When he saw Kitty coming, he frowned, placed his hands on his hips and just shook his head. He took her by the arm when she was close enough, pulled her into the corridor and shut the door behind them so he could hear himself think.
“Listen, we go through this shit every night, you and I. It’s getting old,” he said to her, that big mitt still on her arm. “Now I’m going to tell you, honey, what I tell you every night: Mr. McBane and his dummy don’t want any company. All that shit on stage… it’s just an act, okay? They’re not looking for followers.”
Kitty bristled, pulled her arm away. She was small and fine-boned, thin as a peach twig… but about 110 pounds of poison if you pissed her off. “And I’ll explain to you one last time that I only want to talk to Mr. McBane. Nothing more.”
“Listen, honey, I think the guy’s married and the boss here, he don’t like anybody playing around in the dressing rooms. That’s not the kind of place we run.”
Kitty tried not to laugh. No, the Bamboo Lounge was strictly a class act. All those drunks out there had royal pedigrees and the strippers on stage wouldn’t be turning tricks after lights out. “You listen to me,” she said with venom. “And you listen good. I’m not a groupie. I only want to interview Mr. McBane for my college magazine. I’m a drama major and this is my assignment. It’ll take ten minutes. Now why don’t you be a good boy and just ask the man if he’s interested?”
The big man sighed, worn down. “You know, I’ve been in this business a lot of years, sweet thing. And in that time I’ve gotten real good at reading people… and you? You’re full of shit. You’re not with any college rag. We both know it.” He threw his hands up. “But if you’ll quit crawling up my ass every night, I’ll go ask the man. Just this once. And if he says no, that’s it. I don’t wanna see you tomorrow night or the next. I don’t wanna see you again period… got it?”
Kitty smiled.
4
“I don’t have much time,” Ronny said when Kitty was brought in, the door shut behind her. “That was my last show and I have a late dinner date.”
“Sure he does,” Piggy said from his trunk by the vanity, the lid open and one arm thrown over the side like he was taking a bath in there. “Ronny’s got a date with his right hand. I keep telling him it’s not really sex if you’re by yourself, but he don’t listen.”
Kitty laughed.
Ronny McBane smiled thinly. “That’ll be enough from you, Piggy.”
Kitty sat down and explained briefly what she wanted while Ronny listened intently. He was a tall man, narrow and reedy, but handsome in a sort of undernourished way like certain rock stars that had been hitting the needle. His hands were large, the fingers fine and delicate. The hands of a magician… or a ventriloquist. He liked to express himself with them freely.
“Well, I’ll tell you what I can, Miss Seevers.”
“Call me Kitty.”
“Meooooowwww,” Piggy said. “Come here, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty…”
Ronny went over to him, picking him up. “I’m afraid he’ll be impossible until you greet him properly.”
Laughing, Kitty went over and extended her hand to Piggy. She was amazed how good Ronny was. Piggy’s hand gripped her own. It was a cold grip, but oddly firm for a doll. Piggy bowed his head and kissed her fingers. When he was done, he made a big show of raising his eyebrows and opening and closing his mouth, making smacking sounds. “You have fish for dinner or did you just have a little itch?”
“Oh!” Kitty gasped. “You’re terrible.”
“Ain’t it the truth,” Piggy said. “Ain’t it just the truth.”
Ronny set Piggy back in the box and they got down to business.
“Well, Kitty,” he said, that thin smile touching his lips again. “Where should I begin? I have no formal training in theater or ventriloquism. I’m entirely self-taught. I made Piggy myself and took some years doing it…”
Kitty listened while he prattled on, making a show of keeping notes, nodding with enthusiasm at the right moments. But the notes were mostly doodling and what she was really doing was studying Ronny McBane’s pale, dour face which was so tense and rigid it looked like it had been airbrushed onto the skull beneath. As he talked, the corners of his lips attempted that smile he emoted so well on stage. And it worked out there, but up close like this it was an upturned frown, rubbery and artificial. It never touched his eyes and their haunted depths.
It was hard to say who was more wooden… Ronny or Piggy.
“What made you get into the business?” Kitty asked.
Ronny McBane opened his mouth, but it was the dummy that did the talking. “Well, look at him, baby. He’s a fucking wreck. A nervous wreck… aren’t you a nervous wreck, Ronny? Afraid of his own shadow. If it wasn’t for me holding his dick, he’d piss down his own leg.”
Ronny tittered uneasily. The grin he offered Kitty was like an ax wound on a skull. “You keep quiet, Piggy.”
Kitty swallowed dryly, felt something fluttering in her belly. “How… how can you make him talk like that? I mean, you’re over here… but I saw his mouth move.”
“Come a little closer, sweet meat, and I’ll show you how it really moves,” Piggy said.
The sexual innuendo went right over Kitty’s head. What she was seeing… it could not be. She looked from Ronny McBane to his dummy, back again. It was a trick and she knew it was a trick, yet a gnawing chill expanded in her chest. Piggy sat there in his trunk, grinning like a death’s-head, lewd and unpleasant. He had teeth, she saw, long yellow teeth, crooked and decayed.
Since when did dummies have teeth?
“How…” Kitty mumbled.
“A trick of the trade,” Ronny said, looking almost frightened himself. But it was really hard to tell. There was so much barely-concealed torment slathered onto that face, maybe it was all her imagination.
She decided it was.
“You really had me going for a moment there,” she said to Ronny, not Piggy, trying to sound relieved, but failing.
“You want to get going?” Piggy said. “Come over here, I’ll get you going.”
“Okay, Piggy,” Ronny said. “We’ve had our laugh.”
Kitty looked from her notes to Ronny’s face, avoiding his eyes which were like windows looking into a crypt. “Is… um… is it generally just the two of you? Do you ever have another dummy involved in the act?”
“She’s talking threesome here, Ronny.”
Kitty feigned a laugh. “Oh, stop it. I’m serious.”
“So am I, lady,” the dummy said. “So am I.”
“Never. No other dummies. Just the two of us,” Ronny said.
“How about assistants? I heard you had an assistant.”
Ronny’s eyes went dark and stormy. “Once, yes. We had a… a woman working with us, but it didn’t pan out.”
Kitty could feel Piggy’s eyes burning holes into her back, but of course they weren’t really eyes, just marbles. Dead, inert marbles. Still… she could feel them, that vile gaze creeping over her skin. She turned and looked and, yes, Piggy was staring, mouth sprung open. But he was not moving.
Not at all.
When she looked back at Ronny, however, the dummy started talking again: “Maybe you ought to interview me, baby. Women make Ronny nervous, but I like ’em just fine… if you know what I mean.”
Kitty laughed, not finding any of it funny now. She supposed all ventriloquists had unusual relationships with their dummies, used them to say things they were incapable of. But enough was enough. “Okay already, Mr. McBane. Why don’t we let Piggy rest, put him in his box or something.”