Pop Life

by Ryan Loveless

  But look into my heart and know

  We'll be just fine, baby, fine""

  —Icon, "Waste of Time"

  Words and Music by Andrew Brennan and Michael Scott Martin, Wide Variety, Ltd.

  * * * *

  Chapter Fourteen

  Audrey met Michael and me at Heathrow at nine in the evening local time the next day. She drove us directly to Jamie's London townhouse. "He lives here four months out of the year," she said, pulling up to a quiet, off-white home on a Kensington side street with a small garden situated between the house and a black iron gate that ran along the sidewalk. It was waist-high and did not look locked.

  "This is it?" I asked. "It's so plain."

  "What did you expect? Flashing lights?" Audrey sounded amused.

  "Maybe."

  "He has very nice shrubbery," Michael said.

  "Is it all right if I look around?" I asked.

  Audrey handed me a key. "No one's there at the moment. Go on in. I'm going over to check with management."

  "Do you want me to go with you?" Michael asked. I looked down the street. Three doors down a pair of teenagers kissed, standing on top of a smudged hopscotch grid and ignoring the drizzling rain.

  "It's fine."

  "Go on, then. I'll ask Audrey to give me a ride over to the hotel. Icon are already there. They might have heard something."

  I trudged up the walk past the gate and pushed the key into the lock. To my surprise, the door swung open. I wanted to call out, but the words caught in my throat and I proceeded in silence. The ground floor was spotless: not cleaned, but unlived, as if no one had ever touched it. I climbed the creaking stairs with my hand squeezing the banister. I felt like something was watching me and fought the urge to take the steps two at a time.

  Upstairs it was more of the same, ghostly clean. I wondered whether Audrey had brought me to the wrong home. Then I stumbled into a bedroom that could only be his. Faded red scribbles covered the fall wall. Whiskey and vodka bottles were strewn across the floor. I stepped around them as I entered the room. Out the window, the rain had become a downpour. A maroon stain stood out on the fitted sheet of the unmade bed. I closed my eyes, whispered, "Please God," and bent to smell it. Cranberry juice. But near it, crusted whiteness. I pulled the bedclothes up and covered the stains.

  Hearing a noise like a thump, I whirled towards the door. Jamie stood in the doorway. Water dripped from his hair and clothes. He had no jacket, no luggage. Rain had plastered his white shirt to his arms and torso. He scanned the room. I could almost see him cataloging it: swear words on the wall, bottles on the floor. His breath rattled from the depth of his belly and pushed out of his mouth like death. He lurched into the room, shoes squishing, and kicked a bottle. It shattered against the wall.

  "Jamie?"

  He trip-hopped over another bottle and his left foot sent it, too, into the wall. He still had the form of the soccer player he'd once dreamed of being. I backed into the dresser and climbed on top to get out of his way.

  He stormed the room, throwing anything his hand touched, and kicking bottles. When he ripped down the bedclothes, he stopped cold. He stared at the red stain.

  "Jamie?" I tried again.

  Turning towards me, he looked at me as if he did not understand that I was there, as if I was another ghost of his imagination. He looked at his bed again.

  "She would not shut up about her dog," he said. "I always remember the ones with pets." For a second, his face cleared of its haze, and he stood clutching the corner of the sheet in his hand. "Do you see it? Andrew? I can make it disappear. Look. It rewinds itself, goes back into the glass." He pointed an arc, tracing the path of imaginary crimson from sheet to glass. He blinked, and looked down. "Oh, see? It's there again. I must have done it wrong. You just have to concentrate, Andrew, and it will work. Just watch." He pointed again, up and over. And again.

  "Jamie." I didn't want to get near enough to touch him for fear that he would try throwing me, but I hoped if I said his name enough, he'd realize I was trying to talk to him. At the moment, he seemed to think I was a hallucination.

  "I think I know why it's not working. It's because I'm thinking too hard on keeping you here. If I stop doing that, it will go away. But I don't want you to disappear, so I guess this will have to stay." He smiled. Desperation was wild in his eyes, gleaming through water-curled hair. "You see, people say I can't compromise. But I can. Honestly, I can."

  "I know you can," I said.

  He beamed. "I knew you would say that."

  "Jamie. Would you look at me, please?"

  "I know as well as anyone that this is no way to live. No way at all. But I can't disappear forever and not be found. I do try, though. But the fact is, I actually miss being recognized. I need it, you know."

  "Jamie." I slapped the dresser to get his attention.

  "Stop it, Andrew. I don't want you to do that." He still did not look at me. He sank onto the bed and sat with his elbows on his knees. "If I were smart, I wouldn't have come back. I was doing all right, you know? But now I'm back and all this shit is still here. I'm clever, but I'm not very smart. There is a difference. There's a second option—I've got pills; I've got razors. It wouldn't take long. I gave an interview the morning I left. I was two hours late, but I didn't apologize. If my mother reads that, she won't be happy with me. The reporter assumed I overslept, but I was awake since five in the morning scrubbing lipstick out of the walls. I was supposed to go straight home afterwards, but I didn't. I didn't plan it or anything. I just, I got outside and the last thing I wanted was to go home. So, I didn't. See, Andrew, people think I can do whatever I want anytime I want. But I can't. I have to follow an etiquette you can't even imagine. But sometimes I get to do what I want. When no one is around, if I'm quick enough, I can do exactly what I want. Do you think that if I disappeared completely she would write a story about being the last person to see me, sell it for a million pounds, and retire? I would, if I were her. I always liked her. Charlotte. I guess I wouldn't mind if she got rich off me. I should go find those pills now."

  Sometime between 'clever, but not smart' and 'sell it for a million pounds', I had started crying.

  "Jamie, I'm here," I said. I swung my heels against the drawers.

  "Andrew? Why are you crying?" Jamie's hands trembled. "I didn't want…"

  "I'm crying because I'm actually here, I'm not in your imagination, and I have fucking feelings," I said. I slid off the dresser, but Jamie put his hand out.

  "Stay there. Please. You heard everything I said?"

  I stopped. I wanted to yell that of course I'd fucking heard him, but Jamie looked anywhere but at me. "Yes."

  "I'm sorry if I upset you," he said.

  "Jamie? Don't go get any pills, okay?"

  He sat on the bed, one leg curled beneath his thigh, the other leg dangling off the end. "You should go," he said.

  "I'm already here," I replied. "So, c'mon. Let me take care of you tonight." I pulled him up. "First things first. You don't need to sleep on these sheets." I took hold of the bedclothes and stripped them off. "Why don't you go take a shower? You'll catch cold in those wet clothes."

  He tilted his hip in the image of a Southern Belle. "Why, Andrew, are you trying to get me out of them?"

  I pushed him towards the bathroom. "Yes," I said.

  "This is the worst seduction attempt I have ever seen," he grumbled. "And I've had people deface my property." He gestured at the wall.

  "I'll try harder next time." I gave him another shove. He stumbled a few feet and stopped.

  "You're really here?"

  "I am. Where do you keep your sheets?"

  He pointed at the dresser. "Bottom left. Are you angry at me for running off? Bob's going to be furious."

  "I know you needed some time," I said. He couldn't have any idea what I'd been feeling if he thought anger came into it. I had been terrified. I opened the drawer and grabbed the top set of sheets.

  "I don't run off
because I'm fed up with the crew or sick of the fans. It's what I do now instead of trying to heal myself with girls and liquor. Looking for the cure in the cause, I guess."

  "Jamie. Go shower."

  He nodded and went into the bathroom. Through the half-open door I could see snatches of him reflected in the mirror as he undressed. Trying not to think about how much I wanted to touch him—I wouldn't take advantage of him like that, even if it was to comfort him—I turned away. A moment later, I heard the shower come on and the break in its patter against the shower floor as he stepped into it.

  He emerged wearing a pair of boxers and toweling his hair dry as I was putting the last pillow down.

  "Do you love me?" he asked. He ignored that I was lifting the bedclothes for him to climb into bed.

  "Yes."

  "C'mere." He grabbed my waistband and tugged me towards him. I closed a fist over his hand when he began to undo my trousers.

  "Jamie, you don't have to do that."

  "Why? Are you wearing embarrassing pants?"

  "You don't have to thank me like that."

  "Maybe I want to," he said.

  "You're shaking."

  "You have difficult buttons."

  "There's only one button, Jamie."

  "Help me, then."

  I released his hand. I remembered what I had told him in New York, even if he didn't. I wanted all of him, and right now, he wasn't even half of himself. I let him undress me to my underwear. I was afraid that if I stopped him he would take the rejection as having something to do with him. And my pants would come off anyway before I went to bed, but I had to stop him before he added me to his collection of self-blame.

  "Jamie, I was thinking," I said as he pulled me onto the bed.

  "What?"

  "Could you just hold me tonight?"

  He looked at me for a minute. "Yeah," he said, "sure."

  I rolled into his arms, and they closed around me. My hair brushed Jamie's chin. "So, where did you go?"

  "Chester."

  "Chester?"

  "It's quite nice this time of year."

  I had been to the small town that bordered Wales with a school group when I'd gone on a class trip to England. It could be a good place to disappear if the touristy areas were avoided. "It's probably hard for you to blend in, though." He was, after all, one of the most famous men in the country.

  "I pay for my hotel rooms in cash and sign in under Isaac Grant, my middle name and my stepfather's last name. I take the bus to get around town. No one expects to see Jamie Webster on a bus. It's fine. I don't do drugs. I don't drink. It's rather nice, actually."

  "Sounds like it," I said. Tugging him a little closer to me, I tried to imagine him going around, being normal, something he hadn't been allowed to do since he was sixteen.

  As dawn broke, Jamie began thrashing in his sleep. I grasped his freezing body and pulled the covers tight around the both of us until he relaxed in my arms.

  * * * *

  In the morning, Jamie had curled into me. I gently moved his arm off my back and sat up. Jamie shuddered when my body's warmth disappeared. I replaced the blankets over him and got out of bed.

  "What were you doing?" he asked. He rubbed his eyes.

  "Starting breakfast. I have to meet Icon in an hour. Paeder's thing is today, and I still don't know how I'm getting there."

  Jamie stretched off the bed. "I'll drive you. I love to drive." His eyes sparkled.

  "Oh dear," I said, which only mildly conveyed the absolute terror I was feeling.

  * * * *

  Music Meter Magazine

  Truly, Paeder, Paeder Brogan

  Reviewed By Robert Whythe-Smith

  Published August 1999

  Released 10 August 1999

  Produced by Seamus O'Malley

  Co-Produced by Andrew Brennan and Michael Scott Martin, Wide Variety, Ltd.

  3/5 stars

  What can one say about Paeder Brogan that has not already been said? He is Irish to the teeth, a bit on the serious side, and as my mother says, "very pretty." With four albums under his belt and another one on the way with the Icon stamp, one would think (hope) that Brogan would have run out of things to say. Alas, this is not the case.

  We might have guessed what we were in for based on the single "Irish Times" (reviewed 1 July). However, we were too busy figuring out how in the Hell it became a number one record to think that Brogan was going to spring more of this upon us. You know what they say about hindsight…

  Brogan's debut album as a solo artist is part tribute to himself, part bumptious ode to the homeland. The only songs worth a listen for those of us not weaned on Icon (and I feel like I'm insulting several Icon fans by saying this) are the four tracks written and produced by veteran songwriting team Brennan and Martin. They bring a new sound into the mix and take Brogan away from his self-aggrandizement. It is anyone's guess how they got him to record a line like, "I'll force myself against the wall/ I'll back down/ I'll admit I'm not good enough/ When you're not here/ to tell me I'm right." Could it be the conceit is just an act?

  The curious can decide for themselves when Brogan lights up the Royal Albert Hall for a one night only performance on 3 August. As for the rest of us, let's all hope that the Brennan and Martin songs are chosen for the future singles. Otherwise, it's going to be a very long summer indeed.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Jamie drove through London with what one might describe as "spirited abandon." However, my only thought, Please don't kill me, chased itself in circles through my head.

  "Are you sure you can drive?"

  "I am, aren't I?"

  "You passed your driver's test, though, right? I mean, you've got a license?"

  Jamie grinned. I paled, actually felt the blood draining from my head down to my stomach, and tugged my seatbelt for the hundredth time.

  "Relax, Andrew. We're here."

  The Royal Albert Hall was bigger than I had remembered it. Rounder, too. Following Jamie backstage, I was amused by the reverence he inspired in the guards who let him through without a pass. Jamie was unfazed. He proceeded to the dressing rooms.

  Jamie stopped at the door with Paeder's name on it and knocked. Keelin opened it. "You made it!"

  "Jamie nearly killed us with his driving," I said.

  "That's why I always get a cab when I'm with him." Paeder came up next to Keelin. He nodded at me. I nodded back.

  "I'm glad to see you're all right, Jamie," Paeder said.

  "Whatever that means, eh, Paeder?"

  Paeder looked flustered. "Well, we're about to do the pre-show photo shoot so…" He opened the door wider to reveal a tripod camera.

  "Andrew, Michael's next door," Keelin said.

  "Thanks." I stepped over and rapped on the door. I heard the sound of a small scuffle, and then the door swung open. My smile disappeared as I found myself looking at Jeff.

  "Shouldn't you be next door?" I asked. "Paeder seems to think you're here to take his picture."

  "I'd rather take your picture, Andrew." Jeff darted his tongue across his lips. "You don't even have to pay me. Just let me position you." He held his fingers up and rotated his hand, molding my pose in his imagination.

  "Get off, Jeff," Michael said. He grabbed Jeff's arm and forced him to step aside. Michael leaned into me and whispered. "He's incorrigible. Thank God Russell's here, too."

  "Yeah. Thank God." I smiled for Michael's benefit. I made sure my ass was clear of Jeff as I walked into the room.

  Jamie strolled in behind me. "Hey Jeff, how's it going, mate?" Jamie asked, stepping into Jeff's embrace.

  "Never better," Jeff said. He thumped Jamie's back.

  "Same here, mate."

  Jamie was putting on one hell of a show. This was not the man I saw last night. "What's wrong?" Michael asked. He interrupted my thoughts with a gentle squeeze on my elbow.

  "Nothing. So, you came with Keelin and Paeder?"

  "Yeah."

  "Sorry. I gue
ss I kind of ditched you last night."

  "Don't worry about it."

  I glanced back at Jeff and Jamie. Jeff waved his arms, and Jamie laughed. He grinned when Jeff touched his shoulder or brushed against his chest. I fingered my pocket.

  "Why is he here and not with Paeder?"

  "I was wondering that myself," Michael said.

  "C'mon, now, Mike, you know why," Russell said. He glanced up from his classic car magazine.

  "Oh, yes," Michael said. "I'm his new project."

  I raised an eyebrow. "His what?"

  "He's trying to bend me to his savage ways."

  "And how am I doing?" Jeff asked.

  "Not well," Michael said.

  Jeff slid over to me, pulling Jamie along. He draped an arm around me. "Of course, now that Drew's back, maybe I can find some other way to entertain myself, eh?"

  I pushed his arm off me.

  "Hands off him," Jamie said at the same time. Jeff and I both looked at him. So he did remember. Jeff backed off, hands up in surrender.

  "It's being shown on telly tonight," Russell said. He had been watching us, crossing his legs and lacing his shoes.

  "What?" I asked.

  "Paeder's concert. It's going out live."

  "He's probably really excited about it," I said.

  "He hasn't shut up about it since Keelin and I got in. It's been 'telly this, telly that, go Ireland!' You know how he gets."

  Did I ever. "Let me guess, he's using a huge Irish flag as a backdrop tonight?"

  Michael laughed, converting it into a harsh cough when Keelin swung into the room as if the weight of the door was propelling him forward.

  "Paeder's ready. We're heading down to the auditorium."

  Jeff, immediately all business, dropped his arm from Jamie's shoulders and turned to go with Keelin. The rest of us followed, though Russell took his sweet time to do it.

  * * * *

  I held the door to the auditorium open, and Jamie walked through. We hadn't talked about what had happened the previous night. I was sure that his desire to hallucinate me meant for something for us, but it seemed too soon to ask what that might be. He claimed a seat in a middle row without waiting for me to follow. I joined the others in the aisle. Paeder was running through his cues while stagehands plugged in various cords and turned instruments on and off. I was relieved to find that I was wrong about the flag.