A Little Night Music Read Online Free PDF Page A

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                          Dr. Frank N. Furter blinked two glittery pink eyelids in consideration. “Fifty bucks.”
                          “Thirty and you wash your hands.”
                          “Deal.”
                          With a flourishing removal of leather bands and boas, he-she-it dipped into a side door. Jon heard a faucet running and a paper towel ripped from its housing. He fished out his wallet. Thirty bucks for some bullshit story . At least here Jon was the sanest person in the room.
                          “I’m Echo.” Jon spotted the tensile veins in Echo’s forearm as he reached for the cast - definitely a dude.
                          Jon handed Echo three ten-dollar bills. He was infinitely more reluctant with the trumpet.
                          “I’m not going to blow it,” said Echo.
                          Jon’s solar plexus felt tampered with. He would kill Gabe for sending him here. Switchblade in a dark alley kind of kill.
                          Echo took the case and led Jon to two high-back velvet wing chairs separated by a table covered with what could have been a sultan's robe with its jewels and intricately stitched open and closed eyes.  Already Echo’s guttural note of disapproval upon possession of the instrument made Jon’s nerves scramble inward for protection.
                          Jon settled in the chair. Echo hovered over his as if fully committing to the task at hand was something he had reconsidered. He lowered himself and opened the case as if expecting the gruesome remains of a homicide victim or a Bible.
                          In the blue-speckled teardrop lamp over the table, the trumpet took on a foreign hue, a dark cast not apparent in daylight or the yellows and reds of the stage lamps. In Echo’s hands, it trembled.
                          Jon stared, transfixed.
    Echo exhaled, long and deep. His tar breath hit Jon in a foul wave. The whites of his eyes transitioned to glittery pink and spider web lashes as he closed them. His black fingernails trembled.
                          “You feel it too,” said Echo, all pretense, all theatrics absent from his voice. It wasn’t a question, it was knowledge.
    In this new, genuine tone, Jon found absolute conviction. He tried to remind himself of the thirty bucks for a bullshit story, but this person before him who had given himself over to the task in such a genuine way made Jon forgot the voodoo dolls and dragon statues and pentagrams. Everything in the room slipped away but the trumpet and the falsetto of Echo’s voice.
    “Yes.”
    “Someone has placed something on this.”
    “A curse?”
    “Nothing like that. At least not what you might think.” Echo hesitated, stroking the bell’s curve. He treated the instrument with such reverence, Jon’s fierce protectiveness of the trumpet all but died.
    “Powerful enchantment to be sure, but it’s not dark. It’s almost…” Echo hesitated, searching the overhead lamp for the precise word—a hesitancy so unmistakable, Jon thought it absurd that Echo should worry about an insanity judgment past his green tights and peacock-feather tail. Jon expected him to say light or positive or inspirational. He did not expect him to say what came next.
    “Love.”
    “Excuse me?”
    Echo came back to planet Earth with a firmer declaration. “Love. No question.”
    “But not a curse?”
    “Think of it as good fortune for anyone who plays it.”
    “Love is not good fortune.”
    “Love is always good fortune. That tie, however?” Echo made a whooshing sound, followed by a tsk and a stink-face. Moment of  bonding passed. This coming from a guy who thinks a dog collar with a moon pendant passes for bling? Thirty