Goodnight Steve McQueen (13 page)

“Thanks very much,” I say, pushing away my toast and taking a small mouthful of tea. “You look like an Australian bag lady.”

“Well, you’ve got to make the effort, haven’t you?” he says, straightening the collar on his shirt. “I mean, I don’t want to be outdone by that cock head from Scumface, do I? … So come on, then, did our man Bradley send the contracts over to Kostas or what?”

“Yeah,” I say, offering the sheets of curled-up fax paper to Vince. “Take a look for yourself.”

Vince picks up the contracts and reads through them without taking off his shades. It takes him a while to get the gist.

“They’re asking us to buy on to the tour?”

“Yeah, a grand. They want us to pay a thousand dollars for the privilege of supporting Scarface.”

“And we’re first on?”

“Eight o’clock sharp.”

“Bollocks,” says Vince, taking off his sunglasses and stubbing out his fag. “The Brookside slot.”

Eight o’clock is a particularly duff time to go onstage. It’s still light out, the venue is still filling up, and if you’re playing at a university union most of the students will still be sat in the pub or standing in their rooms wan king over the sink and watching the end credits of their favourite soap while you’re just about to run through the last of your un requested encores. No one’s pissed up yet so they’re not quite ready to start enjoying themselves. They’re still waiting for their girlfriends to turn up and their beards to start growing and they’re usually too busy adjusting their hair gel and picking their spots to bother with watching the support band. You’re the musical equivalent of Polyfilla: plugging the gaps until the headline act can be bothered to take the stage.

Vince wipes a piece of fried bread round the pool of egg yolk that’s spilled out on to his plate. It repulses me and makes me feel hungry at the same time.

“Well then,” he says, mid-wipe, “I think we should just get on with it.”

“You don’t mind going on at eight o’clock?” I say, amazed that he’s taking it so well.

“Well,” he says, ‘these are big venues, Danny, they’ll be at least a third full by the time we go on. That means we’ll be playing to nearly six hundred people every night. It’s more than we’ve ever played to before. And anyway…” He pauses to put some bread into his mouth. “It’s probably going to be our last chance.”

I can’t help feeling guilty. Vince has invested more than a decade in this band. In me. Why should I be forcing his hand just because my relationship with Alison is going through some kind of a five-and-a-half-year crisis?

“Maybe I’ll have a word with Alison,” I say, taking a small bite of my toast. “See if she’s prepared to extend the deadline a bit. A year maybe, or eighteen months. A little while longer isn’t going to make any real difference to her.”

“No, mate,” he says, “I’ve made up my mind. Alison is right, six months is long enough. If we don’t end up with a result by the end of the year we should bite the bullet and jack it in. I’ve had a word with my uncle and he says there’s enough plumbing work for me to join the firm full time if I want to.”

“But you hate plumbing,” I say, pouring some extra sugar into my tea. “You said the sweaty hair balls in the U-bends make you want to puke.”

“Yeah, well, there’s worse ways to make a living.

“

“But what about the sewage factor? You can’t tell me that you aren’t put off by the sewage factor?”

“Look, give it a rest, will you, Danny. I’m trying to eat my breakfast here.”

“Sorry,” I say. “I just didn’t think you were that keen on plumbing, that’s all.”

Vince stares down at his plate and starts digging into a piece of bacon like it’s still alive. It makes me uncomfortable to hear him talk like this. I’ve never heard him talk seriously about giving up before, and it feels like a turning point. It makes it seem real. It makes me feel unbelievably maudlin.

“Cheer up, you wanker,” he says, noticing the look on my face. “You never know, it might still work out for us. We should at least try and make the best of it.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” I say, dipping my toast into Vince’s beans and taking a small bite. “It’s a good opportunity.”

“Exactly, and anyway,” he says, pushing away his plate and lighting himself another cigarette, ‘you’re gonna be a busy boy.”

“Why, what d’you mean?”

“Well, one of us has got to work out how we’re going to raise the money for the buy-on fee and the won ga for the hotels and then there’s the van hire and the sound guy and a roadie and—’

“What about you? How come I’ve got to do it all?”

“Come off it,” he says, exhaling a thick plume of cigarette exhaust, ‘where am I going to find the time? I’ve got less than six weeks to organise what we’re all going to wear onstage and, more importantly, I’ve got two weeks’ worth of compilation tapes to make. You can’t expect us to go out on tour without a top-notch set of vintage-Vince compilation tapes, can you?”

“No,” I say, waving the smoke from Vince’s cigarette away from my face. “I suppose not.”

I wonder if I could get away with wearing flared trousers like Vince’s. I have a feeling that my legs may be too short to carry it off. It’s not like I’m a short-arse I’m five foot ten and a half but I’ve always thought that flares look much better on you if you’re over six foot. I had a pair of cream corduroys with sixteen-inch bottoms once. Alison liked them because they were really tight around the crotch but I had to stop wearing them in the end because I kept getting my left bollock caught in the material when I sat down. I wonder if I’ve still got them somewhere.

I’m almost at the flat and I’m just wondering whether we’ should go all out for seventies psychedelia with paisley shirts and fake Afros or stick to basic in die-issue black when I notice someone sitting outside on the wall. It’s Kate. She’s got her hair in bunches and she’s wearing a low-cut summer dress over a pair of cotton Indian-style trousers. The whole effect is quite flimsy, and as I draw nearer I can see her nipples sticking through the fabric of her dress like a pair of pink, fleshy wheel nuts. Kate has big nipples and small breasts. They point upwards and outwards like miniature winter Olympic ski jumps.

Maybe it’s the remnants of my Galliano hangover or the humidity of the afternoon sun but something about the whole combination pert tits, flimsy cotton, the gash of red lipstick on her fat, smiley lips gives me an instant semi. Well, not quite a semi, more like a quarteri. This is exactly what I’m talking about, though. This is exactly the kind of moment when you want to make sure you’re wearing baggy combats instead of tight-crotch corduroy flares.

“Danny, hi.”

“All right, Kate,” I say, holding my Seven Eleven bag in front of me so she can’t get a look at my quarteri. “What’s up?”

“I just popped over for a chat. I wanted to talk to you about the gig. You don’t mind, do you?”

“No, no, not at all. Come on up, I’ll make us some coffee.”

The flat is a bit of a state: dirty clothes piled up in front of the washing machine, yesterday’s Pyrex stuck to the coffee table and a range of glasses and mugs and cutlery and Play Station games scattered all over the living-room floor. Kate doesn’t seem to notice. She asks if I’ve got any herbal tea, flops down in the middle of the sofa narrowly avoiding a three-pronged fish fork and starts rooting through her bag for details of the warm-up gig that she’s organised at her art college.

She keeps all her college notes in a large satchel decorated with sequins and mirrors and bits of old ribbon, and I can’t help noticing the beads of sweat nestled in her cleavage as she reaches over to belt it shut. The bunches and the satchel give her whole look a sort of teenage Britney Spears effect, and something about the way she twirls her hair with her fingers and crosses and uncrosses her legs makes me feel a little bit like a dirty uncle. Plus she’s Matty’s girlfriend. It’s not on. It may be the height of summer, but I shouldn’t really be checking out Matty’s girlfriend’s cleavage. Or her tits.

“Right then,” she says, kicking off her sandals and wriggling back into the cushions. “Here it is. I think I’ve asked all the right questions.”

I take her sheet of notes and sit down next to her. There’s not much to it, really. Fifty quid for an hour-and-a-half set. Three weeks’ time. Union bar. Guaranteed audience of about a hundred people. She could easily have sorted it out with me over the phone.

“Yeah,” I say, ‘seems OK to me. It’s exactly what we need, actually. I just found out we’re on the Scarface tour for definite.”

“Wow, that’s fantastic. Does Matty know yet?”

“No. Vince was going to give him a ring later on.”

“I knew it,” she says, brushing her fringe off her forehead and widening her eyes at me. “You’re probably going to think this is stupid but a friend of mine has been drawing up a star chart for Matty and she reckoned something amazing was just about to happen for him. I could get her to do one for you, if you like. You’re Libran, aren’t you?”

I don’t bother correcting her.

“Thought so,” she says, touching my knee with her hand. “You’ve got all the typical traits.”

I feel my cock start to wither and I immediately stop listening to what she’s saying. It’s one of those things. You can be having a perfectly civilised conversation with someone and then they ask you what your star sign is and you instantly realise that you’re talking to a moron. She might as well be talking about bigfoot or with craft or sacrificing virgins in the middle of Bodmin Moor.

‘.. . and I’ve just been given this book on reiki,” she says, getting into her stride. “It’s really interesting. It’s all about the transfer of the universal life energy. Like a massage for your aura or something.”

“Right,” I say. “Sounds good. But… you know… Alison’s mum bought me an electric foot-massager a couple of years ago and it’s been in the cupboard under the stairs ever since so … maybe massage isn’t really my thing.”

She smiles at me. She doesn’t seem to mind that I’m taking the piss.

“Seriously,” she says, ‘you really ought to read it. It’ll completely change the way you look at the world.”

She’s beginning to annoy me now. What’s wrong with the way I look at the world? She’s read half a crappy paperback by someone who once went on holiday to India for a week and she thinks that makes her an expert on the human condition. I think that’s the main appeal of mysticism to people like Kate. A couple of health-food shop leaflets and a quick visit to the

hocus-pocus library and you’re instantly an expert on your subject compared to everyone else. It’s a short cut. It means you get to feel superior and knowledgeable without actually having learned anything. Of any use. Whatsoever.

I let her finish up her tea but I don’t bother offering her another cup. I thank her for sorting out the gig, tell her that I’m expecting a call from Alison and she finally takes this as her cue and gets up to leave. She offers to lend me her book on reiki so that I can be more informed about life-forces and my hidden self. I think about telling her that I’d rather chew off my own foot, but I don’t want to hurt her feelings so I tell her to give it to me next time she sees me. I didn’t know what else to do. It was the only way I could think of to get rid of her.

The phone hasn’t stopped ringing all afternoon: a woman from BT offering to extend my Friends and Family package - I didn’t even know I had a Friends and Family package a man from Barclaycard ringing to see if I want an extension on my credit limit very nice of them considering I already owe over two thousand pounds and a quick call from Ike congratulating me about coming on the tour. Odd, really. He sounded quite magnanimous. I wonder if he had anything to do with it. Probably decided he quite fancied the idea of having a whipping-boy on tour with him after all. Wait until he sees us play, though. Wait until he meets Vince. Vince will sort him right out. Must remember to tell Matty not to make friends with him, though. Matty’s terrible like that. He’s so trusting. He’ll meet Ike and he’ll share a couple of beers with him and before you know it Ike will be his brand-new, best-ever mate.

Maybe we could get him a tattoo: Must not make friends with Ike. We could have it inked across his forehead in backwards writing. Bit harsh. Maybe we could just write Ike is a cunt across the top of his drum heads to remind him what’s what.

I think I must have dozed off. The last thing I remember is an Alsatian having his piles removed by a cute-looking nurse on Pet Rescue and now it’s almost eight o’clock. I check the _

answer phone to see if Alison called me while I was asleep. ]p

Nothing.

Maybe I should nip down to the shops and buy myself something to eat. My hangover stomach seems to have settled down a bit and I’m suddenly starving hungry. I decide to risk it. I’ll just record a new answer phone message in case Alison calls me while I’m out.

“Hi, if that’s you I’ve gone to Budgens.”

Shit, maybe I shouldn’t say I’ve gone to Budgens. Sounds like I have no life. Who am I trying to kid? Alison already knows I have no life. Try again anyway.

“Hi, if that’s you I’ve gone to the pub… with Vince… and with Matty… and some new friends that you don’t know

That’s no good either. She knows I don’t ever go out with anyone apart from Vince and Matty. I know, I’ll pretend I’m doing something cultural, that’ll impress her.

“Hi, if that’s you I’ve gone to the opening of Kate’s new art exhibition … I probably won’t stay very long … I definitely won’t be late … in fact I’m probably already back… but, if not, leave a message … or a number where I can call you… your hotel or something… bye.”

I grab my wallet, dash down to Budgens and end up shopping in a bit of a rush. I try to buy ingredients for Thai green curry but for some reason I end up forgetting about the rice. And the fish sauce. And the lime leaves. And the green curry paste. I flick the answer phone button as soon as I get back. Someone called but they didn’t bother leaving a message. It was an international number. Bollocks.

I make myself some kind of messy sub-student food involving peppers and curry powder and a wok full of tinned tomatoes and eat it flicking between the news and an episode of The Sopranos that I’ve already seen. She doesn’t call back. I study my Bruges brochures for a while, listen to a spot of Leonard Cohen with the lights out, think about having a wank over one of Alison’s old copies of Vogue but decide against it. I can’t seem to settle. I really want to talk to her. I want to know how she is. I want to tell her all about Ike and the tour and Kate turning out to be a New Age loon and I really need to ask her advice vis-a-vis me and flared trousers. I want to tell her that I miss her. I want to tell her that the flat feels empty without her.