Goodnight Steve McQueen (10 page)

“Do you want to stay for some coffee?” I say, searching through the cupboard to see if we’ve got anything besides instant.

“No thank you, must get on. Have delivery of John Woos coming for Sheila in half an hour. I see you at the shop laters, OK.”

“OK, Kostas. Thanks again.”

This is nice. This is really nice. Sitting in my kitchen, waiting for the kettle, listening to The Moral Maze on Radio 4 and eating cold kleftiko for breakfast. I wonder if caramelised onions are a good idea first thing in the morning. I wonder if the braised chillies might be pushing things a bit too far. I wonder if Columbo is on yet.

“Danny?”

“Yeah. Who’s that?”

“It’s me, Kate.”

“Kate?”

“Yeah. I’m not disturbing you, am I? It’s just that I wanted to make sure I got hold of you before I went into college.”

She is, actually. I was just about to take a shower. I was right in the middle of a delicate and highly complex operation. Our shower is evil. It’s old and cranky and glazed with rust and the pipes shake like an epileptic with a strobe light every time you try to turn it on. It’s very temperamental. There’s less than a millimetre of dial between freezing cold and boiling hot and I very nearly had it. I was almost there. I only bothered answering the phone in the first place because I thought it might be Alison.

“No, it’s fine,” I say, reaching for a towel and wrapping it round my waist. The was just about to take a shower, that’s all.”

“Really?”

“Yeah… you know, most people take them in the morning.”

“Yeah, of course, I do too… take a shower, I mean.”

“Good.”

“Good.”

“So, Kate, was there something that I could help you with?”

“Oh, right, of course, the gig.”

“The gig?”

“Yeah. Matty said you were going to try and blag yourself on to this Scarface tour, which is way cool, by the way, and I thought, hey, you guys are going to need some warmup dates to get yourselves back into shape, so why don’t I ask the events officer at my art college if he can fix you up with something.”

“Really? Could you do that? I mean, do you think he’d be up for it?”

“Sure, no problem. I thought I’d try and get hold of him this afternoon. Maybe I could pop over later and let you know what he says.”

“All right then, thanks. That’s really good of you.”

“OK, wicked.”

“So … then.”

“So…”

We take a short pause. I’m not used to speaking to Kate on the phone. I only ever see her when she comes out with Matty, and I’m suddenly not quite sure what to say.

“Er… how’s your sculpture class going?” I ask finally.

“Good,” she says, “I’m really enjoying it. I’ve just finished my first installation. It’s a giant wingless bird made out of scrap metal and pubic hair. I’ve modelled parts of it on my own body. Not the beak, though… obviously.”

“Right,” I say. “Sounds… fascinating.”

“Well listen, if you’re interested you should come down and see it some time. The exhibition’s on for another couple of weeks yet.”

“Yeah… er, nice one… I’ll see if I can make it down.”

“Great,” she says, ‘and it’s definitely OK if I call round later and let you know about the gig?”

“Sure, absolutely, no problem.”

What a nice thing for her to do. A gig at her art college is exactly what the band needs to warm up for the tour. Alison is completely wrong about her. She might be a bit over the top but deep down she’s a really good kid. Things are definitely

looking up. All I have to do now is convince the shower not to boil me alive, find myself some semi-clean clothes from under the bed, and try to work out how the hell I’m going to get hold of Ike.

For a very brief period spring 1983 to the summer of 1985 there was a chance that Ike Kavanagh and I might be friends. We were both equally hated. Me for being spotty and bearing a ridiculous name and him for being overweight and rich. He was the richest kid in our school: the first one to get an Atari, the first one to get a pocket calculator, the first one to get Kickers and a Kappa track-suit top. His dad owned an aerosol factory in Dagenham and he used to collect Ike from school in an olive-green Rolls-Royce with hand-stitched cream leather seats. Everybody wanted to take a ride in it. Almost as much as they wanted to kick Ike in the head.

So we both kind of bonded for a while: the class losers, the school spanners, the two kids who were always last to be picked for games and first to be picked on for ritual humiliation. We used to sit together in maths and music. I used to go round to his house and he’d show me his swimming pool and his snooker table and the Sinclair C5 that his dad had bought him for his thirteenth birthday. He never let me have a go on it, though, not once.

And then, one day, midway through our mock O-level exams, I came in to find the whole class holding a seance and pretending that they were trying to contact the spirit of my dead dad. That happened quite a lot. People were always giving me shit for having no dad and no mates and a crazy mother who insisted on wearing kaftans and ostrich-feather mules to sports days and parents’ night. It was their idea of fun. They were always trying to Spock me and wind me up and they’d often pretend that they’d just seen my father giving a ghostly geography lesson at the back of the class.

And there was Ike. Right in the middle of it: puppy fat rippling round his stomach as he laughed, pupils shining like burnt chocolate, lips shrunk back into his face like a snorting horse.

“Hey, Moony,” he said, carving an extra pen tangle into the desk with his penknife, ‘when you off to Hollywood, then? When’s your old man coming back to fetch you? Yeah, didn’t you know? Moony’s dad was a famous actor. He faked his own heart attack, didn’t he, Moony? Ran away to America just so as he could get away from your loony mum.” Everyone collapsed and I hardly ever spoke to Ike again. That’s the thing about kids who are bullied the second you give them the chance to cross over to the other side they jump at it with both sweaty hands. Arsehole. The only reason he got into a band in the first place is because it was the one thing I ever managed to do before him. If I’d had any sense I would have decked him there and then.

“Yes, I’m a very close friend of his. We go way back.”

“Well, I don’t know. We don’t usually give out contact numbers for our artistes, sir.”

“But he’d be happy to hear from me, honestly, he’ll be really pissed off if you don’t give me his number.”

“Well, if you’d just like to hold for a moment…” Hold? Doesn’t she realise how much this is costing me? Doesn’t she realise that I’ve already waited five hours for the lazy bastards in New York to get up out of bed and come into work? Doesn’t she understand that if Alison comes home and finds twenty million calls to the States on our next phone bill she’s going to lynch me?

“Sorry to keep you waiting, sir … but like I said, it’s really not Geffen’s policy to give out contact numbers over the phone. Perhaps you could try somewhere else.”

The already have. I’ve tried his management office and his

publishers and the snivelling little shit-bag in Pasadena that does all of his West Coast press.”

“There’s no need to get abusive, sir…”

“But it’s not fair. What’s wrong with you people? I mean, Ike Kavanagh… he’s hardly a threat to national security, is he?”

“Sir … sir… you are going to have to try and calm down…”

“How about his mobile?”

“No.”

“His girlfriend’s number, then?”

“No.”

“The hotel he’s staying at, the house that he’s renting, the number at his million-quid condo on Malibu Beach.”

“Ike doesn’t live near the beach, sir … he doesn’t like sand. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to have to terminate you…” Click.

Sod it. I’m not sure who else to try. His parents moved away years ago and his father’s factory got closed down on account of the ozone layer. Fuck it, fuck global warming. Fuck Ike Kavanagh and his money and his attitude and his Jiffy bags full of hot steamy turds. There must be someone else. There must be some other way of getting hold of him. His live agent. I haven’t tried his live agent yet the name’s at the bottom of the tour ad in the TIME. They’re called ICN. I’ll try them. I’ll try a completely different tack.

“Good morning. Brad Pearlman speaking… how may I help you today?”

“Er… yes… thank you, Brad… my name is Terry Stamp, I’m the front-of-house manager at The Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London, England.”

“I see.”

“Yes… er, and of course we are expecting Scarface over to play at our esteemed venue in October and I have a couple of queries regarding the band’s rider.”

“You do?”

“Yes. It says on our fax here that Mr. Kavanagh will be expecting a range of stationery to be supplied backstage along with the usual supplies of beer, spirits and hot-and-cold running buffet for twenty.”

“Well, yes, as you know, the band will be expecting a wide selection of beverages, spirits and cold cuts… but stationery, you say?”

“Yes, stationery, and I just wondered what kind of thing Mr. Kavanagh would be expecting… plain white, padded brown, W. H Smith’s note lets with kittens on the front or regular plain old Basildon Bond?”

“Baiziledon Bond?”

“Oh yes, Brad, a gentleman knows exactly where he is with Basildon Bond.”

“Hmmnimn… well, perhaps I should give you his tour manager’s cellphone number, then. He’s English so he’ll probably have more of an idea of what it is that you’re actually talking about.”

“OK, that’s very kind of you.”

“No problem, Terry.”

Thanks, Brad.”

“You’re very welcome, Terry.”

Bingo.

The number is engaged so I stand in front of the hall mirror for a while practising what I’m going to say. His tour manager isn’t going to be fooled by bogus queries about padded envelopes, so I’m going to have to try to convince him that Ike and I really were friends. Maybe I’d sound more convincing if I was wearing a different T-shirt. I wonder what I’d look like if I gelled my hair up into one of those shark’s-fin styles that everyone was wearing last year. Yeah, my yellow Pixies T-shirt, my secondhand Levi’s jacket and a bit of a sharky haircut. Excellent.

It hasn’t worked. My Pixies T-shirt has a huge stain on the

front. It’s so faded you can barely read the words any more and the stain makes it read “This monkey’s gone to heave’ instead of ‘heaven’. And my hair is a complete disaster. I’ve used nearly a whole pot of Black and White and something of Alison’s called Perfume Fudgey Whip. I smell like a rent boy. I look like I’ve just had my hair cut by someone called Giovanni. It’s gone all high. I have dome-head. I have third-degree hat hair and I haven’t even been wearing a hat.

“Hi,” I say, trying to pat my hair down with the heel of my hand, ‘my name’s Danny McQueen.”

“YOU WHAT!?”

“Danny McQueen.”

“You’ll have to speak up! Hold on, I’ll just take you outside.”

There’s a tremendous amount of noise on the other end of the line: drums and guitars and piercing feedback squalls and a thin, reedy voice darting in and out of range through the middle of it. It sounds like the tour manager is standing dead centre on the main stage at Glastonbury. And then it all goes quiet.

“Right then… who did you say you were?”

“Danny McQueen. I’m an old school-friend of Ike’s. I’ve been trying to get in touch with him. You wouldn’t happen to know where he is, would you?”

“Yeah, he’s right next door. In the rehearsal room. I’ll just see if he wants to speak to you… Hey, Nathan, tell Ike there’s someone called Sammy McQueen on the phone for him, will you…”

“Danny… not Sammy…”

He isn’t listening. I hear a door open and the music turns from a dull pulse back to a violent, cacophonous wave. Someone is shouting above the noise. I hear the band stop playing. I feel a bit anxious. He probably won’t even remember who I am.

“Sammy?”

“No, no, it’s Danny… Danny McQueen.”

He pauses for a second. I’m not sure if this is because he can’t place me or because he’s just trying to make me think that he can’t.

“Moony?”

“Em… yeah…”

“Moony… Moony McQueen … no shit… how you doing?”

“Fine… fine,” I say. “What about you, though. Looks like you’ve finally cracked it.”

“Yeah, well… you know… success brings its own hassles.”

What a twat. What an almighty twat.

“So what are you up to these days, Moony… ?”

“Well, I’m still playing in the band… we’re called Dakota now.”

“You’ve got a band?

“Yeah… you know I have… I’ve always been in a band … I—’

“Oh yeah, right, right, I remember, you used to play the guitar or something?”

“Yes… look, Ike, I know this is out of the blue and you probably have a lot of people asking you for favours and stuff these days but ..

.”

“Yeah, I do … everyone I’ve ever said more than two words to in my life is suddenly crawling out of the woodwork and claiming to be my best-ever friend.”

“Well… I’m sure… but the thing is I was wondering if—’

“Hey, why don’t we catch up for a drink?”

“Sure,” I say, surprised. “I mean, that would be great but I think LA might be a bit far to go for a pint of lager.”

“No, I’m in London… King’s Cross. We’re rehearsing here while we do all of our European promotion. We’re finishing up about four. You should pop down and say hello.”

I look at my watch. It’s almost 3.30. No time to change out of my Pixies T-shirt or to get the half-pound of scented wax out of my bouffant. Vince had better appreciate this.

This is unlike any rehearsal room I’ve ever been in. It’s huge. It’s got a reception. It’s got a receptionz’s?. It’s got windows and daylight and cheese plants and chairs and a polished wooden floor with spotlights running right through the middle of it. The receptionist clocks my hair as I walk in and stifles a smirk. She looks like she works for Razzle on her days off: dark brown hair bleached with an Addam’s Family streak and a Barbara Windsor bosom that spills over the top of her blouse as she speaks.

“Can I help you?” she says, twirling her pen lid round her collagen.