When it happened, it all happened very quickly... Blue Moon 13.0

by Donna Lamb

.

Jo pulled Bugs aside before Lemon started the Too Drunk Boogie; Arnie covered the short break with a recorded piece. Jo disappeared again. Richard looked at Bugs who only whuffled into his mustache. Then the three guitars got together in the middle of the stage for some serious get-down, get-funky boogie rhythm.

Sounds like ZZ Top doing a concert from South Central, thought Richard. He drummed hard and steady, not much else being required; this being a nearly pure guitar number, at least to start.

Lemon danced with his guitar, a drunken stumbling rush from one side of the stage to another. A synthesized rhythm guitar took over while Kylie switched to trumpet. Richard looked for Jo but the twin keyboards in the other corner of the stage were still vacant. Is Arnie playing that in the booth?

Kylie wailed and growled on the trumpet, sounding like two horned animals quarreling. A phantom mandolin came in with a new melody line. Bugs multiplied his guitar, playing lead and rhythm both at once. Lemon switched to a driving bass beat and began to sing:

Got too drunk last night!
Got too drunk last night!
Me and my baby had a fight!

Too drunk boogie!
Too drunk boogie!

Still drunk this mornin'!
Still drunk this mornin'!
One of us gonna be leavin'!

Too drunk boogie!
Too drunk boogie!

Got drunk again t'very next night!
Got drunk again t'very next night!
Decided I needed another fight!

Too drunk boogie!
Too drunk boogie!

Had a fight wif mah bes' frien'
Too drunk boogie!
Had a fight wif mah bes' frien'
Too drunk boogie!
And one of us dead when it end!

Too drunk boogie!
Too drunk boogie!

Haul my ass to the city jail!
Haul my ass to the city jail!
My dead frien' can't make my bail!

Too drunk boogie!
Too drunk boogie!

The trumpet wailed and the mandolin died. Bugs and Lemon stood in a vee and watched each other's faces while their guitars exploded and screamed with sound.

Holy Shit! thought Richard. Gogie Luft's sticks beat a rhythm Richard could never have dreamed of.

Too drunk boogie!
Too drunk boogie!

The judge he asked how'd you do it!
The judge he asked how'd you do it!
Tole him weren't nothing to it!

Too drunk boogie!
Too drunk boogie!

Hit him with a lef' and then a right!
Too drunk boogie!
Another lef' and another right!
Too drunk boogie!
Hit him wif' a chair and put out his light!

Too drunk boogie!
Too drunk boogie!

The jury called it murder one
The jury called it murder one
Twenty-five to life is how that's done!

Too drunk boogie!
Too drunk boogie!

My frien' is dead, what do I care?
My frien' is dead, what do I care?
They lock me up for sixteen year!

Too drunk boogie!
Too drunk boogie!

Find me a bridge and take my life!
Find me a bridge and take my life!
Or mebbe with a gun or mebbe a knife!

Too drunk boogie!
Too drunk boogie!

But they let me out on my parole
Too drunk boogie!
And singin' this song has saved my soul!
Too drunk boogie!

Too drunk boogie!
Too drunk boogie!

If you get drunk, don't you fight wit' yo baby!
Too drunk boogie!
That's the road to hell, I don't mean maybe.
Too drunk boogie!

Too drunk boogie!
Too drunk boogie!

The crowd danced. Some of them howled the chorus. Lemon switched to his baritone sax and replayed the whole story as a duel between horns. Richard's forearms ached. Jo had come back and he hadn't noticed. She played hot piano on the white keyboard with one hand and faked a bass violin on the black keyboard with the other hand.

Bugs, Lemon and Kylie stopped suddenly. Richard and Jo kept playing while the others sang the chorus over and over. the crowd joined in, singing, dancing or just jumping up and down in place.

Too drunk boogie!
Too drunk boogie!

Too drunk boogie!
Too drunk boogie!

Arnie cut the sound and lights on the stage and announced. "Five minute break, folks."

No one heard him but the band got off stage while the crowd kept shouting, jumping and dancing for more than a minute. The building rattled with the noise.

Too drunk boogie!
Too drunk boogie!

Too drunk boogie!
Too drunk boogie!

Down in the green room, Lemon almost choked on his ice tea when Richard said, "I'm glad we don't have to follow those guys!"

Even Bugs laughed, which is what that whuffling into his mustache was, Richard noticed.

Jo came over to Richard. "Can I sit in your lap and you hold m-me? Just for a m-minute?" She looks so shy, a bit of Joel showing through, Richard though, a little amused.

"Sure," said Richard. He made a place and put his arms around her waist. "You're trembling!"

She lay her head on his shoulder and sighed. "I wrote another song I want to do."

"Is that why you're shaking?" he asked. Oh, that's where she's been disappearing to.

She shook her head.

He rubbed her arms then hugged her. Nothing of Joel now, just a frightened girl.

Jo hugged him back. "I think somebody w-walked across m-m-my grave."

The spooky thing is, Richard reflected, Joel is in a grave somewhere.

* * *

The band began the second half of their set in a unique way. Arnie passed out bongo-like drums from some store room. Kylie and Jo each got a pair of small drums. The guys each took a single larger drum, with Lemon's drum the biggest of all. The girl's drums were hand-played but the guys had a pair of African-style drum hammers. Each drum was tuned to a different note, making a semi-harmonic scale in the key of G.

"Just follow our lead," Lemon told Jo and Richard,. "Beat hell out of your drum, you'll catch on." He grinned. "Arnie's got a whistle track to play with us." The big sound man nodded, hunched over his decks and boards.

The lights came up and they drummed their way in a wedge from far upstage down nearly to the lights, beating fast and furious. When the whistle came in, actually a sopranino recorder pre-recorded by Lemon, Richard recognized the expected tune. Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me Al." He almost laughed aloud when Lemon began singing in a powerful and unexpected falsetto, sounding eerily like Simon himself -- on helium, maybe.

Jo and Richard quickly picked up the cues to hoot with Kylie and Bugs, the four of them like demented owls some mad scientist or shaman had tuned to the tonic chord. Jo did laugh, loudly and musically, each time Lemon turned to her and sang, "I can call you Betty!"

On the last verse, Lemon Eater sang in his natural baritone, perhaps from exhaustion -- falsetto is tough to do at volume. They played two extra instrumental verses, each drummer stopping as Arnie cut his or her spot. Then Lemon played another verse solo with only the "whistle" accompaniment -- getting extra notes by striking the sides of his drum. Sweat flew from his arms and ran into his face.

The crowd danced and laughed while they danced. Arnie cut the stagelights and looped the whistle for one more verse then brought the lights back up with everyone, except Lemon, in their regular places.

Kylie took up the next song, the Eagles' "Desperado", standing downstage playing rhythm with Bugs picking lead beside her. Jo did something on the keyboards with mandolins, banjos, harmonicas and faraway kettle drums while Richard beat steady and true. I could do my part of this one without waking up, he thought. His arms still ached from the unexpected weight of the drum hammers.

Lemon stood backstage in the hallway between the booth and the stage door, wiping sweat off his face, hair and arms with a ragged towel. "Damn! 'Betty' laughing at me almost bust me up!" he said aloud. Still chuckling, he looked around for a bottle of ice tea that he'd left on the banister only to find a pale-haired white man already drinking it.

"Hey, man," he said with mild reproach. The door and heavy curtains between them and the stage made it possible to talk without shouting.

"This yours?" asked Barry. "Sorry." He passed the last quarter bottle to Lemon who drained it in one gulp.

"Who you, man?" asked Lemon. "Friend of Jill's?"

Barry shook his head. "Friend of Melody's. She's onstage, right?"

"Melody?" Lemon considered. "Oh yeah, Melody Jo. Yeah, she's doing great. Gonna sing a new song she wrote next."

Barry looked around. "Where can I go to see and hear without going out front?"

"You could go into the booth, I guess. Be careful Arnie don't step on you, man." Lemon brushed his short Afro-styled hair with his fingers and started back onto the stage. He pointed toward the door to the sound booth out to Barry before disappearing.

Barry waited a few seconds, pulling on his lip. When the applause from out front washed in through the side corridors, he scratched on the sound booth door and slipped inside.

A few moments later, Cherie stumbled into the backstage landing after an unintentional detour through the kitchens. "Now where'd the bastard go?" she muttered.

* * *

Upstairs in the Cattle Call Supper Lounge, Sophie smiled around the last spicy Beijing drumlet. "Everyone in their places, curtains going up on the last act," she simpered.

Ted the Clarence scowled. "Don't act like you've scripted this; you've no more idea what's going to happen than they do."

The Devil in Drag laughed. "Your precious free will? I know a bit more than any one of them because I know what each of them knows. Plus 7000 years of studying human nature."

"Warping human nature, you mean." Ted looked glum. His angelic vision could see right through the walls down to where all the principals of the final act waited all unknowing of the drama in the moment. He didn't like the set up at all.

"Oh, come now!" Sophie sneered, enjoying the angel's discomfort. "You can't blame me for everything. The Crusades and the atom bomb weren't my ideas, you know."

"But you had something to do with the Sack of Constantinople and the Cold War!" protested Ted.

Sophie preened as if complimented. "Well, that monster shaman from DeNiro isn't mine either. And he's the one passed the maguffin to Cherie!" she pointed out.

"Pfah!" Ted snorted. He still thought Gmunro must be one of Sophie's agents.

* * *

In the booth, Arnie handed Barry a spare set of headphones. "Use these. Stand there by the door and don't touch nothing. I don't care if you're Jo's uncle and Richard's fiance -- don't move. If you get in my way, I'll send you through that door so fast you'll think I used a cannon."

Barry knew when to yield to experts. He took the headset and thanked Arnie for it, settling the padded earpieces in place, careful of his hair. "I'll just listen and watch the monitors."

"Do that," agreed Arnie.

* * *

Onstage, the lights came up, everyone in their places. The crowd applauded again. Under cover of the sound, Cherie slipped through the stage door and hid behind the curtains, directly behind Jo. In the darkness, she fumbled in her purse.

Jo felt nervous, excited. The new song felt right, the band felt right, even the way she felt about Richard seemed right. Amazing that it wasn't even 24 hours yet since the blue moon rose last night. And she'd soon be singing a new song she'd just written for the second time tonight. Cyndi Lauper was right, girls have a lot more fun, she misquoted giddily.

Lemon had come back on stage and given her the thumbs up. He'd be ready for her new song after one more. Good. They finished off "Desperado."

Bugs played a bridge, a sort of medley of old hits then segued into Billy Joel's "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me". Richard sang lead and the others sang the response lines. Jo beamed over at her guy. He flubbed a line and sang skat till the tag. Oops! thought Jo.

Lemon shook his head when Richard signaled for him to take the lead. "Not my key," Jones mouthed. Bugs and Lemon did an instrumental chorus so Richard could get his cool back.

Richard soldiered on, avoiding looking at Jo dancing at the keys. Shoulda done Uptown Girl but I don't know the words as well, he thought. Next time. He tried to sing like he'd invented the song, a trick Lemon had that he admired. It meant he had to be completely in the moment and he couldn't think about the weirdness of the last twenty something hours.

Drumming while he sang meant no fancy stick work which was good, e wasn't good with fancy stick work. I'm in way over my head, he thought, not for the first time. When the rest of the band dropped out at the end of the last verse, he stopped too, as confused as if he had stepped off a curb in the dark. Jo saved it, coming in on the beat and singing the coda a capella. The crowd liked that.They played another verse, instrumental and the crowd liked that too.

* * *

In the booth, Arnie worried about the person he'd glimpsed hiding in the corner of the darkened stage. He debated hitting whoever it was with a spot but that would disrupt the show but what the heck was someone doing there? It looked like a girl, he thought, one of Lemon's honeys stalking him maybe? He brought the ambient lighting up a touch, trying to get another look. Then he patched the house phone into his speakers and rang security.

But Jo onstage was starting her new song and the woman crouched behind the stage curtains, only her feet visible on his monitor, didn't seem an immediate danger. Whispering into his mike, he told the bouncers to have someone on the stage door at the end of the next song. He'd cut the lights and play a tape that would clue Bugs, Kylie and Lemon in; he'd just have to hope Jo and Richard would get clued in by the Julie Brown song.

And then he had a stranger in his own booth, too. Another stalker? Looked kind of respectable but you could never tell. Sure is keeping an eye on Melody Jo. Arnie resolved to watch the guy, too.

Barry watched the monitors and listened on the headset. Melody's so beautiful, he thought, I never knew she had talent, too. He tried to get closer to the monitor but the big man glared him back.

* * *

Onstage, Jo played a bridge into her own tune, letting Kylie and Lemon find the harmonies. Richard beat a steady rhythm,smiling at her. Bugs did magic with the guitar, taking Jo's melody and making it larger, somehow. She stopped playing, stepped away from the keys and began to sing, holding her mike in both hands. In the booth, Arnie adjusted the amps and spots to highlight Jo and her song.

If I were your girlfriend
And you were my lover, too
Would I be able to depend
On knowing you'd be true?

If you were my boyfriend
And I loved you oh so true
Would you have another girlfriend
Or love me only, too?

How can I believe you?
When I see you look at them?
I'm not just another girlfriend.
'Cause I love only you.

That chorus really challenged her range. She let Bugs invent a bridge so she could get her breath back. She sneaked a glance at Richard who looked like someone had played bongos on his head with the drum hammers they had used earlier. Jo risked a smile in his direction.

Lemon had pulled a horn out of a bag. It looked like a fat, four-valved trumpet but with a wide deep bell and it sounded like someone had gilded the loneliest wind that ever blew. The hornman followed Jo's vocals with it when she began again on Bugs's cue.

I don't want to be your friend
If I'm not your only lover too.
If it can't be so then I'll put an end
To my plans on loving you.

I won't be another girlfriend
You make some promise to.
If you can't love me to the end
Then you and I are through!

How can I believe you?
When I see you look at them?
I'm not just another girlfriend.
'Cause I love only you.

Maybe she'd over-estimated herself, she could hit those notes but it took a lot out of her. The rest of the band came in with an instrumental verse, Richard blushing at the drums. Jo readied herself for another lung-bursting chorus.

* * *

In the booth, Barry ripped the earphones off, weeping. "She loves me," he cried. "She really loves me!"

Arnie stared at him but had things to do with the boards. With the music in his own headset, he hadn't really heard the man, anyway. "What?" he grumbled, manipulating the pots and switches to highlight Bugs and Lemon while Jo caught her breath.

Barry stumbled out into the hallway behind the stage. "She loves me," he repeated to a startled security man coming up from the other direction.

"Shut the door!" Arnie complained.

* * *

Jo sang the achingly high chorus again to a crescendo of sound from the band:

How can I believe you?
When I see you look at them?
I'm not just another girlfriend.
'Cause I love only you.

In the shadowed corner of the stage, Cherie struggled to get the curtain out of her way. "He doesn't need another girlfriend! He's got a wife!" she snarled.

No one heard her. The crowd erupted into a shattering cascade of applause, advancing on the stage with nothing but delight on their minds.

Things happened quickly.

Arnie cued up "The Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun" and rippled the lights.

Bugs shouted, "She's done it again! Get'er off stage, Charlie!" He slung his guitar over his back and headed for the drums. Lemon and Kylie traded glances and Lemon went for his bass guitar, carelessly dropping the expensive double mellophone on its velvet carry bag.

Jo peered into the club dance floor, unsure of what she saw beyond the lights. The noise washed over her, they seemed to be shouting, "Girlfriend!" over and over.

"Wow?" she said, filled with wonder at the reaction.

Richard headed for her, calling out, "Jo! Jo!"

In the hall outside, Barry Aronhaus pushed past the confused security guard. "Sounds like a riot, we've got to get her off stage!" he yelled, used to seizing authority and using it. The guard yielded.

In the quiet corner where she had been hiding, Cherie finally shook free of the curtain and emerged, hair a bit disheveled, purse in one hand -- and a small black pistol in the other. She looked around, confused by the noise and lights.

In the booth, Arnie could see Cherie from his audience view monitor and it looked like ... he put a spot on her, a tall redhead dressed for business and carrying.... "Holy Cow! She really does have a gun!" He reached for the panic button....

Richard grabbed Jo, shouting something at her that she couldn't hear. The first of the crowd got forced into the barrier of speakers in front of the stage by the press of people behind them.

More bouncers came in from the wings to try to push the crowd back. "What the hell?" one of the big meaty men shouted to another who simply shrugged. Neither had ever seen such a crowd before.

Barry opened the stage door.

Cherie blinked in the spot light, staring at the gun in her hand. "Where did this come from?" she said aloud.

Richard scooped Jo into his arms and turned to head upstage.

Jo squeaked. "Where'd you come from?" she asked.

Richard grinned. "Pacoima!" he shouted. Jo laughed.

Arnie dithered a fraction of a second then hit the silent security alarm and turned off the spot on Cherie before the crowd saw her. His hands reached for other switches.

Lemon, Bugs and Kylie began to play, joining the Julie Brown song coming out of the speakers. They faced the crowd, marveling at what frenzy Jo had apparently inspired.

Richard and Jo, Barry and Cherie all met upstage near the stage door.

"Barry!" two women shouted but one of them added, "You sonoffabitch!"

"Cherie?" Barry shouted astonished. Seeing the gun, he reached for it. "Don't shoot!" he yelled.

"God help me!" Richard screamed. He tried to spin, Jo still in his arms. He tried to put his body between Jo and the gun. Now, he thought, I should make that wish now!

The single popping sound made by the small caliber automatic could hardly be heard in all the noise. No one but the five by the door and Arnie knew it for what it was. The security man tried to push past Barry. Cherie stared at the gun in her hand.

Richard felt himself tripping, falling. I'll land on top of Jo, he thought. She'll be safe. He tried to twist, just a little, to make sure it happened that way.

Jo screamed, bringing her hands up, reaching for Richard's face.

Richard opened his mouth to say something reassuring, to warn her they were going to fall. To tell her he loved her.

Arnie cut the stage lights and everything went dark.

* * *

The bullet entered the back of his neck, a little to the left of his spine; the impact first stunned the spinal nerves, temporarily paralyzing his legs. Still angling upwards and across, the tiny slug tore through his windpipe, shattered his right jawbone with a glancing blow and emerged from his face.

Richard fell on top of Jo as she tried to bring her hands up to stop the gout of blood, metal, bone and flesh that came out of his cheek. The right carotid artery severed, Richard lost consciousness before the impact of landing on Jo.

* * *

"Hello?" he said into the echoing emptiness. He remembered the moments before as only a flash of pain and a short darkness.

"Hello to be greeting your esteemed friendship," said a familiar booming voice.

"I...." Richard peered around. "Where am I? Mr. Gumro?" Not darkness but a grayness extended in all directions as far as Richard could see. Empty, featureless, nothingness.

"We are finding ourselves in that island between death and living, off the hornishness of Africa. Some call it Limbo, I call it Dnuro." said the voice. "I am living here for many of many years."

"This isn't real?"

"Ontology is not our proper subject, Defender. You did well, defending one you had taken into care. Now you are dying, having taken a great and honorable wound in that service."

"Oh," said Richard. "Jo is okay?" He felt no regret, only a mild anxiety that he had done the right thing correctly.

"Physically, she is unhurt except for a bruise or twain."

He could not weep, neither with sadness that he would not see Jo again nor with relief that he had saved her, or helped save her. There are no tears in Limbo there being no bodies to shed them. "What ... what happens next?" Emotions without bodies to feel them are hollow empty things hardly worth calling by that name.

"Now you wait for the dying. It won't be long. Regardless, be there no time for the measuring here."

"Oh."

"You did well, Defender," said the voice.

Richard would have shook his head if he still had a head to shake. "I didn't have time to do anything, I just turned away and got shot."

"You called for help," said the voice. "I heard you in my own ears."

"Was it enough?"

"It was a plentitude, a surfeit," the voice assured him. "Exactly the right amount is always too much."

"You confuse me."

The voice chuckled. "Clear meanings obscure hidden truths. The tangled jungle holds many paths to righteousness."

The grayness seemed to take on color and shape. "I hear someone calling my name," said Richard.

* * *

"Richard! Richard!" sobbed Jo. "I forgive you, just don't die!" She lay where they had fallen, his bloody head against her chest, the weight of his body on top of her. With her hands on his neck and cheek, she tried to stop the flow of blood which no longer spurted but simply flowed around her fingers. Quietly, without her noticing, life deserted the body she cherished in her arms.

Cherie still held the tiny gun. Barry held her hand in his, the security guard holding Barry's other arm. "The gun -- it just went off!" said Cherie.

"Don't say anything," Barry the lawyer advised.

Jo struggled to sit up without hurting Richard. She glared at the assemblyman and his wife. She said, "I wish to God you had shot me instead!"

* * *

"That was the third wish!" Ted the Clarence said, loud enough that everyone in the building should have heard him.

"Doesn't count, she made it to God, not me," said the Devil in Drag looking around the lounge. None of the other patrons were aware of the drama going on below nor the argument in Booth 13. She checked again, feeling a third supernatural presence but seeing no one.

Clarences seldom get angry but this one pounded the table with a fist. "If you grant two wishes, you have to grant three, it's in the Restrictions!" Ted's expression would have frightened the severed head of King Charles lying in its basket.

"She's still got over an hour to make her third wish!" insisted Sophie.

"If you won't grant this wish, yield it to me!"

Sophie shook her head, stubborn as Hell. "That's not a true wish, it's more of a prayer. I don't grant prayers!"

"Grant the wish!" screamed Ted.

"You said no more rewriting of time!"

"That was on the earlier two! This wish can only be granted by bending time! Grant the wish, bitch!" Ted thundered.

"It wasn't in the subjunctive mood!" Sophie grasped at a straw.

"Don't trifle with Heaven's mood! Grant the wish!"

"I can't!" Sophie admitted. "He's dead. Even by bending time, I can't bring back the dead! It's in the Restrictions!"

Ted smiled, a gotcha sort of smile. "He wasn't dead when she made the wish. You're in a box because you tried to stall. Now yield the wish to me."

"I don't have to," Sophie snarled. "If the subject makes a wish that can't be granted because of Restrictions, I can give them a replacement wish! She's got an hour, 'til midnight, to make another wish! One I can grant!"

Ted's smile widened. "You're going to trust to human selfishness to get you out of this?"

Sophie gave him a sharp look then smiled back. "I seldom lose that bet!"

"Very well," said Ted. "Either you yield to me, or choose to spend a thousand years granting no wishes, or...."

"Carry her soul off to a thousand years of torture?" she offered pleasantly.

"As you say," agreed Ted. "If you win."

They settled back into the cushions, smiling at each other. After a few moments, they ordered another round of drinks.

* * *

Outside, sirens approached.

In the booth, a weeping Arnie blasted the crowd with Roy Orbison, John Cougar Mellenkamp and The Rolling Stones. Only the exit lights burned steady, all the other lights in the building strobed at random intervals. Some of the crowd left, some of them kept dancing.

"Ain't never been a party like this!" someone shouted.

I-NO-Y gathered around Jo and Richard. Bugs wept like a little girl with a broken doll while Kylie held him and crooned softly. Lemon's face collapsed in a grimace painful to see.

Bouncers and club security made a wall around the band. Wrangler Jill in full cowgirl costume shouldered her way through her guards and knelt beside Jo, careless of the blood pooling around them. Andie collapsed against a wall, staring at Barry and Cherie, each being held by two security guards, one of whom had taken the gun from Cherie, handling it only with a glove.

"I'm an assemblyman," Barry protested.

"Shut up till the cops get here, you don't want your head broke," snarled Angelynne Foster, the six-foot-four inch former NFL guard holding his left arm.

Barry stared into her eyes, level with his own, and decided to shut up.

* * *

Richard stepped into the light. "Welcome, Defender," said a voice he thought he recognized. "Or should I am calling you 'Clarence'? Same self, this thing, to be truthsaying."