Wonderkid

by Wesley Stace

  I looked over where I’d thrown my jacket. There it was, pockets emptied, contents strewn.

  “When I happened by,” he continued, “the door was wide open, and there were two cops on the bus.”

  “Oh, God.” I actually put my head in my hands. I hadn’t even locked the door. Rule One: nothing good happens when you leave the door open.

  “And after you’d done your Midnight Express flit, they wanted to search the back and Blake emerges, and there’s nothing back there, but they’ve got the scent and there’s that jacket and guess what they find in there. What was it doing there?”

  “Oh God,” I said. “I’ve never even done cocaine.”

  “Well, Blake’s taken the fall. And he really has. And guess who has to deal with it?”

  “Can I . . .?”

  “You’ve done enough. Go to bed.”

  I didn’t have the stomach to turn on the talk show. The high, when everything had felt possible—even the marriage of Heaven and Hell—had lasted such a relatively brief time. I couldn’t sleep, thinking of Blake in his cell.

  In fact, his jail experience went okay, primarily because of the dented, ancient TV bracketed to the wall outside the holding cell. When the show came on, his cellmates—no one too terrifying but nevertheless, large men who knew the score—put two and two together, mainly because the newest arrival, wearing the same clothes as the guy on TV, stood directly beneath the screen, sang along and did the same moves. At least, that’s how Blake told it. When his TV doppelgänger sat down to chat with the host, Blake’s stock rose further.

  “What you here for, rock ’n’ roller?” asked a Mexican guy. It was one of the most exciting questions Blake was ever asked. He quoted it a million times.

  “Drugs, my friend. Category A drugs.”

  “Celebrating your TV appearance, ese?”

  “Got out of hand.”

  “Didn’t expect to be watching it down here, though, didja?” asked another man, laughing.

  “No, I didn’t.” “Rock Around the Bed” began. “My name is Blake Lear and I’m fairly happy to meet you all.”

  The lawyer had Blake out next morning, though he’d have to return for a hearing: it was unlikely to result in anything but a hefty fine.

  We picked him up at the precinct. It was hardly a hero’s welcome, though Randy applauded. (One could only imagine the curled lip of Heaven’s disgust.) Blake launched straight into anecdote, as though the whole thing had revitalized him: “Okay, here’s the key detail. Best image of the night. We’re all given these little peanut butter sandwiches in plastic Ziploc bags, and no one eats them, because they’re disgusting. No. What they do is, whoever wants them most trades them for whatever they’ve got, and then they use them as pillows. Peanut butter sandwich pillows. You can’t make that shit up.”

  As the bus moved, Mitchell announced from his desk-office, very matter-of-fact: “Andy is going to meet us in Westchester, and I guess there’ll be some kind of band meeting. Blake will be lying low. Sweet will be thanking his lucky stars.”

  “Hey, come in the back with me,” Blake said to me. “Let’s finish that conversation.”

  When we were settled, I thanked him.

  “Better me than you,” he said.

  “Why are you always taking the blame for things you didn’t do?”

  “Because I never do anything except onstage. And it’s all allowed up there. I’m very lucky, right? Even this. There’s an opportunity for a song here. Where’s the Tupperware?”

  “Don’t you think you should . . .”

  “Don’t you think you should absolutely never tell me what to do?”

  “It’s in my coffin.”

  “Good lad. So, blow, then, now is it? Good high? Missed out pot? Moving straight to heroin? Injecting it in your dick? Giving it the old Dusty Miller?”

  “I’ve never even tried it.” I told him the story: I’d seen the kid drop it on the floor, and I thought Blake might want it. And then I’d just forgotten it.

  “That would have to be the unluckiest bust in the history of drugs. And totally deserved. But look,” he was crumbling some rather dry, smelly grass into a small pipe, “whether I want cocaine or not—and thanks for thinking of me, but I don’t—you are not my drug runner. I must set a horrible example, but be a teenager. You wanna do some coke? We’ll do some coke together.”

  “I don’t want to do coke.” And I didn’t want to do it with Groovy Dad either. Where was the middle ground? In fact, I just wanted him to tell me off. But he wasn’t thinking of discipline; he was inhaling deeply.

  “The lesson here is, don’t pick up packages that don’t belong to you just because they’re there and you can. And if you do, take the drugs as soon as possible: everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it. Here’s a story. Once, at university, I was going to a demo, which turned out to be the one demo in the history of our many demos where everybody was arrested, taken to the cells and searched. And that would have been me. But, strangely, my father called that day—he happened to be in town, it was the only time ever—and I reluctantly met him in some quaint little tea shop. I totally missed the demo and the arrest because I was eating scones and clotted cream: that’s how committed to class warfare I was. Anyway, I was kind of annoyed about it, until a few days later, when I found three tiny blue tabs of acid in my pocket, which someone had given me at a party a few days before, and I’d completely forgotten about. And that would have been the end of my university career right there, finished, sent down. You gotta keep your nose clean and know what’s in your wallet.” He put his arm around me. “I know it’s a little weird round here, but everything will be okay. It’s not your fault.”

  “It is.”

  “A little drug bust can’t stop this juggernaut.”

  “Blake,” I said, since we were being honest, “I’m sleeping with Mei-Xing. She’s actually eighteen, even though everyone thinks she’s fifteen. I’m the only person who knows. Even Curtis doesn’t know.”

  “Which bit?”

  “All the bits.”

  “What is it with the older women? Do you wish you had a mother?”

  “Do they count as older women if you think they’re younger?”

  “Are we using protection?”

  It was then Jack joined us in the back. He was white as a sheet.

  “Bad night for all us,” he said, collapsing onto the remaining seat.

  “Possibly worse for Blake?” I suggested. But there was a look in Jack’s eyes, and I realized that, during all that morning’s excitement, he’d been completely quiet, expressing no opinions whatsoever, not even “nasty” or “tedious.” He hadn’t said a single word when his brother got on the bus, let alone made the usual snarky jokes about Blake’s cellmates’ sexual preferences. In fact, there hadn’t been a word since he’d left us the previous evening.

  “What is it, mate?” asked Blake, handing Jack the spliff, which his brother rejected.

  “Look, there might be cops waiting when we arrive.”

  “No, it’s sorted. We’re all done with cops for today.”

  “For me.” Blake looked up. Then Jack told us.

  The previous night, he’d phoned up this woman, and she’d invited him out for a drink somewhere they could see the band on TV, then taken him back to her anonymous tenement building. (It was at this point that, without looking at us, Jack began to rub at an imaginary mark on his right palm with his left thumb. “Never tell anyone, not even Mitchell.”) It turned out she liked a bit of the rough stuff—he said the phrase in inverted commas with a pained smile, but there were so many elements of this story upon which one might judge him that there didn’t seem any point pussyfooting around this aspect; the whole thing was coming as quite a shock to me. She’d asked him to tie her up, not to the four corners of the bed, which request he was never cruel enough to deny a willing participant, but from this hook in the middle of the room, from which her feet just touched the ground. She knew precisely wha
t she was doing; the hook wasn’t there by chance.

  At first, Jack felt a little out of his depth. He was no stranger to silken sashes, but the meat hook was a little more torture chamber than slap and tickle. He didn’t want to disappoint the nice lady, however, so he got into it. He gagged and bound her semi-clad body, dangling her from the meat hook as requested. Things were going swimmingly. On an inspiration, Jack decided to heighten the suspense by going out for a packet of cigarettes. He told her what he was going to do, and not to do anything he wouldn’t do, got her front-door key and took the elevator to the ground floor.

  His quest for smokes took him slightly further afield than he intended, and in his slightly drunk, somewhat high state, as he sucked on a welcome Camel Light back on the street, he realized he couldn’t remember the number of her apartment, and it wasn’t written on the key. At first, this struck him as funny, because he pictured himself having to try the key in every apartment door in the building. But then . . . he looked around him, not quite sure which way he’d even walked. Forget the number of the apartment; he didn’t even remember what building it was.

  “So how did you find her?” I asked.

  Jack put his hand in his pocket and ruefully showed us her key, letting it dangle from his finger a little too graphically. He groaned.

  “Well, call her,” said Blake in exasperation. Jack looked up and sighed. She wouldn’t be picking up the phone. “For Christ’s sake! How long ago was this?”

  “A few hours.”

  “You’ve slept?”

  “No,” said Jack. “I don’t even remember what building it was.”

  “You looked everywhere?”

  “YES!”

  “Have you got the receipt for the fags? Check.”

  Miraculously, he fished it from the depths of his coat pocket. That was the starting point.

  “Okay, Jack. You and me, right now. We’re going to put that key in every keyhole around that cornershop until we find the right one.”

  “She’s going to be livid,” said Jack.

  “She’s going to be pleased to have the chance to be livid. I’m livid! Anyway, maybe you gave her the night of her life, you prick.”

  Blake opened the door and in a completely different tone of voice, ordered: “MITCHELL! Turn the bus around. 14th Street and 7th Avenue, please, now, before we leave town. Jack and I have some work to do.” He turned back. “Jack, we’ll sort this out. We’re going to be very calm, and you’re going to give me every ounce of help. Sweet, you too. First, we’re going to get three keys cut. Then, we’re going to spread out.

  I’d never had a handle on Jack’s sex life, the true Gothic horror of which was revealing itself in a slow striptease. I’d tried to suppress all memory of that video, and I can’t claim to have known much about the further reaches of sex—the Marquis of This, and Whiplash Girlchild von That, all that Velvet Underground stuff. You try not to judge, but what on earth was he doing in his spare time?

  Back at the bus, Jack wore the smile of a man recently spared the gallows. She’d picked up finally, after he’d left his fifteenth message from a pay phone.

  “But how did she . . .?”

  All he said, once we were safely behind the Great Wall of China, was: “She wasn’t best pleased. Seems like the cleaner found her. But she told me to be in touch.”

  The band meeting took place in a conference room at the hotel the next morning. Everyone apart from Blake was on time: Andy, John from WBA, Curtis, Camille, Mei-Xing, Mitchell, even Aslan, who was laying out a Thomas the Tank Engine track in the middle of the floor. There was a decanter of water and some freshly cut flowers.

  “Good morrow,” said Blake. “Who’s got the good news?” He clapped his hands as though he’d been relishing this little get-together. Backstage the previous night had been like a morgue. The other Wonderkids had found out then; the world at large this morning.

  Curtis shook his head, sadly. “Blake, what were you thinking?” he asked. Before I had a chance to clarify, which I intended to because it was my fault, Blake hushed me. Mei-Xing rolled her eyes. It was hard to imagine what they’d have made of Jack’s little adventure.

  “Blake,” said Andy. “There actually is good news. But, first, can I just say, and I’ll take a vote on it, but wouldn’t it be better if we restricted this meeting to band members?”

  “Is it getting a little too Let It Be for you, Andy?” asked Blake. It wasn’t even a jab at Yoko, just a reference to the fracturing of a band, the opposing points of view around the table. It was a harsh reminder of a time when we had all been singing from the same songbook, just like the Beatles when they were happy boys with matching mop tops.

  “Just so we can focus.”

  “He might have a point,” said Jack. It was true; Camille was looking at Aslan; Mei-Xing, my beautiful little pony, was sitting quietly next to Curtis, holding his hand, as if offering moral support. And what about me? Who was I?

  “Meh,” said Blake. “Take us as you find us. So, good news then.”

  “Orders have gone through the roof since the TV appearance. The single will chart. The band is in great shape. The band’s image, however . . .”

  “Tarnished,” said John who seemed more executive than ever.

  “Would this,” Blake asked, “be the ideal time, strategically, to morph from a children’s band into an Everyone Music type band?”

  “Are you being facetious or amusing?” asked Andy, politely.

  “No,” said John. “We’ve identified a market. We are the number one brand in that market. What we want to do is stay number one. Do we diversify? Yes, we diversify. Do we increase productivity? Yes, we increase productivity. But we don’t ditch a marketing plan just because . . .”

  “Alright. Alright,” said Blake. “Jesus. Just throwing it out there.” Camille, serene and interior, was paying no attention at all. She smiled encouragement at Aslan every now and then.

  “The main problem right now is this.” John opened a newspaper to a picture of Jacquelyn Belmer; she was brandishing a copy of Number Two. “We won’t go into the history of this antipathy, the rights and the wrongs, but this kind of behavior—a drug bust—is grist to her mill.”

  “This is literally insane,” said Blake. “Rutles arrested! Nude girl and teapot!”

  “It’s not insane,” said Andy. “You’re the lead singer of a band for kids. Parents don’t want their children entertained by junkies. Four upcoming promoters have pulled out, dropped us. We’re not playing those shows. We are losing money. Contractually, in fact, they can’t, but they have and you can see their point. The pith of this particular article, however, is that you legally cannot now play your upcoming show in the District of Columbia. You are banned from playing there.”

  “Can we actually go into the District of Columbia, but not play a show?” asked Jack, as though this were salient. Perhaps he had a date there. “Or can we just not go there at all?”

  “We’re banned from DC?” asked Blake.

  “So we’re free the Friday of next week?” asked Camille.

  “So we’re free the Friday of next fucking week?” repeated Blake. Camille immediately started crying, which he ignored. “You want a night off? Take a night off! We’ve been BANNED in DC. We can’t play there. What court granted that injunction or whatever you call it?”

  “The lawyers are dealing with it. They’re appealing,” said John, adjusting his Lennon glasses. “The trouble is that this isn’t one of those PMRC things where everyone gets to expatiate over whether the lyrics are subversive or not. It’s a drug bust; it’s against the law; it’s real bad behavior.” I looked at Blake shamefaced. “And there’s this other issue of “incitement to riot” she keeps banging on about. Everyone saw what happened at that other show. You’re like the Jesus and Mary Chain of the pre-teens. People are scared of you.”

  “You seem quite excited by it,” said Blake.

  “Well, it’s a unique opportunity for moving product,” sai
d John. “But it has to be handled carefully. Apparently you’re pushing all the right buttons; just don’t push any more. And obviously, no more drugs. And some anti-drug public service announcements. Believe me, WBA has been here before.”

  “It wasn’t his cocaine,” I said.

  “Yes, it was,” said Blake.

  “The thing is,” said Andy hastily, “it doesn’t actually matter whose it was, because it is now officially Blake’s. Or he gets in even deeper shit for lying. We know Blake’s a kind, generous, occasionally overly flamboyant man. That’s not the issue. The issue is public perception of a band who are primarily entertaining children, and who shouldn’t really be seen taking a sip of beer or smoking a cigarette in public, much less flashing at Disneyland or being arrested for hard drugs.” There was silence. “We’re shelving the theme park for the time-being,” said Andy, making it clear that this punishment was Blake’s uniquely. “The money’s vanished. We’re concentrating on meat and potatoes: live performances, records in the charts, staying out of trouble. No grand statements. Contrition.”

  “Hey,” said Blake, who’d been cooking something up during the lecture. “DC gig. Okay, we can’t play DC, so we play right on the edge of Maryland or Virginia, as near DC as we can possibly be, and we make it a free gig and we do the best show ever, and we get the ACLU to help us put it on. The Pack ’n’ Play Festival.”

  “Is that exactly the kind of grand statement I just mentioned?” asked a weary Andy.

  “No, I like it,” said John. “It’s great. It’ll take planning.”

  “Well, we can all have the Friday of next week off,” said Blake pointedly, “but let’s get the date for this festival and advertise it before next Friday. Let’s not let the kids down.”

  “Okay,” said Andy. “There’s more.” And there was more: there had been threats. “We’re putting a stop to the autograph sessions after the shows. Now most artistes would be absolutely delighted by this but . . .”

  “That’s half of the show,” pleaded Blake. “That’s what they come for.”

  “We won’t shift so many units,” I said.