Wonderkid

by Wesley Stace

  “Even so,” said John.

  Wow.

  “Look, I’m not afraid of threats,” said Blake. “What are they gonna do? Shoot me? No, they’re gonna spit on me or egg me or give me a damned good talking to. I’m not scared. We shouldn’t give in to them. We should just carry on . . .” He’d said just about everything he could say, but he was fighting a losing battle. “What? What?”

  “Well . . .” said Andy.

  “Have there been actual threats?” asked Blake. Andy nodded. “But you’re more worried about the threat I might offer.”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way, at all,” said Andy. “But I’d say now was a good time to lie low, play shows, sell records, and get ourselves together: contrition.” Blake sniffed. “And one other thing: don’t think you stand for anything. That’s dangerous. You’re not Lenny Bruce. You’re not a martyr. You’re a guy with a drug bust.”

  “Well,” said Curtis, prodded by Mei-Xing as the meeting was coming to a close, “since we’re all sharing, I have an announcement: I’ll be leaving the band at the end of the tour. It’s been a wonderful ride, and I thank you for the opportunity, but I want to pursue other ambitions.”

  “The solo record?” asked Jack. “Man And His Cymbals?” Mei-Xing looked at me again. I tried out a smile.

  “Okay,” said Andy. No one was shocked—we’d grow another Wonderkid. “Well, that’s a shame. But if that’s how you really feel.”

  “Yes,” said Mei-Xing, mostly to me. “Curtis wants to make his own music now.”

  “Curtis,” said Jack, raising an eyebrow. “She’s fourteen years old.” She’s not. “You’re taking advice on your musical career from a fourteen-year-old?”

  “She’s fifteen. You forgot her birthday,” said Curtis. Jack had, but I hadn’t. It was her eighteenth, and I was the only one who knew. I’d let her win at Monopoly. There had been forfeits.

  “Right,” said Jack. “Well, happy birthday, Mei-Xing. Congratulations on breaking up the band.”

  Please don’t call her Yoko.

  Blake was being unusually grown-up about the whole thing. As far as he was concerned, it was a minor wrinkle on the ironing board: “Till the end of the tour, then, you say?”

  “Yes, absolutely. I’d never leave you in the lurch.”

  “Well, then, let’s have a word with the agent and see if he can have the tour go on forever. I don’t want to see you go, Curtis. I’m going to make you see sense over the next few weeks.”

  “Okay,” said Curtis. “I appreciate your attitude.”

  “And Jack agrees with me,” said Blake.

  Jack nodded. “Sorry. Bit of a shock, you know, what with everything else.”

  “Well, it’s partly the everything else,” said Curtis.

  “And I’ll be leaving too,” said Camille, attempting a laugh, “so you’ll need another chick as well as a black guy.” No one spoke. “This situation is too stressful, and I can’t give Aslan the care he needs. This is no way to bring him up. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “I’ll tell you where you’re wrong though,” said Blake, looking at Aslan. Kid was so happy, playing with the trains on his track, making them endlessly crash off the wibbly-wobbly bridge. “This is the best place to bring a kid up. This is it.” It was? Did he believe that?

  “Drug busts, buses, guns backstage?” asked Camille. “Soundchecks, naked mothers, and playgroupies?”

  “Life! As it is lived!” said Blake, voice raised. “Life! Live a little!”

  “Oh,” said Andy, hoping to draw the meeting to a close before it fell apart, “and the record label want you in one bus. They feel that two draw unnecessary attention. And it’s an extravagance.”

  “Why?” asked Blake, full of indignation. Camille and Curtis would walk out right now rather than travel on one bus. “Who cut the tour support?”

  Andy didn’t know how to answer, then said quietly: “I told you he wasn’t used to people saying ‘no.’”

  “Okay,” said Blake. “We keep the two buses. I’ll pay for the other one. Who do I make the check out to, Mitchell?”

  “I’ll get you that information,” said Mitchell, who hadn’t said a word. “But if it’s cards on the table time, I’ll add this.” His final words, spoken with great dignity, as befitted a man who wore Brooks Brothers coats, a raffish scarf, and carried a gun, were: “Gentlemen, Ladies, there is only so much I can do to help you, and I have reached the limits of my patience. My work on your planet is done. I wish you well. I am returning to sanity.”

  He took off his laminate, let it hang from his finger until it dropped, then left. I watched him. We all did. No one could believe it.

  I’d been Mitchell’s go-between, his protégé. I understood his frustration, and no one understood more than I how difficult his job had become, but even I was surprised he left in the middle of a tour like that. He didn’t even turn to say goodbye.

  14

  “You wouldn’t want my trousers to fall down.”

  I ONCE READ A REVIEW OF A LOUIS XV BIOGRAPHY IN WHICH THE author marveled that bystanders were actually instructed not to look at the King. But isn’t that standard practice for folk music’s Bob Dylan? Or is it Diana Ross? Well, regardless—Blake wasn’t that bad.

  But looking back at Mitchell’s departure—so ill-timed, such a disaster—it’s possible that it all started with the request for a hair dryer, a hair dryer that Blake would never use. It was a senseless imposition—difficulty for its own sake—yet Blake kept on about it, even though he knew that Mitchell knew that there was no good reason for it. Mitchell just couldn’t stand it anymore—it was the gun, the drugs, the atmosphere. He said more than once, in that paternal, everything’s under control way, that he’d never had such trouble from any of the hardcore bands he’d toured with. And nor did I, in the years that followed. I was surprised by his timing though. Even Curtis, even Camille—who felt no great tie to the band—knew you didn’t just pick up sticks. I asked him about it later, and he said: “I’m a road manager, not a road sweeper.” The left hand must know what the right is doing.

  The tour couldn’t function without a road manager, but the unspoken question was whether the band could function without Mitchell. It would have been the last thing Andy and the record label wanted. I alone seemed to understand that he was leaving because he knew I could take over, so I suggested myself. Three people said “no” at once, the firmest of which was Blake’s.

  “You should be having fun, Sweet.”

  “I’m not sure anyone’s having fun, are they? Anyway, that’s why he left, because he knew I could do it.”

  “You think that’s why he left?”

  “Besides I’d like to. I know what to do. Mitchell taught me.”

  “Over my dead body.”

  Andy took the reins for the next few dates until we were entrusted to a hardy, pockmarked survivor named Adam. There was no time for an audition, no bedding-in period. It was Adam or nothing.

  “Randy!” He high-fived the driver, boarding as though he owned the bus. “My man!” Oh joy.

  With him arrived a portable fax machine, an impressively small mobile phone, and a massive collection of laminates, all of which hung from his neck as though he might at any moment require Cheap Trick credentials from 1981. I expected him to gather us, sit us down, tell us a bit about himself, but there was no ceremony. He spread himself thickly around the parlor and perused the itinerary, evaluating its success: “Seattle to San Fran, then back to Portland. Jesus. What joker came up with that bullshit?”

  Adam was supposedly in the same line of work as Mitchell, but there the similarity ended. Adam set himself up as everyone’s adversary: the agent, the promoters, the label, even the band. Everything had to suit him and his schedule. He was the king of the ulterior motive. He liked to hold the cards and deal at his leisure. He withheld information, regardless even of a “need to know.” This had the function, first, of putting everybody on edge and, second, of reducing p
eople to a state of dependency upon him, which, though he invited it, he seemed to resent. He wasn’t officially the band’s adversary, of course, that was just his personal style. He was pleased to mock everyone on the tour for his own amusement, and this had the effect of uniting the Wonderkids, if only in their dislike of him. It was like we’d been sent a Boot Camp road manager “for our own good.” Who knows? If Mitchell couldn’t bring us into line, maybe Adam was exactly what we needed. It was hard to like him; he didn’t care. It wasn’t his job to be liked. Though it was apparently his job to say that it wasn’t his job to be liked, because he said it very often.

  “I’ll get you there on time, and I’ll check you into the hotels,” he said, “and if you do your jobs, which I hear you do, the shows will go like clockwork. And I’ll pick up your money. But I’m not wiping your asses.”

  “Good to know,” said Blake.

  “Did the other guy wipe your asses?”

  “It’s a metaphor, right?”

  Blake and I watched Fanny and Alexander in the back of the bus one night. The kids have an idyllic, noisy childhood until their father dies, and their mother remarries a bishop into whose cold, wretched house they are moved. And thus was pockmarked Adam rechristened the Bishop, the least likely nickname of all.

  “Just get him out of the bus, Jimmy,” said Jack wearily. “Where’s Mitchell when you need him?”

  After three more days of torture, Blake said: “Hey, Adam, do you mind traveling in a separate car or with the road crew? I don’t think this is working. We need some space.”

  “If that’s what you want,” said the Bishop. “Your money.”

  “God be with you.”

  The Pack ’n’ Play Festival was confirmed. The record company agreed to rush release the new single: “Life, As It Is Lived,” classic Blake. The lyrics somehow managed to be flippant, yet they took in all the recent mistakes and revelations, especially the breaking up of the band. Roll with the punches, was the idea, and everything will be okay. It might have been a recipe for depressing, but the chorus was infectious and the hook moreish, with the band at their joyful sloppiest—they’d recorded on the hoof in a couple of studios along the way. It certainly spilled out of Blake, something he had to say, all delivered in glorious nonsense—we all make mistakes, we’re all human, life throws some funny things in your path, let’s keep having fun. It was one of those songs he had to get out of his system—his “Give Peace a Chance,” except he actually bothered to get out of bed to record it. The single was on the radio within a week of its recording. A scandal, MOMs’ disapproval, a TV appearance: the perfect hothouse atmosphere for the cultivation of a hit.

  The big Maryland show was hastily expanded into a pay-per-view event, affording the Bishop many opportunities to paint himself as greatly put-upon and massively overworked. In the run up, Blake dabbled with a few experimental changes to the old routine: yes, peanut butter; yes, feathers. He watched a few Alice Cooper videos. A guillotine was too heavy, biting the head off a plushie toy not quite enough. He tried putting red ribbons inside one, so they left a trail of “blood” behind, but that wasn’t doing it: too visceral and not funny enough. Rod Stewart kicking footballs out into the audience seemed promising, but how: ping-pong balls? Bouncy balls? They’d all get thrown back anyway, as Mitchell had suggested years ago—kids give as good as they get. Jack suggested dressing kids up in Hells Angel gear and having them pretend to do security at the outdoor concert. Altamont reference: tasteless. The trouble was: though these ideas were all ripe for parody, and good fodder for an amusing parlor game, they were, as far as Blake was concerned, self-parody. He needed that one real coup de théâtre for the pay-per-view; the bit of rock ’n’ roll that outdid all that went before. The rest of the show wrote itself. This was where we really lacked Mitchell. No one was overseeing Blake now, encouraging him in the right direction, while simultaneously restraining him, and he wouldn’t let me do the job. Adam had been employed to keep a firm hand, but he wasn’t on the bus anymore. Blake’s imagination was free to roam, but it roamed without focus.

  As the date came closer, the general mood improved. Blake never tired of doing shows or meeting his audience, on the rare occasion this was now allowed, and he was genuinely excited about what the band was doing, particularly the fact that the Wonderkids had sparked a little debate about censorship and the role of art. I didn’t think for a moment that Blake was planning to go out with a bang. I just thought he was looking for a good show.

  Some people can’t stand reading about themselves or seeing reviews of their shows. Certain highlights passed before our eyes: a lengthy editorial in Billboard that sheepishly supported the band, citing some pretty astonishing sales, without excusing their personal habits; Kurt Loder came out as a fan with a series of hastily-assembled pieces for MTV News. But for the most part, and though I was curious, we didn’t pay attention. Now with the Internet, you have to make a conscious attempt not to know things, but back then, if one didn’t read papers or watch much TV, it was easy—and none of us, not even Jack, was aware of quite how the Maryland concert had mushroomed into an event. Andy had issued an edict that Blake shouldn’t be put in front of the cameras before the show, which meant no press to talk to, and the Bishop had a strict policy of hoarding and withholding information: he told us nothing. “It’s going to be a circus,” was all he could spare. “The equipment will meet us there.” Most of what I knew, I found out from the Kidders, who hung on for dear life, cheerfully doing as many shows as still remained on our itinerary. With all the cancellations, we had an unusual amount of time on our hands, but Blake and Jack hardly got out of the bus, except when their requirements exceeded the capacity of the toilet.

  Mei-Xing and I didn’t see each other as often as I would have liked. I once bumped into her in the aisle of a CVS. She smiled like a long-lost friend.

  “Wanna play Monopoly?” I asked. The contents of her trolley looked outlandishly large, family-value this and that. My purchases were all travel-sized, rattling round the bottom of my basket; minuscule shaving foam, ten-squeeze toothpaste, a shot glassful of mouthwash.

  “No,” she said. Her refusal seemed to upset her.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s emotional to say no when I don’t want to say no and you know that I don’t want to say no. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Yes.”

  As we drove towards the festival park, passing the first battalion of television cameras, I wondered what was going on. Then I realized: what was going on was us.

  Progress to the backstage area was majestically slow. There were protests, and people protesting the protests, and other people drawn simply by the fact that a crowd represented as good a reason as any to dust off a placard that proclaimed WHALES AREN’T ENDANGERED: YOU ARE! or IT’S BETTER TO BE RACIST AT NIGHT! or whatever bizarre thing they happened to believe.

  The police were out in force, wearing shorts on a hot afternoon. A cop always seems less threatening when you can see his knees. The park was packed, full of happy picnicking families, many in Wonderkids T-shirts. Police later estimated the crowd at four thousand, which meant eight to ten. There was even a video screen to the right of the stage for those too far away to see the details. It was a beautiful scene. There’d be no Altamont action here. This was a bright, shining celebration of youth and music—two fingers at the moral majority. The ACLU had a big booth; there were food vendors everywhere, some offering PB&J sandwiches (Andy had probably negotiated 5 percent of every sale). Blake, Jack, and I looked out of the bus window like children misting up the outside of a toy store. It really did seem like the pinnacle of everything, as though this was precisely what the band had been invented for.

  Backstage was mayhem. Some band, not the Kidders, was already playing, and music was swirling around this way and that. There were plenty of microphones pointing in our direction, and Andy and his worker bees were buzzing everywhere, trying to save Blake from this, steer him towards that
. We found our way to an air-conditioned Winnebago, where the rest of the band was waiting. Curtis and Camille’s departures hadn’t been further discussed, even between Jack and Blake, and now wasn’t the time. Everyone was ready to forgive and forget, because this was clearly as good as it got: headlining your own free festival.

  “Wow!” said Curtis. “What a party!” Mei-Xing gave me a peck on the side of the cheek and whispered in my ear: “rent.” Camille too was happy. The sylvan vibrations had rose-tinted everyone’s spectacles.

  “Okay. People,” Blake said. “This is it. Sit back and enjoy the ride.”

  “Anything special planned?” I asked. I’d be Mitchell if I had to be, whether he liked it or not. I’d even pretend to be annoyed at the late warning if the answer was “yes”.

  “Look,” said Blake. “We’re doing it all. Nothing crazy new. It’s live on TV; people are paying to see us all over America; let’s give them the best show we’ve got; the one we do so well; the one the kids love. We always get it right onstage, so we’re not going to get it wrong tonight.”

  I couldn’t wait for showtime, but, as the Kidders went on, there was a lot of fun to be had in the fenced off backstage. Mei-Xing and I played Ping-Pong, Blake got a massage, and Jack sat down with some mums to sample catering—there was even a paddling pool in which Aslan performed some kind of water ballet under a sprinkler. Blake was itching to get in: he loved a paddle. It was all, literally, too good to be true. Maybe this would all prove so seductive that Curtis wouldn’t ditch the band. I was so excited I got wired on Coke. You’d think I was too jaded for a sugar rush, but no. And then I ate some Ben & Jerry’s and got that terrible frozen face where you can’t do anything but pinch the bridge of your nose, and people ask you if you’re okay, but you can’t even look up to let them know you’re not choking. In my excitement, I’d forgotten how to eat ice cream.

  It was wondrous to behold the sea of humanity before them as the Wonderkids hit the stage. TV cameras danced around Blake, movements he incorporated into his usual pogoings. The dressing-up box came out earlier than usual. It was great, and it didn’t really matter what music the band was playing—everybody loved it: the kids were dancing, the grown-ups were dancing, everyone was screaming and singing along. Aslan, Mei-Xing, and I watched from a VIP area at the side of the stage: a perfect view of both the audience and the band. I always loved it when Blake, knowing where I was, winked. Is there anything better than when a performer singles you out for special, perhaps private, attention? And best of all, Mei-Xing was drawing a secret line down my back with her index finger.