Page 14 - Effable Encounters

Krud

A tired voice within responded.
“Oh, yeah. It’s Vince, right? Yeah, let him in, Bigfoot.”
Lazaretto entered the windowless storage room and found a stool.
His movement through the chamber insufflated a sour bouquet of
post-performance odors into his nasal cavities: sweat, cologne,
burning insulation, illegal pharmacopoeia. Krud faced him, turning
sideways from a portable dressing table strewn with crumpled tissues
and small canisters of makeup and medicine.
“Hi, Sheldon.” said Vince. “I hear you knocked ‘em dead.
Unqualified success, this trip.”
The composer-singer-actor-dancer permitted himself a brief smile;
the wrinkles thus invoked revealed the man’s habits, not his age.
Sheldon Schacht shrugged, rotating bony shoulders inside a terry-
cloth robe; his stage outfit, a chrome-studded leather jumpsuit, lay
crumpled on the floor.
“You got a cigarette, Vince?” he rasped. “I’m almost calm; good
time to test my blood pressure—but not my urine.”
Vince chuckled. Squirt Records had many uses for its petty cash.
Artists had to be indulged, or they would peddle their product
elsewhere. On the other hand, Squirt’s executives had obligations,
which, if not met, could lead to their own removal. Vince’s job was
not easy, welding corporate culture and artistic anti-culture into a
joint venture bringing fulfillment to both. But his talents were
appreciated: he was amply rewarded whenever one of his productions
ended up as a gold or platinum record framed in mahogany behind
the president’s desk.
And Krud’s third, most-recent album, Torn Limbs, had gone
platinum. Banned in the Bible Belt and denied airplay in half the
national markets, it nevertheless found its audience: disaffected
youth with disposable income. Refusing to sign contracts for more
than one release at a time, Krud had not made as much on the hit as
he might have; now the ball was back in the company’s court. Vince
Lazaretto held the key to millions of dollars in his hands.
For the moment he silently offered the younger man a cigarette,
flicking it to flame with a silver lighter. Squirt Records had given
Schacht fairly free rein in determining the form and content of his
first three releases; not much money had been invested in the
recording sessions, and the company normally had low expectations

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