In the Neighbourhood of Fame

by Bridget van der Zijpp

  ‘I see him at the park sometimes.’

  ‘Yeah? He’s still around here then?’

  ‘Can we?’

  Marty picks it up, inspects the listings on the back. ‘I got this album as a review copy years ago. I used to write some stuff for Rip It Up. I really liked it when it first came out, everybody did. It seemed fresh, like at last we’d got ourselves a proper rock star. He had a massive radio hit with “Captain of the Rules”, this big punkish riff-out of a song. That topped the charts for months and months, and then had a resurgence again later when it got picked up for this TV ad. Had a couple of minor hits too, never as big as that one.’

  ‘Why’s he just living around here then, walking his dog to the park and stuff? Why isn’t he like some big international star?’

  ‘A lot of reasons probably. Partly the times, I suppose. No YouTube or anything, so it was more of a big deal for bands to try and make it overseas back then. They’d start happening here, then would head off on their big extended tour and try and break through. Mostly they’d have little pockets of success, which would never be quite enough, and then they’d land back here exhausted, sick of each other, brokenhearted and pretty much busted up.’

  ‘So he wasn’t successful overseas?’

  ‘Yes and no. Depends how you quantify success, I guess. He headlined a couple of festivals in Germany, massive there for a while. “Captain” went down well but that song was written with a droll, ironic humour that was easily lost in translation. I heard that he was quite disturbed by their aggressive embrace of it and didn’t ever go back.’ While he’s standing he reaches over and grabs a chopstick off the bookshelf and uses it to scratch his leg inside the plaster. ‘And I guess you could say he crept further up the charts in the UK than most, got listed in NME’s albums of the year. A couple of his songs got used on film and TV soundtracks in the US, so he must have picked up some nice royalties there.’

  ‘And when he came back here? Still big here?’

  ‘Yeah, for a while. Early on he used to get a lot of radio play on the alternative networks, but after his commercial success those stations couldn’t decide if he was cool or not and they hardly ever played him again. And the mainstream radio stations never played much local music back then, so they only ever gave airplay to “Captain” and occasionally “Surfin’ again”. When he got back from touring internationally he started doing the summer circuit here quite successfully, and over in Aussie too, and after a while he put out a second album that sank like a stone, and then he started refusing to play “Captain” at gigs, and then the band had a big blow-out and after that you just didn’t hear much about him anymore.’

  ‘So his second album wasn’t any good?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t that, thinking about it now. Maybe it was just out of its time.’ He’s still scratching, working the chopstick around to the back of his leg now. ‘The word the critics of the time seem to use most was indulgent. Actually that was like a wave that washed him away. One big review decided it was indulgent, this fatuous arsehole that used to contract for the dailies, and nearly everything that followed made the same implication, and the word indulgent became his new label.’

  ‘And was it? Indulgent? Did he screw up?’

  ‘I don’t know. No. Maybe.’

  He puts down the chopstick and slips the CD out of its cover and loads it into the player. Thank God. The end of Eldorado. ‘This is one of the songs off this first album that I really liked. “Catatonic”. A bit more nuanced and understated. I suppose, thinking about it now, it was an early signal to the direction he was heading. It’s got a pretty inspired bassline in the bridge.’

  Would quite like him to shut up now so I can concentrate on the song but he sits back down in the chair, his mouth still running. ‘He was talented though. A lot of bands around that time were trying to make it big by sounding like groups from overseas, but he was more bona fide, more true to his own way of doing things. He had three good things going for him actually. First he had a really excellent feel for melody. Second he had this quite unique phrasing … see, hear that … ?’ We both tune our ears in. ‘The way he sings that line … somebody told me she was crazy … see, that could be terrible, but there’s just something to the way he phrases it.’

  ‘So the third thing?’

  ‘Ah yes. Well, on a lot of his songs he had an excellent turn for self-loathing. He gave it a kind of louche, underground glamour that made other people want to have it too. Actually he had a fourth thing, now I think about it.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘He was pretty good to watch. He had something, he definitely had something. Especially for the girls. For them he was crumpet.’

  Crumpet! We listen for a while. The front window is open and a light breeze is bustling the net curtain about, the hem brushing across an ashtray now and then. It’s already so grimed-up that it doesn’t really matter.

  When I next look at Marty I notice he has his eyes closed and looks to be almost in a trance, as if he’s trying really hard to hear the thing that’s underneath the music, the one true excellent thing that hardly anybody else ever notices. After a moment he opens his eyes and carries on. ‘His second album was much more low key. It was almost uncomfortable at the time, like you’d stumbled onto something quite private. Like he was just noodling around in his own space and you just happened to hear it. It was so ambiguous it gave off the idea that there was some elusive meaning you weren’t quite getting. I don’t really know why people were so scathing at the time. It’s like everybody was angry at him for shifting the game. I guess they just wanted a bit more of the Captain energy.’

  When I ask if I can borrow the CD, Marty hands it over, but I can tell he’s reluctant. His mystery system might be all out of whack if even one CD leaves the house.

  ‘Have you got the other one too?’

  ‘Nah.’ His eyes flick over his collection, checking. ‘I used to have it but I think the last time I saw it my mate Don and I were playing it on a road trip we took round the East Coast. I always suspected he must’ve nicked it out of my car.’

  ‘Is he still your friend?’

  He thinks about it for a minute. ‘Haven’t seen him in a long while. Should probably get back in touch. Nick it back. That thing is probably a collector’s item by now.’

  Promise to return the album once I’ve had a chance to copy it.

  ‘You know I talked to him at a gig once,’ Marty says. ‘It was quite funny. I’d given his album, the first one, a pretty good review, four stars. I said in the review that it would have got five except for the deathly over-reaching of “Captain”, and also I thought the instrumental track “Sneaky Summer Melody” contained too much diddly-wankery, or something like that. We were just chatting away and then suddenly he realised I was the guy that had written that review, and he told me he’d been really pissed that I’d called his track diddly-wankery. I guess he didn’t mind what I said about the other.’

  Wolf is over at Sas’s and then Dylan comes in with some bud he’s cadged off this guy down at the ramp. He pulls some butane and a camp cooker out of his backpack and sends Sas upstairs to get a bottle of Coke out of the fridge, and two knives. We pour out the Coke into glasses, and put the CD in the drive while Dylan heats up the knives and Wolf cuts the Coke bottle in half. Once the knives are red hot, Dylan puts a ball of bud on one and taps the two knives together, sending smoke up the neck of the half-bottle. We all suck some in. Once is enough, except not for the boys. ‘Here, don’t hog the hooter,’ Wolf says to Dylan, a bit too keen for it.

  Just one more thing I’ve never done before.

  Once the album plays all the way through, we start it again and Sas says, ‘It’s weird, eh, that he made this whole album of songs …’

  ‘… and the only one you ever hear of is “Captain” but his other stuff has a pretty okay vibe,’ Dylan says.

  ‘Yeah,’ Wolf says. ‘I like the way he croaks out that line … somebody told me she wa
s crazy. That could be about you,’ he says to Sas.

  She pokes her tongue out at him, and then their mouths come together and they do a deep sexy kiss.

  Keep my eyes away from Dylan while it’s happening.

  ‘I feel a bit funny about liking this so much,’ Sas says as she stops to take out her gum.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Cos Dad does. You should hear him singing along if “Captain” comes on the car radio. It’s so embarrassing. Anyway, what’s he like? Is he all wrinkly and past it?’

  Wrinkly and past it is more like Marty, who is maybe about Jed’s age and always trying so hard with me, planning things out to catch my attention. Sometimes Marty reminds me of the next-door farmer down at Aunty Susan’s place in Invercargill. He used to like to give out sweets and make you kiss him on his hairy old moustache, and sometimes he’d move his mouth so it got in the way, as if by accident. And you knew it was never an accident but you wanted the sweet and you didn’t really care that you had to try and dodge his mouth, because you always ended up with the prize. I know I’m playing a game with Marty and I have most of the power. I don’t think Jed is like that. He seems like the kind of person who always holds the power himself. Everybody pretends they don’t really care about him, but when you offer up that you know him people are interested.

  ‘I dunno,’ I say, ‘he seems kinda cool.’

  ‘Yeah, he’s all right,’ Dylan says. Smile at each other.

  Sas presses play again, and we are all pleasantly buzzed after the spots, all sleepy but with our heads gently imploding from the electrical brainstorm the songs bring us.

  One of my favourites, I decide, is the last song, the one without any words. ‘Sneaky Summer Melody’ – the song Marty accused of diddly-wankery. He had it so wrong, I reckon, I can see why Jed might’ve been annoyed. It isn’t the kind of song you’d hear on the radio – just a couple of guitars, and some drumming, and some other instruments that are too weird to identify, and near the end some whistling, but the guitars definitely have an affecting on-urging beat that makes you think about when it’s a nice day and you’re cycling along, and you can feel the sun on your neck, and life seems good and you are happy for no reason.

  ‘Put that one on again,’ Sas says as soon as it’s finished. ‘That’s the shizz.’

  Soon Sas and Wolf are really going at it kissing. Wolf’s hands are on-urging up inside her shirt. You can tell that when they’re alone they’re going to do it. They’ve already done it lots of times before.

  Dylan shifts into the seat beside me. Whispers, ‘You didn’t reply to my text?’

  Shrug.

  ‘Are you shy?’ he asks.

  Shrug again.

  He puts his arm around me.

  I don’t stop him.

  He kisses me.

  I don’t stop him.

  1. Captain of the Rules; 2. Surfin’ again; 3. Crazy moves; 4. Sweet weekend; 5. Breathe in, breathe out; 6. Seize the Night; 7. Me and my bad self; 8. Catatonic; 9. Reckless; 10. Golden Sleep; 11. Lucked into you; 12. Sneaky Summer Melody.

  Liked ‘Captain of the Rules’ at first, but it seems too big, too used now, and I can’t get Marty’s words deathly over-reaching out of my head. Am amazed at how directly some of the other songs speak to me, how fresh they seem. He made them years ago, but if I’d just heard them without knowing anything about Jed I might’ve thought they’d come straight from some current singer.

  Walking around with these sounds coming into my head through my buds I hear it all again in a totally new and private way, and it’s like trying a flavour for the first time, like aniseed gum maybe, when you’re in your own world, rolling it around on your tastebuds, trying to connect this new thing to something you already know.

  Would’ve liked to have known the Jed Jordan who was around my age. Would’ve liked to have gone out to a venue one night and seen him do live that little tricky move with his legs, and afterwards go over and talk to him, and … what?

  Realise the thing I’d most like to ask him is: if you could do what you did on that album, why would you ever stop?

  Walk to the park the long way around so I can pass the tree with the tag. Surprising how little it’s taken to change Mum’s life. She’s begun knitting like crazy, and drinking on her own a lot less. Phone rings more too. Like she was some trashed thing lying under her log, and somebody came along and shone their beam on her and now she’s busily scuttling around under the new light. She has friends! They’ve set up a website to show off their ‘tags’ and somehow one photograph even appeared in the local giveaway paper. A lone tree by the roadside with a big stripy cosy attached around its trunk and the word sublime knitted into it. Mum cut the photo out and slipped it under a magnet on the fridge door. Whenever I pull on the handle my idea of it changes – sometimes it seems like a subtle statement, sometimes it almost makes me smile, and mostly it seems stupidly pointless.

  Now I see it with my own eyes. Pointless. But in a good way. A head-shifty sort of idea, just put out there for no good reason. Rochester lifts his leg on the base of the tree. Should’ve taken a photo of that.

  Jed Jordan is already there. When he sees me, he says, ‘Howsit?’

  Say: ‘It’s a really nice day.’

  ‘I suppose,’ he says, looking up at the sky which I hadn’t noticed is actually quite cloudy.

  ‘When I was walking here I had that song of yours going – “Sneaky Summer Melody”.’

  Gives me a sidelong look. ‘You’re kidding.’ His fat dog comes puffing across the paddock and dumps the ball at his feet. He bends to pick it up and says, ‘How come you’re listening to that? Studying ancient history or something?’

  Say: ‘Nah.’ Shrug, because I can’t think of a good reason to say out loud. And he knows, anyway, why I’m listening to it. Because of seeing him here. Because of nearly knowing him. But trying to talk to him feels just as awkward as those days when I stand nearby not talking to him.

  ‘The tune for that song came into my head in the middle of the night,’ he tells me. ‘It was like I heard it somewhere that day, and I thought I must have, so for weeks I went around playing it to other people but nobody could say what it was. By the time I put it on the album I was shit-scared that somebody would pop up and say that it was really the melody of something else. I fiddled around with it, just in case, and now when I listen to it, not that I ever do much, it sounds like I was trying so hard not to make it exactly like the tune in my head that it came out as something wandering and lost.’ Throws the ball from his hip, spinning his arm, so that it goes off on an angle so sharp that at first the dogs run off in the wrong direction. The kind of throw one of the guys on our school cricket team might do.

  ‘I think the wandery thing is what I like about it. Did anybody ever say anything?’

  ‘Nope. One guy shat on it in a review once, but nobody ever said they’d heard it before.’

  Rochester runs past with somebody else’s Frisbee in his mouth.

  Say: ‘I like the way you sing,’ so shyly can hardly get the words out. ‘I think you have really good phrasing. And nice melodies.’

  Looks me straight in the face. Long penetrating look that makes my legs go unsteady, like he’s searching for the original source of those words, and then says, ‘Well, thank you. That means a lot coming from you.’

  Does it?

  Lauren

  So full of artless jealousy is guilt, it spills itself in fearing to be spilt. Queenly Shakespearean quotes from past performances hang in these hallways with glib significance, and it’s only lately that you understand the profound truth of these words.

  You hate yourself now. Why did you do that? Did you give him an involuntary signal? Was it something in your facial expression, you wonder? Perhaps just a lift, a slight frisson, when his hand first touched your arm in the foyer? Was he alert to the impulsive desire? Because he had done it before?

  He had a powerful, nuggety body and perhaps there was a trace of hardness i
n his features. His bottom lip naturally jutted in front of his top lip, just a little. A bullish quality. So was that why you were obscurely attracted to him? Did you discern somehow that he was a man who could tame something in you? The held wrists. Had you fallen under the shadow of Brando’s character in that bloody film? Or did that stupid board meeting just make you want to annihilate yourself?

  Next time I will tie you to a chair, he said. Or might’ve said.

  God, who would risk that? It’s already caused a complete re-characterisation of your self-image. You can no longer say you are a faithful wife. You are something awful-new. Abominable? Worse than abominable?

  Now, sitting at your desk, it’s impossible to concentrate on the final proof of the quarterly season brochure. You’re giving the copy one last pass before it goes off to the printers, but barely need to. You can rely on Floyd to have meticulously double-checked all the dates, liaised with the production companies and ensured all the photographs are accurately credited. His reliability, his awed reverence, comes from a passionate regard for the theatre. He has a better grounding in the classics than you – graduating first with his Lit Honours degree, and following that up with a Bachelor of Performing Arts – and he’s here to learn, sucking up knowledge, striving for excellence, second-guessing everyone. In fact, he treats you with so much solicitude that he makes you long for his predecessor, Gloria, who used to come in late, with terrible hangovers and disastrous stories about one-night stands with lead actors that sometimes brought the current production to the brink of disaster. Gloria swore a lot, openly despised diva behaviour, and made up nicknames for producers and directors which, if they ever got back to them, would have demolished the theatre’s relationships. Floyd is not like that. Not at all. And he isn’t yet tired of opening nights, where directors and actors, with the sound of clapping echoing in their ears, try to engage anyone they can into career conversations. He hasn’t yet seen too many people coming through who think that suddenly their entire world has changed, that they have made it up onto a new level, onto the trajectory, and that this time they will be immune to the post-high crash that is soon to follow.