The Frumious Bandersnatch

The video had premiered last night on all four music channels during their prime-time debut spots—

“I meant why does thebeast 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.

“So?” 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—orit, 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 Godthat 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 ofDebbie 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.

“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. Meant you kept the light out of a person’s eyes, unless he was a perp.

Avery Hanes was about to become a perp in an hour or so, but Officer Knowles didn’t know that yet, and neither did Sergeant McIntosh, at the wheel of the police launch, or Officer Brady, standing in the stern with his hand resting casually on the butt of the Glock holstered on his hip, just in case this guy driving the Rinker turned out to be some Al Qaeda nut determined to blow up either himself or something else, or else some drug runner or something. These days, you never could tell.

“Everything’s fine, Sergeant,” Avery said, because he was the smart one, and he’d seen the stripes on McIntosh’s uniform sleeve.

“Saw you runnin with all your lights off,” McIntosh said.

The launch was idling alongside the Rinker, which had come to a dead stop on the water.

“Ooops. Thought I had them on,” Avery said, and flicked the dashboard switch that turned the running lights on and off, clicking it several times to make sure, and then turning to look at McIntosh with a slightly puzzled shrug.

“I meant in the cabin,” McIntosh said.

“I’ll turn them on if you like,” Avery said. “Such a nice night and all, so many stars, thought we’d take advantage. They shine so much brighter without any lights.”

“Where you bound?” McIntosh asked.

“Back to the marina.”

“Where’s that?”

“Capshaw Boats. Fairfield and the water.”

“Off Pier Seven, would that be?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Who’ve you got aboard, Captain?”

“My girlfriend and my best man. We’re getting married in June, wanted to check out the River Club.”

“Nice venue,” McIntosh said.

“Yes, sir, it sure is. Might be too expensive for us, though.”

“Well, sorry to’ve bothered you,” McIntosh said. “Enjoy the rest of the evening.”

“Thank you, sir. Did you want me to put on those cabin lights?”

“No need.”

Knowles turned off the spot. The waters went instantly black. McIntosh eased the throttle forward, and the police launch pulled away from the Rinker. On the stern, Officer Brady took his hand off the Glock’s butt.

J. P. HIGGINSwas holding forth on the various types of videos on the air these days. He was Bison’s Executive VP in charge of Video Production, and he was obviously impressing the foreign affiliates who’d been invited to tonight’s launch party. The man from Prague didn’t understand English as well as Bison’s people from London (well, of course not) and Milan, or Paris and Frankfurt, but he was nonetheless hanging on every word because he hoped to learn how to promote the “Bandersnatch” video in his own country, now that the flood waters had subsided, and once the video and the album were released there. One drawback was that Tamar Valparaiso was virtually unknown in the Czech Republic. Well, she was virtually unknown here as well. But that was why Bison had spent a pot full of money on the video, not to mention all the publicity and promotion preceding tonight’s launch party when—in exactly one hour by the Czech’s imitation Rolex watch—Tamar Valparaiso herself would be performing with the very same dancer who’d accompanied her on the video.

There was a palpable air of expectation.

Something big was going to happen tonight.

Just how big, none of the assembled guests could ever possibly imagine.

Higgins was a man in his early forties, and he liked to think he’d learned all there was to know about video production by the time he was thirty. Convincing the foreigners gathered around him was a simple task. He concentrated instead on trying to sell his savvy to a young black girl wearing what appeared to be nothing but three chain links and a diamond earring, sitting on a hassock alongside their man from London.

“Your cheapest video to shoot is what I call your ‘Pool Party’ video,” Higgins said, trying to catch the black girl’s eye, but she seemed absorbed in her chocolate pate, which was the exact color of her barely covered breasts, topped with a pair of red raspberries, the dessert, not her breasts. “One of the execs at any label is sure to have a house with a swimming pool. You go to that house, you set up your cameras around the pool, you decorate the premises with girls in bikinis and guys in thongs, and then shoot your artist against a backdrop of all these half-naked young people writhing in time to the music. You don’t have to worry too much about lighting because you’re shooting in broad daylight. Only thing you have to worry about is airplanes flying overhead. But that’s the same as on any daytime shoot.”

Higgins didn’t know what it was he’d said that suddenly captured the black girl’s attention. Maybe she was interested in auditioning for the role of one of those half-naked young people writhing. She was half-naked herself right now, albeit not writhing. Higgins plunged on regardless.

“Your second cheapest video is what I call the ‘Disco Party’ video, which is a variation on the poolside theme. You rent a disco for the night, you pack it with those same young people from the swimming pool, except