Candy

by Kevin Brooks

  Chris, meanwhile, was giving me a shitty look. I didn’t really blame him. It was the last song of a great set, and he wanted to end it doing what he did best—playing the guitar. And now I was stealing his thunder. If I was him, I know I wouldn’t have liked it. But Jason was right—“Candy” was a brilliant song to end on. And it was one of ours. And I could play the guitar part better than Chris. Not because I was better than him, because I wasn’t. Chris was a genius. He could play anything. But “Candy” was a really simple song and it needed a really simple sound and Chris was just too good to be simple. “Candy” was a blues song—it was made of empty spaces. And, unlike me, Chris was just too good to leave the spaces alone.

  “I’m sorry—” I started to tell him.

  “It’s OK,” he said, unstrapping his guitar and passing it over. He still didn’t look too happy about it, but he didn’t look too sulky, either. I think he knew it was the right thing to do.

  With a slight nod of his head, he said, “Let’s make it good.”

  I nodded back, gave him my bass, and we both went back to the front of the stage.

  Jason introduced me, then stepped aside to let me have the microphone. As I adjusted the mike and strummed a few chords on the guitar, I started feeling really weird. I’d never sung onstage before. I’d never been pushed to the front. I’d never had so many people looking at me. And I didn’t know what it was I was feeling. It was like a mixture of fear and some kind of wondrous discovery. A sense of—This is it, Joe, this is your time and your place, right here, right now.

  I knew I couldn’t think about it, though. If I started to think, I’d freeze on the spot. So I just started playing. Quietly at first, just gently stroking the chords, finding the feel and the rhythm…then gradually I started building things up, strumming more confidently…and the harmonies rang out across the room, slow and spiky and edgy, and then the bass came in, beefing things up, and the drums, and Jason’s guitar started wailing in the background, and I could hear the melody in my head, calling out to be sung, and I raised my head to the microphone…

  And that’s when I saw Candy.

  She was standing right at the front, just as she said she would. No more than a few meters away from me, looking up, her eyes fixed on mine, her face a picture of pure delight. She was dressed to kill in skintight jeans and a short black T-shirt, her arms tied with leather laces, her hair spiked up, her eyes painted black. She looked fantastic.

  My breath caught in my throat for a moment, then a wave of energy surged through me, and I opened my mouth and started to sing:

  The girl at the station,

  The girl with the smile,

  The moment’s temptation,

  To stay for a while…

  Simple words for a simple song. And, somehow, I didn’t feel embarrassed singing them. I should have, I suppose, seeing as the girl in question was right there in front of me. But, for some weird reason, I didn’t. Maybe it was because I wasn’t actually looking at her while I sang. In fact, I wasn’t looking at anything. My eyes were closed to the song. The music, the words, the trancelike rhythm, rising through the dark to the echo-sweet swirl of the chorus:

  Candy, your eyes

  Take me away,

  Take me away,

  Take me away…

  I don’t know what the words mean, if they mean anything. They just came to me the night I first met her, when I was sitting at home, strumming the guitar. They were the words of the moment, and that’s all the song was about, really—a moment.

  As the chorus finished, I stepped back from the microphone to concentrate on the guitar part that brought us back to the verse again. It was one of my favorite bits of the whole song, a really nice little guitar break. Dead easy to play, but it sounded great.

  I glanced down at Candy. She was dancing now. All alone, her eyes closed, dancing for the sheer hell of it, moving like a dream. She looked so alive, like a child lost in time…

  I could have played that song forever.

  It had to come to an end, though, and when it finally did, following a thunderous roar of drums and guitars, the sudden ringing silence seemed to shock everyone. Just for a moment, no one moved, no one made a sound…and then, all at once, the whole place exploded, with everyone cheering and clapping and calling out for more and the vibration of their stomping feet echoing through the floor…

  It was breathtaking.

  An indescribable feeling.

  As Jason said good night to the crowd and we switched off our amps and trooped off the stage, we all had the same dazed look on our faces—a blend of intoxication and pure fatigue. I was exhausted, mentally and physically drained. My ears were ringing; my fingers were bleeding; my clothes were soaked in sweat. I’d never felt better in my life.

  I felt so good, I almost forgot about Candy.

  I stopped and turned around and stepped back onto the stage. The houselights were on again, and when some of the still-cheering crowd spotted me, they thought we were coming back for an encore. The cheering got louder—“More, more, more!”—and I started feeling a little bit stupid. I don’t know why, but I suddenly felt as if I didn’t belong there anymore. It was really odd. I’d felt perfectly at home a few minutes ago—standing in the spotlight, singing and playing my heart out—but now the stage felt so alien to me that I was scared to venture too far from the edges.

  Until, that is, I saw what was happening.

  At first I thought it was just another fight, and I wasn’t particularly worried about it. You get them all the time in places like The Black Room—drunken scuffles, a few punches, arguments that get out of hand. They don’t usually come to much. This one didn’t seem any worse than the rest—raised voices, a bit of pushing and shoving…I couldn’t really see very much as it was all going on at the back of the club, next to the doors, behind a crowd of onlookers. I wasn’t that interested, anyway. I just wanted to find Candy…ask her out for a drink or something…see what she thought of the gig…maybe introduce her to Gina and Mike. Or maybe not. I didn’t know. I just wanted to find her, that’s all.

  She wasn’t down at the front of the stage anymore, so I was scanning the crowd, searching the room, looking out for her face…but so far I wasn’t having any luck.

  I heard Jason calling out to me from the corridor. “Joe! Where are you? Come on, there’s some record company guys here. They want to talk to us. Joe!”

  “Yeah,” I called back. “I won’t be a minute.”

  I kept looking, searching the roomful of faces.

  Come on, Candy…where are you?

  Just then, the scuffle at the back of the club got louder again and my eyes were drawn to the noise. A gap had appeared in the crowd now, and I could see some of the people involved. The first person I recognized was one of the black guys I’d seen earlier in the pub. Then—with growing unease—I noticed another and another…and another. They were all there. Half a dozen of them, standing in a semicircle with their backs to the door, facing down another black guy. This one had his back to me, so I couldn’t see his face…

  But I knew who it was.

  It was Mike.

  I started moving to the front of the stage.

  “Joe!” Jason called after me. “Come on, man…what are you doing?”

  I ignored him, moving faster.

  I could see Gina now. She was standing to one side, screaming at someone behind the six black guys. I couldn’t see who it was. One of the black guys made a move toward her and Mike stepped up and whacked him in the head. As he went down, two of the others started kicking at Mike, and I jumped off the stage and started pushing my way through the crowd.

  It was hard going. Everyone was still buzzing from the show, and people kept grabbing me, telling me how much they’d enjoyed it, asking where we were playing next…

  “Sorry,” I kept saying. “Excuse me, sorry, sorry…”

  The noise from the doors had quieted now, and I didn’t like the sound of it. It was too quiet. I squ
eezed through a gap in the crowd and jumped on a chair to see what was happening…

  And my legs went weak.

  What was happening was Iggy.

  Backing out of the door, dragging Candy with him, his passionless eyes covering the room like two loaded pistols…he looked like nothing and everything, all at once. Nothing—no life, no feelings, no fear. And everything—size, strength, the power of violence. He had it all. The rest of his crew were watching his back, guarding his exit, but he didn’t need them. He didn’t need anything.

  From the corner of my eye I could see Mike lying prone on the floor and Gina bending over him with tears in her eyes. The sight of them should have been enough to take my mind off everything else, but when Iggy paused, halfway through the door, and fixed me with his deadly stare, the rest of the world disappeared.

  I was alone in the darkness, standing on a chair, and all I could see was the sterile light of Iggy’s eyes, searing into mine.

  Stilling me.

  Draining me.

  Shrinking me to impotence.

  He still had Candy gripped by the arm. She wasn’t struggling at all, she was just standing there, hanging from his hand like a lifeless trophy, waiting to be taken away. Iggy’s lips moved—a silent word in her ear—and she languidly turned her head toward me. I caught a brief glimpse of her lightless eyes, a glazed look of recognition, and then she was gone, ghosted away into the night.

  chapter nine

  By the time I’d got down off the chair and made my way over to the door, there wasn’t much left to see. Candy and Iggy were long gone, Iggy’s crew had disappeared, and now that the fight was over, most of the onlookers had lost interest and were beginning to drift away. Things seemed strangely normal. Apart from the state of Mike’s face and Gina’s obvious shock, it was hard to tell there’d been any trouble at all.

  Mike wasn’t hurt too badly. He’d taken some hefty kicks to his head and his ribs, and his mouth and nose were bleeding a bit, but at least he was back on his feet again. In fact, he was more than back on his feet—he was livid. Standing tall, glaring angrily around the club, trying to work out what had happened.

  “Where’d they go?” he spit. “Where’s the big guy? Where’s the girl…?”

  Gina was trying to calm him down—holding him, hugging him, fussing with the wounds on his head—but she looked pretty shaky herself. Her hands were trembling, her lips were quivering, and her shocked-white face was streaked with tears.

  I didn’t know what to do.

  I didn’t know what I wanted to do.

  I wanted to rush out into the street and start looking for Candy, but that would mean leaving Gina…and I didn’t want to do that. She was my sister. She was hurt and upset. I wanted to be with her… where I belonged. And besides, I knew in my heart that looking for Candy was a waste of time. Even if I did find her, she’d be with Iggy and his crew, and what chance would I have against them?

  So I stayed where I was, my heart beating hard, watching Gina as she hugged the life out of Mike.

  After a while, Mike spotted me over her shoulder.

  “Hey, Joe.” He grinned. “Great night out—thanks for inviting us.” He wiped some blood from his mouth.

  “Are you all right?” I asked him.

  He nodded. “I’ll live.”

  Gina let go of him and turned to face me. She was still crying. I went over and put my arms around her.

  “Are you OK?” I said.

  “Yeah…” She lowered her voice. “God, Joe, I thought they were going to kill him.”

  “What happened?” I said. “How did it start?”

  She sniffed and wiped her nose. “I don’t know…there was this girl—”

  “Christ—what are you doing?” a voice interrupted. I looked around to see Jason walking briskly toward us. His face was all twitchy and tight, and his eyes were alight with a curious mixture of anger and excitement. He came over and grabbed me by the arm. “Come on,” he said, pulling me toward the dressing room. “They wanna see you.”

  “Who?” I said, shrugging his hand away.

  “The record company guys…” His face lit up. “They’re really keen, Joe. They wanna talk to us…all of us. Come on—”

  “I can’t—”

  “What do you mean, you can’t? This is big stuff—”

  “I have to talk to my sister—”

  “Your sister?” His face screwed up in disgust. “Sod your sister. This is important—”

  “So is this.”

  He glared at me, his eyes a rage of disbelief, and I thought for a moment he was going to hit me. I know I felt like hitting him, and if Gina hadn’t stepped forward and put her hand on my arm, I think I probably would have.

  “It’s all right, Joe,” she said calmly. “I’d better take Mike home, anyway. We can talk about what happened later…You go and see your record company people.”

  I looked at her…pale and quiet.

  I looked at Jason…forcing himself to smile, trying to control his anger, his contempt, his impatience.

  It wasn’t a hard choice to make.

  “You’ll have to do without me,” I told Jason.

  His smile wavered. “No, you don’t understand, they wanna see you—”

  “Tell them something came up—”

  “Christ’s sake, Beck,” he hissed. “What’s the matter with you? You can’t just bugger off whenever you feel like it—”

  “Look,” I said, “I’m really sorry—OK? But I need to go home with my sister—”

  “Why?”

  “I just do, that’s all.” I turned to Gina. “Come on, let’s go.”

  “Are you sure?” she said, slightly puzzled. “I mean, it’s no big deal—”

  “Yeah, it is,” I assured her.

  She looked at me, her eyes full of questions. “Is this about—”

  “Not now,” I said.

  She gave me another thoughtful look, then nodded slowly, took Mike’s arm, and started for the door.

  I turned back to Jason. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll explain everything another time.”

  “Yeah?” he said sulkily. “And who says there’ll be another time?”

  I looked at him for a moment, started to say something, then decided against it. I just couldn’t be bothered.

  I turned my back on him and walked out.

  It rained on the way home, a fine black rain that misted the air and dazzled the night with kaleidoscope lights. As Mike eased the car through the slick city streets and on toward the M25, I stared through the window at the starburst colors spinning in the darkness—the headlights, the streetlights, the bleak neon signs…all blurred and vacant in the rain.

  Blurred and vacant.

  Cold as glass.

  I couldn’t think.

  I’d tried ringing Candy on my cell phone as soon as I’d got in the car, but the number was dead. No tone, no voice mail, no nothing. I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know what anything meant. I was torn in too many ways. Too many highs, too many lows, too many feelings all at once…and I couldn’t put a voice to a single one of them. I didn’t know where to start.

  But Gina did.

  “I think it’s time to talk,” she said, turning around in the passenger seat to face me. “Is there something we ought to know about what happened tonight?”

  “I’m not sure…” I said.

  “Come on, Joe…all that stuff with what’s-his-name, the singer—what was that all about? Why do you need to talk to me so much? Is it something to do with the fight?”

  “I think so…”

  “You think so?”

  “It’s hard to explain…Look, I’m not trying to hide anything, it’s just…well, I don’t know what happened with you and Mike…and the girl.” I looked hard into Gina’s eyes. “I need to know what happened.”

  She looked back at me, thinking hard, then she glanced across at Mike. Without turning his head, he said, “Tell him.”

  She
told me.

  “It was during the last song,” she said, “the one you were singing. I was watching you, listening to you…I couldn’t believe how good you were, Joe. It was fantastic. You were fantastic. I couldn’t take my eyes off you.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Mike. “It was really good.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Gina nodded. “Anyway, I was watching you, and I was watching the crowd as well. They were really getting into it. Especially the girl at the front…the one you kept looking at.” She paused, waiting for me to say something. When I didn’t, she kept on. “I thought at first she was just a girl…you know, just a pretty girl you’d seen in the crowd…but then I realized I’d seen her earlier—”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “In the toilets. About five minutes before the last song.” She looked carefully at me, her eyes hesitant, as if she was unsure what to say. “Is she…I mean, do you know her?”

  “What was she doing?”

  Gina didn’t answer for a moment. She lowered her eyes, then looked up again as Mike flicked her a quick glance. She said to me, “I went into a cubicle…I thought it was empty…but it wasn’t. The lock was broken. She was in there…this girl…She was crouched on the seat, smoking heroin…”

  “Heroin?”

  Gina nodded.

  I said, “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. She had a strip of aluminum foil and—”

  “She was smoking it?”

  “Through a plastic straw.”

  “I thought you had to inject heroin?”

  Mike said, “You can do what you like with it—smoke it, snort it, pop it…whatever.”

  I don’t know why I felt shocked, really. I knew that Candy took drugs and I’d kind of guessed it was heroin, but I suppose I’d chosen to ignore it, as if it didn’t really matter or it wasn’t really there…

  But now it was there.

  In all its dirt-cold reality.

  And it was hitting me hard.

  “Joe?” said Gina. “Are you OK?”

  I looked up, still plagued with the picture of Candy—crouched in a toilet cubicle, smoking heroin through a plastic straw…