silence. A silence leaden and morose, hanging over them like a pall, causing each to wilt bodily beneath its oppressive mass. A thick, stagnant silence, almost palpable, and of the kind not easily broken.
Billy unconsciously gripped the chair arms. His head drooped listlessly on its weakened stalk. His mouth was gaping open. The colour had all but drained from his face and from dark, heavily hooded eyes he stared beyond his own knees at nothing in particular...
Thoughts, lighter than air, flit randomly hither and thither, one no sooner formed than it spryly drifts away, to be instantly replaced with another, which itself drifts off in turn. Thoughts like bubbles, in that any attempt to grasp them merely disturbs the surrounding air, sending them further into the ether, floating teasingly out of reach. Delicate thoughts, diaphanous and ephemeral, then – pop! – lost forever.
...but in the general direction of Pabs, who, lying star shaped on the floor, was gazing vacantly up at the ceiling, his blithe spirit crushed beneath the tremendous weight of the stone that had lain him flat. Or maybe it had only moved out, temporarily, for want of room in its scrawny abode beside the immense quantity of smoke he had recently inhaled. Either way, only the lifeless body remained. Even Tony was looking the worse for wear: slumped low on the couch with his feet on the table, staring dreamily into the television. But now, as though resurrected, he began to stir. He took his feet off the table and raised himself up, intertwined his fingers and stretched, cracking each of his knuckles. He twice cricked his neck, once each side, and drew the table towards him. And, displaying an inhuman resilience, as Billy looked dumbly on, he began again to lick, stick, lick, stick, etcetera, smoothing, between that thumb and those fingers, with unimpaired pride, yet another exemplary joint.
Pabs suddenly spoke, in reflective tones directed at the ceiling.
‘Shame,’ he said, ‘that nobody wanted the tamazy’s. I told Daz I’d shift the lot for him no bother. And he must be due up any minute.’
Tony was reaching for the lighter. But on hearing that a visit from Daz was imminent he paused, and withdrew his hand. Casually taking the joint from his mouth he said:
‘You know what, man? It pains me to fuckin say it, but Billy’s probably right. We really should be makin a move. We’ve got a bit of a fuckin walk ahead of us, eh? And that dog’ll not feed his-self.’
And he proposed a quick line or two to get everyone back on par, a motion eagerly seconded by Pabs.
For his part Billy now had no intention of moving, and but for an irrational fear of speaking out loud would have said as much. Yet when, after striving valiantly to conquer this fear, he finally felt able to speak, he was bewildered to find that his mind was a blank, and try as he might to refill it his efforts were in vain. Frustrated, he soon gave up, thinking only that he’d been thinking about it for far too long and had forgotten whatever it was he’d been trying so hard to remember.
Tony meanwhile had prepared the lines, and as he readied himself to take one of them, he had second thoughts about the pills.
‘Ah, fuck it, Pabs,’ he said. ‘Give us the thirty at half price, will you? You never know, eh? It might make for an interestin night!’
Lines taken, Pabs was unbolting the door. Dooly eyed fixedly the intersection between it and the jamb, whining urgently as his tail thump-thumped the wall, anticipating liberty as a runner anticipates the starting pistol.
‘Wait!’ Said Billy from the other end of the hallway. ‘Let me get him on the lead first. He’s got a habit of runnin away.’
The door was then opened and Billy was pulled into the stairwell, where he had to restrain Dooly from tearing down the stairs. Tony, sniffing hard, strode confidently out behind him.
‘Well, Pabs, mate,’ he said, ‘a pleasure as always, eh? Will we be seein you in the pub later for a few?’
‘Oh, I doubt it, man. I doubt it,’ said Pabs. ‘I’ll probably not venture that far. Just go straight to the gig from here, eh?’
Tony frowned quizzically.
‘Gig?’ he said. ‘What gig?’
‘What gig?’ repeated Pabs with some surprise. ‘Only the biggest fu...! Aye, right you are, Drako, man. I’m wasted but I’m not that wasted, eh? What gig, he says! Listen, I’ll no doubt see you down there, about nine-ish, right? But if you’ll excuse me, boys, I’ll be gettin back inside now. I’ll catch my fuckin death standin here!’
13
They had put a synthesized and syncopated dance track where the real guitars and drums had been!
In an editing suite, with Steve Steve, Kris and Jeremy all in attendance, Tony was staring in numb stupefaction at the TV screen before him.
He was dimly aware of the images on it chopping and changing in quick succession – an angry mob of stone throwing protestors wearing scarves over their faces like outlaws; an advancing cohort of riot police, shields and batons at the ready; black and white CCTV footage of an after hours street brawl filmed from on high; himself, in extreme close up, scowling out at the room – one image no sooner up there than it was immediately replaced with another – the clash of police and rioters; an apprehended street brawler refusing to go quietly; a severely truncheoned protestor; another being dragged bodily from the ruck; himself again, this time from the side, singing angrily into the microphone, gripping its stand with both hands – no single shot lasting longer than a second or two. But he saw the whole thing at one remove, as though the screen were a thousand yards distant. He was oblivious to the video's merits or otherwise.
They had put a synthesized and syncopated dance track where the real guitars and drums had been!
The music’s clichéd beats had reached the drums of his ears and plunged straight to the pit of his stomach, bypassing his heart completely, and the suffering it caused him, the humiliation he felt, he felt all the more keenly for having seen this coming. This, he had known all along, was what they had meant by ‘modernise’. This was why he had been afraid to ask. This was what he had feared most of all. This – with its dominant monotonous bass line, cheap imitation percussion and soulful (quote, unquote) backing vocals (coming from no deeper than the throat and not even close to the real Deal) – was dance music by numbers, and its pat, preprocessed arrangement neutralised the passion he had invested in the song and made a mockery of everything he stood for.
It didn’t take a genius either to see the thought behind this (mis)deed. By amalgamating the two different styles, ‘Alternative’ and ‘techno’, they would appeal to both sets of fans and capture double the market share. It was a sure fire winner. Two birds with one stone. The best of both worlds. Statistics would bear them out on that. But Tony ‘just wasn’t feeling it’. His gut feeling, an actual physical gut feeling, was that this cack-handed attempt to make a fast buck would be seen for exactly what it was, and that the two birds, short of being killed, would escape unscathed, having spotted the clumsily thrown stone coming a mile off. And as for it being the best of both worlds it was neither one world nor the other, neither fish nor fowl, punk nor pop. It fell flat on its face between at least two stools and, in a pathetic, crumpled heap, would lie there while people pointed at it and laughed, spat on it, pissed all over it, kicked at it and poked it with sticks, before ignoring it altogether.
That music stand hurtling feet first towards the glass; the microphone felled by that clubbing right hook; a discarded shield, blood on the sidewalk, and, on an image of Tony glowering defiantly into the camera, the music ended and the screen faded to black. There was a clearing of throats, a shuffling of chairs and an air of expectancy in the room as all turned towards him for his verdict. But he did not, could not, move a muscle.
They had put a synthesized and syncopated dance track where the real guitars and drums had been!
With their cold-blooded reliance on statistics and analyses, their ears to the ground and their eyes on current trends, they had managed to reduce, to the level of mere novelty single, one of the greatest songs of all time. But it was his face up there on the screen and it wo
uld be his name, there for all to see, on the cover.
14
They had retraced their steps to the exit of the shopping centre (now an entrance), and Tony was telling Billy to just wait here while he nipped inside for something unspecified.
‘Two seconds, man,’ he was saying. ‘I just need to get somethin. I’ll be two seconds.’
Even from here Billy heard base-metal hit plate glass, plate glass hit faux-marble floor, the flat-note tinkle of smaller pieces of plate glass re-hitting faux-marble floor, the stunned silence of the crowd and the continual high-low high-low of a shop alarm system, and Tony came bolting back out through the sliding glass doors clutching a life-size cardboard cut-out of pop star Ryan Watson, shouting:
‘FUCKIN RUN!’
15
If Tony was shocked but not at all surprised by the addition of this modernised backing track, Steve Steve was less surprised still by Tony’s, da-da da da, let’s say impassive response to it: newcomers to the business always brought with them an impractical amount of idealism. Nevertheless, hoping against hope, he kept his earnestly enquiring gaze – raised eyebrows, innocent eyes – trained on Tony for as long as he could until it was no longer cost effective to do so, and it fell, all at once, to a mixture of disappointment and, if not