Wonderkid

by Wesley Stace

  “Hot stuff!” he said.

  “Hot stuff?”

  “Yeah, bro. Your girlfriend.”

  This was exactly what I was here for. “Yep. That’s her.”

  “Kudos, my man.” He seemed just a middle class kid, living out a weird fifteen-year-old Saturday Night Fever fantasy. Sometimes it was like I didn’t speak American.

  “My friends over there. We have some coke too,” he said.

  “Right,” I said.

  “The other kind of coke.” I nodded. Something about coke, uniquely among drugs, appealed to me, perhaps just the name. “Would you and your lady friend like to . . . indulge?” Indulge. Lady friend. He had it down.

  “She just wants to dance, I think.”

  “Well, maybe I should ask her.”

  “She’s really just here to dance.”

  “Well, maybe I should ask her.”

  “She doesn’t speak English.”

  And so on. By the end of this stand off, which had involved a lot of dorky encouragement from a small scrum of friends furtively smoking over by the side wall, nothing was resolved. There wasn’t anything remotely threatening about them, despite their drugs. I’d been more scared of five-year-olds. Often.

  At that moment, Mei-Xing ran from the dance-floor. “My purse,” she said. “It’s gone.”

  We swept the floor in the unlikely event that it had flown off her neck, but, even given the difficulty of searching in the black light, the purse was nowhere to be seen. The coke kids looked on in amusement as we searched with ever-diminishing hope.

  “Someone stole it,” she said, distraught. “Someone stole my purse.” And then, after an awful pause, with all eyes upon us: “YOU stole it!” She started beating my chest with her fists. I was tall enough to restrain her by enveloping her in my arms. One of the group laughed in contempt.

  “Mei-Xing. Stop. You know I didn’t. Did you have it when you started to dance?”

  “Yes.” She was crying now.

  “Okay. Then let’s be calm and look around.”

  Almost incredibly, she found it stuffed behind the back of a cistern in the ladies. Only the cash was gone. She brought it back to me, shamefaced. You could see where someone had cut the string. The group was deriving maximum enjoyment from our discomfort. It was time to leave.

  “Go over there by the bar,” I said, seeing the original kid come over again. “We’ll get a cab.”

  “Hey, man,” he said, watching her leave. “You were going to introduce me.”

  “I’m afraid we have to go,” I said.

  “Well, maybe I should ask her.”

  We were back to that again, so I said: “No,” and put my hand on his shoulder. Without warning, he lifted his cigarette and, with a swift jab, extinguished it on my forehead right between my eyebrows. I felt, and smelled, my skin burning and pushed him back, more out of surprise than pain. I put two of my fingers up to cover the area and winced.

  “What the fuck did you do that for? Ouch! Fuck!”

  But he was gone already, strutting back to high fives from his little gaggle. Luckily the incident was spotted by a bouncer bored enough to take it quite seriously.

  “You alright?” he asked, shepherding me towards some ice at the bar where Mei-Xing was waiting. Radioing another employee, the bouncer set off towards the would-be hoodlums. At the moment of confrontation, Mei-Xing was dabbing my forehead with ice wrapped in a towel. After a scuffle and some shoulder jabbing, the whole group was led away, and I noticed the guy who’d just used my forehead as an ashtray ditch a couple of items, perhaps mindful of an imminent requirement to turn out his pockets; two tiny handmade white envelopes. Only I’d seen, and since they still lay unnoticed on the floor as we left, destined to remain there until the cleaners came the next day, I thought it best to take them myself. Blake might like it. You never know.

  Mei-Xing, at least, had got what she’d come for, but the combination of the purse incident, her accusation, and the occasionally searing pain on my forehead left the evening in need of a little salvation.

  “Thank you for defending my honor,” said Mei-Xing over a chocolate milkshake. “My hero.”

  “Guy was a dick,” I said. The memory made me scrunch my eyes as if in preparation for another attack, which served only to irritate whatever pitiful scab was trying to form. I also had a vicious headache.

  “Poor boy,” she said tenderly, squeezing my hand. It was an apology. I wasn’t at my most entertaining, and she showed me the pictures of her parents from her purse, the reason she’d been so upset. There was one of Curtis as well.

  “All my parents . . . Curtis’s music is so beautiful.”

  “Great drummer.”

  “No, his own music that he makes at home and on the bus. It’s so beautiful. I tell him he shouldn’t be the drummer in someone else’s band; he should be the singer in his own band. Maybe he’s wasting his time.”

  It didn’t occur to her to sugarcoat this remark, and for a moment I got a feel for the way the angels spoke in Heaven. It was a wonder that Curtis allowed her to fraternize with me. I suppose I was handy: the right age; I didn’t drink; I didn’t do drugs. Perhaps they saw some salvageable good.

  I escorted her to her room, keen not to see anyone else until I’d iced and camouflaged my wound as best I could. Who was I kidding? Blake was up and strumming, of course, and I told him the whole story. He called Jack, and I had to tell it again. Jack didn’t make it any better.

  “You look like an Indian with a fucking bindi!” he said.

  “Thanks, Jack. Thank you.”

  “Nasty,” he said, sympathetically squinting at the perfectly circular burn. “You want a Band-Aid on that.”

  “And some Savlon,” said Blake, cradling my head between his hands, as he applied cream to the trouble spot. “And a good night’s sleep.”

  I felt I had to tell them what Mei-Xing had said about Curtis, even though I knew it was a bad idea. I just couldn’t help myself.

  “What’s he gonna do? Ask for some songwriting credits?” asked Blake. “His invaluable contribution?”

  “And who the fuck does she think she is?” asked Jack. There was an edge to his laughter: “Yoko fuckin’ Ono?”

  “She’s Chinese,” I said, but I laughed, more out of obligation than anything else, hoping it wasn’t a nickname that stuck.

  Our relationship was probably a bad idea, a potential disaster, but looking back, it’s possible that Mei-Xing and I kept the band together for a while beyond its natural lifespan. Just the fact of our friendship made for a better atmosphere; everyone was less tense around one another on our behalf. I should have told Blake the truth, but yet again I didn’t. It started out as a kind of extended apology on her behalf. She somewhat offered herself to me, and I somewhat didn’t refuse.

  Having said that, she played by my rules, and my rules were strict, if unspoken. She was too young, now just fifteen; it was technically illegal, and that was a book I didn’t need to reopen, if only out of loyalty to the band. It was also partly because of her history; I didn’t want to be one of those men, like those other men. So we never had actual sex, at least in the beginning. What we did have, because we could have it, was a form of parallel play. We’d lie next to each other, without touching, and we’d make ourselves have orgasms, and then we’d cuddle. That was it. And it was perfect. We also played a lot of Monopoly.

  “Was that nice?” I’d ask. We kissed occasionally. I used to lick the scars on her wrist, then blow on them to make them go away. We didn’t speak very much, sometimes at all. One night our entire conversation consisted of “Rent” and “Will you trade Park Place for Atlantic Avenue?”

  “We are like brother and sister,” she said.

  “Possibly,” I said without conviction.

  “Cousins?” She suggested. “Kissing cousins?”

  “Maybe Romeo and Juliet.”

  Our mostly chaste misdeeds took place only in her hotel room, never on a bus and never, nee
dless to say, backstage, where Monopoly represented the sublimation of our “desires.”

  That was how it began and how it continued and how it was going to stay. But you make these rules only for them to be broken, and I now realize that it was nailed on from the moment we began. My reluctance to go any further became a course of frustration; she even accused me of withholding something “special,” as though I considered her unworthy of it. This was far from the truth. She was totally worthy. And I was soon to be seventeen (though my seventeenth birthday would pass much less eventfully than my sixteenth—almost unnoticed, in fact). One night, after she tried to convince me it wasn’t that big a deal, I told her why: her backstory and her age.

  “Is that all?” she asked. “I thought you were just being careful. You’re a virgin, right?” I wasn’t sure what she wanted to hear, so I let her assume what she liked from my silence: an embarrassed admission, perhaps. “You don’t have to worry about my age,” she said, taking her clothes off. “I’m eighteen.”

  “You were fifteen two months ago.”

  “No.” She was completely, impressively naked now. “My old passport is right. Everybody thinks I’m younger.”

  “Get your passport,” I said.

  “You’re actually going to make me show you my passport?”

  “Definitely.” I perused the documentary evidence.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “And the story about me being sold: not true either. I’ll tell you afterwards.”

  Her guardians had managed to get her to America by over-amplifying her history and faking her age. The children’s home required her to be younger than she was: they hadn’t known. Curtis didn’t know. He liked her fifteen. But I knew. In the darkness, on all fours, she was a pony with a long black mane.

  The late-night talk show appearance was finally upon us. New York City, as Blake said, was our Oyster Bar.

  For once, there would be no deviation from the perfect plan: Blake was going to set fire to a ukulele during “Time to Sing a Song,” the new single, for which a video already existed, the song intercut with snippets of the pre-teen comedy (directed by a John Hughes protégé, produced by the man himself, and starring a very young Phoenix family member) for which it was now the theme. All negotiated with the network. Great.

  Within the band, there was a general burying of hatchets, the game face that accompanied any excursion into the upper echelons of show business—TVs, bigger gigs, award shows, anywhere the audience couldn’t jump onstage.

  The younger generation stood among the wires at the side of the set and clapped along. It was a killer performance—the best this version of the band ever was—and at the end, as arranged, Blake torched his ukulele and encouraged it voodoo-style, just like Hendrix. It was a magical, shamanic moment, in response to which the host unexpectedly invited Blake to join him at his desk. (Perhaps there was time to kill before the next block of ads.)

  “Well, we’re lucky none of our other guests is playing the ukulele tonight,” said the host, then to an imaginary producer off-camera: “Do we have any ukulele players on the show tonight? No? Tiny Tim here? No? . . .” Back to Blake: “Because they’d be hard-pressed to follow that.”

  “Well, they could eat it maybe; play tennis with it,” said Blake, clapping his hands together boyishly.

  “Top Ten Things to do with a ukulele except play it,” said the host. “Eat it. Hmm.” He licked the lead of his pencil, then ticked his notecard. “Your band’s a sensation. So tell me: what’s it like playing to all those kids?”

  “Well,” said Blake, “it’s great to know that at any given moment during a show one of them is innocently relieving themselves without repercussion.”

  The host tapped his mug with the pencil and looked out at his audience: “Don’t get any ideas, people. So tell us about the Wonderkids.”

  “Okay. We’re trying to give kids the real rock ’n’ roll experience for the first time in their lives. Kids love mayhem and that’s what rock ’n’ roll is all about. Kids aren’t self-conscious about the subconscious, like grown-ups. They’re natural anarchists. And we’re giving them real rock ’n’ roll.”

  “Aren’t you worried about dumbing down?” asked the host mock-seriously. It was a good line.

  “Nooooo! If I were, would I have set a ukulele on fire?”

  Uproarious laughter.

  “That thing will never be played again. Look at this footage,” said the host, banging his cue cards on the table. “What the heck is happening here?” It was film I’d never seen, shot recently, of Blake, almost entirely covered in peanut butter, doing what came naturally.

  “I ran out of bread,” Blake said.

  “Could Iggy Pop sue you for that?”

  “We, the kids, are going to sue him! He stole his whole act from naughty children!”

  “But do you see yourself as role models for the kids? Aren’t you being a little . . . bad yourself? Shouldn’t you behave?”

  “Absolutely not. That’s why grown-ups are scared of us. We’re the ‘id’ in ‘kids.’”

  “Well, I’m scared of you. And you’re a great band, whoever you’re for.” The host caught sight of an anxious producer, who was trying to attract his attention by means of a raised finger. “Okay, then. Have you got another song for us after the commercial break?” This was unexpected. “How about ‘Rock Around the Bed’?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Then we’ll be right back, folks, with, once more, the Wonderkids.”

  Applause. The host turned away for an urgent conference with the producer, who explained that the next guest was incapacitated at her hotel. It was all hands on deck to get the next song ready, but the Wonderkids were troopers. They’d worked in the deadliest trenches of show business; this was nothing to them. No one needed to change instruments, or reprogram a synth, or put new cheat sheets up on the monitors—these were hardened live musicians, doing the corporation a favor. Blake asked for a second ukulele, which Mitchell had on hand. All was ready well before the ads had even finished.

  “Welcome back. Let’s hear it once more for the Wonderkids.”

  And then, “Rock Around the Bed.” No messing around; just the song—the hit. And, since there was no time constraint, and we were on adult television, late-night television no less, Blake was always going to sing his favorite verse. Then he went ballistic, climbing up on one of the gantries, then beating the crap out of another ukulele. Everyone was having a ball, even the host. Mei-Xing dragged me on the set with Aslan. We threw confetti. They danced. It was stupendous.

  “I can’t thank those guys enough,” announced the host. “They’re playing Westchester tomorrow. Go and see their show. A wonderful band! The Wonderkids! Good night, folks. See you tomorrow night, unless you see us first!”

  It was the zenith of their fame. It didn’t have to be; from there, they could have gone anywhere. But they went down.

  My fault.

  After the show, the record company took us all out to eat, and we wound up back in someone’s room, where we put dance music on the little Walkman speakers. Mei-Xing waltzed with Jack; Blake did the lambada with Camille; Curtis and I did the limbo. It was just like old times. But parents needed to get kids to bed and, rather than wait up for the broadcast, some drifted away, and the focus was lost. By the end of the night, it was, as usual, Jack, Blake, Mitchell, and me, and Jack had a phone call he had to make—other fish to fry. Blake wanted to get something off the bus, and thought he might just watch the show on there, and Mitchell was bored. I walked down with Blake. The bus was impudently parked on the street. Inside, he turned music up full blast—one of the limitless supply of live albums we were always listening to—and ricocheted off the coffins on his way back: “Let’s have some fun,” he shouted over his shoulder as I threw my jacket down.

  The music from the front was cranking, but we couldn’t be bothered to walk forward to turn it down, so we shut the door on it instead. Blake rolled a joint and breathed a sigh
of relief. “What a day. Magic.”

  He never required praise, or fished for it, but he deserved it: “You were so good on that sofa.”

  “Well, he made me look good.”

  “You were great.”

  Blake lost himself in a reverie, a poignant remix of the old dream: how the Wonderkids, given a few opportunities like that, could come to be seen as more than a children’s band. It wasn’t that it wasn’t true; it was just that it meant so much to him. I became aware that the music down the other end had been turned off. Probably Mitchell. I opened the door a crack and put my finger up to hush Blake. I saw, quite clearly illuminated, two of New York City’s finest; between them and us, the lone figure of Mitchell in his smart tan suit. I closed the door as quietly as I could: “Blake,” I said. “There’s policemen on the bus. Mitchell’s stalling them.”

  Without panic, Blake opened all windows, gathering various pieces of paraphernalia into a Tupperware box; this wasn’t the first time he’d cleaned up. “Sweet,” he said. “They probably only care how we’re parked. Can you get out of that window?” I reckoned I could. “Okay. Take this up to the hotel room. Then come back, walk in the front and say you’re looking for me, then knock, and I’ll come out. Okay? Unless it’s all died down.”

  I nodded and did exactly what I was told, walking round the entire block just to avoid the front of the bus, carrying the Tupperware like it was sandwiches for my night shift.

  When I returned, only Mitchell was there, on the phone: “Yes, Precinct 35. That’s where they took him. I know. I know. Andy, Andy. I know. I’m doing my best here. Get a lawyer soon.” Mitchell looked at me: “Don’t tell me. I know exactly what you were doing. He’s been arrested.”

  “But I had all the gear.”

  “Amazing. But he wasn’t arrested for pot.”

  “For what? Parking a bus illegally? Playing music too loud? Being annoying?”

  “Save that laugh, funny man,” said Mitchell. “Possession of cocaine.”

  “But Blake doesn’t . . .”