunglasses looking elsewhere. Another woman was lofted on the wave of raving humanity and claimed a kiss from those frost-white lips. She shrieked in bereavement as he moved on.