Shut Up And Deal (every BITCH for HIMSELF Chapter 5ive)

Wednesday, 5 PM. Rocket USA. A large night club with two large showrooms and a large lounge in between. One showroom was for concerts and the other was a dance club with a DJ booth and dance floor.

Rocket USA was the most popular club in town next to The Whiskey and The Roxy in Hollywood with the advantage of being on Santa Monica Boulevard, keeping it out of cutthroat competition with the Sunset Strip and Hollywood Boulevard clubs. It was smack dab in the middle of Hollywood without any of the headache. Club owner Jack Sterling liked it that way.

Jack Sterling packed in his acting career when TV westerns went out as quickly as his rugged boyish looks did. What a show that was: "Longhorn" was almost even more popular than "Wrangler's Canyon", until Archie Bunker and his urban pals rendered everything on a horse obsolete. Oh, he tried his hand at a situation comedy after "Longhorn" got canceled, a show called "That Invisible Guy" about a gym teacher with powers of invisibility. The only problem was you couldn't see him for half the show so people began forgetting who he was. Frustrated, the show was mercifully canceled after half a season.

Sterling invested in a decaying night club that was once the toast of the supper club scene when Trini Lopez and Johnny Rivers ripped it up. With a bank loan he built up the huge club and modernized it to modern glam rock standards by calling it "Rocket USA" and then riding the crest of the punk wave.

Not only was the club a hit with the kids but he made sure he asserted himself as the figurehead of the scene by dressing as eccentrically as he could, like a bizarre dandy straddling several eras at once: he brandished a walking stick, wore a straw boater for a hat - sometimes traded in for an old style English derby and only the finest velvet three-piece suits, complete with chained pocket watch and tiny snuff tin.

Sterling sat in his office scratching his ears as he heard the band banging downstairs moving in their equipment into the concert room for sound check. On the other end of his office he could hear dance records played loudly below testing the sound system in the dance club section.

For a brief moment he wished he was still astride a horse in front of a camera, but the feeling quickly left.

6 PM. Downstairs at the bar of the concert hall a very short, delicate girl was rinsing shot glasses. Her once-blonde hair was now dyed violet. Her name was Lily Electric, she had cold gray eyes and spent a lot of time with Raquel Tequila. Since Raquel had hazel eyes when they went to punk shows together they were known as The Ghost Sisters. If Raquel was fire then Lily was ice.

Jack Sterling liked having King Steve, a black guy with blue eyes working alongside a weird punk girl like Lily mixing drinks at the bar. It sold a lot of drinks having these two weird kids mixing cocktails, almost bringing a little carny spirit to a rock club. Other clubs were jealous.

Big Jason walked into the club, stared at the band beginning their sound check and quickly walked over to the bar. Lily looked up from her rinsing and smiled.
"Big Jason Gulliver, back in town. Raquel said Godzilla returned to Tokyo, I wondered how soon you'd drop by here".
"Front me a soda, Lily. How's the night club racket?" Jason barked over the noisy band.
"Guys still hitting on me including your stupid friend King Steve", Lily shot a jet of soda pop from her beverage gun into a water glass.
Jason chortled. "He's slow on the draw. You're a fuckin' dyke but a cool fuckin' dyke. I don't even care if you sleep with my girl".
"Why thank you, Caveman", Lily smiled, handing him the soda with a cherry on top.

"Let's skip the formalities, dyke. You know I'm pulling a job and you're getting a sweet cut in the action".
"You can count on me. I keep everything under the wire", Lily added another cherry on top of Jason's drink.
"Good, that's cool. Is Sterling in today?"
"Yeah and you'd better make tracks. His OCD's really kicking up worse than ever. He was scratching on walls and nodding his head so much I-"

Sterling walked towards them from the darkness, nervously twisting his neck and staring right at Jason. Jason returned his stare.
Still staring at Jason, he said, "Lily, can I see you in my office in ten minutes?"
"Ten minutes coming up!"
"Bye, Lily", Jason left half his drink unfinished, avoiding any more recognition from the man he planned to steal thousands of dollars stashed in his office safe.

7 :15 PM. Book Soup, Sunset Boulevard. Jason walked into the book store and smiled at his friend Carlos working behind the counter. Carlos was a tall, thin, bespectacled dark young man dressed in white. The store was jammed with endless shelves of books lined from the floor to the ceiling and looked like something out of a German Expressionist movie.

"Jason! Where've you been? I've been holding that special order of Corso for you. I thought you'd never come back".
"I have returned, Carlos. How's the literary world?"
"Chevy Chase came in last week. No sense of humor", Carlos handed over the book to Jason.
"I'm shocked".

"Oh!" Jason handed over a ten-dollar bill. "Keep the fuckin' change."
"I can't do that".
"Fine, give it to the starving Bolivians in China", Jason said as he leafed through the book. "Elegiac Feelings American. Do you know how hard it is to find a book of poetry with a title like that?"
Carlos laughed.

"You know what I like about a guy like Gregory Corso? He'll write a poem about Greek gods on one page and then on the next one he'll have one about baseball. Yeah! I want to write poetry like that. Go from the ancient Greeks to shit like the Dodgers killing the New York Mets. I think I can write prose like that".
Carlos smiled. "Jason, if anyone can write poetry like that, you can. By the way, how did you get that silver hair?"
"My hairdresser. Sherwin-Williams".

Fifteen minutes earlier. 7 PM. Lily Electric sliced up limes and lemons thinking about the colossal waste of time Jack Sterling put her through making her sit in his office. First she had to watch him scratch his phone ten times, rub his hands six times, etc. The OCD was really in full force. She wanted to roll her eyes but instead stared at his framed memorabilia on the walls: a TV Guide cover, cutting the tape at a Hughes Market, shaking hands with Casey Kasem.

"Yeah, okay, Lily, I know I can trust you. You never rock the boat, you just do your job and clock out. You don't hang out and start shit like the other staff".
"Thanks, Jack".
"We're going to make some big changes around here soon. I'm going to get serious state of the art security sensors installed into the club. Some asshole's been stealing from the club and I need to start monitoring the staff. I hate to do it, you understand, but..."
"Oh, uhm, well. Do you have anyone you suspect?"

Sterling scratched his chin thoughtfully. "Well, how well do you know Bobby Mann that meat head bouncer? He's always hovering around the cash register".
"I don't think so, Chief. He does that to hide the fact he uses an inhaler. Nobody's going to be scared of a bouncer who uses an inhaler".
"Oh, I didn't know that. How awful".
She lied.

"Well, when are you planning on getting this equipment installed, anyway?"
"Sometime in the middle of next-" the phone ringing interrupted him. He picked it up.
"Hello? What?" His voice rising. "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? THEY CAN'T PLAY SOME LOFT PARTY THE NIGHT BEFORE THEIR ENGAGEMENT AT MY CLUB! I'LL TEAR UP THE CONTRACT AND PISS IN YOUR FACE!" His face turned from beet red to deep purple, his eyes squinting with ferocity.
"DON'T YOU FUCKIN' INTERRUPT ME!!!! TELL THE BAND TO EITHER FORGET THE STUPID FUCKIN' PARTY OR THEY CAN FORGET ROCKET USA! GUESS WHO'LL PAY BETTER MONEY??? IDIOT!" He slammed down the phone. Lily paled at the sound of him screaming.

Jack Sterling quietly looked down at his desk, and then slowly spoke. "Rocket USA is the finest showcase for any rock band in the country, perhaps the world, and these small timers want to play a stinking loft party in the rat-infested arts district. Bands that play dumpy lofts DO NOT PLAY at Rocket USA. Ugh!"
Lily squirmed in her chair a bit.
"Lily, you can leave now, and please ask Steve to come in. I have something very important to tell him".
Lily Electric got out of the chair, happy to be relieved of the neurotic display just witnessed.
"Okay, no problem".

8 PM. Dahlia Doll adjusted her bra strap and got up from Franco Mann's bed. He was lying back staring at her. He dragged his right hand across his pasty, thick and hairy chest.
"Admit it, baby, I'm still the best fuck you ever had. You enjoyed every second of it".
"Of course, hon. I'm going to run right home and write six pages about it in my diary".
"Nah, seriously. You were loving it. I saw you!"

Dahlia pulled a brush out of her handbag and brushed her jet black hair. "Did you get those guns to Bobby yet?"
"Yeah, but not without hearing him brag his stupid ass off about what a hot shot he was at the LA Gun Club. What a dork".
She stopped her brushing. "He's practicing shooting a gun?"
"Yeah, but he sucks. Don't worry about it".
"I won't, but it won't be me he'll be shooting at".

"If I know my brother he'll probably shoot himself in the foot".
Dahlia pulled out her lipstick, removing the cap. "Don't underestimate him. He's not so dumb about everything, okay? I'm going to have to talk to him about cutting down on the target practice".
"You're wasting your time worrying about it. Besides I've got my guys ready to blow these assholes away".

Tamping her lips with a napkin, she threw it down on the floor. "Look, I gotta take off. When he gets home tonight I gotta pump some more info out of him. He's been getting pretty cagey lately".
"No fucking, alright?"
"Don't worry about i-"
Franco leapt out of bed and grabbed Dahlia's left arm, twisting it behind her back.

"STOP THAT GODDAMMIT! LET GO ASSHOLE!"
Franco pressed his face close to hers and hissed, "If I find out you're still fucking him, I'm going to break both your arms and you're going to have to give him hand jobs with your smelly fuckin' feet, understand, Bitch?"
He pressed his lips into hers smearing her newly applied lipstick. Tears of pain rolled down her eyes.
Franco finally let go and she rubbed her left arm over and over.

"Let that be a lesson to you. Poppa don't play that mess".
"Yeah, I get it, Franco. In black and blue".
"Hey, that's funny, babe. See ya".

Dahlia cussed under her breath, threw on her leather jacket and stormed out, slamming the door. Five different dogs in the apartment building barked in protest like a demented Greek chorus.

NEXT WEEK: Chapter Six - The Big Dust Up, when Big Jason Gulliver and the boys play a punk rock loft party in the Gallery District downtown and create more mayhem. Nothing but trouble from these guys! Guaranteed!

(c) 2013, Andy Seven. All rights reserved.