“Yeah,” I say, “I’m here to see Ike Kavanagh… from Scarface.”
“One moment, I’ll just phone down to the studio and let his tour manager know that you’re here… Hi, yes, this is Kelly from reception, I’ve got someone here to see Ike.”
This isn’t right. This is all wrong. I wonder if Kelly has ever had athlete’s foot. I wonder if Ike has shagged her yet.
“OK, that’s fine,” she says, smiling at me with a mouthful of expensively whitened tooth enamel. “Someone will be up to collect you in a minute.”
I sink into a long leather sofa and flick through one of a pile of Music Week magazines that are stacked up on the table next to me. I feel like I’m in the waiting room of a millionaire music mogul turned evil suburban dentist: Brian Epstein meets David Geffen meets Laurence Oliver in Marathon Man. I think about pretending to be Dustin Hoffman by stuffing some tissue paper in my cheeks, and asking Kelly if it’s ‘safe’, but I don’t think she’d get it. It’s
at least ten minutes before anyone bothers to come up and collect me.
The practice room itself is the size of a small aircraft hangar. It’s got a raised wooden stage at one end and an overhead lighting rig illuminating piles of amps and guitars and drum cases at the other. Scarface are still on stage. Ike is throwing messy rock poses with his guitar while his tour manager barks a complicated series of instructions at his team of roadies and press officers and assistants and glorified hangers-on. One of the road crew fat gut, stocky limbs, scrappy dragon tattoos etched into his freshly shaven head is crouched over at the side of the stage making a tray of joints for the band. He’s like a machine: rolling them up, licking their seams, rolling them up, licking their seams, rolling them up, licking their seams, fitting them with roaches and dotting them about on the band’s equipment like sweets.
Ike sees me come in and gives me a quick nod. He leans over, selects the fattest joint he can find, jumps down off the stage and strolls over to slap me on the back. Hard.
“Moony, duuuude… long time no see. Long fucking time.”
“Hi, Ike,” I say, ‘you’re looking well.”
“Cheers, yeah… but look at you, man… look at you… still exactly the same … I mean, really, Moon, you haven’t changed a bit since school. Not one little bit.”
“Well… I’ve seen you a few times since then, Ike. Remember when you were off to post that Jiffy bag to the Melody Maker that time?”
“No. Not sure what you mean. Was it a demo tape or something?”
“No, it was a turd.”
“Oh yeah,” he says, taking a long toke on his spliff. “I remember. That was cool, man. That was one stinky fucking turd.”
Ike lifts the spliff back to his lips and inhales deeply. I notice that he holds the smoke in his lungs for as long as he can. I notice that he plucks his eyebrows and that he wears chipped
black varnish on his fingernails. I notice that his hand shakes a little as he pulls the butt from his mouth and passes it back to his roadie.
“Right then,” he says, ‘that’s better. Now we can go up to the cafe for a bit of a chat.”
Ike has a severe case of the munchies so we head over to the serving hatch and join the food queue. Ike orders shepherd’s pie and peas. And a plate of spotted dick and custard for dessert. I’m not feeling that hungry so I settle for a mug of tea. And a packet of Hula Hoops. And a small slice of pie.
We spend the next half-hour making idle music-business banter and pretending that we’re both interested in what each other has been up to for the last five years. He’s exactly how I expected him to be: full of himself. He’s got a skewed mid-Atlantic accent that keeps lurching into ‘dudes’ and ‘mans’ and ‘sure things’ and then crashing back into comedy Dick van Dyke mockney. He can’t stop bragging: the places he’s been to, the people he’s met, and he’s sipping his tea and stirring his custard and spilling their names like party wine and waste paper.
“Of course, Madonna,” he says, leaning in low over his mince, ‘has got fantastic tits… for her age … I mean, she’s a bit long in the tooth, yeah? But she’s definitely a nice bit of old. Came down to our gig at The Whiskey last month… amazing. Remember that sex book she did… ? Man, I must have worn my dick away bashing off over that book… especially that picture of her and that model, you know, the one where it looks like Naomi Campbell is sniffing her crack or something.”
I have the feeling Ike was more likely to be found masturbating over his souvenir Cats programmes than dirty pictures of Madonna, but I let him carry on regardless.
“And Kate Moss, dude. Sooo cool. Came to our album launch at Chateau Marmont. Really fit. Really fit. I like ‘em skinny. Anything over a size eight and you just feel like you’re
dipping your prick into a bucket of lard… know what I mean?”
I don’t say anything.
“So what about you, eh… ? Making up for lost time, no doubt?”
“Lost time?”
“Yeah … I mean, let’s face it, Moon, no one was gonna let you anywhere near them with those zits of yours, were they?”
“Well, I’m living with someone now… her name’s Alison. We’ve been together about five years.”
“Right, right … so you don’t get bored, then?”
“No, she’s great… she’s just landed this job in—’
“Yeah, whatever,” he says, stubbing a cigarette into his beans and reaching over for his dessert. “Couldn’t do it myself, though. So much pussy, man. So much pussy, so little time.”
I finish my Hula Hoops and watch while Ike spoons pudding into his mouth and splatters custard down the front of his shirt. He chews with his mouth open, breathing through his food like an asthmatic weasel, stuffing more in before he’s even finished with his last mouthful. There’s an awkward silence developing. He’s looking at me like he can’t be bothered to think of anything else to say, like he can’t believe he ever knew me.
And then I come straight out with it.
“Hey, I’d love to help you…” he says, wiping up a spot of custard with his sleeve, ‘you know I would, but it’s not really up to me who we take. We usually leave that sort of thing to our live agent.”
“Right.”
“I mean, if it was up to me…”
“If it was up to you… ?”
“Yeah, if it was my shout…”
You’d do fuck all about it.
Ike finishes his food and gets up to leave. It’s clear that I’ve outstayed my welcome. He’s got what he wanted. He’s shown me a slice of the kind of life he’s living now and he’s seen just enough to get the measure of mine. He takes his thousand-dollar leather jacket off the back of his chair and flings it across his shoulder like it’s made out of recycled cotton. He takes in my disastrous haircut and my stained Pixies T-shirt and runs his fingers idly over his bleached blond crop.
“So… take care then, Moony… give our tour manager a bell some time and we’ll see if he can get you and a mate into the London gig. Maybe we’ll give you a couple of after-show passes or something.”
“Thanks very much.”
“No problem. No problem at all.”
And then he’s gone.
I feel poisoned to the core.
The evening rush hour is in full swing: afternoon shoppers fat with carrier bags, out-of-town tourists thin with confusion, and waves of commuters spreading out across the concourse like tides of muddy water. They look tired: suits creased from the summer heat; faces crumpled with boredom; eyes fixed dead ahead so as not to attract anyone’s attention.
I sit down on the floor and watch them spill past me. I know that I’m watching myself. What was I thinking of? What made me think I could avoid it? Why did my lunatic mother convince me I was going to grow up to be rich and famous when the truth is I was destined to spend thirty-five years strap-hanging to work with another commuter’s brown leatherette briefcase jammed hard into the crease of my arse cheeks?
It’s not right. If me and Alison ever have kids I’m going to make sure I tell them the truth right away. I’m going to lock them in their bedrooms and beat them with a stick until they’ve finished all their homework. I’m going to ban them from listening to music and watching the telly. I’m going to take them to work with me and show them the crappy office where their dad sits locked away from daylight for 363 days of the year. I’m going to show them the rented flat in Crouch End that is all they’ll ever be able to afford to live in, and if one of them even so much as hints at wanting to learn how to play a musical instrument I’ll send them for a course of electroconvulsive therapy that will fry their brains into submission and turn them into wannabe lawyers or crawly chartered accountants.
Ambition is the worst thing you can give a kid. They’ll always be disappointed.
I buy myself a ham-and-cheese croissant and wander around King’s Cross feeling sorry for myself. It’s almost 5.30. I’m not due at the video shop until seven and there’s not much point in going home because I’ve probably already missed Alison calling me from Bruges. I wonder if she’ll have left the name of her hotel on the answer phone I wonder if she had a nice time with Didier last night. I wonder if the travel agent’s next to W.H. Smith is still open. It is.
The travel agent is busy with a young couple looking at beach holidays, and I amuse myself with a top-quality EuroDisney brochure while I’m waiting. He’s giving them the big sell. He’s pressing figures into his pocket calculator and running his tongue round the roof of his mouth, and he’s just about to lean in for the kill.
“Well, yes, it is rather expensive,” he says, focusing his attention on the woman and smacking his lips together, ‘but’ of course, you’re buying more than just a holiday when you select a trip like this. You’re buying the holiday’ he pauses for effect ‘of a lifetime.”
I can feel myself getting agitated. “Holiday of a lifetime’ is one of the most depressing phrases in the English language. Everyone uses it. Every piss-poor per ma-tanned travel show presenter, every greasy-haired, white-shirted travel agent; every moronic quiz show host that has ever had the temerity to live and draw breath. It’s insulting. The idea that you might only be able to take one great holiday in your life. That you should only expect to take one great holiday in your life. That two weeks swarming about in an up market Novotel with palm trees and piped music might constitute the highlight of your entire life’s leisure.
Still, it did look nice, though. I wonder if Alison would fancy a trip to Bali.
The couple leave without buying anything and I slide up the banquette and take my seat in front of Darren. I know he’s
called Darren because he has his name pinned carefully to his left lapel.
“Right then, Darren,” I say, rubbing my hands together noisily, ‘let’s go somewhere fabulous.”
“Excuse me?”
“Fabulous… you know, yachts and models and movie stars and coconuts and a host of pre-paid excursions suitable for myself and my lovely wife Audrey.”
“Em, were you thinking long-haul, sir?”
“Oh yes, very long, the longest.”
“Far East perhaps?” he says, reaching for his Kuoni luxury breaks brochure.
“Not sure,” I say. “Has it got coconuts?”
“Of course. There’s an abundance of coconuts in the Far East. Perhaps you might like to think about Thailand.”
“Too Leonardo DiCaprio.”
“Malaysia?”
“Too harsh on drugs.”
“Singapore?”
“Too harsh on chewing gum.”
“Well, perhaps sir might like to think about the Caribbean.”
“Is it nice?”
“Oh yes, it’s very nice indeed.”
“Really? What’s nice about it?”
“Well, the beaches are excellent and the hotels are first class and there’re some very pleasant excursions to places of local colour and interest.”
“How d’you know?”
“Well, it’s all here … in the brochure.”
“Yes, but how d’you know? I mean, have you actually been there?”
“No.”
“There we go, then. Not sure I can take a recommendation from you unless you’ve actually been there. Perhaps we should try somewhere a little bit closer to home.”
The Gambia?”
“Too many mosquitoes.”
“Egypt?”
“Too many pyramids.”
The Canaries?”
“Not enough coconuts.”
“Well, sir, I’m not sure what else I can sugges—’
“How about Bruges?”
“Bruges?”
“Yes. How about some city breaks brochures that include a wide and varied selection of hotels in and around the medieval city of Bruges?”
Darren loads me down with shiny brochures and sends me on my way. He thinks about it but in the end he doesn’t bother to tell me that coconuts are not, as far as he knows, indigenous to Belgium.
“Just look at this,” I say, opening the World Choice city breaks brochure and offering it to Sheila and Kostas in disgust.
“Look at this hotel. Look at these pictures.”
Sheila lifts her glasses out of her bag and moves forward to take a closer look.
“Oh, how lovely,” she says, eyeing up the soft-focus photography and reading aloud from the blurb. “Hotel Romantic, every bedroom individually decorated with exclusive fabrics and antiques. And what a nice idea to have flowers and champagne in the room on arrival.”
“Exactly,” I say, pulling the brochure back across the counter and flicking to the next page. “I mean, look at this one, this one is even worse.”
“Hotel Barrone, built by a seventeenth-century count. Intimate hotel full of charm and character in peaceful setting overlooking the “Lake of Love”.,”
“See, see what I mean? Look at those cushions. Look at the size of that bed. Look at the lace curtains and the silk eiderdown and the free mints on the pillow. I mean, just think about that for a second. Not one mint. Two. Two mints. Who
is eating it? Who is eating Alison’s other mint? She’s shacked up with the Count of Monte Cristo in the “Lake of Love”. Already. She’s only been gone two days. I can’t believe it.”
“Maybe is not so bads,” says Kostas, reaching for the brochure and flicking back to the cheaper hotels. “Maybe she is only staying here, in Hotel Sleeuwebrugghe. Very bad furnitures. “Cosy hotel decorated in typical Flemishes style. Radio in room and free bike for hires.” Maybe she is too busy for mints because she is riding round Bruges on a bikes.”