Utopia Avenue

by David Mitchell

  “My point is, Stuff of Life proves what a few of us have been saying since Rubber Soul and Bringing It All Back Home: the best pop music is art. And art is about whatever the artist wants it to be. Falling in love for the first time? Yes. But also grief. Fame. Madness. Betrayal. Theft. The whole caboodle.”

  “Even—can yer say ‘sex’ on the radio?” asks Dean.

  Through the glass, Bat’s producer is making a NO gesture.

  “Sure,” says the DJ, “as long as you in no way suggest sex might be pleasurable, because that would be pure filth. Elf, could we give ‘Bluebells’ a spin before we hear a message from our sponsors?”

  “Fire away. It’ll be a North American exclusive.”

  “Then to all you passengers aboard Locomotive FM”—Bat positions the stylus over the quiet groove on the LP and shucks an earphone over an ear—“Great till Late on 97.8 FM, this is ‘Even the Bluebells,’ by our special studio guests Utopia Avenue…”

  * * *

  —

  ELF, DEAN, AND Griff slalom through the afternoon’s interviews at the office of Gargoyle Records on Bleecker Street. After each round of questions, Elf hopes that Levon or Max will appear with the news that Jasper has shown up at the office or the Chelsea. This does not happen. Max is hunting for a session musician who knows Paradise and Stuff of Life and who might step in to save the Ghepardo show. This, so far, is too tall an order. Howie Stoker has called in a favor at the NYPD to put out a city-wide alert for a “tall white Caucasian with long red hair in a purple jacket.” Like looking for a needle in a needle factory, thinks Elf. They return to the Chelsea Hotel at 6 P.M. to prepare for a show that may never happen. Dean is furious with the absent Jasper. Griff is silent. Elf’s more worried than angry. She’s also feeling guilty. She wishes she could rewind to last night when Levon told her about Jasper’s behavior. I should have checked on him then. I should have checked on him this morning…

  At 7 P.M. they depart for the Ghepardo. Levon brings Jasper’s Stratocaster in case he appears at the club. Manhattan lights up, but Elf barely notices. She is certain Jasper would be here if he possibly could. Her rosiest explanations are now that Jasper’s had a crack-up, or has been mugged; the bleakest ones end in a city morgue. Max still hasn’t found anyone able to play Jasper’s parts from Stuff of Life, but he has tracked down a session player who can make a decent fist of the Paradise songs. The plan is to wait until the very last minute, plead appendicitis, and perform Dean’s and Elf’s Paradise material plus a few covers. “It’ll only be half as good as it should be,” says Dean, “at bloody best.”

  The car turns onto Eighth Avenue and shunts along in stop-and-start traffic. Elf combs the crowd’s countless selves for a tall, stooping figure. A man bangs on the car window, yelling, “I’m hungry! Hungry! Hungry! I’m hungry!”

  The driver veers the Lincoln into the middle lane.

  “He’d better be in hospital after this,” says Dean.

  “Don’t wish that,” says Elf. “However pissed off you are.”

  “Why bloody not? The selfish prick’s—”

  “I’ve been in hospitals, Deano,” says Griff. “Elf’s right.”

  * * *

  —

  A PINK NEON sign inscribes THE GHEPARDO on the glowing dusk over a street-level entrance under unlit anonymous offices. Max opens the car door. “No news.” A poster says, TAKE A TRIP DOWN UTOPIA AVENUE, using the Stuff of Life font. Luisa is waiting in the lobby. Her smile vanishes when she sees the band’s faces. “What?”

  “Jasper’s been missing all day,” explains Elf.

  “Don’t assume the worst,” says Luisa.

  Brigit, the matriarch of the Ghepardo, is less fazed. “Hey, musicians may be walking asscracks or they may be God’s mouthpiece on Earth, but punctual they ain’t.”

  Elf looks at Levon. Jasper is always punctual.

  Brigit shows the band onto the stage for the sound check. The Ghepardo is a big old once-grand ballroom. Nine glitterballs hang from a paneled ceiling in need of renovation. The shoulder-high stage is well equipped with speakers, lights, and a stage curtain. A capable sound technician helps Elf, Dean, and Griff find levels that suit them and the space. Dean plays the Stratocaster and guesses at the levels Jasper would ask for. Sound checks are usually fun. This one feels like a rehearsal for a funeral.

  * * *

  —

  8:15 P.M. THE substitute session player is caught in uptown traffic and won’t arrive for another half-hour. Even Brigit is concerned now. Max is glum. Levon maintains a calm façade, but Elf guesses he’s screaming inside. Elf is resorting to prayer: not Let him walk in now, but Let him be alive and well; failing that, she’ll take Let him be alive. She finds the words to “Prove It” have faded from memory. How many hundreds of times have I sung those lines? She studies her emergency crib sheet, with Luisa’s help. Howie Stoker arrives with a honey-skinned girlfriend a third his age with green eyeshadow, arachnid eyelashes, and satin-white hair. He introduces her as Ivanka. Naturally, Howie is disturbed that the star guitarist in “his” first signing is nowhere to be found thirty minutes before their American debut. “Where is he?”

  “Up my bloody arse,” mutters Dean. “I hid him for a joke.”

  “Shouldn’t bandmates look out for each other?” asks Howie.

  Griff puffs a smoke-ring of indifference.

  Howie’s partly right, thinks Elf. We’re so used to Jasper’s eccentricities, we stopped watching out for him.

  Levon comes back from the ballroom. “It’s filling up.”

  * * *

  —

  IT’S 8:45 P.M. Neither Jasper nor his stand-in has arrived. Elf has a sense of déjà vu, and traces it to anxiety dreams where she has to perform at a pre-doomed show. There’s no waking from this one. “Why don’t the three of you just play a few of the new tunes?” suggests Howie.

  “Why don’t greyhounds have three fookin’ legs?” asks Griff.

  “Who exactly is impressed by your cussing?” asks Howie.

  “Haven’t got the fookiest idea, Howie.”

  Aretha Franklin’s Lady Soul LP is playing on the Ghepardo’s speakers. Elf wishes it was something less good. Howie lumbers over to meet Luisa. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  “We haven’t,” Luisa confirms.

  “Howie Stoker, mover and shaker. And you are?”

  “A friend of Elf’s.”

  Howie purses his lips and nods. “I connect with señoritas. An ex-wife was a past-life therapist. I was a matador in Cádiz in Viking times. We may be cousins. Sufficiently distant ones.”

  Luisa looks at Elf. They both look at Ivanka, ten steps away. She can hear. She gives no sign of caring. Is she paid by the hour? “We will not be connecting, Mr. Stoker. Not in any life.”

  “Is disaster!” Ivanka falls to her knees. “My eyelash…is lost! Everybody, look for!” She studies the dark carpet. “Is black!”

  Levon enters: “Look who’s arrived.”

  It’s Jasper, walking in as if it’s nine o’clock this morning, not ten minutes before the show. “I need a glass of water.”

  During the long and dramatic pause, Elf is tempted to go over and give him a hug; but something holds her back.

  Dean finds his voice first. “Where the fucking hell were yer?”

  “Walking. I need a glass of water.”

  Dean seizes a jug of ice water and empties it over Jasper.

  Jasper stands there, soaked and dripping.

  “ ‘Walking’? We’ve been shitting ourselves ’bout yer all day; yer didn’t tell us if yer was alive or what; just for sodding ‘walking’? Yer selfish bloody pillock!”

  Jasper takes a glass of water from Elf and drinks it in one. “Another.” Levon has magicked up a tea-towel and is dabbing Jasper’s face dry. Elf gets him a second glass. “Are you
all right, Jasper?”

  “I am here to play. I want their energy.”

  “Are yer high?” asks Dean. “Yer high, aren’t yer?”

  “He said not,” reports Levon. “His pupils are okay.”

  “The…instrument. The—”

  “That’s not high?” scoffs Dean.

  “Let’s focus on the show,” Levon tells him, “and what help Jasper needs. You’ve made your displeasure clear.”

  “I bloody haven’t. We had promo, de Zoet. Interviews. Work. Sound check. The set list. We’re professionals. We’re on in ten minutes. No. It’s five now. ‘I went for a walk’ is not good enough.”

  Jasper is unmoved. “I gave him a day’s grace. To make peace.”

  Him? Elf looks at Luisa. “Who, Jasper? Who’s ‘him’?”

  Jasper stares at the dressing table mirrors. He walks over and brings his face up close. An ecstatic smile spreads across his face.

  “Jasper?” asks Elf. “What are you doing? Jasper?”

  Max and Brigit hurry in, having heard the news. “Glad you could join us, Jasper,” says Max. “Can you play?”

  “That question is off the bloody menu,” says Dean.

  “I wholeheartedly agree with Dean,” says Howie Stoker.

  “De Zoet will play.” Jasper watches his reflection turn and tilt.

  Anyone would think this was his first encounter with a mirror. “What happened to you out there?” asks Elf.

  “Later,” Levon tells her, softly. “Later.”

  “Damn right,” says Brigit. “We’ve got no warm-up act and you’re on now. I’m Brigit. This is my club. Get your ass here earlier tomorrow or I’m cutting your fees in half.”

  Jasper walks past Brigit, takes his guitar out of its case, plugs it into a baby Vox in the corner, and begins to tune up.

  Brigit shakes her head in disgust and leaves.

  “All’s well that ends well, it seems,” says Howie Stoker.

  All is not well, thinks Elf. “If you’re having some kind of mental crisis, Jasper, you can—”

  “Bloody well have it in England, a week Friday,” says Dean.

  Jasper plays a G. “I am here to play. I want their energy.”

  * * *

  —

  DEAN SPEAKS INTO the mic. “We’ve been waiting all our lives to”—a spike of feedback—“to say, ‘Good evening, New York—we are Utopia Avenue!’ ” The crowd clap at middling intensity. Griff plays a drum-roll, Elf plays a line of “the Bronx is up and the Battery’s down,” and Jasper could be waiting for a bus. Dean and Elf exchange a worried glance. “With no further ado,” says Dean, “here’s our single, ‘Roll Away the Stone.’ And a-one, and a-two, and a-one two three—” Jasper comes in on the four and plays his guitar part as per the album. Griff and Dean are as tight as ever, Elf plays with as much verve as she can muster, but Jasper’s a lifeless imitation of Jasper de Zoet. They get through the song, but Elf senses the audience is dubious about this alleged peer of Clapton and Hendrix. The same thing happens with “Mona Lisa Sings the Blues.” Griff and Dean support Elf’s performance as best they can, but Jasper’s playing is sluggish and sclerotic. He’s making no connection with the crowd. Many onlookers stand with folded arms. He’s not looking at the band, either, so Elf, Griff, and Dean have to fit around his stinting guitar part. Next up is “Darkroom.” He steps up to the mic. Someone calls, “Say a few words, Jasper.” He says nothing, and merely counts the band in. If that wasn’t a deliberate Fuck You it definitely came over as one. Jasper doesn’t drop notes or forget lyrics, but he plays without the joy or musical acrobatics that make Utopia Avenue’s shows a hot ticket. The applause for “Darkroom” is perfunctory. He’s behaving as if the Ghepardo is beneath him. “The Hook” and “Prove It” follow. Both are, in Griff’s phrase, three-legged greyhounds. The reviews will range from mixed to submersion in a cesspit. Elf senses the crowd’s confusion: Why are three-quarters of Utopia Avenue playing their asses off, but the guitarist is only going through the motions? Dean’s pissed off. Griff looks grim. Elf’s sweating buckets. After a lackluster “Prove It” she glances into the wings and sees Luisa. She looks concerned. Jasper names the next song on the set list—“Sound Mind”—and pain distorts his face. He hunches up and shudders for a second or two. When he straightens up, he looks surprised, and Elf dares to hope the real Jasper is back and that pallid impostor is gone. Jasper looks out at the Ghepardo. Tinkerbells from the glitterballs dance across his face. “Thanks for coming out tonight, everyone.”

  Someone calls out, “More than you’ve fuckin’ done, pal!”

  Jasper turns to Dean: “Thanks.” To Griff: “Nice work.” To Elf: “Goodbye.” Elf doesn’t understand why he’s saying this. We’re not at the halfway point yet. Dean sends Elf a what’s-going-on? look. Elf replies with a search-me look, but at least Jasper appears to be present again. He strums; asks the tech guy for more volume on his guitar; shuts his eyes…and slams into an amp-blowing, bent-string howl; and fires off a scale of triads, sliding from high E all the way down. Was he playing some weird mind game with us all? Jasper rewards his first cheer of the night with a new riff that isn’t “Sound Mind” but gets the audience thunder-clapping in time. Griff punctuates the melody; Dean enters the fray with a three-note underlay. Elf launches slabs of Hammond chords. This could be us jamming for fun at Pavel Z’s on a Soho morning. Jasper drives the improvisation over three laps of rocky blues before blasting it to pieces with a jangled, hammered, sustained B flat, the opening of “Sound Mind.” Dean gets the message and plays the song’s bass riff; Elf comes in on the next bar; and Griff chop-slaps on the next. Jasper leans in close to the mic to do the first verse in his psycho-whisper…

  * * *

  —

  …JASPER SETS OFF firework after firework through “Sound Mind” ’s nine verses. The Ghepardo is a beast transformed. At the third chorus the band drop away to let five hundred New Yorkers bellow out the final line. Jasper’s eyes are half closed. He gallops into a rapid-fire outro. Elf summons a crescendo of bathybic, many-fingered runs; and Dean’s hanging on for dear life, his faster-than-the-eye fingers skimming around his fretboard. Jasper takes measured steps toward the Marshall stack, flirting with frequencies until—a yooooo­ooooo­oowl! of feedback thrashes and tears the air; a glance at Griff reveals an eight-armed Oriental deity; and Elf is laughing, drunk on relief that Jasper’s back, stoned on the dope of art. Jasper’s cheeks are wet. I didn’t know he had tear glands. The studio “Sound Mind” is long gone. Elf hammers along to Dean’s riff with both hands, cross-hands, slam-hands. Jasper walks into the center of the stage and looks past Elf; his eyes track someone walking toward him, but Elf sees nobody. Jasper nods at the presence, and his eyeballs roll back in their sockets…

  * * *

  —

  …AND HE SLUMPS like a discarded puppet. Elf stops playing. Dean stops. Griff stops and stands. The audience falls silent. Someone shouts, “What’s going on?” Jasper’s mouth’s moving, forming a word Elf cannot read, and closing. A fish drowning in air. She recalls Dean’s story about Little Richard’s fake heart attack, but this isn’t that. Jasper’s nose is bleeding. Maybe he cracked it on the floor. Maybe it’s more sinister. Levon and Brigit come skidding up. Levon shouts, “Lower that curtain!” Seconds later, the fire curtain drops down. Jasper spasms and snarls, like a dog in pain. Muscles are moving in his neck. Brigit shouts, “Get Dr. Grayling!” Elf remembers Brighton Polytechnic. Staff appear with a tarpaulin. They slip it under Jasper’s body and, with Griff and Dean, carry him to the changing room. They lower him onto the red leatherette sofa. Jasper’s only semiconscious, at best. Luisa checks for a pulse—Of course she knows first aid: her dad’s a war reporter—while Dean dabs blood from Jasper’s nose with a hanky. “Yer’ll be fine, mate, don’t worry, yer’ll be okay.” Luisa says his pulse is through the roof. A hefty, bison-faced man i
n flannel barrels in with Brigit. “This is Dr. Grayling, he’s hip.” He kneels by the sofa and peers into Jasper’s face: “Can you hear me, Jasper?”

  Jasper makes no response. His eyes flicker.

  A scraping noise comes from Jasper’s throat.

  Dr. Grayling asks, “Anyone: Does he have a history of epilepsy?”

  Elf forces a reply, “Not as far as we know.”

  “Diabetes?”

  “No,” says Dean.

  “You know for certain?”

  “I’m his flatmate.”

  “What drugs is he on? Do not lie.”

  “Only Queludrin,” says Elf. “As far as we know.”

  The doctor looks skeptical: “The antipsychotic? Are you sure?”

  “Yes. He took some yesterday.”

  “Any schizophrenic episodes of late?”

  “I don’t think so,” says Elf.

  “He was missing all day,” says Dean. “We can’t be sure what happened since this morning, or what he took.”

  “I’ll give him a sedative to bring his pulse down.” The doctor readies a hypodermic needle. “Brigit, you’d better call an ambu—”

  The doctor’s mouth stops moving, as do his arms, hands, fingers, and eyelids. He is a 3D photograph of himself…except for a vein. Elf sees it throb. Dean, also, is motionless, except for his chest rising and falling. Elf turns her head to Luisa—who is motionless, biting her fingernail. “Lu? Can you—”

  TIMEPIECE

  The wall in Jasper’s mind is shattered, and falls away.

  Knock Knock bursts out, flooding his brain.

  Jasper’s sentience dims to near zero.

  Presence reverts to Absence.

  Jasper’s body is now Knock Knock’s. He can no more command it than the viewer of Lawrence of Arabia can command Peter O’Toole, up on the screen. No vocabulary exists for this non-death. Jasper must resort to metaphor. I used to drive this car where, when, and how I wished; now I’m a passenger in the back, tied and gagged. Or, I was once a lighthouse: now I’m a memory of a lighthouse in a mind unraveling. Through the eyes that were his, he sees the interior of Private Ward N9D. Through the ears that were his, he hears textured silence. The Hollow Man has stopped breathing.