THE SMOOTHIE WAS THE ABSOLUTE NADIR, BUT ONLY THE THREE OF us knew about it. Thus, the official nadir was not the urine (which, had anyone else known, would have led to the band’s immediate demise) but the gun.“Mitchell,” Blake had asked at some point. “Can you pick me up a vaguely realistic toy gun? Second thought, it doesn’t have to be that realistic.”
“No one will stand for a gun onstage,” said Mitchell.
“Of course not. Just for me.”
That forgotten, and after enough time had elapsed to serve his purposes, Blake made an unexpected cameo in the other dressing room. He was in a bad mood. MOMs had started picketing the gigs—I still have some of the pamphlets—and a guy, not realizing who Blake was, had tried to force some propaganda on him as he went backstage from the bus. There had been a minor scuffle.
“Hey, Mitch,” asked Blake, “do you have that fake gun?”
“Yes, hold on. I was wondering when you’d ask. A couple of options . . .” He delved inside a plastic bag with a big red logo.
“I don’t want toy guns around Aslan,” said Camille.
“Oh,” said Blake. “It’s just a silly thing.”
From the bag, Mitchell pulled out a gun. But it was not a toy gun. It was his gun; his real gun. He looked at it, initially horrified, then guilty, like Cary Grant at the UN in North by Northwest. Immediately, Blake took unnecessary control of a nonexistent hostage crisis: “Mitchell, now calm down! Take it easy, man! Think of the children!”
Without a word, Mitchell placed the gun down, barrel carefully pointed at the wall, dialed the combination on his case, opened it, removing the toy gun Blake had somehow snuck inside, which he pocketed, put the real gun back in its rightful place, and locked the case again: “Blake, in the bus now.”
“Just a bit of fun,” said Blake, daring anyone else to laugh, adding in mitigation: “It didn’t go off.” I calculated the lengths Blake had gone to: learning the combination, substituting the guns, patiently waiting for the perfect moment. It was an impressive amount of work for a bizarre payoff.
“IN THE BUS!” shouted Mitchell, face red, veins bulging up his neck. It was the only time I ever heard him shout.
“Unbelievable,” said Curtis, after they left, Mitchell’s anger still echoing around the room. “Unbelievable.”
“Is everything okay?” Camille asked me, genuinely concerned.
“Yes,” I said, thinking of the urine they’d been drinking, the dartboard, Camille’s horror at the very possibility of a toy gun.
“Was that a real gun?” asked Aslan with reverence.
“No,” said Camille, at the exact moment Mei-Xing said “Yes.”
Nobody moved. I sat.
“Are you worried about him?” asked Curtis. “Seriously.”
I mean, I was worried about him, but, curiously, I wasn’t worried about the gun gag. Could it be that the whole prank was revenge for the hair dryer? It was harmless enough. No one was “waving a gun around,” whatever they said later.
“A little, I guess.”
“Do you want to come and hang out on our bus more often? Travel with us?”
“We can play Monopoly,” said Mei-Xing with a kind of smile.
It actually sounded appealing: Monopoly and a smoothie. Of course, I’d blend it myself.
Though Mei-Xing and I, victims of backstage apartheid, rarely spoke, she hovered near the booth, and I got the feeling that, despite the differences between our buses, she wanted to hang out. Besides, if there was mayhem on the floor, the booth was a sanctuary. Curtis knew she was there and she’d wave. I’d wave back. We all waved.
Once in DC, the second of a two-afternoon-stand, she unexpectedly asked if I’d take her to a disco, a pre-birthday treat. She was a little dressier than usual, wearing a noticeably shorter skirt than Curtis generally allowed.
“Should we ask Curtis?”
“He told me about a place,” she said. “He’ll arrange for us so we get in.”
Backstage, I felt like I was being set up, introduced to my girlfriend’s father for the first time.
“So, Sweet, are you up to the job?” asked Curtis. Maybe this was part of my indoctrination into their happy cult, a strategy to save my soul.
“Well, I hope so, sir,” I said. Mei-Xing laughed. “Wouldn’t you rather take her yourself?”
“No, no; she doesn’t need old Curtis hanging around her the whole time, do you, little miss?”
“Well,” I said. “I’ll do the best I can, to, you know, chaperone.”
He scribbled an address. “It’s a teenage disco, no alcohol. I know you’re not interested in that stuff anyway.”
“Is it . . . churchy?” I asked, fearing the absolute worst.
“No, no,” he said, surreptitiously slipping five $20s into my hand. “It starts at five. Cabs everywhere. Go get a burger. Then straight back to the hotel. No later than nine.”
A disco wasn’t my preferred evening off—a bit of a busman’s holiday—but it had got to the point where I could do without the sometimes tense atmosphere, and if Mei-Xing needed an accomplice, I was happy to be one. We barely spoke in the cab, but after what appeared lengthy private debate, she said: “You can pretend to be my boyfriend, right? No one will bother me that way. We’ll just dance.”
We gave our names at the door—some kind of VIP deal. The doorman seemed listless, spared even the checking of IDs, the bouncers likewise in the grip of mild existential crisis. There may have been no alcohol—though little huddles of teenagers were scattered about the club, up to no good—but everything else was a perfect facsimile of the real thing: the smell, the bodies, the pounding bass of “Shiny Happy People” vibrating through the dance floor, the themed rooms. Mei-Xing chose which mirror-ball to dance beneath. I’ve never been much of a mover, so I was content to stand back and watch this mysterious almost-fifteen-year-old, lost in music, but she finally roped me in with that invisible lasso mime native to all of the world’s dance floors. She was making fun of an adjacent group who demonstrated all the old favorites without irony: the nose-dive snorkel, the two-finger cats-eye, the iconic Saturday Night Fever teapot.
At one moment, eyes closed, she rubbed her leg—actually, the bit between her legs—up and down my knee. I was an innocent bystander, a prop, but I wondered whether, as her “boyfriend,” I shouldn’t evince a bit more enthusiasm. The other boys were very aware of her. What she really wanted was a bodyguard. I am no one’s ideal bodyguard.
“Dance like nobody’s watching,” she shouted over the music. Conversation was, happily, impossible.
“I’ll go and get a drink,” I yelled, accompanying it with a Greg-ish mime.
“Okay. Coke,” she said. At least she had good taste.
Holding both our cokes, I watched from the side of the room. She was oblivious, surrounded now by a throbbing group of teens. A kid approached me, fifteen, dressed like this was the big night of his life.
“Hot stuff!” he said.
“Hot stuff?”
“Yeah, bro. Your girlfriend.”
This was exactly what I was here for. “Yep. That’s her.”
“Kudos, my man.” He seemed just a middle class kid, living out a weird fifteen-year-old Saturday Night Fever fantasy. Sometimes it was like I didn’t speak American.
“My friends over there. We have some coke too,” he said.
“The other kind of coke.” I nodded. Something about coke, uniquely among drugs, appealed to me, perhaps just the name. “Would you and your lady friend like to . . . indulge?” Indulge. Lady friend. He had it down.
“She just wants to dance, I think.”
“Well, maybe I should ask her.”
“She’s really just here to dance.”
“Well, maybe I should ask her.”
“She doesn’t speak English.”
And so on. By the end of this stand off, which had involved a lot of dorky encouragement from a small scrum of friends furtively smoking over by the side wall, nothing was resolved. There wasn’t anything remotely threatening about them, despite their drugs. I’d been more scared of five-year-olds. Often.
At that moment, Mei-Xing ran from the dance-floor. “My purse,” she said. “It’s gone.”
We swept the floor in the unlikely event that it had flown off her neck, but, even given the difficulty of searching in the black light, the purse was nowhere to be seen. The coke kids looked on in amusement as we searched with ever-diminishing hope.
“Someone stole it,” she said, distraught. “Someone stole my purse.” And then, after an awful pause, with all eyes upon us: “YOU stole it!” She started beating my chest with her fists. I was tall enough to restrain her by enveloping her in my arms. One of the group laughed in contempt.
“Mei-Xing. Stop. You know I didn’t. Did you have it when you started to dance?”
“Yes.” She was crying now.
“Okay. Then let’s be calm and look around.”
Almost incredibly, she found it stuffed behind the back of a cistern in the ladies. Only the cash was gone. She brought it back to me, shamefaced. You could see where someone had cut the string. The group was deriving maximum enjoyment from our discomfort. It was time to leave.
“Go over there by the bar,” I said, seeing the original kid come over again. “We’ll get a cab.”
“Hey, man,” he said, watching her leave. “You were going to introduce me.”
“I’m afraid we have to go,” I said.
“Well, maybe I should ask her.”
We were back to that again, so I said: “No,” and put my hand on his shoulder. Without warning, he lifted his cigarette and, with a swift jab, extinguished it on my forehead right between my eyebrows. I felt, and smelled, my skin burning and pushed him back, more out of surprise than pain. I put two of my fingers up to cover the area and winced.
“What the fuck did you do that for? Ouch! Fuck!”
But he was gone already, strutting back to high fives from his little gaggle. Luckily the incident was spotted by a bouncer bored enough to take it quite seriously.
“You alright?” he asked, shepherding me towards some ice at the bar where Mei-Xing was waiting. Radioing another employee, the bouncer set off towards the would-be hoodlums. At the moment of confrontation, Mei-Xing was dabbing my forehead with ice wrapped in a towel. After a scuffle and some shoulder jabbing, the whole group was led away, and I noticed the guy who’d just used my forehead as an ashtray ditch a couple of items, perhaps mindful of an imminent requirement to turn out his pockets; two tiny handmade white envelopes. Only I’d seen, and since they still lay unnoticed on the floor as we left, destined to remain there until the cleaners came the next day, I thought it best to take them myself. Blake might like it. You never know.
Mei-Xing, at least, had got what she’d come for, but the combination of the purse incident, her accusation, and the occasionally searing pain on my forehead left the evening in need of a little salvation.
“Thank you for defending my honor,” said Mei-Xing over a chocolate milkshake. “My hero.”
“Guy was a dick,” I said. The memory made me scrunch my eyes as if in preparation for another attack, which served only to irritate whatever pitiful scab was trying to form. I also had a vicious headache.
“Poor boy,” she said tenderly, squeezing my hand. It was an apology. I wasn’t at my most entertaining, and she showed me the pictures of her parents from her purse, the reason she’d been so upset. There was one of Curtis as well.
“All my parents . . . Curtis’s music is so beautiful.”
“Great drummer.”
“No, his own music that he makes at home and on the bus. It’s so beautiful. I tell him he shouldn’t be the drummer in someone else’s band; he should be the singer in his own band. Maybe he’s wasting his time.”
It didn’t occur to her to sugarcoat this remark, and for a moment I got a feel for the way the angels spoke in Heaven. It was a wonder that Curtis allowed her to fraternize with me. I suppose I was handy: the right age; I didn’t drink; I didn’t do drugs. Perhaps they saw some salvageable good.
I escorted her to her room, keen not to see anyone else until I’d iced and camouflaged my wound as best I could. Who was I kidding? Blake was up and strumming, of course, and I told him the whole story. He called Jack, and I had to tell it again. Jack didn’t make it any better.
“You look like an Indian with a fucking bindi!” he said.
“Thanks, Jack. Thank you.”
“Nasty,” he said, sympathetically squinting at the perfectly circular burn. “You want a Band-Aid on that.”
“And some Savlon,” said Blake, cradling my head between his hands, as he applied cream to the trouble spot. “And a good night’s sleep.”
I felt I had to tell them what Mei-Xing had said about Curtis, even though I knew it was a bad idea. I just couldn’t help myself.
“What’s he gonna do? Ask for some songwriting credits?” asked Blake. “His invaluable contribution?”
“And who the fuck does she think she is?” asked Jack. There was an edge to his laughter: “Yoko fuckin’ Ono?”
“She’s Chinese,” I said, but I laughed, more out of obligation than anything else, hoping it wasn’t a nickname that stuck.
Our relationship was probably a bad idea, a potential disaster, but looking back, it’s possible that Mei-Xing and I kept the band together for a while beyond its natural lifespan. Just the fact of our friendship made for a better atmosphere; everyone was less tense around one another on our behalf. I should have told Blake the truth, but yet again I didn’t. It started out as a kind of extended apology on her behalf. She somewhat offered herself to me, and I somewhat didn’t refuse.
Having said that, she played by my rules, and my rules were strict, if unspoken. She was too young, now just fifteen; it was technically illegal, and that was a book I didn’t need to reopen, if only out of loyalty to the band. It was also partly because of her history; I didn’t want to be one of those men, like those other men. So we never had actual sex, at least in the beginning. What we did have, because we could have it, was a form of parallel play. We’d lie next to each other, without touching, and we’d make ourselves have orgasms, and then we’d cuddle. That was it. And it was perfect. We also played a lot of Monopoly.
“Was that nice?” I’d ask. We kissed occasionally. I used to lick the scars on her wrist, then blow on them to make them go away. We didn’t speak very much, sometimes at all. One night our entire conversation consisted of “Rent” and “Will you trade Park Place for Atlantic Avenue?”
“We are like brother and sister,” she said.
“Possibly,” I said without conviction.
“Cousins?” She suggested. “Kissing cousins?”
“Maybe Romeo and Juliet.”
Our mostly chaste misdeeds took place only in her hotel room, never on a bus and never, needless to say, backstage, where Monopoly represented the sublimation of our “desires.”
That was how it began and how it continued and how it was going to stay. But you make these rules only for them to be broken, and I now realize that it was nailed on from the moment we began. My reluctance to go any further became a course of frustration; she even accused me of withholding something “special,” as though I considered her unworthy of it. This was far from the truth. She was totally worthy. And I was soon to be seventeen (though my seventeenth birthday would pass much less eventfully than my sixteenth—almost unnoticed, in fact). One night, after she tried to convince me it wasn’t that big a deal, I told her why: her backstory and her age.
“Is that all?” she asked. “I thought you were just being careful. You’re a virgin, right?” I wasn’t sure what she wanted to hear, so I let her assume what she liked from my silence: an embarrassed admission, perhaps. “You don’t have to worry about my age,” she said, taking her clothes off. “I’m eighteen.”
“You were fifteen two months ago.”
“No.” She was completely, impressively naked now. “My old passport is right. Everybody thinks I’m younger.”
“Get your passport,” I said.
“You’re actually going to make me show you my passport?”
“Definitely.” I perused the documentary evidence.
“Why?” I asked.
“And the story about me being sold: not true either. I’ll tell you afterwards.”
Her guardians had managed to get her to America by over-amplifying her history and faking her age. The children’s home required her to be younger than she was: they hadn’t known. Curtis didn’t know. He liked her fifteen. But I knew. In the darkness, on all fours, she was a pony with a long black mane.
The late-night talk show appearance was finally upon us. New York City, as Blake said, was our Oyster Bar.
For once, there would be no deviation from the perfect plan: Blake was going to set fire to a ukulele during “Time to Sing a Song,” the new single, for which a video already existed, the song intercut with snippets of the pre-teen comedy (directed by a John Hughes protégé, produced by the man himself, and starring a very young Phoenix family member) for which it was now the theme. All negotiated with the network. Great.
Within the band, there was a general burying of hatchets, the game face that accompanied any excursion into the upper echelons of show business—TVs, bigger gigs, award shows, anywhere the audience couldn’t jump onstage.
The younger generation stood among the wires at the side of the set and clapped along. It was a killer performance—the best this version of the band ever was—and at the end, as arranged, Blake torched his ukulele and encouraged it voodoo-style, just like Hendrix. It was a magical, shamanic moment, in response to which the host unexpectedly invited Blake to join him at his desk. (Perhaps there was time to kill before the next block of ads.)
“Well, we’re lucky none of our other guests is playing the ukulele tonight,” said the host, then to an imaginary producer off-camera: “Do we have any ukulele players on the show tonight? No? Tiny Tim here? No? . . .” Back to Blake: “Because they’d be hard-pressed to follow that.”
“Well, they could eat it maybe; play tennis with it,” said Blake, clapping his hands together boyishly.
“Top Ten Things to do with a ukulele except play it,” said the host. “Eat it. Hmm.” He licked the lead of his pencil, then ticked his notecard. “Your band’s a sensation. So tell me: what’s it like playing to all those kids?”
“Well,” said Blake, “it’s great to know that at any given moment during a show one of them is innocently relieving themselves without repercussion.”
The host tapped his mug with the pencil and looked out at his audience: “Don’t get any ideas, people. So tell us about the Wonderkids.”
“Okay. We’re trying to give kids the real rock ’n’ roll experience for the first time in their lives. Kids love mayhem and that’s what rock ’n’ roll is all about. Kids aren’t self-conscious about the subconscious, like grown-ups. They’re natural anarchists. And we’re giving them real rock ’n’ roll.”
“Aren’t you worried about dumbing down?” asked the host mock-seriously. It was a good line.
“Nooooo! If I were, would I have set a ukulele on fire?”
Uproarious laughter.
“That thing will never be played again. Look at this footage,” said the host, banging his cue cards on the table. “What the heck is happening here?” It was film I’d never seen, shot recently, of Blake, almost entirely covered in peanut butter, doing what came naturally.
“I ran out of bread,” Blake said.
“Could Iggy Pop sue you for that?”
“We, the kids, are going to sue him! He stole his whole act from naughty children!”
“But do you see yourself as role models for the kids? Aren’t you being a little . . . bad yourself? Shouldn’t you behave?”
“Absolutely not. That’s why grown-ups are scared of us. We’re the ‘id’ in ‘kids.’”
“Well, I’m scared of you. And you’re a great band, whoever you’re for.” The host caught sight of an anxious producer, who was trying to attract his attention by means of a raised finger. “Okay, then. Have you got another song for us after the commercial break?” This was unexpected. “How about ‘Rock Around the Bed’?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Then we’ll be right back, folks, with, once more, the Wonderkids.”
Applause. The host turned away for an urgent conference with the producer, who explained that the next guest was incapacitated at her hotel. It was all hands on deck to get the next song ready, but the Wonderkids were troopers. They’d worked in the deadliest trenches of show business; this was nothing to them. No one needed to change instruments, or reprogram a synth, or put new cheat sheets up on the monitors—these were hardened live musicians, doing the corporation a favor. Blake asked for a second ukulele, which Mitchell had on hand. All was ready well before the ads had even finished.
“Welcome back. Let’s hear it once more for the Wonderkids.”
And then, “Rock Around the Bed.” No messing around; just the song—the hit. And, since there was no time constraint, and we were on adult television, late-night television no less, Blake was always going to sing his favorite verse. Then he went ballistic, climbing up on one of the gantries, then beating the crap out of another ukulele. Everyone was having a ball, even the host. Mei-Xing dragged me on the set with Aslan. We threw confetti. They danced. It was stupendous.
“I can’t thank those guys enough,” announced the host. “They’re playing Westchester tomorrow. Go and see their show. A wonderful band! The Wonderkids! Good night, folks. See you tomorrow night, unless you see us first!”
It was the zenith of their fame. It didn’t have to be; from there, they could have gone anywhere. But they went down.
My fault.
After the show, the record company took us all out to eat, and we wound up back in someone’s room, where we put dance music on the little Walkman speakers. Mei-Xing waltzed with Jack; Blake did the lambada with Camille; Curtis and I did the limbo. It was just like old times. But parents needed to get kids to bed and, rather than wait up for the broadcast, some drifted away, and the focus was lost. By the end of the night, it was, as usual, Jack, Blake, Mitchell, and me, and Jack had a phone call he had to make—other fish to fry. Blake wanted to get something off the bus, and thought he might just watch the show on there, and Mitchell was bored. I walked down with Blake. The bus was impudently parked on the street. Inside, he turned music up full blast—one of the limitless supply of live albums we were always listening to—and ricocheted off the coffins on his way back: “Let’s have some fun,” he shouted over his shoulder as I threw my jacket down.
The music from the front was cranking, but we couldn’t be bothered to walk forward to turn it down, so we shut the door on it instead. Blake rolled a joint and breathed a sigh of relief. “What a day. Magic.”
He never required praise, or fished for it, but he deserved it: “You were so good on that sofa.”
“Well, he made me look good.”
“You were great.”
Blake lost himself in a reverie, a poignant remix of the old dream: how the Wonderkids, given a few opportunities like that, could come to be seen as more than a children’s band. It wasn’t that it wasn’t true; it was just that it meant so much to him. I became aware that the music down the other end had been turned off. Probably Mitchell. I opened the door a crack and put my finger up to hush Blake. I saw, quite clearly illuminated, two of New York City’s finest; between them and us, the lone figure of Mitchell in his smart tan suit. I closed the door as quietly as I could: “Blake,” I said. “There’s policemen on the bus. Mitchell’s stalling them.”
Without panic, Blake opened all windows, gathering various pieces of paraphernalia into a Tupperware box; this wasn’t the first time he’d cleaned up. “Sweet,” he said. “They probably only care how we’re parked. Can you get out of that window?” I reckoned I could. “Okay. Take this up to the hotel room. Then come back, walk in the front and say you’re looking for me, then knock, and I’ll come out. Okay? Unless it’s all died down.”
I nodded and did exactly what I was told, walking round the entire block just to avoid the front of the bus, carrying the Tupperware like it was sandwiches for my night shift.
When I returned, only Mitchell was there, on the phone: “Yes, Precinct 35. That’s where they took him. I know. I know. Andy, Andy. I know. I’m doing my best here. Get a lawyer soon.” Mitchell looked at me: “Don’t tell me. I know exactly what you were doing. He’s been arrested.”
“But I had all the gear.”
“Amazing. But he wasn’t arrested for pot.”
“For what? Parking a bus illegally? Playing music too loud? Being annoying?”
“Save that laugh, funny man,” said Mitchell. “Possession of cocaine.”
“But Blake doesn’t . . .”
I looked over where I’d thrown my jacket. There it was, pockets emptied, contents strewn.
“When I happened by,” he continued, “the door was wide open, and there were two cops on the bus.”
“Oh, God.” I actually put my head in my hands. I hadn’t even locked the door. Rule One: nothing good happens when you leave the door open.
“And after you’d done your Midnight Express flit, they wanted to search the back and Blake emerges, and there’s nothing back there, but they’ve got the scent and there’s that jacket and guess what they find in there. What was it doing there?”
“Oh God,” I said. “I’ve never even done cocaine.”
“Well, Blake’s taken the fall. And he really has. And guess who has to deal with it?”
“Can I . . .?”
“You’ve done enough. Go to bed.”
I didn’t have the stomach to turn on the talk show. The high, when everything had felt possible—even the marriage of Heaven and Hell—had lasted such a relatively brief time. I couldn’t sleep, thinking of Blake in his cell.
In fact, his jail experience went okay, primarily because of the dented, ancient TV bracketed to the wall outside the holding cell. When the show came on, his cellmates—no one too terrifying but nevertheless, large men who knew the score—put two and two together, mainly because the newest arrival, wearing the same clothes as the guy on TV, stood directly beneath the screen, sang along and did the same moves. At least, that’s how Blake told it. When his TV doppelgänger sat down to chat with the host, Blake’s stock rose further.
“What you here for, rock ’n’ roller?” asked a Mexican guy. It was one of the most exciting questions Blake was ever asked. He quoted it a million times.
“Drugs, my friend. Category A drugs.”
“Celebrating your TV appearance, ese?”
“Got out of hand.”
“Didn’t expect to be watching it down here, though, didja?” asked another man, laughing.
“No, I didn’t.” “Rock Around the Bed” began. “My name is Blake Lear and I’m fairly happy to meet you all.”
The lawyer had Blake out next morning, though he’d have to return for a hearing: it was unlikely to result in anything but a hefty fine.
We picked him up at the precinct. It was hardly a hero’s welcome, though Randy applauded. (One could only imagine the curled lip of Heaven’s disgust.) Blake launched straight into anecdote, as though the whole thing had revitalized him: “Okay, here’s the key detail. Best image of the night. We’re all given these little peanut butter sandwiches in plastic Ziploc bags, and no one eats them, because they’re disgusting. No. What they do is, whoever wants them most trades them for whatever they’ve got, and then they use them as pillows. Peanut butter sandwich pillows. You can’t make that shit up.”
As the bus moved, Mitchell announced from his desk-office, very matter-of-fact: “Andy is going to meet us in Westchester, and I guess there’ll be some kind of band meeting. Blake will be lying low. Sweet will be thanking his lucky stars.”
“Hey, come in the back with me,” Blake said to me. “Let’s finish that conversation.”
When we were settled, I thanked him.
“Better me than you,” he said.
“Why are you always taking the blame for things you didn’t do?”
“Because I never do anything except onstage. And it’s all allowed up there. I’m very lucky, right? Even this. There’s an opportunity for a song here. Where’s the Tupperware?”
“Don’t you think you should . . .”
“Don’t you think you should absolutely never tell me what to do?”
“It’s in my coffin.”
“Good lad. So, blow, then, now is it? Good high? Missed out pot? Moving straight to heroin? Injecting it in your dick? Giving it the old Dusty Miller?”
“I’ve never even tried it.” I told him the story: I’d seen the kid drop it on the floor, and I thought Blake might want it. And then I’d just forgotten it.
“That would have to be the unluckiest bust in the history of drugs. And totally deserved. But look,” he was crumbling some rather dry, smelly grass into a small pipe, “whether I want cocaine or not—and thanks for thinking of me, but I don’t—you are not my drug runner. I must set a horrible example, but be a teenager. You wanna do some coke? We’ll do some coke together.”
“I don’t want to do coke.” And I didn’t want to do it with Groovy Dad either. Where was the middle ground? In fact, I just wanted him to tell me off. But he wasn’t thinking of discipline; he was inhaling deeply.
“The lesson here is, don’t pick up packages that don’t belong to you just because they’re there and you can. And if you do, take the drugs as soon as possible: everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it. Here’s a story. Once, at university, I was going to a demo, which turned out to be the one demo in the history of our many demos where everybody was arrested, taken to the cells and searched. And that would have been me. But, strangely, my father called that day—he happened to be in town, it was the only time ever—and I reluctantly met him in some quaint little tea shop. I totally missed the demo and the arrest because I was eating scones and clotted cream: that’s how committed to class warfare I was. Anyway, I was kind of annoyed about it, until a few days later, when I found three tiny blue tabs of acid in my pocket, which someone had given me at a party a few days before, and I’d completely forgotten about. And that would have been the end of my university career right there, finished, sent down. You gotta keep your nose clean and know what’s in your wallet.” He put his arm around me. “I know it’s a little weird round here, but everything will be okay. It’s not your fault.”
“It is.”
“A little drug bust can’t stop this juggernaut.”
“Blake,” I said, since we were being honest, “I’m sleeping with Mei-Xing. She’s actually eighteen, even though everyone thinks she’s fifteen. I’m the only person who knows. Even Curtis doesn’t know.”
“Which bit?”
“All the bits.”
“What is it with the older women? Do you wish you had a mother?”
“Do they count as older women if you think they’re younger?”
“Are we using protection?”
It was then Jack joined us in the back. He was white as a sheet.
“Bad night for all us,” he said, collapsing onto the remaining seat.
“Possibly worse for Blake?” I suggested. But there was a look in Jack’s eyes, and I realized that, during all that morning’s excitement, he’d been completely quiet, expressing no opinions whatsoever, not even “nasty” or “tedious.” He hadn’t said a single word when his brother got on the bus, let alone made the usual snarky jokes about Blake’s cellmates’ sexual preferences. In fact, there hadn’t been a word since he’d left us the previous evening.
“What is it, mate?” asked Blake, handing Jack the spliff, which his brother rejected.
“Look, there might be cops waiting when we arrive.”
“No, it’s sorted. We’re all done with cops for today.”
“For me.” Blake looked up. Then Jack told us.
The previous night, he’d phoned up this woman, and she’d invited him out for a drink somewhere they could see the band on TV, then taken him back to her anonymous tenement building. (It was at this point that, without looking at us, Jack began to rub at an imaginary mark on his right palm with his left thumb. “Never tell anyone, not even Mitchell.”) It turned out she liked a bit of the rough stuff—he said the phrase in inverted commas with a pained smile, but there were so many elements of this story upon which one might judge him that there didn’t seem any point pussyfooting around this aspect; the whole thing was coming as quite a shock to me. She’d asked him to tie her up, not to the four corners of the bed, which request he was never cruel enough to deny a willing participant, but from this hook in the middle of the room, from which her feet just touched the ground. She knew precisely what she was doing; the hook wasn’t there by chance.
At first, Jack felt a little out of his depth. He was no stranger to silken sashes, but the meat hook was a little more torture chamber than slap and tickle. He didn’t want to disappoint the nice lady, however, so he got into it. He gagged and bound her semi-clad body, dangling her from the meat hook as requested. Things were going swimmingly. On an inspiration, Jack decided to heighten the suspense by going out for a packet of cigarettes. He told her what he was going to do, and not to do anything he wouldn’t do, got her front-door key and took the elevator to the ground floor.
His quest for smokes took him slightly further afield than he intended, and in his slightly drunk, somewhat high state, as he sucked on a welcome Camel Light back on the street, he realized he couldn’t remember the number of her apartment, and it wasn’t written on the key. At first, this struck him as funny, because he pictured himself having to try the key in every apartment door in the building. But then . . . he looked around him, not quite sure which way he’d even walked. Forget the number of the apartment; he didn’t even remember what building it was.
“So how did you find her?” I asked.
Jack put his hand in his pocket and ruefully showed us her key, letting it dangle from his finger a little too graphically. He groaned.
“Well, call her,” said Blake in exasperation. Jack looked up and sighed. She wouldn’t be picking up the phone. “For Christ’s sake! How long ago was this?”
“A few hours.”
“You’ve slept?”
“No,” said Jack. “I don’t even remember what building it was.”
“You looked everywhere?”
“YES!”
“Have you got the receipt for the fags? Check.”
Miraculously, he fished it from the depths of his coat pocket. That was the starting point.
“Okay, Jack. You and me, right now. We’re going to put that key in every keyhole around that cornershop until we find the right one.”
“She’s going to be livid,” said Jack.
“She’s going to be pleased to have the chance to be livid. I’m livid! Anyway, maybe you gave her the night of her life, you prick.”
Blake opened the door and in a completely different tone of voice, ordered: “MITCHELL! Turn the bus around. 14th Street and 7th Avenue, please, now, before we leave town. Jack and I have some work to do.” He turned back. “Jack, we’ll sort this out. We’re going to be very calm, and you’re going to give me every ounce of help. Sweet, you too. First, we’re going to get three keys cut. Then, we’re going to spread out.
I’d never had a handle on Jack’s sex life, the true Gothic horror of which was revealing itself in a slow striptease. I’d tried to suppress all memory of that video, and I can’t claim to have known much about the further reaches of sex—the Marquis of This, and Whiplash Girlchild von That, all that Velvet Underground stuff. You try not to judge, but what on earth was he doing in his spare time?
Back at the bus, Jack wore the smile of a man recently spared the gallows. She’d picked up finally, after he’d left his fifteenth message from a pay phone.
“But how did she . . .?”
All he said, once we were safely behind the Great Wall of China, was: “She wasn’t best pleased. Seems like the cleaner found her. But she told me to be in touch.”
The band meeting took place in a conference room at the hotel the next morning. Everyone apart from Blake was on time: Andy, John from WBA, Curtis, Camille, Mei-Xing, Mitchell, even Aslan, who was laying out a Thomas the Tank Engine track in the middle of the floor. There was a decanter of water and some freshly cut flowers.
“Good morrow,” said Blake. “Who’s got the good news?” He clapped his hands as though he’d been relishing this little get-together. Backstage the previous night had been like a morgue. The other Wonderkids had found out then; the world at large this morning.
Curtis shook his head, sadly. “Blake, what were you thinking?” he asked. Before I had a chance to clarify, which I intended to because it was my fault, Blake hushed me. Mei-Xing rolled her eyes. It was hard to imagine what they’d have made of Jack’s little adventure.
“Blake,” said Andy. “There actually is good news. But, first, can I just say, and I’ll take a vote on it, but wouldn’t it be better if we restricted this meeting to band members?”
“Is it getting a little too Let It Be for you, Andy?” asked Blake. It wasn’t even a jab at Yoko, just a reference to the fracturing of a band, the opposing points of view around the table. It was a harsh reminder of a time when we had all been singing from the same songbook, just like the Beatles when they were happy boys with matching mop tops.
“He might have a point,” said Jack. It was true; Camille was looking at Aslan; Mei-Xing, my beautiful little pony, was sitting quietly next to Curtis, holding his hand, as if offering moral support. And what about me? Who was I?
“Meh,” said Blake. “Take us as you find us. So, good news then.”
“Orders have gone through the roof since the TV appearance. The single will chart. The band is in great shape. The band’s image, however . . .”
“Tarnished,” said John who seemed more executive than ever.
“Would this,” Blake asked, “be the ideal time, strategically, to morph from a children’s band into an Everyone Music type band?”
“Are you being facetious or amusing?” asked Andy, politely.
“No,” said John. “We’ve identified a market. We are the number one brand in that market. What we want to do is stay number one. Do we diversify? Yes, we diversify. Do we increase productivity? Yes, we increase productivity. But we don’t ditch a marketing plan just because . . .”
“Alright. Alright,” said Blake. “Jesus. Just throwing it out there.” Camille, serene and interior, was paying no attention at all. She smiled encouragement at Aslan every now and then.
“The main problem right now is this.” John opened a newspaper to a picture of Jacquelyn Belmer; she was brandishing a copy of Number Two. “We won’t go into the history of this antipathy, the rights and the wrongs, but this kind of behavior—a drug bust—is grist to her mill.”
“This is literally insane,” said Blake. “Rutles arrested! Nude girl and teapot!”
“It’s not insane,” said Andy. “You’re the lead singer of a band for kids. Parents don’t want their children entertained by junkies. Four upcoming promoters have pulled out, dropped us. We’re not playing those shows. We are losing money. Contractually, in fact, they can’t, but they have and you can see their point. The pith of this particular article, however, is that you legally cannot now play your upcoming show in the District of Columbia. You are banned from playing there.”
“Can we actually go into the District of Columbia, but not play a show?” asked Jack, as though this were salient. Perhaps he had a date there. “Or can we just not go there at all?”
“We’re banned from DC?” asked Blake.
“So we’re free the Friday of next week?” asked Camille.
“So we’re free the Friday of next fucking week?” repeated Blake. Camille immediately started crying, which he ignored. “You want a night off? Take a night off! We’ve been BANNED in DC. We can’t play there. What court granted that injunction or whatever you call it?”
“The lawyers are dealing with it. They’re appealing,” said John, adjusting his Lennon glasses. “The trouble is that this isn’t one of those PMRC things where everyone gets to expatiate over whether the lyrics are subversive or not. It’s a drug bust; it’s against the law; it’s real bad behavior.” I looked at Blake shamefaced. “And there’s this other issue of “incitement to riot” she keeps banging on about. Everyone saw what happened at that other show. You’re like the Jesus and Mary Chain of the pre-teens. People are scared of you.”
“You seem quite excited by it,” said Blake.
“Well, it’s a unique opportunity for moving product,” said John. “But it has to be handled carefully. Apparently you’re pushing all the right buttons; just don’t push any more. And obviously, no more drugs. And some anti-drug public service announcements. Believe me, WBA has been here before.”
“It wasn’t his cocaine,” I said.
“Yes, it was,” said Blake.
“The thing is,” said Andy hastily, “it doesn’t actually matter whose it was, because it is now officially Blake’s. Or he gets in even deeper shit for lying. We know Blake’s a kind, generous, occasionally overly flamboyant man. That’s not the issue. The issue is public perception of a band who are primarily entertaining children, and who shouldn’t really be seen taking a sip of beer or smoking a cigarette in public, much less flashing at Disneyland or being arrested for hard drugs.” There was silence. “We’re shelving the theme park for the time-being,” said Andy, making it clear that this punishment was Blake’s uniquely. “The money’s vanished. We’re concentrating on meat and potatoes: live performances, records in the charts, staying out of trouble. No grand statements. Contrition.”
“Hey,” said Blake, who’d been cooking something up during the lecture. “DC gig. Okay, we can’t play DC, so we play right on the edge of Maryland or Virginia, as near DC as we can possibly be, and we make it a free gig and we do the best show ever, and we get the ACLU to help us put it on. The Pack ’n’ Play Festival.”
“Is that exactly the kind of grand statement I just mentioned?” asked a weary Andy.
“No, I like it,” said John. “It’s great. It’ll take planning.”
“Well, we can all have the Friday of next week off,” said Blake pointedly, “but let’s get the date for this festival and advertise it before next Friday. Let’s not let the kids down.”
“Okay,” said Andy. “There’s more.” And there was more: there had been threats. “We’re putting a stop to the autograph sessions after the shows. Now most artistes would be absolutely delighted by this but . . .”
“That’s half of the show,” pleaded Blake. “That’s what they come for.”
“We won’t shift so many units,” I said.
“Even so,” said John.
Wow.
“Look, I’m not afraid of threats,” said Blake. “What are they gonna do? Shoot me? No, they’re gonna spit on me or egg me or give me a damned good talking to. I’m not scared. We shouldn’t give in to them. We should just carry on . . .” He’d said just about everything he could say, but he was fighting a losing battle. “What? What?”
“Well . . .” said Andy.
“Have there been actual threats?” asked Blake. Andy nodded. “But you’re more worried about the threat I might offer.”
“I wouldn’t put it that way, at all,” said Andy. “But I’d say now was a good time to lie low, play shows, sell records, and get ourselves together: contrition.” Blake sniffed. “And one other thing: don’t think you stand for anything. That’s dangerous. You’re not Lenny Bruce. You’re not a martyr. You’re a guy with a drug bust.”
“Well,” said Curtis, prodded by Mei-Xing as the meeting was coming to a close, “since we’re all sharing, I have an announcement: I’ll be leaving the band at the end of the tour. It’s been a wonderful ride, and I thank you for the opportunity, but I want to pursue other ambitions.”
“The solo record?” asked Jack. “Man And His Cymbals?” Mei-Xing looked at me again. I tried out a smile.
“Okay,” said Andy. No one was shocked—we’d grow another Wonderkid. “Well, that’s a shame. But if that’s how you really feel.”
“Yes,” said Mei-Xing, mostly to me. “Curtis wants to make his own music now.”
“Curtis,” said Jack, raising an eyebrow. “She’s fourteen years old.” She’s not. “You’re taking advice on your musical career from a fourteen-year-old?”
“She’s fifteen. You forgot her birthday,” said Curtis. Jack had, but I hadn’t. It was her eighteenth, and I was the only one who knew. I’d let her win at Monopoly. There had been forfeits.
“Right,” said Jack. “Well, happy birthday, Mei-Xing. Congratulations on breaking up the band.”
Please don’t call her Yoko.
Blake was being unusually grown-up about the whole thing. As far as he was concerned, it was a minor wrinkle on the ironing board: “Till the end of the tour, then, you say?”
“Yes, absolutely. I’d never leave you in the lurch.”
“Well, then, let’s have a word with the agent and see if he can have the tour go on forever. I don’t want to see you go, Curtis. I’m going to make you see sense over the next few weeks.”
“Okay,” said Curtis. “I appreciate your attitude.”
“And Jack agrees with me,” said Blake.
Jack nodded. “Sorry. Bit of a shock, you know, what with everything else.”
“Well, it’s partly the everything else,” said Curtis.
“And I’ll be leaving too,” said Camille, attempting a laugh, “so you’ll need another chick as well as a black guy.” No one spoke. “This situation is too stressful, and I can’t give Aslan the care he needs. This is no way to bring him up. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“I’ll tell you where you’re wrong though,” said Blake, looking at Aslan. Kid was so happy, playing with the trains on his track, making them endlessly crash off the wibbly-wobbly bridge. “This is the best place to bring a kid up. This is it.” It was? Did he believe that?
“Drug busts, buses, guns backstage?” asked Camille. “Soundchecks, naked mothers, and playgroupies?”
“Life! As it is lived!” said Blake, voice raised. “Life! Live a little!”
“Oh,” said Andy, hoping to draw the meeting to a close before it fell apart, “and the record label want you in one bus. They feel that two draw unnecessary attention. And it’s an extravagance.”
“Why?” asked Blake, full of indignation. Camille and Curtis would walk out right now rather than travel on one bus. “Who cut the tour support?”
Andy didn’t know how to answer, then said quietly: “I told you he wasn’t used to people saying ‘no.’”
“Okay,” said Blake. “We keep the two buses. I’ll pay for the other one. Who do I make the check out to, Mitchell?”
“I’ll get you that information,” said Mitchell, who hadn’t said a word. “But if it’s cards on the table time, I’ll add this.” His final words, spoken with great dignity, as befitted a man who wore Brooks Brothers coats, a raffish scarf, and carried a gun, were: “Gentlemen, Ladies, there is only so much I can do to help you, and I have reached the limits of my patience. My work on your planet is done. I wish you well. I am returning to sanity.”
He took off his laminate, let it hang from his finger until it dropped, then left. I watched him. We all did. No one could believe it.
I’d been Mitchell’s go-between, his protégé. I understood his frustration, and no one understood more than I how difficult his job had become, but even I was surprised he left in the middle of a tour like that. He didn’t even turn to say goodbye.