Stories We Could Tell (16 page)

But in the shadows of the Goldmine, the bouncers just stared right through him with hooded eyes and folded arms, not moving. One of them – a tough-looking forty-year-old with a silvery quiff – even nodded at Leon. An Elvis fan, he thought.

The DJ just smiled at Leon, patted him on the back as if he was some kind of floor show, and turned up the volume. The dancers were already lost in the music.

Leon self-consciously started from the booth, feeling awkward and clumsy and tight in the presence of all those habitual dancers, all those loose-limbed groovers getting down with the Commodores. He was depressed about the death of Elvis, and felt like his words were useless and inadequate.

Nobody knows what I’m talking about, he thought, and then he stumbled badly on the bottom step of the DJ booth and pitched forward like someone trying a reckless new dance move.

Leon was getting up off his knees and looking around for his hat when he was aware that someone was standing over him. It was the most beautiful girl in the world.

A journalist is at home everywhere, Leon thought, as she took his hand. At home everywhere. Remember that, Leon.

‘Like the hair,’ she said, the sound of the suburbs in her voice. ‘Autumn Gold?’

Terry loved speed because it helped him to think clearly.

The cold white conviction of the drug helped him to stay focused, to deal with the job at hand, to forget about all the things that didn’t matter.

That’s why on the short journey across the West End he was able to pretty much ignore Christas hand resting on the top of his thigh, to shut out the mindless babble of Dag’s manager in the front seat, and let the crowds beyond the car window just melt away. The speed helped him to give his complete attention to Misty, and what he was going to say to her when they got there. Oh yes.

The car pulled up in front of the Hotel Blanc, and Terry felt Christa’s fingernails increasing their pressure. He looked at her as if for the first time and she smiled at him with her smooth, practised smile, and the funny thing was, he really liked her face, he had liked it from the moment he first saw her in Berlin.

He liked the red slash of her mouth, the pale skin, the unearthly, un-English whiteness of her teeth. The way she dressed more formally than what he was used to – like a businesswoman, he thought. All that was good. But he already had a girl, and he needed to find her.

Christa said his name but the door was open and he was already gone, out of the car and into the hotel, which he knew well from interviewing various longhairs from Los Angeles in his early days at
The Paper
, before he could pick and choose who he talked to, who he wrote about, but he still came here from time to time, most recently to interview a steady stream of shorthair musicians from New York. American groups at the Hotel Blanc was one of the things that never changed. The first thing he saw was Brainiac being ejected by a uniformed doorman.

“It is imperative that I speak to Mr Dag Wood immediately,’ he was saying. ‘Terry! Tell them!’

Terry was already at the staircase where Dag’s rhythm section, the two brothers, were lazily ascending with a couple of girls from the Western World. The girls had seemed fashionably undomesticated in the gloaming of the club, all torn stockings and hair stiff and spiked with Vaseline, blinking out at the world from big black Chi-Chi and An-An circles. Under the harsh lights of the hotel lobby they looked like dumpy vampires, or overgrown children on Halloween. But Terry knew there was no man less choosy than a musician on the road.

The drummer brother, the dumber brother, all bulging tattooed biceps in his sleeveless vest, held out a meaty arm, hailing Terry like a long-lost friend. Terry wished he would stop doing that. It
was really starting to get on his nerves. He walked past the drummer, and carried on up the stairs, two at a time, past the bass-playing brother, who he had actually liked, who he had spent time with in Berlin, who he had thought was some kind of friend. Terry was starting to learn that you could never really be friends with these people.

There was a door open at the top of the stairs, a party going on inside, and a waiter was trying to get a signature for a tray of drinks. He held out the pen to Terry as he approached and Terry scribbled on the chit, gave the waiter back his pen and entered the room without breaking his stride.

The room was full of people. Some of them he knew. The rest of Dag’s band. Faces from the Western World. Other musicians who must have been lodging at the Blanc. Somebody that Terry had seen dealing little blue pills in the toilets at the Roundhouse. And then there was a familiar face at last. Billy Blitzen was sprawled on the sofa, short, dapper, hair everywhere, his immaculate waistcoat unbuttoned, smoking a joint the size of a Mr Whippy cornet.

‘I thought you had a gig tonight,’ Terry said. ‘I thought Warwick Hunt was coming down for your second set. I thought it was your big break and I was going to do a review.’

Billy looked insulted. There’s plenty of time. Who are you? My mother?’

‘And I thought you didn’t even
like
Dag Wood,’ Terry said, scanning the room. No sign of her. Where the fuck
was
she? ‘I thought you said he was an arsehole.’ Terry’s face twisted with a parody of transatlantic vowels. ‘An
asshole.’

Billy sucked on his Mr Whippy spliff, and didn’t need to explain a thing. That’s one thing I’ve learned about these New Yorkers, Terry thought. They follow the drugs. And then he saw Misty.

On the far side of the room, she came out of what had to be the bathroom followed by Dag Wood. Then she was leaning against a wall and Dag was standing in front of her, his hands resting on
the wall either side of her head, almost pinning her there. Terry flew across the crowded room.

‘Hey, man,’ Dag said to Terry, slowly removing his hands, as if it was no big deal. ‘What kept you?’

Terry stared at Dag, then at Misty. He realised he didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what was happening. All he knew was that he didn’t like it, and his confidence was ebbing away with the kick of the sulphate.

‘Is that my JD and coke over there?’ said Dag, as smooth as a Foreign Office diplomat.
‘Finally.’

A big cheesy smile and then he was gone, and Terry was alone with his girl again, alone with her in that rented room, and he waited for her to say something.

‘What?’ she said.

All wide-eyed and innocent.

Terry was speechless. ‘What?’ he said. ‘What?’

‘Yeah – what?’ A bit of a fishwife tone creeping in now.

‘Why’d you run off like that?’ he said, more hurt than angry. ‘What’s going on? I mean – fucking hell, Misty!’

Misty examined her fingernails. ‘I didn’t run anywhere.’ She sighed as if he was her bloody father. ‘Chill out, will you? Please, Terry,’

‘Chill out?’ he said, suddenly agitated. ‘Chill out? How can I chill out? What’s wrong with you tonight?’

Her hands clawed at the air, grasping at nothing, trying to find the words. As if the way he was drove her insane. It scared him. This was even worse than he’d thought.

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Everything.’

‘I want to know what’s happening here.’ Trying to keep calm now. Wanting to understand, to make it right. To get things back to where they had been only hours ago. Trying to avoid sounding like one of those men that Germaine Greer had warned her about. ‘I just want to know…’

He struggled to express what he wanted to know. What had happened to the girl who had met him at the airport? And was it all over between them? And was she going to fuck Dag Wood? Yes, he wanted to know all of these things. But a part of him would prefer not to know.

And he wondered how he was meant to deal with the changes in his life. It was less than a year ago that he had lived in a world where you could get your head caved in for looking at someone’s girlfriend the wrong way. For
just looking
. But now he was somewhere else, some weird place where you were meant to chill out and be cool and take it easy when someone was trying to actually fuck your girlfriend.

‘You can’t steal a woman,’ Misty said, reading his mind, making him start with surprise. ‘Don’t you know that yet? Haven’t you learned anything? You can’t steal a woman. A woman is not a wallet. You know what your trouble is, Terry?’

Now she was making him tired. ‘Why don’t you tell me?’

‘All right then – you don’t want a strong, independent woman. You want the girl next door.’

He almost took a step back. ‘What’s wrong with the girl next door?’

Misty laughed in his face. ‘She’s a boring little cow.’

He thought of his ex-girlfriend, the girl from the gin factory. Sally. The one he had left behind with his old life. He missed her tonight. He knew Sally wouldn’t be a sucker for Dag Wood. Sally liked Elton John. Especially
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
.

‘There’s nothing wrong with the girl next door,’ he said.

She shook her head, examined her nails. ‘You don’t want me to have a career,’ she said. ‘You can’t handle it.’

It was his turn to laugh. ‘This is a career? Some old rock star jumping on your bones? That’s your idea of a career?’

She almost snarled at him. ‘You don’t think Dag might be interested in
my work? Did
that even cross your mind? That he might want to look at my portfolio?’

‘Oh, I’ve got no doubt that he wants to take a look at your portfolio, love.’ Then his voice softened. ‘Come on, Misty. I saw him in Berlin. Dag fucks anything that hasn’t got a knob. You think you’re special?’

She looked stunned. ‘Well, don’t you?’

He didn’t know what to say. Of
course
he thought she was special. He thought there was no one like her in the world. But wasn’t that obvious?

‘And why have I never met your parents?’ he said.

It was all coming out now.

‘Oh, what’s that got to do with anything?’ she said. ‘You’re just an old-fashioned guy, Terry. You want me to stay home and – I don’t know – bake bread or knit socks or something. You want to hide me away from the world.’

He wanted her to understand. ‘No, I don’t – I just want to protect you. I just want to stop bad things happening.’

Misty tried to be reasonable. ‘Look, Terry – he’s a legend. We’re just…talking, that’s all. Really. We’re just spending some time together. Like the pair of you did in Berlin. What’s the difference? That I’m a woman? But why should that stop us? It might be 1955 in your head, but it’s 1977 in here. We’re just
talking,’
she said, and he felt horrible to see her so unhappy. ‘And if not now – then when?’

‘I know him,’ Terry said simply. ‘You don’t.’

‘But I want to,’ she said, and they looked at each other with something close to loathing. A weight seemed to settle on Terry’s shoulders. They had never looked at each other like that before. ‘You’d like to chain me to a pushchair until my brain melts,’ Misty said. ‘Admit it!’

Pushchairs? Melting brains? He had no idea what she was going on about. He stood there dumbfounded, lost for words, offering no defence, as if guilty of crimes that he now realised he had committed by accident. Then suddenly Dag was back, his JD and coke in one hand, draping his free arm around Terry’s shoulder.

‘Look at that,’ he chuckled, contemplating his glass and the thin frozen sliver floating on top of his drink. ‘They call that ice. Say, man, you got any of that crank left?’

Terry stared warily at Dag. He still wasn’t completely sure what was happening. He seemed to be the only one who felt that everything had gone wrong. Maybe he was overreacting. Maybe this was how things were in the new world, and you had to live with it. He wished he had more experience of these things. He wished he had seen more. He wished he were older. Maybe everything was innocent after all. How could Terry know? He felt like he knew nothing.

Misty acted as though hanging out with Dag was a cross between harmless fun and a kind of job interview, fascinating but also vital for her career prospects, while Dag acted as if nothing unusual or untoward had happened – as if draping your leather-clad legs across another man’s girlfriend and then whisking her off into the night and taking her into a fucking toilet in a hotel room and offering his own girlfriend as fair exchange – but was that really what had happened? – was socially acceptable.

Christa approached their little party and slid her arm around Dag’s waist, smiling ‘Hi’ to Misty, who smiled ‘Hi’ back, and Dag’s big lizard lips placed a wet kiss on Christas ear. The tip of a fleshy tongue teased her lobe. Her smile never faltered. But, her hand in the car – that was surely a come on, wasn’t it? Or was she just being friendly?

Terry gawped at them all, his face red, then fumbled for his speed, a fool who didn’t know what to do with his hands. Perhaps he was making a big deal out of nothing. Be cool. That’s it. He had to be cool. They would all have a line together and everything would be fine again, even better than Berlin because now Misty was with him.

But the cellophane bag of speed was almost empty. Just a few flakes were left, hardly enough for one decent line. They must have
taken more than he realised when they were under the stars, hiding from the Teds. Terry held the bag up apologetically.

‘That’s okay,’ Christa said, her accent more American than German. ‘I’ve got some good stuff up in the suite.’

Dag’s huge blue eyes shone. ‘Not the Keith blow?’

Christa nodded, and Dag kissed his fingers, a debauched-looking sommelier recommending the Chassagne-Montrachet, assuring Terry and Misty that they were in for an experience they would never forget.

The two young people laughed nervously, like children on Christmas Eve who had just been told that Santa was stuck halfway down the chimney. And they smiled at each other, as if something had been restored between them, healed and mended, and the atmosphere was so cool, meaning relaxed, that when Dag urged Terry to go with Christa and collect the good stuff, he could hardly refuse to go, could he? Because they were all friends here.

So Terry left Misty with Dag and found himself walking out of the party with Christa and catching the lift up to the very top of the hotel. She slipped the key in the lock, smiling her dazzling red and white smile.