Goodnight Steve McQueen (9 page)

We all do.

“So, what happens now?” I say, beckoning the waitress over to take our order. “What do you think we should do?”

“Well, there’s not much we can do really. If six months is all we’ve got, then six months is all we’ve got.”

“Not very long, though, is it?”

“What d’you mean? Of course it is,” says Matty enthusiastically. “Six months is loads of time.”

“No, mate, it’s not. I mean, how are we going to do it? How are we going to find a manager, record a demo, and sign, seal and deliver ourselves a record deal all by the end of the year? It can’t be done.”

Vince looks down at the table and begins to play absentmindedly with his hairline. Matty looks disgusted with the pair of us.

“I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” he says. “I can’t believe you’re both being so defeatist. What about all the new material we’ve been working on? What about that new song Danny wrote last week? It’s great stuff. It’s way up there. Christmas is loads of time. It is. We can do it, guys. We can find a live agent and get some decent gigs and if we all pitch in we can definitely afford some more demo time … I mean, we just need to be more positive. We can do this. I know we can.”

“Yeah…” says Vince, banging his chair leg on the floor for emphasis. “And right here is where we start payin’ .. . in sweat.”

“Y’what?”

“Kids from Fame,” I say, explaining Vince’s ludicrous American accent to Matty. “Bit before your time.”

“Well, I don’t get it. I’m going to read my paper. Let me know when you’ve decided you want to do something constructive instead of sitting about moaning like a couple of old grannies.”

The waitress arrives with our coffee and I spend a quality moment checking her out to take my mind off things. She’s very sexy. Cute and dark and curvy with one of those very short fringes that only look good on seriously attractive women. I notice the way she looks at Matty as she puts down his cup. All women look at Matty like that: like they’re not quite sure if they want to mother him or fuck his brains out.

“Fuck me,” says Matty, lifting his nose out of the TIME and almost causing the waitress to spill Vince’s drink. “Look who’s in here.”

“Who?”

“Scarface. You remember. You said you used to go to school with their lead singer.”

“Yeah, complete prat. His band are awful, never make it in a million years.”

“Well, according to this they already have. Says here that they signed a huge deal in America at the end of last year.”

“No… they can’t have. Are you serious?”

“Yeah, they’ve been touring the States for the last nine months. TIME reckons they’ve sold close to a million records.”

“How can they … I mean, how did it happen? Why hasn’t there been any news about them over here?”

“Well,” says Matty, reading out excerpts from their centre page spread, ‘it says here that they’re coming over in a couple of months to do a British tour. Their record company wants to break them in the UK before they start work on their next

album in LA. Wow. I can’t believe you know their lead singer, man. That’s amazing.”

I need to see for myself. I reach over, grab the paper off Matty and start scanning the article for information. I take in a hundred facts a second: their chart positions; their front covers; their designer dishevelled clothes; the stupid, squinty, mock-moody grins on their faces that say they still can’t quite believe their own good fortune. Scarface. Bastards. Talentless, witless, sub-Kurt Cobain copyist bastards. How could this have happened? How could Ike Kavanagh have turned into a millionaire big-cheese rock star without me knowing it? How could he be recording his next album in Los Angeles and going out to dinner with Mick and Keith while I’m still working for Kostas in a specialist video shop in Crouch End? I can’t take it in. I can’t seem to breathe.

And then I notice it: a small but perfectly formed sentence lurking at the bottom of the page. Right next to the picture of their shiny silver tour bus; curled up underneath the venue listings for their ‘major UK tour’.

Support acts still to be announced.

Support acts still to be announced. I have an idea. I lift up the article and beckon Vince and Matty across the table.

“Now that,” says Vince, screwing up my ‘to do’ list and flicking it into the ashtray, ‘is what I call a plan.”

“It’s genius.”

“I know.”

“Sheer genius.”

“I know.”

“It means we can bypass the whole thing. We can go straight to the next level. We’ll get press coverage and huge exposure and we’ll play to thousands of people and if there’s a shred of justice left in the world we’ll blow them off-stage and get ourselves the record deal of the fucking century.”

Too right.”

“Too right.”

“And this time next year…”

‘.. . We’ll all be millionaires.”

Till drink to that.”

We’ve walked the fifty yards from the World Cafe to the Harringay Arms and we’re celebrating the birth of our first good idea in years. It’s perfect. All I have to do is call in a favour from an old school friend and the tour is as good as ours. No matter that Ike Kavanagh hated my guts at school, no matter that he’s the sort of bloke who still wears a hammer-and-sickle badge on his lapel and peppers his sentences with the word ‘dude’. No matter that he thinks Scarface is an acceptable name for a rock band and that I haven’t actually spoken to him for the best part of two and a half years.

“So when did you last see him, then?” says Vince, taking a sip of his lager.

“I ran into him in Camden Town a couple of years ago. He

was on his way to post a Jiffy bag to some guy at the Melody Maker who’d given him a bad review.”

“A Jiffy bag?”

“Yeah, a padded envelope. With a turd in it.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. He did it all the time. He got a lot of bad reviews in those days.”

“I suppose that’s why they went off to America, then.”

“I guess so.”

“Still, must be nice for him now, though, everyone in this country saying he was shite and him getting to come back over here as a bona ride pop star.”

“Yeah,” I say, ‘it must be fantastic.”

“Wow,” says Matty. “How did he manage to poo in the bag? I mean you’d need a pretty good aim, wouldn’t you? And what if the bag was too small? What if you’d chosen one of those small ones and forgotten that you’d been out for a super-hot curry the night before and then when you got your arse to the edge of the envelope it started to fill up too fast and come over the edges and…”

“Matty?”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you ask him when you see him… OK?”

“OK, good idea.”

“So, what makes you think he’ll give us the support slot? It’s not like we’ve got a deal or a press profile or anything like that.”

“Simple. I’ll blackmail him.”

“Blackmail him?”

“Yeah. I mean, look at this,” I say, spreading the TIME article across the bar. “It says here that his favourite bands when he was growing up were The Clash and The Beatles and The Stooges and The Smiths.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing, it’s just that it’s not true. Ike Kavanagh was a Nick Kershaw fan. He liked Level 42 and Haircut 100 and, get this,

his all-time favourite song was “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” by Bonnie Tyler.”

Vince shoots me a look. We both know I was a bit of a Howard Jones fan myself until Vince got hold of me and forced me to spend a whole weekend listening to The White Album and Blood On The Tracks, but it’s not the kind of thing he’d ever bring up in front of Matty.

“I mean, he didn’t go to his first proper gig until he was almost twenty,” I say, ignoring Vince and folding the paper away. “The nearest he got was his big sister taking him up the West End to see Cats. He saw it five times. I tell you, we could destroy his street cred overnight.”

Vince looks concerned.

The don’t know, mate,” he says, flicking his cigarette into the ashtray. “Sounds to me like you’re the last person he’d want to have around. He’s not going to want to hang out with someone who remembers every gory detail about his naive adolescence, is he?”

“Well,” I say, ‘that’s where you’re wrong. The other thing about Ike is that he’s a bit of a sadist. He won’t be able to resist it. He won’t be able to resist taking us on tour and showing us everything that he’s got and rubbing our noses right in it.”

“Sounds like a nice guy.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Ike’s the best.”

I leave Vince and Matty in the pub plotting world domination and make my way home along Mount View Road; Alison promised she’d phone me when she got to Bruges and I want to make sure I’m there to take the call. It’s a perfect afternoon the trees are thick with leaves and I can feel the sun burning a small red patch into the back of my neck as I walk. I wonder if the whole of August is going to be like this. I wonder if it’s as hot in Belgium as it is over here.

“Danny, it’s me.” “Hey, how is it?”

“It’s great. It’s great. The apartment they’re putting me up in isn’t ready yet so I’m staying in this ridiculously swanky hotel for a few nights. It’s got a phone in the bog and a view across the whole city and—’

“Has it got a minibar?”

“Yeah. D’you want to know what’s in it?”

“Definitely.”

“OK, wait a minute… right, it’s got Belgian lager…”

“Obviously.”

“Er… assorted miniatures including two schnapps and three cherry brandy… two packets of M & M’s, a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, a quarter-bottle of champagne and… let’s see, what else… ? Oh yeah, three packets of Porn Bars. Assorted flavours.”

“What the hell are Porn Bars?”

“Some sort of crisps, I think. Yeah, crisps shaped like little bears… uhmm, they sort of stick to the roof of your mouth … a little bit like Wotsits, but not quite as cheesy.”

“It’s no good,” I say. “It’s still not a proper minibar.”

“Why not?”

“No Toblerone,” I say. “Every minibar worth its salt has to have a bar of Toblerone, everybody knows that.”

“Bugger,” she says. Till have to ask them to move me somewhere else now.”

It’s good to talk to her. I know she’s only been gone a few hours but it’s still nice to hear her voice. I like talking to Alison on the phone. We used to have these conversations that went on for hours before we moved in together, and to be honest there’s always been a part of me that’s sort of missed them.

“So, how was the journey?”

“Good. It’s really easy. I was going to start reading Captain Corelli again but I just ended up reading Heat and Hello! and your Let’s Go guide to Bruges instead.”

“Who was in it?”

“Heat or Hello!”?”

“Hello!”

“Oh my God, it was priceless. They had a whole article on Hale and Pace enjoying themselves on a day out with a pub lunch.”

“Fantastic. What did Hale have?”

“Hale had steak and chips and Pace had the fish. Honestly, Danny, I was laughing so much I thought I was going to puke.”

“What did you have?”

“Oh, it was brilliant, I was in first class so you get these mock-gourmet meals that taste a bit like the stuff you get on a plane, and a glass of champagne and a packet of nut truffles… oh, and a tiny bit of smoked salmon with a caper on the top. It was ace.”

She sounds on top form, like she’s really enjoying herself. Come to think of it I’m not sure I can remember her sounding this animated for months.

“So what’s Bruges like?” I say, flicking the kettle on for a Pot Noodle.

“It looks nice. I haven’t seen that much of it yet but, you know, it looks pretty, loads of canals and stuff.”

“Great. So are you going to go out and have a look around?”

“Yeah, Didier’s taking me out for a meal later on. He’s going to recommend some good places to go.”

“Didier?”

“My new boss. Like a welcome dinner. You know, welcome to Thorstans, here’s some free chocolate… that sort of thing. I haven’t met him yet but he sounded like a bit of a dick on the phone.”

“Good,” I say without thinking.

“So anyway,” she says gently, ‘how are you?”

“Not bad,” I say. “I was a bit pissed off that you left without waking me up, though.”

“Yeah, sorry about that, but I know how much you hate getting up in the morning and it just seemed easier… I’ll let you take me to the station next time. I promise.”

so

“No chance,” I say, peeling back the lid of my noodle and searching around for the Tabasco. “You can walk next time for all I care.”

She laughs.

“Look, Danny, I can’t stay on for too long… I’ve got to take a shower and unpack my stuff… I’ll phone you again tomorrow… same sort of time, OK?”

“You sure you don’t want me to call you?”

“No. I get my calls on expenses so I might as well phone you from here. They’re fixing me up with a free mobile account as well, so my old number might be out of order for a couple of days.”

“OK, I’ll wait for you to ring me, then. Speak to you tomorrow.”

“OK, take care … I love you.”

“Yeah. I love you too.”

It’s only after I put down the phone that I realise she hasn’t even told me the name of her hotel. It’s the first time in almost five years that I haven’t known exactly where she is.

“Kostas, is that you?”

“Yes, is me, Kostas. Let me ins, I have somethings for you.”

“But it’s nine o’clock in the morning.”

“Yes, but I have present for you… from Mrs. Kostas.”

I shut the bedroom window, put on some pants and head downstairs to open the door for Kostas.

“What is it?”

“Dinner.”

“Dinner?”

“Yes. Mrs. Kostas is worried you don’t have girlfriend to cook you dinner no more so she want you to have this. Is very nice. Is kleftiko.”

I take the lid off the Pyrex dish Kostas is holding and take a look inside. It looks good. A huge shin of lamb melting off the bone into a pool of thick, her by gravy. It smells fantastic.

“Thanks,” I say, ‘but she really shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble. I usually cook for myself anyway.”

“So I see,” says Kostas, eyeing up the empty Pot Noodles by the sink.

“Still,” he says, ‘really is no problem. You bring back dish when you finished and, if you like, Mrs. Kostas can make you something else next week.”