AT 29 (106 page)

Valentines Day fell on a Monday. Jimmy presided over a bachelor's party the night before. While dozens of other musicians and friends cavorted with scantily clad strippers in a private club off East 11th Street, he remained stationed at the open bar. Sonny had the time of his life. The next day Jimmy took his place beside his friend at the altar of a non-denominational church as a radiant Marsha came down the aisle.

Two hours later he delivered a humorous toast, sipping frequently from the champagne flute as he roasted the lead guitarist and his new wife. While others danced, McCabe pulled his star aside and demanded that he return to work. Jimmy took the rebuke in stride, thinking more about getting away to his apartment for a stronger drink. A week later he did return to Millburn, but he had no ideas for a new album. By the end of March all he had to show for endless days in Studio B were skeletal chords that went nowhere. McCabe asked him to work with some of the new talent. He did this half-heartedly although the results were better. Sonny began work on a solo album and invited him to consult. After two more weeks this petered out as well. He stopped coming to Millburn.

He visited Alice in a private rehab center on Long Island. She had rallied from the pneumonia and was focused largely on overcoming her addiction. Still, she was frighteningly thin. She welcomed him, but after an hour her voice drifted to silence as she returned to her own private thoughts. He reported this by telephone to Peggy. No sense sugarcoating the facts. It would be a long time before Alice would be her old self, if ever. Peggy already knew. She made the trip from Vermont to Long Island every other week. Still, it was heartening to know Jimmy finally looked in on her sister.

McCabe licensed the Melbourne encore tape to MTV on April 1. It aired a week later. The music video was longer than those normally shown on the cable channel, three songs over eighteen minutes that MTV's producers worried would tax the attention spans of its young viewers. They were less concerned about encroaching on ad time. The new television concept was still in its infancy. Advertising sales were in their infancy, too.

Within ten days the video was in the top ten based upon viewer requests. People wanted it shown more often than the typical five times in a twenty-four hour cycle. Most important, was the demographic. Twelve to eighteen year-olds typically led the overnight Nielsen tallies, but for this video, viewers between twenty and thirty surged. These were the spenders advertisers wanted to reach. The business side of the network was euphoric.

Miles immediately put the video in the stores, packaged with the three albums. He called the release BWK for Buckman, Whitehurst and Kate. He cut the price by twenty percent, hoping the video would spark renewed interest in his best selling artists. He manufactured both Beta and VHS video cartridges, but the accompanying albums came only as digital compact disks. It was a small risk, meant to enhance interest in the new CD technology. The response far exceeded his expectations. The first run of fifty thousand sold out in three weeks. The music was past it prime, but the video depicting the three stars together, putting forth their hit singles in a softer more personal way, tapped a new audience. Blossom Records sales surged across the board.

Jimmy called Les' childhood home in Amherst every other week all the while continuing his love affair with the bottle. Sometimes, he spoke with her mother, other times it was her father who came on the line. They continued to be cordial, accepting his interest in their daughter's well being as genuine, but they would only tell him that she was traveling. Sister Marie took his calls over the same intervals. She had nothing new to add, but she kept him abreast of Nigel's recuperation. He was at a Sydney rehab center. He had reunited with a girl named Reina from his youth. She had taken an apartment near the center. Sister Marie was delighted that the young woman was back in his life. “She'll make all the difference.”

On April 18 the Pulitzer Prize finalists were announced by Columbia University. Alice Limoges won for Feature Writing. She was best known for her Dispatches From the Road, which appeared each month for a year in Backbeat magazine. Hillary attended the luncheon a month later. She accepted the award and its ten thousand dollar prize on behalf of her ailing daughter. It was bittersweet. Although Alice was stable and winning her battle with addiction, mother and sister had been forewarned by the medical experts to brace for their loved one's eventual decline.

Jimmy traded the Saab for a Ferrari and drove it off the showroom floor drunk. He took a two-week road trip across upstate New York, circling each of the picturesque Finger Lakes before speeding further north across the Canadian Border. On the way back, convinced that he wasn't getting the most out his powerful new toy, he stopped at the foot of Seneca Lake in Watkins Glen and enrolled in a three-day racecourse program. On the third day his instructor watched in horror as his student came off the third turn at 112 MPH and slammed broadside into the wall. He escaped with only cuts and bruises, but the $100,000 vehicle was destroyed.

Miles wasn't focused on Jimmy when he arrived at his office each morning. The next Blossom Presents tour, featuring The Riland Brothers Band fronted by a promising new group, was about to kickoff in San Jose. MacGregor was to hit the road a month later. Sonny's solo album was scheduled for release in a week and Kate's solo was already in the Top 100 and rising. Ellis signed on as Blossom's President for Europe. He gave up being an agent when Miles put his salary and bonus numbers on the table. Ted and Melinda linked with Sonny, as did Travis and Eugene, leaving their loyalty to Jimmy behind when it became apparent that their leader would not be doing anything new. Whitehurst remained in rehab. He was making progress, but any chance for a return to work was still far off. The BWK video spawned resurgent sales of
Yarra
and
Back and Blue
. This took the edge off McCabe's impatience. He was content to wait for his Australian heavy hitter. Jimmy could use the time to come around by himself. Cindy agreed with the strategy although she chided her husband for failing to keep in touch with
his two big moneymakers. It wasn't simply business to her. These were people, men she respected and admired. She continued to keep in contact. Nigel came to the phone when she called. Jimmy did not respond to the messages on his answering machine.

The delicate delving into Alice's sexual history had to be done. Peggy was in the room when the CDC investigators did their questioning. It didn't take long. Alice answered willingly and without the slightest embarrassment, although Peggy cringed when she heard the details. There had been a dozen partners over the past year. Most during the first six months before she joined the Whitehurst entourage and settled in with its star. The Atlanta gang rape was examined in detail. No sex with Nigel or anyone else after that. She was too emotionally damaged and, by then, heroin held far more interest. The CDC zeroed in on Stick and the two other bikers. Tests were done. Stick came up positive although his deteriorating condition seemed to be proof enough. Nigel was also tested as a precaution. He came up negative, as did Hank in protective custody and the other Vulture in the city jail. When queried about his partners Stick clammed up. Hank filled in with what little he knew. Stick went with men as well as women. He didn't know names, but he offered up a list of Stick's favorite hangouts. The CDC investigators fanned out to locate other possible carriers and victims.

Jimmy returned to his apartment and continued drinking heavily. He stopped calling Les' parents and when Peggy did not hear from him, she began to join Cindy in leaving unanswered telephone messages. By mid-May, he tired of the ringing and unplugged the telephone. His days were split into twelve-hour sectors of scotch and comatose slumber. In early June he spent an excruciating day on the floor next to his toilet. He woke with a splitting headache, so dehydrated that his thirst could not be quenched. He showered weakly then tried to eat. All he had in the refrigerator were mottled eggs, three weeks old, inedible. After a visit to a clinic a block away, he resolved to quit drinking. He found some roadmaps and charted a course across America. The camper he bought was a small van, good enough for someone who wanted to be alone and spartan on the road. He skipped the cities and towns he'd seen on his tours. The goal was to take all the time needed to visit the lower forty-eight. Then drive north to Alaska, do some final sight seeing, sell the van and fly to Hawaii. If all went according to plan he'd kill the summer months, shake the desire for alcohol and forget about Les forever.

The plan unraveled one afternoon thirty states and six weeks later when he pulled into an empty campground just outside Death Valley. It was one hundred and ten degrees and the compressor in the van gave up the moment the engine was shutdown. When darkness fell he endured the night outside under a short canopy that unwound from the roof. He built a small campfire and sat-up in a folding chair staring into the flames. All around was death, dead air, dead quiet, still and dark. A million thoughts crossed his mind, including the thought of his own demise there in the emptiness of America's most desolate landscape. Les tormented him. He could not forget.

Before sunrise he escaped to the highway and drove straight through to New York. He parked the dusty, malfunctioning vehicle in the underground garage with the keys still inside. He showered in his apartment then dragged himself to bed. When he awoke the next afternoon the same heaviness invaded. He listlessly dressed and went down to the street. He passed a corner kiosk. He hadn't seen a newspaper in more than a month and he didn't look at the headlines now. If he had he would have read that the Bronx DA had won a big case against a criminal motorcycle gang. He might have also
noticed the small sidebar about its leader who died in a prison hospital just before the verdict was rendered. He was among the first HIV/AIDS deaths recorded in New York.

As August rolled around, Miles put the finishing touches on his business plan for the last four months of the year. Production was humming. The second Blossom Presents Tour was enjoying great success. Four new groups were finished with their debut albums, each to be released in succession through December. A new agreement with MTV called for music videos, featuring each group, to be aired in conjunction with the albums' release. With an army of songwriters at its disposal, a Blossom hit machine was in the making. Ellis signed two new British groups and dispatched them to Millburn. With Weak Knees working on a new set of songs, all of the bungalows were occupied. A third recording studio was under construction and a film crew came onboard fulltime to produce as many videos as MTV could handle. Rebellion, sans Kate who anchored Blossom Presents, returned to England with its own album. The new lead singer was a Kansas farm boy with a rugged voice that mixed country twang with hard-edged rock. Only the group's name was the same, the sound was totally different. Ellis booked them in clubs around London three times a week. On weekends, they traveled to Dublin and Belfast to sold out venues.

To Cindy it seemed like her husband had forsaken the two stars that made everything possible a short year earlier. He dismissed her arguments by simply stating the facts. One was on the other side of the world dealing with his drug problem. The other had gone back to his unreliable habit of disappearing.

“It would be different if I needed them at the moment,” he explained. “I don't. I can afford to wait them out. Next year's business plan puts them back in the studio. That's when I'll apply some pressure.”

“Is money all they mean to you?”

***

Illalangi Illuka kept a close watch on the object of his ancestral responsibility. It wasn't hard. The Australian newspapers did the monitoring for him while Nigel Whitehurst fought his addictions in a Sydney rehab center. To Australia the meteoric rise of its native son to international rock ‘n' roll royalty required regular updates and constant feature articles about his troubles as well as his talents. The singer kept himself away from the public eye. Of course, he had little choice since the renowned addiction treatment program was a cloister.

Illa read the papers. Somehow, as good reporters do, sources were cultivated and news written. It had been eight months since the rescue at Winkipop. Six months since Whitehurst had sojourned to Sydney for treatment. A woman was with him. Good, Illa concluded. Whitehurst's release was predicted for sometime in the Australian Spring.

Yet, his impending return only intensified the Aborigine's confusion. He had wearied of the legend he knew was true. Watch and wait. Why? The Gadubanud were scattered to the four winds. No one cared that the spirit who once lived among his people had returned. Never married, Illa could not pass his charge on to his own son and no other indigenous youth was worthy. What was he to do? The other one also troubled him. There was something about the American who saved Whitehurst from the waves, his spirit when he touched him, the visions that came to Illa in the nights since he looked into the man's eyes. There is a connection. No answer, only questions.

Alice defied the odds. Her doctors did not know why. She was a cooperative patient, chastened by the guilt of her wild ways and the repercussions that followed. Test after test confirmed that she was AIDS positive. Other tests showed no sign that the insidious killer was taking hold. She was in the best physical condition of her life. The pneumonia was in remission. She had overcome her addiction to heroin. She had an excellent appetite that combined with exercise, brought her to the optimum weight for her size. She was writing again.

Peggy made the trip from Vermont with Hillary. Both women were relieved and encouraged. An AIDS based death spiral could strike at anytime, but the doctors were optimistic. Alice was ready to go home to Vermont. After the papers were signed, Hillary went back with Alice to her apartment to gather things to take to Barton. Peggy left them to the task while she headed across town to see Jimmy. It had been months since she'd heard from him. She knew he took a trip cross-country. She also knew he'd planned it as a way to stop drinking. He didn't exactly admit this during their last telephone conversation, but she knew that was the reason.