A NIGHT IN THE VAULT

Clay didn’t know what had happened. One minute he was singing, bouncing around the stage, enjoying the mildness of the New York autumn and the excitement of the throng of fans. The next minute as he was leaving the stage, a gang of faceless figures grabbed him. They hustled him roughly through a door he would have sworn wasn’t there a moment before, into a dimly lit and echoey room. Before he could resist they chained him to the wall and headed for the door. “See you tomorrow—maybe,” one said.

“Wait!” he cried. “What’s going on? What is this place? Why am I here?”

“This is the Vault. It’s rarely used, which accounts for the musty smell of old Duran Duran videos. You’ve been sent here for 24 hours. We’ll be back for you tomorrow, if they want you back.” The figure jerked a thumb toward the door and what lay beyond it, and he and his companions exited. Clay yelled as they slammed the door behind them, and then jerked at the chains around his wrists until he slumped back against the wall, exhausted and confused.

What was this? He’d never heard of any vault. Heck, he’d been number one on TRL! What was he doing in some vault? There were people who disliked him, though Lord knew he couldn’t figure out why. Were those the ‘they’ who would determine his fate? For all those folks cared Clay could stay in here till he rotted and was forgotten. Or was it the network, or the label…or the fans? Fans forgot so easily—

Not MY fans! he argued with himself. They’re different. They wouldn’t have done this to me! The fans ran TRL, though, or so the network insisted, so that was the only option—except that Clay refused to believe it.

The vault was cold; he shivered and was thankful for the slight warmth of several layers under his gray hooded jacket. It was dusty, too. He could move only a couple of steps in each direction, but that was far enough to see shelves lined with video tape cases. Had all those acts done time in this virtual prison? His arms and feet were starting to hurt—he couldn’t stand like this all night and the next day, and however long after…Clay shivered again, and closed his eyes. “Don’t leave me here,” he whispered. “Please, God, don’t let them leave me here.”

As if in response to his prayer, there was a rattle outside, and the door swung open. Women poured through the opening, women of every age and size and shade and shape, all stylishly dressed for burglary in basic black—no, dark purple, he saw when he looked again. They swarmed over him, calling his name and reaching out to touch him.

“We found him! Clayton!”

“Oh, Clay, thank Sedaka you’re all right!”

“Those MTV bast—uh, well, you know, them and their skank h—I mean—“

Several got into a small tussle—something about someone named Waldo—and ended up challenging each other to rassle in Jello. The confrontation escalated until a woman with a large set of keys grabbed a spatula from another and waded in, whacking indiscriminately about her and informing all involved that there would be no rassling in Jello as long as she was the Keeper of the Keys. They could take their differences outside and settle them in vanilla pudding. That sounded, if Clay were honest, quite promising, especially when he paused to consider the cleanup phase of such an event.

“Who are you gurrls?” he finally got a word in edgewise after the feuding parties had, somewhat to his secret disappointment, resolved their conflict with nothing messier than a group hug.

The hubbub ceased, and the woman with the keys returned the spatula to its owner and drew herself up to her full height. “We,” she declared, “are your Broads, Clayton. And, by the way, you are the only one who may call us gurrls.”

“The Lecherous Broads!” For the first time since his ordeal began, Clay found he could smile. “I should’ve known you wouldn’t desert me.”

He started as a thud echoed through the vault. Several Broads lay prostrate on the floor, and the cloud of dust they raised had everyone else coughing for a few moments. “Must’ve been the smile,” the Keeper of the Keys grumbled and went to help rouse them.

Clay looked around him at the horde of beautiful women, and his heart swelled with gratitude (well, that wasn’t all that swelled, but he tried not to think about that—after all, he was a gentleman). “I could just hug all of y’all!” he cried.

This thud shook the room, as most of the remaining Broads fell over. “Oh, damn—I mean darn it!” exclaimed the seemingly indestructible Keeper. “It’s all your fault, Clay Aiken.” She brought the keys over and tried every one in the manacles around his wrists, without success.

Clay was disheartened, but did his best not to show it. “At least you made an effort,” he said softly to the Keeper. “Thank you for trying.” She looked into his eyes, and collapsed in a heap.

“Nelle!” several Broads who were recovering from their own inexplicable falls yelled, and rushed to her side.

“The EF, the EF,” she muttered as they helped her sit up. “Or is that OF, I forget…I need a cigarette…who’s got a calendar, somebody count off nine months from right now, and start knitting booties…”

With Nelle temporarily out of commission, other Broads filled the void. Two attacked the chains themselves, one wearing biker boots and wielding a tire iron, the other dressed like Xena and swinging a sword. A third whipped two long metal knitting needles from a tote bag (it had, Clay noticed, a picture of him on it, one of those dorky bathroom floor shots) and began busily poking with them at an electric control box she found mounted on the wall behind a faded A-ha poster. After frizzing her hair a few times, she got a connection, and the chains began to unroll from the wall. By the time they reached their full length and stopped, instead of being pinned to the wall Clay could move around most of the room and almost to the door (he didn’t go that way, too frustrating) “Whew, that’s much better!” he sighed in relief as his arms dropped to his sides. He twisted his ankles, and could at last stretch his stiff neck and shoulders.

“That neck,” sighed one Broad who bared her teeth as if she’d like to take a nip out of it.

“Those shoulders,” sighed the Broad with the knitting needles, and nearly poked her eye out with one.

“Bendy feet!” groaned yet another.

Alarmed, Clay realized somebody needed to take charge of the situation. “All right, that’s it!” he ordered and wagged a finger at them. “No more thudding! Understand?”

A Broad in a black and white T shirt (was that logo from some comic book?) fell to her knees. “Yes, sir!” she gasped, her face ecstatic.

True to his word, Clay hugged each and every one of them, and was amazed and moved by the love in every touch (although he had a hard time persuading Michelle, the Broad in the T shirt, out of crawling to him and mumbling something about needing a good spanking). At least he thought he had gotten to them all, until he saw one sitting in a corner crying. Several others were gathered around her. “What’s wrong?” he asked Nelle, who had finally emerged from her delirium.

“Mary’s our TRL vote coordinator. She’s been inconsolable ever since this happened—she’s convinced she’s somehow to blame.”

“That’s stupid.” At a plethora of Broadly scowls he hastily added, “I mean, you know—oh, heck—Mary!” Clay walked over as far as he could and reached out to her.

“Come on, Mary,” the others urged her. “Clay wants you!” She shook her head and kept sobbing apologies, but they finally coaxed her to get up and go to him.

“This isn’t your fault, Mary,” he murmured and hugged her tighly. “Please don’t give up on me, gurrl. I need your help to get out of here!”

She wiped her tears away and a grim determination showed in her face as she touched the chains that bound him. “We will get you out, Clay!”

“But not tonight, unfortunately,” Nelle said. “None of my keys work on those.”

“Are you sure?” the Broad with the spatula protested. “We could take him back to the Ranch and get him back here in the morning before anybody suspects. I can rustle him up a tasty meal, and he can get a good night’s—uh—well, at least he’ll have a comfy bed, ding dang it…”

“I don’t think so, Wendy,” Nelle said sadly.

The Broads and Clay were silent for a moment. Then one Broad waddled to the door. “In that case,” she said and pulled the door shut with a clang, “looks like slumber party time! Who brought the food? Somebody help me stack up some of these tapes so I can prop my feet up on them, my ankles are swelling.” She sat down and rubbed her belly. “I think this is your fault too, Clay Aiken.”

With that, the Broads began to delve into bags, pockets and cleavage, and to chat excitedly among themselves. “Somebody remembered the cards, right? Oh my god, that’s not Sprite, it’s Mountain Dew! He’ll be so wired we can hang him from the ceiling—come to think about it, that opens up all kinds of new possibilities. Krispy Kremes? Check. Twister? Check!”

Clay stared in disbelief as dozens of pairs of purple flannel pajamas appeared. “What—you’re staying?”

“Hel—lo!!” came a chorus of replies.

“If we can’t get you out right now, the least we can do is to keep you company,” Mary said firmly.

“Unless you don’t want us to, eh?” remarked another Broad.

“No—I mean yes—ah—“ Clay had a fleeting vision of his mom’s face if she ever found out he had spent a night with dozens of beautiful women in their pajamas (which they were clambering into even now—how on earth did women do that without showing their altogether?) “No, I don’t want you to leave. Yes, please stay.”

“Please stay,” moaned a Broad wearing, of all things, a tiara with her pajamas. “Oh, to hear that from those lips without being surrounded by a horde of other people…even other Broads.”

“Hush,” said the obviously expectant Broad, her feet comfortably elevated, “and pass the donuts.”

Time raced by faster than Clay would have imagined possible. They ate donuts and drank soda and played games and poked through the piles of old videos, some of which Broads acted out to the amusement of all. In fact, he hadn’t laughed so hard in months. The Broads were forever trying to sneak something in on him, though, such as when an apparently innocent game of poker was suggested. “I don’t have any money on me,” Clay mourned.

“Oh, we didn’t plan on that anyway,” one Broad piped up. “We all know you’re too darn cheap to play for money. We were thinking more along the lines of strip poker.” Clay looked around at the circle of lecherous grins, remembered he was abysmally bad at cards, and politely declined.

The dusty vault was a far more pleasant place, though still chilly. When Clay shivered, the Broad with the knitting needles (he thought she was a Lisa, though it seemed at least a half dozen of his visitors answered to that name) grabbed another Broad, retired to a corner and pulled an inexhaustible strand of fat purple yarn from that bag of hers. In no time, they had whipped up a warm and soft throw they wrapped around him. “Wish I’d had time to do matching socks for you,” Lisa apologized.

One by one, the Broads nodded off. When Clay’s eyelids grew heavy, he spread the purple throw on the floor and curled up between two Broads. The nearest one snuggled up to him; but every so often as he dozed he heard sleepy grunts and shoves. “Move over, it’s my turn!” Then another body spooned up to his and another pair of arms slid around him, and he smiled drowsily and drifted back to sleep.

He woke to a hand draped across his chest and a dreamy voice sighing, “Clipple…who’s got the clipple?” Whatever that meant, he didn’t particularly want to move; but he heard activity, and rolled over when the hand moved away to see the Broads busily packing their gear.

“Let’s get with it!” Mary had become a regular slavedriver. “We’ve got voting to do! Let’s get packed and out of here!”

Deb, one of the knitting Broads, collected the purple throw with a regretful air. “We’ll hold on to it for you till our next slumber party,” she told Clay. “Hopefully it’ll be in more pleasant surroundings. We can’t leave it here now, though.”

“That’s right,” one Broad cautioned. “We’ve got to put everything back as it was.” Clay knew what that meant, and he didn’t like it one bit. He bit his lip and tried not to think about it while they bustled around putting videos back on shelves and wiping up spilled soda. When everytihng else was done they all gathered around, and he not only hugged but kissed every Broad goodbye. A few swayed, but not one fell over. Every one had tears in her eyes and a promise on her lips.

“We’ll get you out of here, Clay.”

“These rat as—uh, they haven’t seen anything yet. You just wait!”

Mary came last. “Not only are we going to get you out of here,” she said, “we’re going to put you back on top. You’ll see. We like you there.”

“I like it there too,” he admitted with a grin that almost felt lecherous. My goodness, maybe they were rubbing off on him!

Michelle growled, and the round of giggles made it easier for him to stand back against the wall and let the chains be eased back into place. The Broads left much more slack than before. “If they notice, screw—I mean, forget them,” Nelle said. “Let ‘em think you got really ticked off and pulled them out!”

A group of Broads paused and pulled out notebooks. “Mmm. This gives me an idea—“ one began, busily scribbling.

“Me too!” said another.

“Come on, you fic ho’s, we’ve got work to do! Let’s go dial our pooty fingers off!”

With more tears and promises, they slipped out the door and closed it behind them. Clay leaned back against the wall, and held tight to the memories of their love and lechery through the weary hours that followed. Surprisingly, it seemed like a very short time before the ones who had dragged him in here returned, with baffled shakes of their heads, and released him. Before he left, Clay turned and looked around the vault one more time, then walked out with his head high, to the welcoming screams of a crowd. Whenever he met trouble, he knew now, as he never had before, who had his back.

(Although they wanted his backside too, as well as most of his other body parts, and he still hadn’t figured that out…)