‘I’m not the world’s best flier.’
‘We have vomit bags in the cars.’ Max nods at the two drivers who nod at porters. ‘Let’s go.’
The two limousines leave the futuristic airport up a ramp to a highway on pillars. Levon, Jasper and Griff travel in the first car; Elf, Dean and Max Mulholland follow in the second. Dean strokes the walnut trimmings. ‘Lincoln Continental.’ Highway lights dot a path across the urban dusk to the glittering city. Paul Simon’s new song ‘America’ plays itself in Elf’s head. I imagined I’d be making this journey with Lu. Dean turns to Elf, looking tired but excited. ‘It’s a long old way from Brighton Poly, eh?’
‘A long, long, long, long way away.’
Streetlamps slide overhead. Pylons stride across wastelands, like Martian invaders. American trucks would dwarf British lorries.
‘This view still gives me goosebumps,’ says Max.
‘Are yer from New York, Max?’ asks Dean.
‘No. I endured a childhood in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.’
‘It’s an idyllic name,’ remarks Elf, ‘Cedar Rapids.’
‘Beware idyllic names in the New World.’
‘So where d’yer meet Levon?’ asks Dean.
‘On our first Monday at the now-defunct Flake-Stern Agency. We arrived to be told that just the one job was available, and that on Friday, each of us would be given five minutes to persuade Messrs Flake and Stern why he should get the job and his rival the chop.’
‘How gladiatorial,’ says Elf.
‘“Shitty” was the word I used,’ says Max. ‘We had both given up jobs for the Flake-Stern offer – and had my rival been anyone but Levon Frankland, I’d have spent the week plotting and backstabbing to save my skin. But Lev spotted in me what I spotted in him. We devised a pact and hatched a plot. We borrowed files from Accounts and did some midnight sifting at my apartment. Cometh the hour of doom on Friday, we made a joint statement that the agency would be offering us both full-time positions. Otherwise, on Monday the agency’s clients would learn about the discrepancy between earned monies received and monies paid out. On Tuesday the clients’ lawyers would start calling. By close of business on Wednesday, Flake-Stern would likely cease to exist.’
‘Yer blackmailed yer prospective bosses?’ asks Dean.
‘We presented them with a joint offer.’
‘It only worked because neither you nor Levon stabbed the other in the back,’ remarks Elf.
‘My point, exactly,’ says Max. ‘If you don’t skin Levon’s rabbit, he won’t skin yours; and an honest manager in show-business is as rare as rocking-horse shit.’
Elf climbs out of the limo, stands on a real downtown New York sidewalk – not pavement – and stares up. A Victorian Gothic edifice of windows and balconies towers halfway to the moon. A vertical sign reads ‘HOTEL’ over a smaller horizontal ‘CHELSEA’. ‘It’s an institution,’ says Max. ‘Long-term lets, mostly. A town within a city. People raise families here, grow old here, die here. Not that Stanley the manager’ll admit that anyone dies here. Lots of folks assume the neighbourhood’s named after the Chelsea, it’s that iconic.’
‘The Stones keep a penthouse here,’ says Dean.
‘It’s one of the few places in New York that’ll take musicians,’ says Max. ‘Nobody cares how you look and the walls are thick.’
‘What’s the population?’ asks Elf.
‘I doubt there’s been a census since the 1880s.’
A man with blood clotted under his nose melts out of the shadows. ‘Hey, y’all, need any uppers, downers, out-of-towners?’
The two drivers block the dealer while Max ushers the band through the doors of the Chelsea. A giant porter greets him like an old friend and Max puts a banknote into his hand. ‘If you’d give a hand with the bags and accoutrements …’
‘You got it, Mr Mulholland.’
The lobby contains thirty or forty people sitting on the low sofas, nursing drinks by the carved fireplace, arguing, smoking, seeing and being seen. Elf guesses they include professors, actors, hustlers, prostitutes, pimps and activists of the type railed against by the immigration officer. None of them is Luisa Rey. You’re going to have to stop this. Many have hair as long as Jasper’s and a wardrobe at least as adventurous as Dean’s. Artwork of mixed merit covers the walls. ‘Stanley accepts art in lieu of rent,’ Max tells Elf, as they reach the desk.
‘Stanley never learns.’ A man with a long face and a flop of brown hair straightens up with a retrieved pencil. ‘A dozen kids a week show up, clasping a portfolio and telling me, “I’m the new Jasper Johns, this is worth three months’ rent, I’ll need a double bed and a TV.” Max Mulholland. How the hell are you?’
‘Stanley, you’re looking like a million dollars.’
‘I’m feeling like dimes and pocket-lint. Utopia Avenue, I presume. Welcome to the Chelsea. I’m Stanley Bard. I tried to get you adjacent rooms. I managed adjacent floors. Dean, Griff, I have you both in Eight twenty-two.’
‘I’ll be needing my own room,’ states Dean.
‘Aye, the needing is mutual,’ says Griff.
‘Eight twenty-two’s a suite with two bedrooms,’ says Stanley, ‘and I glean from the Village Voice you’re a Dylan-fancier, Dean.’
Dean is cautious. ‘Who isn’t?’
‘Bobby composed “Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands” in Eight twenty-two.’
Dean’s face changes. ‘Yer bloody codding me.’
‘He said it has a special vibe.’ Stanley Bard holds the key by its fob. ‘There might be separate rooms on the third, if you—’
‘Eight twenty-two’ll do nicely, cheers.’ Dean cradles the key in his hand like a believer holding a nail from the Holy Cross.
‘Elf, you’re Nine thirty-nine. Levon, Nine twelve. Jasper, I’m putting you in Seven seventy-seven. A Chinaman assured me it’s the luckiest room in any hotel.’
Jasper takes the key, mumbling ‘Thanks.’ Elf asks in a perfectly natural voice, ‘Are there any messages for me, Stanley?’
‘I’ll check.’ He goes into the back office. The others move to the lifts, except for Dean. ‘Hoping to hear from Luisa?’
Elf answers brightly. ‘Just on the off-chance. She’s dead busy with work right now. A big story.’
Stanley returns. ‘Nothing, Elf. Sorry.’
‘I wasn’t expecting anything.’
Room 939 is stuffy and smells of roast chicken. It is furnished with items not worth stealing: chenille bedspread, a chipped ceramic lamp, a barometer whose needle erroneously claims ‘STORMY’ and a painting of an airship. Elf unpacks, imagining Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde and a survivor of the Titanic unpacking before her in this very room. She puts her framed photograph of the three Holloway sisters and their mother, taken by a waiter last year on the day Imogen announced her pregnancy. Mark’s there too, kind of. Elf washes her face, drinks a cup of New York tap-water, fixes her hair and reapplies her makeup at the cracked mirror above the dressing-table. I bet Jasper covers his mirror with the bedsheet. If Stuff of Life does well and Utopia Avenue has to do more international tours, Jasper will need better medication than Queludrin.
Elf opens the door onto the balcony. A cool night. Nine storeys down, cars, people and shadows flit. London exists horizontally, mostly: New York is a vertical place, enabled by elevators.
America. So it’s a real place, after all.
The band are meeting for dinner downstairs. Elf changes into the black chiffon tunic-top and frayed cream bell-bottoms she bought with Bea in Chelsea, five time zones and two days ago. What to do about Luisa’s seraphinite pendant? If I wear it, I’m a desperate dyke who can’t face reality. lf I don’t wear it, I’m discarding her, and the dying hope that this is all some misunderstanding. Elf wears the pendant.
When the elevator stops at the ninth floor, the busboy who operated the archaic cage on the way up is missing. A well-groomed man of about thirty is the only occupant. Elf tries to open the outer door, but the handle is stiff and awkward.
‘Allow me,’ he says. ‘It’s quite the operation.’ He slides the inner door across, twists the handle of the outer door up and swings it open. ‘Step aboard.’
Elf steps in. ‘Thank you.’
‘Any time.’ The man knows he is tall, dark and handsome. He has a wedding ring and his aftershave smells of tea and oranges. ‘Your final destination this evening, if I may ask?’
‘Ground floor, please.’
‘Keep your thumb pressed on G.’
It’s an odd instruction, but Elf obeys.
The elevator doesn’t move.
‘Huh. Odd. Let me ask Eligius.’
Nobody else is here. ‘Who?’
‘Patron saint of elevators.’ He shuts his eyes and nods. ‘Got it. Eligius says you have to release your thumb …’ Elf realises he’s now talking to her, ‘Now.’ She obeys, and the elevator resumes its slow descent. ‘Good old Eligius.’ says the man.
Elf works out the trick: the lift won’t move until the button is released. ‘Funny. Moderately. Not very.’
His amused eyes have double-folded bags. ‘So are you a new inmate at the asylum, or just visiting?’
The elevator descends through the eighth floor.
‘Visiting.’
‘Who is your fortunate host?’
Elf chooses an unobtainable male to deflect the man’s charm offensive. ‘Jim Morrison.’
‘Why, madam, you are in luck. I am Jim Morrison.’
Elf tries not to find this funny. ‘I’ve seen lollipop ladies in Blackpool who look more like Jim Morrison than you.’
He gestures surrender. ‘You’ve wrestled the truth out of me. Friends call me Lenny. I hope you will too.’
Elf replies with an is-that-so face.
The elevator descends through the seventh floor.
Lenny doesn’t press for her name. His shoes are polished to a high gloss. ‘Be warned, this is the slowest elevator in American hostelry. If you’re in a hurry, walk. It’s quicker.’
‘I’m in no mad rush.’
‘Good for you. The word “faster” is becoming a synonym of “better”. As if the goal of human evolution is to be a sentient bullet.’
The elevator descends through the sixth floor.
He speaks like a writer, thinks Elf. She tries to think of a literary Lenny or Len. ‘Are you a resident here?’
‘Periodically, but I’m an incurable itinerant. Toronto, here, Greece. Is yours what is called a “Home Counties” accent?’
‘Yes. Not bad. Richmond, west London.’
‘I was in London eight years ago on a kind of scholarship.’
The elevator descends through the fifth floor.
‘What kind of scholarship?’
‘The literary kind, I wrote a novel by day and poetry by night.’
‘How very Bohemian. Good memories?’
The elevator descends through the fourth floor.
‘My memories of Bohemia-on-the-Thames,’ says Lenny, ‘are of landladies diddling the gas meters; complaints about the loudness of my typewriter; not seeing the sun for months; and a wisdom-tooth extraction going horribly wrong. I wouldn’t have survived without Soho. The saucy twinkle in Mother London’s eye.’
‘It’s twinkling as saucily as ever. I live there. Livonia Street.’
‘Then I envy you. In part.’
The elevator descends through the third floor.
Elf recalls Bruce’s friend Wotsit. ‘I’ve heard Greece is lovely.’
‘It’s many things. Paradoxical. Governed by a far-right junta, yet out on the islands, it’s live and let live.’
‘How did you end up there?’
‘One day, at the fag end of an English winter, I went to the bank on Charing Cross Road. The teller had a perfect tan. I asked him where he’d been. He told me about Hydra and I thought, I’m off. A fortnight later, the ferry from Piraeus dropped me at the quay. Blue sky, blue sea, cypress trees, whitewashed buildings. Cafés where fifty cents get you a dinner of grilled fish, chilled retsina, olives and tomatoes. No cars. Intermittent electricity. I rented a place for fourteen dollars a month. I own one now.’
‘Sounds like Paradise,’ says Elf, ‘in many ways.’
‘The snag with Paradise is, it’s hard to earn a living there.’
The elevator reaches the ground floor. Elf opens the door.
‘I’m dining with friends at Union Square,’ says Lenny. ‘If you’re heading that way, you’re welcome to ride in my taxi.’
‘Thank you, no. I’m heading’ – Elf points at the door to the El Quijote restaurant – ‘all the way there.’
‘I’m glad we shared this epic voyage, mysterious stranger.’
‘Elf Holloway.’
Lenny repeats it approvingly, lifts his hat like an old-fashioned gentleman and crosses the lobby – before reappearing at Elf’s elbow. ‘Elf, forgive me if I’m overstepping a mark, but sometimes one gets a feeling about a person. My friend Janet is hosting a small gathering on the roof terrace later. Very informal. Just a few fellow misfits. Time and energy allowing, drop by. Or drop up. Companions in your coterie would also be welcome.’
‘Thank you, Lenny. I’ll think about it.’
Spanish music, brassy and tasselled, crackles from the El Quijote’s fuzzy speakers. The vocals are another reminder of Luisa. A vast mirror doubles the room’s apparent size. Jasper sits with his back to it. Waiters glide over the chessboard floor carrying trays of food. Nothing Elf sees on the trays or other diners’ tables is familiar. Their party of six is drinking a cocktail – also new to Elf – called an Old Fashioned. ‘I wasn’t looking for trouble,’ Max Mulholland is saying. ‘I was looking for talent. My logic was, if half a million kids are flocking to Chicago for a week of music and protest, there’ll be a hundred buskers on the fringes, and of that hundred, five might be shit hot. A buddy staying at the Conrad Hilton for the Convention offered me his sofa to bunk on. Now, I was expecting a San Francisco-style flowers-in-gun-barrels affair. How wrong I was. Not a flower in sight. Last year’s ten years ago. We’ve had Martin Luther King’s murder. Riots all summer. Vietnam’s going to shit. In the run-up to Chicago, the Yippies were dangling stories about spiking the water supply with LSD. Garbage, of course, but the press eat that shit, shit it out, and people believe it.’
‘What’s a Yippie when it’s at home?’ asked Griff.
‘Youth International Party,’ says Levon. ‘An umbrella group for anarchists, idealists, anti-war, pro-drugs groups. It’s quite west-coast, merry-prankster-ish in spirit – right, Max?’
‘Right, but Chicago is more Mayor Richard Daley in spirit,’ says Max. ‘Rich as Croesus, corrupt as Nero. He issued a shoot-to-kill policy for arsonists during the summer riots. Cops shot. Cops killed.’ Max’s levity ebbs away. ‘Long story short, the Yippies’ liberal base finked out. Only the MC5 and Phil Ochs turned up for the concert in Lincoln Park. Instead of a sea of half a million, there was a pond of a few thousand. One in six of whom was a Fed in a floral shirt. My hopes of finding the next Bob Dylan evaporated and I headed back to the Hilton. On Michigan Avenue, I overtook a big anti-war demo. It was getting dark. At the hotel, the TV crew lights were up bright on a phalanx of National Guards on one side, and long-haired kids waving Vietcong flags on the other. In Chicago! Two weeks later, describing it to you now, the danger’s obvious: here’s a match, here’s the kerosene. At the time, I just figured, Hey, I’m a guest at the hotel, it’ll be fine, I’ll just walk through the cops and go inside.’ Max sips his Old Fashioned. ‘It happened like a dam bursting. A roar boomed up and suddenly – urban warfare. Bedlam. Bricks. Screaming. The crowd surged. The cops surged back, armed with nightsticks. They’ll crack bones like hard candy if wielded right. And wielded right they were. The Tribune called it “a police riot”, but most riots are better behaved than Chicago. Anyone was fair game. Straights in suits. Women. Cameramen. Kids. A&R men. Anyone not in uniform. The cops went for faces, groins, kneecaps. They drove vehicles fitted with “slammers” straig
ht into the crowd. They tore their numbers off so they couldn’t be identified. This one cop locked eyes with me. He was the predator, I was the prey. I don’t know why he chose me, but he waded straight at me. His intent was to smash my skull. I knew I should’ve run. But it was … like one of those dreams where you’re just not in charge. I just stood there, thinking, This is how I die, now, today, on Michigan Avenue with my brains spilling out …’ Max lights a cigarette and gazes at the back of his hand. ‘A boot in the back of my knee saved me. I went down with my face pressed on the road. Someone fell on top of me. A tear-gas grenade bounced, inches away. A big red can with a steel nipple on top. I crawled off through a screaming, stomping, shouting churn of bodies. I found a kid, lit by a TV light. Busted nose, half a lip torn off, teeth gone, blood from a gash where his eye should’ve been. I still see that kid’s face. Like a Kodak print.’ Max draws a label in the air. ‘Peace Activist, 1968.’
‘I thought Grosvenor Square was bad,’ says Dean.
‘Were you able to get him out?’ asks Elf.
‘I took a blast of tear-gas to my face. It’s like your eyeballs are melting. I staggered away, so … no, Elf, to my abiding shame I never learned what happened to that kid. I found the back of the hotel where a porter stood by the kitchen entrance. Six foot six, armed with a rolling pin, mean – as – cuss. I said, “Let me in.” He said, “One dollar.” I said, “People are getting slaughtered.” He said, “Two dollars.” I paid. And saved my skin.’
‘That’s the free-market for you,’ says Griff.
‘I’ve never associated America with violence,’ says Elf.
‘Violence is on every page of our history.’ Max mops up his gazpacho soup with a crust. ‘Brave settlers massacring Indians. Some days we’d cheat them with worthless treaties, but mostly it was massacres. Slavery. “Work for me for nothing till the day you die, or I’ll kill you now.” The Civil War. We industrialised violence. We mass-produced it, years before Ford. Years before the trenches of Flanders. Gettysburg! Fifty thousand deaths in a single day. The Klan. Lynchings. The Frontier. Hiroshima. The Teamsters. War! We need war like the French need cheese. If there’s no war, we’ll concoct one. Korea. Vietnam. America’s that junkie outside the hotel, only heroin’s not the drug we’re hooked on. No Sir.’
Utopia Avenue : A Novel Page 46