by Nick Hornby
At breakfast in their cheap and nasty hotel in downtown San Francisco, Annie read the Chronicle and decided she didn’t want to see the hedge obscuring the front lawn of Julie Beatty’s house in Berkeley. There were plenty of other things to do in the Bay Area. She wanted to see Haight-Ashbury, she wanted to buy a book at City Lights, she wanted to visit Alcatraz, she wanted to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge. There was an exhibition of postwar West Coast art on at the Museum of Modern Art just down the street. She was happy that Tucker had lured them out to California, but she didn’t want to spend a morning watching Julie’s neighbors decide whether they constituted a security risk.
“You’re joking,” said Duncan.
She laughed.
“No,” she said. “I really can think of better things to do.”
“When we’ve come all this way? Why have you gone like this all of a sudden? Aren’t you interested? I mean, supposing she drives out of her garage while we’re outside?”
“Then I’d feel even more stupid,” she said. “She’d look at me and think, ‘I wouldn’t expect any different from him. He’s one of the creepy guys. But what’s a woman doing there?’ ”
“You’re having me on.”
“I’m really not, Duncan. We’re in San Francisco for twenty-four hours and I don’t know when I’ll be back. Going to some woman’s house . . . If you had a day in London, would you spend it outside somebody’s house in, I don’t know, Gospel Oak?”
“But if you’ve actually come to see somebody’s house in Gospel Oak . . . And it’s not just some woman’s house, you know that. Things happened there. I’m going to stand where he stood.”
No, it wasn’t just any house. Everybody, apart from just about everybody, knew that. Julie Beatty had been living there with her first husband, who taught at Berkeley, when she met Tucker at a party thrown by Francis Ford Cop pola. She left her husband that night. Very shortly afterward, however, she thought better of it all and went home to patch things up. That was the story, anyway. Annie had never really understood how Duncan and his fellow fans could be quite so certain about tiny private tumults that took place decades ago, but they were. “You and Your Perfect Life,” the seven-minute song that ends the album, is supposed to be about the night Tucker stood outside the family home, “Throwing stones at the window / ’Til he came to the door / So where were you, Mrs. Steven Balfour?” The husband wasn’t called Steven Balfour, needless to say, and the choice of a fictitious name had inevitably provoked endless speculation on the message boards. Duncan’s theory was that he had been named after the British prime minister, the man who was accused by Lloyd George of turning the House of Lords into “Mr. Balfour’s poodle”—Juliet, by extension, has become her husband’s poodle. This interpretation is now accepted as definitive by the Tucker community, and if you look up “You and Your Perfect Life” on Wikipedia, apparently, you’ll see Duncan’s name in the footnotes, with a link to his essay. Nobody on the website had ever dared wonder aloud whether the surname had been chosen simply because it rhymed with the word “door.”
Annie loved “You and Your Perfect Life.” She loved its relentless anger, and the way Tucker moved from autobiography to social commentary by turning the song into a rant about how smart women got obliterated by their men. She didn’t usually like howling guitar solos, but she liked the way that the howling guitar solo in “Perfect Life” seemed just as articulate and as angry as the lyrics. And she loved the irony of it all—the way that Tucker, the man wagging his finger at Steven Balfour, had obliterated Julie more completely than her husband had ever managed. She would be the woman who broke Tucker’s heart forever. Annie felt sorry for Julie, who’d had to deal with men like Duncan throwing stones at her windows, metaphorically and probably literally, every now and again, ever since the song was released. But she envied her, too. Who wouldn’t want to make a man that passionate, that unhappy, that inspired? If you couldn’t write songs yourself, then surely what Julie had done was the next best thing?
She still didn’t want to see the house, though. After breakfast she took a cab to the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge and walked back toward the city, the salt wind somehow sharpening her joy in being alone.
Duncan felt slightly odd, going to Juliet’s place without Annie. She tended to arrange their transport to wherever they were going, and she was the one who knew the way back to wherever they had come from. He would rather have devoted his mental energy to Julie, the person, and Juliet, the album; he was intending to listen to it straight through twice, the first time in its released form, the second time with the songs placed in the order that Tucker Crowe originally wanted them, according to the sound engineer in charge of the sessions. But that wasn’t going to work out now, because he was going to need all his concentration for the BART. As far as he could tell, he had to get on at Powell Street and take the red line up to North Berkeley. It looked easy but, of course, it wasn’t, because once he was down on the platform he couldn’t find any way of telling what was a red-line train and what wasn’t, and he couldn’t ask anyone. Asking somebody would make it look as though he wasn’t a native, and though this wouldn’t matter in Rome or Paris or even in London, it mattered here, where so many things that were important to him had happened. And because he couldn’t ask, he ended up on a yellow-line train, only he couldn’t tell it was yellow until he got to Rockridge, which meant that he had to go back to the 19th St. Oakland stop and change. What was wrong with her? He knew she wasn’t as devoted to Tucker Crowe as he was, but he’d thought that in recent years she’d started to get it, properly. A couple of times he’d come home to find her playing “You and Your Perfect Life,” although he’d been unable to interest her in the infamous but superior Bottom Line bootleg version, when Tucker had smashed his guitar to smithereens at the end of the solo. (The sound was a little muddy, admittedly, and an annoying drunk person kept shouting “Rock ’n’ roll!” into the bootlegger’s microphone during the last verse, but if it was anger and pain she was after, then this was the one.) He’d tried to pretend that her decision not to come was perfectly understandable, but the truth was, he was hurt. Hurt and, temporarily at least, lost.
Getting to North Berkeley station felt like an achievement in itself, and he allowed himself the luxury of asking for directions to Edith Street as a reward. It was fine, not knowing the way to a residential street. Even natives couldn’t be expected to know everything. Except of course the moment he opened his mouth, the woman he picked on wanted to tell him that she’d spent a year in Kensing ton, London, after she’d graduated.
He hadn’t expected the streets to be quite so long and hilly, nor the houses quite so far apart, and by the time he found the right house, he was sweaty and thirsty, while at the same time bursting for a pee. There was no doubt he’d have been clearer-headed if he’d stopped somewhere near the BART station for a drink and a visit to the restroom. But he’d been thirsty and in need of a toilet before, and had always resisted the temptation to break into a stranger’s house.
When he got to 1131 Edith Street, there was a kid sitting on the pavement outside, his back against a fence that looked as though it might have been erected simply to stop him from getting any further. He was in his late teens, with long, greasy hair and a wispy goatee, and when he realized that Duncan had come to look at the house, he stood up and dusted himself off.
“Yo,” he said.
Duncan cleared his throat. He couldn’t bring himself to return the greeting, but he offered a “Hi” instead of a “Hello,” just to show that he had an informal register.
“They’re not home,” said the kid. “I think they might have gone to the East Coast. The Hamptons or some shit like that.”
“Oh. Right. Oh well.”
“You know them?”
“No, no. I just . . . You know, I’m a, well, a Crowologist. I was just in the neighborhood, so I thought, you know . . .”
“You from England?”
Duncan nodded.
“You came all the way from England to see where Tucker Crowe threw his stones?” The kid laughed, so Duncan laughed, too.
“No, no. God no. Ha! I had some business in the city, and I thought, you know . . . What are you doing here, anyway?”
“Juliet is my favorite album of all time.”
Duncan nodded. The teacher in him wanted to point out the non sequitur; the fan understood completely. How could he not? He didn’t get the sidewalk-sitting, though. Duncan’s plan had been to look, imagine the trajectory of the stones, maybe take a picture and then leave. The boy, however, seemed to regard the house as if it were a place of spiritual significance, capable of promoting a profound inner peace.
“I’ve been here, like, six or seven times?” the boy said. “Always blows me away.”
“I know what you mean,” said Duncan, although he didn’t. Perhaps it was his age, or his Englishness, but he wasn’t being blown away, and he hadn’t expected to be, either. It was, after all, a pleasant detached house they were standing outside, not the Taj Mahal. In any case, the need to pee was preventing any real appreciation of the moment.
“You wouldn’t happen to know . . . What’s your name?”
“Elliott.”
“I’m Duncan.”
“Hi, Duncan.”
“Elliott, you wouldn’t happen to know if there’s a Star-bucks near here? Or something? I need a restroom.”
“Ha!” said the kid.
Duncan stared at him. What kind of answer was that?
“See, I do know one right near here. But I kind of promised myself I wouldn’t use it again.”
“Right,” said Duncan. “But . . . Would it matter if I did?”
“Kind of. Because I’d still be breaking the promise.”
“Oh. Well, as I don’t really understand what kind of promise you can make with regard to a public lavatory, I’m not sure I can help you with your ethical dilemma.”
The boy laughed. “I love the way you English talk. ‘Ethical dilemma.’ That’s great.”
Duncan didn’t disabuse him, although he did wonder how many of his students back home would even have been able to repeat the phrase accurately, let alone use it themselves.
“But you don’t think you can help me.”
“Oh. Well. Maybe. How about if I told you how to find it but I didn’t come with you?”
“I wasn’t really expecting you to come with me, to be honest.”
“No. Right. I should explain. The nearest toilet to here is in there.” Elliott pointed down the driveway toward Juliet’s house.
“Yes, well, I suppose it would be,” said Duncan. “But that doesn’t really help me.”
“Except I know where they keep their spare key.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“No. I’ve been inside like three times? Once to use the shower. A couple times just to see what I could see. I never steal anything big. Just, you know, paperweights and shit. Souvenirs.”
Duncan examined the boy’s face for evidence of an elaborate joke, a satirical dig at Crowologists, and decided that Elliott hadn’t made a joke since he’d turned seventeen.
“You let yourself into their house when they’re out?”
The boy shrugged. “Yeah. I feel bad about it, which is why I wasn’t sure about telling you.”
Duncan suddenly noticed that on the ground there was a chalk drawing of a pair of feet, and an arrowed line pointing toward the house. Tucker’s feet, presumably, and Tucker’s stones. He wished he hadn’t seen the drawing. It gave him less to do.
“Well, I can’t do that.”
“No. Sure. I understand.”
“So there’s nothing else?”
Edith Street was long and leafy, and the next cross street was long and leafy, too. It was the sort of American suburb where residents had to get into their cars to buy a pint of milk.
“Not for a mile or two.”
Duncan puffed out his cheeks, a gesture, he realized even as he was making it, intended to prepare the way for the decision he’d already made. He could have gone behind a hedge; he could have left that second, walked back to the BART station and found a café, walked back again if he needed to. Which he didn’t, really, because he’d seen all there was to see. That was the root of the problem. If more had been . . . laid on for people like him, he wouldn’t have had to create his own excitement. It wouldn’t have killed her to mark the significance of the place in some way, would it? With a discreet plaque or something? He hadn’t been prepared for the mundanity of Juliet’s house, just as he hadn’t really been prepared for the malodorous functionality of the men’s room in Minneapolis.
“A mile or two? I’m not sure I can wait that long.”
“Up to you.”
“Where’s the key?”
“There’s a loose brick in the porch there. Low down.”
“And you’re sure the key’s still there? When did you last look?”
“Honestly? I went in just before you came. I didn’t take a single thing. But I can never believe that I’m standing in Juliet’s house, you know? Fucking Juliet, man!”
Duncan knew that he and Elliott weren’t the same. Elliott had surely never written about Crowe—or, if he had, the work would almost certainly have been unpublishable. Duncan also doubted whether Elliott had the emotional maturity to appreciate the breathtaking accomplishment of Juliet (which, as far as Duncan was concerned, was a darker, deeper, more fully realized collection of songs than the overrated Blood on the Tracks), and nor would he have been able to cite its influences: Dylan and Leonard Cohen, of course, but also Dylan Thomas, Johnny Cash, Gram Parsons, Shelley, the Book of Job, Camus, Pinter, Beckett and early Dolly Parton. But people who didn’t understand all this might look at them and decide, erroneously, that they were similar in some way. Both of them had the same need to stand in fucking Juliet’s house, for example. Duncan followed Elliott down the short driveway to the house and watched as the boy groped for the key and opened the door.
The house was dark—all the blinds were down—and smelled of incense, or maybe some kind of exotic potpourri. Duncan couldn’t have lived with it, but presumably Julie Beatty and her family weren’t sick with nerves all the time when they were in residence, the way Duncan was feeling now. The smell sharpened his fear and made him wonder whether he might throw up.
He’d made an enormous mistake, but there was no undoing it. He was inside, so even if he didn’t use the toilet, he’d still committed the crime. Idiot. And idiot boy, too, for persuading him that this was a good idea.
“So there’s a small toilet down here, and it’s got some cool stuff on the walls. Cartoons and shit. But the bathroom upstairs, you see her makeup and towels and everything. It’s spooky. I mean, not spooky to her, probably. But spooky if you only kind of half believe she even existed.”
Duncan understood the appeal of seeing Julie Beatty’s makeup absolutely, and his understanding added to his sense of self-loathing.
“Yes, well, I haven’t got time to mess around,” said Duncan, hoping that Elliott wouldn’t point out the obvious holes in the assertion. “Just point me toward the downstairs one.”
They were in a large hallway with several doors leading off it. Elliott nodded at one of them, and Duncan marched toward it briskly, an Englishman with pressing West Coast business appointments who’d troweled some time out of his hectic schedule to stand on a sidewalk, and then break into someone’s house for the hell of it.
He made the pee as splashy as possible, just to prove to Elliott that the need was genuine. He was disappointed by the promised artwork, however. There were a couple of cartoons, one of Julie and one of a middle-aged man who still looked something like the old photos Duncan had seen of her husband, but they looked like they’d been done by one of those artists who hang out at tourist traps, and in any case they were both post-Tucker, which meant that they could have been pictures of any American middle-class couple. He was washing his hands in the tin
y sink when Elliott shouted through the door, “Oh, and there’s the drawing. That’s still up in their dining room.”
“What drawing?”
“The drawing that Tucker did of her, back in the day.”
Duncan opened the door and stared at him.
“What do you mean?”
“You know Tucker’s an artist, right?”
“No.” And then, because this made him sound like an amateur, “Well, yes. Of course. But I didn’t know . . .” He didn’t know what he didn’t know, but Elliott didn’t notice.
“Yeah,” said Elliott. “In here.”
The dining room was at the back of the house, with French windows leading out onto a terrace, presumably, or a lawn—there were curtains drawn over them. The drawing was hung over the fireplace, and it was big, maybe four feet by three, a head-and-shoulders portrait of Julie in profile, half squinting through her cigarette smoke at something in the middle distance. She looked, in fact, as if she were studying another work of art. It was a beautiful portrait, reverential and romantic, but not idealized—it was too sad, for a start. It somehow seemed to suggest the impending end of his relationship with the sitter, although of course Duncan might have been imagining that. He might have been imagining the meaning, he might have been imagining the power and charm. Indeed, he could have been imagining the drawing itself.
Duncan moved in closer. There was a signature in the bottom left-hand corner, and that was thrilling enough to require separate examination and contemplation. In a quarter of a century of fandom, he’d never seen Tucker’s handwriting. And while he was staring at the signature, he realized something else: that for the first time since 1986 he hadn’t been able to respond to a piece of work by Crowe. So he stopped looking at the signature and stepped back to look at the picture again.