Gimme More

by Liza Cody

  She’s the student type, jeans and not enough make-up. Helen and Petra automatically decide to hate her.

  ‘Are you going to introduce us to the band?’ the student type says.

  ‘Sure,’ says the old woman.

  Helen and Petra exchange an agonised glance in the mirror. They turn.

  ‘Do you know them?’ breathes Helen.

  ‘Sure,’ says the old woman, smiling.

  ‘Do you know Sapper?’ says Petra, gasping a little at saying HIS name out loud. ‘Only, me and my friend think he’s…’ Helen jabs an elbow in her ribs.

  ‘You know, the best way to meet a band is to ask for their autographs,’ the old woman says. ‘They’d like that.’

  ‘Really? I’d feel …’

  ‘Yes,’ the old woman says. ‘If you say you really like their music and you think they’re great – that’s what they want to hear. How’re they going to know unless you tell them?’

  ‘I couldn’t,’ Helen says.

  ‘We’d die,’ Petra says.

  ‘Could we?’ Helen asks.

  ‘Got any paper?’ the old woman says. ‘And you’ll need a pen.’

  Sapper suddenly finds himself surrounded by girls. At first it was just two little honeys who hung back shyly and then plucked up enough courage to approach him.

  ‘We think you’re great,’ they said in a rush. ‘Can we have your autograph?’

  ‘We really like the music,’ one of them said.

  ‘Could you make it out to Helen?’ said the other.

  ‘And Petra.’

  Now he has a pen in his hand and he’s modestly signing scraps of paper, beer mats, cocktail napkins, whatever they put in front of him.

  He looks past the eager young bodies and sees Birdie watching.

  Now she knows, he thinks. Now she’ll see me for who I am.

  He lifts his chin and turns his head, meeting her gaze from beneath lazy eyelids. It feels like a classic rock-star expression. It feels good. He knows he’s imitating something he’s seen before but he can’t help it. He’s starring in his own video. He sees himself from a distance, in a smoky club – somewhere blue-collar in the States. He is the tough outsider – the working boy genius – who catches the eye of the cool, unresponsive broad. In the next scene, he’s on-stage singing to her, back-lit, lonely, but so irresistible. She begins to dance. In the next scene he’s dancing with her. Final scene: he walks away down a wet, lamplit street, carrying his guitar case. On the other side of the road is a white limo with darkened glass windows. One of the rear windows rolls down and the cool but melting woman watches him walk away. There is just the beginning of a smile twitching at the corner of her mouth. She has plans for the tough, lonely genius. Oh yes, she does.

  And it’s all true. It’s as if he’s at last seen himself on MTV.

  The thing that bewilders Ozzy Ireland the most about this gig is that he has recognised three scouts from other labels lurking in the crowd. Two come from little indie companies. But one is from MCA.

  He points this out to Mr Freel who merely grunts in reply.

  Later though, at the end of the first set, when the band is at the centre of a surprising rush of female attention, he hears Mr Freel ask the guy from production, ‘Just what have we signed this band for?’

  The answer he hears is, ‘Interim contract. One of those suck-it-and-see things.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘I think three months.’

  Mr Freel grunts again.

  Ozzy catches Birdie’s eye. She winks, long and slow.

  He’s beginning to feel he’s associated with something which might not be an instant success but which is certainly not a failure either.

  ‘Enthusiastic local fan-base,’ he says to Mr Freel.

  ‘Mmm,’ says Mr Freel.

  Whenever Lin introduced Grace to anyone she never said, ‘This is my niece,’ or ‘Meet Grace, she’s my niece.’ She always said, ‘This is Grace,’ as if Grace needed no explanation, no reason for being with Lin except as good company. It was one of the things Grace loved her for. She wasn’t an add-on, or defined by her relationship. She could be an individual.

  Tonight, she’s meeting a lot of people: the band, the honchos from the record company. She’s at the centre of things. She’s excited.

  And she’s lucky: she’s with a guy who isn’t afraid to dance. That makes him perfect. When she looks around the floor she sees so many girls dancing on their own or in all-girl groups, while she’s out there dancing with Alec. He isn’t a particularly good dancer, but he’s there. He doesn’t show her up or drink too much or take the piss out of dancing like some guys do.

  Grace doesn’t know a lot of men who enjoy dancing. Check out any dance floor and you’ll see what makes Alec special.

  She’s glad Lin likes him enough to invite him here tonight. And she’s glad he likes Lin too. Somehow it makes Grace feel more attractive if one member of her family, at least, is warm, welcoming and with it. Unlike her mother whose suspicion is almost tactile.

  Perhaps I shouldn’t have brought him home unannounced, she thinks. But I thought Mum was flexible. She used to be nicer to my friends. Perhaps she doesn’t want me to grow up. Perhaps she’s getting too old.

  Grace takes a drink out of Alec’s glass and feels his arm around her shoulder. They’re waiting for the band to go on-stage again.

  Lin comes over and says, ‘Can I leave the car keys with you, sweetie? You haven’t been drinking too much, have you?’

  ‘Aren’t you staying to the end?’ Grace says, disappointed.

  ‘I’ve got to talk to some people. But if you’ve drunk too much to drive, call a cab.’

  ‘I’ll drive,’ Alec says. ‘I’ve only had a couple of beers. I won’t drink any more.’

  ‘Isn’t he perfect?’ Grace blurts out.

  Lin laughs and says, ‘Whaddya think, sweetie? Shall we ask him to leave his name with the booking agent? Give him a call when we need a good roadie?’

  ‘Why not?’ Grace says, recovering.

  Alec throws back his head and snorts with laughter. Grace feels she’s been saved from her own obviousness.

  *

  The second set begins with ‘Thirty-nine Stitches’. Sapper hits it with everything he’s got. He is the guy in the restaurant and he’s the waitress too. He’s begun to describe the song to anyone who’ll listen as a character song, and tonight, for the first time, he feels the characters inhabiting him.

  Bathed in white light, speeding, he picks Birdie out of the shadows in front of him. This is partly her song too. They wrote it together. A song about a young man and an older woman. He’s giving it back to her – exactly how she wants it – hot and hard.

  There’s a heaving mass of dancers between him and her – girls, like snakes, are just about wriggling out of their skins. But he can feel her eyes. She’s watching.

  Next on the set list is ‘Back in the Sweatshop’. ‘Two nights with my baby – then back in the sweatshop again. Don’t go, don’t go, baby doncha leave me. Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go.’

  He looks for her, but she’s gone. Her shadowy chair is empty. She doesn’t come back.

  Well, fuck her – who needs her anyway? Plenty more where that came from. Look at ’em all! Booty by the ton. All hot for me. ‘But don’t go, don’t go, don’t go. At least, my honey, stay with me until I’ve finished with you.’

  Right at the bitter end, in the alley behind the club, when his muscles are aching and his skin is chill with drying sweat, he tastes the sourness of partially metabolised adrenaline and amphetamine. He has gorged on live flesh, so how come he’s still hungry?

  Sated and wanting more, he sees two girls in strappy, slippery dresses hanging out near the van.

  ‘Pudding?’ Dram suggests. ‘Ours?’

  ‘Aren’t they a bit young?’ says Karen.

  ‘They’re never too young to be up for it,’ Flambo says. ‘You go on home like a good girl. Unless you fancy some too.�
��

  ‘Which one is yours?’ says Dram.

  ‘Don’t fuckin’ care,’ says Sapper, edging forward. ‘The one with the neck. You two can fight about the other.’

  V

  A Weird Little Man

  The back of the Bentley was upholstered in blond suede. It was as big as a poor boy’s double bed – not that I know a lot about poor boys’ double beds. I leaned into the softness, closing my eyes. The ride was smooth enough to be sickening.

  I wished I was alone. I wanted to empty my mind. But Sasson, who had been monosyllabic earlier, wasn’t going to let that happen. The false intimacy in the back of a chauffeur-driven car was working on him.

  ‘I hope you didn’t think I was completely unresponsive back there,’ he said. ‘In fact, I think you’re right – that’s a nice little band you’ve got there. It’s the commercial possibilities I have to consider.’

  I sat tight behind closed eyes and didn’t answer.

  He continued, ‘The singer seemed to be giving it a lot of top-spin.’

  What did Sasson know about top-spin? It was a silly metaphor. What everyone’s looking for is a lead singer you can’t drag your eyes away from, and that isn’t something you can work on the way a tennis player works on a stroke. A singer’s got it or he ain’t – it’s one of life’s mysteries.

  ‘What’s the matter, Birdie? Nothing to say? I thought you’d be pitching for him.’

  ‘No. I’ve already told you what I think would be sensible and fair.’

  ‘You must have a personal opinion though. I mean, think of the singers you’ve known. How does he stack against them?’

  Sasson could answer that himself. He was goading me.

  When I didn’t reply, he said, ‘Well, he’s no Jack. That’s for sure.’

  Comparisons, comparisons. Poor Sapper.

  I said, ‘If you only signed bands who stacked up against the stars you’d only sign one every seven years and you’d be out of a job. You gotta have something new to sell. That’s what you’re in business for.’

  ‘True,’ he said. ‘There aren’t many Jacks around. It’s just that I don’t have your knack for talent-spotting. I sometimes wonder, if I hadn’t grown up with Jack, if I’d first come across him in a club like tonight, would I have spotted him for what he was?’

  ‘Did you have a tin ear, Sasson?’ I asked with mild curiosity. ‘Were you blind? Because you would’ve had to have been blind and deaf to fail to spot Jack.’

  ‘Yes.’ He sighed and mercifully shut up for a few more miles.

  We rolled on west at a steady eighty miles an hour, he in his corner, me in mine; he with his thoughts, me with mine.

  We were going to Dorset – not Sasson’s county. It wasn’t his house we were driving to, and we weren’t in his car. The man behind the wheel wasn’t his driver. In short, the trip was not Sasson’s idea.

  It wasn’t my idea either – except that it is what I’ve been walking towards for years. So many little steps, one at a time, bring me to Nash Zalisky’s doorstep.

  Once, years ago, when he was still more or less a social creature, I met Nash Zalisky at a reception. Even then he was a formidable character. His own independent label had just been bought out by Columbia and he had been transformed from a music industry maverick into a rich, rich maverick with a three-year exclusion clause in his contract.

  I was being stealthily pursued by a man with a telephoto lens, and I escaped up a flight of stairs to a shadowy gallery overlooking the reception area. Nash was the only other person up there – watching the party from above as if it were his personal bull-ring.

  He said, quietly, ‘Birdie, would you please go elsewhere. You attract too much attention.’

  ‘Where?’ I asked, because I was looking for a private way out and couldn’t find one. I looked down and saw Jack at the centre of a crush of women.

  He said, ‘You know, I always wanted Jack on my label, but I couldn’t afford him. Now I can afford him but I’m not allowed to work.’

  ‘Money has a price,’ I said.

  He nodded seriously and we both watched the photographer look up and catch sight of us. With military precision, we took one pace back into the shadows.

  He said, ‘I would like to go to the movies now. Would you allow me to take you to the movies?’

  ‘If you know a discreet way out of here,’ I said, ‘I’ll allow you to take me anywhere.’ At that moment I was sick to death of being a peep show at a circus. I was sick of the hype and fuss and flattery, the grabbing and groping. If a quiet man wanted to take me to fantasy-land and a darkened space I wasn’t going to stop him.

  ‘Only I must warn you,’ he said, ‘I won’t tolerate talking at the cinema. And afterwards I do not want to discuss the film. Half-digested opinions drive me nuts. But I might want to hold your hand.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘My side of the contract stipulates no groping and you pay for the tickets. Deal?’ I thought he was joking.

  ‘Deal,’ he said. He wasn’t joking.

  We went to a Marx Brothers double bill at the Curzon, and we didn’t exchange another word from the time we left the reception until he put me in a cab at the end of the second film. Then he kissed the hand he’d held all through Horse Feathers and said, ‘Thank you for your company. It was surprisingly restful.’

  I never saw him again from that day to this. But it wasn’t the last time I heard of him. Quite apart from becoming a card-carrying eccentric and something of a recluse, when his exclusion clause ran out he came back on to the scene as a major player. Only this time he didn’t let any of the big sharks buy him out. He was the shark.

  Which, if my research tells me no lies, is why he can send a car for Dog’s most important suit well after midnight, and Sasson will meekly hop in and drive away to Dorset when he’d much rather be home in bed. Better yet, he can send me a perfect gold and green orchid, packed in ice, and a handwritten invitation to a late supper. Oh my! Further, he can make Sasson very nervous indeed.

  ‘I’ve never been invited to Badlands before,’ Sasson confessed, shifting uneasily.

  ‘Invited or summoned?’ I said. I was uneasy myself. The flower was exquisite, and I wondered if that meant Nash might think I was still exquisite too. Being a recluse sometimes means that a man doesn’t keep a grip on time.

  ‘So, you haven’t seen him recently,’ I said.

  ‘Who has? Well, he does come to town once in a blue moon – he hasn’t completely cut himself off.’

  ‘What does he do with himself?’

  ‘Well, I suppose you might say he’s become the éminence grise behind all sorts of ventures.’

  ‘Which ventures?’ I asked. ‘Dog, for instance?’

  ‘One thing I know for certain’, Sasson said, glancing nervously at the back of the driver’s head, ‘is that almost everything you hear is wildly exaggerated.’

  ‘So there’s no truth in the rumour that he heads a multimedia consortium which has its own cable company?’

  ‘Where did you hear that one, Birdie?’

  ‘Just gossip,’ I said, grinning in the dark.

  ‘Nash doesn’t like gossip.’

  ‘Tough,’ I said. ‘Non-disclosure invites speculation.’

  ‘You should know,’ Sasson said bitchily.

  ‘Indeed I do. Is he your boss, Sasson? Are you obeying orders? Who are you dancing for?’

  ‘Actually, Birdie, I don’t have a boss as such.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, ‘and that’s why you’re dogging around in the wee small hours with a bitch you’ve resented for years.’

  ‘I don’t resent you, Birdie,’ Sasson said in a voice you could pour from a cream jug. ‘I just wish I could get a line on you – you’re so wayward.’

  I laughed and retreated. For the time being, fishing was a waste of energy.

  We approached the house through iron gates set in a high wall. After about half a mile on gravel the drive became stone-paved, and at exactly that point the c
hauffeur switched the engine off and allowed the Bentley to coast silently around the last bend. We had just enough momentum to bring us to the base of a flight of stone steps. The house was enormous.

  I said, ‘Who’s the king of the castle?’

  ‘Shut up,’ Sasson said, sounding distinctly uncomfortable. ‘Birdie, please don’t …’

  ‘What?’

  But I didn’t find out. We were ushered out of the car and pointed up the steps to a pair of colossal doors. The doors opened without any prompting from us and we entered a sort of baronial hall. The floor should have been tiled with marble, but instead it was covered in deep-pile green carpet – acres of it.

  ‘Aha,’ I said. ‘The rule of silence persists.’

  ‘You remember,’ said Nash, appearing from behind a thick oak door like a leprechaun popping out from between the pages of a book.

  ‘I didn’t know you knew each other,’ Sasson said.

  ‘Nobody meets for the first time,’ Nash told him seriously, ‘they only think they do. In fact, everyone has met everyone. It’s just that they don’t know anyone.’

  ‘I see,’ said Sasson.

  ‘No you don’t,’ said Nash. ‘Would you like some supper? I’m cooking carciofi ripieni di mortadella’

  ‘Er, wonderful,’ said Sasson, looking blank.

  ‘Well, I know Birdie loves globe artichokes,’ Nash said. ‘Come along.’

  Miles of silent corridor led to a kitchen. The billionaire, it seemed, was doing his own cooking. Sasson and I sat at the kitchen table drinking Cuvée Dom Perignon while we watched Nash carefully brown his artichokes. It was a sight to see: he was dressed in black except for a white collarless shirt, which looked like a priest’s dog collar under his black sweater—a billionaire vicar cooking supper. He was still very slight and boyish and his buck teeth gave him the appearance of class nerd – the boy who would be surrounded and kicked to shit in the playground. But, up close, his skin was as dry and lined as a man of seventy’s and his hair had been dyed an improbable chestnut colour. A cook-book was open on the counter beside him and he studied it at every stage of the operation.