Cherry Red Surcingle boards the twilight bus to Carousel City. Cherry’s twenty-seven, small, soft, fleshy, rounded like the fruit, with a hard centre. She’s dressed in a blood red sweater, navy velvet shorts, six shiny buttons, and thigh-high ruby velvet boots, six-inch heels. Stands 4-foot-6 in her stockinged feet, a miniature cameo of a woman. Cherry’s constantly wooed by lovers, all sorts. When she’s excited, she flicks her immaculately coiffured mousy blonde hair and murmurs ‘mm’ like a thirsty bather sipping soda in the heat on the sun-baked beach of summer love.
Cherry Red is the sensational singer at the Dog and Doll Club in Eva Street where she duets with her late husband, soothing you with her syrupy Texan drawl. She carries a Pekinese called Frankie inside her handbag wherever she goes. Frankie has a bow on his head that matches her sweater. Let me attempt to explain…
*****
‘How much is that dog in the window?’ asked Cherry, ‘I wish that dog was mine.’
‘The one with a wiggly tail?’ replied the creatist, all-clone, pure laboratory creation, stunning in a red round-neck, short-sleeve dress, flashing hologram badge: ‘Marian’.
‘Mm.’
‘£500,000 including transmogrification, 10% off for instant iris-recognition payment.’
‘Wrap him up, I’ll take him!’
Cherry attached her coral iris to Marian’s palm pay pad.
‘Is my husband ready?’
‘Ready as he’ll ever be!’ gushed Marian, ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to…’
‘That’s ok, it’s cool. How long will it take to make a mutt out of my man?’
‘Half an hour or so?’
Marian smiled, wrapping the dog up in membrane, ‘Come and watch us in the chapel.’
Cherry’s eyes popped with amazement, ‘Really? I can watch?!’
‘Of course! Did you remember to bring your husband’s most treasured possession?’
Cherry fell quiet, wiping away a solitary tear as she handed over Frank’s favourite red bow.
‘Thank you, Mrs Surcingle,’ Marian said, all gracious, ‘Now, if you’d like to follow me.’
The husband lay cold and blue in a recyclable cardboard box, none the worse for his death. Monadelphous filaments of anti-freeze fluid wormed from his flesh into a transmogrifier.
Marian gently put the dog to sleep, laying him across the corpse’s chest with the bow, and switched on the machine which, incidentally, whirred and hummed and glowed all scarlet. Cherry glanced nervously at her iridium wristwatch:
I mustn’t miss the twilight bus to the club…
*****
He watches her, his idol, falls for her there and then, outside the chapel. Sidles up to her in the street. Cherry’s preoccupied with the mutt in her handbag, the bow on his head. Frankie is wooing her unashamedly, twitching his nose, wagging his tail wildly. The big man wears army fatigues, a candy pink hairband. He wants her, needs her, woos her:
‘When the children are asleep, we’ll sit and dream.’
He sings his heart out. She ignores him. He was too forward. His heart sinks.
He sings again, plaintively, in melancholic tones:
‘Longing to hold you, but afraid and shy. I let my golden chances pass me by.’
She pushes her man-dog’s head deeper into her handbag, turning down Carousel Avenue into Oklahoma Street. He follows her from a safe distance, hiding in the shadows, as quiet as her phantom. Cherry Red’s biggest fan. What’s love got to do with it? What’s love but a second-hand emotion? He follows her to the bus station. The lights are much brighter there, you can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares in Downtown. He watches her as she sits down, looking gloomy, unwraps her dog, and sits him up in her handbag,
‘I’m so blue, Frankie.’
Cherry who is missing Frank, goes and stands silently by the fountain, eying three shiny copper coins, lying on the mosaiced bottom.
The big man won’t forget what happens next.
‘Three coins in the fountain,’ Frankie croons, ‘Each will bring you happiness. There for certain young lovers. Which one will the fountain bless?’
‘Make it mine!’ Cherry wishes, ‘Make it mine! Make it mine!’
He looks on, astounded, as the hound gazes into Cherry’s teary eyes, cheering her. A silver auto-hover-bus floats in, bound for Uptown. The dog begins to sing,
‘My kinda town, Chicago is…’
Cherry rebukes him, laughing, ‘Frankie! Stop it!’
The mutt stops singing, flexes his red bow, looks up sorrowfully at his mistress.
‘So, here’s to you, New York, Ne-ew York!’ he sings, wagging his tail.
‘This is Carousel City, silly!’ Cherry howls.
‘I’m sorry,’ nods the mutt, a dumb muppet expression on its stupid face.
Cherry can’t help but bend over double, crying hysterically, loving being so happy. Cringing, creasing up, laughing so hard, she nearly wets herself.
‘Does this bus go past the Doll & Dog Club?’ she asks the Bus, struggling to contain herself.
‘The Dog and Doll, Lady? Sure, hop aboard,’ replies the Bus, ‘Dogs travel free b-t-w!’
She registers the big man, handsome brute, listening to her,
‘Coming along for the ride?’
‘Sorry, I have to work.’
‘Too bad!’ she calls over her shoulder, ‘You’ll miss my greatest performance!’
The doors slam shut and the bus floats off down 42nd Street. Cherry’s pale face moons at the man until the bus turns right into Old Broadway.
The Dog and Doll Club in Eva Street, eh? he thinks. Know it well. Just got time to call into Hotel California and get changed…
The Club heaves with an eclectic mix of bleeding hearts, artists, thespians and musicians, all quaffing blushing peachy Bellini’s. Pet City slickers, guzzling Coors. Tigers, picking at piss-flavoured peanuts, mushy olives. They stop dead, stand in silence, staring at him as he enters.
He waits for her to hit the stage, perched at the bar in his favourite white tuxedo, a black silk bowtie, looking particularly suave and sophisticated. A big guitar twangs in the background. He swivels, crouches, lets off six rounds from his imaginary luger pistol.
She clutches her chest, smiles, pretends to swoon. There is no blood, no scarlet bloom. She likes her men like that, finds them exciting. Cue the hiss of brush on drums, the slide of hand on guitar, a throbbing thumb on a bass, the big sax…
The crowd roar as she stands before them, licking her sweet desire rouge lips, eager to sing, raking her slim fingers through her smart short pink-stained auburn-blonde hair, her latest look. She’s adorable, kinda woman who’d look like a goddess dressed in rags.
Tonight, Cherry has thrown on an enticing, low-cut, strawberry bonbon dress to show off her freckled ivory skin, cosily wrapped in a fluffed-up, fake fur stole.
‘What can I get you,’ squeaks the barman, his black-oiled hair slicked back in one foul swoop behind his ears. He’s wearing too-tight trousers, a short-sleeved shirt, blue day-glow tie.
‘Martini, on the rocks, shaken not stirred,’ says the man, ‘Make it two, one for the lady!’
The barman shakes himself into a frenzy, rippling his biceps, decanting two martinis out of a big chrome shaker into frosted tumblers full of icebergs. The man asks for three maraschino cherries to suck off the sticks, like they used to in Baby Cham ads, and flashes his brown iris.
The barman holds up a hand, ‘That won’t be necessary, Sir. It’s on the house.’
Cherry Red Surcingle walks up to the serrated chrome microphone to give her moonlight serenade. When she speaks, her drawl is drawn-out and lingering. Meanwhile, in the crowded bar, the men’s hearts pound like steam-hammers in their chests.
‘Missed me? Long time since Vegas,’ she coos.
Her voice drowns in the roar of the crowd.
‘Still love me, do you?’
She’s teasing them. They worship her.
‘Well, then.’
She blows them a kiss. Then Cherry sings, to the shivery shrill of the slide guitar:
‘Me and my dog get around, me and my dog gonna get on down…’
They rise to their feet. Some of the younger guys rush the stage. She drives them crazy,
‘It’s just my situation, Baby, feel this all the time…’
‘Cherry we love you!’ they cry.
‘You’ve got my imagination… working overtime…’
‘Can’t take much more,’ puffs the big man smoking the fat Cohiba cigar.
Frankie pops his head out from under Cherry’s stole:
‘Baby! Baby!’ he barks, ‘Baby! Baby!’
*****
Cherry Red came to Carousel City in search of music, love and romance. She left early this morning with an amazing dog-husband, a big man, and a little baby, bound for a blissful new life in Vegas.
Cherry Red, the futuristic bride!
