* * *
—
JASPER SLIDES THE elevator door open and finds an elegant ballroom with a high ceiling and chandeliers. At the end of the long table sits Yu Leon Marinus. “You might want to step out of there,” says the doctor. “The elevator has a mind of its own.”
Jasper enters the ballroom. Three large windows are semi-opaque. A vast mirror doubles the space and light. Jasper averts his gaze, then averts it back. One less phobia. Pictures from many eras adorn the walls, including Agnolo Bronzino’s Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time. Jasper thought the painting was in London’s National Gallery. “Knock Knock’s gone,” he tells Marinus. “So I guess last night was real.”
“He is gone. It was real.” Marinus indicates a seat near his and lifts a silver dome of the type used to keep food warm. There are poached eggs, mushrooms, brown toast, grapefruit juice, and a pot of tea.
“That’s what I like to eat at home.”
“Fancy that. Tuck in, if you’re hungry.”
Jasper finds that he is, sits down—and realizes they’ve been speaking Dutch. “A psychiatrist, a Horologist, and a linguist.”
“My Dutch is rusty, so”—Marinus reverts to English—“I’ll spare you further earache. I was reborn in Haarlem six lifetimes ago, but Dutch evolves so rapidly. Really, I should go and live there for a few months to brush up. Perhaps Galavazi can organize a residency.”
Jasper grinds black pepper onto his egg. “You really do come back? Lifetime after lifetime after lifetime?”
“Same soul, old mind, new body. Now, let’s not insult the chef by letting our breakfast cool. Bon appétit.”
Under Marinus’s dome is a bowl of rice and miso soup. They eat in silence for a minute. Normals feel awkward in the absence of conversation, but Marinus is no Normal. Jasper notices Marinus’s newspaper is the Russian edition of Pravda. “Were you Russian in a previous life?”
“Twice.” Marinus dabs his mouth. “Any newspaper named ‘Truth’ is bound to be stuffed with lies. Yet lies may illuminate.”
Jasper’s yolk bleeds yellow-orange. “So Knock Knock agreed to leave without a fight, and the psychosurgery was successful.”
Marinus tips a small dish of pickles onto his rice. “We made a proposal. Esther is persuasive.”
Jasper pours some tea into a Wedgwood cup. “A proposal?”
“If he granted you your lifetime,” Marinus lifts his bowl and chopsticks, “we would grant him one in return.”
“How? He doesn’t have a body.”
“I found him a spare.”
Jasper is flummoxed.
“Last June, a teenage male in a city on the eastern seaboard took a drug overdose. His soul left his body that night, but his body saved itself by entering a coma. The police couldn’t identify him and nobody came looking for him. In August John Doe’s coma was downgraded to a persistent vegetative state. American hospitals are businesses, and care is costly. Life support was to be withdrawn on Friday. Approximately…” Marinus pulls out a timepiece on a chain, “…ninety minutes ago, John Doe regained consciousness. His team are calling it a miracle. The word ‘miracle’ is a disservice to Esther’s psychosurgery, but no matter. John Doe’s body is Enomoto’s new, and last, host body. Barring accidents, he should live to eighty.”
“A soul transplant.”
Marinus sips his miso soup. “You could say so.”
Tulips in a vase are wine-red and snow-streaked.
“What if Enomoto starts brewing Oil of Souls again?”
“Then he becomes an enemy of Horology.” Marinus munches a pickle. “It’s a risk. The ethics of what we do are gray, I admit. But if ethics aren’t gray they aren’t really ethics.”
Jasper eats a mushroom. “So horology is a kind of…psychosoteric FBI. What a job.”
There may be a smile under Marinus’s frown.
Jasper has cleared his plate. He runs his thumb over his guitarist’s calluses. “What do I do now?”
“What do you want to do?”
Jasper considers. “Write a song. Before this fades.”
“Then go back to the Chelsea Hotel and write a song. Everyone’s at it there, I’m told. Go forth. Multiply. Your body looks good for five or six more decades.”
Levon and the band…“The others! They’ll think…I’ve been kidnapped. Or…What about last night at the Ghepardo?”
Marinus dabs his mouth with his napkin. “Xi Lo redacted a few minutes from the mnemo-parallaxi of all the witnesses.”
“I have no idea what that sentence means.”
“Their memories of what happened backstage have been wiped and replaced by a cover story. You collapsed on stage. An ambulance took you to the private clinic of a colleague of your Dutch doctor for tests and observation. It’s not far from the truth. I telephoned Mr. Frankland earlier with the good news that I’ve identified the cause of your collapse: an endocrinal imbalance, treatable with a course of anticoagulants.” He takes a pillbox from inside his jacket and slides it to Jasper. “A stage prop. They’re only sugar, but they’re big and impressive.”
Jasper takes the box. I’ll never need Queludrin again. “Can I play tonight’s gig at the Ghepardo?”
“You’d better, after all this trouble.” A young woman has arrived. She has oil-black hair, a heather-colored dress, and a silent way of moving. “Your color’s back, de Zoet.” She’s familiar.
“You brought in the wheelchair for me last night.”
“I’m Unalaq. I’m driving you to your hotel.”
Time to go. Marinus is walking him to the elevator.
“I had more questions I was hoping to ask.”
“I’m not surprised,” says the serial reincarnatee, “but further answers would be superfluous.”
Jasper steps inside the paneled elevator. “Thank you.”
Marinus studies him over his glasses. “I see your ancestor Jacob in you. A middling billiards player, but a good man.”
* * *
—
UNALAQ SAYS VERY little as she drives Jasper across a drizzly Manhattan. Horologists don’t talk much. Carlo Gesualdo’s haunted madrigals fill the silence. The anonymous black car crosses Central Park, where Jasper got lost only a night and half a day ago. The streets beyond the park become scrubbier, and soon they pull up at the Chelsea Hotel. Unalaq peers up at the brick cliff face of windows, balconies, and masonry. “The opening party lasted a whole week.”
“I won’t remember any of this, will I?”
Unalaq doesn’t say yes and doesn’t say no.
“I understand. If the government knew about Horology, they’d put you all in a lab and you’d never see sunlight again.”
“I’d like to see them try,” says Unalaq.
“Or if the public knew about predators like Enomoto…or that death is postponeable…What wouldn’t change? What wouldn’t the powerful do for a supply of Oil of Souls?”
A garbage truck growls by. Glass smashes in its innards.
“Your life is waiting, Jasper.”
“Could I just ask if Horology—”
Jasper is on the pavement looking at Unalaq’s Arctic eyes.
“Horology?” she asks. “Isn’t that repairing old clocks? I don’t know much about it, I’m afraid. Bye, then.”
Jasper watches the car vanish around the corner.
“Buddy,” says a drug dealer at Jasper’s shoulder. “Whadd’ya need? If I ain’t got it, I’ll get it. Tell me. Whadd’ya really need?”
* * *
—
ELF, DEAN, GRIFF, and Levon sit around a Spanish breakfast.
“Eh up,” says Griff. “Here comes Trouble.”
“Of all the ways to dodge an encore,” says Elf.
“Got a decent review, considering.” Dean holds up the New York Star. “ ’Pparently yer
collapsed ’cause of…” he searches for the line, “…‘incandescent creative genius.’ Who knew?”
Levon stands up and clasps Jasper’s shoulder. “I woke up and thought, Shit, I don’t even have the name of the clinic! Then the phone went, and it was Dr….Marino telling me all was well. I nearly died of relief.”
“Indestructible, is our Jasper,” says Dean. “He’s prob’ly immortal but hasn’t told anyone.”
“What is ‘an endocrinal imbalance’ exactly?” asks Elf.
“Elf,” says Dean. “Let the poor guy catch his breath. Jasper, mate. Sit down. Have a splash o’ coffee. How d’yer feel?”
From now on, Jasper decides, I am a student of feelings. “I feel…” He looks at his friends. “As if my life is beginning.”
I’M A STRANGER HERE MYSELF
Why bloody not? Dean loops the strap of his Brownie around his neck, climbs onto the balcony railing, grabs the arching trunk of the tree, and starts to shimmy up it, koala-like. The bark is scaly and warm against his skin. Below, Laurel Canyon falls away. Shallow-angled roofs, flat roofs, plants from Tarzan films, and swimming pools in backyards. Not “back gardens” in America. Dean reaches a Y in the trunk and perches there. The ground’s a long way down. Broken limbs if not a broken neck. He looks through the Brownie’s viewfinder, doubtful that the camera could capture a tenth of the majesty of the view. Los Angeles, gridded by streets, flat as a puddle, a mile off. The Pacific Ocean is a navy stripe, tinseled. I’m the first known Moss or Moffat to see it. The Californian sky is the one real true-blue sky. British blue skies are just a cheap knockoff. Same goes for flowers. Flowers here spill, explode, and riot. Scarlet trumpets, frothy lilacs, blushing stars, twisted spires. What a place, what a day, what a time…Cars rumble. Insects wind and unwind. Birds call strange notes. Dean takes a photo, just to show Ray and Shanks when he gets back. Landward is Joni Mitchell’s veranda, almost level with the Y that Dean is perched on. She’s trying out versions of a first line: “I slept last night in a fine hotel…” Then, “I spent last night in a good hotel.” Then, “I love to stay in a fab hotel…” The melody’s beautiful. I’m going to ask Elf for piano lessons…
* * *
—
THE LONGER DEAN’S away from London, the less he wants to go back. Reverse homesickness. In England’s favor, “Roll Away the Stone” is now at number twelve on the UK charts. Utopia Avenue, if it was a football team, has spent its life knocking about in the lower reaches of Division Three. Almost overnight, they’ve been promoted to the top half of Division One. People are starting to recognize Dean, and ask for his autograph. Including bouncers at nightclubs. He has a cherry red Triumph Spitfire in a lockup behind Levon’s flat in Bayswater. Not to mention regular nookie with Tiffany Seabrook, foxier than all my old girlfriends rolled into one. On the other hand, England also means the Craddocks, a baby boy who might be Dean’s son, and the Craddocks’ lawyer, who is proving to be no pushover. England means Rod Dempsey, who is acting more like a Kray Twin by the day. England is 80 percent income tax, miserable weather, strikes, only one flavor of ice cream—white. Plus, if Great Britain likes the band, America bloody loves us. After their rocky opening night at the Ghepardo, the band played three strong shows to growing houses. Jimi Hendrix hung out backstage on the Friday. Ginger Baker wants Dean on his next LP. A black model made a move on him several nights ago at the Chelsea. How could a gentleman refuse?
“Dean?” Elf’s on the balcony in her yellow hippie-chick shift, looking around. Her hair’s bundled up in a towel. She can’t see him. He’s tempted to hide, but: “Me Tarzan,” he calls down, “you Jane.”
“Jesus! Is that safe?”
“Relax. I’ve read a million Spider-Man comics.”
“You have a phone call.”
Here? “Well, yer can tell whoever that I’m up a palm tree in Laurel Canyon, and I’m never coming down. Unless it’s Jimi, Ginger, or Janis. I’ll come down for them.”
“What about Rod?”
“Rod Stewart? Seriously?”
“No, you dolt. Rod Dempsey. Your pal.”
The forty-foot drop below lurches into four hundred. Dean grips tight. “Uh…” If I avoid him, he’ll guess it’s ’cause I helped Kenny ’n’ Floss skip town. “Tell him I’m on my way…”
* * *
—
“ALL HAIL THE King of America!”
“Yer voice is dead clear.” Dean tries to sound casual. “Who knew the phone lines stretched this far?”
“Age o’ the satellite, matey. Tour going well? The NME said yer went down a storm in New York.”
Dean feels like a defendant having his guard lowered by a few easy openers. “Jasper collapsed onstage the first night, but he’s fine now. This’ll be costin’ yer an arm ’n’ a leg. What can I do for yer?”
“First off, my estate agent says yer ’n’ Jasper can move into the Covent Garden flat. No deposit needed for a pal o’ yours truly.”
“T’riffic, Rod. Thanks a lot.”
“Happy to help. Item two’s a bit less t’riffic, I’m afraid.”
He knows about Kenny ’n’ Floss. “Yeah?”
“Delicate one, this, so I’ll jump straight in. Two days ago I heard a nasty rumor ’bout a set o’ shall-we-say ‘artistic’ pictures of the missus of a famous filmmaker doing the dirty with a young British bass player on the top floor o’ the Hyde Park Embassy.”
How? How? Down the wooden hallway, Elf and Jasper are harmonizing on Jasper’s “Who was that in Central Park? Who was laughing in the dark?” line.
Rod asks, “Yer still with me?”
“Yer seen ’em? The pics? With yer own eyes?”
“I took the liberty, yeah. ’Cause we’re mates. I needed to check if the rumor was bollocks or kosher. ’Fraid to say, it’s kosher.”
Dean forces himself to ask: “What can yer see?”
“Handcuffs. Faces. Coke. Not only the faces. They’ve got yer.”
Beads in the doorway clack in the draft. “Who took ’em?”
“Prob’ly an insider at the Hilton recognized yer and tipped off a specialist. Looks like a hole was drilled through the adjoining wall. They’re top quality. All very James Bond.”
“Who’d bother? I’m not John bloody Profumo. Tiffany’s no spy.”
“Yer’ve both a public reputation and money to pay to protect it.”
“I’m not rich compared to”—drug dealers and pimps—“stockbrokers or estate agents.”
“The News o’ the Screws’d pay upward o’ three grand for pics o’ you ’n’ Mrs. Hershey. Stings like this’re commoner’n yer’d think.”
Dean imagines the scandal and Anthony Hershey’s reaction. The film deal would be off. Tiffany’s career would be over. She’ll be “the adulterous mother of two” for the rest of her days.
“Yer’ve gone all quiet on me,” says Rod.
“It’s a bloody nightmare, is why.”
“Cheer up, yer got a few options. Well, three.”
“Revolver, noose, or sleeping pills?”
“Stick, carrot, or ‘scarrot.’ The stick is, yer tell the bright spark who took the photos that if the pics surface yer’ll have him put in a wheelchair. People get persuadable when it comes to kneecaps.”
“I can’t blame them. So do I.”
“Trouble is, what if they call yer bluff? Yer’ve either got to back off or carry out the threat. Conspiracy to commit GBH’ll earn yer two to four years.”
“If that’s the stick, what’s the carrot?”
“Cough up the bread for the negs.”
“What stops the bastards coming back for more?”
“ ’Xactly. That’s the problem with carrots. My friendly advice is, respond with a ‘scarrot.’ Stick and carrot. Yer say, ‘Congrats, yer got me fair ’n’ square. I like a quiet life, so here’s a contract.
Sign it, and a thousand quid’ll appear in yer account three days from now. Send the negs and another grand’ll appear three days later. But if yer ever darken my door again, it’s war. If one o’ them pictures appears, anywhere, by fuck you will regret it. Deal? Good. Sign on the dotted line and no funny business.’ Or language o’ that ilk. Then yer can also get ’em for blackmail, if they Judas yer.”
The beads clack as if somebody has just passed through. “I don’t think I could say all o’ that,” says Dean. “Not convincingly.”
“It ain’t yer specialty. But give me the nod and I’ll administer the scarrot. Since I’ve already had dealings.”
Dean thinks of the money. “Two bloody grand.”
“When knobbing married actresses, change yer hotel. Yer can afford it, mate. What yer can’t afford is for this to get out. Yer lady friend, she’d be well ’n’ truly pokered. The divorce. The disgrace.”
He’s right. “Do it, Rod. Please. The scarrot.”
A car pulls up in the driveway outside. Levon ’n’ Griff.
“Leave it with me,” says Rod. “But, Dean, first—give me yer word yer won’t breathe a thing to yer manager or yer lady friend. If it all goes tits up, the fewer the people yer’ve told, the better. Yeah?”
“Agreed. I promise. And thanks.”
“It’s Gravesend boys versus the world. We’ll get through this. I’ll call again soon to let yer know how it went.” Click.
Purrr………………………Dean hangs up.
“The LA Times loves you.” Levon enters the house, carrying a box of groceries. “You’re the hottest ticket in town.”
“Look at this.” Griff holds up a real pineapple. “Just like off the front of a can. Cost less than a can. What a fookin’ country!”
“Good news,” says Dean. “Rod Dempsey just called from London. Me ’n’ Jasper can move into that flat in Covent Garden.”
Utopia Avenue Page 56
