Dream On (28 page)

"I bloody rue the day I ever heard of that Raw
Talent," said Dave. "If we hadn't gone there, you and Shane would still be
here."
And so would Ariel.

"I'm so sorry, lads, I really am," said Boz,
again. He slapped them both on the back. "Come on, let's go and get mortal,
eh? I'll get 'em in. Let's drown our sorrows and drink to Thor - and
Genital Warthog, right?"

They mooched back into the pub and settled at a
table by the door, pints in hand.

"Yeah, Raw Talent certainly changed the lives of
all of us, didn't it?" said Dave.

"Right. 'Cept me," said Ritchie. "Nothing ever changes
for me."

"Whatever happens," said Boz, "we did those gigs, we
produced those songs. The music's still there, even if the band is no
more."

"Hmm, I suppose you're right," said Ritchie. He
put his head on one side, considering. "Yeah, people didn't stop listening to
The Beatles after they split up, did they? And look at Led Zep!"

"That's right!" said Boz. He lifted his glass. "To Thor!"

Dave had never felt less like making a toast. "To
Thor!" he said, obligingly.

"To Thor!" said Ritchie.

Just then, the door of the pub banged open; a blast
of cold air swept in from the street.

"Oy! You lot!"

Dave, Boz and Ritchie all looked up.

In front of them, hands on hips, stood a red faced,
very, very angry Kerry.

"Can one of you three arseholes," she said, "tell
me where the
fuck
Shane Cowley's hiding?"

March the twenty-sixth was a big day for Ariel. Not only was it her birthday, but also the first day of proper rehearsals for
her new job, via Oceanwide Entertainment.

The day dawned bright, cool and windy, but spring
was in the air; she smelt it as she walked down to the tube station, and it
made her smile. She liked the spring best of all the seasons; it was
her
time.

She saw Will Corrigan watching her, waving from
across the road, waiting to plunge with her into that busy world underneath the
city.

Something about the set of his shoulders reminded
her of Dave Bentley, for a moment, and she felt a wave of sadness. She would miss
Dave; she already did, quite badly at times. But any pain she felt was bearable;
there was so much ahead of her.

The wind whipped her hair from behind her ear, and
she pushed it out of her eyes, waved back, and, glancing up to make sure the
little green man was showing on the crossing, ran across the road to the new
chapter in her life.

Melodie Joy was now down to the final six on Inspire TV's
most successful show, Raw Talent.

Media interest had increased; never mind whether or not she
won the actual thing, she'd already been featured in a couple of downmarket TV
guides and celebrity magazines - along with the other contestants, admittedly,
but there she was, pictured in a magazine.  She'd even been quoted in one of
them. "
This is such an emotional journey,"
she'd said, apparently,
though she said so many things to so many people, it was hard to remember.
"It's been a real learning curve, too! Raw Talent has
given me a chance to live my dream! Singing is my passion, it's all I've
ever wanted to do!"

She couldn't remember saying any of that, but she
supposed she had. The show's publicist had said to her, quite rudely, she
thought, that if she
must
talk to the press, could she please not read
directly from that extremely slim publication, The TV Talent Show Contestant's
Phrase Book; she was supposed to be an
artiste,
not some dumb parrot. She'd
got quite annoyed with him.

"Well, write me some words, then!" she said. "I'm a
celebrity, I'm not supposed to be bloody Einstein!"

He'd raised his eyebrows at her and walked off,
saying to the vocal coach, "we're going to have trouble with this one!"

Damn cheek. Well, okay, she wasn't a proper celebrity
yet. But she'd read somewhere that if you kept telling yourself you
were
something,
then eventually you became it.  Clever, that. She couldn't remember who'd
said it; maybe Katie Price. Or Chantelle Houghton. No, it was probably a bit
deep for either of those two. Must have been Geri Halliwell.

She rarely gave Ariel Swan, or Boz, or any of the
other members of Thor, either, a moment's thought.

Ritchie picked up his Stingray and ran up and down
the blues scale in E, as if he couldn't really be bothered to do so at all.

"Ever thought of packing it all in?" he said.

"No," said Dave. "D'you want another?"

"Yeah, don't mind if I do," said Ritchie, and reached
across the glass coffee table to take the can of Carlsberg Export that Dave had
pushed his way. "You had anything to eat?"

"Tin of ravioli."

"That all?"

"Bit of toast."

"D'you want anything from the chippie?"

"Nah."

"Do you want to go down the pub?"

"I can't be bothered," said Dave. "Going down the pub
means talking to people."

"Right. I know what you mean," said Ritchie. "It's shit,
isn't it."

"Yep," said Dave, and braced himself for what was coming
next.

"I mean," said Ritchie, "one minute you're in a band,
having a laugh, with all your mates, playing your stuff - even if it is all
ripped off from other bands, ha ha ha - you're going down London, getting on a
TV show, all that applause, people telling you how great you are on your MySpace
page, and the next minute - zilch. Back to the bleeding starting blocks,
except it's worse, 'cause your mates have gone."

"That's about the size of it," said Dave. God, how
many more times was Ritchie going to give this little speech? It was worse
than the 'women are the spawn of the devil' one.  More irritating still was the
way his rants were always delivered in the second person - you're this, you're
that -  as if he was giving a lecture on a common syndrome that might affect
anyone. And it made him a bit angry.
He
was still there, him, Dave
Bentley, the person who'd actually thought of Thor in the first place. If that
hadn't happened, Ritchie would still have been standing at the bar in The Romany
spouting Rant Number Three, the one about the state of the music industry.

He knew how he felt, though. He missed Shane, too;
the three of them together had a certain chemistry, and now one part of that
trio was gone. Even though it was Dave and Shane who'd been the childhood
friends, the double act, for as long as he could remember, Ritchie had been the
Craig to their Luke and Matt. No, the Ronnie to their Mick and Keith. The
Joey to their Steven and Joe. Boz was the icing on the cake, the other part of
the jigsaw that turned them into Thor. Dave missed him, too; he'd been a
laugh, Boz. Always cheerful - and he'd had that valuable insight into the
industry that the others didn't have. Pity that insight had shown him where
his bread was buttered. Genital Warthog. Jesus.

"Think I'll go down The Romany, anyway," said
Ritchie. He stood up, put his wallet and keys in his pocket. Then he
stopped. "Ain't the same when you know you're not going to see Shane there,
trying to get his leg over some barmaid, though, is it?" And then he was gone.

Dave opened another can of lager and lit a
cigarette, even though Ritchie didn't really like him smoking in the flat. To
his credit, he'd been a bit more understanding about that sort of thing, of
late. Since Shane and Boz had gone, Ritchie had even been sympathetic about
Ariel.  Well, he'd said, "Yeah, must be a bit of a bummer, man, the stupid
bint," a couple of times, anyway. Dave hadn't reprimanded him for calling
Ariel a stupid bint, because he knew he was only trying to be kind.

Spring was coming, and he thought back to this time
last year. This time last year, he'd been in exactly the position he was now;
except that Shane was there, Thor was yet to be born, and he was seeing a hell
of a lot more of Janice and Harley.

He pictured Janice and his son, then, and it made
him feel melancholy in the extreme. He was struck by a momentary, extreme urge
to just
go home.
If Ariel hadn't come back and thrown his heart (and
his cock) up in the air, he'd probably be safely back there by now.  Sitting
there watching the telly, putting Harley to bed, still feeling down because
Thor was over - but he'd be being comforted by Janice, cuddled up with his wife
and son (his
wife
!) in his own home, on his own sofa, not sitting here by
himself on this expensive leather chair in Ritchie's bachelor pad, staring at a
wall covered in framed photos of motorbikes and Jimi Hendrix. There were a
couple of large ones of Judas Priest over there, too.

Dave's pondering stopped in its tracks.

He sat bolt upright.

Judas Priest.

Rob Halford of Judas Priest.

Dave remembered, when he first moved in, being
surprised. He hadn't known Ritchie was a fan of Judas Priest, in particular. Certainly not enough to have them smouldering out of stylish chrome picture
frames around his living room.

Dave glanced up at the CD shelf.

He hadn't known Ritchie was such a big Queen
groupie, either.

The Queen section in his CD collection included
every album they'd ever produced.

Freddie Mercury of Queen.

Rob Halford of Judas Priest.

The geezer doth protest too much. That was what he'd always thought about Ritchie,
but had he got the wrong end of the stick?

Had he?

The only two openly gay guys in rock, and Ritchie
appeared to be their biggest fan.

He'd never seen Ritchie with a girl - well, not for
ages, anyway. He raged against them, as if he hated them, at times. You never
heard him say a girl was 'fit', or anything. He'd been gutted when Shane
left. Down in the mouth ever since. He had pictures of a leather clad Rob fucking
Halford all over his bloody flat.

No.
No.
Surely not! Dave wasn't
homophobic, he assured himself, not at all - because anyone who was, these
days, was some sort of twat, weren't they - but, all the same, surely not
Ritchie -

No, no, no. Not Ritchie. Any guy who loved rock
music might have a picture of metal legends Judas Priest on the wall, mightn't
they? And Freddie Mercury would still be a God of Rock, even if he shagged
sheep.

Mustn't make assumptions. Then he corrected
himself. If Ritchie
was
- well, like that - it didn't matter, did it? He was his mate. He probably wasn't, though. It was probably just the lager
doing his thinking for him. Must've had about eight cans by now. Too much. He didn't feel any more drunk than usual (which was quite a lot these days, if
he was honest), but his perception was being altered in the way that only
Carlsberg Export knew how.  He knew that from experience, from when he'd
become a bit of a dipso after he got booted out of Critical Mass. Used to
think about all kinds of weird shit.

Fuck, Ritchie had one of those black moustaches, like The Village People.
No, stop
it. Every third bloke who'd ever owned a bike and a guitar had a black moustache.

Shut up, Lars,
he thought.
You're talking silly.
Ritchie's a Viking.

He sighed and got up, emptied his overflowing bladder, then
went, with his ninth can of lager, to lie on his bed, where he'd lain with Ariel
only a few weeks ago. No. Couldn't think about Ariel. Trying
to block that off. He thought instead about Janice. If he was at
home with Janice, now, she'd probably be doing the ironing, or something, and
then they'd be watching a DVD. She always went and hired the ones he
liked. A nice bit of blood and guts, not all that macho man Steven Segal
action type garbage like Ritchie had in his collection -

Macho men like Steven Segal. In Ritchie's DVD
collection -

Janice, she'd always moan about his disgusting
choice of films, but she'd sit there and watch them with him, just the same,
and then they'd go to bed.

Their sex life had been good, apart from that
period when he was on the dole and drinking too much. But they'd always done
it at least three times a week, even when she was tired, when Harley was a
baby. He missed that. She was enthusiastic about it, too, not like some
blokes' women. Phil and Jim at work complained that their wives would be
happier if they never had to do it at all.

Him and Janice, they'd been perfect together,
really, he thought. If you took away her not understanding about his music. But she was okay about it, she'd never really nagged him. Well, not much. Not
like that Kerry would have done if Shane hadn't escaped when he had.

He took a large slurp from his can of lager, and some of it
spilled down his chest.

If only Janice hadn't chucked him out, none of this
would have happened. Why had she done it? Oh, okay, yeah, he knew why. She'd
thrown him out because he'd behaved like a right pillock. And then, when
they'd been thinking about getting back together, what had he done? He'd taken
up with Ariel. Where had that got him? No, no, couldn't think about Ariel - it
hurt too much, gave him a pain in his gut, and everywhere else, too.

Janice must have been so hurt, poor thing. No
wonder she'd got together with Max Stark. But she couldn't be serious about
him, could she? He was nearer her mum's age than hers. And he was sort of
fat. Not
fat
fat, but he didn't have the body of a Viking like he, Dave
Bentley, had. Most of all, he wasn't Harley's father. Didn't that count for
something? It ought to count for a hell of a lot, Dave thought. He'd been
round there a couple of times to find Max in situ, and they'd all been very
civilised and friendly, but he hated seeing Max talking to Harley as if he was
his own kid. At least Harley still ran to him and said "Daddy!" as soon as he
saw him. Always. But he hated that Max was the person who took him to school
in the mornings, not him. In his flash car. Hated that one day Harley might
actually live with him, if things between him and Janice got more serious.