by Stuart David
So when they closed the bar I just helped the wee man up the stairs and dropped him down on his bed.
He came round for a few seconds and asked me how I was.
‘I’m fine, son,’ I told him. ‘How are you?’
‘Exhausted,’ he said. ‘I’m fucking exhausted, Peacock.’
Then he was gone again, and I went back to my own room where Bev was still sound asleep—and probably dreaming her Hollywood dreams.
* * *
‘Peacock?’
‘Spot-on, pal,’ I said.
‘Peacock? What fucking time is it?’
‘You tell me.’
I’d woken up early, and I was down in the hotel lobby—phoning my guy back at home, the guy who’d sent me over to hook up with Bob in the first place.
I could hear him scrambling about on the other end of the line.
‘It’s three o’clock in the morning, Peacock,’ he said at last. ‘Where the fuck are you?’
‘I’m in L.A,’ I told him. ‘I’m in L.A. still trying to get this fucking record made. You and me are going to have to have a serious talk when I get back there, son.’
‘Aww, come on, Peacock,’ he said. ‘You’re not still angry are you? You’re in L.A. for Christ’s sake. How much better could it have turned out?’
‘Listen,’ I said to him. ‘Listen. Somehow we’ve just about managed to get this thing made, no thanks to you and your fucking ‘contacts’. But I need some more money to get it finished, and you’re going to send it to me—to help make up for the money I’ve had to spend because of you, you fucking clown.’
He was silent for a while, and then he asked me how much I needed.
‘Two grand,’ I said, and he was silent again.
‘You weren’t serious about cutting me out of the deal, were you?’ he asked, and I took my turn to be silent.
‘I’ll tell you what,’ he said, ‘I’ll send you the money, Peacock, by way of an apology. I feel bad about what’s happened. But here’s the condition. Two grand’s a lot of money to pay out, so in return I want twenty percent of what you make from the record, instead of ten.’
I stayed silent again. He fucking had me. There was no other way out of it.
‘Alright,’ I said in the end. ‘Just as long as you wire me the money as soon as it’s morning there.’
‘I’ll send it first thing, Peacock,’ he said. ‘The moment I get a Fax from you, entitling me to my twenty percent—with your signature on it somewhere.’
‘What?’
‘I’ve got to cover myself, Peacock.’
‘Jesus…’ I said. ‘Alright, alright. I’ll send it.’
I wrote down the number of his machine, and hung up.
What a fucking joker.
Chapter 22
But the prick was as good as his word, which came as a fucking surprise to me. The money arrived that afternoon, and we were back in business again.
I’d told Bob the money was coming, just after I’d written that fax, and we’d sent Bev off on another one of her tours while we waited around for it to arrive. It got pretty fucking boring though, just hanging about, so to pass the time we gathered up the money we had left and went out to renew the lease on the car.
Bob seemed alright again. He had a fuck of a hangover on him, but he didn’t say anything more about any worms, and I was happy about that.
And he was happy I’d managed to sort out the money, or as happy as you can be with that kind of hangover banging away.
‘How did you get him to send it over?’ he asked me, as we drove out there.
‘He knows he owes me big time now,’ I told him. ‘He knows he fucked this thing up right from the word go.’
‘I’ll bet that’s all down to my guy,’ Bob said. ‘He probably stuck it to your guy just to get at me.’
‘I’m not going to let him know that though, son,’ I told him. ‘I’m going to play this fucking thing for everything I can get.’
Bob laughed.
‘Imagine my guy when this record takes off,’ he said. ‘Imagine him when he realizes he’s catapulted me to stardom. That’s going to be fucking priceless.’
And he started cracking up.
It was a long way out to that hire place. A couple of times I thought we must have left L.A, we’d gone so far. I hadn’t realized till then how fucking enormous the place was. But it was well worth the trip.
When we finally got out there Bob showed the guy the lease agreement, and the guy looked at it.
‘This expires tomorrow,’ he said.
‘I know that,’ Bob told him. ‘That’s why we’re here. We want to extend it.’
‘But it expires tomorrow, sir,’ the guy said. ‘We can’t extend this today. We can’t renew the contract until it expires.’
‘You’re fucking kidding me,’ Bob shouted. ‘So we have to come back out here again tomorrow?’
‘Normally you would, sir,’ the guy told him. ‘But in this instance, tomorrow is a Sunday. We’re closed on Sundays, sir.’
‘I’m sorry? You won’t let us renew it today because it doesn’t expire till tomorrow, but we can’t renew it tomorrow because you’re closed?’
‘Normally you would renew it tomorrow, sir. But in this instance we’re closed tomorrow.’
‘So why did they give me an expiry date that’s a Sunday? How could I take the car back or renew it?’
‘I guess the place you hired it from must be open on a Sunday, sir. We’re not. We’re closed.’
‘Give us a break, pal,’ I said. ‘Just fucking renew the thing.’
‘Excuse me, sir?’
‘We’re trying to give you money, pal. What’s your fucking problem?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘So what do we do?’ Bob asked him.
‘I’m afraid you’ll have to come back on Monday.’
‘But we won’t be here on Monday.’
‘Do you know where you will be, sir?’
‘We’ll be travelling.’
The guy started hitting some buttons on a keyboard.
‘If you have an idea of where you’ll be, sir, I can look on our computer and find you details of the nearest office.’
‘We’ll find it ourselves,’ Bob said. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘Okay, sir. I’m sorry we couldn’t be of more help.’
‘Fucking jack-ass,’ Bob muttered as we left.
Like I said, it was well worth the fucking trip.
But at least it passed the time, and when we got back the money had arrived. We’d won a fucking watch too—cause the clown had thought I’d meant two thousand pounds, not dollars. So there was a lot more than I’d been expecting, and as soon as we’d counted it up we went straight off to see our guy.
He was waiting for us too. He was waiting there and ready to go. In fact, he was a bit too ready as far as I was concerned. The chump had already drawn up a contract entitling him to his ten percent, and he wanted us to sign it as soon as we got there.
‘Hold on a wee minute, pal,’ I told him, and Bob translated. ‘Wait till the fucking song’s finished. Wait till we see if we like what we’re getting first.’
But I had to give him his due—once he got going he did a cracking job on it, and he worked fucking quickly too. It was nothing like that night we’d spent in the other recording studio. He just loaded all the individual tracks we’d brought him into his computer, and he mixed them together without any drums. Then he started adding all these banging beats and dance noises. It was all over in no time.
‘What do you think, guys?’ he asked us, after he’d been fiddling around with one particular bit for a while. ‘Does that sound okay to you?’
But it had already been sounding perfect to us for ages.
‘It’s not too far from what we knocked together ourselves in Chicago, huh Peacock?’ Bob said, and he laughed.
‘You’re right, wee man,’ I told him. ‘This one’s just a bit more… what’s the word…?’
‘Polished,’ Bob said, and he laughed again.
But I told the guy that we fucking loved it, and I think he even understood me for once. So we signed his fucking contract and gave him his money.
‘You guys get this to D.C. as soon as you can,’ he said, and he gave us the details of the place. ‘I really do think this is going to fly.’
‘I don’t suppose Glen’ll be too pleased about it,’ I said, and Bob translated again.
‘I guess not, but fuck him. He’s already made his millions. He couldn’t make them the same way today. If he was starting up now this is probably what he’d be getting into.’
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Maybe.’
And then we were out of there. Three fucking hours from start to finish.
‘That’s the way to really make the money,’ I said to Bob, but he wouldn’t go for that.
‘It’s nothing compared to what’s coming our way,’ he told me. ‘Nothing at all.’
Chapter 23
We left L.A. early the next morning, and Bev was absolutely gutted. It was a terrible thing to have to see. It was terrible because she didn’t make any fuss, she just wept and wept.
When she’d got back from her tour I’d let her hear the finished song, just to break her in gently before I told her we’d be leaving. And to try and shut her up about the tour for five minutes too, if I’m being honest. It was starting to drive me mad again.
‘There you go, hen,’ I said, and gave her the headphones. I could hear it tinkling away while she listened to it, and she started bopping about and laughing.
‘This is mental, Peacock,’ she shouted.
‘You don’t have to shout, hen,’ I told her.
‘What?’
‘You don’t have to shout.’
She pulled the headphones away from her ears.
‘I can’t hear you,’ she said.
‘I know. But I can hear you. You don’t have to shout.’
‘Oh.’
She let the headphones fall back into place, then she started laughing again.
‘It’s mental, Peacock,’ she shouted, louder than before. ‘Totally mental.’
It was fucking hard to tell after that, after seeing her dancing about—and knowing how happy she still was from her tour. But it had to be done.
We’d had to think up a plan too, me and the wee man—to make sure she’d want to come to Washington with us, rather than staying on there and flying back herself. We didn’t have the money to get her a flight and hotels, and take us both across the country, but I couldn’t let her know that. So Bob had said to tell her we’d stop off in Memphis and visit Graceland on the way over. I must admit, that got me pretty fucking excited myself, and that’s where I told her we were headed to now, rather than just saying we were leaving L.A.
But she still didn’t take it too well. She just fell silent and sat down on the bed.
‘Don’t you want to visit Graceland?’ I asked her, and she nodded quietly. Then she sniffed.
‘It’ll be fucking magic,’ I told her, but there was no cheering her up.
Not all night long.
When I woke up in the morning she was already awake and weeping. Just quietly.
‘What’s up, hen?’ I asked her.
‘I’m just being daft, Peacock,’ she said. ‘I’m just sad.’
And she didn’t stop. We went down for breakfast with Bob and she sniffed all through it, covering her face up with a tissue every now and again when her sobbing got the better of her, and I watched her shoulders moving back and forwards.
‘You’ll enjoy the trip when we get going,’ Bob told her. ‘This really is the best way to see the country.’
She took the tissue away and rubbed her eyes.
‘I’ll be alright,’ she said, and she was going to say something else too, but she couldn’t get it out.
I’m a fucking fool to myself sometimes, but it was breaking my fucking heart to watch her like that. So on the way back up in the lift I gave her a wee cuddle and told her me and Bob had one more treat planned for her before we left. I told her we were going to take her up to Beverly Hills, as soon as we’d packed, and I told her all about the maps you could get of the houses up there.
It wasn’t an ideal move from me and Bob’s point of view, but she got pretty fucking excited about it.
‘Oh, Peacock,’ she said. ‘That sounds wonderful.’
And she sniffed hard and wiped both her eyes dry.
While we were up there packing she couldn’t stop talking about it, asking me whose houses I thought we’d see, and if we’d see anyone out in their gardens. And we had everything stuffed into the suitcases in no time at all.
I tried to imagine how packing would have been otherwise, if we hadn’t been going up there. She’d have picked all her crap up one thing at a time, and dragged herself around the room in tears—curling up on the bed every now and again to cry properly. It all seemed like an okay trade when I thought of it like that.
And you should have seen her face while we stood out on the pavement waiting for the valet guy to bring the car round. She looked like a wean, with her eyes all red and damp, and stuff dripping down out of her nose. The sun was shining on her, and to tell you the truth she looked fucking lovely; all laughing and excited. I wish now that I’d taken a picture of her.
I let her sit up in the front beside Bob when the car came round, and when we got into Beverly Hills she sat with her map spread out in front of her, and she kept turning round to me to tell me whose house was coming next.
She directed Bob to the ones she wanted to see the most, and made him stop at the entrance to each one. Even in daylight there wasn’t a lot you could see, past all the security gates and fences and trees. But at some you could see a tiny patch of garden or an area of the house, and she sat staring in the hope that she’d see someone.
‘Can you imagine living in a place like that?’ she asked Bob at one of the houses. ‘It would be like you’d died and gone to heaven. You could have ended up in one of those, you know, if you’d gone through with my plan.’ Then she laughed. ‘Oh, God,’ she said. ‘Listen, I’ve just remembered a dream I had last night. I had this dream that we were all walking down Hollywood Boulevard, all three of us, and you were following this girl, Bob. You were walking really closely behind her, staring at her. And then you turned round to us and said, ‘She is just so Tom Cruise.’
‘I said what?’
‘She is just so Tom Cruise.’
‘What the fuck does that mean?’
‘Well, I asked you that. In the dream. I said, ‘Bob, what do you mean?’ And you said, ‘That’s what I say when someone’s sexy. I say they’re Tom Cruise.’’
That cracked the wee man up.
‘Tom Cruise,’ he said, and he could hardly contain himself. ‘I like that. Maybe we should tell him if we see him up here.’
But we didn’t see him. And we didn’t see anyone else.
When Bev had sat outside all the houses she wanted to see she had Bob take a quick drive around the whole place again, just to get one last look at it, but she’d already gone back to being quiet by then. She only had him stop once more, and that was when we were almost back at the bottom of the hill, and she wanted to swap me the back seat for the front.
I was in for a surprise when we got outside the car though. She gave me a wee kiss on the cheek, and thanked me for bringing her up there. Then when we got back inside she lay down and we started the long drive out of LA.
And each time we ground to a halt in traffic, and the CD got quieter as the engine slowed down, we could hear the sound of her weeping in there.
Chapter 24
The simplest route would have been Highway 40, all the way to Memphis. But I looked at the map and saw we could pass through Phoenix on the way.
‘It adds a hundred miles to the journey,’ Bob said. ‘Maybe more.’
But I managed to convince him. I didn’t want to miss out on the chance to see the
subject of one of Glen’s best songs. So we got on Highway 10 and I dug out the Glen CD again and stuck it on.
I played ‘By the Time I Get to Phoenix.’ on repeat a couple of times, just to get us in the mood, then I knocked it back to the start and let the whole CD play through.
Bev had fallen asleep by then. Her weeping had been replaced by snoring, and she slept on through most of the day.
It was fucking strange to be back out travelling again. I’d almost forgotten what it was like. I’d forgotten how boring it could be, and how much energy it took just to fucking sit there all day without losing your mind.
It was early evening by the time we started seeing signs saying that Phoenix was close, and we hadn’t seen much of anything else between there and leaving L.A. It had fucking ground me down. But I slowly came back to life when the signs started to appear, and I got the CD back on again, and rubbed my hands together to wake myself up properly.
It wasn’t long before Bev’s head appeared between the two front seats then either. She struggled to get her eyes open and peered out through the windscreen.
‘Where are we?’ she asked, looking confused.
‘Near Phoenix,’ I said.
She squinted and screwed up her face.
‘What’s that?’ she asked.
‘Where?’
‘Up there. Is that a teapot?’
‘Aye.’
‘Who’s is it?’
‘Bob’s. He bought it in L.A
‘I thought it looked pretty Tom Cruise,’ Bob said, and she laughed.
Then her head disappeared again.
The buildings started to appear on both sides of the road, and soon we were on the main road running into town. The sun was getting low, and I had to play the song once more. It felt fucking magic to be almost there. We kept travelling down this road and there were hotels and fast food places and petrol stations on both sides, and it felt fucking mental to almost be at the place the song was about. Every time I’d ever listened to it it had brought a vague picture into my mind, and now I was about to see what it was really like.
We climbed up on a road that swept off to the right, amongst all these other roads bridged over one another and sweeping off in all directions.
