MY PHONE VIBRATES. A TEXT.
Deep breath.
As I reach for my iPhone, the sound system explodes into volume. No one around the Wonderkids table misses my frantic lunge. It feels like if I don’t read that text straightaway, it will self-delete, evaporate into the digital ether, lost forever, and with it, its author: “Can’t find the stage door! Meet me outside the big windows. Come alone.”
“It’s Blake,” I hiss across the table. “Everything’s okay. He can’t find the stage door. I’ll go and get him.”
There is a general sigh of relief. Greg, completely gray now, crew cut to disguise the lack of alternative, gives it the smug “I knew he’d be here” nod of his head, accompanied by an equally annoying two-handed “be calm.” Perhaps he knows something: they’re as thick as thieves. “Shall I go?” he asks.
“No, it’s okay. Back in a tick.” I don’t mention Blake’s instruction that I come alone. Why worry anyone unduly? I mean, it’s probably nothing, right? The lights dim.
“It’s time to turn off your cell phones,” advises a voice over the PA, as I plot my exit. Squinting, I see a large series of plate-glass windows at the back of the room. “WELCOME TO THE FOURTH ANNUAL JIM-JAMMIES!”
Time to make my way. But “the fourth”? We’re the fourth Hall of Fame inductees? Who were the other three? Pete Seeger? Peter, Paul & Mommy too? Who else? Simeon? It’s fair to say that we may represent a fairly radical change of direction.
As I get up, the show begins. Why, if it isn’t Star of Stage and Screen and Part-Time Children’s Presenter . . . actually, I have absolutely no idea who it is, but it isn’t Dan Zanes (hair), They Might Be Giants (glasses), a Wiggle (primary colors), Simeon (very old, asshole), Joni Johnson (extremely attractive), a character from Sesame Street (furry), and it certainly isn’t 1-Z (black). But there’s a house band, and this guy’s behaving like the cameras are on.
My most direct route to the back of the hall involves a wayward meander through a maze of circular tables, a game where points are lost for failing to avoid obstacles, tripping over longer legs, kicking purses. I prepare the wording of inevitable apologies. There are these weird girls dotted around, arched eyebrows and short Betty Boop skirts. They look like they might be selling cigarettes but they’re not; they’re just stylish. Or perhaps they’re a Kindie act: the Boops. Probably up for Best Newcomer (Group). I smile at one. She ignores me.
The chain of events that has led to the Kravitz Center flashes before my eyes, as though—well, as though I’m dying. The band may yet die here tonight, so it’s quite appropriate. It’s like The Last Waltz by the band the Band. They got back together to break up for the film. Maybe the Wonderkids are doing that too.
First there was the genius music supervisor who put “Rock Around the Bed” in a Judd Apatow movie a couple of years back. The Wonderkids were always ripe for rediscovery, but that rediscovery seemed impossible. It was always going to take someone with a little vision and a lot of enthusiasm to put the band back before the public eye. Turns out that this guy was at the Pack ’n’ Play Festival and witnessed the rogue finger, aged eight. On the back of the movie, the original video was recut, premiered on Vimeo, went viral (however that magic happens), and suddenly this 1-Z kid starts talking about the Wonderkids, how their anarchy influenced his Gangsta Kindie. Blake was the nearest thing Family Music ever had to an outlaw.
And then Niall from KidCon started sniffing around again. I’d thought him rather ineffectual when we’d met, a bit of a standard poodle, but he was more like whatever dog it is whose jaws lock after he’s sunk his teeth in. Anyway, Niall just wouldn’t let go of our trouser leg. And finally, it was just like any band reunion: whatever the band says to the contrary, whatever the claims of “the time is right” or “we’ve all grown up and when we started playing together again, the bad vibes just melted away” and “sure we’ll be doing the old songs, but we’re debuting great new material as well,” it’s always all about the money.
If the idea had stayed with Andy and Blake, nothing would have happened. But Jack found out, and as much as Blake didn’t need it, Jack and Rita did. And Blake, finally, couldn’t refuse: his brother, his family, his nephews. Perhaps there was a (totally unacknowledged) sense of pride in the accomplishments of the Wonderkids, as well. Anyway, he gave in, though it was clear that it would be up to me to take care of everything. “I’ll turn up” was about all he said. Things needed sorting out, but when you needed an answer, he wouldn’t call back; he barely understood email. The promoters needed to know this or that, and I’d answer as best I could. Blake didn’t seem to have any particular plans for the event, and I knew he wouldn’t get back to me anyway. There was an increasing air of desperation when people asked me what the band was going to perform. You can only tell people everything’s under control so many times.
It wasn’t any trouble getting Curtis and Becca, though Curtis’s filming schedule was a minor hiccup. It wasn’t like anybody had been in touch much over the last few years—though Curtis was an inveterate Christmas card sender, always with those pictures of Mei-Xing and the last year’s progress report—a bit ridiculous given that she was in her mid-thirties and on her second marriage. But the moment news got around (and I imagine Niall was behind a little of the rumormongering: he was dogged), it couldn’t not happen.
And so here we are in Manhattan—a gig to follow at the KidCon Festival in Prospect Park and, icing on the cake, induction into the Jim-Jammies Hall of Fame: redemption. Niall pressed all the right buttons. I had to cancel the second half of a tour with some Scandinavian Goths—hard as fucking nails onstage, pussycats off, all vegan and organic underwear—just to get to grips with the logistics and visas. Blake hadn’t made things any easier, but I wasn’t complaining. It’s what I do.
The Wonderkids’ entourage has been carefully placed, like a recently soiled diaper, at some remove from the action. And not one person, not one single person, has come up to say hi. Actually, strike that. Two people: Niall (who doesn’t count because he was paying his respects everywhere) and Simeon, but only to say hi to his daughter. Nice touch.
Andy, one-time manager, is with us but paying little attention; ditto Nick Hedges. Andy seems far more interested in his wife, much younger and faker than the one before, though there remains the possibility that she is the one before, but with work. And what on earth has he been doing for the last eighteen years? I bet he moved with the industry, left the majors, went into consulting, got into digital distribution, licensed stuff online, developed a very briefly top-selling app, rolled with the punches. Back in the day, nothing was too little trouble for him. The Wonderkids were his problem once, but not anymore, no sir.
Jack has been fidgeting like crazy, right hand twitching like Blake’s used to. He’s been drinking too quickly. “Tastes like piss” is the only non-Blake-related remark he’s made so far, referring to the wine, winking for my benefit only; oh, the secrets we share, the jokes only we can make, the smoothies we defiled. There’s nothing wrong with the wine, but he wouldn’t let that stand in the way of the joke that only I understood. All these years on, the same stimuli provoking the same reactions from Pavlov’s WonderDogs. Rita is wearing the largest pair of silver cuff bracelets; they’ll steal the show, clinking in toast and clattering in applause. Becca, more hippieish than she used to be, is with Sam. I met him when he was six, and now he’s twenty-five, a stand-up comedian. It always seems like that would be the punch line. In truth, everyone seemed on edge except Andy.
Of course we are: the Wonderkids are going to play live for the first time in, let’s be precise, eighteen years, and there’s no sign of the lead singer. The last I saw Blake was the night before, when we gathered at the hotel bar. When I turned in, he was unsuccessfully trying to swivel round on his stool, yelling “Quack!” in Greg’s ear. Curtis then witnessed his departure for a “midnight creep”; I could confirm his return because I woke him with a phone call around lunchtime to go over the schedule. He subsequently didn’t turn up to soundcheck; no surprise there. He hasn’t shown up to any of the rehearsals either. I stood in for him. Like I always used to, while we wondered where he was.
On top of the fact that there’s no Blake, there’s a weird energy in the room. Granted, it’s an awards show: everyone’s edgy. There will be winners and losers; some of the bigger names, confident of a good showing, speeches prepared in their back pocket, feel comfortable in their finery. Others haven’t bothered to dress up at all. They’ll grin and bear it, assuming failure while secretly hoping for the success that would make a monkey suit worth the expense. The good news: the Wonderkids will be spared the more competitive aspects of the evening. We are being honored, Hall-of-Famed, inducted, whatever the exact phrase is: the band has won just by having existed.
The Jim-Jammies is, by its nature, a family event. Not in the sense that there are any kids in evidence. Oh, maybe there are a couple: one male nominee is sporting a BabyBjörn (full of wriggling baby, unlike the one Blake used to sport), but you get the feeling that the contraption and its contents are fashion accessories, part of his brand. It isn’t like the dude’s babysitter fell through or his kid desperately needed an evening out suspended across his father’s stomach. It’s a bold move by dad; luckily the ergonomic Björn leaves his hands free to pick up possible awards later on.
The irony is, I would have been invited to the Jim-Jammies anyway, since it’s Joni’s world; she’s sitting with her manager at a different table. I would have been there as her guest, her date, rather than as her tour manager, so I’d have been dressed rather smarter. I’d stuck to my policy of never dating someone you’re working with, but she can barely have got her key in the last hotel door before I texted her to ask her out. There’d been a bit of flirting—she used to call me “Sir”; I once said she looked so good she’d make her teenie audience come of age (she acted shocked but I could tell she liked it)—but I wasn’t positive she’d say yes. She did.
I push hopefully at a glass door that turns out to be a window. An usher, seeing my mistake, holds the actual door open for me.
There’s no sign of Blake outside but there’s a fountain, bathed in a white watery light, and that’s where he’ll be. He has a soft spot for fountains: a chance to throw in a coin, make a wish. I half-expect to see him paddling—bedraggled, shivering, laughing—but he emerges, dry as a bone, from behind the central spout, obscured by spray, calling my name. The first thing to say: he looks fantastic, in white suit, white shirt, and white tie. He’s spared us the halo, but he still appears saintly, angelic.
“Where on earth did you get that?”
“Garment district today. That old boy’s still there. I couldn’t believe it. He measured me up. Too much?”
I remember the guy. We’d stopped there the day before Blake spent the night in jail. “Perfect.”
He takes me in his arms, kisses my cheek.
“Is it time yet? How’s it going in there?” He takes a brand new pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and, in one deft sequence of movements, removes the cellophane, bangs the pack hard on his hand, opens it, whips out the silver protective wrapper, and rifles through his pockets for a lighter. He doesn’t have one, but I do: it’s just the kind of thing you get used to carrying. You become other people’s pockets. I also have a church-key bottle opener on my keychain. And a Leatherman.
“Well, it’s quite ritzy. Everyone’s going to be relieved that you’re here. Jack’s on edge.”
“Yeah, yeah, sorry . . . the suit took time, and I actually wrote a little speech . . . So this isn’t too much?” he asks, drawing attention to the suit once more.
“No, it’s fine. But there’s no alternative, right, so why are you asking? It’s that or underwear, right?” It’s unlike him to worry.
“There’s another one inside. You’re going to wear it.”
“I’m what?”
He brushes away my concerns. “How about this?”
He produces a large silver cross on a necklace.
“Depends what you’re going for,” I say circumspectly.
“Gotcha. ‘It’ is what I’m going for. I’m going for it.” He’s sucking the life out of the cigarette. He still smokes twice as quick as everyone else; even an American Spirit doesn’t slow him down. Smoking doesn’t relax him; that isn’t the point. “I couldn’t find the stage door.” He fiddles with the cross, trying to get it perfectly straight.
“I know that. Because when you text me, I’m the one who gets the text.” He nods as though this is news. “I also know the location of this elusive door. Look, I’ll text Greg, and let everyone know we’ll see them backstage at the intermission.”
The fountain abruptly changes color to red as the light show continues through its cycle.
“Well, hold on, before you do . . . Let’s talk as we go.”
I lead him in the direction of the backstage door. We could never go back through the audience with him in his stage clothes: I mean, rule number one. Unfortunately this involves our walking around the entire complex and in through the underground parking, the way we arrived this afternoon.
“Reminds me of that friend of Greg’s who was tech-ing for Prince. Remember that one?” asks Blake. It’s a story I know well, and one I’d just thought of when Blake mentioned my matching suit, but I think Blake might want the chance to tell it, settle the old nerves. It’s from the days when Prince made his whole crew dress up wearing braids and bodysuits, identical to whatever the little genius was wearing for that particular tour. Halfway through the show, at some barn in Germany, Prince has a kind of freak-out, and the guitar tech, his boss’s peace of mind paramount, escorts Prince from the stage, while the audience wonders what’s going on, whether it’s something serious or some kind of James Brown “I’ve given too much” piece of showbiz. The guitar tech bundles a hyperventilating Prince into a taxi and off to his hotel, and heads back into the gig to make his report on the situation to a none-too-pleased stage manager, who will have to explain to a none-too-pleased promoter, who will in his turn have to announce to an arena full of hostile punters that Prince has left the building. Furs will fly. Has the small star even played long enough to ensure ticket money doesn’t have to be refunded? (That’s the key thing: I once saw Bowie play in a monsoon at Jones Beach, just long enough to get past the “no refunds” watershed.)
However, the door through which the guitar tech has delivered Prince to safety has closed behind him without his knowledge. In fact, all the doors around the huge arena are closed, since the concert is supposedly in full purple swing. Further, Greg’s mate realizes that he doesn’t have any of his stage credentials with him, such had been his haste to leave, and that therefore his only option is to return through the main entrance, around which only a few increasingly desperate ticket touts linger, and that, to cap it all, he is a small, slightly pudgy, white New Yorker, in Germany, dressed as Prince.
We never knew how the story ended. Probably he got in okay and all was well, but we loved that image of the bloke wandering around outside the Stadion Halle, dressed as Prince, wondering how he was going to get back in, while 20,000 people inside bayed for blood as the band manfully vamped an instrumental version of “Housequake.”
By the time Blake’s done, we’re in the underground car park, and he’s enjoying one final cigarette before we enter his nicotine-free backstage nightmare. He looks very much as though he’s going to face a firing squad.
“I should text,” I say. “They’ll be on tenterhooks.”
“Look, Sweet,” says Blake, finally reaching the point. “I’m not going to perform tonight. I’m just going to make a speech.”
“The band isn’t going to perform?” I could talk him out of this. I could and I would.
“The band will perform.”
“But you won’t? What are they going to perform without you? An instrumental version of ‘Housequake’?”
“No, you can sing. That’s why I bought you the jacket.”
I laugh. “No.”
“You will sing.”
“You’re joking, of course.” He doesn’t seem to be.
“Look, I can’t do it. I don’t even want to do it. I don’t want to be Blake Lear . . .”
“Neither do I.”
“I’m just going to explain to the audience how honored we are, and what happened, and what’s happened in the meanwhile, and that it just isn’t in me anymore. If I sang the songs, I’d probably end up having a funny five minutes like Prince, and you’d get locked out of the gig, wearing an identical white suit. You sing them. I’ll dance across the stage or something.”
“You’re going to be Bez from the Happy Mondays while I pretend to be you?”
“Bez, the Dance Instigator!” says Blake as though this might persuade me.
“Hands down, your worst ever idea, Blake; second only to when you wanted to throw a fake toddler into a screaming audience.”
This actually provokes a laugh. A large transit van honks at the two guys in the middle of the car park.
“Well, it’s either that or nothing, because I’m not doing it. I promise it’ll be great. You know the songs.”
“Better than you, probably, at this point . . .” To which I hastily add, “Not that that’s an argument for me doing it. Anyway, that’s blackmail. I honestly don’t want to. I’ll be terrible. Also, what about the Prospect Park gig? It’s thousands of dollars. It’s Chuck and Johnny’s college fund or something, isn’t it?”
“I already put the money in Jack’s account.”
“You’re just going to cancel the gig?”
“I’ll go to the gig, mate, if you do the singing.”
“What?” Ridiculous.
He fusses over the stupid cross again, then fixes me with a laser eye: “Trust me. Do this for me.” He winks. That’s all, just a wink—a minute flexing of a tiny muscle. “Please, Sweet.” And now it really is like I’m dying or he’s hypnotized me. I remember how he delivered me through that dressing-room window, saved me from the Terrys, took me off to join the circus. Everything comes at me vertically and I don’t want to look down. “I’m your Dad, right?” I only realize there are tears in my eyes when I close them to stop the stinging. “Would I steer you wrong?”
“Not intentionally.”
“Then do this for me. I promise it’ll be great. It’ll be so much better than if I sang.”
“It’s going to be terrible. I can’t front a band. I don’t even want to. I’m too old for this shit.”
“No, I’m too old for this shit. You’re the right age. You know what to do. Trust me.”
It’s like that TV magician/mesmerist guy, when he turned a woman into a concert pianist in one week, despite the fact that she couldn’t play the piano at all; his entire method was to encourage her to waft her fingers over the keyboard in a vaguely classical way, and tell her that it would be okay, however nervous she felt. I mean, that was the set up. The trick, the viewer found out, was that she’d been a concert pianist all along, but he’d hypnotized her to forget it, so when it came time for the concert he dehypnotized her, and voilà: Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3. Genius TV.
But I’m not the lead singer in a band, nor have I ever been. Nor am I really hypnotized, though I do feel a little fuzzy. My entire stage experience comes down to a few songs with Jack’s cover band, including (I will admit) a storming version of “Burning Love” by Elvis Presley, the odd bit of “Testing One Two,” which sometimes, due either to my boredom or the tardiness and overwhelming lack of interest of a lead singer, has turned me into a vocal surrogate at soundchecks. Those are my meager qualifications . . . oh, and a working knowledge of the Wonderkids set earned by rehearsing the songs as Blake’s voice-double. Jesus.
“Do you trust me?” He’s shaking my shoulders. I’m in a bit of a daze.
“No,” I say.
“Fine,” says Blake. “Now let’s you-go-and-do-this-thing. And don’t say a word to the band. They’ll just refuse to play. It’s better this way.”
I deposit him in the dressing room and walk back to our table without relish, foreknowledge weighing heavily. Fuck knows which award they’re up to.
“Everything okay?” asks everyone without the need for actual words. I feel bad that I haven’t alerted them.
“Yeah.” I can only manage a half-smile. I’m feeling nauseated. It’s not like that nightmare where you’re taking an exam you haven’t revised for—I do at least know the songs—well, it’s a bit like that. Blake’s asked it of me—okay—but that doesn’t stop the Kravitz Center from swaying.
“Man,” says Greg. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“The ghost looks fantastic,” I say. “He’s raring to go.”
At intermission, the band, Greg and I leave the rest of our party at the table and head backstage to the dressing room. Blake has affixed a note on a paper napkin to the room-length mirror with a square inch of soap: “Having a massage.” Fuck. Just like before the Pack ’n’ Play Festival. And look what happened then. And there we sit, Blakeless once again, twiddling our thumbs; those people who smoke, thinking about smoking, those people who drink, drinking.
“Nice back here,” says Greg. “I mean, you could move in, couldn’t you? Put a little bed over there, TV over here, kettle—groovy. Bit of a drag getting in past security and that.”
No one’s nervous, but there’s also no natural opportunity for regular conversation, and no one’s willing to take that bull by the horns. The moment calls for Greg, a monologue on something irrelevant: “Did I ever tell you about that band Arab Spring? Well, their manager . . .” but Greg perhaps feels a little self-conscious, unnecessarily on best behavior, unusually reticent; he’s never known Curtis or Becca that well. Just when we need him most, he goes quiet. In fact, he’s doing the Evening Standard crossword. He’s in Manhattan and he’s going the Evening Standard crossword. Perky P.A.s and downtrodden gofers keep us apprised of the show’s progress. This finally kickstarts Greg into some story that passes a little time.
And then there’s Blake, vivid in his white suit, rotating his shoulders as though he really has been massaged. He greets the room with genuine enthusiasm, abject apology, and takes the note off the mirror, as though he doesn’t want it to be unclear whether he’s back or not. He throws open a wardrobe door and hands me the white suit identical to his: “Throw that on; we’re all going to look great tonight, even the crew.”
“Guy’s just about to induct us,” he says cheerily, as I emerge from the bathroom, gleaming, vastly self-conscious. Our favorite P.A. comes to lead us to the side of the stage for the grand entrance. The band is to set up behind the curtain while Blake gives his speech. Blake asked Jack earlier whether he’d like to say anything. Jack said: “I think I’ll let the music speak for itself, man.” Very wise.
“How about if you let me speak for ourselves?” asked Blake.
“Great, man,” Jack said. “Our band,” but he said it like he was saying “your band.”
Roger Wrong takes the stage. It’s a lovely introduction, appropriate to the climax of the evening; he talks about how everything’s an opportunity to learn, and how great the Wonderkids were, and then goes on to tell a very brief version of his Blake anecdote.
“Did I do that?” Blake asks. I nod. He grimaces.
“It was funny.”
“It’s funny that I don’t remember.”
As Roger Wrong goes on, my mind wanders. I feel myself floating like the tiny, stray feather currently fluttering to the ground in the glare of the lighting on the Kravitz Center stage. The feather swishes this way, then that, before it lands, buffeted by otherwise imperceptible eddies and currents of draft at shoe level. I’ve almost forgotten that I’m going to play some songs; it seems so surreal. I hope my landing is as soft. I had a friend whose first published poem was in The New Yorker. My first live stage performance as a lead singer will be to a thousand people in New York City. I first gave a woman an orgasm on the space ride at Disneyland. She’s standing behind me now. She squeezes my hand. It’s just like the old days. No one else notices. How did we get away with that for so long? Why did we bother?
And then Roger Wrong announces Blake Lear of the Wonderkids, and on Blake walks to, I have to say, an ovation. I wasn’t expecting anyone to boo—everyone here knows what’s what and who’s who and why—but there’s genuine adoration, even perhaps a note of apology on behalf of America. Add a dash of redemption into the mix, and you have the cocktail for a proper comeback. If only he was actually going to sing . . . or come back . . . but there he is, large as life behind the see-through podium in his white suit, like Alec Guinness, Hopkirk Deceased and David Byrne all rolled into one, but with a cross on his chest.
We are escorted behind the curtain to gather our instruments, or rather for the band to gather their instruments, and me to fiddle with Blake’s guitar and check the positioning of his microphone as though he, rather than I, is about to sing. So we can’t really watch him. But we can hear.
“Do you ever get the feeling you’ve been inducted?” is Blake’s opening sneer: Sex Pistols. Risky, but the audience gets it. “Hey, at last, we get an award. About bloody time! Firstly, I’d like to thank The Man for this.” There isn’t a monitor near, so I can’t be sure, but I imagine him lifting the award skyward, brandishing it in a Heavenly direction. Very Blake. Whether he believes in God is irrelevant. It’s just the kind of thing twats do when they get an award. “And I’d like to say this. The Wonderkids were the best band I ever played with; we weren’t perfect, but we were a great little band. We tried to communicate directly with the kids, with you, without mediation. We tried to show the kids a little rock ’n’ roll, when you lot . . .”—and perhaps he’s indicating a few of the stars of the contemporary scene; perhaps he is indicating my girlfriend . . . oh, what is she about to witness . . .—“when you lot were a twinkle in your fathers’ eyes.” Laughter. Good. It’s like listening to the Oscars on the radio.
“I tried to channel Edward Lear, William Blake, and all the poetry I loved into these songs, for which my brother Jack wrote fantastic tunes.” His voice floats around us in the hall, disembodied, echoey. “Originally I meant those songs for adults, for everybody—Everyone Music—but Nick Hedges over there, who made it all happen, thought that possibly our best audience was children, and that made total sense to me. Kids dream without restraint. Your great Dr. Seuss said that. They don’t know how to do it, they just do. And as we grow up, we forget; so my appeal was directly to the subconscious, and that’s what they enjoyed. So I’m proud.”
I strum the guitar once and check the monitor. I’d need a whole lot more guitar.
“But I feel humble, too, because we weren’t ready. And I say that frankly: we made mistakes. We were in untested waters. We were the kids. The kids were more grown up than us! Maybe that’s why they liked us. We didn’t mean to, but we screwed up. And for that, we’re sorry.” There is respectful applause, but I don’t want to hear him apologizing for the band, particularly if I am just about to be its lead singer. One two, I whisper, as the monitor guy gives me the thumbs up. “Well, we’re not entirely sorry, because we enjoyed monkeying around, and we indulged ourselves to the full, and we enjoyed the mums’ company, and we made no secret of that then, I guess, which was foolish, and we make no bones about it now because . . . why bother? It was my gang and I was in charge. But we were made an example of. And now the rest of you are all very well behaved. Because you worked it out. And I’m pleased we died for your sins.
“But just because you’ve worked it out, don’t always be telling the kids what to do and what to think and how to behave. The environment’s up the spout; all animals are endangered species now, including humans; but let the kids be kids. The kids are cool! Just entertain them. That’s what we tried to do. You know what nonsense is to kids? It’s mother’s milk. If you want to send a message, use FedEx. Kids are people too! Free the kids, man!” He’s laughing, but all I can think is: he’s right about kids, so why is he always wrong about me? “And to anyone who followed us, who took that leap of faith, we love you more than you’ll ever know. And if we let you down, we apologize. We’ve spent the rest of our lives trying to work out how to make that up to you. I tried to be a mate, and I should have tried harder to be a role-model.”
And that’s when I know he’s talking to me. The room’s quite silent now. A drumstick skitters away from Curtis across the floor. He winces.
“I have no words of wisdom for you, except don’t do what we did. Or do it, and know you’ll pay for it. I paid for it, and then I tried to write songs that made perfect sense and that didn’t work; so I tried to write a novel that made perfect sense, and that didn’t work; and I ended up writing a series of young-adult books under the name Judith Esther, The Dark-Headed Clock Trilogy, six of them.” Perhaps some people assume he’s joking; there’s also, however, an audible gasp. He’s never mentioned his authorship in public before, and though this comes years after the books’ success, their moment in the sun has lingered. They’re still in print, still sold in select airport bookstores. “I won’t write another of those. It’s weird, having success as another person, a person who doesn’t exist, but no one really wanted to hear from me, and I’d said all I had to say as Blake Lear. In fact, my life has been one of meaning to do one thing and ending up doing another.
“Sorry, I’ve gone on. We’re really very proud of this award and the band is looking forward to performing for you, but I want to finish with this: I can’t stand before you, or even jump around before you, and play these songs. It isn’t in me anymore and it just isn’t me. I’m no fool. I know when I’m done.
“And now, ladies and gentleman,” he adopts a rather stuffy American accent, his old Ed Sullivan routine: “Yesterday and today our theater’s been jammed with newspapermen and hundreds of photographers from all over the nation, and these veterans agreed with me that this city never has witnessed the excitement stirred by these youngsters from London and Los Angeles who call themselves the Wonderkids. Now tonight, you’re gonna twice be entertained by them. Right now, and again in the second half of our show. Ladies and gentlemen, the Wonderkids! Jack, Curtis, Sweet and Becca! Let’s bring them on.”
I pick up Blake’s guitar. The curtain rises.
The band looks at me. I look at the band. We all heard the speech, but nobody, I think, has been looking at each other aside from the moment Curtis dropped his stick; certainly I haven’t been trying to work out what anyone is up to. I’ve been too busy pretending to ready Blake’s equipment, while secretly trying to remember whether we’re going to play “Life, As It Is Lived” or “The Story of Dan, Beth, Chris, and Blank” first, before we bring the house down with “Rock Around the Bed.” We rehearsed them all, but we decided on two, and my mind has gone . . . “Blank.” That was it!
The man in the white suit wafts off to applause, taking the award with him, and glances once over his shoulder: “What are you waiting for?”
Curtis counts 1,2,3,4 and we’re playing “Dan, Beth, Chris, and Blank.” And suddenly I’m singing: “There once was a girl named Dan / Who loved to fix and loved to fan.”
The singing bit is easy; the guitar playing is easy; playing with the band is easy; but the whole thing is very hard. Partly this is because searchlights are circling the audience, and I can see in every eye, including those front and center, that I am a great disappointment. They want Blake. They don’t want me. I daren’t even look where Joni is sitting. Heaven knows what she’s thinking, but she knows it’s complicated. And here I am, exactly as I’d expected, the turd in the Super Bowl. I’m not actually doing anything wrong; I’m just not right.
Blake is standing at the side of the stage, conferring with Greg and smiling broadly, despite the fact that this is already the massive anticlimax I’d predicted. The band, on the other hand, is motoring, not in the least bothered that Blake isn’t singing and I am; perhaps, I reflect, because they knew. At Blake’s right hand, Greg is organizing left and right, an atypical display of leadership. I just go on opening and closing my mouth singing, the band go on playing, about which Jack particularly seems enthused, and the audience goes on being disappointed. The song ends and there is applause—it would be mean to deny us that—but there is no standing ovation. It isn’t a nightmare; it doesn’t qualify. Perhaps I’d give it a little more wellie if we were going to bother to do the other.
Those Boop girls, the look-alike cigarette girls that I saw swanning about, are now standing in little battalions around the room, all holding silver salvers. I’d thought there were three or four but there seem to be about a hundred Kindie-music storm troopers. Curtis is turning a screw on his snare drum and doesn’t seem ready to start the next song. I feel I should say something but all that comes out is: “Sorry I’m not Blake.”
I look out into the hall. The cigarette girls now flank every table, large silver-domed serving plates on their arms. Probably dessert. As one, they put the silver salvers down on the tables and remove the tops with a flourish. It’s perfectly choreographed, whatever it is they’re doing. The serving of the lukewarm starter wasn’t nearly this spectacular. I struggle to see what’s on offer. I’m the one who should be sitting down there eating ice cream, maybe next to my girlfriend, not standing on the stage.
“Hold on,” I ask the house. “What’s that?”
“Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches!” someone shouts back. And just as he speaks, the first sandwich, lobbed by one of these agent provocateur Boops, flies towards me on the stage. I duck.
“Hey!” I say. I look over at Blake.
“Chuck it back!” he mimes, laughing. Of course. I should have known. But it’s going to take more than an orchestrated food fight to sell the band without him on stage. I pick it up and throw it at him, missing by inches. Curtis counts us in, and we are suddenly Rocking Around the Bed:
“I got my pajamas on and I look like a pirate.”
By the time we get to the first chorus, the food has really started to fly. No one wants to eat a PB&J sandwich at the end of a meal, but everyone wants to throw one, if only out of respect to the Wonderkids: behave like kids. It’s slow to get going, but quick to escalate. These are little sandwiches, cut into many different geometrical shapes, crusts removed (I happen to note) as I peel half of one, jam side down, from Blake’s guitar.
The guitar’s owner is still in consultation with Greg. Catching my eye, he licks his index finger and chalks one up to himself in the air. I’m actually doing what comes fairly naturally onstage. I mean, I’m no Blake. I’m not going to pogo or anything, but I can put the song over okay, particularly if there are a few distractions. KISS had stage effects for a reason, right? They weren’t that good. Same with me. If Blake provides the fireworks, I’ll stand here and recite the lines, but it’s just so silly that he isn’t doing it.
It is now that whoever’s in charge of the feathers pulls the switch. And down comes the down. Hundreds of thousands of feathers, every feather in the world, wafts down on us slowly. That first feather I saw while we were waiting at the side of the stage? I hadn’t given it a second thought. As they gracefully descend, Greg, stage right, turns on one of those Neil Young industrial strength standing fans, a matching one starts up stage left, and the feathers billow out into the audience. They fired the first volley; here is our riposte. The front tables in particular are bombarded. It is an onslaught of plumage, designed to penetrate every orifice, get caught on any spot of moisture, in drinks, on lips. Meanwhile, the shit actually does hit the fan; the gooey shrapnel of a first macerated sandwich spews all around us, dispersed far and wide by the vicious rotation of the blades. It’s like someone in a dunk tank. You just can’t resist.
The song is reaching the bridge, the audience is in uproar, and I couldn’t have seen Blake even if I was looking for him, let alone Joni. This is partly, I now realize, because huge inflatable pillows, silver like the ones I once saw in the Warhol Museum, are floating down from the ceiling, bouncing up and down in stately, ponderously elegant fashion, like chrome blimps, picking up feathers here, delivering them over there, in calm slow-motion amidst the disorientating anarchy. It’s how they’d have done the video way back when if they’d thought of it.
As we reach the last chorus—and this I can see quite clearly—the Cigarette Girls, the Boops (there are about thirty of them) in those black bodices and pencil skirts, come up the stairs in single file and flank me. The band continues full steam ahead as the girls, in one gesture, like a well-drilled chorus line, which is precisely what they are, rip off their tops with the surgical precision of seasoned burlesque artistes to reveal borderline pornographic bras, upon which the tops of their boobs rest. There is no actual nipple on display, primarily through judicious use of flesh-colored Micropore.
I look down at Niall, tarred and feathered, at the front table, half-expecting to see regret, even anger, in his eyes, but he is pissing himself with laughter, clapping along, receiving plaudits from the rest of his party. He fucking knew about this. Everyone knew about it. Did the band know? By the expression on Jack’s face, yes, and he can’t believe his luck.
And as we hit the last chorus, the Boops, at Greg’s signal, squeeze some contraption . . . well, to be honest, I don’t precisely know what the hell they do, but huge arcs of white liquid (let’s presume milk, mother’s milk) spray over the audience. Have you ever seen that bloke who can throw cards miles into a theater? The milk goes further than that. And it keeps flying, cascading down on the audience in giant ribbons. The nearest Boop turns and lets me have it right in the face. What could I do but open my mouth?
The audience is pounding the floor. I mean, we are it, and it is now, and we are all in one room, and it isn’t time to stop. So we just keep playing the chorus over and over until the feathers have finally fallen and the food has stopped flying. Blake dances across the stage, one movement from left to right, and the audience, those who weren’t already on their feet, stand to applaud, and as he passes me, he winks again—Trust your old Dad, mate—but this time the wink hits me a different way, and he registers my reaction: I couldn’t even manage a smile. He waltzes off stage right.
I’ve seen the Wonderkids whip a crowd up, but this is beyond beyond; it’s the adult energy, the fact that the audience is full of performers willing to muck in, unleashed at the end of a long evening, sheer relief, nonsense. It’s ordained mayhem—Niall was clearly in on it with Greg and Blake—but its effect is unconfined. Above all, it is Blake, stage-managing, instigating the whole thing.
When we finally finish, after a climactic chord that goes on for about a minute as we applaud one another with our strumming, surrounded by Boops, covered in food and feathers, slipping in milk, Curtis shouts: “One more?”
“You think we’re topping that?” yells Jack. “Leave ’em wanting more. We’re done. They’ll have to come to the Festival.” Then he points at me and gives me the thumbs up. It’s just assumed that I’m going to do this. The Boops walk off without any acknowledgement at all. Their night’s work is done. Niall bounces up on to the stage before the audience drifts away.
“Wow! The Wonderkids! Nothing’s going to top that,” he announces to an audience who know they’ve seen all they can see. “I promised I’d get you the Wonderkids and I got you the Wonderkids! They’ll be playing the Prospect Park KidCon Festival on Saturday! See you at next year’s Jim-Jammies!”
The house band is back in position and starts to play, instruments untarnished by fluff, preserve, or cream. They’d known to remove their instruments. Of course they’d known. Blake knew; Greg knew; Niall knew; everyone knew except the audience and me. Becca’s arm slips around me and she hugs me, but I suddenly feel very self-conscious about Joni: where is she? There seems now to be no distinction between the audience and the stage. Where the fuck is health and safety? How was this even allowed? Security!
“Greg,” I shout. He is in conference with Niall.
“Good job, mate,” he yells, heading towards me.
“Prospect Park’s going to be great,” shouts Niall.
“I’m not doing it!” I shout back. They both nod, letting me know that I am. I meet them halfway. “Why can’t Blake do it? He’s the lead singer. It can be the last ever gig.”
“Dunno,” says Greg, “you ask him.”
“Where is he?” I ask vaguely, surveying the wreckage. “You knew all about this, right?”
“Yeah, man. We were at this soundstage on 27th running the timings all afternoon.”
“That’s where Blake was?”
“Oh yeah. Of course.”
“So you’ve known all day . . .”
“I’ve known for fucking weeks. And I’ve never worked so hard in my life.” Greg is quite unperturbed. He is, in fact, acting like a manager. I can tell because it is so extremely unlike how he normally acts. “These things don’t happen by magic.”
“They certainly don’t,” confirms Niall, with a raised eyebrow implying that there has also been insane expense.
“. . . And, Greg,” I continue, “you sat there all evening pretending to be worried whether Blake would show up or not.”
“Yeah. Blake told me to.” He picks feathers from my shoulder, as though one or two will make a difference.
“You’re such a liar.”
“I know, mate.” He laughs and shrugs. “I’m the best liar in the world, always have been, because people like it when I do.”
“Well, I fucking don’t!” It just comes out of me that way, angry, brutal. I turn away, shouting over my shoulder: “I fucking don’t like it at all.”
“What’s wrong?” He can’t believe I’m upset. He thinks perhaps I’m joking. It’s the only explanation. “Hey! What’s wrong?”
This evening is done and there will be no repeat performance. Of course, Blake is nowhere to be seen. Greg is trying to calm me down.
“Where the fuck is Blake?” I shout at no one.
I text Joni to meet me at the soundboard. I haven’t spent a moment with her the whole evening, hardly said “hello”: bad boyfriend. The great thing is, she understands. I was working, entirely focused on my charges, on my lead singer’s absence. She looks beautiful in her electric blue dress; she isn’t even fiddling with her phone, just waiting for me with a smile.
“Hey,” she says. “You almost pulled that off.”
“Never again.” I hug her.
“Dark horse. You never told me you were going to . . .”
“I’m not a dark horse. I only found out at the last minute. Same as usual.”
“Poor baby.” Her sympathy is genuine. She’s heard the stories. “I’ll never make you do that for me. I promise.”
“I know. Thanks.” Suddenly, I feel like crying. “Will you be here? I have to talk to Blake, tell him I won’t sing at this stupid Festival. But I have no idea where he is.”
“Oh, I know precisely . . .” She points behind her through the plate-glass windows to the fountain where Blake is wading underneath the central spray, still in the white suit that so perfectly matches mine. I turn to leave without so much as a word. She grabs my arm just as she did the very first time we met: “What about me?” We kiss; she tastes of . . . peanuts. “You really weren’t bad, but stick to what you’re good at.”
She isn’t even teasing. I like it. “Road managing?”
“And romancing,” she whispers.
By the time I get to the fountain, Blake is sitting on the edge, soaked, paddling; he’s taken his shoes off, as though that was plain common sense. His clothes remain defiantly on. He beckons me with a cheery wave, splashes me.
“Quack! Get in!” he says. “Water’s lovely.” He’s made a little origami boat from a page of the program; it’s bobbing across the water.
“Hey, what an ending!” he shouts. “What an ending! Amazing ending, right?”
“Yes.” I can’t help but smile. He looks so harmless with his hair plastered flat over his forehead. He spits water from his mouth and wipes his sleeve across his brow. “A great ending, Blake.”
He wrinkles his nose and sniffs, skimming an imaginary stone across the surface: “But it’s the wrong ending, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I say.
“You did sing for me when I asked you, though. Thank you.”
“Yes. And now you’re going to sing for me.”
“Right,” he says. “I’ll be singing at the Festival, then.”
“It’s what you’re good at,” I say. “What else you gonna do? Do what you’re made to do, and I’ll do what I do. And I’ll help you do what you do. And that’s how we’ll work.”
“It’s that simple, isn’t it? Sorry for failing to notice that you’re not me. C’mon! Get in, Sweet! Get your feet wet.”
“Blake, why on earth would I want to get in? I should be telling you to get out. I don’t want to get wet.”
“Well, at least you have a change of clothes backstage. I got nothing. Look, I’ll sing at the Festival. Get in. Actually, I’ll only sing at the Festival if you get in.”
“You’re so annoying.”
I sit down beside him, and he puts his big arm around me, as the fountain continues its rainbow routine. The door from the auditorium opens and music spills out on to the plaza. Joni.
“Towel?” she shouts, then noticing the development. “Oh! Towels?”
“TWO!” I yell back.
I take Blake by the hand and pull him up so we’re both standing. Drenched, in our matching white suits, we stand in the arc of the fountain, shivering, waiting for the towels to arrive.