Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite! (27 page)

I didn't follow golf.

'I guess.'

Then he let out a strangely high-pitched little snort of a laugh, or at least, it seemed strange coming from his large frame.

'Kite,' he said. 'Like Mr Kite, in the song. Nice.'

He grunted, then started running his hand down his beard as he considered the fact that he was talking to someone called Kite, which seemed to be of interest to him.

'You ever heard of the Jigsaw Man?' I asked.

He grunted again.

'That's what you're looking for, is it?' he said.

'What d'you mean?'

'You asked for the
Alternate Sgt. Pepper
bootleg, so you're looking for the Jigsaw Man. But that bootleg's not what you're after.'

I shook my head. It wasn't, after all. It didn't mean that I actually knew what I was after. Since I had no idea what that was, I thought it best to say as little as possible and hope that the guy with the beard filled the gaps. Some people don't like silence, and usually it's a good idea to use that fact.

'You know what happens if you Google "Sgt. Pepper" and "the Jigsaw Man"?' he asked.

I hadn't thought of that, which is weird in itself. It's my generation, I suppose. The generation that grew up without the internet. It still hasn't become the default setting. When a problem arises, one still tries to sort it out by some other means, before finally realising that no matter what the problem is, someone else will have had it and will have written about it online.

Folk growing up now, like Baggins, mostly believe that there's no reason to learn anything at all, ever, because instant knowledge is available at an instant click.

'No,' I said.

'Nothing,' he replied. 'You know, you get a bunch of pages of
Sgt. Pepper
jigsaw puzzles, or various shit where the two separate items are mentioned on the same page. But not many people know about the Jigsaw Man and his part in the album.'

He stared at me from behind all the facial hair. He was eyeing me up, deciding whether or not to trust me.

'How come you know about it?' he asked at length.

'I'm a Beatles scholar,' I said, deciding for some reason to protect my source, the waitress. 'I know stuff,' I added unnecessarily.

'Oh yeah? What do you know?' he said.

I didn't reply. Two minutes ago I'd been relying on silence, and then I go and boast about knowing stuff.

'What have you got on
Sgt. Pepper
?' I asked, trying to move the conversation along.

'Scholar, eh?' he said, continuing the thing where we were having two different conversations. 'That mean you've written something, or do you just read?'

'I wrote a couple of online articles last year,' I said.

'Hit me,' he said.

'Wrote one about who was the coolest Beatle,' I said, and as I said it, it sounded incredibly slight and pointless and stupid. Who was the coolest Beatle? Really? That was the best I could do? How about who was the Jigsaw Man?

'Ha!' he barked. 'You wrote that shit?'

I nodded.

'Too embarrassed to put your own name on it, eh? Billy Shears. Ha! Not surprised. I thought maybe it was written by Mrs Harrison.'

'It was me,' I said.

It seemed a long time ago, a different life. It had been a different life, those six months out, the right time to concentrate on trivialities. Now, however, everything seemed more serious. Even conversations with waitresses and guys in record shops were weighted with significance.

'You ever met Paul McCartney?' he asked.

I shook my head.

'Coolest. Guy. Ever,' he said.

I nodded. I had no interest in defending my previous position. Indeed, my only current interest in the Beatles was in getting to the bottom of the
Sgt. Pepper
mystery, as I'd become convinced that therein lay some sort of answer to the enigma of the Jigsaw Man.

'Wait a minute,' he said, barely missing off the doggone, 'tell me it wasn't you who wrote that dog turd of a thing about Paul being dead and his replacement's place in musical history.'

I didn't answer. After all, I couldn't tell him that I hadn't written it.

'Holy crap, you're a piece of work. You need to meet Mr McCartney some day, learn some humility.'

'
Sgt. Pepper
?' I asked, persevering beyond his contempt.

He shook his head and looked despondent, as though I'd finally argued him into submission.

'There's an album,' he said. 'It's rare, but then, it's kind of pointless. It's known as
Revolver 2
, and it's
Sgt. Pepper
before the Jigsaw Man got involved...'

'
Revolver 2
? You're making that up.'

'Hey, kid, I work in a bootleg music shop and you write barely readable shit on the internet. You think I care if you believe me or not?'

'All right.
Revolver 2
. Shouldn't
Revolver 2
be outtakes from
Revolver
?'

'You mean, like
Jaws 2
is outtakes from
Jaws
?'

'Do we have to have a pedantic argument about different standards in nomenclature between the bootleg album and the movie business?'

'Whatever, kid. You want me to tell you about
Revolver 2
, or you want to get your ass out of my shop?'

'Tell me about
Revolver 2
,' I said.

He gave me something of a sceptical look, but he was talking.

'To be honest, it's shit. Most of those songs, man, you know... they're just not all that great. You ever think that?'

I looked at him, but didn't answer. It was as if I didn't want to publically denounce
Sgt. Pepper
. But, of course I'd thought it.

'You strip away all the shenanigans and the sound effects and the whatever and, like, what have you got? Well, kid, you've got
Revolver 2
, the original unimaginative album. Then the Jigsaw Man came along, whipped them into shape and gave them some direction.'

'You have a copy?'

'Not any more,' he said, shrugging. 'Sold one last week though.'

'Who to?'

'Like I'm going to tell you,
Paul Is Dead
guy. Who d'you think I am?'

'You know where I can get one?'

'Fuck should I know, bud? Ebay?'

I must have looked crushed, because I could see the immediate softening of his attitude.

'It won't help you, man,' he said.

'What d'you mean?'

'Find the Jigsaw Man, if that's who you're looking for.
Revolver 2
is the album before he got there. If you want to find the Jigsaw Man, you need to look at
Sgt. Pepper.'

We stared at each other across the counter. He suddenly looked lugubrious behind the beard, and I wondered how many customers he actually had through his door.

'You make a living in this place?' I asked.

He gave a minimal shrug.

'Doesn't matter. Made my money in the dotcom boom fifteen years ago. Now I do this. Watch the Mariners every now and again, got my 'hawks season ticket. You? Make a living in crappy online Beatles shit?'

'I'm in coffee,' I said.

He nodded.

'Come to the right place, then,' he said.

––––––––

I
walked back in the direction of the waterfront, still not entirely sure why I was there. Was I just travelling aimlessly around, or was there some underlying purpose to it all?

Coffee. That made sense. Perhaps I needed to concentrate on that, rather than on
Sgt. Pepper
. I'd encountered two people who seemed to know more about the album
Sgt. Pepper
than I did, yet there was no need for those people to have been specific to Seattle. I could have encountered them anywhere on the planet.

What was it that had made Jones drag me here? There was something bigger going on than her just doing it on a whim. This had all started with me thinking myself off a plane, after all. Although that didn't explain why I'd been on the plane in the first place.

My mind rambled on over the events of the past few months, trying to tie everything together. I had to give weight to everything, even the slightest, most insignificant detail. It could all be tied, it might all matter. And perhaps, what really mattered, was the last line from the guy with the beard.

Come to the right place, then
.

If there was some greater hand at work, then there had to be significance in my coming to Seattle. I worked in coffee, doing a job that wouldn't have existed thirty years ago, and the only reason that it existed now was because of a company based in Seattle that had started out as one little emporium dealing in coffee beans, and was now a worldwide franchise, opening on average three new stores every single day of the year.

I went into the next Starbucks that I came across to sit and think things through. I ordered a flat white, wondering if they made it the same way we make it at home.

I took up my position a few tables back from the window, but still with a good view out onto the street. For the first time that day I noticed that the weather was much cloudier than it had been. The women were no longer dressed for summer.

This flat white was a little frothier than I make it. Didn't feel like it had so much substance. Maybe that's what people want. No one expects substance any more. Everyone has forgotten what substance is, what it even means.

I ate the froth using the small wooden stick provided, and knew that at some point I was going to have to get up and buy a product with higher coffee content and something to eat.

A waitress walked by and smiled as I caught her eye.

'Everything all right for you today, sir?' she asked.

'Sure,' I said.

She giggled.

'Cool,' she said. 'You're British. D'you know the Queen?'

I shook my head, and she laughed.

'I'm only kidding. Y'all believe that us Americans think everyone in Britain knows each other.'

I nodded, smiled, and she turned to go.

'You heard of the Jigsaw Man?' I asked.

She stared down at me, then smiled again.

'You mean the guy who does jigsaws?'

'Could be,' I said, then she laughed and I realised that she was just playing along.

'Sorry,' she said. 'Don't know of any Jigsaw Man.'

I shared her smile and she was gone. I think that was best. It was going to freak me out if it turned out that everyone in Seattle had heard of my guy.

Back to coffee. It had to be the reason I was here. Was it worthwhile finding Jones again, as it was her who had brought me to this place? She'd said she'd be at the hotel for a couple of weeks. Assuming she didn't spend her every day in her room, it shouldn't be too hard to find her, wouldn't be too long a wait in the lobby before she came by.

Of course, while I had escaped the temporary mental paralysis which had allowed me to think of nothing but Jones for a few days, it wasn't as though I never wanted to see her again, or that the thought of her didn't still overwhelm me with sorrow, melancholy and gut-wrenching heartache. Nevertheless, it felt a little different. There was, at last, a chink in the obsessive armour, and maybe there was a little light escaping.

I wondered if perhaps she should have said more to me than she had. Perhaps the awkward circumstances had taken her away earlier than intended. Impossible to tell, and the very suggestion implied some sort of grand design. I don't think I was ready to believe in a grand design just yet.

For the moment I had to follow the coffee. Nowhere in Seattle is too far from Starbucks HQ, the imposing red brick building on Utah. But that wasn't it. I needed to be at Pike Place Market, the original home of the company. I'd already walked past it, already passed the relatively new Starbucks store at 1
^st
and Pike, the café on the corner, the gateway to the market.

The market was where I needed to go, but it hadn't been the right time.

Now was the right time.

I dug out the street map of Seattle. It was only going to be a twenty-minute walk, which gave me twenty minutes to work out what I was going to do when I got there. Something made me decide I needed a little longer.

*

I
headed down to the waterfront and leant on a railing for a while. Looked at some yachts that were moored and not going anywhere. There was a guy working on one. On another, there was a cat sitting, its face angled slightly towards the sun. Clouds were flitting past. The sun had started to come and go.

There were a few people out, milling around, nowhere more definite to go than I had. A few cafés, most of the outdoor tables occupied, despite it being cooler than the previous day. A nice atmosphere and I felt myself relax, even though I hadn't thought I'd been especially tense since I'd dragged myself out of the Jones head funk.

I was carrying my bag over my shoulder, although all it had in it was a light jacket and a Seattle street map, which I didn't really need. I seemed to instinctively know my way around.

I think she'd been standing next to me for a few seconds before I realised she was there.

'Hey there, Mr Faraway,' she said. 'Thought I'd lost you.'

I turned and looked at her. Jones in a light summer dress, a cardigan thrown over her shoulders as a concession to the day.

'Small world,' she said, now that she had my attention. Another smile, then she looked away and faced the water, the slight breeze coming off the sound and catching her hair.

'How are you and Piotr getting on?' I asked, managing to invest the question, so I believed, with absolutely no bitterness.

She made a slight noise of exasperation, and then dismissed all thoughts of Piotr with one of her casual waves.

'I'm leaving tomorrow,' she said.

That didn't surprise me in the slightest.

'Relationship run its course?' I asked.

'I'm reading for a part. Theatre. Not really me, haven't done the stage in years, but needs must, etc., etc. Piotr's mad, of course, but I can't sit around here for the rest of my life just so he's got someone to fuck at the end of the day.'