“You can close the windows if you like. I know it gets cold, but it helps me think.” Sam sat on the ground in front of a stack of amps with his Stratocaster across his lap. The wind blew his hair—recently dyed crayon red to complete the alien rock star look—across his face as he scribbled on a piece of paper held down by a mug. He wore dark blue faded jeans, a T-Rex t-shirt and his leather jacket. He looked up at Kit, grinning crookedly.
“I’m not cold. Been trapped on the Tube for what feels like hours, so fresh air is nice,” she said.
“Hope you didn’t have any trouble getting here,” he said, placing the end of the biro he’d been writing with in his mouth, letting it hang like a cigarette.
“Not really. What’re you working on?”
“Pop song. Crunchy. Easy. Three chords. Ya know, the stuff they like.”
“Yeah, I know.” She smiled and picked up one of the papers lying on the floor. Despite knowing the transient nature of the heart revealed in a pop song, she read his lyrics through the rose-coloured illusion that they were about her.
“Come here, I’ll tell you a secret,” he whispered conspiratorially, motioning for her to move closer. She sat down beside him, their knees touching.
She couldn’t think properly when he was near. Equally strong was her desire for him to recognise how clever she was and for him to think her pretty, the latter of which she internally chastised herself for.
“What’s your secret?” she asked on a quiet breath.
“I’m going to add a fourth chord to this song,” he said, eyes glowing. “Nobody can know.”
She broke out in uninhibited laughter, shoving at his shoulder. Kit reached over to open her own guitar case and gently took out her baby, the black and white Telecaster. She was dressed to match—black boots, black stockings, black skirt, white boyish blouse. Her kinked black hair was free and loose, curling inwards and outwards at the nape of her neck.
“Let me show you how it’s done,” she said.
After tuning up and plugging in, she got straight to work at impressing the trousers off Sam Numan. Her fingers danced across the fretboard with prowess and grace, some licks recalling celestial refrains, others rumbling up straight from the gutter. Each frenetic riff speeding down the neck, each note held and bent obscenely, showed on her face in flashes of light, sparks of intricate intensity. She and her six-stringed instrument bled together in perfect harmonious discord, a whirlwind of angst turned into joy via steel and electricity. When she played the guitar, she played the angelic whore.
When she finished, her eyes slowly lifted to meet Sam’s. She smiled almost shyly, one eyebrow raised.
“Show-off,” said Sam. His eyes were glittering. “Knew I was right about you.”
“Right about me how?”
“That you’re fecking brilliant. That you’ll complete us.” He leaned in close, grinning, their faces almost touching.
Kit shifted positions, accidently smacking Sam across the forehead with the headstock of her guitar.
“Sorry!” she gasped. “Sorry, sorry...are you alright?”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” Sam said, rubbing his forehead and grimacing.
“I’ll go get you some ice.”
“Nah, it’s fine, hey, settle down.” He grabbed her hand to stop her from rushing off, pulling her down to sit beside him again.
Kit sucked in a tense breath, pulling ever so slightly away from him even as she wanted to surge forward. She knew better, knew guys like Sam. He uses people, she thought. He probably doesn’t even realise it.
Doesn’t mean I have to end up being used, she told herself. I can use him right back. We can use each other.
But not just yet. Better to draw it out.
Sam was trying to get a good look at her, but she wouldn’t make eye contact for more than a second. He grinned sideways, tilting his head down and deciding not to push her for the time being. Anyway, they had work to do. He rummaged around for his cleverband, finding it buried in a pile of Rolling Stones tabs. Sometimes it made him feel a little freer to take the damn thing off. Most people never did, so used to having the ultra-comfy, waterproof, stainproof devices strapped to their wrists that they never thought to remove them.
“Hey, check out this lyric submission I pulled from the FoxDen app. Think we can work around it? If we do, this kid wins this lyric contest thing we’re running.” Sam showed her the set of words glowing on the display in neat black type:
If I am cruel I have cause to be
You lied when you said I was free
If we are cruel we have cause to be
They lied when they said we were free
“There’s a ready set rally chorus in there,” Kit recognised.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought, too,” Sam said. “Four chords?” he said.
“Yeah, four chords. I’ll come up with a solo that teases off the melody of the verses.”
“Perfect. And I’ll wear purple at the next show to match the shiner on my forehead,” he said with a pout.
“Don’t start,” she smirked. “You’re a fighter; you can take it.”
“I hope so,” said Sam. “I’m sure to take a few more hits along the road.”
Sam and Kit worked late into the night, writing words and melodies of candy and bliss. When the sun set and the air blowing through the open windows turned bitingly cold, neither of them noticed, too engrossed in their songwriting which flowed freely and easily. Down in the streets below, the workforce praised high heaven that the day had ended, and retreated to pubs, to restaurants, into the storybooks of the modest 84-inch televisions inside their flats. The new composing duo of Saint Fox and The Independence were hard at work preparing to gift them with another dream—a dream of freedom and equality, a dream of expression and light.
A fool’s dream, some might say. And only a dream.
Chapter Twelve
ARMY OF ME
If you were counted amongst one of the supposedly carefree and spoilt generations who had never seen war, and had not been corralled into earning degree, you held a retail job. You lived in a flat with one or two other people and together you drank, smoked, laughed, and watched a telly that one of you owned until you sold it for rent money, then you watched telly on your holo display in your individual rooms. You woke up at six a.m. and rode the crowded Tube lines for forty-five minutes until you arrived at your ubiquitous everything-you-need-chainstore, at Tesco, at Argos, at Asda. You stood on your feet for ten hours a day with one half-hour lunch and one fifteen-minute break, smiling at people who were rude and demanding. You stared at the clock as the minutes dropped off like water from a broken faucet.
Janus Jeeves was collecting data. He collected data from a database connected to an app created by Benson Bridges. The data was collected through tracking cookies and surveys; the data was then parsed into charts which Janus Jeeves poured over wearing ruby red horn-rimmed spectacles with no lenses in them. The data showed that ninety percent of Saint Fox and The Independence’s fan base was in the lower twenty-five percent income bracket, which despite current reported statistics, accounted for about fifty percent of the population.
Janus Jeeves correctly assumed that this meant a significant percentage of Saint Fox and The Independence’s fan base worked at Tesco, at Argos, at Asda. They were there when the shops opened, they were there when they closed, they were there when you swiped the Dot across Pay Now on the P.O.S. interface. Their shoes were new and their cleverbands were up-to-date, and these were the chosen luxury items of the younger generation who fed on ramen noodles, slept on secondhand furniture, and were peripherally aware of the discrepancy between their wages and the rate of inflation, but powerless to do anything about it. They watched Mr. and Mrs. Designer Suit buy bottles of imported wine that cost a hundred and eighty quid and swallowed their envy, knowing they’d been cheated. So they killed time laughing and drinking and playing with their cleverbands, and sometimes wondered whether someone would come along and offe
r a solution for why—no matter how many hours a day they stood on their feet—they still could not get a leg up.
They put their eardiscs in and turned the volume up.
Harold Waterman’s study on the second floor of his three-story home was nearly identical to his office on Downing Street. Both contained: A beautifully finished, antique desk large enough for a family of ten. A name brand, Korean-manufactured 17K-pixel SO-LED monitor—the same one anyone who knew anything about technology owned, or so his man in I.T. said. The most comfortable and ergonomic office chair money could buy, and, of course, a fine selection of top-shelf liquor housed along the wall in crystal decanters.
Waterman sat quietly in his study on a Thursday evening, hoping no one would disturb him. No such luck. A relentless knocking was followed by his wife’s voice drifting in through the door, the tone of it lifeless and hollow.
“Harry? Are you in there?” she inquired in an admonishing tone that reminded him of the director of administration back at Eton, a woman who bore a physical resemblance to his wife as well.
Amelia was a shapely woman with chin-length brown hair and a full, round face. She was a wonderful philanthropist to various social causes, a doting daughter to her widowed mum, and a picture-perfect mother to their two children, Stephen and Felicity, who were away at very posh boarding schools most of the time.
She was a terrible wife to Harry. Or so, this was the story he told himself.
Condescending and cold. Forceful and demanding. She chewed him out at every opportunity, and if there wasn’t one, she’d create it. They’d not had sex in six years. In fact, Harold Waterman believed she’d turned him off sex forever. Women and their sweet smells and their soft hair and exquisite breasts were forever associated with demands and long lists of inadequacies. The sight of a naked woman now turned his stomach. She’d ruined that for him, too.
“Harry, have you spoken with Stephen yet? He still hasn’t taken his car to the shop. It’s dangerous. This is the third time I’ve had to ask you. Do something about your son.”
The Prime Minister sighed, staring blankly through the large holo monitor in front of him while leaning back in his chair, a half-empty glass of vodka in hand. As far as he was concerned, life was a constant string of chess games where the opponent’s moves were all rumor and nothing ever actually happened. Home life, Downing Street—it made no difference. The most powerful man in the country, slave to the banality of the 21st century. What a boring time to be alive. Sometimes he wished for a great travesty; it would give him something to do other than tread these tepid waters. Of course, there were actually a great number of things to be done. Healthcare reform. National security. The ongoing financial crisis. Didn’t Amelia understand that he had more pressing matters to consider?
Harold rose from his seat, unlocking the door. Amelia stood on the other side with one hand on her hip and the other raised as if she were about to knock again, wearing a look of surprise which quickly schooled into apathetic disdain.
“Harry, how nice of you to show your face.” Hers was impeccably manicured, like a well-cared-for Ming vase.
Waterman stared at his cuticles. “I heard you the first time, the second, and the third. I will deal with Stephen and the car when I deal with Stephen and the car.” As he gazed at her, a cold look adhered itself to his forgettable features. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve other important matters to attend to, such as running His Majesty’s fair kingdom.”
Amelia was unimpressed. “Well well, such a convenient excuse for whenever you don’t want to tend to your own family. I don’t care if you’re in the middle of an intertalk session with the King himself. Tell your son—who takes after you—to get the damn car fixed.”
“Oh Amelia, the King most likely doesn’t even know how to use intertalk. He’s far too busy following the earth-shattering drama of the latest footie match.” He closed the door on his wife, who called him a few choice words through the door before turning on her heel, and would most likely forget about the whole thing in a matter of days once she found a new cause to get up in arms over.
Waterman returned to his desk, attending to one last trivial matter before he could retire for the day. He swiped through the messages on his holo monitor and confirmed a meeting next Monday with the President of the United States, a Mister John V. Ellis. A man of the old world order like him, a sixty-three-year-old Caucasian with Rockefeller money and a ludicrous salary for himself and those who’d gotten him into office. Waterman, however, did not readily welcome comparisons between himself and the American President. There were few, and none of substance, as far as he was concerned.
Relations between Great Britain and the United States had gone from cautiously polite to painfully strained to hanging by a thread, years of resentment and dependence giving way to alienation and outright disgust. British corporations that were mutant Siamese twins, joined at the hip to their sister American corporations, were suffering separation surgeries by the hundreds, the steady plummet of the American dollar a drain on anything tethered to it. America simply didn’t have much to offer Britain these days, and since Britain’s economy was only faring marginally better than her sister’s, the most logical progression was to amputate. She had no desire to drag around the weight of a country she could fit inside more than fifty times over, one that treated you like a mistress you were happy to ravish under cover of night, but denied ever enjoying the spoils of her pleasure in public.
The slow but steady divorce proceedings that happened behind the curtain hurt Britain, but they hurt her sister more. Wall Street scrambled to create new connections and solidify whatever old ones remained. With a finger-light touch against a shimmering display, they sold their souls and their second sons in order to secure secretive and lucrative alliances with any country who would still have them.
Great Britain grew more isolated every day. Truly an island nation.
Harold Waterman rubbed at his temples, sick and tired of attempting to get a hold of the President for a conversation that was nothing more than a formality. He glanced longingly at his brandy decanter, but would not allow himself to partake until after six p.m.
Americans were bloody fools, everyone knew that. Still, dealings with them were occasionally necessary. They had an incredible weapons supply, for instance.
British banks and businesses would recover, and ultimately benefit from the growing schism. The military, however, was a different story. In case of crisis, America was unlikely to come to Britain’s aid—not solely out of spite, but because they simply couldn’t afford to. Though their debt expanded by the hour, they spent money they didn’t have equipping and deploying troops to every pocket of the earth. Reckless use of natural and human resources had caused both to wear thin. Rumor had it that some sort of covert draft had even been instated to compensate for recent drops in the number of voluntary recruits.
Even so, America’s motto of “We’re Number One” continued to ring loud and clear as far as armed forces were concerned, though Britain, despite its size, trailed at a respectable fourth place, and remained well-protected from outside invasion. On the matter of what was inside, well, that was kept under control by an optimum level of surveillance that was so invasive some likened it to unscheduled prostate exams.
Operate within the system, however, and one went virtually undetected.
Chapter Thirteen
TWO MEN AT SEA
Montreal of Middleton Park and Janus Jeeves were playground buddies, war buddies, went into foreclosure together, and had once loved the same girl. Between them there was mutual trust and respect, but not much love. Jeeves saw Montreal mostly as an asset; he saw most people as assets. Not that there wasn’t plenty of love in his heart—no, in fact, quite the opposite. That love just manifested itself through his lives’ purpose—to rebalance the equation, to set things right. Things must be set right—through any means possible.
He hoped the children would understand.
Janus Jeeves used his assets wisely. Montreal was no joker—he knew people, had connections. His pal Montreal was ex-MI-5 and somehow still maintained top-level security clearance, which would someday prove useful, very useful indeed.
On a Tuesday afternoon in early winter, Montreal and Janus Jeeves sat across from each other on Jeeves’ secondhand colour-clashing couches with cigars in hand, trying to out-smoke one another. Jeeves blew rings within rings of smoke, rings that spun around 360 degrees before shrinking and sliding through the middle of a larger ring. Montreal blew long, slow puffs which dissipated steadily, the colour fading from grey to white to nothing.
“So, what do you think of my boy, Saint Foxy?” Jeeves asked.
“You mean Sam?” said Montreal. “He’s a quick study. And he’s wiry, like you.” The gravel in his voice made it sound like an insult, but it wasn’t meant as such.
“I’m talking about his stage presence. The bing-bong boy’s got what it takes, right? You seen him on stage. Got ‘em eating right outta his hand.” Jeeves’ left leg twitched impatiently like a dog’s tail.
“I think he does. He got a sweet, silky voice, an’ he moves like he’s transparent,” Montreal said, flicking a spot of ash off the pale red sofa. “Still, there’s something about him that worries me. D’ya know what I mean, or am I gonna have to try and find the right words to explain it?”
“I know it,” Jeeves said. “My kitty’s got an itch. They’ll give him pills for that.”
“Just make sure it’s the right ones.”
“There are no right ones.” Jeeves stood. A faint cloud of smoke and glitter dispersed through the air, temporarily obscuring the vision of him in his faux magenta-dyed ermine fur coat and his five-inch pleather boots. Jeeves sat back down next to Montreal, but not too close. He leaned back, returned the cigar to his mouth and spread his arms out along the back of the sofa.
The Rise of Saint Fox and The Independence Page 8
