CHAPTER 10
I had completed my mission. Jack Ross’ driver Frank was taking me back from the strung-out but legendary folk/blues player who lived out in Tottenham, a tired wilderness of low brick anonymity. I had his guitar. Its strings were dead; it was way out of tune, long abandoned. Her name was Estelle. I had brought a replacement, a decent Gibson, because he might not have a second guitar, and you just can’t take a musician’s last guitar from him.
I tried to get Frank to keep the guitar, hand it over to his boss next time he saw him. But no, Frank was under instructions for me to keep it, play it, enjoy it. The visit had been creepy. The music was dead in the player. I didn’t know such a thing was possible. It felt like I was taking away a dead man’s coat. I didn’t want to hang it in my flat, much less wear it. No, I told myself, you’re not going to play it.
I had Frank drop me off at Natalie’s house. She had called yesterday evening when I had been tied up on the phone back home. I’d forgotten; now I remembered, and called her from the car. Maybe I needed someone young and vital after my visit to the artificially-aged no-hoper of a musician. It was her idea that I stopped by. Her house in Crouch End, a leafy, hard-to-get-to area a few miles east of my flat, was on the way back from Tottenham. I guess she hit a chord with me—she was me, back when my old man skipped out forever.
Natalie lived with her father and his partner. A woman answered the door, slim, angular and attractive, much younger than Natalie’s father (if he was Claudia’s age). Younger than me, even. She met my eyes in that assessing way before turning them off, now formal, a bit distant. She introduced herself as Kate.
“Cool, you brought your guitar,” Natalie said, skating up to the door. I had let Frank go. I liked to test London’s neural network of buses, tubes and trains, trying to get lost, then find my way home. There is probably nowhere in the vast city that’s more than 1,000 yards from a bus line. We went into the living room, just off the entranceway. Natalie plopped down on the sofa, suddenly listless.
“I think I had better call Matthew,” Kate said, trying to be cold towards me. She stood at the entrance to the room like a reluctant chaperone. She held a cell phone, but didn’t seem about to use it.
“I told you!” Natalie snapped. “He has nothing to do with it. Nothing.”
“You called me? Yesterday?” I asked Natalie.
“I called to warn you…about these Nazis,” Natalie said, her face heated, then she changed tacks completely. “Kate, please.” Her smile tried to write Kate out of her Nazi script.
“I’ll make tea,” Kate said, relenting.
“It was just one night,” Natalie started. “You know, when you told me about you, that you had to move—how restless you were?”
“You told them that?” I asked.
Her sheepish smile was comical. “Dad claims I ran away from home. Just because I said I was over at Allie’s and he called me on it. So what? I’m old enough to have secrets.”
Somehow from the way her talk included me in her shenanigans, I guessed she had spent the night at her mother’s flat. Surely her father would have figured that out.
“Are you kidding?” she said. “If I told him that he’d take away the keys. I didn’t think of that…before.”
“It would be worse if he didn’t give a, a damn about where you were.”
“You can say ‘shit’.”
I couldn’t help smiling at that.
“You were right about needing to move.” Natalie gave me an amiable smile, trying to draw me in. She was wearing an impossibly short skirt, not right on this nearly bare, barely-teen.
“I never ran away,” I said sternly, an effort to disentangle myself from the story she was dragging me into. It was at that moment that Kate entered with the tea tray.
“Dad says I’m supposed to stay away from you,” Natalie said for Kate’s benefit, not bothering to hide that maneuver. She gave me a trapped, brave look, yet her blue-gray eyes worked independently with an overlay commentary, optimistic in a wry way. “He’s not serious. Well, Daddy’s always serious, but you know what I mean.”
“If your old man says you shouldn’t see me, you should respect that.”
Natalie gave me a pout at this betrayal; her eyes were laughing though.
Kate finished her tea ceremony, stood, and didn’t move, not certain what to do. She paused for a long moment, eventually drifted away.
We were quiet. Natalie took that important first sip of tea. The living room was small, cluttered with books. An imitation oriental carpet on which sat an old and sagging sofa in pale fuchsia on which Natalie was stretched out. Also a coffee table with yesterday’s paper, the Guardian, mug ring stains, a set of keys.
It was dark already, just after 4:00 p.m. The room felt like a cage, confining. I thought this was about Natalie, her condition. Or maybe it was the small room, crowded with heavy, worn furniture. Natalie misread my assessing look.
“We had them in after the burglary. Kate’s still freaked out about it.”
“What?”
“Those white diamond-shaped things? Over the windows?” She explained that their house had been broken into while they were asleep. It was just before she started her current school year; an omen, she thought.
I asked what was taken, to show interest.
“Nothing really,” she paused, remembering. “The downstairs was a mess. The police think they were after cash and jewelry, small stuff.” She laughed here, bitterly. “Cash? This place?”
“They didn’t take anything?” I asked, to fill a pause.
“Just the stuff in Kate’s handbag. You know, credit cards, fifteen quid. They even took her gym card. In all the mess we never did find my blue beret.” Her smile became about me. “Could you play something? Like, give this place some good vibes?”
Anything was better than the teen drama I had stumbled into. I kept having to ask myself what I was doing there. I got out the guitar—I had forgotten it wasn’t mine. It took a long time to tune. The G string kept slipping out of tune. Still, once I got there, the notes jumped out, bright, present, yet muted by the semi-dead strings as I ran through a few pentatonic scales. It was as if the notes had been cooped up and were now set free, but weren’t used to their freedom.
I started my default twelve-bar blues argument. I started in E.
“Aren’t there any words to it?”
I started singing Eyebeams style, whatever came into my head. “Been a long time since I heard the news.”
I let that line hang there as I toured those bars.
“Dad says she isn’t coming back.” She did this part well, managing an even tone throughout, just an empathic headshake at the end showing the force of feeling. Her eyes in sync with the rest of her this time.
“Still hurts so bad and I’m still confused.”
“Yours?”
“Song’s always yours when you’re singin’ it.” I got back to that chugging blues progression. A look between us messed up the start so I picked up on the second line, now in G. Better, not exactly right yet.
Still hurts so bad and I’m still confused
Like walking a mile in too-tight shoes
I got those Mama’s gone, duh duh’s gone blues.
“Who is duh duh?” She was trying to be condescending in a joking way.
I shrugged. “It’s just the guitar talking.”
“Your father, he left, yeah?” she asked.
I grunted yes. I was in the middle of trying to figure out if the progression sounded better around a base of A. Something that fitted in this confining room.
“So it should be ‘Papa’s gone blues.’ It’s your song.” She gave me a so-there mock pout.
The turnaround came around so I started over, another twelve bars. I sang the verse. Natalie joined in tentatively. I stayed with ‘Mama’s gone’ then she added a ‘Papa’s gone’ to that. It felt like some kind of contract.
�
�I think Mum did meet your friend,” she said. She bit her lip, looking so young all of a sudden. Being Natalie she was half-laughing at how she had messed this up. This lie. Had she forgotten her other lie about the orchestra guy?
“This is based on…?”
“You should talk to Moira. She’s Mum’s PA.”
Okay, she was dragging me into a new quest, to find out what happened to her mother. She was smart enough to understand that Kirk was the key, her lever. Put Kirk together with her mother and she had my interest. I couldn’t blame her for any of that; I didn’t blame myself for resisting, either. Before I could frame a reply she had her cell phone out and was making a call.
I listened to Natalie cue Moira about the alleged meeting between Claudia and Kirk. She did that smoothly. She glanced at me as she talked, her eyes laughing with me at her potential lie. Yet right above that she managed a considerable frown.
There was an imminent trade show, so a meeting with Moira would have to be the following week.
We sat in the living room, quiet but for Estelle, now on a jazz version of “So Far Away.” She was too bright for it. Natalie’s overly obvious attempts to have me look for her mother reminded me of those first days after my father had left. I was too young to think of going out to find him. At least Dad had the decency to write. I knew within two days that he was gone for good. For Natalie there was only uncertainty. It was a deep cut that would take time to heal, never fully. All I could remember of those first days were two things; one was a sudden restlessness. When I was doing something, it needed to be something else. That, and my mother’s absolute need for me. I would sit in the shadows of her drape-closed bedroom listening to her, over and over. You think you know someone, that was her mantra. I wanted to help, but needed to move. That’s how it’s been with Mom ever since.
“Who’s representing your Mom’s interests? Financial affairs. Police. All that.”
“Her ex-husband.” She bubbled over at her circuitous answer.
“Can you talk to him about it? Anything the police’ve told him.” I guess I was playing to her wishes here. “They sure as hell won’t tell me anything.”
“You don’t have to swear about it.” She laughed, the innocent child not above trotting out the F-word on any occasion. Then she turned serious. “Mum. I keep thinking there’s something I know…there must be something.”
“Guess that gives you hope. Hope’s good, isn’t it?”
“Hope can wear you out.”
CHAPTER 11
“Everything Topples (Into Dust)” from You Can Take the Eyebeams (First Album) 3:22
Kirk’s. Those endless days on the road took their toll. We took a beating over the suicides relating to “Coerced Volunteer.” Kirk was the focus of genuine rage and hatred. If it got to him, he didn’t show it. Eventually the furor died down until it was just another part of Kirk’s aura. Then came Portland.
Portland was one of our main stops. We had played there five or six times, had a faithful following. So here we were again. That night we were in mellow mode, as opposed to rock or blues. This was just about when Kirk started falling apart. Kirk always did better with mellow; it amplified the values of his tones, his notes, his sound.
At most of our regular stops there was a group in our right front that liked to dance. I never could figure out how their slowly flailing limbs related to our beat. Maybe the music was rearranged in their chemically rearranged brains. So it was in Portland.
We launched into “Topples.” We had never played it mellow before, live that is, slowed down, but still with a beat you could groove to (if you got it). I was busy adapting to this style. Our hallmark, improvisation, standing up there and taking serious risks. We took them, I think, to keep Kirk in the game. “Make it new” could’ve been his motto, therefore ours.
Some of our fans somehow considered “Topples” an anagram of “topless.” Well, almost. It was an early song from the days when Kirk threw his shirt into the crowd post-finale, mocking in his oblique way the entire rock god set up.
Now, in Portland, a young girl in her own mellow (and no doubt altered) state, moving in her own slow circles, removed her shirt and threw it at the stage (according to witnesses). She danced on topless. Maybe the would-be anagram came into it. A security guard decided that this couldn’t happen. In fairness to him, the girl was clearly young. However, there are times when you’ve got to let things slide.
Amazingly, but we’re talking about Kirk here, he saw all this developing. He went over to the right end of the stage, crimped his guitar between his legs, unbuttoned his shirt and threw it to her.
Chemically confused, she misinterpreted his intent. Oh look, a gift.
Of course Kirk’s act of generosity (and his perfunctory strip show) brought the situation to everyone’s attention, including mine. The girl continued dancing, that red silk shirt around her neck like a prize of war. She wasn’t wearing a bra, so young she almost didn’t need to. She could have been Kirk’s younger sister, all bones and ashen skin. There was a luminescent, chalky quality to her skin, like a bleached shell on a bright beach, so white against the red silk (now that the lights were up. The second mistake, the press agreed later).
A few in the audience started throwing their shirts, not at the stage, but at the rent-a-cop. Then more. A building sense of rebellion now. The mood quieted, but then something happened—accounts differ widely—and there was a crush. Three died; many injured, eight seriously, including that initial rent-a-cop. It was unclear whether that related to his activity, or just his proximity to the epicenter.
Kirk was charged with inciting a riot, soon dropped. There you have it. The most notorious band in the US strikes again.
Fly me to the ruin; let me ponder what once was
Everything topples into dust
Why this impermanence? Is it just because
All atoms spin clockwise as all atoms must?
CHAPTER 12
I kept trying to pull the trigger on what I considered my detox/rehab life. I was clear-eyed, rested and restless. I was learning how to turn down that insistent narrative chatter. At night I earned a respite with plays and concerts or at home, books. I was adjusting, starting to find a rhythm to this life as a stranger in a semi-familiar land.
I decided to go back to Imperial College to see Professor Howell. I had meant to ask him about False Memory, whether Kirk had mentioned it, but forgot that the first time.
I had bought a Russian-English dictionary and was working my way through the poems. I was stuck on Dad’s most famous one, “Zhdat Umeret” meaning “To wait is to die.” It was intimate in a way I wasn’t ready for yet. So rather than delve into the book, I delved into how Kirk obtained it.
The book had the cheap, coarse paper and moldy chemical smell of Soviet books. Its bookmark was the MIT compliment slip his dad had enclosed with it. The note read, “Kirk would have wanted you to have the enclosed.”
The inscription on the flyleaf showed the giver as “Nikolai from Nowhere.” It had that dark, sardonic, self-deprecating tone of my father, born Nikolai Shalabanov, truncating the surname in an Ellis Island irony. Could the inscription be in Dad’s writing? I was more familiar with his English. The dedicatee in the flyleaf was a “Voronitchka.” That could be the diminutive of vorona, female crow, so little crow, or dear crow. Was this some pre-Mom love affair? But Dad had sneaked out of the CCCP via Yugoslavia in June 1967, a year before the date in the flyleaf. It must have been a different Nikolai. How did Kirk get into this mix? He must have acquired it here in London.
Despite his posted hours, Professor Howell wasn’t in his office. I made a wrong turn in leaving; all those narrow, dull halls looked the same. In trying to find my way out I ran into the girl who had been waiting outside his office during my first visit. She was sitting on the floor in front of a closed door, apparently early for a lecture. She was writing intently in a notebook. She did this with a considerable fro
wn. She was wearing a heavy black leather jacket over a pale yellow sweater, black slacks and black anklet boots. The yellow set off the black in an edgy yet pleasing way.
She wrote confidently, like a doctor scrawling a prescription that will save the doomed patient. I looked down on that dead-straight parting of her black hair. She looked up at me; yes, she had known I was there. Our eyes met as I stood over her. She had to tilt her head way up to meet my eyes. She gave no sign of remembering me—our encounter had been brief. I gave her what I hoped was an I-come-in-peace smile. She stood up. Tallish, olive complexion, smooth skin, green eyes, black hair. She had such foreign lips, they rolled and curled like a wave on a cross tide.
“Are you in trouble again?” she asked.
“Probably.”
“You want the professor?”
I nodded.
She explained that something had happened, some personal problem. He had taken emergency leave.
“If I gave you my number, could you let me know when he comes back?” I asked.
“It should be you, yes, to ask me for mine?” Neutral, no come-on, immediately clear such a number was not on offer.
“I have a feeling…you’re the never-answer type.” Was it this tiled hallway that created such an echo? My weak riposte sounded overfamiliar, like the future spilling back to the now.
“And you are Mr. Colin Coll.” Oh, call and call. All of this was light-hearted, easy, like rehearsed lines.
I stood there, not knowing what to do next. When was the last time that happened? Man, I needed to get my mojo back. I made a weak joke about her number being a prime one.
“My number can be constructed of two primes. The first part is a Goodall prime; second is Lucas.”
“Well that narrows it down.”
“If I tell you that the first one has three digits you will have my number.”
“So, Goodall three, Lucas…” here I showed off my math skills by counting on my fingers. “Eight?”
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