by Vina Jackson
It was all the excuse Noah needed. Back in London the next day, he made a beeline for his office straight from the St Pancras Eurostar terminal and arrived just in time to ask Rhonda to make all the arrangements for the trip. If she was surprised by his decision, she gave no sign of it, imperturbable as ever. It was some time since he had been on the road with a band.
A few weeks later, he arrived in Panama. As he walked out of the plane onto the ramp, the heat cloaked him in one gulp like a damp blanket rolling over his jetlagged body. By the time he reached the luggage carousel, after an interminable delay at passport control where just one official was processing two planeloads of arriving passengers, his pale blue shirt was sticking to his back.
There was no one to meet him and he caught a cab to the hotel where he knew The Handsomes and their managers and crew were staying. The cool gusts of the air-conditioning rushed towards him as the uniformed doorman held the wide glass doors open for him and a matching bellboy ran towards him to take his one piece of luggage and place it on a trolley while he checked in. He retained his computer case, which hung from his shoulders. It was frayed at the edges; he’d picked it up as a freebie on an old tour for which Bridget had provided second support and it held a strong sentimental value for him; he carried his papers, a couple of paperbacks, documents, assorted toiletries and odds and sods in it.
‘Business or pleasure, sir?’ the pretty receptionist asked with an artificial smile.
‘Both.’
Entering the large, airy room, he could have been anywhere in the world – geometrical configuration, soft shag carpet, assembly-line top-of-the range functional furniture – until he pulled the curtains open after the bellboy, duly tipped, had left.
He was on the fifteenth floor and the view ranged across roofs and fields all the way to a bluer-than-blue ocean. The band was camped out in a set of luxury cabanas surrounding the outside pool, but since Noah was partly in holiday mode he had upgraded to a suite on the hotel’s top floor. He always enjoyed having a view. He hadn’t looked up anything about Panama before coming here. All he was aware of was its famed canal. But the light was white and flat and dazzling, the sky aquamarine, and a faint smell of spices lingered in the air, blending uncomfortably with some fragrance the room had been sprayed with by the hotel cleaner shortly before his arrival.
‘What the fuck am I doing here?’ Noah wondered aloud. It was mid-afternoon but his body was weary, still on European time. He would sleep. Meet up with the band tomorrow, he decided. He stripped.
Alain, Stéphane and the rest of the crew had risen hours before Noah, despite having apparently all spent the previous night out on the town. The two young musicians and their entourage had taken over a large round table in the hotel’s dining area and were busily gorging themselves on the buffet breakfast, a cornucopia of tropical fruit platters, corn tortillas, meat dishes and the usual fare of miniature boxed cereals, containers of low-fat yoghurt and slices of countless varieties of bread that was always on hand in hotels around the world for unadventurous tourists.
Noah took a large plate up to the hot food counter and ordered the Panamanian breakfast: fresh fried beef flavoured with garlic and paprika, which came with a liberal serving of salty fried dough balls and a scoop of spicy scrambled eggs. He carried his mountain of food towards the table where a pot of fresh coffee and jugs of juice already awaited.
Sampling the local cuisine was invariably one of Noah’s favourite parts of travelling, and he did so with relish now that April was not eyeing his plate and tutting while she munched on wheat-free granola, egg-white omelette, or whatever her latest diet happened to entail. He had been blessed with one of those metabolisms that enabled him to eat whatever he liked and stay in moderately good shape, and he never gave a second thought to the state of his arteries or his cholesterol count.
There was one free seat, apparently saved for him, alongside a pixie-sized girl in her mid-twenties with hair cropped in varying short lengths that formed a bob-like helmet around her skull in a mess of dark roots and peroxide blonde ends. She had a sharp, pointed nose and a face shaped like an upside-down teardrop with a wide forehead, angular cheekbones and narrow, pointed chin. Her brows were thick and formed two animated dark streaks across her temples.
When she spotted Noah heading towards them she rose to her feet and waved, sending the jangling stack of silver bracelets that circled her wrist down her stick-thin arm where they were prevented from dropping all the way to her armpit only by the barrier of her elbow. Her cupid’s-bow red lips opened into a round O as she called out to him.
‘Hey, Noah,’
He racked his memory but didn’t think they had met previously. Surely he would have remembered. Roadies were a dime a dozen and he had been vaguely introduced to hundreds over the years, but nearly all of them were men, and fewer still were slim young blondes.
She extended her hand and Noah took it. Her grip was firm, although he felt like a giant with her tiny palm within his grasp.
‘I’m Dana,’ she said. ‘Michèle told us to expect you.’ She had an unusual accent with a strong US twang. Later she told him that she had grown up in Serbia glued to American TV shows before moving Stateside and meeting The Handsomes at a Cinnabon store in Florida during one of their early club tours. She had ended up training on the sound crew before being promoted to PA and all-round assistant, with her ability to help out on the technical side an added bonus. She was now based in Paris and an indispensable part of the duo’s team as principal troubleshooter and maid of all trades.
Dana introduced him to the others. Pete and Jerry, the senior technical guys on lighting and sound, who were both in their thirties and looked distinctly bored and tired in comparison with the exuberant expressions and unlined faces of their assistants, who were relatively new to life on the road.
Even if Noah hadn’t already seen publicity pics of Alain and Stéphane, they would have been immediately recognisable as the actual stars of the band before they were pointed out to him. Oftentimes, off-duty rockstars and musicians were like actors away from camera or the stage and surprisingly meek and ordinary without an instrument or a microphone in hand. These two were the polar opposite of that. A blind hermit with a total ignorance of pop culture could have sensed the energy that they exuded and the chemistry that popped between the pair.
Alain was the more extroverted of the two, and jumped to his feet to greet Noah, embracing him in a particularly Eurocentric-style hug, complete with light kiss on each cheek. He wore tight skinny jeans in a coral red shade with a short-sleeved thin cotton shirt over the top, buttoned all the way up to the collar. Stéphane stayed seated, and reached across the table to shake Noah’s hand. He had on a baggy black and grey Religion T-shirt that featured a woman’s face with just one eye visible, the rest covered by a stylised hand with all its bones protruding like an X-ray skeleton, and an oversized, thin grey snood that he would surely have to abandon when they left the cool air-conditioned comfort of the hotel.
Noah was aware, from past press releases and many magazine articles, that the two French deejays had been childhood friends, but they could have easily passed for brothers, with their matching slim-line, medium-height figures and identical shaggy brown hair, cut and styled to achieve just the right degree of detached cool.
Noah suspected that the few thin blond streaks they both sported in their long fringes owed more to the bottle than any time spent in the sun; a sign of stylists getting involved to manufacture whatever they deemed to be a more commercial image. They’d come up through the scene at the same time as Daft Punk, but unlike their counterparts did not conceal their faces from their public.
‘Good to meet you both at last,’ Noah told them. ‘I’ve heard great things. I’ve always been a fan of your sound.’
‘It’s our pleasure,’ Alain responded. ‘We’re flattered you’ve come all the way out here.’ He spoke fluent English with a mid-Atlantic accent.
They knew, no doubt, o
f his status at the label and the fact that a positive word from Noah could mean an injection of PR cash from their label’s British arm and a chance to spread their wings further worldwide. Stéphane was appraising him curiously, probably wondering why an English record exec who had previously shown little interest in the two of them should bother to travel all the way to Central and South America out of the blue to watch them perform live.
Noah had no intention of explaining himself. They could think whatever they liked. He poured a strong black coffee from the cafetière – still piping hot, since the roving waitress attending to their table had noticed him join the party and brought a fresh pot – and bit into one of the fried dough balls. They were covered in powdered sugar and the flavour was at once sweet and savoury and took him by surprise.
‘So, what are the plans for today?’ he asked, between forkfuls.
‘We’re headlining at Next tomorrow night,’ Alain told him. ‘The place is pretty huge. We’re going down there later on before doors open to run some soundchecks and liaise with their on site crew. Until then . . . sun, pool, while we can. Might take a trip into the city later, maybe the casinos. You’re welcome to join us.’
They agreed to meet up in the lobby at 9 p.m. and then find somewhere for a late dinner, which would give the band and tech guys enough time to approve the set-up at Next for the following night’s gig.
Noah remained at the breakfast table to finish off his coffee as the others trooped out. He declined to join in with their day-time activities, since strictly speaking he was not out here on vacation and had to go online and attend to the backlog of emails and messages that had no doubt reached his inbox over the course of his absence from the office so far.
He also hoped that during the flight over Viggo might have discovered some further nugget of information about Summer and mailed it to him. Fat chance of that, he mused, but it was the only vague hope he hung onto. Noah had told Viggo in advance about his impromptu trip with The Handsomes, and prompted him to follow up again with Susan to check if there had been any developments on her side.
His room had wi-fi and, to his surprise, a pretty good connection. He pulled open the thick black-out curtains, letting bright shafts of light stream in through the wide French doors, and settled onto the white leather bucket-shaped swivel chair, angling his screen away from the sun’s glare.
There was a whole raft of correspondence from Rhonda listing phone calls that he had missed and minutes from meetings that he had been due to attend. She had kindly sent him an abbreviated summary of all the urgent things he needed to do, letting him know that he could ignore most of the rest as office politics and waffle.
April had sent him a missive, which he opened and then quickly clicked away from after skim-reading a few expletive-ridden lines about how her recent stay with Noah had confirmed to her precisely how much of a pig he was, who she would warn all of her friends not to touch with a proverbial barge pole. He glanced at the time on the message and noticed she’d sent it in the early hours of the morning – probably a drunken rant that she would later regret and he could safely overlook.
Nothing from Viggo.
Noah racked his brains to come up with some reasonable way to pin down the possible whereabouts of the red-haired violinist. He supposed he could Google private investigators, of the sort that populated B-grade Hollywood films, with run-down offices hidden behind nail salons and dubious taste in brown corduroy trousers, if such people really existed. Then wondered how he could possibly justify that cost on his expenses. Or try a more exhaustive Facebook search, beyond his one quick look to see if she had a website or fan page.
He was prevented from utilising such methods by an inner sense of right and wrong that told him reaching out to Summer through his industry connections, in view of his potentially signing her again, was perfectly legitimate, but that trying to find her through more personal means crossed the line from professional interest to possible creep. If the stories that Mieville had told him were true, then the poor woman had enough weird fans as it was, and certainly didn’t need to think that another odd and potentially dangerous stalker had been added to the mix.
Noah didn’t want to be that guy.
He had a few contacts in Brazil, from his freelancing days years ago when every single potential bit of industry gossip across the world had to be nurtured in case one of them might prove his big break. All of whom he hadn’t spoken to in ages before he called and mailed them in the days prior to his flight out of Heathrow to drum up leads. He had received back a handful of mail server bounce-backs advising him of who had now moved on, and several replies that contained a warm greeting followed by an apology informing him that unfortunately they had not heard anything about a kiwi violinist performing in South America in any kind of show, either with an orchestra or something of a risqué or more private nature. They promised to let him know if any clues popped up.
There was a knock at the door, shaking Noah out of the fog of depression that had begun to settle over him.
He wasn’t expecting anyone.
It was Dana.
She had changed out of the black stretch leggings and crop-sleeved button-up shirt that she had been wearing earlier into a pair of trainers, cut-off khaki-coloured shorts that reached only halfway down her thighs, and a white masculine-style muscle vest that featured a colourful print of a gorilla wearing sunglasses and was several sizes to large for her, with a low neck and baggy arm holes that made it clear she was not wearing a bra underneath, though since she was totally flat chested Noah supposed she didn’t need one. A stone-wash denim backpack straight out of the eighties hung from one of her narrow shoulders, and in place of the silver bangles that he had noticed decorating her wrist at the breakfast table she now wore a Swatch watch with neon-yellow straps. On her left shoulder she had a badly drawn tattoo of a 3-D skull that sported a bright-red Mohawk. Noah longed to ask her if she had picked it up on a drunken night out that she now regretted, but he thought better of it.
In one hand she held a bottle of water, and in the other a Panama City fold-out map and guidebook.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I’m not one for sitting by the pool. I have to be back by five to head down to Next with the guys, but before then thought I might take a Canal tour.’
Noah’s expression must have been impassive.
‘I know these organised things are cheesy,’ she said, ‘but if you want to see anything other than the inside of clubs and hotel rooms in this job, you soon learn to cram in what you can. I thought you might like to come along. Follow the band and see the world, and all that.’
He considered her invitation, and thought of how it would look; him, a decent-looking but obviously older man, wandering around town with Dana, a young punk whose slight frame and taste in fashion meant she could pass for a teenager. Not that he spent too much of his time worrying about what others thought of him, but Rhonda’s emails wouldn’t answer themselves and he knew that he was likely to have a few late nights and hangovers to recover from in the coming week that would make business matters even harder to get on with on another day. The older he got, the lower his tolerance for partying. He was grateful that the sound and lighting guys were older too, so at least he wouldn’t feel like the band’s chaperone hanging out with them all.
‘That’s kind of you, but I’m here on a sort of working holiday. More work than holiday, I’m afraid.’ He opened the door wider and gestured his head towards the swivel chair by the French doors, his coffee pot and laptop resting nearby; a makeshift office.
Her eyes widened when she caught sight of the expanse of his view and de luxe-room mod cons.
‘Wow,’ she said. ‘It’s nice up here.’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Executive perks, I guess.’
‘I guess I’ll see you later then,’ she said. ‘If you get through your work and have any time tomorrow, I’m planning on an early start, to hike the Quetzal Trail. It’s a day trip, by Volcán Barú. To see the ra
inforest. Not too taxing,’ she added hastily, ‘if you approach it from the right direction.’
Evidently Dana didn’t think too much of his fitness levels.
‘Don’t you ever sleep?’ he asked her. Noah might be able to sneak off early, but he doubted that the crew would be back before 3 a.m., by the time The Handsomes finished their last set and they packed up all the equipment.
She laughed, revealing a row of perfectly straight white teeth and the silver flash of a tongue piercing.
‘Rarely,’ she told him. ‘You get used to it.’
She gave him an awkward wave goodbye, and turned to go. Noah briefly observed her as she slung her other arm through her backpack’s strap and walked towards the elevator.
Had she been hitting on him? Out of genuine attraction, or an attempt to further her band’s career by sleeping with a label executive?
He didn’t think so, unless he had totally lost his touch for sensing physical chemistry. She had seemed somewhat lonely, and eager for company. Noah recalled from his days of touring with musicians how you quickly grew bored of the people you spent every day with.
Noah took the seat next to her when they sat down for dinner. The concierge had suggested La Trona, a striking location with good food and a price list that wouldn’t break the tour’s careful budget, in the Bella Vista district. The building had formerly been the home of a famous Pollera dancer, Ramona Lefevre, he was advised.
‘So how was the Canal?’ he asked her.
‘Industrial,’ she said. ‘But its history is truly fascinating.’
Over a main course of Sriracha mayonnaise with crab cakes, Noah found himself asking Dana if during the short course of her career on the road thus far she had ever stumbled across a red-haired musician by the name of Summer Zahova. As the words tripped out of his mouth, he blamed his indiscretion on the Chilean wine that the waiter kept liberally refilling his glass with, and the gaudy, wall-sized Renaissance-style oil painting across the room that featured a giant bare-breasted woman and did nothing to take his mind off the opposite sex.
