Utopia Avenue

by David Mitchell

  The boy looks victorious.

  “How d’yer know that? How could yer know?”

  “Educated guess.”

  “God, yer grow up quick in America.” Dean carries on toward the blue flag. A biplane hauls a banner reading, THIRSTY? GRAB A COKE! across the nearly cloudless sky.

  “Why don’t you want to be a dad?” asks Bolívar.

  “Why d’yer ask so many ‘why?’ questions?”

  “Why did you stop asking ‘why?’ questions?”

  “ ’Cause I grew up. ’Cause it’s bloody annoying.”

  “You’d have to put a quarter in the Profanity Jar if you were in our family,” says the boy. “Mom started it because she doesn’t want me growing up in a sewer. So why don’t you want to be a dad?”

  “What makes yer think I don’t?”

  “You change the subject when I bring it up.”

  Dean stops to let a watermelon vendor push his cart by. “I s’pose…I’m afraid of being a dad I wouldn’t want as a dad.”

  Bolívar pats his head as if to say, There, there.

  * * *

  —

  A FRECKLED MAN in a San Francisco Giants shirt and a floppy hat is hovering in the mouth of the lost kid tent, puffing nervously on a cigarette. When he sees Bolívar his face transforms from bottled panic to sheer relief. It was worth bringing the kid over just to see that, thinks Dean. “Jesus Christ, Bolly,” says the freckled man, “you gave us a fright.”

  “Profanity Jar,” says Bolívar. “Two quarters. One for the ‘Jesus’ and one for the ‘Christ.’ I won’t forget.”

  The man makes a God-give-me-strength face and tells Dean, “Thanks. I’m Benjamin Olins—just ‘Ben’ is fine. I’m his stepdad.”

  “ ‘Honorary dad,’ ” insists the boy.

  “Honorary dad.” Ben lifts Bolívar off Dean’s shoulders. “Mom is having a cow. Where were you?”

  “Looking for you. I found him”—the boy points at Dean—“in a trailer. His name’s Dean, he’s from London, and he isn’t sure if he’s a dad or not. Speak to him, Ben. Old guy to old guy.”

  Ben listens to this, frowns, and looks at Dean properly. “Dean Moss? From Utopia Avenue? Holy crap. It is you.”

  “One more quarter,” says Bolívar. “You’re up to three now.”

  “But Utopia Avenue’s why we’re here today, and—”

  “No ifs, no buts: three quarters. And Mom’s here for Johnny Winter, not Dean. Sorry, Dean. There’s a lady over there giving candy to lost kids. I’ll be right back. Don’t wander off.”

  “Yer said it was yer mum ’n’ Ben who got lost,” points out Dean.

  “She’s not going to hand out lollipops to a grown-up, is she? Think it through, Dean.” Bolívar goes over.

  “Not yer average kid,” Dean tells Ben.

  “Jeez Louise—you have no idea.”

  “Eight hundred and eight years old, he said he was.”

  “He’s been keeping that up since he was five. Acute meningitis. Nearly died, poor kid, and he came out of his coma kinda…different than before. Sometimes Dee-Dee—Bolly’s mom—thinks we should get him looked at, but…he’s a happy enough kid, so I’m not sure what we’d be trying to fix. But, Dean, I really dig your music. I run a record store over in Sacramento. If I’ve hand-sold one copy of Stuff of Life, I’ve hand-sold fifty. Your first album sells too, of course, but Stuff of Life is…” Ben mimes an airplane gaining altitude.

  “Cheers. Guess I owe yer a royalty check.”

  “Just make a third album. Please.”

  “I’ll see what we can do. Yer boy’s struck gold.” The lollipop lady is holding the jar for Bolívar.

  “Oh, he could charm the birds and fishes,” says Ben. “Do you have kids, or…I didn’t get what Bolly was saying just now.”

  The smell of toasted chestnuts wafts by. No, I can’t tell a total stranger about my legal woes when I haven’t even told my own family. “He asked if I had kids and I was just saying I don’t feel ready to be a father. That’s all.”

  “ ‘Ready’? Forget it. I’m winging it, every single day.” Ben offers Dean a Marlboro; Dean accepts. “To Dad or Not To Dad? That is the question. It is heavy shit. I won’t say, ‘Do it,’ if you don’t want to.” He puffs the smoke away. “But if you’re on the fence and want a nudge, I’ll nudge you. You won’t miss what you think you’ll miss. You’ll have more headaches but you’ll have more joy. Joy and headaches. The A side and the flip side.” Bolly returns with a fistful of candy. “Look at you, you hunter-gatherer.”

  Bolly spots someone behind Dean. He waves. “Mom! Mom! It’s okay—I found Ben. He’s here.”

  Dee-Dee, a heavily pregnant woman with beaded, braided hair, lets out a long, earthy groan of relief and smothers her son in an enormous hug. “Damn it, Bolly, please don’t go wandering off like that…”

  The boy wriggles free. “One quarter! One whole dollar for the Profanity Jar. I got us a lollipop each, plus one for the baby. Dean, this is Mom. She’s in her third trimester. Mom, Dean helped me find you. What do you say to him?”

  “Bolly, it’s you who went off—”

  Bolly holds up an admonitory finger.

  Dee-Dee takes a deep breath. “Thank you.”

  * * *

  —

  THE CROWD OF seven or eight thousand is the biggest by far the band have played. Dean feels stage fright bubbling under. The sky is the sky from the Eight of Cups, on the cusp of evening. “Please welcome,” booms Bill Quarry at the central mic, “all the way from England, the one, the only UTOPIA AVENUE!” Levon slaps Dean on the back; Dee-Dee, Ben, and Bolívar slap his shoulder, and he’s following Elf onto the stage. Can’t turn back now. The crowd blast out a roar that Dean wasn’t expecting: he feels it on his face. Elf turns and grins. The band take their positions. Jasper and Dean plug in while Elf speaks into her mic. “Thanks, California. We weren’t sure if anyone here knows us, but I guess—” The roar and whistles intensify, and a chant spreads out from a spot Dean can’t locate: to the tune of “John Brown’s Body Lies a-Mouldering in the Grave,” the crowd sings: “Randy Thorn’s career lies a-mouldering in the grave, Randy Thorn’s career lies a-mouldering in the grave…” Jasper picks out the melody on his guitar; the notes are burnished and golden. For the “Glory, Glory Hallelujah” chorus, Elf vamps on the organ, and Dean conducts like Herbert von Karajan. His stage fright has evaporated.

  “We love you too,” says Elf. “So, our first song was written by Dean in a dungeon.” A roar of approval. She nods at Dean.

  Dean deploys a trick Mama Cass told him for opening a song with an unaccompanied vocal: run through the line once, in your mind’s ear, at the pitch you want, then replay it, but join in:

  I-i-i-i-i-f life has shot yer full of ho-o-ooooles —

  a-a-a-a-nd hung yer out to-ooo-oo-o dry…

  Mick Jagger told Dean the hardest part of his job was singing “Satisfaction” for the five hundredth time as if he’d only written it an hour before, but there’s no danger of “Roll Away the Stone” sounding tired this evening. The size of the crowd heightens Dean’s senses. His voice booms out over the PA and off into the universe like the voice of God…

  a-a-aaa-and slung you in a pau-au-auper’s grave

  down where the dead men li-i-i-i-iiiii-i-i-i-ie —

  Griff clicks his sticks to launch the first chorus. The song grows bigger to fill the bowl of the showground. Dean’s stagecraft is more theatrical than usual and Jasper’s playing is fiercer. During Elf’s roller-coasting Hammond solo, Dean looks at people in the crowd nodding in time and swaying as they drink beers and toke on roll-ups. Where the crush is less, near-naked revelers perform the shamanistic dance beloved of film crews at mad hippie festivals.

  The song ends in applause that goes on much longer than Dean would expect fo
r act number eleven on day two. “Prove It” gets a similar reception. Combed-out clouds glow incandescent as the sun sinks. As Jasper hits the first chord of “Darkroom,” the stage lights come on. Jasper’s posh English voice carries an exoticness in the oncoming American twilight that it lacks when they perform the song at home. The rapid punch of “The Hook” grounds the set. They extend the bridge and swaths of audience clap in time. Dean sings with a harnessed ferocity. Everything he tries works. Griff takes a drum solo and gets into a call-and-response sequence with Elf. Somehow it’s funny. Jasper takes a solo that burns up slowly, like a meteor, and smashes to bits at the end of the song. The applause is long and loud. Cocaine’s a pale imitation o’ this, thinks Dean. He mops his face with a damp towel. I hope someone somewhere’s making a quality bootleg o’ this ’cause tonight we’re bloody brilliant. He glances at Levon in the wings, and sees Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead clapping with four fingers against his palm. Dean nods back. Bolívar and his parents are sitting up on some scaffolding.

  Elf plays a few lines of the Moonlight Sonata for fun before seguing into “A Raft and a River.” After the riff-sticky madness of “The Hook,” her song is a cool glass of water. Faces stare at her, hypnotized. Griff pitter-patters and shushes on his cymbals and hi-hat. Dean and Jasper join in on Elf’s new three-part-harmony chorus, inspired by hearing Graham Nash, Stephen Stills, and David Crosby singing in Mama Cass’s kitchen. It’s risky—there’s nowhere to hide if harmony turns bad—but they’ve been practicing and the applause is vigorous. Bill Quarry calls from the side, tapping his watch and megaphoning through his hands, “One more big one!” It’s Jasper’s pick. Dean’s expecting “Sound Mind,” but Jasper calls, “Let’s do ‘Who Shall I Say Is Calling?’ ” He wrote the entire song on the flight from New York. His onstage seizure appears to have had the benign side effect of curing Jasper’s fear of flying. It’s a brave choice. They’ve only played the piece through a few times in the studio, but it does feel like one of those gigs when the songs half play themselves. Elf nods at Dean, who nods at Jasper, who addresses the crowd. “Our last song’s our newest. It’s one day old and it’s called ‘Who Shall I Say Is Calling?’ ” He looks at Dean, nods, “And one, and two, and three, and—”

  Dean’s there with the blues riff. A, G, F, back to A.

  Elf’s Hammond gate-crashes the party, finds its feet, and dances a drunken jig. Griff joins in with a round of backbeats, the snare, and distant thunder on the bass drum. Jasper’s guitar picks out a hovering Grateful Dead–style intro before he sings into the mic:

  You loved him in the tropics,

  they labeled you “Immoral”;

  you gave me life and kissed my head,

  then sank among the coral.

  You loved her in the tropics,

  when Europe was aflame.

  I’m your indiscretion,

  I have your name.

  Dean wonders if the words make any sense at all to people who don’t know it’s about Jasper’s father. “Nightwatchman” and “Darkroom” feel personal but, actually, aren’t. The first two verses of this new one are raw. In lieu of a chorus, Elf plays a half-jazz-half-blues piano solo of cascading runs before the next verse:

  A priest from long ago,

  hid in the family tree.

  Generations passed until

  the priest demanded liberty.

  A stranger from Mongolia,

  turned me back from suicide.

  He walled the priest up in my mind,

  and gave me five more years to hide.

  When Dean asked Jasper who the priest and the Mongolian were, he just replied, “A long story. The short version is, they were voices in my head.” Jasper now plays a solo. The level’s wrong on his wah-wah pedal and it buzzes, half drowning the guitar. It sounds like an icebreaker smashing through ice. Actually it sounds bloody great, thinks Dean. Jasper must agree: he waves away the sound guy and extends the solo by another round. Even the mishaps are on our side tonight. Jasper steps up to his mic:

  One dark day, the walled-up priest

  erupted from the past —

  I tripped into Hell in the Chelsea Hotel.

  I wasn’t the first, I won’t be the last.

  A psycho-surgeon for the damned,

  A shelter in the gale —

  If not for Marinus of Tire,

  I’d not be here to tell the tale.

  These two verses have been modified since Dean last heard them: “Marinus of Tire”? Is “Tire” a place? Or just a tire? The song’s like “Desolation Row,” Dean decides. I can’t say I understand it, but I know ’xactly what it means. He notices Mecca crouching between the spotlights, taking an upward shot of Jasper. Jasper sees her too, and gives her a look. Since his collapse at the Ghepardo, Jasper’s been present and calm and different. If I believed in curses, I’d say a curse was lifted. Jasper’s third cosmic solo spirals over the showground, like a thing with wings. Dean joins Jasper at his mic and Elf leans into hers for the final three repeats of—verse? Chorus? Bridge? Who cares?

  Who shall I say is calling?

  Who shall I say is calling?

  A ghost now asks a ghost-to-be,

  “Who shall I say is calling?”

  The ending is a minute-long Wait for it of whirling dervish keyboards, bass runs, yowling feedback, and drum cascades before the band comes to a sudden, perfect stop.

  The crowd doesn’t react. What’s wrong?

  Dean looks at Elf. Did we fuck it up?

  The showground ignites with the noise of eight thousand people yelling, cheering, whistling, and clapping as loud as they possibly can.

  All that it cost us to get here was worth it.

  Griff, Elf, and Jasper line up by his side.

  Venus is a glint in the eye of the sky.

  Utopia Avenue take a bow.

  THE NARROW ROAD TO THE FAR WEST

  On Monday, the band went to record in Studio C at Turk Street Studios, a short walk from their hotel. They laid down solid demos of Elf’s “Chelsea Hotel #939,” a bluesy waltz about their New York digs, and “What’s Inside What’s Inside,” a love song with zithers, an Appalachian dulcimer, and a flute solo played by a friend of Max’s from the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. They finished at ten P.M., ate at a Chinese restaurant, and crawled into bed. Yesterday, the band recorded a diamond-bright version of “Who Shall I Say Is Calling?” during the course of the morning, then an eight-minute composition of Jasper’s called “Timepiece” featuring amplified clockwork, wind chimes, Elf on harpsichord, a backward twelve-string guitar solo, an ethereal vocal stack, and recordings Mecca made on Monday of a funeral bell, the sea, and a railway terminus. Today, their last full day in San Francisco, has been spent on two new songs of Dean’s: a riff-heavy number, “I’m a Stranger Here Myself,” and a spacier, mystical song, “Eight of Cups.” Dean, Elf, and Jasper are offering and accepting suggestions for each other’s songs more than they ever did at their Fungus Hut sessions. Griff listens closely to each new song as its writer introduces it, and by the third or fourth run-through is laying down a rhythm track.

  Levon comes from an afternoon of meetings and the band stop to play him the latest take of “Eight of Cups.” He leans back, listens intently, and pronounces, “Glorious. Paradise was a few months behind the trend. Stuff of Life is kind of marching in lockstep with the trend. This new stuff is going to be the trend. When Max hears it, he’ll wet his pants.”

  “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” asks Jasper.

  “Good,” says Dean. “What about Günther?”

  “Günther’s not a pants-wetter, but he will tap along with one finger. During the racier passages, maybe two.”

  “Bloody hell. Yer reckon?”

  The light flashes on the telephone. Levon picks
up. “Hello?” Pause. “Oh, yeah, sure. Put him through.” Levon cups the mouthpiece and tells the others, “It’s Anthony Hershey.”

  Of course it is. He’s found out ’bout me ’n’ Tiff. Dean’s not as scared as he should be. What’s there to be scared of?

  “Tony,” begins Levon. “How the hell are you? Did—” A pause. Levon frowns at Dean. “Uh…Okay. Is it anything I can help with?” A pause. “Then let me see if he’s still around.” Levon cups the mouthpiece and whispers, “He wants to speak to you, but he sounds homicidal.”

  Let’s get it over with. Dean presses the speakerphone button so everyone can hear. “Tony. How’s the weather down in Los Angeles?”

  Anthony Hershey’s outraged upper-class voice blasts through the tinny speaker. “How dare you? How RUDDY DARE you?”

  “How dare I what, ’xactly, Tony?”

  “Oh, you know! You’ve VIOLATED my marriage.”

  “Howdy, Mr. Pot—have you met Mr. Kettle?” Elf’s jaw has dropped. Griff is frowning. Levon is already making calculations. Jasper lights a cigarette and passes it to Dean. “It’s an eight-hour drive up from LA, if yer fancy pistols at dawn. Or I could meet yer halfway.”

  “You’d not be worth the bullet, you pig-ignorant, yobbish, flash-in-the-pan, coke-snorting, wife-snatching…oik.”

  Griff has shut his eyes and is shaking his head.

  “Nobody’s perfect, Tony, but at least I didn’t snatch my wife’s career off her and give it to Jane Fonda. I mean, if you were Tiff, would you think, Oh, well, I’ll just have to put up ’n’ shut up ’n’ scrub Tony’s shirts ’n’ undies? Or would yer think, Sod this for a lark, what’s good for the gander’s good for the goose?”

  “My wife is the mother of my children!”

  “See, that’s yer problem, Tony.” Dean mimics Hershey’s accent. ‘My wife is the mother of my children.’ Yer not a feudal lord, matey. Tiff’s not yer possession. She’s a human being. If yer care so much, go back to The Narrow Road to the Deep North starring Tiffany Seabrook. She’s a great actor. So what if she’s not a Hollywood name? Make it anyway. It’ll be a better film. Yer’ll rescue yer marriage.”