I Love the 80s

by Crane, Megan

  ‘Jen’s his protégée,’ Harrison T. continued in that mocking sort of tone, and then headed for the studio doors. ‘We consider her Ken in a miniskirt.’

  ‘It’s Jenna, actually,’ she murmured, but no one was paying any attention to what she was saying. They were all much busier glaring at her as if they would each, individually, like to murder her. Jenna had to lock her knees to remain upright.

  ‘Far be it from me to kick out Ken’s eyes and ears, in a goddamned miniskirt,’ Duncan said scathingly. His famously heavy-lidded eyes bored a hole into Jenna’s forehead from across the room. She ordered herself not to feel for blood. ‘Whatever the esteemed vice-president of Video TV wants, he gets. You can feel perfectly comfortable telling him I said so.’

  Jenna’s head began to spin. Ken Dollimore. The vicepresident of Video TV back in the day, credited with the bulk of the creative programming that had made the station a viable contender against the MTV behemoth. Which Jenna knew because she spent a lot of her working hours on Wikipedia, when she wasn’t napping behind her desk. Oh, okay, and because she was proud of the fact she worked at Video TV, like her favourite aunt Jen before her. It was practically the family business, she felt, and she knew all the trivia. Like the fact that Ken Dollimore was considered the genius behind Video TV, which was supposedly the root of his bitter feud with Chuck Arendt, the CEO from 1981 to 1989 and Ken’s onceupon-a-time mentor—

  That was the moment when it occurred to Jenna that Elfin Jon Cryer had looked a lot like those old posters of Ken Dollimore they were forever dragging out of storage and festooning about corporate events.

  Huh.

  Jenna didn’t know what it said about her subconscious that it was this detailed – that it was subtracting over twenty years from everyone’s age and waiting for her prowess in Eighties trivia to catch up with the show.

  Jenna wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Aimee, she was certain, would have a field day with this dream. Adam, for that matter, who had always treated her devotion to the Eighties like a strain of leprosy, would consider it evidence that she’d finally achieved the truly spectacular level of lameness he’d always suspected she would. The jerk.

  ‘Um, I’ll be sure to tell Ken he has your support,’ she heard herself say to Duncan, who ignored her. But Tommy flicked her a sideways sort of look that Jenna confidently interpreted to mean faintly amused, as she was an expert on reading Tommy Seer’s numerous facial expressions.

  Tommy thought that was funny, a little voice in the back of her head chortled. Jenna tried to hide her smile of pleasure.

  ‘So,’ Duncan said when Harrison T. closed the set doors behind him, leaving a cloud of smoke and petulance in his wake. ‘I asked what the hell was going on in here.’

  ‘Haven’t I just told you?’ Eugenia complained. Jenna decided her accent was, actually, physically grating.

  Duncan set her away from him, not dignifying her with a response, and marched towards the stage.

  ‘I can’t believe what I’m seeing,’ he said in a gravelly, low voice that made Jenna nervous, suddenly. And she could see that she was not alone in that. He looked at Sebastian and Richie, who broke physical contact as if scalded. ‘You two are all over each other, when I explicitly told you we’re selling you both as straight. Straight. Save it for your private time. And here’s Tommy parading around without even pretending he’s English, and who knows who heard him.’

  ‘We’re not onstage,’ Tommy retorted, in an angry sort of tone Jenna had never heard before. Not from him.

  ‘And you’re not likely to be onstage ever again if you don’t do what I tell you,’ Duncan snarled. He stuck his face close to Tommy’s. ‘Remember who owns you, you little shit.’

  In Jenna’s mind, Tommy Seer was like a god, and he didn’t take that kind of crap from anyone.

  But this was Jenna’s mind, and instead of smacking Duncan down in some satisfyingly heroic way, Tommy’s jaw tightened and he otherwise made no response.

  Jenna wanted to punch Duncan in the face on Tommy’s behalf. But she caught herself. For some reason, she sensed this was not the sort of dream in which she could suddenly act like Buffy.

  ‘All right then,’ Duncan said, a note of triumph in his voice when Tommy continued to do nothing. He turned to look at Eugenia. ‘Did I hear you say you want them to perform live?’

  ‘It’s high time,’ Eugenia said, striding towards the stage, casting an imperious look over the band. ‘They’ve ignored me for years now—’

  ‘Because it’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,’ Duncan growled. ‘You’re supposed to be acting like a besotted, supporting fiancée, Eugenia. Has your job description changed even a little bit since the beginning? No. So tell me, what part of being Tommy’s girlfriend involves giving the band creative direction?’

  Colour flamed bright and high on Eugenia’s porcelain British cheeks.

  ‘Everyone’s clamouring for a live performance,’ she said, her voice notably less strident, ‘and this is the perfect opportunity …’ Her voice trailed away.

  ‘Let’s think about your areas of expertise,’ Duncan suggested in that quiet, horrible voice. Even Jenna, no fan of Eugenia’s, was quite certain she didn’t want to hear what he was about to say. Duncan looked Eugenia up and down, his expression cruel.

  He didn’t have to say another word.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her face even redder.

  ‘Why don’t you sit down, shut up, and leave the music to the professionals?’ Duncan ordered her.

  As Eugenia did so, everyone else seemed to stare off into space, expressionless. Avoiding being the next target, more likely.

  ‘So,’ Duncan said when Eugenia was seated, and the moment had become so actively uncomfortable that Jenna had to clench her knees to keep from literally shaking in her boots, while her stomach cramped. ‘How much of a disaster is this thing?’

  ‘Video TV wants a live performance,’ Sebastian said, jiggling his knee in obvious agitation. ‘They’ve been promised a live performance.’

  ‘And we can’t deliver,’ Tommy said, in his English accent, which, now that Jenna had heard his American one, sounded odd to her ears. But there was no denying the slightly mocking tone. ‘The moment we become a live band on national television, we lose our edge. Look what happened to Duran Duran.’

  ‘Simon is a friend,’ Nick retorted, enraged again. Or still. ‘Arcadia is a fantastic band and I don’t know why everyone’s all excited about Powerstation in the first place and besides, they haven’t broken up! Why does everyone think they’ve broken up?’

  ‘Simon’s a friend,’ Sebastian imitated him, with much derision. ‘Listen to yourself. You sound like a groupie. The original line-up is gone and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Live Aid was over two years ago.’

  Everyone started yelling again, while Jenna’s Eighties-obsessed brain tried to make sense of what she was hearing. Live Aid, of course, was the brilliant British charity concert to help with famine in Ethiopia. A year or so before the concert, assorted British artists released the fantastic ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ single on an unsuspecting world. Bethie Ridgeway had given Jenna the special ten-inch single for Christmas that year, bless her. The American response was the decidedly sub-par ‘We Are the World’, which if Jenna never heard it again would be too soon. The very thought of the sickly-sweet chorus, heavily centred on Michael Jackson, made her feel ill.

  Which was all a roundabout way of her figuring out that this bizarre dream of hers was apparently taking place in 1987.

  Sometime late in the summer of 1987, if she had to hazard a guess, based on the lack of coats and hats and Tommy’s ragged denim vest that he wore in place of a shirt. Which meant Tommy was a mere two months away from careening over the side of that bridge. 1987 was a dark year. Jenna could probably list off the band’s every accomplishment during that year – that was the level of her geekiness where the Wild Boys were concerned. She had gone over those accomplishmen
ts with a fine-tooth comb many, many times after 1987, and a great deal over the last eight months, believing that there had to be a clue somewhere in those details that would explain what had happened to Tommy. A clue about what was to come in October. So she probably knew the Wild Boys’ 1987 schedule better than they did.

  Including, now that she thought about it, their revolutionary Video TV appearance in late August of that year.

  Jenna’s breath caught. Was this supposed to be that fateful day?

  She looked at each of the band members, unable to contain her sudden joy. This was the best Wild Boys dream ever, no matter the weird dream asides regarding accents, faithless fiancées, and Duncan Paradis recast from fatherly supporter to nasty, adulterous bully. All of that was probably her brain’s anxiety concerning her usual issues – thirties, Manhattan, betrayed and alone – coming out in strange new ways. But the idea that she might get to take part in that hallmark of Video TV appearances? That was worth whatever weirdness might come!

  Jenna could see the whole thing in her mind’s eye, as if she was once again twelve years old and sitting two inches away from the television in her parents’ study, almost hyperventilating with excitement.

  She had only ever seen similar excitement amongst Harry Potter fans. Or those girls screaming over Edward Cullen from Twilight in the mall. Or the crazy people in South America or somewhere who nearly capsized the Backstreet Boys’ tour bus, that was how much they loved them.

  Everyone had expected a live performance. There had been rumours for months in all the teen magazines, on MTV and Video TV. The Wild Boys were in the studio finishing up their next album, the follow-up to their record-breaking international hit Fancypants Afire. They were a high-concept band, all about the videos. Their limited live shows were pageant-like events in arenas with enormous video-screen backdrops, during which the Boys paraded around in a variety of costumes and produced huge new videos that became iconic. They put on a slick, visual experience, and, now that Jenna thought about it, probably lip-synced the whole time.

  But the rumour was that they’d be playing an acoustic set on Video TV.

  Instead, the Wild Boys had made television history by performing their videos.

  Not their songs, their videos.

  As the videos of their hit songs played against the backdrop, the Wild Boys stood in front of the videos and acted them out as they went. Put like that, it didn’t sound like anything exciting, but for the twelve-year-old with her face practically inside her parents’ television, it was breathtaking. Some of Jenna’s fellow online fans felt Mystery Science Theater had stolen the idea for their franchise from this groundbreaking appearance.

  Tommy’s adorable, bashful smile. Sebastian cracking up halfway through ‘Lucky Penny’. Richie performing an extended air guitar. Nick dancing the robot during the mournful part of ‘Celestially Yours’.

  When they’d released the first single from the new album about a month later, the ballad ‘Misery Loves Company’, it had hit #1 and stayed there for most of that fall. It had just started to slip when Tommy had gone off that bridge, and his death had catapulted the single back to the top spot for the rest of the year.

  Jenna got misty just thinking about it.

  ‘Shut up!’ Duncan roared then.

  Jenna jerked back to attention.

  ‘This is a disaster,’ Nick muttered. ‘No one asks Boy George for an acoustic set.’

  ‘No one asks Boy George for anything these days,’ Sebastian retorted. ‘Not even his name, from what I hear.’

  ‘Culture Club broke up in 1986,’ Jenna said, not that anyone had asked. And no one paid any attention to her, either, as the squabbling commenced – except for the man standing nearest to her, his toned biceps on display.

  ‘You mean, last year?’ Tommy asked, one dark eyebrow raised into a perfect arch.

  ‘Oh, right,’ she said, and laughed nervously because his eyes were so green, ‘because in 1987 you would definitely say last year and not 1986, I get it. That’s totally what you would say.’

  ‘Uh, yeah,’ Tommy said, raising his eyebrow a little more.

  And why not? She was acting crazy.

  Duncan Paradis turned his steely gaze on her then, which was far worse than any look Tommy might have been giving her.

  ‘Well?’ he demanded.

  ‘Well, what?’ she asked, nervously.

  Jenna realized she was terrified of him. And not in that amorphous dreamy way, where she could sort of sense someone was evil or something and feel that they might wish to harm her. This wasn’t like that. She actually felt herself break out in a sweat. A nervous, unpleasant sweat.

  ‘The band won’t perform anything acoustic, and Ken knows it,’ Duncan told her in that awful voice that made her think of Tony Soprano but without the heavy New Jersey accent. ‘This is a set-up, and we’re two seconds away from walking out of here. I’m betting MTV wouldn’t jerk me around like this.’

  ‘There’s no need to bring them into it,’ Jenna replied, stung out of her fear of him by ten years of loyalty to her employer.

  Duncan Paradis smirked.

  ‘So what are you going to do about it?’ he asked. He crossed his arms over his chest and levelled that glare directly at her. ‘Tell me how you’re going to make me happy, sweetheart, and keep me from taking off. You have thirty seconds.’

  Then Jenna remembered that she didn’t have to be afraid of Duncan Paradis or his thirty seconds.

  She already knew what happened.

  ‘Actually,’ she said with a smile that bordered on smug, ‘I have a great idea.’

  5

  ‘You’re a genius!’ Ken Dollimore crowed, not for the first time, and Jenna was so giddy and pleased with herself that she decided to ignore the fact that he had his arm draped across her shoulders. And the fact he was crowing directly into her ear, which meant his elfin lips were tickling her earlobe when he got particularly animated.

  There was only so much she could ignore, however, and the next time his lips touched her skin was well over that line, so she edged away from him in her chair.

  Ken appeared oblivious, his attention focused on the set in front of him.

  The Wild Boys’ performance was, of course, phenomenal beyond the telling of it. Not that Jenna had had any doubt, having watched it herself in excess of three million times, thanks to her early VHS tape and later DVDs. The phone lines had lit up seconds into the first video the band performed, with teenaged girls screaming and swooning into their receivers, and Ken had come racing into the studio with the good news that this live broadcast was electrifying the viewing public. Unfortunately, he had also decided to sit with Jenna and watch the rest of the show, which meant there was far too much touching.

  But this, Jenna felt, was a small price to pay for being hailed as the visionary behind the Wild Boys’ video experience of all time.

  Best. Dream. Ever.

  Harrison T. was thanking the band up on the set, and the closing credit music started to play, and Jenna felt as triumphant as if she’d actually had a hand in making history. It was a very good feeling. Almost as good as the more lurid Tommy Seer fantasies – well, no. Not that good. There was no need to get carried away.

  Ken Dollimore jumped to his feet then, suddenly. He motioned for Jenna to do the same with an impatient hand.

  ‘Hurry,’ he said in an undertone, his eyes on the stage. ‘If I know Duncan Paradis, and I’m sad to say I do, he’s going to want to talk to me and I’d rather do it in my office. Let’s go.’

  Ken did not consult Jenna on what she’d like to do, which was, of course, to remain in the studio where she could continue to watch Tommy Seer. Whether he was being silly with his band mates, singing along with the video, or sitting quietly in his chair during the advertisements with that faraway look on his face, she found him equally mesmerizing. Now he was up on the stage, smiling that gloriously crooked smile, and she wasn’t sure she could bear to so much as blink and miss even a secon
d—

  ‘Jen,’ Ken snapped in a tone that brooked no disobedience, and was completely at odds with his happy-go-lucky, fun-loving appearance. Jenna was on her feet and following him before she knew what she was doing. Like a trained dog, in fact. A comparison which did not exactly thrill her.

  Obviously, she thought as she hurried after him, concentrating on his colourful high-tops, he hadn’t become a legend by being shy and retiring.

  Ken strode to the bank of elevators, Jenna close behind him in spite of herself, and nodded at all the young men in suits who complimented him on the show. All of them, Jenna could see, were blatantly jockeying for his favour, and all of them assumed that the whole thing had been Ken’s idea.

  ‘It was totally boss,’ one lavender-suited gentleman said, loudly enough to drown out the rest of the chorus of praise. Jenna had to cough to cover an involuntary laugh. Totally boss? Really? Who said things like that? Even in the Eighties?

  Instead of seeming impressed, or even interested, Ken caught Jenna’s eyes for a moment and gave the slightest roll of his own.

  Which was maybe why, when Ken wasn’t looking at them, the scrum of competing pastel suits glared at Jenna as if they’d like to wrap their hands around her throat. And those were the milder expressions. Others were far more murderous. Jenna gulped, and moved closer to Ken, despite her earlier personal-space concerns.

  ‘Pack of wild animals,’ Ken muttered when he’d claimed the next available elevator car – and had denied the other men access to it simply by raising his palm to them and jabbing the CLOSE DOORS button with his other hand. He grinned at Jenna. ‘I hate office politics.’

  ‘Everyone hates office politics,’ Jenna said, quoting Aimee. ‘But that doesn’t mean you get to stop playing them.’ Aimee said more or less the same thing to Jenna at least six times a week during their usual daily lunches, feeling that Jenna’s refusal to pay attention to office politics was the reason Jenna was stuck in a going-nowhere position while she, Aimee, was rocketing towards a VP slot. Jenna thought it actually had more to do with her penchant for naps under her desk, to say nothing of the weeks she did no work at all until midday on Thursday, but she knew better than to share that thought with Aimee, who would only get upset and suggest therapists.