Utopia Avenue

by David Mitchell

  “Evening.”

  “You’re Elf. Yer in the band.”

  “Ye-es. I saw the garage was open and…”

  “Harry Moffat.”

  Elf frowns, and unfrowns. “Oh, my God, you’re…” She glances at Dean and stops herself saying, Dean’s dad.

  “Yep. That Harry Moffat. Yer got a lovely voice, pet.”

  “Thanks. Thank you.” Elf is confused. “Wait till you hear Dean’s vocals on the new LP, though. He’s been taking harmony lessons and he’s got this song called ‘The Hook’ and, I’m telling you, he’s airtight.”

  “Yeah? I’ll look forward to hearing it. A lot.”

  The stockbroker neighbor with the dog walks by, lobbing in a “Lovely evening.” Dean holds up a hand in greeting.

  Elf says, “Isn’t it just?” and the neighbor’s gone. Elf asks Harry Moffat, “So…are you…coming up to the boys’ flat? Or is this a garage party?”

  Every word of what he just said, thinks Dean, was real. But I can’t just flick a switch. It’s been too long now. “He’s leaving.”

  “Bless yer, Elf, but I’m heading back to Gravesend. British Rail waits for no man.” He nods at Dean. “Look after each other, eh?”

  With that he slips off, like a man in a story.

  Elf turns to Dean. “Are you okay?”

  Dean taps out a rhythm on the steering wheel. “No idea, Elf. None. Look, I’ll, uh…be up in a few minutes.”

  CHELSEA HOTEL #939

  “Wake up, Elf.” it’s who? it’s Dean.

  She hauls herself out of the quicksand of sleep.

  “Cop a load o’ that,” says Dean, inches to her left.

  She opens her eyes to find she fell asleep on Dean’s shoulder. Through the airplane window, far, far below, is a metropolis of grays and browns, needlepointed by lights, a tapestry sliding as the plane banks. Elf’s brain plays the opening bars of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. “Well, that’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen,” murmurs Elf through a mouth gummy with sleep. It’s Lilliput, Brobdingnag, and Laputa, all in one. Manhattan floats on glassy dark, a raft laden with skyscrapers. Beveled skyscrapers; skyscrapers sharp enough to draw blood; skyscrapers stippled with windows, ledges, and braille-like dimples; burnished skyscrapers, lovingly polished. “There’s the Statue of Liberty,” says Dean. “See?”

  “She looks bigger in her pictures,” says Elf.

  “Looks like a garden ornament from up here,” says Griff.

  Elf checks on Jasper, to her right. His woolly hat is pulled down to his nostrils. “You alive in there, Jasper? Nearly there.”

  Jasper unrolls his hat to reveal bloodshot eyes, fumbles in his bag, and extracts a pill bottle, which he drops. He swears in Dutch.

  Elf reaches for the bottle. “It’s okay.”

  “Did I lose any? Find them all. All of them.”

  “No—the lid’s still on, look. Let me open it. How many?”

  Jasper gulps air. “Two.”

  Elf reads the label—Queludrin—and tips a couple of pills onto Jasper’s sweaty palm. They are big and pale blue.

  Jasper swallows them and screws the lid onto the bottle.

  “What are they for?” asks Elf. “Nerves?”

  “Yes.” Meaning, “Leave me alone.”

  “We’ll be landing soon,” says Elf.

  Jasper pulls the hat over his eyes and Elf returns to the view. New York…a toponym, a symbol, a stage, a byword for Heaven and Hell—but only now, in Elf’s mind, does it qualify as a real place. Frame by frame, her imaginary New York, assembled from West Side Story, Spider-Man comics, On the Waterfront, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Valley of the Dolls, and gangster movies, is dissolving into a solidity of girders, bricks, blocks, cladding, wiring, plumbing, paving, traffic lanes, the tops of buildings, shops, apartments, and eight million people…one of whom is Luisa Rey. Elf’s heart thuds. It hurts. But why hasn’t she answered my calls? My telegrams? My telepathic commands? For all of August, Luisa and Elf airmailed letters to each other every day and spoke for a ruinously expensive five minutes every week.

  Eleven days ago, the cards and letters stopped. Until day five, Elf told herself there was a logical explanation: a postal strike, somewhere, or a family emergency at Luisa’s end. On day six, she rang Luisa’s apartment. The line was disconnected. On day seven she called the New York Spyglass office only to be told Luisa was “away until further notice.” No further details were forthcoming, however craftily Elf probed. On day eight, the logical explanation began to look sickeningly obvious: Luisa didn’t feel for Elf what Elf felt for Luisa, and this most startling love of Elf’s life had ended as abruptly as it had begun.

  Yet a part of Elf holds out hope that the logical explanation is not the correct one. Surely, surely, Lu would have told me. She wouldn’t have dumped me in this cruel limbo where I don’t know if my heart is broken or not, and have no way to find out.

  Would she? What if I didn’t know her as well as I thought I did? It wouldn’t be the first time. Would it, Baby Wombat?

  She’s counting days. Like I counted days with Bruce. The cruelest twist is that she has to suffer alone. Not a living soul knows about her and Lu. Not a living soul can know…

  * * *

  —

  AT THE HERSHEYS’ Midsummer Ball, Elf and Luisa found a quiet back staircase with a window seat big enough for them to hide in. The curtain pulled across, and they were hidden from the garden below by a gingko tree in midsummer leaf. It could have been designed for assignations. They talked about music and politics; families and childhood; London, California, and New York; dreams and time. They shared a cigarette, using a glass ashtray placed between them. They talked about who they loved now, and why. Elf spoke about Mark, and all the birthday cakes she would never make for him. “Bake them anyway,” said Luisa. “With candles. They do in Mexico.” Footsteps descended, past their hiding place; Luisa made a comic-conspiratorial face; the footsteps carried on. Elf wanted to kiss her new friend, more urgently than she had ever wanted to kiss anyone. One voice in Elf’s head warned her, She’s a girl. Stop it. This is not okay. A stronger voice in Elf’s head replied, I know, and she’s the most beautiful person I’ve ever met; and why should I stop?

  Luisa and Elf looked at one another.

  “So this…is happening, isn’t it?” said Luisa.

  Elf’s pulse was fast and hard. “Yes. You’re so calm.”

  “I’m guessing I’d be your first,” said Luisa. “If…”

  Elf was ashamed and not. “That obvious, huh?”

  “I can see your heartbeat. Look.” Luisa touched a vein in Elf’s left wrist and the left side of her body melted. Luisa spoke softly. “I know what you’re feeling. Social conditioning is a radio. It’s blaring, ‘It’s wrong! She’s a girl!’ ”

  Elf nodded, gasped, and sighed all at once, messily.

  “Turn off the radio. Click. Like that. Don’t overanalyze. In fact, don’t analyze. I did and there was no need. Don’t fret. You’re not about to step through a one-way looking glass. You won’t grow horns. You’re not swapping the tribe of the Respectable for the tribe of the Perverts. Nobody needs to know. I’m safe. It’s only two people. Only us. Only”—that smile again—“love.”

  A whoosh, a rush, and they were kissing.

  Elf pulled back, flushed and amazed.

  Honey, tobacco, and Bordeaux wine.

  “Love,” said Luisa, “with a dash of lust.”

  Elf stroked Luisa’s face. Like she would a man’s. Luisa stroked hers. Elf’s heart vibrated like a double bass. Desire, desire, desire, and desire.

  “Don’t forget to breathe,” whispered Luisa.

  Elf nearly giggled. She took a deep, deep breath.

  A door opened up the stairs. Elf and Luisa sat back. Two friends, enjoying a quiet catc
h-up, away from the party. Light footsteps came down to the window seat, and a small hand pulled the curtain back. A miniature blond boy with baby blue eyes peered in. He wore a cowboy hat with a sheriff’s star. “This is my den.”

  “Correct,” said Luisa. “What’s your name, Sheriff?”

  “Crispin Hershey. What are you doing here?”

  “Actually, we’re not really here,” said Elf.

  Crispin frowned. “Oh yes you are.”

  “Oh no we’re not,” said Elf. “You’re dreaming us. Right now. You’re in bed, asleep. We’re not real.”

  Crispin thought. “You look real.”

  “That’s dreams for you,” said Luisa. “When you’re in one, like you are now, it feels very very real. Doesn’t it?”

  Crispin nodded.

  “We’ll prove you’re dreaming,” said Elf. “Go back to your bed, lie down, shut your eyes, then wake up. Then come back, and we won’t be here. Why? Because we never were. Okay?”

  Crispin thought. “Okay.”

  “Off you go then,” said Luisa. “Back to your room. Chop chop. No time to waste.”

  The boy turned and ran back up the stairs. Elf and Luisa climbed out of the window seat and hurried downstairs. Before they re-entered the party, Luisa asked, “What now?”

  Elf didn’t analyze. “A taxi.”

  * * *

  —

  THE BAND QUEUE at immigration control in LaGuardia Airport for one hour and twenty minutes. Jasper recovers some of his composure, if not his color. Griff, Dean, and Levon run through, and expand upon, the band’s repertoire of time-killing word games devised during sixteen months of driving around the United Kingdom in the Beast. Elf is ushered to the booth of an immigration officer. The official squints at Elf’s passport photo, then at Elf, over his iron-framed glasses. He has sugar on his mustache. “Elizabeth—Frances—Holloway.” His voice drags itself wearily to the end of his sentence. “Musician, it says here.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “What kinda music you play?”

  Don’t mention rock ’n’ roll, Levon advised, or psychedelia or politics. “Folk music, for the most part.”

  “Folk music. Like that Joan Baez.”

  “A little like Joan Baez, yes.”

  “A little like Joan Baez. You do antiwar songs?”

  An instinct cautions Elf. “Not as such.”

  “My eldest son signed up for Vietnam.”

  Thin ice. “That must be tough.”

  “Wanna know the worst part?” The man removes his glasses. “Over there, it’s a goddamn slaughterhouse. Over here, goddamn freaks are free to burn draft cards, rut like rabbits, riot, and sing about peace. Who buys them that freedom? Kids like my boy.”

  Of the twelve immigration booths, thinks Elf, why did I have to get this one? “My own repertoire would be more traditional than in the protest area.”

  “Yeah? Traditionally what?”

  “Traditional folk. English, Scottish, Irish.”

  “I’m Irish. Sing me something Irish.”

  Elf assumes she misheard. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Sing me something Irish. A folk song. Or is this”—he waggles her passport—“just so much bullcrap?”

  “You mean…you want me to sing—right here?”

  “Yeah. That’s exactly what I mean.”

  There’s no higher authority to appeal to. Okay then, an impromptu gig. Elf leans in, taps out a 4/4 rhythm on the desk, looks through the man’s lenses into his pupils, and takes a breath:

  On Raglan Road on an Autumn Day,

  I saw her first and knew

  That her dark hair would weave a snare

  That I may one day rue.

  I saw the danger, yet I walked

  Along the enchanted way

  And I said, “Let grief be a falling leaf

  At the dawning of the day.”

  The immigration man’s Adam’s apple bobs. He guides his cigarette to his lips and inhales a lungful of smoke. “Pretty.” He stamps Elf’s passport and hands it back. “Yeah.”

  “I hope your son comes home soon.”

  “He worked at a fuel depot. Near the front. An artillery shell came outta nowhere. Whole frickin’ place went up like the Fourth of July. Nothing left of my boy but his dog tag. Nineteen years old, he was. A bit of metal. That’s all we’ve got.”

  Elf manages to say, “I’m so sorry.”

  The bereaved father stubs out his cigarette, peers back at the queue, and motions at the next supplicating foreigner. “Next!”

  * * *

  —

  “GOOD GOLLY, MISS Molly.” Max Mulholland, the pink-cheeked, feathery-haired, pomaded A&R man of Gargoyle Records, is waiting in Arrivals with a very large card on which WELCOMING THE NAKED GENIUS OF UTOPIA AVENUE is written. Luisa Rey, the only person Elf wants to see waiting in Arrivals, is nowhere. Max Mulholland embraces Levon and groans like a lover. “Lev, Lev, Lev, Lev, Lev. You’re all skin and bone. Is rationing still a thing in England? What are you living on? Roots? Berries? Solid air?”

  “Wings and prayers, Max. Thanks for coming out.”

  “Psshaw! It’s not every day I get to welcome an old friend and a new signing. Griff, Jasper, Dean, Elf. The Avenue.” He greets them handshake by handshake. “You, sirs and mademoiselle, are magnificent. Oh, my dear sweet God, I’ve heard an early acetate of Stuff of Life and it—is—a…” he mouths, “masterpiece.”

  “We’re glad yer think so,” says Dean.

  “Oh, but I do. And Jerry Nussbaum in The Village Voice agrees.” With a flourish, he produces a newspaper open to the right page. “ ‘Question: Mix a shot of R&B with a glug of psychedelia, add a dash of folk and shake well, and what do you get? Answer: Utopia Avenue, whose debut LP Paradise Is the Road to Paradise made a big splash in the band’s native England. With sophomore effort Stuff of Life, this idiosyncratic quartet look set to make waves on our shores. So who in hell are Utopia Avenue? Miss Elf Holloway, who wrote Wanda Virtue’s Top Twenty hit “Any Way the Wind Blows” when she was sweet sixteen, lead guitarist Jasper de Zoet and bassist Dean Moss provide two or three songs per head, ably anchored by drummer-of-many-parts Griff Griffin.’ ”

  “Sounds as if my arms and legs unscrew,” says Griff.

  “ ‘Invention is unflagging across the album’s nine tracks,’ ” Max reads, “ ‘from outrageously catchy opener “The Hook” to the contagiously Dylan-esque closer, “Look Who It Isn’t.” Having three distinct singer-songwriters affords a spectrum of musicality few bands can match. Moss’s ode to liberty “Roll Away the Stone” broods and rises to a Hammond-swirling climax with hell-hounds on its tail. Holloway’s “Prove It” is a tragicomic stomper about love and theft, while her instrumental “Even the Bluebells” captures a genie in a bottle of deep jazz-blues. Virtuosic guitarist de Zoet brings the evensong “Nightwatchman” to the party, and magnum opus “Sound Mind.” Whether Utopia Avenue can recreate the studio wizardry onstage will be revealed at New York’s Ghepardo club this week, but be in no doubt—Stuff of Life is one shit-hot record.’ ” Max looks up. “Welcome to America.”

  “Who’s Jerry Nussbaum?” asks Levon.

  “The kind of critic who’d look at a Michelangelo and complain the marble’s too pale and the dick’s too small. Jasper, you look like you want to puke.”

  “I’m not the world’s best flier.”

  “We have vomit bags in the cars.” Max nods at the two drivers, who nod at porters. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  —

  THE TWO LIMOUSINES leave the futuristic airport up a ramp to a highway on pillars. Levon, Jasper, and Griff travel in the first car; Elf, Dean, and Max Mulholland follow in the second. Dean strokes the walnut trimmings. “Lincoln Continental.” Highway lights dot
a path across the urban dusk to the glittering city. Paul Simon’s new song “America” plays itself in Elf’s head. I imagined I’d be making this journey with Lu. Dean turns to Elf, looking tired but excited. “It’s a long old way from Brighton Poly, eh?”

  “A long, long, long, long way away.”

  Streetlamps slide overhead. Pylons stride across wastelands, like Martian invaders. American trucks would dwarf British lorries.

  “This view still gives me goosebumps,” says Max.

  “Are yer from New York, Max?” asks Dean.

  “No. I endured a childhood in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.”

  “It’s an idyllic name,” remarks Elf, “Cedar Rapids.”

  “Beware idyllic names in the New World.”

  “So where’d yer meet Levon?” asks Dean.

  “On our first Monday at the now defunct Flake-Stern Agency. We arrived to be told that just the one job was available, and that on Friday each of us would be given five minutes to persuade Messrs. Flake and Stern why he should get the job and his rival the chop.”

  “How gladiatorial,” says Elf.

  “ ‘Shitty’ was the word I used,” says Max. “We had both given up jobs for the Flake-Stern offer—and had my rival been anyone but Levon Frankland, I’d have spent the week plotting and backstabbing to save my skin. But Lev spotted in me what I spotted in him. We devised a pact and hatched a plot. We borrowed files from Accounts and did some midnight sifting at my apartment. Cometh the hour of doom on Friday, we made a joint statement that the agency would be offering us both full-time positions. Otherwise, on Monday the agency’s clients would learn about the discrepancy between earned monies received and monies paid out. On Tuesday the clients’ lawyers would start calling. By close of business on Wednesday, Flake-Stern would likely cease to exist.”

  “Yer blackmailed yer prospective bosses?” asks Dean.

  “We presented them with a joint offer.”

  “It only worked because neither you nor Levon stabbed the other in the back,” remarks Elf.