Then It Fell Apart

by Moby

  9

  PARIS, FRANCE (1999)

  I could never figure out why I was popular in some countries but not others – if I knew, I would have been more consistently successful around the world. I’d had sporadic bouts of success in Germany and the UK, but for the nine years I’d been making records I’d never had much of a career in France. Which was why my managers and I were surprised when an iconic French music magazine, Les Inrockuptibles, invited me to play a small concert for them near the Moulin Rouge. Apparently they liked Play and had even given it a good review.

  We played the concert, the lovely French audience clapped and were very polite, and after the show I went to meet my friend Lorraine, who lived in Paris. She was a tall, dark-haired fashion stylist from London who had briefly dated a friend of mine in New York. I told myself I couldn’t stay out too late: I had a 9 a.m. flight from Paris to Bangkok, and then on to New Zealand.

  Play had gone gold in New Zealand. I’d never had a gold record before. My manager explained that because the population of New Zealand was so small, a gold record there meant that you’d sold six thousand albums, as opposed to the five hundred thousand you needed to get a gold record in the States. Nevertheless, the New Zealand record company had sent me my first gold record, and nobody could take that shiny framed disc away from me.

  I took a cab from the venue. It dropped me off near the Hotel de Ville, and I walked a few blocks to the address Lorraine had given me. I walked in circles for a while, because the address was for the Louvre itself, and I couldn’t imagine a bar being in the Louvre. But finally I opened a heavy door, revealing a bar with high ceilings, brass chandeliers, and red-and-gold wallpaper, all inside France’s most famous museum.

  Lorraine and some of her friends were in a booth. “You found it!” she said, kissing both of my cheeks. I felt absurdly cosmopolitan: I was in the Louvre with glamorous fashionistas after playing a concert in Paris and before flying to Asia. We drank wine, and then vodka, and then pear Armagnac.

  At 2 a.m. I declared responsibly, “I should go. I have to fly to New Zealand in a few hours.”

  “No,” Lorraine’s friend Mandy said drunkenly. She exhaled a plume of cigarette smoke. “Don’t go.” Mandy was gamine, with dyed red hair and golden aviator-frame eyeglasses. Originally from Long Island, she was living in Paris doing something fashion-related.

  If I went back to the airport hotel where I was staying, I could get a few hours of sleep before the twenty-six-hour journey to New Zealand. But I was in Paris. And after seven or eight drinks I was slightly drunk. And a beautiful elf had just let me know that she didn’t want me to leave.

  “Okay, but what should we do?” I asked, trusting to fate and a drunk woman I’d just met.

  Five minutes later Mandy and I said goodbye to Lorraine and her friends and got a cab to take us to her apartment building near the Arc de Triomphe. As we drove I told Mandy the strange history of the Egyptian obelisk near the Tuileries Garden. She listened and nodded, but seemed bored.

  At her apartment building we took a tiny nineteenth-century elevator up to the fourth floor. As it wheezed upward I asked her if she’d listened to WLIR when she was growing up on Long Island.

  “DRE,” she slurred. “WDRE.”

  WLIR had been the new-wave station I had grown up listening to. Its signal had been strong enough to make its way across Long Island Sound to Connecticut. In the mid-1980s it was the only commercial new-wave station in or near New York. When I was in high school it had been magical to turn on the radio in my mom’s Chevette and hear the Cure and Echo & the Bunnymen as I drove past the houses of girls I had crushes on. And then in 1987 the station had changed its call letters to WDRE.

  “So you grew up listening to WDRE?” I asked, trying to get to know the person I was probably going to have sex with.

  “Sssshhh,” she said, quieting me while dropping her keys on the cement floor. “I live here with this family, and they’re asleep …”

  The apartment was dark and smelled like cigarettes and dust. “You live with a family?” I asked.

  Mandy looked annoyed. “They’re there.” She pointed past a living room. “We’re there.” She pointed down a short hallway off the kitchen. She got a bottle of red wine from the filthy kitchen and we stumbled through the dark apartment to her bedroom.

  When she opened the door to her bedroom a nervous Chihuahua growled at me. But when I sat down on the bed he jumped on my lap and looked at me with plaintive eyes.

  “You like dogs?” she asked.

  “I love dogs.”

  “He’s George.”

  I wanted to tell her about my deceased grandmother’s dachshund, also named George, but Mandy started kissing me. As we moved to the bed she spilled the bottle of wine. We took off our clothes and had sex on the damp, wine-stained sheets, while her dog paced and whined around us. After sex we passed out.

  I woke up an hour later, panicking and disoriented. I flipped open Mandy’s cell phone: it was 4 a.m. Mandy was passed out and snoring. George was lying half on the pillow and half on Mandy’s head, still staring sadly at me.

  I gathered my clothes, got dressed, and tried to wake Mandy up. “Mandy, I have to go to New Zealand now.” I shook her shoulder gently. She kept snoring. “Hey, hi, I have to go now.”

  George growled in his tiny Chihuahua throat and glared at me.

  I found a pen and a piece of paper and wrote a little “Thank you, I hope I can see you again” note, along with my email address, and put it underneath the empty bottle of wine. “Okay, good night,” I said to George, and pulled her bedroom door closed.

  I walked through the filthy kitchen to the front door of the apartment, which was locked on the inside and wouldn’t open without a key. I returned to Mandy’s bedroom. “Hey, wake up, Mandy,” I said, jostling her shoulder a bit harder. “I need to get out. I’m locked in.”

  She had passed out, and kept snoring. George barked at me.

  I found her ring of keys, went back to the door, and tried each one. None of them worked. I went back to her room and turned on all the lights. “Mandy, come on, wake up!” I said loudly, starting to panic. “I’m locked in and I need to go to New Zealand.”

  She kept snoring. George looked confused.

  I inspected the window to see if I could climb out, but we were on the fourth floor and there was no fire escape. I went back to the door, hoping that maybe I had missed some way out, and heard the sweet sound of someone opening the door from the other side. A giant of a man in black motorcycle leathers walked in, smoking a cigarette and carrying a black helmet under his arm.

  “Oh, thank you,” I said. “Do you speak English?”

  He stopped and looked at me quizzically, but said nothing. I decided this wasn’t the moment to be effusive.

  “Well, thanks,” I said, and headed for the door.

  He said quietly and in heavily accented English, “You fuck Mandy?”

  “Um.”

  He threw me against the wall of the kitchen and put his left hand around my throat. “You fuck my girlfriend?” he growled, forming a fist with his right hand.

  “I have to go to the airport,” I tried to say through my squeezed trachea. And then I squeaked, “Je suis désolé.”

  The leather-clad giant let go of my throat and stood there, his right hand still in the air. Then his hulking shoulders slumped. He stared at the floor and shook his head. “Get the fuck out of my apartment, you fucking American,” he told me.

  I ran down the four flights of stairs, out the front of the building, and onto an empty Parisian street.

  I calmed down, shaken by fear and guilt, and walked two blocks to the Champs-Élysées, where I hailed a cab. “Sofitel at Charles de Gaulle, s’il vous plaît,” I said to the African driver.

  We sped out of Paris on empty streets, as the sky streaked blue and gray with the dawn. As we got close to my hotel, “Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?” came on the radio. I’d never heard any of the songs from Pl
ay on the radio before. I was surprised – even though I’d mixed it on an old, cheap console in my bedroom, it didn’t sound terrible.

  “Can you turn it up?” I asked the driver.

  “Cette chanson?” he asked, in lilting African-accented French.

  “Oui, monsieur, cette chanson,” I said. The clouds at the airport turned pink with the dawn.

  10

  DARIEN, CONNECTICUT (1972)

  My mom was stirring a pot of ravioli with one hand and holding a Winston cigarette with the other. I wouldn’t be eating with her tonight – I was going to a sleepover at my friend Scudder’s house. “I’m going to wait outside for Scudder’s dad,” I told her.

  “It’s cold and raining. Don’t you want to wait inside?”

  “No, I’m okay. Bye!” I said, and shut the door behind me.

  A few months earlier we had moved into an apartment on Noroton Avenue, just down the street from the volunteer fire department and around the corner from Darien’s one block of subsidized public housing. Our home was a converted garage, with a small bedroom by the front door, a bathroom with a vinyl shower stall, a small orange kitchen, and a flight of stairs that led to another small bedroom and a storage room where we watched TV.

  Before living here we’d lived a few miles away with my grandparents in their white, seven-bedroom colonial house, surrounded by tall trees and sprawling lawns. But my mom had wanted her independence, so she moved us to this garage apartment – even though she couldn’t really afford the $85 a month rent.

  My mom and I were poor, but when we’d lived with my grandparents I could invite friends over and pretend that I was normal and lived in a normal house. But now we lived in a cold garage apartment and all our furniture came from the Salvation Army or Goodwill. The couch in our living room was so old that bits of foam rubber would fall out onto the floor when I sat down.

  I’d learned I was poor in nursery school in Darien. A little blond boy walked up to me and told me, matter-of-factly, “You’re poor.” I didn’t like being poor, especially not in one of the wealthiest towns in the US, and I didn’t like not being able to invite my friends over. The only friend who had visited my new house was Robert Downey Jr. – he and his family lived in a small house too.

  I wanted to invite my best friend, Bobby Miller, to come to my house and play, but he and his family lived in an eight-bedroom house overlooking a river lined by ferns and birch trees. By Darien standards he and his family were middle class, as Bobby’s dad was only a senior vice president at IBM.

  One of my other friends, Phil, lived in a brick mansion at the end of a long winding driveway. I’d overheard my grandfather talking about Phil’s dad: he had inherited a few hundred million dollars and now ran a bank. Then there was Grant, who lived on ten acres and whose dad worked at Lazard Frères. And Dave, who lived in an old stone mansion and whose dad was an executive at General Electric. On and on, an endless sea of blond, wealthy parents and their blond, beautiful children.

  They played tennis. They skied. They were good at lacrosse and field hockey. They knew what Bermuda was. They went to Switzerland for holidays. I had never left the US, but I had gone to a wedding in Nebraska once.

  Tonight I’d been invited to a sleepover at my friend Scudder’s house. I didn’t want Scudder, or his dad, or anyone at all, to know that I lived in a garage apartment. So when I gave Scudder my address, I told him that I lived at the one nice house on my street, a quarter-mile away.

  Scudder’s dad was picking me up at 7 p.m., so I left our garage apartment at 6.45. I was wearing Lee jeans and a Yale sweatshirt my mom had bought at the Darien Community Center thrift shop. I always tried to pick clothes that I thought would make me look normal and not poor. My sneakers came from a basket at the supermarket: the kind checkout lady had let us use food stamps to buy them. They had four stripes, but I’d removed a stripe on each shoe with a razor, hoping to make them look like Adidas. Over my outfit I had my one new piece of clothing, a blue down jacket that my grandparents had given me for Christmas.

  I walked to the one nice house on our street and stood under a tree by the driveway, hoping that anyone who drove by either wouldn’t see me or would think that I lived there. After a few minutes Scudder’s dad pulled up in a brand-new Mercedes.

  “Hey, pal,” he said. “You didn’t have to wait out in the rain.”

  “Oh,” I said, stumped, “I wanted to get some fresh air.” I’d heard someone say that on TV, and thought it sounded grown-up.

  “Fresh air? It’s raining, buddy.”

  “Well, my mom smokes in the kitchen,” I said, thinking quickly.

  He winced as I sat wetly on the leather seat of his new German car. “Your jacket’s soaked. How long have you been out here?”

  “Just a couple of minutes,” I lied.

  Thankfully he changed the subject. “I hope you’re hungry. Mrs. Baldwin is making meatloaf.”

  “Oh, great, I love meatloaf.”

  Scudder’s dad lit a cigarette, and for the rest of the trip we talked about the Yankees. They were my favorite baseball team, and the catcher, Thurman Munson, was my favorite player. I also liked Sparky Lyle, but since he was a pitcher he didn’t get to play as often. Last summer my grandfather had even taken me to Yankee Stadium to see a game. I made sure to work this into my conversation with Scudder’s dad, asking him, “Have you seen the Yankees in person?” It seemed like a normal question.

  After fifteen minutes we came to Old Cobbler Road, where Scudder and his family lived. Darien had been a town since the sixteenth century, and one way of measuring status was by how old your street was. Old Cobbler Road was a private road with a hand-carved wooden street sign, letting all visitors know that it predated the American Revolution, a war that some Darien residents probably still saw as an affront.

  We drove past two stone gates and parked. When we got out of the car a golden retriever and a black Labrador ran up to us, happy and barking. They jumped up and licked my face. “Morgan! Stanley!” Scudder’s dad yelled good-naturedly. “Calm down!”

  The kitchen was warm and smelled like meatloaf and cigarette smoke. “Hi, Mrs. Baldwin,” I said, carefully shaking her hand.

  “I wish all of Scudder’s friends were so polite!” she said with a smile. “Scudder’s in the den.”

  I’d been to Scudder’s house before, so I walked down the carpeted hallway to the den. The walls were covered with framed photos of Scudder and his family: on their sailboat, in the mountains, in Europe, under a giant Christmas tree. In the den, Scudder and his two older brothers were watching Bowling for Dollars. “Hey, Scudder,” I said.

  “Hey, Moby,” Scudder replied, not looking away from the TV.

  Scudder and I had known each other since kindergarten, but this was the first time we were having a sleepover. I was the only fatherless poor kid most of my friends knew, and sometimes I thought I was invited to birthday parties and sleepovers as a form of local charity. I didn’t mind, so long as I got to spend time in warm houses with carpets.

  Scudder’s brothers didn’t acknowledge me. They were big kids, in junior high school. They were tall and good at sports, so I knew not to address them or make eye contact.

  The den was the family’s casual recreation room, with dark wood paneling, board games on the shelves, and two pinball machines. I’d gone exploring the last time I’d visited, so I knew that the house also had a family room, a formal living room, a formal dining room, a sun room, a large office, and a greenhouse behind the pool and tennis court. There were six bedrooms at the top of the front stairs and two maids’ rooms you could get to from a second staircase off the kitchen. Outside, the landscape lights were on. I could see the pool, surrounded by flagstones and covered for the winter.

  “I can’t wait for summer,” I said.

  Scudder and his brothers glared at me, annoyed that anybody would be talking to them while they watched TV. This carpeted privilege was their world, and it was all that I longed for. Indoor heatin
g. A pool. But most of all, a sense of belonging. They looked like everyone else at school and lived like everyone else lived. Their parents owned the world, and the world bent to their will. That we lived in the same town was just a strange fluke of real estate and Protestant heredity.

  In the eighteenth century I would have been a stable boy, occasionally invited up to the manor house, but afraid of his own shadow and only comfortable with the horses and dogs. When I went to my friends’ houses I was always careful to be polite, to sit quietly, and to not draw attention to myself. My greatest fear was that someone would look too closely and see me for who I was.

  Scudder’s mom called down the hall: dinner was ready. I jumped up, but Scudder and his brothers ignored her. She called again.

  “Shouldn’t we go get dinner?” I asked.

  They ignored me, still absorbed by Bowling for Dollars. Scudder’s mom came down the hall and turned off the TV. “Mom!” Scudder and his brothers complained in unison.

  “Dinner’s ready, you little men,” she announced.

  Scudder’s brothers weren’t little men; they were tall, terrifying, thirteen-year-old beasts. If I had called them “little men,” they would have casually ripped me limb from limb.

  We walked down the hall wordlessly and sat at the table in the kitchen. The formal dining room was for holidays and parties, while this country-style kitchen table was for everyday family dinners. Scudder’s mom served the food, while Scudder and his brothers went to the fridge and poured Cokes for themselves.

  Coke. Beyond the pool and the tennis court and the second set of stairs, this was the greatest luxury I’d seen: bottles of soda in the fridge. My mom and I had milk and orange juice in our fridge, but we watered everything down to make it last longer. “May I have a glass of Coke, Mrs. Baldwin?” I asked.