Shelley was in trouble because she had the key but couldn’t use it, like Rump before. Couldn’t get it off her neck; hung there like an useless, object-less necklace, product of The Void obviously. The Venus Cage had manifest for real, one of its dark powers.
“And *stay* there until I return,” George called back unnecessarily, walking away from the scene — as The Musician — to a local gig at the Pink Think bar, first in a series of such, he hoped. “Great Gig in the Sky” he wanted to title it, thinking of another Pink. The beanstalk to the 3700m high joint broke off like a collapsed tornado, falling falling falling in the far distance. He’d put that into a song as well, maybe the one about Money — Cash — he’d been working on. He’d heard about red cash for the first time from a man at the bar at the same time as him, a man in black, he recalls. Tall. He was with another guy who goes by Biff — remembered his name because of the detergent. The other guy — yes, Able. *Albert*. Both seemed to be stalking someone: different people, he gathered, but both leading them to here, this Gemini retconned from Mercury (get to that in a bit again). “If you turn totally green,” the man called Albert said to him, shared martinis all around, “then you’re done — *cooked*. “You have to keep a bit of red about you or else… (not) here.”
“Amen,” said Biff sitting across from him, to the left side of me. He was reading a small, wine red book, which I guess counted for his protecting talisman. I wondered what Albert had on about him of the same color. Perhaps a pen? Or a scarlet handkerchief in his lapel pocket that he could whip out at any time for a sneezing damsel in distress? But I daydream (within the daydream). Back to Albert…
(to be continued)
