Subpoena Colada

by Mark Dawson

  Brian is sitting with Dave Gahan from Depeche Mode, and a couple of girls I don’t recognize. They must be transient attractions - Brian doesn’t even introduce them to me. Dave smiles at me and leaves. The girls follow him. Several bottles of champagne have been emptied and stand discarded on the table. Brian motions for more from a waitress. She brings a bottle over and Brian slaps a twenty down on the table.

  ‘Have yourself a go on this,’ Brian says, slipping a vial into my hand. ‘A trip to Disneyland.’

  He doesn’t need to ask twice.

  Returning from the toilets I hand the vial back to Brian, wiping stinging nostrils. My head is buzzing with activity and I have that familiar unquenchable desire to speak.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ Brian says. ‘About this morning in court. Maybe I ought to pay more attention. What’d it all mean?’

  Somehow, I manage to click into law mode. ‘It means you’re not allowed to spend more than you need for reasonable living and legal expenses. This kind of thing -’ I tap the empty vial still lying on the table - ‘wouldn’t qualify, for example.’

  ‘You’re my lawyer,’ he says. ‘We could call this a conference. How’s that?’

  ‘I don’t think a judge would be impressed.’

  ‘I don’t see you complaining.’

  ‘Selective blindness.’

  ‘Hypocrite.’

  I hold up my hands helplessly. ‘Guilty as charged.’

  We watch a couple of girls on a table opposite, in silence, until Brian looks over to me again and says, ‘Thanks for this afternoon.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Cheering me up.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything.’

  ‘You put up with me moaning. And it’s good to have someone else to talk to. I could talk to Davey, I guess, but I don’t like to worry him.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘He’s got a lot on his mind. The album, the solo tour - you know.’

  ‘It’s no problem,’ I say. ‘I don’t mind.’

  There’s a pause and I study Brian over the top of my glass. For a brief moment I see the same vulnerability that was evident in the police mugshots from his drug arrest, years ago. I have to remind myself that this is Brian Fey, rockstar, famous person, icon from my youth.

  Vulnerability isn’t something you associate with him. This is what you associate with him: a hundred thousand screaming fans calling out to him. Him shouting ‘Good evening Pasadena’ from a stage in California during another mega-concert on another world tour. His face on magazines around the world. His songs on everyone’s lips.

  I’m almost feeling sorry for him, and I’m not entirely sure why.

  He says, ‘How’d you explain tonight to your girlfriend?’

  ‘I’m not seeing anyone right now,’ I admit, suddenly confident I can tell Brian about Hannah. I don’t know why I feel this way. Perhaps his own vulnerability has struck a chord.

  ‘But you said-’

  ‘I know what I said, but I’m not. She left me. I just didn’t want to talk about it then.’

  ‘You don’t mind now?’

  ‘No, I don’t think I do.’

  ‘When’d it happen?’

  ‘A while ago.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We just grew apart. You know how it is: you think you know someone, and then you realize you don’t know them at all.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ he says emphatically.

  ‘Things change. You look at people in different ways. But then it was her who left me, so I’m just guessing that’s what happened. I don’t really know.’

  ‘Was there anyone else?’

  ‘No,’ I begin, then, recanting, ‘Yes. He’s an actor.’

  ‘Anyone famous?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘You upset about it?’

  ‘For a while.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says.

  ‘It’s no problem,’ I feign. ‘Not now. I hardly even miss her.’

  I don’t know whether he buys my bravado. He lets it sink in as he picks at a packet of crisps on the table. ‘We’ve got more in common than you think,’ he says. There’s a companionable pause which doesn’t detract from the feeling of surrealism that Brian Fey should be the first person to get the low-down on my new, single status.

  He changes the subject: ‘You’re coming tomorrow, aren’t you?’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘The gig. My first gig. The first one on my own, I mean.’

  I’d forgotten. Brian’s new album gets its live debut tomorrow at a medium-sized venue in town. Brian mentioned it before, I think. He may even have provided me with a ticket. In the confusion of recent events it slipped my mind.

  ‘Course I’ll be there,’ I say. ‘Goes without saying.’

  ‘Good,’ he says. ‘It’d mean a lot. I’m actually pretty nervous. Can you believe that? After everything I’ve done, that a little concert like this’d have me scared?’

  THE NOBLE ART

  Later on a couple of guys approach the table. Both are swaying badly, sloppy drunk. They have the unmistakable look of music executives; ten years ago, they would have been wearing pony tails and shiny suits.

  ‘Are you Brian Fey?’ one of them slurs, bracing himself with both hands on our table.

  Brian half-smiles. ‘No,’ he says, ‘you’ve got the wrong guy.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ says the other guy. ‘You look just like him.’

  ‘I wish I was,’ Brian says.

  ‘You wish you were him?’ says the first guy, eyes swimming. ‘Why’d you wanna be a loser like him?’

  ‘Why’d you want that?’ echoes the other.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why’d you wanna be a loser like Brian Fey? I’ve heard his new album’s a pile of shite.’

  ‘And I always thought,’ opines his companion, ‘the rest of the Dahlias were carrying him.’

  Brian gets to his feet, and I’m suddenly very nervous. ‘Yeah?’ he says.

  ‘Yeah. He had an OK voice but even that’s gone now. Everyone says he’s completely lost it. Too much toot, I reckon.’

  He puts a finger to his nose and gives an expressive sniff.

  I look up at Brian; a dark scowl has settled across his face.

  The two of them close ranks. ‘He oughtta realize he’s over the hill and just get it over with. There’s nothing worse than seeing someone lose their dignity in public.’

  ‘And slagging him off makes you feel good?’ Brian asks. He prods the first guy in the sternum. ‘Makes you feel better, does it?’

  ‘Don’t do that,’ warns the guy, scowling. His friend takes a step towards us.

  ‘Let’s not argue,’ I intervene tremulously. ‘Let me buy you both a beer.’

  ‘I’m not thirsty. And your mate’s upsetting me with his attitude.’

  ‘I’m sure he’s very sorry,’ I say reasonably. ‘You’re very sorry, aren’t you?’ I almost call him Brian but manage to bite my tongue.

  Brian leaps at the bigger man, catching him under the chin with a looping right-handed uppercut that started from somewhere around his knees. The suddenness of the swipe must have taken him by surprise because he staggers backwards into a table. Brian follows in with another punch, this one left-handed; it lands in the man’s gut with a fleshy thwap. He doubles up, wheezing. Brian raises his knee sharply; it thuds into chin, jarring teeth. Something drops out of the guy’s mouth as he drops to his knees - a streamer of bloody spit. Brian lands a kick in the man’s ribs.

  He goes down. Brian keeps kicking, firing out words with each fresh kick.

  ‘Mind… your… fucking… manners.’

  He stomps on him; his arms, his torso, his legs.

  The guy pulls himself into a tight fetal ball; his arms protecting his head but exposing his ribs. Brian’s face is stretched into a brutal rictus, flooded with anger and hate. I try to pull him away but he shrugs my hands away from his shoulders.

  The other guy shove
s Brian back against the table.

  Brian hits the table but bounces right back at him.

  I try to pull him away again. He shoves the guy hard with both hands. I loop my hands around his waist and yank him backwards, mid-kick. He teeters back into me and we both collapse. His body is tight, throbbing with energy. He tries to get up, but I don’t let go.

  As we are lying on the ground, wrapped around each other with him struggling to unlock my arms, the first guy gets up. Blood is pouring from his nose. The two of them step over the furniture until they loom over us.

  The second man pulls me to my feet with one hand locked around my throat. Rather than struggle, or tell him that Brian is the man they should be taking care of, I do something immeasurably dumb.

  I aim a hopeless head butt at his nose.

  Even from this range, close enough to smell prawn cocktail on his breath and see the fragments of crisps in his goatee, I miss. My forehead glances off a solid cheekbone and catches the side of his ear.

  ‘Oh dear,’ he says. ‘That wasn’t too bright now, was it?’

  PUNCHBAG

  It’s Rocky Balboa on the ropes, sucking it up and taking it from Apollo Creed. All I can remember: curling up to absorb the punishment and telling myself that you have to swallow a pint of blood before you’re sick, and risk choking on your own vomit.

  CONVALESCENCE

  Later.

  We’re sitting in a kebab house nursing our drinks and our wounds. Well, I’m nursing wounds; Brian’s swizzling a straw around in his glass of 7-Up, watching the bubbles crawl up the glass and break on the surface.

  The second guy soon put paid to me, dealing me a head butt and following that up with a kicking as I lay mewling on the sticky floor of the bar. All Brian got was a clip around the ear. This was despite him leaping to my defence; he was thrown back to the floor by a flat-palmed shove to the sternum, and by the time he had got back to his feet for some more the bouncers were there and we were thrown out into the snow, blood from my head staining the white.

  Why did I do something so stupid? This wasn’t heroism, not even panic, not even the over-enthusiastic application of the professional duty owed to my clients.

  This was pity and fear. The look of hatred on Brian’s face as he went for the first guy - maybe it was that that pushed me to defend him. I didn’t want him to get hurt, and I could see that he was in the mood to go for the second guy as easily as he had gone for his mate. It was almost as if he was inviting the beating he was inevitably going to take once they were both on their feet.

  I’ve never seen him like that before. It’s hard to attribute that kind of anger to him. Look at him now, casually slurping up his drink and rubbing idly at the back of his head where it hit the edge of a chair. It’s almost as if he was a different person.

  ‘What happened?’ I croak painfully.

  ‘You heard them. They were winding me up. I just lost it.’

  He looks sheepish now, sucking noisily at the straw like a child; different in the artificial light of the cafe washed-out, his colour fading.

  He stares down at the table. A heavy silence has fallen.

  I apply my amateur cold compress - a cold can of Coke - to my bloody nose. The tin is stained again with a bloom of blood, red on silver-and-red.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ Brian says, looking up. ‘It’s my temper. I can’t always keep it under control. It makes me do stupid things.’

  ‘You only had to ignore them,’ I say painfully. There doesn’t appear to be very much in the way of space between my cracked and swollen lips, just enough for a taut grimace.

  ‘I know, but I can’t, not always. Red mist, you know, I snap. I’ve tried everything to stop it - even had anger-management classes once. They didn’t fucking work.’

  Another awkward silence, filled by more sucking noises from the straw.

  A sip of whisky from the bottle on the table will ease the pain. I pour myself a generous measure, down it, then pour again. We bought it in a twenty-four-hour supermarket after being thrown out of the bar.

  ‘I’ll try to make sure it doesn’t happen again,’ Brian promises.

  AN EXTRACT FROM SCOTT DOLAN’S GUEST LIST

  Ex-Black Dahlias singer Brian Fey, 35, seems to be falling to bits.

  Fey, his new album not doing as well as might have been hoped, now stands accused of starting a fight in a trendy London bar. Media worker Guy Roberts was enjoying a night out with a friend at swish bar Attica when Fey and his lawyer, Daniel Tate, got into an argument with them. The argument ended with Fey punching Guy, 32.

  ‘He’s off his rocker,’ said Guy. ‘I thought he was going to kill me.’

  WEDNESDAY

  SWEET DREAMS

  Hannah sits at the bottom of the bed, cross-legged, in my pair of brown tracksuit bottoms. She likes the soft fabric, made fluffy by dozens of washes in the days when I used to work out. She smiles down at me as I rouse myself. She brushes an errant strand of red hair away from her nose. The Sunday heavies are spread around her. It’s the smell rising from the tray on her lap that’s woken me: freshly-baked rolls, strips of bacon, eggs, a pork sausage and two pieces of fried bread. A tall glass of orange juice stands next to the salt and pepper pots and the two sauce bottles, brown and red.

  She teases her fingers against my toes, cool outside the duvet. She says good morning, tells me it’s cold outside, a frost still on the grass in the park. She’s already been to the corner shop, so this must be a Sunday, when she always rises before me to get breakfast and buy the papers. She offers me the tray.

  REALITY BITES

  Nelson wakes me, nuzzling my chin with his head.

  I decide against looking over at the clock on the bedside table. I haven’t removed the picture of Hannah I took outside St Paul’s, which stands beside it, and I know that if I see it the remorse will be unbearable.

  I decide to sink deeper into the sweaty clutch of my sheets for a few extra moments. Just a little longer. I watch dust slowly turning in a slanting diagonal of fresh light. The disc of the sun, muffled by glowing curtains the colour of marmalade, is already at its mid-morning position.

  As I fumble around the kitchen, hoping to find something fresh for breakfast, I reach back and collect the fragments of the previous evening. When did I ever drink enough to feel this bad? Where?

  I don’t even know how I got home.

  I fork tinned salmon into Nelson’s dish. He stands on his hind paws and miaows hungrily.

  The frequency of these memory lapses has been increasing. It’s become the rule, rather than the exception, for me to wake up with no idea what I’ve been doing the night before. This should concern me, I know, but it interests me only as empirical evidence of my accelerating decline.

  I steady myself against the frame of the door as bubbling nausea sends its tendrils clambering up my throat like magma. I open the fridge. An overdue bottle of milk, turned to sludge. A half-used tin of sweet corn and some fruit salad, also off. A half-eaten ham sandwich. Not too mouldy, so remove that infected crust et voila: breakfast is served.

  My cat eats better than I do these days.

  I look at a box of Nurofen in the kitchen cabinet.

  Maybe take a couple? Consider the relief it might offer? A sign that I’m ready to make a conscious effort to get out of this funk; to shower (lack of hot water notwithstanding), iron a shirt, get dressed, go to work. A new start, of sorts.

  I decide to leave the pills where they are. I’m not ready to stop drinking yet.

  I take out a half-empty bottle of gin and the ice-tray from the freezer compartment. Tip the gin into a glass until it laps halfway up. Top up with tonic water, add chunks of ice and a thick slice of lemon, a bonus discovery from the vegetable compartment in the fridge. Take the sandwich and glass into the lounge to polish off at leisure. Take the bottle also, in case refills prove necessary.

  WINTER WONDERLAND

  Outside, the naked skeletons of trees outlined against the bus
depot opposite the flat. A big jumbo cruising overhead, heading for the sun, patterning the sky with frozen crystals. The queue waiting at the bus stop wrapped snugly in scarves and heavy coats, closed against the chill as, slowly at first and then in a thick white curtain, fat flakes of snow begin to fall. The ending of another year.

  On my arrival at Liverpool Street, I divert into the record store to check the progress of Brian’s album. The new Dahlias’ album has sold out. Monster Munch’s is doing well.

  I crouch down to flick through the copies of Brian’s record. There are still four left. I’m the only person to have bought a copy from this store.

  Not good.

  SAMARITAN SECRETARY

  It’s almost 12.30 when I finally slink inside the building. ‘What happened to your face?’ asks Elizabeth, dabbing ginger fingers in the direction of my temple. I tell her I tripped and fell on a loose paving stone.

  Clucking like a mother hen she ushers me into my office, presses me down into my chair, collects various salves and lotions from the medicine cabinet, and dabs at a hardened scab on my forehead that’s started to leak a thick white pus. The sting of the disinfectant is numbed by the booze. I wonder whether she can smell it on my breath? She tells me I should’ve stayed home. I tell her I’m absolutely dedicated to the Law. She laughs and gives me a disapproving smile.

  ‘You really ought to take better care of yourself. I’m going to have strong words with that girlfriend of yours.’

  A lump in my throat; I swallow it. I don’t want her to feel sorry for me. Maybe she knows already, from the TV or the article in Hello!, maybe she’s just probing me. But I want to bear this cross alone. I want to be martyred. Pain is all I have left of my relationship and I don’t want to share it with anyone else.

  ‘I saw her on the telly last night,’ she says. ‘Doesn’t she look great?’

  No mention of the engagement to Haines. Maybe she was just watching Skin Trade?