“I don’t know,” he says with a playful grin. “Something tells me I might remember this night for a while.”
We take our seats and start to talk again about our chosen paths. This time we go broader, less about the specifics of what we’ve done and more the how we get to where we want to go. With a dash of the why, too.
“What’s success to you?” I ask.
He takes a moment to think before answering, “Making a living from music, I suppose.”
“So, if you were offered a gig on a cruise ship, playing piano for some C-list crooner…”
“Fair point. Making music that I want to make.”
“And does it matter if no one wants to listen to it?”
“This feels like a job interview,” he quips before, again, taking time to really think about the answer. “OK. How about…I want to be able to play the music I want to play and have an audience that gets it. And to make a comfortable living out of it. You?”
I don’t need to think about my answer. I’ve always known it. But when I’ve said it in the past, the response I’ve been given has always been a letdown.
“I want to make people feel better,” I tell him.
He doesn’t say a word. He just nods.
I fish for clarity. “Aren’t you going to tell me to be a nurse instead?”
He looks confused at my slightly combative tone and plays with the last bit of his pint, swirling the drink around in the bottom. He looks up and at me.
“I think your answer is the best answer I’ve ever heard.”
9
Quantum Leap
Tom
George Street, Edinburgh
Two hours later
“This is nuts. I’ve known you about four hours. But I really, really like you. Maybe it’s the booze talking, I don’t know. I want to tell you all about myself and find out everything about you.”
As the toilet flushes behind me, I jump out of my skin. I genuinely thought I was alone as I practiced my slightly drunken monologue in the mirror above the sink. An old man in a cardigan steps out from the cubicle and starts washing his hands in the bowl next to mine. I offer him a little head nod. He shakes his and mutters something about youth being wasted on the young.
There’s no doubt in my mind it’s the success of the gig that’s letting me be this confident with Jess. This is it. This is the start. If we’d bombed and she’d been watching, I would have turned tail hours ago.
But how do I trust this feeling? It’s been such a long time. Maybe this is how everyone feels when they communicate effectively with someone they’re attracted to. Maybe there’s nothing special about her. But that’s not what my instinct is telling me. I tell my reflection to “just go back out there and see where the night leads. Stop trying to plan it and go with the flow.” It feels like the man telling me this is an entirely different person to the one I’ve lived with lately.
I sit back down and see I have a third pint waiting for me. Jess meanwhile is drinking water, which I start worrying is a bad sign. Does this mean she’s drunk and wants to sober up? Is she stopping the booze because she’s done for the night and wants to go home? Is she worried she’ll make some stupid mistake if she drinks more? The questions swirl and so does my gut. I thought three drinks would be enough to calm me down, but this minor curveball has thrown me. There must be something happening to my face because Jess squints and studies me before concluding, “The water, right? It’s freaking you out?”
Not as much as your clairvoyance, I think. Instead of saying this aloud, however, I simply nod and say, “A little, yeah.”
I can see the thought process she’s going through, deciding whether or not to divulge something. The usual catastrophizing voice shuts up and lets her explain, before jumping to mad conclusions.
“My parents. They drank. Like, a lot.”
“Both of them?”
She nods, before letting me know she doesn’t just spill like this to random strangers. I make it clear she can tell me as much or as little as she wants. She chooses the former and I feel grateful for her trust.
“My dad left when I was young. Really young. My childhood pictures of unicorns and fairies couldn’t quite compete with the lure of a freshly pulled pint or seven.”
“Hence the water…”
She shrugs. “I don’t really enjoy getting drunk. I like being tipsy. Tipsy is good. If I have a pint of water between drinks it helps me stay at a level. I know, right. It goes against all that British people hold dear.”
“There’s an expectation—when you’re in a band—that you should drink morning, noon, and night.” I don’t say that it’s an expectation I’ve done little to limit over the years. “I have a worrying tolerance to it now. There came a time when four pints felt like three pints and now it’s five before I even consider doing anything stupid.”
Her eyes widen from behind her glass.
“And what ‘stupid’ thing might you be considering doing tonight?”
Panic. Panic. Alarm. Alarm. Please Ground Swallow Me.
“I didn’t mean that…I…”
“Chill,” she says with a grin. “I’m just teasing you. I’m afraid it’s a professional hazard if you get with a comic.” I see her eyes flicker at what she’s said and suddenly she’s the one backpedaling. “I didn’t mean ‘get with.’ I meant—actually I don’t know what I meant. This water is rubbish. Can I come sit next to you?”
I nod and shift along the little bench and Jess sits close. My heart begins to beat an unorthodox rhythm. And. That’s. OK. And. That’s. OK. And. That’s. OK.
“I like people-watching,” she tells me. “Wondering what their lives are like.”
We watch the world together as if it’s a giant TV in the corner of the room and the two of us are an old married couple, curled up on the sofa. We analyze people’s clothes and getups for clues to their personalities, studying their body language and expressions to ascertain the relationships they have with the people around them. What, I wonder, would people make of me and Jess if they did the same?
A random question pops into my head.
“Do you remember that show Quantum Leap?” I ask.
With a perfectly straight face and without batting an eyelid, she repeats the opening monologue of the show word for word, including an incredibly spot-on breathiness, beginning with “Theorizing that one could time travel…” and ending a full minute later with “…hoping each time his next leap…pause for emphasis…will be the leap home.”
My face hurts from the size of my grin.
“That’s quite a party trick.”
“Why, thank you.”
“Sometimes when I’m watching TV or at a gig—”
“You quantum leap yourself into other people?”
I nod, more than a touch freaked out. But as my grin is, if anything, widening, I’m guessing this is a good scared.
“Exactly,” I yell, splashing my pint a little as butterflies flap inside me with the kind of intensity that really could cause a typhoon on the other side of the world. “You do that too?”
“No,” she delivers in perfect deadpan. “That would be really weird. And I’m not weird. Now, drink up. I want you to show me more of this wonderful city.”
We step out into the street and I’m curious as to what “tipsy” constitutes in Jess’s head as she yells into the night sky, “I feel invincible tonight. What you were saying earlier, about me being Bill Hicks with a…” She mimes genitals with her fingers.
“Vagina?”
“Yeah! That’s what I want to do. Forget being pigeonholed. I’m gonna be me. And only me. I’ll take on the whole comedy world. Make any agent who’s turned me down weep when they see me on TV and billboards. The one that got away.”
I don’t doubt she will for a second.
“You have to be obsessed,” she continues. “And even then it might not be enough. Hard work. Luck. Talent. In that order. Unless, of course, you have some famous relative. Those fuckers get the world handed to them.”
I try my best not to show how offended I am. Judging by her naughty-schoolgirl impression, I’ve failed mightily.
“Whoops! So. Who are they? Rod Stewart? Annie Lennox? The Proclaimers?”
“That’s deeply offensive,” I reprimand her, with a smile, before explaining my grandad was Patrick Delaney. She rolls the name around in her mouth and brain.
“I know that name. I think my mum’s into him. He’s a bit ‘down’ for my tastes. Not exactly happy, funky, party music. I see where you get it from now. Can he get you a record deal?”
I shake my head. “He died.”
The jokes suddenly stop and she offers me a genuine apology. I let her know it’s OK and she asks me if he’s the reason I got into music.
“One hundred percent,” I tell her.
“He made it. Having heard you on stage, I’m pretty sure you can too.”
Jeffrey Street, Edinburgh
August 3, 2015 (Early hours)
We spend the next couple of hours pub-hopping. It’s long gone midnight and there are plenty of places still open. There was a Hibs versus Falkirk football friendly earlier and the streets are only just starting to quieten. On the way to the next pub, The World’s End, we talk about our families some more.
I open up about my parents and my grandad. The difficult relationship with the former and the unbreakable connection with the latter. I get deep and talk about a pull of a thread between me and my grandad. How I find all these similarities in the two of us. How it scares me a little. I don’t go into how he died, specifically. That’s a little heavy for a first night, but I do mention some of the struggles he had. Jess is attentive and compassionate, limiting her in-built joke machine as I mention how he was defined by his illness in his later years. When I tell her about the diary my parents sold for money they didn’t need, she’s as outraged as I am.
“That sucks!” Jess says.
“I know, right?”
“Could you hunt it down?”
“I could try but I doubt I could afford it. If the collector knows what he’s got he won’t let it go for anything less than five figures.”
“Let me guess, those are two figures too many.”
“Might be four too many after this weekend. Edinburgh prices, man.”
It’s Jess’s turn to talk all things familial. She tells me about her brother, Dom, taking a gap year and how her mum is in some very minor but annoying legal trouble over some planning permission snafu.
“I know a guy who might be able to help her,” I offer.
Jess stops and asks me to elaborate.
I explain how I studied law at uni for half a term before dropping out, and that while there I met a guy who stuck with it and who now has his own practice. This little info dump gets the expected jokes and jibes from Jess, mostly rooted around how much better off I’d be if I’d not quit.
“You sound like my parents. Anyway, he does stuff for free.”
“Pro bono?”
“The U2 guy?”
“What?”
“Huh? Anyway, his parents are rich. We’re talking Richie Rich rich. So rich he’ll never need to earn a penny in his life. He takes on cases he thinks will cleanse his soul. I could get you his number if you like.”
“I like.”
She bites her lip and skips a couple of steps. Suddenly childlike and playful.
“I could give you my number. Now. If you want?”
“I do. Very much.”
“I mean, I probably should have asked this earlier in the evening, but you aren’t seeing anyone, are you?”
I think about my fake girlfriend and wonder if I told Jess about her what she’d think. I honestly believe I could and she’d just laugh it off. But then I have had about five beers and Five-Beer Tom isn’t the smartest guy in the room. Probably best to keep it to my chest that I’ve an imaginary girlfriend who I’ve told all my friends and family about.
“I’m not. I am not seeing anyone,” I reply.
She narrows her eyes and studies my face. “Definitely? You took a little while to answer there, Tom. You’re not a scumbag guy who pretends to be all nice and shy but is in fact banging half of the Hebrides?”
I feel like correcting her on her appalling geography knowledge, but all I can do is be mildly ecstatic at the thought that she could see me as someone confident enough to be a complete and utter arsehole. Then I repeat as clearly as I can, “Jess. I am not seeing anyone. I am the dictionary definition of a single man.”
“Good,” she says. “I believe some of the high-numbered circles of hell are reserved for people who cheat on their partners. If I find out you’re lying I will send you there myself.”
“Not to put too fine a point on it, but that sounds like you’ve been—”
“Burnt in the past. Correctamundo. His name was Olly. He was a comedy promoter.”
The way she admits this last bit tells me most of what I need to know. Stories in the industry of promoters taking advantage of people are rife.
All I offer is an “Oh.”
“You can probably fill in your own blanks, but yes, this industry is full of snakes and worms and other slippery, slimy, spineless scumbags. With apologies to actual snakes and worms.”
I offer her an apology I hope means something.
We stop walking and she dips into her bag and pulls out a piece of makeup. Maybe something for the eyes. I have no idea.
“Roll up your sleeve,” Jess says.
I do as instructed and she writes the eleven digits of her number on my arm in black. The few seconds in which she’s doing this might be the happiest few seconds I’ve had since I stood next to the founder of Mogwai after a show at the Leith.
“When can I transfer that to my phone?” I ask.
“Let’s say…in the morning. If it’s still there.” She delivers the line with a cryptic look on her face and puts her makeup stick back in her bag. Neither of us moves for a moment.
I get the sudden urge to compliment her, to make her feel good. Because despite me, and all that is me, I think I’m about to kiss this girl in front of me.
“You know your comedy?” I ask.
“I am aware of it,” she replies, smiling.
“You should be you.” I emphasize the you. “I like you.”
“I like you too,” she repeats.
Up ahead, I hear a couple of drunk Hibs fans singing some offensive song about Hearts. The football season kicks off in a couple of weeks and with it flows the pent-up testosterone of a summer off from chanting and insulting people. I decide to wait to kiss Jess until they’re safely past. I’d prefer this moment not to be ruined by some pissed-up jeering. As they come alongside us, I see just how wasted they are. If I had to guess I’d say it’s more than just booze. They’re jittery and their eyes are wide. I don’t mean to look at one directly, but it’s already too late.
“All right, pal?” one spits at me. “Ya got a light?”
I shake my head and take a tiny step in front of Jess, not enough to feel like I’m shutting her out—I just want her not to be the focus.
“What about yer bird?”
Jess shakes her head too.
“Well, what have ya got?”
“What do you mean?”
He looks at his mate and laughs before parroting my accent. “ ‘What do you mean?’ What sort of accent is that?”
Jess tugs on my arm and I hold my hands up defensively to the two men.
“Sorry. Guys, we’ve got nothing for you.”
As we walk away, I hear them taunting me. Mimicking my voice again and calling me a s
oft southern prick. Despite Jess seeming to be wholly unaffected by the encounter, I rapidly start tormenting myself that I should have done more, said more, stood up to them. Replicated what it is to be a man in any way possible.
“Well, they seemed nice,” Jess jests as we head in the opposite direction.
I try to monitor my pace, desperate to put some distance between them and us. I hear them singing their song again, the sound getting closer and closer. As I turn around, I don’t have enough time to react to the fist being thrown into the side of my head.
10
2 Become 1
Jess
Jeffrey Street, Edinburgh
August 3, 2015
“Police. And ambulance. Please. We’ve just been jumped. Two guys in football shirts. They just ran up and smashed my friend on the back of the head. He’s fallen really badly. I think his arm might be broken. Where am I?”
I look down at Tom, sitting on the curb, clutching his right shoulder, which sits at a jaunty angle. He looks up and mouths “Jeffrey Street.”
“Jeffrey Street,” I repeat into the phone. “Outside The World’s End.” The operator asks for more information and tells me they’ll try and get someone to us as soon as possible. I relay the message to Tom. Every time he moves even an inch, he howls in pain.
“Is it your head?”
“No,” he whispers. “My shoulder.”
“Can you wiggle your hand?”
He does. “Yeah, it’s just…” He lets out a deep, searing cry, like he’s in labor and they’ve just told him to push. “Christ. It’s every time I move my arm.”
“Is there anyone you want me to call? Anyone in the band?”
He nods and instructs me to call Scott and tell him to meet us at the Royal Infirmary. The circumstances might be less than ideal, but I really liked him using “us” in that sentence. Focus, Jess. Your amorosity is not the priority right now. I call Scott and tell him everything that’s happened, then hang up as the ambulance arrives. A heavily tattooed paramedic steps out, and his colleague joins him to stand beside Tom. Tattoo Man shakes his head as he instantly diagnoses Tom.
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