"May I?" Arthur asked abruptly, sticking his head in at the limousine door.
Shannon compressed her red lips but Stone only nodded. The rock star was surprised, but he was tired and it failed to rouse more than a passing glance of enquiry from those grey eyes.
Arthur hopped in and the door slammed shut behind him. Frighteningly quick. He blamed the driver for that. Bloody lunatic hated his job, and hated his employers to boot. "Where're we going?" he opened.
"The hotel," Shannon informed him, "Mr. Stone is tired."
"Yeah. Congratulations, Mr. Stone. The show was a success," Arthur said politely.
Stone snorted and didn't bother answering that.
"No, no. It was nice." He couldn't think of a single thing to say that could reinforce his point. Philosophically he dropped the subject and moved on to more serious topics- "Stacy Keller."
Stone didn't even look around from the window he was staring out of.
Shannon tapped her knee and squinted a little. "I've heard the name," she said slowly, "Who is she?"
"Reporter with the Daily News," Arthur supplied, "She's, er, doing a piece on Tommy Stone's affair with bisexual pop star Brian Slade."
Shannon was a very businesslike woman. Her first impulse was to feel annoyed and cheated and worried. She controlled herself, only to pick up on what it was that Arthur Stewart had really said. Blue eyes widening, she could only repeat it in awe- "Tommy Stone's affair with Brian Slade?"
She repeated it a few times more.
Arthur grinned back at her and for once though the woman looked human when she was laughing.
"Oh God," she sighed.
"Yeah, that's what I said," Arthur agreed.
"This amuses you two?" Stone put in quietly from his side of his limousine.
Shannon sobered up instantly. Almost guiltily. She waved a hand as if to clear the humour completely from the air, afraid she would be unable to resist it again. "It is a little funny," she excused, "She thinks of them as two different people."
"Digging into the story will get her the truth, Shannon. Arthur did it." Tommy Stone leaned back in his seat, head back and eyes closed, arms to his side and completely relaxed. "What happens then?"
"True," Shannon agreed, "Mr. Stewart, how much did she tell you?"
"Not much." Arthur thought Stone was acting peculiar. The rock star had given a sell-out performance, been loved and adulated by hundred of young kids, and was traveling in a limousine to a good night's sleep in a luxury hotel. Tommy Stone could do no wrong. The man should see the humour in Tommy Stone and Brian Slade having an affair.
He told them the little that he knew and Shannon noted it all. Arthur didn't like her, but she really was efficient. Not creative, perhaps, but efficient. And she kept Stone hidden from the rest of the world, which was really what Brian wanted from her.
At the hotel, Arthur went alone to his hotel room, worried at the mixture of concern and triumph.
Triumph was easy. Arthur was quite pleased with his plan to keep Keller running around for a little while. Besides which, it was his story, and if he didn't break it, no one could. Arthur didn't want to break it. Curt Wild's reaction said it all.
'So what?' The most genuine reaction he could expect from people was a pain-filled desire to never know. The rest would circle like scavengers around Tommy Stone, pecking and pecking until he either hid again or broke in a storm of anger.
It wouldn't just be Tommy Stone, would it? The club would be discovered. Jack Fairy would be hounded. Arthur was not very worried about Jack Fairy; Jack Fairy exuded a warning to steer clear. Jack Fairy was poisonous fruit. No one would go near him unless they were hardened or gullible.
They'd go for the Flaming Creatures, though. Want to know everything about everything. It would probably bring the band back, but it wouldn't be good, would it? People would parade them around like circus animals.
Arthur sat on his bed and stared at the wall. He couldn't conspire to keep a story hidden forever. His boss would kill him if they didn't get the scoop.
And what about Stone? How long would this last? The lies, the cover-ups, the make-up… all of this had to be hard. Brian Slade hadn't seemed a disciplined person. Booze, drugs and sex was one thing; excess and lots of it was another. Slade had cheerfully bathed in excess.
Arthur wasn't stupid. What if Stone decided to go public? Arthur needed to protect himself. He picked up the phone and asked the front desk to connect him to Stone's room. The call went through but no one answered. He tried again a few moments later, planning the conversation in his head so he'd know what to say.
On the third ring, Stone picked up. "What?"
"Sorry to bother you, but we have to talk about something," Arthur said.
"I'm not in the fucking mood to talk, Arthur."
"Not tonight," Arthur agreed, "Morning, then? Breakfast."
"I doubt I'll make it."
"It's important," Arthur insisted, "When's good for you?"
"Arthur, I might as well tell you the truth," Brian Slade suddenly said cheerfully, "I'm about to kill myself. That, my friend, means I can't meet you tomorrow because I'll be a corpse. Slowly turning blue. And they can all go to hell in a fucking flame jet."
"What?"
"Goodbye, Arthur. You tasted sweet. Wear red next time, love."
The phone didn't go off but there was an almighty crash on the other end and Arthur could hear Stone cursing from very far away.
Shannon! That was who he needed to call- Shannon. She'd know how to deal with this. She'd probably seen this before. Stone wouldn't really kill himself…
Arthur saw the gunman in the dark again and almost bit his tongue dragging his mind back to the present. Chucking the phone away, he jumped for the door and snatched up his jacket because he always took his jacket when he went out and he didn't have the time to reason that he was only going from one hotel room to the other. He didn't need his jacket but it was a familiar action and he needed a lot of familiar things in this bloody travesty of trying to get a credible story.
"Stone," he called, knocking loudly at the door, "Stone! Open the door!"
A door opened but it wasn't the one he was attempting to dent with his knuckles. It was the one opposite. And it was opened by an older lady in a dressing gown with a scowl on her surgically touched up face.
"Must you have to do that," she said, "Some of us are trying to sleep. Couldn't this wait for morning?"
"Sorry, ma'am, but this is an emergency."
Arthur had had a similar situation when a somewhat-girlfriend in New York locked herself into someone else's apartment hallucinating from a bad hit. Back then, the lady across the hall had let him into her house and let him call an ambulance while she tried to persuade Karen to open the door for him. In this case, the older lady only clicked her tongue and went back into her room and slammed her door shut.
A French couple came out of the elevator while he tried to get Stone to open the door and asked if he had forgotten his room key. The girl appeared to be a little drunk, for she kept giggling and inviting him back to their room to sleep on the couch. Her companion humoured her and suggested that Arthur try the front desk for a room key.
Arthur smiled thinly and thanked them for their help, vaguely motioning them to go on their way so he could get on with his task.
"Look," he sighed, leaning his forehead against the door, "Please. Just open the damned door. Come on. You can't die on me before I've finished talking to you. Shannon won't deal with me, you know that. Let me say what I have to say and I won't stop you. Okay? Just open the door."
The door opened. Brian was standing there, rumpled and sweating and tiredly ironic. "The door was always open," he said, "You only had to turn the handle."
Arthur kicked himself for not having thought of that. "Oh. Can I come in?"
"You're here, aren't you?" Brian left him there with that cryptic remark, stalking back to the bar and pouring himself a drink.
Not the first one by the look of things.
Arthur debated leaving. Brian didn't look any more suicidal than normal. Drinking himself to death, maybe, but no immediate danger.
Brian Slade picked up a knife and showed it to his guest. "Was this what you were worried about?" he laughed.
Arthur went in and shut the door. "You going to use it?"
"Already thought of it," Brian Slade announced gravely, "But no. I'm too much of a coward. Can't stand the thought of finishing." He tossed the knife negligently to the carpet and walked over it to sit down in the couch, spilling whiskey down his shirtfront.
Arthur picked up the knife for good measure and stuck it in a drawer so it wouldn't unnerve him by lying there so calmly.
"It's too final," Brian droned, staring at his glass as if he were talking to it. He drank the last of the dregs and tossed it away. He stared appraisingly at Arthur. "There's too much to do, you know? So many things to do."
Whatever he seemed to be looking for in Arthur's face, the reporter couldn't tell if he'd found it or not. Stone just shrugged and looked away. "You can go. I don't need a suicide watch."
"We still have my idea to discuss," Arthur reminded him. No reason not to stir him up a bit, make him sit up and think clearly.
"Not now, Arthur. I need a drink."
"You've had enough. Besides, this is business. You don' want to be drunk for business, do you?"
"Does it matter?" Stone said bitterly, "Business means screwing me over. Ta, but I'd rather not."
"I'm not here to screw you over. I were thinking about Keller. It's my story. I don' want someone else getting the glory of unmasking Stone."
"Really." Those grey eyes were icy.
"Yeah. That's my call. I don' do it 'cause I don't want to. That's my call. But if anyone gets to do it, I want it to be me."
"Well, lovely as all this sounds, I can't guarantee that you'll be the one to get the scoop, Art. Lots of people want to know about Tommy Stone's mysterious past. Shannon always told me it would happen one day. I told her to fix it."
"She can't give you a past."
"That's what she said, too."
"What about if you decide to go public with who you are," Arthur suggested.
Stone shook his head and didn't bother answering.
"Might work," Arthur tempted, "Tommy Stone's a hit."
"And Brian Slade is a disgrace," Stone snapped, "No one wants to know."
"What if you decide to," Arthur persisted, "It's still my story. Let my paper run it."
"The New York Herald? It's not really a confession paper, is it?"
"News like this, we'll be anything at all." Arthur meant it as a joke but he was serious too. The darling of the music industry tearing off his mask would be big. And they would have an exclusive.
Stone dredged up enough mental energy to turn it over in his head. Shannon would fuss. "I'll think about it," he told him.
Arthur nodded. It was better than nothing. And the rock star was sitting a little straighter, his eyes no longer so fogged. He was still slumped dejectedly in the couch, however, one hand on the couch between his knees, the other curled into the dyed platinum hair. Not a scene meant for a general audience.
"Want me to go?"
Stone seemed to start from some daze, blinking grey eyes with slight lines at the corners. Crows feet. Signs of old age and too much facial movement. It happened to rockers; they opened their mouths wide belting out loud songs. Slade remembered being twenty-four and ascending the stairs to the throne. Almost. He'd almost done everything right. Hatred, love, disgust, interest- people noticed Brian Slade. Somehow, he gave them all something- someone to hate, someone to love, someone who disgusted them or interested them.
"Stone?"
Stone was old. Slade was young. Young and beautiful. Even when people hated him it was because he was beautiful and quicksilver and he burned the world he lived in. Stone didn't burn anything. He wasn't any less of a creative triumph, just a different type. He didn't change the world, he moved with it.
"Stone?"
"Shut up."
Arthur obediently shut up. Brian was just looking at him with those grey eyes, his soft mouth partially open as he breathed quietly. And then the long legs moved and Brian stood up and came over to him, artist's hand extended to cup his chin. Drawing him before he could even protest into a kiss that burned and ripped and tore a respond from him before he could blink.
Standing there and kissing Brian Slade was not supposed to be familiar, but it sure felt like it. It was awkward, yes, and it was wet and perhaps Arthur shouldn't have liked the fact that Slade inadvertently bit his tongue because Arthur stood on his foot as they stumbled to the bedroom, but so much in the world was strange and really, how much stranger could this get.
"Closer," Brian demanded.
Arthur wasn't precisely unhappy to oblige. But the word made him reconsider. It felt good but it obviously wasn't good or he wouldn't be feeling so furtive about it.
"Your mum won't walk in on us," Brian muttered, trying to get him to come back.
"What?"
"Stop thinking. Don't think. The mind twists and lies. Just feel me."
Arthur groaned and stared up at the ceiling. Clothing was vanishing far too fast and not fast enough and God, if Brian didn't stop doing that he wouldn't be able to stop. But God, just a second more. Just because.
Ray was right- he was a groupie.
Once his trousers were down and his legs were up, it didn't seem to matter any more.