With astonishing speed the lord of the dead slapped a gag on the celestial singer so that not one hemidemisemiquaver might escape his lips, then declaimed How dare you think that I am not a demiurge of honor? Your bride was eager enough to escape Avernus, but you had to look back. Again. I forgave your petty skepticism once; now I am insulted. Since you seem so fond of gazing into the depths of my kingdom, stay here!
And so he did, until the lucky day when at last he was able to work the gag off, belt out a few bars of Sloop John B. (the "I wanna go home" verse in particular), and take his leave.
The rest is Club rose garden history.
"Yeah," said Orpheus, nodding sagely. "I guess the whole thing is pretty cool. Think maybe I could finally get some coverage on VH1? It'd make a kickass episode of Behind The Music." He grinned and ordered another tequila shooter. It was his sixth, though the liquor seemed to have no appreciable effect on him. I suppose a lengthy and enforced residence in Avernus will do much to increase one's tolerance for mere earthly intoxicants.
Beddoes leaned close and whispered urgently in my ear, "Are you sure he's who you claim he is? Mightn't there be some mistake?"
I shook my head. "He is that demigod musician beyond compare, sweet-voiced Orpheus whose songs had the power to charm the very stones of the earth. I can not help it if now he has chosen to sing rock music rather than music to rocks."
"But Orpheus isn't just mythic, he's dead," Beddoes protested. "See here, I've had a Classical education as well as you and I know the story: He was torn to shreds by the women of Scythia over some silly trifle or another. Touchy things, women."
"Not quite so dead as all that," I said, a shade pedantically. "His severed head lived on and continued to sing despite the ladies."
"Granted, but look at him now, would you? He's got a head and a working body! How did he manage that?"
"He got better?" young Langley suggested.
We both gave him a withering look ere I proceeded to say: "However our musician friend managed to recoup his corporeal deficit, the fact remains that he is here now. It is with the here and now that we must deal."
Beddoes would not be assuaged. "How can you be sure he's Orpheus?" he insisted.
I sighed. "You are evidently an empyricist. So be it." I turned to Orpheus and said, "I beg your pardon, old man, but would you mind favoring us with a little song?"
He smiled. "No problem. Whaddaya wanna hear?"
I told him, though not before I stuffed my ears with a shredded cocktail napkin and covertly signaled both the bartender and young Langley to do the same. Then Orpheus sang.
Some time later, a dripping wet Beddoes was a believer. As he wiped soapsuds from his eyes with a bar towel, he grumbled, "Did you have to make him sing that song?"
"My dear Beddoes, it was the most illustrative item I could come up with off the cuff. I thought you liked South Pacific?"
"That's beside the point. I neither have nor do I desire a man to wash out of my hair."
"Granted. But I think you must admit that finding yourself lathering up in the Gentlemen's locker room while fully clothed should be confirmation enough as to our visitor's, ah, professional chops?"
It was so. There was no gainsaying the matter. Remained to be answered only the pertinent question:
"Now that we know he's Orpheus, what do we do about it?"
I smiled. Although the presence of the bard was evidence that the Club's uncanny knack for attracting trouble of the mythic stripe was undiminished, for once we were ahead of the game. We had identified the amanita among the shiitake before anyone could exclaim, My, doesn't that mushroom look tasty, pop it in his mouth, and perish. Being thus aware of potential peril, we now had the option of preventing the same. It was a heady feeling, and one that I meant to exploit.
"My dear Beddoes, we have in our midst and in our debt a man whose song can lure the birds from the trees, the fish from the waters, the Liberals from their benighted insistence upon helping the less fortunate. What do you think we do about it?"
"Oh man, these tunes are lame." Orpheus looked up from the sheaf of sheet music I had just put into his hands and regarded me with the eyes of a basset hound betrayed.
"It can not be helped," I replied. "No doubt you would prefer melodies more suitable to, ah, head-booming and, er, mash pits, is it? But this is a wedding."
Young Langley suppressed a snigger. He did a wretched job of it, but at least he tried. "I think you mean mosh pits and head-banging," he said, leaning in to adjust Orpheus' bow tie.
"Besides," Beddoes put in, "you really have no choice. You're destitute. You're going to have to earn a living again sooner or later."
"I just can't understand what happened, man." Orpheus scratched his head and frowned. When he had contacted the institutions safeguarding his financial resources they had all reported the same disquieting news: The accounts were empty, the contents of the safe deposit boxes pilfered, the investment portfolios ravished. Nor was this situation to be accounted for by Orpheus's tenure in Avernus. True, he had been declared legally dead, but the gutting of his bank accounts, et cetera, had taken place rather soon after his disappearance from the waking world.
To quote Orpheus's own assessment of the situation: "Bummer. Being poor sucks."
Suck howsoever it might, Orpheus's misfortune was our opportunity, since it left him amenable to our plans. We would have him sing at the wedding that promised to be the event of the social season, encompassing as it did a guest list that included all of our wealthiest members. It was a simple scheme: To use the bard's compelling voice to induce the guests to pony up enough of their capital to put the Club back on a secure financial footing. Such a plot not only would relieve our beloved Club of all fiscal anxiety, but also would have the added benefit of putting paid to the complaints of such cost-conscious creatures as Stafford «Pinch» Dawkins.
Perhaps the thought of good old Pinch's tiresome whinging was what possessed me to propose his wedding to Miss Ren-e Speranza as the perfect place to put our plan into action. If you empty your checkbook publicly, in company with the most influential members of the Club, you are not apt to carp about it afterwards. That would look bad.
Pinch's parsimonious proclivities notwithstanding, for him, appearances were still trumps. Of this we had proof: Had not he bitten the figurative bullet and proposed to Miss Speranza despite his dissatisfaction with Club policy concerning family memberships? Very well, then.
Thus it was that we found ourselves in the Club's ballroom, waiting for the newlywed couple to arrive. The guests were likewise there assembled, having been already processed by the reception line. The bar was doing a land office business despite Pinch's insistence that it be cash only. The canap-s were gone. Our host had paid only for enough to feed three-quarters of the guests a maximum of two apiece.