Jain Snow, my intermittent unrequited love. Her voice is shagreen-rough; you hear it smooth until it tears you to shreds.
She’s older than I am, four, maybe five years; but she looks like she’s in her middle teens. Jain’s tall, with a tumbleweed bush of red hair; her face isn’t so much pretty as it is intense. I’ve never known anyone who didn’t want to make love to her. “When you’re a star,” she said once, half drunk, “you’re not hung up about taking the last cookie on the plate.”
That includes me, and sometimes she’s let me come into her bed. But not often. “You like it?” she said. I answered sleepily, “You’re really good.” “Not me,” she said. “I mean being in a star’s bed.” I told her she was a bitch and she laughed. Not often enough.
I know I don’t dare force the issue; even if I did, there would still be Stella.
Stella Vanilla—I’ve never learned exactly what her real last name is—is Jain’s bodyguard. Other stim stars have whole platoons of karate-trained killers for protection. Jain needs only Stella. “Stella, pick me up a fifth? Yeah, Irish. Scotch if they don’t.”
She’s shorter than I am, tiny and dark with curly chestnut hair. She’s also proficient in any martial art I can think of. And if all else fails, in her handbag she carries a .357 Colt Python with a four-inch barrel. When I first saw that bastard, I didn’t believe she could even lift it.
But she can. I watched Stella outside Bradley Arena in L.A. when some overanxious bikers wanted to get a little too close to Jain. “Back off, creeps.” “So who’s tellin’ us?” She had to hold the Python with both hands, but the muzzle didn’t waver. Stella fired once; the slug tore the guts out of a parked Harley-Wankel. The bikers backed off very quickly.
Stella enfolds Jain in her protection like a raincape. It sometimes amuses Jain; I can see that. Stella, get Alpertron on the phone for me. Stella? Can you score a couple grams? Stella, check out the dudes in the hall. Stella— It never stops.
When I first met her, I thought that Stella was the coldest person I’d ever encountered. And in Des Moines I saw her crying alone in a darkened phone booth—Jain had awakened her and told her to take a walk for a couple hours while she screwed some rube she’d picked up in the hotel bar. I tapped on the glass; Stella ignored me.
Stella, do you want her as much as I?
So there we are—a nice symbolic obtuse triangle. And yet— We’re all just one happy show-biz family.
4
This is Alpertron, Ltd.’s, own chartered jet, flying at 37,000 feet above western Kansas. Stella and Jain are sitting across the aisle from me. It’s a long flight and there’s been a lull in the usually boisterous flight conversation. Jain flips through a current Neiman-Marcus catalogue; exclusive mail order listings are her present passion.
I look up as she bursts into raucous laughter. “I’ll be goddamned. Will you look at this?” She points at the open catalogue on her lap.
Hollis, Moog Indigo’s color operator, is seated behind her. She leans forward and cranes her neck over Jain’s shoulder. “Which?”
“That,” she says. “The VTP.”
“What’s VTP?” says Stella.
Hollis says, “Video tape playback.”
“Hey, everybody!” Jain raises her voice, cutting stridently trough everyone else’s conversations. “Get this. For a small fee, these folks’ll put a videotape gadget in my tombstone. It’s got everything—stereo sound and color. All I’ve got to do is go in before I die and cut the tape.”
“Terrific!” Hollis says. “You could leave an album of greatest hits. You know, for posterity. Free concerts on the grass every Sunday.”
“That’s really sick,” Stella says.
“Free, hell.” Jain grins. “Anybody who wants to catch the show can put a dollar in the slot.”
Stella stares disgustedly out the window.
Hollis says, “Do you want one of those units for your birthday?”
“Nope.” Jain shakes her head, “I’m not going to need one.”
“Never?”
“Well . . . not for a long time.” But I think her words sound unsure.
Then I only half listen as I look out from the plane across the scattered cloud banks and the Rockies looming to the west of us. Tomorrow night we play Denver. “It’s about as close to home as I’m gonna get,” Jain had said in New Orleans when we found out Denver was booked.