Free Passing Through the Flame by Norman Spinrad Page A

his shoulder onto the floor, a bright red streamer. Velva’s insides began to throb quietly.
    “Of course that’s just the teaser,” Beck said. He crossed his arms and grabbed both sides of the collar of his black leather jacket. Then he uncrossed his arms, pulling downward toward his wrists along both brass-studded arm seams. With the tingly ripping sound of Velcro fasteners parting, the jacket came apart at the seams and fell to the floor in two halves.
    Beck began unbuttoning his yellow shirt. “I am also the manager and producer of the Velvet Cloud....”He pulled off the shirt, revealing a slim chest lightly covered with short, curly black hair, did a little bump, and tossed the shirt at Velva. “And president and only major stockholder of Dark Star Records.” Velva caught the shirt, tossed it aside, reached for Beck’s naked flesh.
    Coquettishly, Beck danced away from her, holding up a finger. He stood about five feet away, put his hands on his hips. “And furthermore,” he said, ripping Velcro down the legs of his pants, “I’m vice-president of Eden Records.”
    The pants fell in two halves at his feet, revealing a trim, well-hung body with a wiry thatch of clipped-looking pubic hair that seemed to match his afro. “The rest,” said Jango Beck, “will have to remain mystery.”
    Velva stood there dumbfounded, staring at him, feeling hornier than she had in months. What a sexy man! What an important sexy man!
    “You may ball me if you like,” said Jango Beck, sinking back on the water bed and opening his arms in invitation. Velva laughed and threw herself on top of him.
    He was coy, then tender, then languid for a long, long time, then deeply penetrating and deliberate, then musky and hot, then fast and powerful. After Velva was satisfied —really satisfied—he tapered off through the same stages he had built up. He was just about the best technical lay she had ever had.
    But throughout the whole performance, he had seemed a million miles away, cool and aloof, and whenever she chanced to look at them, those dark eyes seemed to be quietly laughing at her. Not laughing cruelly, but laughing just the same. It excited her in a strange way, but it was also a little frightening....
    And now here I am, she thought, about to meet Jango for the second time. What do I really know about him? I’ve balled him, but what do I really know?
    The Rambler rounded a turn, abruptly revealing a huge amorphous house half-buried in foliage at the peak of the hill still a good distance above them. Dozens of lights of many tints glowed from windows of various shapes set at at least five or six different levels. Trees and vines, whipped by the Santa Ana, flicked back and forth across the lighted windows creating strange strobe effects, turning the house on the hill into a strange, somehow ominous giant light show. Beautiful, yet vaguely sinister, like its master.
    The road straightened now, and ahead of them, Velva could see strings of headlights moving up through the darkness toward the fairy castle on the hill.
    Fairy castle? No, it was no fairy castle, it had too much of Dracula’s house in it. She couldn’t figure out how it made her feel at all. She seemed to be happy, fearful, nervous, and turned on, all at once. All those feelings seemed wound together inside her like a multicolored ball of twine scraps.
    Which, come to think of it, was exactly what it had felt like in that black leather room body to body with Jango Beck.
     

VI
     
    Paul Conrad decided to be impressed. Why not? Jango Beck had a good cinematic eye; all of this couldn’t be pure dumb chance. The long, winding drive up through the darkness, like a long slow fade through black away from whatever scene you were coming from, then—bang! hitting you with the new scene as you rounded the bend. What Conrad admired most was what had not been done. The estate grounds along the approach had not been landscaped, the road had not been lit, and the tangled