“Dep dooomop dooomop doomop, doo ooo, ooowah oowah oooway ooowah,” sang Leroy, and they all asked “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?” Leroy sang like he was Frankie Lymon—not just some kid from the projects who wanted to be him—and the Kool-Tones were the Teenagers, and they began to pull and heave that song like it was a dead whale. And soon they had it in the water, and then it was swimming a little, then it was moving, and then the sonofabitch started spouting water, and that was the place where Leroy went into the falsetto “wyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy,” and instead of chopping it where it should have been, he kept on. The Kool-Tones went ooom wahooomwah softly behind him, and still he held that note, and the crowd began to applaud, and they began to yell, and Leroy held it longer, and they started stamping and screaming, and he held it until he knew he was going to cough up both his lungs, and he held it after that, and the Kool-Tones were coming up to meet him, and Leroy gave a tantrum-step, and his eyes were bugging, and he felt his lungs tear out by the roots and come unglued, and he held the last syllable, and the crowd wet itself and—
The lights went out and the amp went dead. Part of the crowd had a subliminal glimpse of something large, blue, and cool looming over the freight yard, bathing the top of the building in a soft glow.
In the dead air the voices of the Kool-Tones dropped in pitch as if they were pulled upward at a thousand miles an hour, and then they rose in pitch as if they had somehow come back at that same thousand miles an hour.
The blue thing was a looming blur and then was gone.
The lights came back on. The Kool-Tones stood there blinking: Cornelius, Ray, Slim, and Zoot. The space in front of the center mike was empty.
The crowd had an orgasm.
The Bombers were being violently ill over next to the building.
“God, that was great!” said Vinnie. “Just great!”
All four of the Kool-Tones were shaking their heads.
They should be tired, but this looked worse than that, thought Vinnie. They should be ecstatic. They looked like they didn’t know they had won.
“Where’s Leroy?” asked Cornelius.
“How the hell should I know?” Vinnie said, sounding annoyed.
“I remember him smiling, like,” said Zoot.
“And the blue thing. What about it?”
“What blue thing?” asked Lucius.
“I dunno. Something was blue.”
“I saw was the lights go off and that kid ran away,” said Lucius.
“Which way?”
“Well, I didn’t exactly see him, but he must have run some way. Don’t know how he got by us. Probably thought you were going to lose and took it on the lam. I don’t see how you’d worry when you can make your voices do that stuff.”
“Up,” said Zoot, suddenly.
“What?”
“We went up, and we came down. Leroy didn’t come down with us.”
“Of course not. He was still holding the same note. I thought the little twerp’s balls were gonna fly out his mouth.”
“No. We . . . ” Slim moved his hands up, around, gave up. “I don’t know what happened, do you?”
Ray, Zoot, and Cornelius all looked like they had thirty-two-lane bowling alleys inside their heads and all the pin machines were down.
“Aw, shit,” said Vinnie. “You won. Go get some sleep. You guys were really bitchin’.”
The Kool-Tones stood there uncertainly for a minute.
“He was, like, smiling, you know?” said Zoot.
“He was always smiling,” said Vinnie. “Crazy little kid.”
The Kool-Tones left.
The sky overhead was black and spattered with stars. It looked to Vinnie as if it were deep and wide enough to hold anything. He shuddered.
“Hey!” he yelled. “Somebody bring me a beer!”
He caught himself humming. One of the Hellbenders brought him a beer.
As Eileen Gunn once wrote, Howard Waldrop is “a legendary unknown writer.” He lives in Austin, Texas where he writes, fishes, and builds bookcases. He does not have a cellphone, a computer, or an email account. He’s written a couple of novels and a bunch of short stories, most of which can be found in his eight collections. The winner of both a Nebula and a World Fantasy Award, both “Flying Saucer Rock and Roll” and “Heirs of the Perisphere,” were nominated for the same Nebula award one year, placing hardcore Waldrop fans in a schizophrenia-inducing double-bind. Waldrop has garnered other honors as well, including a Nebula nomination for “Do Ya, Do Ya Wanna Dance,” another rock-influenced story.