“What the fuck you doin’ here?” Colin asks Rayce when crowd noise lessens a bit.
“Preening.”
“That’s obvious. I’m asking what you’re doin’
here
, here at this hotel. I thought you booked rooms at the Chamberlain. And I thought you weren’t due there till tomorrow, actually.”
“David’s idea to install me here. So he can keep an eye on both of us, is what I heard.”
“He’s got no reason to keep an eye on me.”
“That’s not what I heard. Where is she, anyway?”
“Can’t say.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
Anyone who cares to can overhear this rapid-fire exchange, and enough of those eavesdroppers are members of the press to put an end to it, as far as he’s concerned.
“Settle into your rooms and we’ll get together after.” Colin slips into the hotel with minimal difficulty.
He’s not far into the lobby when he spots one advantage to sharing Rayce’s limelight. To the approaching band of hotel guests who’ve recognized him and are about to get between him and the lifts, he points over his shoulder and warns that no less than Rayce Vaughn is poised to enter their midst. “Stay where you are and you can’t miss him.” He then ducks into an empty lift and makes a clean getaway, to again borrow Laurel’s term.
He won’t be surprised if met with another type ambush when he reaches his floor. By now, someone must have figured out he’s been on his own all day. But the suite’s unoccupied when he enters, and a blinking light on the phone is the only indication anyone’s looking for him. Following Laurel’s recent example, he ignores the phone messages and flops onto the nearest couch to blank out for a bit.
“Yeh, right,” he groans when that effort lasts no more than ten minutes and his head fills with worrisome imagery, all of it featuring Laurel in some sort of peril. He envisions her literally devoured by commuter traffic or at the mercy of a villainously pleasure-seeking David Sebastian; he pictures her accosted by hordes of paparazzi and set-upon by every convict she ever helped send to jail. That last is most disturbing for taking on aspects of a Bruegel depiction of Hades. He blinks it away and turns on telly.
Nothing there to distract. He goes to the window. No distractions there either, unless the movement of traffic below may be seen as spellbinding. In the end he does what he’s been denying himself all along, goes to the phone and dials her number. If she’s there, she’s not picking up. And her machine’s not picking up because it’s probably still full.
“Hell with it.” He lets out a mild string of oaths, goes into the bath to take a couple Polks, then laughs at himself for having gone through the motions. As if the over-the-counter shit could somehow cure ills of the psyche. As if any form of shit could cure what ails him.
He’s still grumbling and bumbling about when the door chime rings. He doesn’t respond because Bemus will get it. But Bemus isn’t here, he remembers when the chime sounds again. He goes to answer it, faulting himself in the extreme for the momentary lapse.
Rayce is alone when he comes in—a novelty in itself—and he’s replaced the rock star plumage with an Italian designer’s idea of ordinary street clothes. He takes his time looking round the suite, much as Nate did his first time here. If he finds fault with the surroundings, unlike Nate, he’s not saying so by word or expression.
At the piano, he picks up and fondles the Icon statuette displayed there. “Brilliant, that was . . . what you did when accepting this thing. I would’ve told ’em to sod it.”
“Don’t think it didn’t cross my mind, but it was more satisfying to make ’em squirm a bit.”
Rayce sets down the Icon and takes up the glass owl that’s been on display ever since it was purchased to give to Laurel one day. After thoroughly fingerprinting the sleek object, Rayce helps himself to the music and lyric sheets scattered overtop of the piano. “And what have we here?” He silently reads through a few with his lips moving and goes full voice on the set Colin most wishes he’d left in a dresser drawer.
“
Can’t you see I’m here to love you
? . . .
Don’t you know I’m here to care?
. . .
Will you ever let me tell you
. . .
My life is yours to share
?” Rayce gives the recitation the full treatment saving the most dramatic pause for last. “Wowser,” he says and rather gulps. “This is lookin’ serious, mate. Like I said earlier, where is she?”
“Far as I know, she’s at home. I’d just left her there when I stumbled onto you.”
“From what you’ve said on the phone, I thought she’d be lodging here with you. Are you sayin’ . . . you’re not sayin’ you haven’t been there, are you?”
“Like it’s any of your bleedin’ business.”
“That’s a no, then.”
“We’ve had direct eye contact a few times. That count for anathing?”
“Jesus, Mary, and Margaret Thatcher!” Rayce let’s go with a trademark cackle. “Look who needs a boost. Look who’s wanting a wingman, a Cyrano, a—”
“The day I need any of that is the day—”
“It’s plain you’re in need of something. I propose we go downtown.”
“Clubbing?”
“Recording. New label’s givin’ me carte blanche with studio time whilst I’m in town. Let no note go unrecorded appears to be the policy and who’m I to argue? Gimme thirty minutes to alert the lads and we’ll be off.”
Rayce must have alerted the media as well because when the convoy of limos leaves the hotel, paparazzi bring up the rear, some on motorbikes. At the lower Manhattan recording studio they’re met by a veritable who’s-who of session musicians and recording engineers.
The subject of Laurel still lingers, retarding his ability to see much beyond the end of his own nose. He’s slow to grasp that this must be the first time since rehab that Rayce has been inside a recording studio, an atmosphere at once redemptive and harshly reminiscent of a former lifestyle. That might account for Rayce’s muted exuberance in the limo. That might even account for David wanting the two of them at the same hotel. If that is the case, the manipulation’s more characteristic of Nate than David, who ought to know as well as anyone that proximity doesn’t always produce the kind of mutual-assistance pact he’s looking for. He can’t be blamed for trying, though.
The banter going on whilst the techies set up strikes as forced and artificial. The several musicians and the pair of engineers don’t exactly telegraph enthusiasm as they go through their various rituals of preparation.
“You seein’ this for what it is, mate?” Rayce says.
“I’m seeing that nothing’s actually expected and a big chunk of studio time stands to be wasted.”
“All to keep my mind off . . . like anything could ever do much toward keeping my mind off . . . It’s always gonna be there.”
“That your own assessment or that of a professional?”
“Both.”
“You do know this is where we were back in autumn of ’eighty-four?”
“No shit. This the same studio? Is this site of the massive rat strangle with the string section of the philharmonic and all? There’s fuckloads I don’t recall, y’know.”
“You ‘n’ me both. But no, I didn’t mean we were physically in this place back then, I meant this is where we were
creatively.
We were in the talking stages of doing something together, and my manager was dead set against it because—”
“I was of questionable reliability.”
“Yeh, somethin’ like that. I was arguing the subject with Nate the same day my lights went out.”
“So, if I’m readin’ you right, you’re now suggesting we pick up where we left off . . . as though nothin’ much happened in the interim.” Rayce cranks cackle up to full booming laughter and everyone from gofers to engineers alerts.
“Let’s start with the one you played me over the phone,” Rayce goes on, “the one you call ‘Angle of Repose.’ Lay down a ghost track of that and we’ll see who amongst these wankers has anything to add.”
A slow two hours pass before unified direction is found, and once the road shows itself, there’s no holding back. The layers start going down with a complexity rare in a pickup band come together more for a perfunctory jam session than an actual recording session. With each playback, additional structure and texture is revealed even though the mix is still rough. This is no Muscle Shoals; that was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but from within this impromptu coalescence, a rush is nevertheless building. When it comes, it’s the familiar one that’s better than anything that can be inhaled, swallowed, or injected. And with Rayce at the forefront, musical communication reaches a level transcending telepathy.
Colin recedes from center stage, aligns himself with the rank and file. Songwriter/lyricist may be enough after all. Position may not be everything when choice rather than circumstance dictates its importance.
Alone in the vocal booth, Rayce recaptures a vitality no one was expecting. From a distance, he still bears resemblance to the Pan, the beautiful boy whose plaintive pipes once drove his disciples to excesses of worship and his detractors to censorship campaigns to rival ban-the-bomb rallies, as one industry wag once put it. From any distance, he can still bring it off despite the effects of time, gravity, and hard living. Or maybe because of those effects. In a voice gone darker and grainier, he delivers like he’s never done before. It’s in the indefinable tonality and expression, in Rayce’s startling ability to convey broad statements with minimal effort. Bloody sorcery, it is.
When they break to listen to the latest mix, three a.m. is not far off. Reactions vary from thunderstruck to awestruck, absent any chatter about what could’ve been done better.
Rayce comes out of the booth and drains off the last of the coffee one of the gofers brought in. “Let’s have it, then. What’s the deal? Why are you givin’ me first shot at this tune? Some sort of mercy fuck is it?”
“Suits you better’n me, that’s all.”
“You’re not thinkin’ you still owe for when you were tits up?”
“That’s not what I was thinking, but I’ll always owe for—”
“Don’t be a prat. You’ve been my favorite good deed for long as I can remember.”
“And we all know how long you can remember.” Colin returns the jibe and gets a cackle out of Rayce that infects the others. A regular babel of banter breaks out, and this time it sounds sincere. When it’s run its course, he and Rayce return to the relative privacy of the vocal booth, where Rayce fixes him with a long unblinking stare.
“I know what you were gettin’ at out there and I’ll say what I’ve always said. Be careful what you idolize, mate. It’s only quite recently I can go by a mirror without . . . without cringing. I’m fifty-five years old, can pass for seventy. Ready for the taxidermist, I am. But I’m learnin’ to handle it—and I can still get it up if someone else handles it.” Rayce winks, leers, leaves room for a laugh. “On the other hand,” he continues, “I’m putting together a new young band who are clean and sober, possessed of massive amounts of hair, and no strangers to spandex.”
“But that’s not you. Forget the hair and the spandex. Leave that shit to those without any other marketable talents. Be Rayce Vaughn, it’s what you do best,” Colin says.
“Even when I’m singin’ your shit?”
“Specially when you’re singin’ my shit.”
“And here we have it, ladies and gents.” Rayce climbs onto a folding chair, makes sure the intercom is on, gives a mock bow to a mock audience. “We at last have the real reason Colin Elliot’s givin’ me his best shit. He’s emulated me to the point we’ve come full circle and technically speaking, that would make his shit my shit. Shit-mingled, we are.”
This brings genuine whoops of laughter and not a few curious stares from beyond the booth. Amongst the curious is the engineer who’s been spot-on throughout and now indicates he wants a word.
“Colin, Rayce . . . if I may,” he says over the intercom.
“Say mother may I.” Rayce hops down from the chair.
“Ignore him.” Colin ushers the engineer into the booth.
“Some observations and a suggestion. You’ve just made preproduction a dirty word and overthinking unthinkable. And you hafta know you’ve got an anthem on your hands that’s gonna blow ‘Desperado’ away with the tumbleweeds,” the engineer says.
Until this reference to the great Eagles standard, no thought’s been given to comparisons, and Colin is not sure he wants to make any lest the word “derivative” happen to surface.
“You’ve created an instant classic,” the engineer echoes Laurel’s opinion. “It’s one of those tunes folks’ll swear they heard before and artists like Sinatra’ll wanna cover. My suggestion is Colin do all the keyboards, isolate at the start, then share the vocals with you, Rayce. Let’s try it ensemble to establish the harmonies and then we can do the overdubs. That work for you?”
A pleasurable shiver goes through him upon grasping that Laurel identified a so-called classic before a professional did—before he himself did, for that matter. “Works for me, I’m good” Colin says.
“I’m on, but first I’m gonna need to step outside for a smoke,, and I could do with more coffee.” Rayce leads the way to the main exit, passing by numerous no-smoking signs and a few that read “Keep off the grass.”
Out on the pavement, a pair of bodyguards are positioned either side of the door, more than enough to keep a few diehard paparazzi at bay. Rayce lights up a Marlboro red, inhales deeply and expresses annoyance that no one appears to be going for coffee.
“If it’s only a hit of caffeine you’re after, I can supply some Polks. You know, the aspirin shit with the extra kick,” Colin thoughtlessly characterizes the remedy and fishes two doses from an inside pocket. It’s only when he’s offering the small glassine envelopes of powdered product to Rayce that he flashes on what he made it sound like and what it undoubtedly looks like to the watchful bodyguards and paparazzi.
The realizations come a tick too late. A light flares, and an automated film advance whirs against a sudden blur of activity that includes his own. Minus the three seconds it takes to contemplate consequences, he’s on the bloke wielding the camera, smashing both to the pavement with enough force to guarantee damage to both. Rayce’s bodyguards pull him off before anymore can be done and restrain him as the fuckbag photographer scrambles to his feet and gathers up the remains of his camera.