Grey

In the crowd behind us, people were standing, screaming, and waving their arms. Some were ripping off their clothes. Others began fighting—throwing punches and slamming their elbows into each other’s ribs. Amid the chaos, the only words I could make out were love, disgust, vomit, and agony.

Hospitality girls, now in safety helmets, rescued Walter and me and locked our chairs to the floor. They cleaned the broken glass and wiped up the fallen snacks.

Beneath Father’s silvery visor, I saw him mouthing along to the words as he pounded his fists on the table and thrust his hips. Jenni, beside him, held her arms in the air, where the percussive thuds shook them like twigs in a cyclone.

After a chorus of what sounded like torture in your bowels, the song crescendoed. As squealing feedback shattered lights and cracked several of the glacierlike structures on stage, I slipped off the chair and hid below the table. Around us, I saw several people grab at their ears as if in pain. Farther back, a man’s helmet cracked open and his exposed head lasted just two seconds before it imploded into a bloody mass and his limp body crumpled to the floor.

The song finished with a series of yellow and green explosions that sent one of the drummer’s arms—still clutching his percussion hammer—spinning into the seats.

Then it was over. The shaking and vibrating stopped. The smoke cleared. The crowd roared. Erik Heimlick dashed back on stage. Blood dripped from his mouth, eyes, and ears. “The beautiful dead Ultra child of your nightmares has thus spoken!” he screamed.

The crowd began chanting something that sounded like hard horn—lard corn.

Father tore off his helmet, ran up the stairs, and threw his arms around one of the singers. “Fuck,” he said, tearfully, “I needed that!”

Nineteen

Walter took off his helmet and glanced at me with a fearful frown. “Too loud,” he said.

His nose was smashed and bleeding. “Walter,” I said, shocked that I would have to tell him, “your nose is broken.”

Looking down cross-eyed, he grasped the bone and wiggled it back and forth.

“Don’t do that!” I said, revolted.

Leaning in, he smiled. “The ARU takes all pain away.”

“You better go see one of the hospitality girls.”

“Michael,” said the director, sitting on the edge of Father’s chair, “you look fantastic in your suit. Love it!” As he spoke, he peered all around, as if pleased with his work. With a nod, he added, “Come with me. It’s time.”

Father was on stage still hugging and shaking hands with Anus. And after I told Walter to have his nose checked again, I followed the director as we headed to the black door at the side of the stage.

Taped-down wires covered the floor. Assistants shouted orders and questions and ran in all directions. “Damn it! I’ll be right there!” replied the director to his screen. “Back in a second!” he told me, before he dashed off.

A woman almost ran into me. Then two men carrying a big metal drum rushed by. Afraid of being blown up, I stepped beside the clear sound baffles that lined the stage.

“And now,” I heard the announcer intone, “please stand, scream, and join me in welcoming the implausible host of the best and most popular celebrity interview channel show—with a very naughty and nautical theme—yes, it’s Milo Holly from Celebrity Research Yacht!”

Across the shiny icelike stage, Milo in his whites and captain’s hat skipped down the far stairs. He looked like he was trying to imitate a carefree boy returning home after the last day of school. When he came to the front of the stage, he grasped the large silver mike and screamed, as if he had just lost his mind, “We’re charting a course for even more implausible Ultra!”

Behind the baffles, the crowd roared like a huge passing Bee Train. After Milo droned on about himself and RiverGroup, he introduced the next band. “With implausible pleasure, implausible pain, and implausible implausibility, I give you the greatest Ultra band since the last one on this very stage, the stark-raving hot Dark Castle of Pound!”

From all three staircases came the members of the band, wearing the same sort of bizarre pirate costume as Father, with short-sleeve jackets, shirts with big flopping orange sleeves, and overstuffed codpieces. Instead of Father’s wooden sandals, though, they wore huge, black rubber boots that were a half-foot thick and made them waddle like ducks. A man with a bumpy, misshapen skull wheeled in an enormous, black harp with a human skull atop the column. Another man had a metallic electric cello strapped to his chest and played the strings with a blowtorch. Still another held a pneumatic saxophone that vibrated in his arms like a jackhammer. The rest played rocket and mortar drums. The last to come on stage—the leader, I guessed—who looked like he had just come from an emergency room, with tubes running from his mouth and nose, wore a curved, florescent green keyboard around his waist, like a peplum. As he screeched lyrics, the giant video screen lifted away to reveal the jet-powered organ I had seen them constructing before. When the leader began playing runs on his keyboard, fifty-foot flames shot from the pipes.

They were loud, but not unbearable behind the baffles. When I turned to see if I could find the director, fifteen feet back, in the shadows beside a stack of blinking electronics, stood a man in a black suit and glasses.

I started toward him and the closer I got, the more I was sure that it was Father’s freeboot. His gristly skin was the same. So was his hole of a mouth and his single nostril.

“You damned bastard,” I said, “I hate you.” He didn’t move a molecule. Behind his dark glasses, I couldn’t even tell if he was looking at me. “You hear me? Get out.” He still didn’t move, and it was like the arteries in my body weren’t filled with blood anymore but gasoline. I pulled my arm back to whip it at him.

“Michael!” said the director, grasping my arm just before I brought it forward. “What’s going on?” His breath was salty and sour, his eyes, wide and concerned.

The anger I had felt slowly became dismay and horror. I had just about blown myself up. It was the same madness I had felt when I’d screamed at father minutes before. The freeboot was gone. I worried that father had brought him here to kill me.

“Hair and makeup,” enthused the director, as if he were afraid something was wrong with me. “We’re ready for you! You all right?”

“Yes,” I said, stepping back. “Sorry. I—I was confused.”

“Drink too much carrot?” he asked, with a nervous smile.

“None,” I said as I glanced about, wondering where the freeboot had gone.

The director led me behind the stage were it was quieter and fewer people ran around. Crates of machines, amps maybe, sat humming, their green power lights throbbing to the distant beat. Then he stopped suddenly and I bumped into his back.

“Oh no!” he said. “We’re not supposed to see you!”

Before him, stood Elle. Her face was again pink, her nose black. Her hair was the same white-blonde seafoam and protruding from it were two rounded pink ears—maybe pig or raccoon. The material of her huge, white wedding gown was shiny, stiff, and awful, like polyurethane. On it hung a dozen glassy, undulating red and orange spots, each five inches wide. Her eyes were big with surprise. “Oh, look at you,” she said, her voice squeaking, “you’re the bestest of the bestest!” After one of her tittering jungle-bird giggles, she grabbed one of the polka dots from the front of her gown, held it up, and said, “Look, my cervix agrees!”

As the director dragged me away, while telling a gaggle of assistants to get her back to wardrobe, I decided that those polka dots had been camera views of her insides. I felt nauseated and wanted to go wash my hands a dozen times. We came to a row of black fabric tents not much bigger than outhouses.

“Could be bad luck, that,” chuckled the director, as he turned to me. “They say it’s a bad omen to see your bride before the ceremony.” Opening the door to one of the tents, he said, “Go on in. Take a seat. Relax and