The Edge

by Jamie Collinson

  ‘I’ve been nothing but respectful to him,’ Adam protested. ‘He’s had a big success and it’s gone to his head a little. Plus he’s got every major label in his ear. You know how this goes.’

  The cough came again, louder and harsher this time. ‘Yeah, but you get in his ear too then, for Christ’s sakes. We need to be taking him out every night. Buying him steaks.’

  ‘… He’s a vegan.’

  ‘Good. I’m a vegan too!’ the Autodidact said, with barely suppressed outrage.

  ‘Ah,’ Adam said. ‘Yes…’ The last time he’d been in London, Jason had been subsisting largely on raw coconut water and activated charcoal.

  ‘Surely he knows we’ve got greater capacity now, if anything?’ Adam said. ‘Now that we’re better funded?’

  ‘It’s not about money for Roger,’ the Autodidact said. ‘It’s about leverage from other artists, market share, all that shit.’

  ‘Right,’ Adam said, trying to dispel the familiar psychic clouds of boredom that these terms always conjured.

  ‘Whatever,’ the Autodidact said. ‘If I’m gonna keep everyone in the job,’ he continued, slowly now, ‘then we need to keep artists like Falconz on the label.’

  ‘But haven’t you hired six new people already this year?’ Adam asked.

  There was a very long pause. Long enough for Adam to have the sense that any remaining happiness was draining out of him and pooling beneath the bench. He pressed the heel of his right foot painfully into the top of his left.

  ‘Look, man,’ the Autodidact said eventually. ‘Just meet Roger, please. Just try and sort this out. Send him a nice marketing plan for album two. Do whatever needs doing.’

  ‘Will do,’ Adam said, kneading the flesh above his nose.

  ‘You’re supposed to be the expert on America. I can’t do it from here. I’m happy to toss ideas out, of course, but you lot are gonna have to execute them.’

  You can toss me, tossbag, Adam thought. ‘I’m on the case,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you. Let’s speak tomorrow for an update.’ And with that, the Autodidact had gone.

  Adam marched off at a fast walk, too angry to go back to the office. He let out an audible groan as he set off alongside the lake again, and a tough-looking jogger glanced at him as he passed. The jogger was wearing a hoodie over his t-shirt, and yet wasn’t sweating. Why? Adam thought. Why oh why am I the only one who sweats?

  He’d believed that reaching the point he had in his career, he’d now be one of an inner circle; lead a conflict-free life of smooth seniority. It was destined never to be. It was like being at school again, being unable to join in somehow. Always needing to pop the bubble of other people’s pretensions – and his own too. Making himself unpopular, hated even. Preventing himself from ever being truly invited in. Maybe if he could have played the part a bit better, he’d have developed the belief necessary to do it.

  And it was a part, now. Back when he’d had passion, everything had gone well. Now that he hated the music he worked on, he worried that people could smell it on him. He felt like a fraud. A man who’d lost his purpose. He was terrified that someone was going to call him out.

  So he sat in meetings uttering buzz phrases and aphorisms, longing to escape, approaching the edge of hysteria, little tremors running through him as he suppressed a mad giggle, thinking Can’t they see? Can’t they tell?

  He’d been winging it for too long, and it was becoming dangerous.

  A shadow passed over the shining grass beside him, and he looked up to see a red-tailed hawk being chased off by a crow. The hawk was a scraggy old bird, feathers missing from its tail and left wing. The crow cawed at it, as though outraged at its incursion, and the hawk beat a quick retreat towards Sunset Boulevard. I know how you feel, Adam thought. Still, it probably wasn’t too bad a life, being a hawk. Probably better than being a bear, actually.

  Standing in the shadows at the far end of the lake was a homeless lady – one of the park’s regulars. Whenever Adam saw her, she was bent over, hands almost touching the floor, her back at a near right angle to her legs. She was extremely thin and dressed in a filthy, deflated brown Puffa coat. Matted black hair poked out from under its hood, but Adam had never seen her face.

  As he walked past, a black plastic bag on the ground beside her subsided, and a shrivelled orange rolled out towards his feet. Adam picked it up, walked over to her and dropped it back into the bag. She didn’t look up, but her shoulders – hanging low over the grass – were convulsing. Something fell from her face, and shattered like a tiny crystal when it hit the path. He realized with horror that she was crying.

  There was a clump of notes in his pocket, and he pulled it out and placed a twenty in the bag, on top of the orange. As an afterthought, he took his handkerchief out of his back pocket and placed it down carefully on the note. He felt suddenly as though he might cry too, so he stalked away, not wanting to embarrass the woman, horribly embarrassed himself.

  A phrase surfaced in his mind: ‘There but for the grace of God.’ No, he thought, that wasn’t right. Here by the grace of the Autodidact. And lucky to be so. Far luckier than this poor woman.

  The homeless were always there, wherever he looked. People who maybe just weren’t very good at life – and he knew all about that. Was it only him who felt himself to be one disaster – a car crash, a lost job, maybe just one paycheck – away from joining them?

  6

  At 5.30, back at home on his small deck, he’d found some peace and quiet. More importantly, he was drinking a glass of wine. Not the best idea, perhaps, given that there would be much drinking to come – but today of all days he needed it.

  A meeting with Roger was on the cards for the following Friday morning. Bright and early, in Hollywood of course. Perhaps it was wishful thinking, but when Adam had called him, he felt he’d detected a note of gratitude and warmth in Roger’s voice. Perhaps all that had been needed was this effort to reach out. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d had to check his ego in order to make something work. Maybe, after all, everything would be OK.

  Maybe he would even enjoy the showcase, he thought, brightening with each sip of the wine. Craig and Angelina would both be there. He’d be surrounded by friends and contemporaries. How bad could a rooftop gig, taking place as the sun quite literally set over Sunset Boulevard, be?

  He’d almost drained the wine when his landlady appeared, stepping out onto her own deck opposite him. The apartment was one half of a duplex, hers the mirror image of Adam’s. He’d been inside her half only once, and had resisted any subsequent invitation due to the pungent smell of cat urine it harboured.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, grinning. ‘Drinking some wine?’

  He smiled back at her. Stef was fifty, friendly, a hard drinker and a rare cynic among LA’s relentless positivity.

  ‘Yep,’ he said. ‘I’d offer you some, but I’ve got to go back to the office in a minute.’

  ‘Oh no. What’s up?’

  ‘We’ve got a showcase on the roof. A band playing live.’

  ‘Cool!’ she said. ‘Anyone I’d know?’

  ‘No, they’re tiny. Called The Suffering.’ It occurred to him that he might have invited her. ‘You could come, actually!’

  ‘Thanks, but I can’t tonight.’ She lit a cigarette and blew out a plume of smoke over her dry, dying slope of a garden. She had once laid turf on this, but in a mere two nights the raccoons living under the house had gleefully destroyed it.

  ‘I’m on a deadline,’ she said. ‘We’re script-doctoring a comedy that’s going to pilot.’

  Stef, with a male partner Adam had never met, was a screenwriter.

  ‘Wow,’ he said, impressed. ‘That’s exciting.’

  She beamed at him. ‘No, it’s not. It’s godawful.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yup. A total piece of shit.’

  In Adam’s experience, this was not how most screenwriters talked. Anyone he’d met who was even vaguely involved in mov
ies only ever described everything as ‘exciting!’, ‘awesome!’ or ‘great!’ – usually through a brittle smile. With screenwriting, it seemed, everything was always just on the verge of really happening – and then it never did.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘work is work.’

  ‘Amen,’ Stef said, breathing more smoke. ‘So, guess what I did today?’ she said, suddenly excited.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Had an enema!’

  ‘Wow,’ Adam said again.

  ‘I know, right?’ She cackled gleefully.

  ‘Any particular reason?’

  ‘My friend was going, and she wanted some company. She paid. No way I was going to! Money up the shitter.’

  ‘How was it?’ Adam asked.

  ‘Totally gross.’

  ‘I’m not surprised.’

  ‘It still feels a little weird down there, to be honest. I thought I was going to explode. But hey, they say it’s good for you…’

  Stef ’s cat, Beans – an ancient, fluffy black creature with a permanent expression of shock – slunk through the doorway and began pissing against the frame. Stef carefully pushed him off the edge of the balcony with her foot, and he fell to the earth below with a resigned yowl. She stubbed out the cigarette, and grinned at Adam.

  ‘Back to it, I guess,’ she said. ‘Now I just have to flush out this shitty-ass script.’ She cackled again, and disappeared inside.

  * * *

  It was clearly going to be a very bad showcase. With atrophying patience, Adam watched the band’s manager attempting to decipher a rented mixing desk. The sound tech had taken a phone call, and was lurking somewhere on the staircase. Occasionally, bursts of distortion tore from the monitor speakers before cutting out as abruptly as they’d started. A bead of sweat ran down the manager’s forehead as he stared at the blinking lights, dials and knobs of the desk. It might as well have been some sort of alien, planet-rending bomb that he’d been called upon to defuse.

  The members of the band stood around him, hands on hips, tension radiating from them in waves. Everyone except the bare-chested drummer, who happily bashed at his kit, eyes closed and mouth open – rather like someone having an orgasm. This, Adam knew, was quintessential drummer behaviour.

  When the manager looked over at him, Adam turned away, leaning on the railing and peering down the avenue towards Sunset. Below him, a filthy-looking man was pushing a very fat woman in a shopping cart along the sidewalk. When they reached Sunset, they continued across it, forcing the cars to stop. A cacophony of horns blared out gleefully despite the sluggish traffic, momentarily drowning out the drummer behind Adam.

  He watched as the couple reached the far side of the road, the woman shouting something, perhaps unhappy with the pace at which the man was pushing her. The man wore only a grey-brown vest and denim cut-offs, and his bare flesh was glistening with sweat. Adam had never seen these particular homeless people before.

  He felt a tap at his shoulder, and turned to see the band’s worried-looking manager standing a little too close to him. Behind him, the huge, taciturn sound tech had appeared and got the desk working.

  ‘Adam, mate,’ the manager said. Like Adam, he was British. Unlike Adam, he was only visiting Los Angeles, and thus hadn’t developed the American habit of standing at the maximum reasonable distance from any other person during conversation.

  ‘Benji,’ Adam said. Anticipating a problem, he felt the skin of his face clench tight around his skull. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Bit of an issue with the tacos.’

  ‘Oh? They’re quite good, I thought.’

  ‘Well, it’s more the smoke.’

  ‘The smoke?’

  ‘Yes. It’s blowing into Cyrus’s face. It’s not going to work.’

  ‘What’s not going to work?’

  ‘Him singing, with taco smoke in his face.’

  ‘OK. So I’ll cancel the tacos, yes?’

  ‘Well, what will people eat?’

  ‘Benji, it’s really quite late in the day…’

  The manager glanced back at the singer, a very thin east Londoner who wore a silver bomber jacket and a baseball cap twisted at an angle above his longish, dyed black hair. He stood gazing upwards, as though in direct communion with the sun, and appeared to be striving to give the impression that he had lofty concerns on his mind. He hadn’t, Adam knew. Otherwise he wouldn’t have asked for a desk lamp to be brought upstairs and pointed at his face so that the ‘crowd’ would have a ‘focal point’.

  Benji squinted, his pale, dry face creasing into fine wrinkles.

  ‘Let’s just go with it,’ he said, finally.

  Adam felt a brightening within. ‘I mean, I could maybe have someone stand next to the grill, and somehow disperse the smoke.’

  ‘No, no,’ Benji said.

  ‘Are you sure? There’s a very tall intern who might do.’

  Benji had gone.

  Adam walked over to the drinks, and poured himself a large whisky. He glanced at his phone. There was nothing from Angelina. But that was OK, he reassured himself. She had told him she was coming. He opened Facebook, which loaded directly onto her page. Ten minutes ago, she’d changed her status to ‘feeling blessed’. Adam felt a twinge of panic. Why was she feeling blessed? What, or more importantly who, had been the cause of this?

  Benji came back across the roof.

  ‘OK, we’re all set,’ he said. ‘Cyrus still feels there isn’t enough light on his, ah…’

  ‘His face?’ Adam asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Maybe he could ask the sun to stay out a bit longer?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. I’ll send the intern down to get another desk lamp.’

  The singer had begun soundchecking, his falsetto voice knifing the still Los Angeles air.

  ‘You leave signals for me… in a language I can’t read,’ he emoted. His voice was quite good, but he apparently needed urgent coaching on his stagecraft. His stance was awkward and hunched, his eyes squeezed shut and his hands flapping in front of his chest like someone who’d been badly trepanned.

  ‘One more thing,’ Benji said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘That gap, in the railings, behind where the band are. Can we seal that off?’

  ‘No can do. It leads to the fire escape. Our permit is invalid if it’s blocked. The fire department were very firm on that.’

  ‘Can we have someone keep an eye then?’ Benji asked. ‘Y’know. I don’t want anyone having an accident.’

  ‘Sure thing,’ Adam said. ‘I’ll make sure someone stands there. There’s absolutely nothing to worry about.’

  Benji nodded absently, and wandered off again.

  The tall intern, a French girl called Camille, smiled at Adam from across the roof. She was a model-cum-electronic music producer, and wore little more than a sports bra and tiny denim shorts to the office most days. Each time he found himself in conversation with her, she would tell him about some famous producer or other she’d met at a party and now hoped to collaborate with. This was the sort of subject he’d once have engaged with avidly and now felt sickly allergic to. The sort of thing to which his mental chorus might object: Fraud. Ageing fool. What do you know of these things now?

  What he did know was that she was unlikely to make a career with her music, which he had heard, and that the producers who’d shown enthusiasm were likely more interested in sleeping with her than working with her. He didn’t think he could tell her either of these things – you either knew them or you learned them – and consequently he’d limited interaction, wherever possible, to friendly hellos.

  In his pre-gig nerves, though, the warmth of her smile cheered him, and he grinned back. He’d lost confidence in his own smile. It felt like he was grimacing. Once upon a time, he’d been considered quite handsome, but now, as far as he could tell, the question was definitely out to the jury.

  There was another reason for avoiding Camille. At the last couple of events
he’d attended, she had seemed to flirt with him, even extending casual invitations to the sort of parties at which she met famous producers. He had given much thought to this, and had come to the conclusion that he must be imagining it. That was a worrying sign in itself.

  He felt old. I’m not old, he told himself. Mid-thirties isn’t old. People kept telling him so, anyway, but he was never quite sure if they were being honest.

  Maybe the delusion of the intern’s flirting was a good thing, simply a security blanket provided by age. Certainly, her smile, these days, was good enough for him. For much of his life, and for reasons he’d never clearly understood, Adam had felt stupid, inferior and pointless. Sleeping with new women had always given him a burst of validation. But it had also got him into a great deal of trouble.

  Finally, the soundcheck was over. There was a little over half an hour left before the guests would start arriving. The tacos were cooking, the drinks cooling in a chrome trolley filled with ice, and the intern had taken the band off to get food elsewhere. Scott was sprawled on a sofa, explaining the American music business to Benji – his deep, slow voice droning across the rooftop – and the other staff were eating tacos and drinking a first beer. For Adam, it was a time for nervous pacing of the roof, and for more glances at Angelina’s Facebook. This, as with any gig, was the calm before the storm.

  To Adam’s relief, Craig chose this moment to arrive. Sauntering out onto the roof, a trademark mischievous grin already on his face, he threw out his arms for a hug.

  ‘Now then, fuckface,’ he said, his pleasant Aberdeenshire voice drowning out Scott’s as he surveyed the scene. ‘Isn’t this lovely?’

  Craig was slim, not quite as tall as Adam, and dressed in the standard-issue LA music industry garb of black jeans, black boots and V-necked black t-shirt. His not-quite-ginger hair was cropped short above his pale skin and broad smile.

  ‘Eaten yet?’ he asked Adam.

  ‘No, I was going to have a taco.’