Espedair Street

by Iain Banks

  'Damn,' he said, taking his feet off the speaker and sitting forward on the edge of his seat, staring down at the tiled floor through the clear liquid in his glass. 'I don't know what to say, Dan.' He looked up at me, and took his Porsche glasses off, rubbing the bridge of his nose as though he was tired. He seemed oddly naked and vulnerable without the glasses. He put them back on again. 'I'm... sorry, I know how much you meant to each other, even if you hadn't... well, no; look...' He held up one hand as I opened my mouth to speak. '... I guess there isn't anything we can say, either of us, but, well, I want you to know ... well, I guess I felt the same way you did.' He looked away, shaking his head.

  I had the oddest feeling of déjà vu. What year was this, for God's sake? This was what he'd said after Miami, after Davey died. What sort of weird time-warp was I — or he — in? Had something else happened? I didn't know what to say. I wanted to ask, What the hell are you talking about? but there was a silence between us now I didn't feel able to fill, a confusion in me I didn't want to admit to.

  I was still trying to cope with last night, with the combined effects of a bad hangover, bruised ribs and the awful feeling that I'd lost a friend. I'd been to the Griffin when it opened, leaving a note on the door of St Jute's for Tumber, but McCann hadn't appeared for his usual Sunday drink. I' d waited an hour, drinking fruit juices, then left a message for McCann with the barman and come back to wait for Rick. So I had enough to think about, and I didn't even want to ask if some new catastrophe had befallen anybody I knew.

  Nevertheless, I had to say something. I was still wondering what it should be when Rick knocked back his vodka and reached for the leather briefcase.

  'Life goes on,' he said briskly, with the air of somebody deliberately putting a brave face on the hardly-bearable. 'I brought some incredibly pure coke with me. You still indulge?' I shrugged, feeling weakened, suggestible, vacuous in every sense.

  'You know I used to be able to fuck twice within the space of one side of an album?' Tumber said. We were playing table tennis on the slightly dusty table right at the back of the choir under windows depicting hares chewing the cud, the two fathers of Joseph, God showing his rear parts to Moses... that sort of thing. Playing table tennis coked up had seemed like a good idea at the time but, as usual when it came to games, I was losing, and in this case I seemed to spend most of my time chasing the ball around under the table and across the floor. I had no idea how we suddenly started talking about sex.

  'Really?' I said.

  'Yeah,' Tumber served again. 'Twice in twenty minutes.' I missed a topspin slam completely and had to follow the bouncing ball across the tiles again.

  'Wow,' I said.

  'Yeah.' Rick got ready to serve, and I crouched, feeling tiger-tense and twice as fearsome, and staring at the point on the table where I expected the ball to bounce. Then Rick straightened again, rubbed his chin and looked up to the roof. I looked on, aghast. 'I mean, it was a while ago. The record was Let It Be...' He frowned, crossed his arms, seemed to say more to himself than to me, 'Now who's flat were we using? I always thought it was that one in Argyll Street, but...'

  'Serve!' I shouted at him. He started as though he'd just noticed me, and crouched to serve again, the ball held in his left palm like some strange plastic offering.

  'Sorry,' he said. 'Will I serve now?'

  'Yes!' I screamed.

  He served.

  'Aah!' I yelped, returning.

  'Well anyway; you should have seen this girl, Dan. What a body. I swear her tits didn't change shape when she lay down. That usually means silicon, but she was one hundred per cent natural, believe me. We'd done it once and then we just started doing it again, and, well, fucking zap-pow, man... anyway we were still lying there panting and quivering when the side finished and the turntable switched itself off, and I got up, dripping everywhere, and turned the album over, and then went back to bed, and...'

  'And turned her over...' I laughed, which gained me a point when Tumber laughed, and missed the ball. My turn to serve.

  'You asshole, Weird,' Tumber said.

  We played a short rally which I lost, of course. Rick served again. 'So I'd come twice in twenty minutes, and I thought, "Hey, that's pretty good; you must be some sort of sexual athlete there, Ricky boy."'

  'I wonder if they have heats for sexual athletics,' I pondered aloud.

  , And I started,' Rick went on, 'timing myself like that, with sounds. Doing that deliberately, just to see, you know? I wanted to keep a check on my performance.'

  'Uh-huh,' I said. I lost another point.

  'Yeah,' Tumber said, serving again. 'I only stopped doing it with Judy... you remember Judy? When I was in love?'

  'I remember. You seemed almost human for a while. It was disconcerting.'

  'Thanks. Anyway I stopped doing it with Judy cos it felt wrong, and even after we split up I didn't do it because I'd sort of forgotten about it, and then a couple of months ago I was screwing these two gorgeous black chicks, and I'd just put Brothers In Arms on, and I humped one then the other, and it finished and I realised I'd done it again; twice within one side, and, like, I was completely exhausted, but I was so fucking pleased I'd done it, and then I realised ...'

  'What?' I said, missing the ball again and going after it. It bumped up against a box full of Rumanian plum jam.

  'It was a fucking compact disc, man,' Tumber said, disgustedly. 'I'd taken about fifty fucking minutes and I felt twice as knackered.' He shook his head. 'Jeez, was I pissed off.'

  'My heart bleeds for you,' I told him. 'My bladder leaks for you; my pituitary secretes for you. What were you doing in bed with these two women, anyway?'

  'What do you think I was doing?'

  'Asking them, was it good for you two?'

  'Wrong. In fact, they're a double act. I'm thinking of signing them.'

  'I didn't know you'd formalised your relationships to quite that extent,' I said, and actually won a point. Tumber tossed the ball back to me.

  'My relationships are changing a lot, Danny. I'm getting careful in my old age.' Rick stood up suddenly from the crouched position he'd assumed to receive my serve, put his hands on his hips and said, frowning with annoyance, 'Christ, isn't it a fucking bore wearing those goddamn willy wellies?'

  I didn't move, but looked up from my serving stance and said, 'Yes.'

  'Never mind,' Tumber said, crouching again and winning off the return. 'I'm laughing; I used the profit on my Telecom shares to buy into London International.'

  'Asshole,' I told him.

  'That's about the size of it.' he grinned.

  We sat in the restaurant of the Albany hotel, Rick's usual base on the rare occasions when he visits me.

  We finished our game of table-tennis. He'd won, of course, though I did score a couple of points, which I always regard as a moral victory. We'd had some more coke, talked for an hour or so about The Business, bad-mouthing everybody we could think of, then we drove the couple of hundred yards to the Albany in Rick's hired GTS (though only after he'd complained about the car-hire people at the airport not having a black Porsche to match his glasses; a red Ferrari was all very well, but it clashed).

  When I'd woken up that morning I'd put on what I'd been wearing the night before, so I was just about respectable enough to be allowed into the Albany, once I'd put my tie on.

  The meal was all right, though Rick made a fuss over the wine, and I'd insisted on tomato sauce with my Chateaubriand, just to be awkward. We sat back, belching and slurping brandy; Rick sucked on a Havana cigar. While we'd talked, I'd felt several times that Rick had steered clear of something, a subject that he didn't want to raise, but I hadn't tried to find out what it was. There were, anyway, two things perhaps; what he'd come to talk about, and whatever disaster he'd awkwarded his way round earlier. I was trying not to think about anything too deeply. I just sat with the man and pretended it was like old times.

  '... God, yes, I remember that party.' Rick laughed. 'Amanda caught me
screwing Judy in the flowerbeds; bitch tried to run me through with a rake, or a hoe, or something agricultural like that.'

  'Horticultural,' I said. 'And rake would have been appropriate,' I said, drying my eyes.

  We'd been reminiscing about the parties Davey had given at the mansion in Kent, and Rick had been telling me about the time Davey had lost control of his traction engine during a tug of war with Wes' Range Rover, a local farmer's tractor and his own Daytona (with Christine at the controls). He'd won, but — accidentally he claimed — drove the machine into the main marquee, through the bar and over several tables, scattering shrieking guests like hens before a car. He hit one of the two main tent supports, demolished half the marquee and set fire to the rest; it must have been one of the few fires that year put out with a combination of water transmitted from an ornamental pool by an ice-bucket line, and champagne. I'd missed that particular soiree, but the ones I'd been to had been only marginally less interesting.

  Rick and I had reached that stage where neither of us could think of any more appropriate stories, so just sat there for a few moments, shaking our heads and sniffing and drying our eyes.

  I took a deep breath. 'So, what brings you up here anyway?' I asked him.

  He sat back, swirled brandy. 'How do you feel about making another album?'

  'Terrible. The answer's no.'

  'Well, have you really thought about it? People in the business are asking me about you, without me having to ask; they all want to know if you're going to do anything again. We get letters from fans asking where you are and if you're working on some new project; the interest is there, Dan. I mean, with Personal Effects doing so well, and after all this time; you'd be crazy not to think about it.'

  'Is it doing well?' I said. 'I didn't know.' Personal Effects was the album I'd released as a solo effort — though with lots of session people, of course — in '82, a couple of years after the band broke up. I'd been all fired up and enthusiastic about it at the time -I'd taken a year and a half off after Miami and I was missing recording and playing — but when it came out... I don't know. I'd lost interest.

  Happened even before it came out, come to think of it; I remember sitting at a mixing console one day, talking over the right balance for some track or other, and I just suddenly felt, What the hell? What does any of this really matter?, and I could never summon up the enthusiasm again, after that. Not for any length of time. The album didn't do very well, anyway. Not by Frozen Gold standards. Personal Effects was my second choice for a title; I'd wanted to call it Looks Like Shit To Me, but ARC — Rick, in other words, because he was boss by that time — had vetoed that.

  'What?' Rick looked amazed. 'Don't you read the music press at all? Listen to the radio? It's been in the forty for the past six months; a bit of publicity and you'd be in the twenty at least. Make a come-back and I'd guarantee top ten. God damn it, Dan, don't you check your royalty statements?'

  'No.'

  Rick shook his head. 'You're an exasperating man, Daniel. Don't you get any thrill from... from playing music? Don't you miss the applause, the lights? The people?'

  'I keep my hand in,' I said defensively.

  'What?' Tumber snorted derisively. 'Jingles for adverts and TV series? Big deal.'

  'And film scores.'

  'Ha; you've done one. So the music was the best part of it; so what?'

  'There were two, and there's another couple in production,' I said. I didn't like having to defend myself like this, but I couldn't let Rick twist the truth that way without setting him straight.

  'So there were two. And as for the two in production; I've talked to those people; to Salmetti, and Grosse; they like the music all right but they don't like the way you work; they're both thinking about paying you off and getting somebody else. You expect them to write the films around the music, not the other way round. That's crazy. They expect you to take scenes and write stuff specially for those bits, not just send completed tapes and scores and expect them to cut what they've got to suit. The most they'll do is use your stuff as themes up front, but even that's unlikely. And don't bother telling me you didn't know any of this, Danny boy, because I know you didn't; that's another thing they're not very happy about; even film people expect letters to get answered eventually. Besides all of which, the big money in film music these days isn't the sort of stuff you're writing at all; they want rock bands singing three-minute singles. You're out of date.' Tumber sat back, drank his brandy.

  This was Rick talking tough. I nodded thoughtfully.

  'Well, I don't care. I don't need the money.'

  'I know you don't need the money; I do look at your royalty cheques. But what about you, Danny? Don't you need to know who the hell you are? Don't you need something else besides sitting around in that fucking ... tomb up there feeling sorry for yourself and emptying crates of commie booze? Christ, man, you're an artist. You're a fucking piss artist at the moment, but you're still a clever man; you could be doing things, you could be making a difference, you could be taking part. That's what you should be doing; taking part, showing some of these spotty fucking brats how it's done, for Christ's sake.' Rick sat back, then leant forward again, jabbing the cigar towards me. 'You're just the guy to do it, too. People have only half-forgotten about you; you're a legend now, the whole band is, even more so now that ... what? What is it? I say something funny? What?'

  'Legend,' I said, shaking my head. 'Bullshit.'

  Rick reached over and touched my arm. 'It's been four years, Danny boy. You forget what industry you're a part of. You make a small fortune in a couple of months in this business; you make enough to last you all your life in a year, and you're yesterday's newspaper in eighteen months. Show me Adam Ant now.' He sat back, shaking his head, apparently thinking he'd proved his point. 'Four years is just right to become a legend; long enough so a lot's happened, not long enough for people to forget about you. All that stuff about you living on a Caribbean island, or in a monastery in the Himalayas, or being dead... that's just perfect. You'd be crazy not to make a come-back. You've got the material; you've told me so yourself. Jesus Christ, Danny; you're thirty years old...'

  'Thirty-one; you forgot my birthday again.'

  'Oh well, pardon me...' Tumber shook his head, looked pained. 'Aw, come on, Dan; you're still a young man; you going to vegetate up here for the rest of your life? Drink yourself to death? Fucking hell; forget about the money; give it all to Geldof for all I care...'

  'What, your share too?'

  Rick looked wounded, as though this was an unfair departure from decent negotiating behaviour. He sighed heavily, burped lightly. 'I'd sooner do a no-profit deal with you than none at all, Danny. I'm not saying I'd be happy, but I'd rather you just... worked, even if it doesn't do anything to improve our year-end figures. I don't like to see waste, Dan. I don't like to see people just throwing away what they've got. There are enough people in this country who'll never even get a chance to work, who can't make anything of themselves, who can't use whatever kinda gifts they've got. But you could if you wanted to; you've got the choice. You're just... I don't know; lazy, too sorry for yourself. We've all been hurt by what happened to Christine; it's a tragedy, we all know that; a tragedy... but...'

  He talked on for a bit, and a couple of times, when he waited for answers, I nodded, or grunted, or shrugged, and did whatever was appropriate, but I didn't hear what he said.

  My eyes filled, briefly, at one point, but I blew my nose in the stiff napkin, and sniffed, and I don't think he noticed. I stared at his face without seeing him, listened — apparently avidly without hearing him.

  So it was her .

  It was Christine. Oh, Christ Jesus, what had happened? I didn't want to think about it and I couldn't stop thinking about it.

  What had they done to her? Was she dead? Was it that bad, was it the worst? I thought back to the way Rick had talked when he first arrived that afternoon, the things he had said, the tone he had used, the way he had sat... and
I couldn't tell. It might be something less than that, but I didn't think it was. She might have been pregnant and lost a baby, or been hurt in an accident, or... my imagination failed.

  Most of the things I could think of were either just not severe enough for Tumber to have acted the way he did towards me, or things he might have followed up on, like if she'd been badly injured he'd have said something about me going to visit her or sending something. No, I couldn't think what it might be... prison? I latched on to that, like a drowning man. She'd been done for drugs in the States in some place with crazy penalties and locked up for a couple of years... but he would still have said something about going to see her, writing to her... Oh, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus...

  '... Dan? You all right?' Rick Tumber looked more concerned than I could ever remember him looking. I sniffed, nodded.

  'I, ah... I'm sorry. I was thinking about Christine.'

  'Oh,' he said. 'Yeah.' He looked away, and slowly brushed some crumbs off the tablecloth.

  God forgive me; this was terrible, but even now, even now I was trying to cover up, trying to not let on how little I knew; even now I was pretending I knew something, even if not all; 'What ... exactly happened?'

  Rick's brow flickered, as though he disapproved of my ignorance. I shrugged. 'I only... heard,' I told him. 'No details. Can you tell me?'

  Tumber cleared his throat, took a slightly shaky breath. We both watched his right hand stub out the stump of the fat cigar.

  'It seems...' he said, after a pause, and a sigh, '... the guy was... some moral majority freak... I dunno; one of these fundamentalists or... some fucking nutcase; I didn't hear what church... sect or whatever...' Tumber shook his head again, still addressing the hand delicately tapping out the cigar. 'He just turned up at the hotel, in Cleveland, with a Saturday Night Special. He'd travelled up from Alabama, apparently, specially. Ah... like, they'd had tighter security in the South when they were playing there, just because they had all the demonstrations and such, and death threats, but I guess they didn't think Cleveland was so much of a threat. Anyway; he was waiting in the lobby, and when she came out the lift, he... he shot her. Got her bodyguard, too; blew the guy's brains out. Wounded Chris in the side and head; she got as far as the sidewalk outside, screaming for help, but the guy just followed her and put another two shots into her, on the ground, before a hotel guard shot him.