THEY HAVE HAULED ME INTO THE GREEN ROOM, laid me out on the couch, put a cold compress across my wrinkled brow. Pennylegion is currently out in the corridor shouting, “Lunch!” but he shouts it so loud and mean, the sound tearing the flesh along his throat, that no one will have any appetite left. But they clear out of the little studio. Pennylegion, the Claire thing, and Kim go off to discuss strategy. Iain is likely off in search of more booze. There’s a room full of hooch here, but you know what alkie sopheads are like, they are always wandering off to find another soggy heaven. So Iain is not around, even though I could well have been undergoing some life-threatening episode, a heart attack or brain explosion.
So I am all alone in the Green Room. Even the spirits of Manny and Clay are taking a lunch break. Except I hear a scraping out in the hallway, the sound of slow and painful movement. There is a labored breathing, heavy as fog, and mixed into the croaking suck of the intake is a scream of air. If it is another ghostly specter, it’s the worst yet, and Manfred was gruesome beyond belief.
It’s Blue Hermann, pulling himself into the room on his thick oaken canes. He glares at me on the couch. “Whew,” Blue sighs, fresh from Life’s Weary Wringer.
“Hermann.” I nod. My voice is feeble, likely more so than it need be.
Blue lurches for the bar. It takes him a few long moments to get there, and when he does Hermann goes into a bit of a feeding frenzy, sucking on a multitude of jugs, his toothless maw pumping like a pup’s on a nipple. When he is recovered sufficient he turns to me and says, “I was so scared you’d died.”
“Yeah?” Blue Hermann ain’t such a bad sort, you know. He was a newspaperman, after all, so he can be forgiven much of his sharky rancidness.
The Blue man pulls on his drink. “Yeah,” he nods, the melting flesh blurring on his face, “I was afraid you’d gone and died before I had a chance to beat the piss out of you.”
“Say what?”
“Clay made me promise I’d do it, but I have to admit, I really want to.”
“I’d say your medication’s misfired, Hermann. Clay was my best friend.”
“Clay was your only friend, you bastard.”
“What about …?” I keep my counsel. “So why would Clay make you promise such a thing?”
“That’s what he said. ‘Make him hurt.’” Blue shrugs. “So I’m gonna lay a beating on you.”
“That’s very humorous, buck. In case you ain’t noticed, you are invalided and I executed a St. Louis Whirlygig yesterday.”
“In case you ain’t noticed, Leary, I am armed.” Blue hefts up one of the walking sticks and waves it in the air. There is a whooosh. Point well taken. My own staff, the one with the dragon’s head, is resting over in the far corner. I start to get a bit nervous, especially since I am prone on the couch, and Hermann could make it over here with two or three well-executed lurches.
“Hermann! Your brain is on the sizzle. Clay was my bosom companion. We were like brothers. They wrote books about us. Why would Clay make you promise to beat me up?”
“He said, ‘Make him hurt.’ ”
Blue lurches, and I pop off the couch. “Hold on there, Blue-boy.”
“ ‘Make him hurt.’” Hermann takes another lurch, and this one has a bit of a side step to it, which blocks the avenue of escape I was about to pursue. He takes his third lurch and is within striking distance.
“ ‘Make him hurt, Blue.’ That’s what Clay said. ‘Promise me. Make him hurt.’” Hermann raises his right-hand cane and takes a bead on my bald crown. “‘It’s the only way to save him.’ ”
Well, folks, I still have some of the old Irishter quickness, because his eyes pop as I hit him in the stomach. He didn’t even see me move. I don’t hit him hard, mind you, I just apply the fist to his lower belly, where he stores the little oxygen he uses. Then I step around him neatly. “Just calm down, Hermann!” I realize he’s about to go over. I make a move toward him, even get my hand around his brittle rib cage, but he buckles and crumples and slips through my fingers. There is a sharp crack as his head meets the arm of the couch. Blue Hermann gives up his remaining air and his last two drinks. The carpet in the Green Room, formerly green, begins to turn purple in a halo around Blue’s head. I see blood trickle from his hairy ear. No scream will come. Blue Hermann is motionless. Can you imagine leaving two old farts like us on our own? Inexcusable. I stand over Blue’s body, hoping to hear a groan or a rusty wheeze. I hear nothing. It seems strange that Hermann could come so far and then give up the ghost so easy. It’s like Blue’s body eagerly tossed the old ghost heavenwards. His features are calmed by the fingers of Death. He hasn’t looked this good in years. Blue is almost handsome again. He is smiling and contented.
I grab my dragon-head swagger stick. I flee.