little t&a

jump right ahead and you're dead

Peter and Ace stuck around for a couple hours. Long enough that Paul heated up the leftover pizza for them, and Gene ended up getting two more delivered, while the forgotten remains of both their Dairy Queen milkshakes just melted in Paul's car. Paul confessed to nearly everything, from when Gene had first come over to the call to Steve Rubell's secretary.

Peter had been pretty loath to talk about witchcraft and ways to alleviate the curse at any real length. It seemed to make him as queasy as it did Gene. Ace, on the other hand, perused Paul's occult books for awhile, and offered to scour some old hippie contacts and see if they still knew any witches.

"Or Suzie. But she would've told you herself if she knew anyone good." Ace had shrugged, devouring another slice of pizza. "Thing is... thing is, you're better off going to the source. You just don't wanna mess with it yourself if you don't have to. You got really fucked up. You don't wanna risk making it any worse, getting someone else to try to fix it."

"You think someone might turn me into a frog on accident?"

Ace had laughed.

"We could get you a cute costume that way. What d'you think, Geno?"

"We could get him a cute costume now."

"Bet you already have."

Paul's face went red. Ace winked.

"But... really, thing is, this kind of shit isn't your basic curse."

"I didn't know there was such a thing."

"Y'know, bad luck for a couple months, bad acne, psoriasis, that kinda curse." Ace ran a thumb across his own pockmarked cheek, then added, unnecessarily, "I've had this since I landed on Earth, it ain't a curse—but that's about all most witches could've done to you."

"Anybody ever do anything to you, Ace?" Paul asked. It was a pretty fair question, Gene felt like. Ace used to run with a weird crowd. Still did. But Ace shook his head.

"Nah. Well, Suzie told me KISS'd never get a number-one single here. But that was more of a prediction—"

"She's wrong." Gene dismissed her out of hand. Across from him, sitting on the coffee table, Peter nodded in agreement. Ace shrugged.

"What I mean is, it could take awhile to fix, and that's if she wants to fix it."

"Ace, we're not canceling the tour."

"'M not saying cancel." Ace gnawed heavily on his lip. Gene could tell he was just about to ask Paul for a beer. "But how far back do you think we could push it? Couple months?"

"We couldn't push it back any without Bill wanting a reason why," Gene said flatly.

"So let's give him a reason why." Ace exhaled. "I'll... y'know, I never did have a big honeymoon with Jeanette. I could tell him I wanted three weeks for that."

"That's only three weeks—"

"Yeah, but..." Ace reached for the Tab Peter had been drinking out of, finishing it off with a gulp. "It's about buying time. We could keep on finding excuses if we had to."

"I don't want you to have to," Paul said. "I don't want to fuck things up for everybody."

The silence lingered for several moments. No one said a word to argue his point. Paul's gaze lowered to one of the cardboard pizza boxes, and, next to it, the box of Gene's Studio 54 clothes. Finally, Peter spoke.