Resurgence

by M. M. Mayle

  Four whole days after the planting, none of the regular news outlets are reporting anything about a Colin Elliot arrest for possession. It’s time to accept that rock stars probably bribe their way through border crossings as a regular thing.

  He finishes the sandwich, sets aside his writing and selects one of today’s newspapers he hasn’t yet studied. The story’s still front page, but down toward the bottom.

  LONDON (Reuters) — Not since Elvis Presley’s untimely demise a decade ago has a cause of death been as hotly debated as that of Rayce Vaughn, preeminent British rock star who died Monday, April 13, at his lavish townhouse in the Holland Park district of London. Vaughn was found by household staff and pronounced dead at the scene. An autopsy performed later that day identified a brain hemorrhage as the ultimate cause of death. Informed sources report that the hemorrhage was, in all probability, induced by the massive ingestion of a controlled substance said to be cocaine of an unusually potent quality.

  Because Vaughn had a long history of self-medication and a more recent history of self-imposed abstinence, speculation is running high that his death may not have been accidental. However, the naysayers aver that Vaughn—spectacularly launched on the comeback trail after last Friday’s stunner of a concert at New York’s Madison Square Garden, with a recording of that event expected to ship platinum, and a sold-out twenty-three date European tour to follow—had everything in the world to live for. Vaughn’s fellow passengers on a charter flight to London Saturday night concur, especially longtime friend and collaborator, Colin Elliot—himself on the comeback trail after surviving a devastating 1984 car crash—who strongly emphasized in a prepared statement that Vaughn displayed typical high spirits throughout the flight. A coroner’s jury may have to decide the issue.

  Vaughn, age 55, is survived by seven children, three ex-wives, and two sisters. According to his manager, David Sebastian of the Manhattan law firm Clark, Sebastian & Associates, a private funeral will be held at an undisclosed time and place.

  Nothing fresh to work with there, so Hoop moves to the wardrobe and retrieves the gym bag containing the few items not stored with Audrey. He works the combination lock and the zipper and takes out the rock star’s pocket photo album, Cliff Grant’s rotary card file, Gibby Lester’s copybooks, and the lawyerwoman’s little diary. The handful of splinters taken from the lawyerwoman’s back stairs, he doesn’t bother with. The rest he lines up on the bed, brings a chair over to the foot of the bed, and sits himself down with every intention of trancing on these objects till one or all of them tell him what to do next.

  TEN

  Early morning, April 17, 1987

  “Oh . . . look.” Laurel twists in her seat to watch the scene he’s monitoring in the rearview mirror—Anthony peering through the bars of the big main gates that have just swung shut in their wake.

  “Yeh, he’s doing his abandoned orphan bit.” Colin brakes at the end of the driveway and cranes to see that Anthony has now climbed up onto a wrought-iron crosspiece and is extending a beseeching arm. “No, my mistake, it’s the ‘last refugee out of Saigon’ routine. The lad’s obviously got a stage career ahead of him and I’m thinkin’ it won’t have anathing to do with music.” Colin lowers a window and returns the wave before entering the unmarked road fronting the estate.

  “Drama aside, he does know we’ll be back tonight?” Laurel says.

  “He does, and it’s not like he’s gonna suffer in our absence. Three of his soccer mates are joining him for the day and when they’re not terrorizing livestock and scoring goals in the rose garden, they’ll be trashing the kitchen with their Easter egg coloring.”

  “I almost forgot about Easter—that it’s Holy Week—that today’s Good Friday.”

  “Any bleedin’ wonder what with all that’s come crashing down on you. If anyone should be carrying on like a detainee, it’s you. Cooped up, you’ve been, ever since you arrived.”

  “There’s no place I’d rather be, and I’d hardly call free access to endless acreage and countless rooms being cooped up.” Laurel casts a wan smile his way.

  “No matter, you need the change of scene as much as I do, so the request from Amanda couldn’t have come at a better time, could it then.”

  “Did she say why this—whatever it is—couldn’t be handled by phone or fax?” You’ve already approved the press releases, haven’t you?”

  “I get the feeling she’s leavin’ nothing to chance, but you’d know more about her persnickety side than me.”

  “True. Amanda can be thorough to a fault. With a new assignment, doubly so. Nothing she does should really surprise me, but I can’t get over how confident and self-possessed she seemed when I spoke to her, and she’s only been in London two days.”

  “London must agree with her, then.” Colin threads the black Jaguar XJ6 through a roundabout and onto a motorway bound for London.

  “Would certainly seem so, and there’s no question the assignment’s a perfect fit.”

  “Did you think to ask whose idea it was?”

  “Are you still questioning David’s motives?”

  “Yeh. Given this particular set of circumstances, wouldn’t you? And if it wasn’t strictly David’s idea, then I’d wanna know who is pushing the buttons and supplying this extra boost to her confidence.”

  “I refuse to ask what it is you’re suggesting. I will, however, assure you that Amanda’s no dupe and she would never set herself up as anyone’s puppet. Okay?”

  “Yeh. Okay, then . . . Are you pissed now?”

  “No, it’ll take a lot more than that to get me going.”

  “Then why are you twitching about and hugging yourself like that?”

  “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Very well. I’ve never ridden in the front passenger seat of a car in England. I keep thinking the steering wheel’s fallen off and I’m out of control.”

  “Sorry. Should’ve seen that coming. I used to experience similar when I first visited the States and the answer for it was to do the driving. You wanna drive?”

  “In this traffic? Good lord no.”

  Till she mentioned it, he hadn’t actually noticed the increased volume of traffic, unusual for midmorning with the start of the Easter holiday likely to blame. Their progress slows even more as agricultural land gives way to suburban sprawl and he’s soon reminded of their return to Manhattan from the visit to the New Jersey shore, when he was only too glad to do the driving as the best means of keeping his hands off her.

  He watches her now, out of the corner of his eye, gauging when traffic might come to a full stop, and when it does, where all he will kiss her, starting with that spot right in front of her ear and maybe grazing on her neck for a bit before touching on eyelids and nose and working his way down to the corner of her mouth and into her mouth.

  “Colin?”

  “Jesus! What? Sorry—you were saying something?”

  “I was only echoing something you said earlier about being barred from Rayce’s funeral—that by being denied the ritual, you were being denied a crucial element of the mourning process.”

  “No shit. Selfish bunch of twits, that rag-tag family are, and I don’t give a flying fuck about their reasoning that a funeral ceremony open to his friends would’ve become a circus. Rayce’s bleedin’ life was a circus. Try denying that, won’t you!” He gives the steering wheel a hard thump.

  “I’m not, sweetie. I’m just agreeing with you that closure will indeed be difficult to accomplish without some event or ceremony to mark his passing.”

  “We’ll have to make do with a coroner’s inquest for that, won’t we, then?”

  “It begins to look that way.” Laurel slumps into a resigned silence that encourages him to alter his outlook a bit.

  “In the back of my mind,” he says, “ever since we got in the car this morning, I’ve had the idea that while we’re rather removed—encapsulated, you could say—and in motion,
we could suspend these cares and woes and sneak a bit of the happiness we should’ve been wallowing in these past four days. Days that should’ve been amongst the happiest we’ll ever have—and there’s another reason why I’m dead certain Rayce didn’t do himself in. Suicide’s a selfish act. Rayce may’ve been a great many things over the years, but he was never selfish. He’d never willfully do anathing to lessen the happiness of someone he cared about—and he did care about my happiness. He rather reveled in it, actually. The day Rayce met you he rang my mum to say we all were gonna be blessed with way more than we ever could’ve hoped for. He was delighted. Thrilled, he was. Clear over the moon.”

  “But that was before—”

  “Yeh, it was, before I was ready to speak up. But Rayce had faith. He knew right off that you were destined to be more than my official biographer.”

  “Oh lord, you have to bring that up.”

  “Every chance I get. Did you know there was talk of having a T-shirt made? And Gemma offered to embroider a cushion with the legend. Done lovingly, you understand.”

  “I understand, and I hope you understand that designation was never a sham. I’ll admit I was hiding behind it toward the end of my resistance, but I always intended to see the job through. And now that I think of it, that may be one of the things Amanda wants to discuss with us. How to finish the book now that I’m a hopelessly biased participant.”

  “Hopelessly biased. I rather like the sound of that.”

  “I thought you might.”

  When traffic does come to a complete stop they’re in a seedy residential area. Colin stares out at the madly contrasting facades of tumbledown attached houses with derelict cars parked in front gardens and spilt-over dustbins dotting the remainder of the landscape. Not quite the setting he had in mind for covering her face with kisses.

  “I love you, Laurel Grace Chandler, and I’m happier than I have any right to be at the moment,” he says without darting as much as a glance at her or he’ll choke up.

  She could be in the same predicament because she doesn’t say anything till they’re under way again, nearly to the river crossing, where she responds in kind, then brings up a subject no one’s dared approach before now.

  “How will I ever forgive myself for missing Rayce’s concert at the Garden? I—”

  “Laurel . . . Do not go there.”

  “I can’t help it. I cared about him too, you know. I may not have known him very long, but he meant a lot to me and now I’m cheated out of ever knowing him better, and I’ve cheated myself out of ever seeing him in concert because I was so goddammed stubborn and so cruel to you and—”

  “Leave off! I don’t want to hear it. You did what you had to do. It’s done with. Now look at the fucking scenery. That’s the dome of St. Paul’s over there, and in the other direction’s Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament.”

  To get past the bad patch, he calls out landmarks like a frenzied tour guide till they near Curzon Street and the converted Mayfair mansion housing the London offices of Clark, Sebastian & Associates. They’re almost there when he realizes Laurel hasn’t interrupted him because she’s been holding her breath for great shuddering intervals.

  When they arrive, Amanda is in the vestibule to greet them. She’s done up in a smart business suit and high-heeled shoes that lessen her girlishness. Her natural exuberance is in check when she says how sorry she is for their loss and embraces them each in turn. “I only wish I could think of an appropriate way to say how—”

  “Save it, sweet pea,” Colin says. “We know what you mean. We were havin’ the same struggle on the way here, feelin’ guilty about being happy in midst of a shit storm.”

  Laurel concurs and lights up a little when Amanda goggles at the engagement ring and works a saucy “I told you so” into the exchange.

  “We’re in the back conference room,” Amanda says and leads them along a corridor where a steady buzz of activity emits from the offices along its length. When she opens the double doors of a chamber he vaguely recalls from some long-ago gathering, he’s ready for almost anything but what he sees.

  If there were more than two people in the room he’d be making comparisons to the otherwise disastrous New York meeting that yielded him Laurel. But even though there are only two here to contend with, he can’t shake the feeling he’s vastly outnumbered.

  For several ticks he just stares at them, at his former bandmates, Lane and Jesse. They’re each done up like chartered accountants in pinstripes, fine worsteds, and pricey cravats; wolves in sheep’s clothing, they are, because their studied rock star nonchalance is very much in evidence and giving nothing away.

  “Dude,” Lane says, getting to his feet. “Been too long, it has.”

  They exchange an awkward embrace and retreat as though to neutral corners.

  “Lookin’ good, lookin’ good,” Jesse says, rising from his chair to offer an abbreviated handshake and clumsy clap on the back.

  “Your other component couldn’t be here today,” Amanda says. “Chris Thorne’s away for the Easter weekend, but I’m authorized to let you know he’s on board if the rest of you agree. Please, everyone, make yourselves comfortable and I’ll fill you in as quickly as possible.”

  After they’re settled at a large round table, she gives them each a bound presentation. “This is a proposal for an all-star concert to memorialize Rayce Vaughn. I’ve prepared a summary of progress to date and you’ll see that the Hammersmith Odeon and Royal Albert Hall are the venues currently under consideration and the list of possible participants is growing as we speak. Once we’ve locked in a date and secured the necessary clearances, more and better decisions can be made regarding the actual implementation.”

  Colin glances first at Laurel, who’s got on her unreadable face, then at Amanda, who’s ingenuousness in action, and finally at the pages listing the major draws of the music world who have volunteered to perform, schedules permitting. He reads that three high-ranking record labels are willing to lend their clout, and Britain’s premiere concert promoters are already vying for the job. Absolute top drawer, the lot, with all of them having in common a former relationship with the recently deceased—with all of them owing something to the recently deceased.

  He rethinks his criticism of Laurel’s tradeoff of hiccoughs for tears as his throat closes before he can make any sort of comment.

  Amanda takes advantage of the lull to introduce Laurel to Lane and Jesse—something he should have done straightaway—then brings up one of the finer points of the proposal.

  “I believe it goes without saying that if you’re willing to take part as Verge reunited, there can be no greater honor to Rayce Vaughn’s memory and his immeasurable contribution to contemporary music.”

  Amanda natters on about the likelihood of steamrolling bad publicity with good, and the possibility of turning the event into a fundraiser; she brings up television rights, marketing potential, subsidiary this and residual that, and she needn’t continue.

  Railroaded or not, lingering bitterness or not, he can’t refuse. Not when amazing little Amanda’s spot-on with all her assumptions, especially the one related to the chances of him not showing up if he’d known in advance what the meeting was about. A “Nate” touch, that; one that could raise suspicions if Laurel hadn’t warned him off thinking of Amanda as a puppet—anybody’s puppet.

  “Question.” Colin finds his voice and flips shut the glossy presentation folder. “When you were recruiting all these stellar people and organizations, did you just happen to mention that a Verge reunion could be in the offing?”

  Amanda wavers for a tick, on the brink of reverting to her former blushing and fluttery self, then clears her throat. “I may have,” she says, “but not in so many words.”

  Lane and Jesse are back to looking too cool for any space they occupy, and Laurel’s still giving no clue to her feelings on the matter. Amanda only appears expectant, not impatient, and before he can ask for it she suggests the three forme
r band members take some time alone to mull over the idea.

  “Laurel and I have a few things to take care of, so you needn’t feel rushed,” Amanda says and spirits Laurel away as smoothly as she’s stage-managed everything else.

  “Proper pimped, we are,” Lane says once the women have left the room.

  “I was thinkin’ railroaded, but your description’s better,” Colin says.

  “Whatever you’re callin’ it, what’re we gonna do about it?” Jesse says.

  Although his mind’s already made up, Colin keeps them guessing whilst reflecting on the last time they were together in one room—a time when they couldn’t be sure he knew they were there, when their presence couldn’t be seen as other than perfunctory damage assessment. Then he reflects on the last time they shared a stage—a time when they no longer spoke to one another unless absolutely necessary. That puts him in touch with something said to Laurel not even two weeks ago when he stated unequivocally that Verge would never again perform as a band. But two weeks ago, who knew that Rayce Vaughn would be found dead on his bathroom floor and his friends and admirers left in great need of a means to express their loss?

  “What the fuck,” Colin mutters, “I say we do it.”

  “Fuckin’ A!” Lane immediately responds.

  Jesse chimes in with similar and they all start talking at once, with the first order of business their mutual desire to hear direct from Chris Thorne’s mouth that he truly is on board. But that will have to wait till Amanda provides them with a number where Chris can be reached, and a glance into the corridor shows no signs of where the women took themselves off to.

  “How much time’ll we have to get back up to speed?” Lane says, voicing another concern they all share. And again they’ll have to wait for Amanda’s return, because nothing in the printed presentation mentions a specific performance date. All then that’s left to discuss is where they’ll refamiliarize themselves with the Verge vibe. The obvious choice is Terra Firma, an easy enough commute from Lane’s farm near Guildford and not all that far from Jesse’s place in Farnham.