Thin Air (3 page)

She knew his pattern. When the
world Dex moved in became too overwhelming, he would find a
bolthole and hide for a few days, getting drunk and smoking dope
with people who were only too glad to take him in. He didn’t always
call her, but she never worried, confident that Dex knew his own
limitations and when it was time to withdraw and recuperate.

So, when he disappeared again,
late in October 1995, Jay was not unduly concerned. She received
the call on a Sunday morning, while Dex was on his ‘Vanishing
Light’ tour in the north of England, doing some warm-up gigs for
the release of his new album, ‘Songs to the Shadow’ early in the
following year. She’d had friends round the night before, who’d
left quite early at two a.m. and had then worked through until five
on her monthly column, which if it wasn’t delivered by Monday would
be late. At nine thirty the phone rang. Jay woke up, groggy, and
lay there ignoring it. Presently the answer-phone clicked in and as
the volume was turned down, Jay couldn’t hear who was calling.
Whoever it was could wait. She put the pillow over her head, and
turned on her side, determined to sleep on at least until one.

The phone rang seven more times
in the next half hour. She stubbornly ignored it. It must be the
same person trying to get through, perhaps even Dex, although he
was never the urgent type. Finally, cursing, Jay picked up the
phone on the eighth call.

‘Jay!’

She recognised the
cigarette-cracked tone of the band’s manager and her heart sank.
‘Tony, it’s the middle of the fucking night! What do you want?’

‘Sorry to ring so early, babe.
We’ve got problems.’

At this moment, some celestial
agent should have touched Jay’s shoulder, warned her with a wave of
intuition. She reached for her cigarettes on the bed-side table.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Tony! Sort them out yourself. I’m not coming
up there, no matter what, so...’

‘Jay, he’s gone.’

‘He’s always going. What pissed
him off this time?’

‘He didn’t even play the gig
last night.’

Jay paused. That was unusual. No
matter what temper he was in, nor how much he wanted to murder any
members of the band, Dex delivered when it was needed. He was not
an absconder in that sense. ‘What happened?’ She inhaled unwelcome
smoke into lungs that had smoked too much the night before.

‘Well, there was a row at the
sound-check.’

Jay groaned.

‘It wasn’t the usual row. It was
weird. Sammy had let some kids in - fans who’d been hanging about
outside, and Dex went crazy - quietly. Not him, right?’

‘Sammy’s an idiot sometimes. He
should’ve known Dex’d go spare.’

‘He just muttered something and
walked out. Didn’t even kick down a door on the way. That was the
last we saw of him. We had to cancel the show, which pleased
multitudes. Jay, this is all going too far. He needs help or
something. I can’t afford this prima donna stuff.’

‘What do you want me to do about
it? Dex isn’t
here
, Tony.’

‘You just talk to him when he
shows up, that’s all. And let me know if he calls. It’s every time
now, Jay, every fucking gig there’s a problem with him. We’re all
treading on egg-shells. We’ve got another show scheduled for
tonight and...’

‘Then find a new band.’ Jay
slammed down the phone and lay on her back, pulling the pillow over
her head once more. This wasn’t her problem. She wouldn’t let
anyone make it hers.

She eventually went back to
sleep and dreamed she woke up and Dex was there in the room with
her. They had a measured conversation about what had happened, and
she persuaded Dex to call Tony. Everything was resolved. Jay and
Dex made love with exquisite tenderness, then Dex started getting
ready to go back up north for the gig. In the dream, Jay lay warm
in bed, feeling secure, in control and content, listening to her
man moving around the flat.

She was woken by the phone again
at two o’clock, immediately conscious that Dex wasn’t there with
her. It was Gina Allen calling. Gina always went on tour with her
husband; a man whose compulsive philandering bordered on psychosis.
She explained that the band had driven to Manchester where the next
gig was booked. So far, Dex had not made a reappearance.

After discussing the stupidity
of men for a couple of minutes, and the fact it was a miracle any
male band ever managed to stay friends long enough to achieve
anything, Gina said, ‘The thing is, Jay, I think Dex... well... I
think there’s something badly wrong.’

At that point Jay wished Gina
was a stupid woman whose remarks she could ignore, but Gina’s
stupidity extended only to her choice of men. ‘What do you
mean?’

‘It’s - um - just a feeling.
I’ve seen all of Dex’s moods and tantrums – even more than you
have. But this time it was different. He’s not that happy with the
new material, and he’s blaming the others. I think he’s really run
away this time.’

‘Not happy with the new
material?’ Jay’s mind flashed back to all the long days and nights
when Dex had been composing the songs, closeted away in his
work-room with banks of equipment, emerging sleepily on occasion to
feed and watch half an hour of MTV. Sometimes, he’d stay up for
nearly three days, before falling exhausted into bed for sixteen,
eighteen, twenty hours, only to wake and repeat the pattern. But he
hadn’t seemed disturbed or upset, or even dissatisfied. Jay had
listened to some of the tapes, and had helped Dex decide which
songs to use on the tour. He always wrote at least twice as much
material as he needed. ‘How do you know this?’

‘After the gigs - he’s been
ranting and complaining. Telling the others they weren’t pulling
their weight. Slagging off the sound engineers. Everything. He said
it was all just crap.’

‘Was it?’

‘I don’t think so, but I’m not a
musician, am I? The crowds liked it. When someone pointed this out,
Dex just said they were all morons.’

Jay laughed. ‘Nothing new there,
then. The album’ll sell millions next year, and he’ll still
complain. Don’t worry. I’m sure he’ll show up soon.’

Gina sighed down the phone.
There was a silence that unnerved Jay far more than any words Gina
could have said. The room suddenly seemed colder. ‘Spit it out,’
Jay said. ‘Come on, Gina, what else is it you want to say?’ Images
flashed before her mind. Could it really be another woman - a
serious
other woman?

‘I’ve watched him,’ Gina said.
‘He’s been so nervous, drinking heavily even for him. I found
him... God, this difficult... I found him banging his head against
a wall, Jay, like some kind of nutter. It was hideous. He was
bleeding.’

‘When was this?’

‘Yesterday afternoon. I tried to
talk to him.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He just pushed me away and
walked off. I told Dan about it, but you know what men are like. He
just ignored it.’

‘Did you talk to Tony?’

‘Yeah, kind of. Tony said he’d
speak to Dex, but I don’t know if he did.’

‘What has Tony decided to do?
Are you guys staying up there or coming back?’

‘We’ll stay here overnight. Tony
thinks Dex’ll just cool down and turn up here.’

‘But you don’t think so.’

‘No.’

It was only once Jay was dressed
and drinking orange juice in the kitchen that she sensed Dex was
not coming back, ever. She was looking out of the window, down
across the park, and the afternoon went so still, as if the whole
world was watching her. There was an imminence in the sky, as if it
was full of unseen thunderheads.
My God
, she thought to
herself, in wonderment rather than fear or sadness.
My
God
.

Dex’s disappearance was the talk of the
music papers later that week. By that time, the police had been
called in. Jay prayed for Dex to call her, make contact. One moment
she felt sure he was just about to walk through the door, while at
other times, the void inside her felt like a silent scream that
went on and on. The rest of the band rallied round her, and it was
clear Gina especially thought Jay should not be left alone.

‘He’ll show up,’ she said, on
more than one occasion.

‘I don’t feel him,’ Jay would
reply, clawing at her own chest. ‘Not in here. Not anywhere.’

‘You don’t know that,’ Gina
would say, misinterpreting Jay’s words.

Jay didn’t believe Dex was dead,
despite the unspoken suspicions that hardened the lines of Gina’s
face and the barely-covered innuendoes in the press that Dex had
killed himself.

On the Saturday, his car was
found at a sea-side resort, but no-one had seen him there. He had
really disappeared into thin air. When Jay was informed, she went
utterly numb. No hideous images flickered across her inner eye, no
instinctive convictions clenched her heart. She just didn’t know
what happened, couldn’t feel it. Even when people visited her, the
flat was too still, too quiet. There was a space in it that only
Dex had filled. She closed the door on his work-room and told
herself she’d never open it again. Only Dex could do that. When he
came home.

Fans kept a vigil at her
doorstep. Their silence unnerved her. It felt like a funeral.

How could he do this to her? Had
he lied about his feelings? She wanted to feel angry but could only
muster an exhausted bewilderment. Had she been so stupid, so taken
in? No. He had loved her,
did
love her. Something had caused
this, something she didn’t know about.

One night, drunk, she threw open
the door to his work-room and a smell of him came out at her like
an enveloping ghost. ‘Are you here? Are you?’ She turned on the
light. Tapes and papers littered every available surface. It burned
her fingers to touch them. She resisted lifting them to her nose.
She might find a sheet of lyrics that would explain everything. But
the papers were just notes. He’d left nothing personal behind, no
hint as to his state of mind.

Gina and the band were no help.
They couldn’t answer her questions. Whatever Dex had been worried
about, he’d kept it to himself. He’d not confided in his friends or
the woman he loved. That hurt the most. The silence. The lack of
trust. The betrayal.

The police were reassuring,
explaining that many men in Dex’s age group, with stressful busy
lives, disappeared in this way. A great number of them were found,
or returned of their own accord. They felt it was unlikely he’d
committed suicide. Jay might have to prepare herself for months, if
not years, of waiting, though.

Snide articles began to appear
in the music press. One journalist suggested that as Dex had been
so successful for so long, he was afraid his popularity was about
to wane. Perhaps this disappearing act was a publicity stunt,
engineered to regenerate interest in his work. Jay didn’t want to
read the piece, and boiled with silent rage as she did so, but just
couldn’t resist. It made her think about how time had hurried by.
She and Dex had been together for seven years. Surely she should
have known him better than she had? How could she have been so
blind?

Jay was no longer just one of
the beautiful people; now she was a tragedienne. Dex’s fans
converged on the flat, some just watchful, others bearing gifts of
condolence. Jay drew the curtains on them. Her grief and confusion
were too intense and private to share. A girl in Birmingham killed
herself and left a message telling the world that she had followed
Dex into the next life.
No you haven’t
, Jay thought angrily.
He’s not dead.

Still, she felt she’d never see
him again. For whatever reason, he’d jettisoned his life, and it
wasn’t his physical departure that hurt, but the fact she’d never
known what had been going on in his mind. She’d been careless,
overlooked a crack that had become a chasm. If she’d been more
vigilant, he’d still be with her. It was her fault. She saw that in
the eyes of female fans who haunted the steps outside. If they’d
been his woman, they’d have protected him. Jay hadn’t. They had
been jealous of her all along and now had an excuse to turn on her.
She was a celebrity like him, made more famous by him; cold,
calculating and greedy. Someone must be blamed for Dex’s
disappearance. Jay became the scapegoat. Nobody would believe in
her grief. The papers had made sure everyone knew she would not go
on tour with him, and that she had refused to come when he needed
her. Had Tony let that slip, or Dan, or Sammy or Martin? Perhaps
even Gina, chatted up by journalists. Messages circulated on the
Internet. Some implied wild conspiracies, even to suggest that Dex
had been abducted by aliens. Others speculated as to whether Jay
herself had engineered his disappearance. Perhaps she had murdered
him for his money. It was ridiculous, Jay knew that, but every
criticism, every insane idea, shocked and hurt her like a slap
across the face. Had people no respect for her feelings? They
didn’t know her. They couldn’t see into her mind, experience the
physical pain of her grief.

‘You must ignore it,’ Gina said
firmly. ‘It’s just the way things are. It’ll all blow over in a
couple of weeks. People will find something else to focus on.’

The realisation hit Jay like a
physical blow. Dex’s role in the music world had changed. He was no
longer a creative immediate force. New stars would rise to take
that place. Dex was destined to become a myth, like Jim Morrison or
Kurt Cobain. A rock casualty enshrined on the murky Olympus of
shattered stars. When he was remembered, it would be as an obscene,
sentimental travesty. She hated that. He was a man,
her
man,
and he was lost. People were just too eager to make him a god. They
didn’t want him to be found. The worst thing he could do now was
saunter back into his life.

As one week rolled into the
second, Jay became increasingly insular. She didn’t want to see any
of her friends, or even speak to them. Acquaintances in similar
jobs to her own, from whom she hadn’t heard for months, were
suddenly interested in calling her, ostensibly to murmur their
condolences. Jay saw through their thin words of sympathy. She tore
the phone from the wall. She wouldn’t answer the door. Sakrilege
had re-released Dex’s last single; it went straight to number one.
Naturally. Jay couldn’t bear to go out of the flat. It seemed
everywhere she looked there were posters of Dex’s face staring at
her. It seemed like a mockery. So, she holed up like a wounded
animal in shrouded daylight. She drank rum: white in the mornings,
fiery spice in the amber afternoons, and dark, voodoo ichor through
the long nights. She felt as if a thousand horses thundered through
her head. She could almost see their flaming nostrils, their wild
eyes, their foaming manes and tails. They carried her onward into a
grey future that could not form properly, that would never become
days and nights, seasons turning. She was immortal in the golden
light of a perfect October. This moment would go on forever.