Utopia Avenue

by David Mitchell

  Guus de Zoet sips his tea. “Jasper has discussed his…origins?”

  “There’s a lot of hours to fill ’n’ kill if yer in a band. Yer talk. So, yeah. I do know how yer got his mum up the duff in India. And how yer acted like he didn’t exist till his granddad bloody well made yer.”

  Guus de Zoet puffs on his Chesterfield. “You paint me as the villain of this movie.”

  “How d’yer paint yerself, Mr. de Zoet? The victim?”

  “Not entirely. I acknowledge Jasper in law. We, the de Zoets, allow him to use the family name.”

  “Yer want a sainthood for that, do yer?”

  Guus de Zoet makes a face like a reasonable man in vexing circumstances. “Young men make mistakes. Don’t you?”

  A bloody ton, thinks Dean, but bugger me if I admit it.

  The Dutchman blows smoke away. “I paid for Jasper’s education. For his summers in Domburg. For a sanatorium. I presume you know?” He looks at Jasper, who nods. “For his conservatory in Amsterdam. And for this flat.”

  “Which yer now kicking him out of.”

  “The fact is,” says Maarten, “Jasper is illegitimate. That is not his fault. But he cannot have the same claims on the de Zoet name as I. Sorry, but this is how the world works. He accepts that.”

  “There’s only two real bastards here.” Dean folds his arms and looks at Maarten and Guus de Zoet.

  “I am pleased Jasper has an”—Jasper’s father tap-taps on the ashtray—“advocate. But, Jasper, I was clear that your tenancy was likely to be temporary? Correct?”

  Jasper inspects the calluses on his fingers. “Correct.”

  Oh, for fucksake, thinks Dean. Why do I bother?

  “You were not entitled to sublet,” adds Maarten.

  “I didn’t,” replies Jasper. “Dean paid no rent.”

  “Ah,” smirks Maarten, “no wonder he’s so upset.”

  “And with all your success,” adds Guus de Zoet, “you will not have to sleep on a bench in Kensington Gardens, I think.”

  Maarten stands up. “I will inspect the two bedrooms.”

  Dean stands up. “No, yer won’t.”

  “You are forgetting who owns this flat.”

  Dean sizes Maarten up. He’s a couple of inches taller, pudgier, better teeth, smooth skin. And more afraid o’ getting hurt. “We’ll leave by September the first. But till then our rooms’re private, matey. So yer can fuck off.”

  De Zoet Senior stubs out his Chesterfield. “Perhaps Dean is hiding an embarrassing secret, Maarten. The inspection can wait.” He converses in Dutch with Jasper and the language-shutter falls. Dean retreats to his room, where Tiffany’s getting ready to leave…

  * * *

  —

  THE UNWELCOME DE Zoets are gone, Jasper is in the bath, and Janis Joplin is on the turntable. Dean washes up the tea things, telling himself that any similarities between his recent conduct and the younger Guus de Zoet’s are superficial. He never lied to Mandy Craddock. He didn’t get her pregnant knowing he already had a family. He has no proof that he is her baby’s father. Dean opens a beer and sinks onto the sofa. So we need a new flat by September. He could afford a place of his own now. I’d miss Jasper, Dean realizes. When Dean first met this unsmiling, public school, half-Dutch weirdo he was a free place to stay, a great guitarist, and that was that. Eighteen months later, he’s a friend. There’s so much in that word. Dean tunes his new acoustic Martin and feels around for the “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” chords. D…A…G…A? He fetches the double album from his room, where Tiffany’s scent still lingers, and puts side four on the stereo in the lounge. “With your mercury mouth in the missionary times” is D, A, G, A7. “And your eyes like smoke and your prayers like rhymes” has the same pattern, but the third line is different, as third lines tend to be. G…D…E minor? Dean tries picking instead of strumming. Better. Better. Try an F minor instead of the G. No, F. One spoon of Dylan makes a gallon of meanings. Why don’t I try to write lyrics like this? A song about how one brief phone call can change what you are. How a call from Tiffany Hershey—“Join me for a cocktail at the Hilton”—turned them into adulterous lovers. How stability is illusory. How certainty is ignorance. Dean gets a biro and starts writing. Time slips. Jasper’s out of the bath. Time slips again. The doorbell rings. Jasper’s getting it. It’s probably Elf.

  Jasper’s saying, “It’s for you.”

  * * *

  —

  IT TAKES DEAN a moment to recognize the scrawny, zombie-eyed couple at the door as Kenny Yearwood and his girlfriend, Floss. “Hey, Kenny. Floss. It’s been ages.” Dean’s mind boomerangs to the day of the riot in Grosvenor Square, and back to now. He stops himself asking, “How are yer?” The answer’s clear: They’re junkies.

  Kenny’s tense. “Has Rod Dempsey called?”

  “Not recently, no. Why?”

  “Can we step inside?”

  They want money. “Sure, but me ’n’ Jasper’re off out.”

  “We won’t be staying.” Floss glances around the mews.

  Dean lets them step into the hallway. They both have rucksacks. “We want our thirty quid,” declares Floss.

  What thirty quid? “Yer what?”

  “Kenny lent it you at the 2i’s,” says Floss. “Last year.”

  “That? That was a fiver. Kenny, I paid yer back at the Bag o’ Nails. The night Geno Washington was playing. Remember?”

  Kenny turns away his bloodshot eyes.

  “Thirty, it was.” Floss pushes back her hair, revealing the crook of her elbow, a lesion, and needle damage. “You can’t plead poverty now, pop star.”

  Dean asks Kenny, “Mate, what’s going on?”

  Kenny looks barely alive. “Give us a minute, Floss.”

  Floss is no longer the head-in-the-clouds hippie girl Dean met. She’s fractured and sharp-edged. “Don’t let him fob you off. Give me the cigarettes.”

  “Yer smoked the last one on the tube, Floss.”

  Dean has a packet in his shirt pocket and offers her one. Floss takes five and goes outside. Kenny says, “She’s nicer than that. Nothing fucks yer up as bad as shame. So I’m learning.”

  “Kenny, what’s happened?”

  Jasper is noodling on his Stratocaster in his room.

  “Crash us a ciggie too, would yer?” asks Kenny.

  “Take the pack. What Floss left, anyway.”

  Kenny’s hand’s trembling. Dean helps him light up. Kenny takes a grateful drag. “When did I see yer last?”

  “March. Grosvenor Square. Day o’ the big demo.”

  “Yeah, me ’n’ Floss tried smack a bit after that. Ever done it?”

  “I’m scared o’ needles,” admits Dean.

  “Yer can cook it on a spoon and suck the fumes up a straw, but…whatever yer do, don’t go near the stuff. Yer know how everyone tells yer, ‘Don’t touch drugs,’ and yer do ’em, and yer think, They were feeding me bullshit? Well, smack’s the one where it’s not bullshit. First time, it was…a-fucking-ma-zing. Like coming. With angels. Can’t describe it.” Kenny rubs a sore on his nostril. “But yer have to get that feeling back. Not ‘want to.’ Have to. Only the second time, it’s not as good. Third time’s not as good as the second. Down it goes. Now…yer gums’re bleedin’, yer feel like shit, yer hate it, but…yer need it to feel normal. Lost my job. Flogged my guitar. Rod gave us a few bags o’ weed to sell. To pay for the smack, like. As a favor. I kept it under the floorboards in our room.”

  “The commune in Hammersmith? Rivendell?”

  “Nah, there was a bust-up.” Kenny flinches. “Rod got us into a place he owns on Ladbroke Grove. A no-questions-asked sort o’ bedsit. A friend o’ Rod’s minded the door, day ’n’ night, so Floss felt safe. All our earnings from the weed, though, went on smack. But yer need more ’n’ more o’ the stuff. So, last w
eek, Rod said he’d pay us a fiver plus an ounce o’ Afghan White a week for ‘storage.’ Meaning, he stored a stash o’ coke under the floorboards in our room. It was our job to mind it.”

  Why’d Rod Dempsey trust two junkies to mind a stash of drugs? Dean is afraid he can guess.

  “The Afghan was the purest we’d had in ages. The high wasn’t like the first time, but it was like the fifth or sixth. Better than it’d been for ages. Two days later”—Kenny sucks the life out of his cigarette—“the coke was gone. The floorboards’d been lifted. I told Rod. Straightaway. He’s got a psycho side. He screamed at me. Asked if I thought he was stupid. But we never nicked it. I swear on my life. On Floss’s life. On bloody everybody’s life. We never.”

  Rod Dempsey nicked it, Dean thinks. “I believe yer.”

  “When Rod calmed down, he told me that me ’n’ Floss owed him six hundred quid. I told him we didn’t have six quid. Six bob. So Rod said me ’n’ Floss could pay him back by…” Kenny’s finding it hard to talk, “…going to parties.”

  “What kind o’ parties?”

  Kenny’s breathing speeds up. “Yesterday night, we were taken to a…a place in Soho, behind the Courthouse. Quite classy. Me ’n’ Floss was separated. I was given a bath, scrubbed down, shaved…They gave me a dab o’ smack—and…there was three men…”

  “What?”

  “Don’t make me spell it out. F’fucksake, Dean. Use yer imagination. Yeah? What yer thinking, that’s what they did. In turns. Get the fucking picture?”

  The words are “drugged” and “raped,” realizes Dean.

  Kenny wipes his eyes on his sleeve. He tokes on his cigarette, sharply. “Floss was in the car. After. She didn’t speak. I didn’t. The driver did. We’d earned back ten quid of our debt, he said. Five hundred and ninety more to go. He told us to forget the police. They’re paid off. If we ran away, he said our families’d be liable. He showed Floss a photo of her sister and said, ‘Lovely little thing, ain’t she?’ Back at Ladbroke Grove we had a sleeping tablet ’n’ ice cream and this morning we got Methadone. Floss told me to get her out o’ this or…she’d kill herself. I know she’s not bluffing. ’Cause I’m the same.”

  “D’yer want to hide out here?”

  “This’ll be one o’ the first places he’ll look.”

  “Why didn’t yer ask for help off the bat?”

  “Floss didn’t think yer’d believe me. Do yer?”

  “I didn’t know Rod did this—but…I’ve seen how he puts hooks into people. Plus, how could yer make this up? Why would yer?”

  Kenny, in the half-gloom, grips Dean’s wrist.

  Dean takes everything he has from his wallet—over eleven pounds—and puts it into Kenny’s hand. “The heroin. I’m no expert, I know from Harry Moffat that just saying ‘Quit what’s killing you’ does nothing. But if yer don’t get clean…”

  Jasper’s noodling turns into his “Nightwatchman” solo.

  Kenny stuffs the money into his pocket. “I’ll get us out to the middle o’ nowhere. Somewhere there’s no dealers. Isle o’ Sheppey maybe. I dunno. Find a bit o’ shelter, and…we’ll try cold turkey again. Yer feel like yer bloody dying. But that house in Soho, it was worse than dying.”

  The telephone rings. Kenny stands up, pale and shaking.

  “It’s okay,” says Dean. “It’ll be Elf to say she’s late.”

  Kenny crouches, like a frightened animal. “It’s him.”

  “Honest, Kenny. Apart from at a party last month, I’ve hardly seen him.” Dean picks up the receiver. “Hello?”

  “Dean, how the hell are yer? Rod Dempsey here.”

  The air is sucked out of Dean’s lungs. “Rod?”

  Kenny’s backing off, shaking his head.

  Rod Dempsey does a friendly little laugh. “Yer sound…funny. Case o’ speak o’ the devil, is it?”

  If I needed proof, this is it.

  Kenny’s left the flat. The front door’s half open to the pale dusk. I can’t help him, ’cept by lying well enough to fool a world champion. “Yer must be a bloody mind reader, Rod. Swear to God, ten minutes ago—no, five—me ’n’ Jasper were talking ’bout the best dope we ever smoked, and we thought o’ that Helmand Brown. Yer brought it over last autumn, with Kenny ’n’ Stew? Remember that?”

  “An unforgettable night. I can get yer some more, if yer want. Different batch, but just as good.”

  “Perfect. Yeah. Uh. We’re just finishing the new album, but soon after, maybe? I’ll give yer a call.”

  “Will do. Speaking o’ Kenny, have yer seen him? I’m trying to track him down.”

  “So’m I, actually.” Hide yer lie in a haystack of facts ’n’ half-truths. “Not since Grosvenor Square. He was in a commune out Shepherd’s Bush way. Have yer seen him? Is he okay?”

  Rod Dempsey calculates. “I met him ’n’ his lady friend last month. The Commune was giving him grief, so he asked me to keep my ear to the ground. A pal’s renting a place in Camden, all mod cons, good price. It’s perfect for him ’n’ Floss. Problem is, I’ve lost his number. Could yer track him down for me? Urgent, like.”

  Rod Dempsey’s hiding his lies in half-truths too. “I’d like to help. I’m trying to think who might know. But I’m drawing blanks.”

  “That’s the thing ’bout London,” says the drug dealer, pimp, and God knows what else. “There’s no knowing who’s coming round the next corner. Is there?”

  * * *

  —

  THE ONLY SIGNS of Kenny and Floss are two cigarette stubs on the bottom step. Evening is pooling in Chetwynd Mews. Dean’s mind is a noisy Top Five chart of problems and crises. He opens the garage doors to visit his Spitfire. He switches on the bulb and stares at her. The new place has to have a lock-up garage, he thinks, or a beauty like you won’t last fifteen minutes. It’s too late for a drive, but Dean climbs in and tries to find a moment’s peace. He doesn’t. He could be some kid’s dad. That’s the last thing I want. An affair with Tiffany Hershey’s a gratifying thrill, but How’s that going to end? Being turfed out by Jasper’s father is a pain, but it won’t end in homelessness. Kenny ’n’ Floss, though, that’s another matter. Nothing can ever undo what’s already been done to them. Even if—when, if, if, when—they kick the heroin, Dean knows their peace will always be frayed, will always have shadows at the edges. Floss is right to hate me. I’ve got a part in this. Kenny came to London because of Dean, and Dean did nothing to help him. Nothing. A figure crosses the mouth of the garage, stops, and looks in. “Hello, Dean.”

  It just comes out: “Oh, yer’ve got to be bloody joking.”

  Harry Moffat takes a shallow breath. “Been a while.”

  He steps into the yellow light. Dean has a good view.

  Harry Moffat is both the same and different.

  His liver spots are splotchier. His eyes have sunk.

  He’s shaved. His hair’s neat. He’s made an effort.

  Dean stays in his Triumph. “Ray tell yer my address, did he?”

  Harry Moffat shakes his head. “There’s only two de Zoets in the phone book and Mayfair’s likelier than Pinner. Yer might want to go ex-directory.”

  Dean stopped scripting possible encounters years ago, so now he has no store of lines to fall back on. “What d’yer want?”

  Harry Moffat has a new, sad, unsure half-smile. “Don’t know if I know, Dean. I…Well, first off, yer album’s brilliant.”

  Yer used to belt my mum, and Ray, and me.

  “ ’Specially ‘Purple Flames.’ Yer really put it across.”

  Dean wonders where his own anger and contempt have gone. Time’s a fire extinguisher, he thinks.

  Moths flutter around the garage bulb.

  “Lovely motor,” says Harry Moffat.

  Dean says nothing.

  “We was worried about yer while
yer was banged up in Italy.”

  Who’s the “we”? Moffats? Gravesenders?

  “Feels like a long time ago,” says Dean.

  “Guess yer’ve been busy? Tourin’, recordin’, ’n’ stuff?”

  Following a path yer used to shit on, a dream yer once poured paraffin on and set alight. “Yep.”

  “Yer’ve done well for yerself.”

  Dean can’t help it: “Must be all the encouragement yer gave me.” Harry Moffat flinches. No, I won’t feel guilty.

  “There’s lots o’ things I wish I’d done,” says Harry Moffat. “Lots o’ things I wish I’d never.” He indicates a stool in the mouth of the garage. “May I? I won’t keep yer, but my legs ain’t what they was.”

  Dean’s gesture says, It’s all the same to me.

  He sits and takes off his cap. Dean sees he’s stopped trying to hide his bald patch. “I’m in this group. For alcoholics. Thanks to them, I ain’t had a drink since…the accident. Yer heard ’bout that?”

  “The man who can’t walk and the girl with one eye?”

  Harry Moffat looks at his hands. “Yeah. There’s this lady in our group, Christine, she’s my sponsor. She says, ‘Not even God can change the past.’ It’s true. Yer can’t always fix stuff or put it right. But yer can say sorry. Maybe yer’ll be told to bugger off, maybe they’ll smack yer, but…yer can say it. So…” Harry Moffat takes a deep breath and scrunches his eyes shut. Dean was sure today had no surprises left in it, but the sight of tears on Harry Moffat’s cheeks proves him wrong. “So. Sorry for hitting yer, and yer mum, and Ray. Sorry I let yer down. Sorry I…didn’t see yer mum’s cancer. Sorry I was all yer had. Sorry I went off the rails after yer mum died. As if I was ever on the bloody rails! Sorry I burned yer stuff. Yer guitar. Bonfire Night. Sorry ’bout that time you’n’Kenny’n’Stew were busking. I did all that.” He opens his eyes and wipes his cheeks with his palms. “I’m not blaming the drink. It was there, God knows, but…” He shakes his head. “Lots o’ men in the AA, they never hurt a fly. I hit my family. That’s on me, that is. I’m sorry.” Harry Moffat stands up and puts his cap on. He’s about to say one last thing when Elf walks up.