The Upgrade: A Cautionary Tale of a Life Without Reservations (28 page)

Unfortunately, Brian’s alcohol-related suggestions didn’t stop there.

“Why the hell are you drinking that?” he asked when he arrived, pointing at my beer.

“I asked for something local, and this is what they gave me. It’s called ‘Viking.’ It sounded Icelandic.”

“They thought you were a tourist,” said Brian.

“I am a tourist,” I said, tucking my Iceland tourist guidebook into my coat pocket. Brian shook his head and headed to the bar, returning with two small shots of what looked, to my naive eyes, like vodka.

“This is ‘Brennivin,’” he explained. “It’s a local schnapps that literally translates as ‘burning wine.’” (An alternative name, according to my guidebook, is
svartidauði
, or “black death.”)

“It’s nice,” I said, necking the contents of the shot glass. A waitress walked past.

“Two more,” said Brian. Two hours later and the burning wine had done its work. All thoughts of technology were forgotten and Brian and I found ourselves standing at the back of another bar.

Somehow we’d ended up at a gig by Magni Asgeirsson. Asgeirsson, in the unlikely event that you haven’t heard of him, is famous—in Reykjavik—as the only Icelandic contestant of the American reality show
Rock Star: Supernova
. In case you missed that too, the show’s “aim” was to find a lead singer for a new rock supergroup featuring Mötley Crüe’s Tommy Lee and former members of Metallica and Guns N’ Roses.

Asgeirsson made it all the way through to the final, largely because the entire population of Iceland set their alarm clocks for the middle of the night local time to phone America and vote for him.

Sadly, as the entire population of Iceland is less than the population of the town of Colorado Springs, Magni finished in fourth place and is now back playing gigs in local Reykjavik bars. Bars like the one Brian and I had found ourselves standing at the back of.

The gig was actually rather good, if you like Icelandic hard rock played at ear-splitting volume in a nearly empty bar on a Tuesday, which—after half a bottle of Brennivin—I did. But after a few more shots of black death, washed down with a pint or two of Viking beer to sober me up a bit, I decided that Asgeirsson must be fed up with playing his usual rock set every night and wandered up to the stage with a few requests.

“You haff a request?” growled Magni.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m a journalist from England, writing about Icelandic musicians and I …”

Magni’s face brightened and he reached out and grabbed my hand.

“A journalist! From England! Welcome to Reykjavik—I see you have been enjoying our Brennivin.” Another shot had somehow materialized in my hand. “I would be glad to play your request. What is it?”

Now, I’m prepared to admit that the fault here was all mine. I should have requested something clever and hard and rocky—but the problem is, I’m not really a hard rock person. I’m more of a middle-of-the-road, dorky guys with acoustic guitars kind of person. I always told myself that it was a question of knowing my enemy: that by liking bands that American college girls like—Matchbox Twenty, Hootie and the Blowfish, REM—I would benefit from some kind of special we-have-so-much-in-common power that I could use to woo those same girls.

The truth is, though, I just have really girly taste in music. My drunken amusement at the idea of interrupting an Icelandic rocker and asking for a song request hadn’t stretched as far as actually thinking of what song I wanted him to play. I wasn’t expecting him to be so accommodating. Bloody Icelandic hospitality. “Umm …” I said, and
then blurted out the first song that came to mind. A favorite song of my ex-girlfriend, unsurprisingly.

He looked at me for a moment, with an expression that clearly said, “are you kidding me?” But then he shrugged. “Hokay,” he said, “I try my best.”

Satisfied, I went back to Brian. And so it was that one of my last clear memories of the night is of a shaven-headed semi-celebrity Icelandic rocker clearing his throat, apologizing (in English) that “I’m a little rusty because I haven’t played this since school,” picking up an acoustic guitar from a case behind a speaker and breaking into the jaunty opening bars of “Mr. Jones” by Counting Crows.

“Maybe we should have pushed his repertoire to ‘Hotel California,’” said Brian before wandering to the bar to see if they had any shark meat for me to try.

Fact Six: unsuccessful 4 a.m. drunk dials to old flames to tell them about how you convinced an Icelandic rocker to play Counting Crows are even more painful to recall the next day when you realize you made them from Iceland, to America, using a UK cell phone.

I woke up in my hotel room; in my bed; and without any strange Icelandic girls. I won’t pretend I wasn’t slightly disappointed, but I comforted myself with the thought that I at least had enough material for an amusing column about Reykjavik.

I padded over to my laptop and checked my email. It was just after 1 p.m., and outside it was already starting to get dark, which did little to lighten my hangover. Overnight, more Icelanders had emailed to offer their services as tour guides, but my headache told me that I’d probably brush them off and instead spend the rest of my trip recovering
in one of the many thermal pools that litter the landscape like hot tubs for giants.

The only other interesting email was from Sarah. I’d last seen her a month or so earlier when she’d made a trip to London to launch the UK edition of her book. As a final act of compensation for my behavior in Vegas I’d agreed to help Robert interview her on stage at the launch event.

Since bonding over their disapproval of Drunk Paul, Robert and Sarah had become good friends too and so she had entrusted him with choosing the venue for the event. Which is how we’d ended up interviewing one the most successful women reporters in a male-dominated industry onstage at the Soho Review Bar—one of London’s oldest strip clubs.

Fortunately Sarah, Robert and I share a similar sense of humor so—given my hideously misogynistic comments about her South by Southwest interview earlier in the year, Sarah seemed to think Robert’s choice of venue strangely appropriate. “Maybe you could wear a short skirt and flirt with me?” she suggested.

“Maybe you could fuck off,” I retorted, cleverly.

And now, according to her email, Sarah was heading back to Vegas in January, to appear at the Consumer Electronics Show—the gadget industry’s biggest event of the year. Finally prepared to risk another encounter with Drunk Paul, she wondered whether I was going to be there too, given that it seemed like my kind of event: booze, booth babes and cheap hotel rates. I hadn’t planned on being in Vegas, but I was definitely overdue a trip to San Francisco, given that it had been—oh—at least two months since my last visit.

It occurred to me that going to Vegas would also provide the perfect excuse for a stopover in my favorite city on earth. By now I was head over heels in love with San Francisco, partly for work reasons, partly because it’s a beautiful city, but also in large part because of the women.

As a British writer, covering technology, for a famously liberal newspaper, I represented a pretty good trifecta for the huge number of liberal, arty girls who worked in and around Silicon Valley. There was one girl in particular, Kelly, who I’d been seeing quite a lot of on my regular visits; a few days with her in January would be a pretty good way to start the year. I was looking forward to seeing Sarah again too. After London, she’d just about forgiven me for my behavior on the first trip to Vegas, and if I could prove that I was able to return to the scene of the crime and actually behave myself, then hopefully the incident could be put to rest for good.

It was strange, especially given my occasionally misogynistic attitude toward women, but I really wanted her to respect me. I took another look out of my hotel window, at the snowy gloom of December in Reykjavik and hit the reply button on Sarah’s email.

“Sure,” I wrote. “Overdue a trip to SF, and Vegas is always fun.”

I
flew into San Francisco, after an overnight stay in London, on New Year’s Day 2009.

I’d decided to catch the 10 a.m. flight from Heathrow knowing that, this being the most hung-over day of the year, the plane would be almost empty.

I had a six o’clock wake-up call so had decided to go easy on booze the night before. But—who was I kidding?—it was New Year’s Eve in London so I’d finally fallen into bed at about 4:30 a.m., with a Canadian girl called Alana who I’d first met a few months earlier at my book launch.

I decided to let Alana sleep as I finally stumbled out of the door and into my cab to the airport at 8 a.m.

It was a classy move, taking a girl back to my hotel and then fleeing the country a few hours later. I wrote her a note on hotel stationery; I have no idea what it said, nor do I remember the cab ride, check-in, security or take-off. In fact, I didn’t sober up until I was at 36,000 feet when an angel of a flight attendant shook me on the shoulder.

“Excuse me, sir,” she said. “There are three free seats up front if you’d like to lie down across them.”
⁴⁵
That’s how ill I looked.

Ten hours later, I’d made it through immigration and checked into my usual room at the York Hotel. Except now the hotel wasn’t called the York, and my room looked anything but usual.

After six months of renovations, the whole place had been restyled as “Hotel Vertigo,” complete with decor themed around the movie. Swirls in the paintwork evoked the look and feel of the opening titles, original movie posters adorned the hallways and, just in case the theme was lost on guests, the movie itself played on a constant loop on the
lobby’s flat screen TV. The new rooms were beautiful too, with gigantic king-size beds and Egyptian cotton sheets, free Voss water and high-end toiletries. Two freakish, but somehow beautiful, porcelain lamps in the shape of horses’ heads stood beside the bed. Wrong movie, I thought.

What with the hangover, the early start, the jet lag and the flight time, I couldn’t wait to climb into one of those new beds. I unpacked my suitcase—taking exactly five minutes, as always—and checked my email.

There was the usual mix: spam, messages from readers of the column, questions about the book—but one email in particular looked like it might be important. Not least because the subject line simply contained the word “
IMPORTANT
!” in capitals.

It was from Anna, who I hadn’t seen since I generously bought her and Drew a new door. I clicked to open the message, hoping there wasn’t a problem with the door. There wasn’t—unless you count the fact that a few hours earlier a policeman had knocked on it, asking whether Anna knew of my whereabouts.

Why the police were looking for me, Anna had no idea, nor could she understand why they thought they might find me hiding out at her house. Still, Anna is a loyal friend and, as it turned out, the perfect criminal’s moll, cunningly palming the policeman off with the truth: that I didn’t live in her house, that I was out of the country and that she hadn’t seen me in months. This failed to satisfy him, though, hence her email.

The policeman had left a number. “If you hear from him, tell him he’s in a whole lot of shit” were (Anna swore) his exact words. Hmmm. Obviously the police had gone to Anna’s because that was the address they had from when they arrested me there—but why in the name of fuck were they looking for me now?

I racked my brains for any possible way in which it could be good news. Did the police come round to deliver news of lottery wins? No. Had I lost a dog that they might be returning? No. Also, none of those scenarios would explain the words “he’s in a whole lot of shit.”

Shit.

Shaking with a combination of tiredness, hangover and absolute terror, I dialed the number Anna had given me in her email. It was a mobile number, but as it was already 11 p.m. in London I wasn’t expecting anyone to answer. “Ello …? Ello?” said the voice on the other end. I swear that’s how the policeman answered the phone, like a parody of a British bobby. If I hadn’t been in such a panic, I’d have laughed. I laughed anyway. “Ell … er … hello,” I said, “this is Paul Carr. I think you were looking for me earlier?”

“Oh yes, Miiiissster Carr,” said the policeman in a way that reminded me rather too much of my old school principal just before he was about to give me a detention. There was a rustling of papers.

“My name is Detective Constable Jamieson, and I’m investigating a burglary two weeks ago in east London.”

A burglary? What the hell? He continued: a month or so earlier, an apartment near Liverpool Street had been robbed while the owners were out of the country. The police had dusted for fingerprints and, much to DC Jamieson’s evident glee, they’d found mine all over the place. What with me having now fled the country, it was pretty much an open and shut case. Except for the slight detail that I’m not a burglar, and was pretty certain I’d never been to the address he gave me—I don’t know anyone who lives near Liverpool Street. Oh, and at the time of the burglary I was in Iceland, getting drunk in the company of Magni Asgeirsson.

“I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong person,” I said. “I’ve never even been there.” Which in hindsight was exactly the wrong thing to say, given that they’d found my fingerprints on every surface.

How, I wondered, could they not find my police record that night outside Karen’s house when they had my full name and date of birth, but apparently they had me dead to rights over fingerprints in a place I’d never been to?

“Well, clearly you have been there,” said the policeman, “and also, are you sure you’re not in the UK at the moment?” I looked out of the window at the San Francisco bus trundling by. Somewhere in the distance I think I heard a sea lion bark.

“Pretty sure, yes.”

“Well then, how,”—he paused for what I imagine was dramatic effect, but could equally have been a sip of tea—“do you explain the fact that you’re calling me from a UK number?”