Читать книгу When Hell Freezes Over - Rick Blechta - Страница 9

The change in the weather as we landed in Toronto came as quite a shock. While Scotland had been snowy, damp and miserable, the temperature hadn’t come close to the effect of the glacial air mass that held southern Ontario in its grip. To top it off, when I’d left town, the weather had been more like March than January.

I left the plane, feeling gritty and hung over, the result of almost no sleep over the past two days. The cold bit right to the bone, going some way towards jolting me out of my stupor.

Boarding a plane in Glasgow twelve hours earlier, I’d asked for an extra pillow and given the flight attendant strict instructions not to wake me for any reason, then spent the trip in that peculiar twilight world where you’re not sure whether you’re awake or asleep. I’d done the same thing on the connecting flight from Heathrow. Consequently, when I eventually opened my eyes, it felt as if I hadn’t really slept at all.

I should have stayed another day at Angus’s, gotten the sleep I needed and taken the flight back to Toronto on which I had actually booked a seat, but...I couldn’t.

Face facts, Quinn, I said to myself, Angus was right. You turned tail and ran.

While it had still been pitch black out, I’d carefully pulled away from Regina’s warm body, and making certain I didn’t wake her, I’d grabbed my clothes and suitcase and beat it.

As expected, I’d found Angus already up and sitting in the dull glow of a floor lamp in the middle of his sitting room, attempting to wrestle his tax receipt avalanche into submission. “Good God, Michael, it’s only half five! I thought you’d be asleep for hours yet.”

“I have to get back to Toronto. Will you drive me to the airport?”

“But your bloody plane isn’t until tomorrow! You’re going to pay through the nose to change your ticket if you leave now. Why the haste?”

“Something’s come up.”

“And what about the lassie?”

I tried to keep my face suitably blank. “I assume she’s still asleep.”

Angus fixed me with a curious expression. “I noticed on my way downstairs that she didn’t sleep in her own bed last night.”

“I am aware of that,” I answered phlegmatically. “Are you going to take me to the airport?”

“Does she know you’re leaving?”

“What difference does that make?”

“I think it might make a lot of difference to her,” my friend answered as he got to his feet.

“Look, you’re not my bloody nanny. I know what I’m doing.”

“Do you? You weren’t always like this.”

“And you know why I am like this now,” I said, taking my overcoat from the peg by the door.

Angus put his beefy hand on my shoulder, turning me to face him. “Michael, that was long ago. I’m not saying that what we did was right or wrong, but we did it, and it’s over. Time to put the past to rest.”

“Who’s to say I haven’t?” I shook off his hand and picked up my suitcase. “Maybe I just don’t want the bother of having someone mixed up in my life right now.”

“You did last night.”

“Yes, and I’m regretting it already.”

“What about all the other things? You know this exile you’ve put yourself in? This life you’re living isn’t the one you were destined to follow. Why deny it?”

“Look Angus, old friend, we’ve been down this road before, dozens of times. Nothing has changed. I’m through making music. It doesn’t interest me any more.”

“Bollocks! Then why the hell are you still hanging around on the fringes of the music business? You do want in again, and you’re too stubborn or too stupid to see it!”

“Take me to the airport, or don’t, but I’m leaving,” I replied tensely.

“All right, all right, but I’ll take you only as far as Dunoon. After that, you’re on your own. I am not crossing the Clyde,” he answered, as he grabbed his coat.

The roads were in better shape, but the ride was hardly less hair-raising, since daylight was still a few hours away. At least Angus knew the road well, and the Rover had better traction. As we descended from the hills to sea level, I came to a decision.

“We weren’t strictly on the level with you last night about the Jaguar.”

My friend continued staring straight ahead. “I’m aware of that.”

I was startled. “How?”

“Because whoever smashed my automobile had to have been very angry. You’re not the type to cause people to behave that way, and from what I’ve seen, neither is your lassie.”

“She’s not my lassie!”

Angus shrugged. “So what did happen?”

I gave him a more accurate version, still leaving out the part about Regina’s father. It was up to her to tell him about that.

“So six great lumping bastards were chasing one wee lassie? There’s more to this story than you’re telling me.”

“Be that as it may, I’m telling you this so you’ll know.”

“Know what?”

“Look, they might show up at your door. These are people you don’t want to mess with.”

“You did.”

“Only because I didn’t have a choice. Just take this as a warning. If I were you I’d go on holiday to the south of France or head to the Caribbean.”

“No one chases me from my place!”

I slumped in my seat, having known before the conversation had started that it would end like this. Well, at least I’d tried to warn him. I just hoped he didn’t get punched in the nose or knocked around if they showed up. Angus always was as stubborn as a mule.

He put his hand on my arm as we pulled up at the ferry dock. “What am I supposed to tell The Princess when she wakes up?”

“Here, I’ll write a note,” I said, taking a scrap of paper and a pen from my coat pocket. I scribbled a few lines and handed the result to Angus.

“I’ve had to go back home suddenly. Glad to have been able to help you—and get to know you. Best of luck in the future. You’re a really great person.” Angus shook his head. “That’s cold, Michael, very cold. And what am I supposed to do with her after she’s read this? After all, you brought her here.”

I opened the door, letting in a blast of cold air. “She’s a big girl. Let her decide.”

***

While waiting for my bag to come down the chute in the baggage claim area, I got on the phone to my business, knowing full well that I should have called them the day before.

A crisp voice answered, “Quinn Musical Equipment, Canada’s backline specialists. How may I direct your call?”

“Let’s see, Kevin, how about connecting me with the Department of Phone Answering Bullshit?”

“Oh, it’s you boss! Where you calling from?”

“The airport. I came back early. Anything up that I should know about?”

“That huge order for the DataSwitch tour went out right on time, no hitches. We got a call about quoting for the Downtown Jazz Festival, and a little walk-in business. Not much else since the last time we talked.”

“You did get a certified cheque and have DataSwitch’s road manager sign the damage waiver, didn’t you? Remember what happened the last time those idiots used our equipment.”

Kevin didn’t try hiding his bored tone. “Yes, I remember: most of it had to be thrown on the scrap heap, because they’d decided to pull a Who the last night of their tour and trashed everything. You remind us about that at least once a week.”

Even though it mightn’t sound like it, I had a good crew, and I cut them a lot of slack in how they spoke to me. But when it mattered, they knew who the boss was, even though I seldom had to exercise that particular power.

“Well, if there’s nothing requiring my urgent attention, I’m off home, and I will see you first thing in the morning. I’m knackered.”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot one thing,” Kevin said. “Betty the Customs Bitch just called to say they had a large flight case that came in. They’ll have it cleared by morning. She wants to know if we’ll pick it up, or should they deliver it. Is it what I think it is?”

Kevin had called Betty the “Customs Bitch” ever since he’d put the make on her and she’d laughed him off, but she was good at her job and gave me great service.

“Must be,” I answered. “We weren’t expecting anything else. That was bloody fast! I only bought the mellotron three days ago!” The lads at Rugely Electronics had the reputation of always being prompt with everything. “I’ll phone Betty and take care of it.”

I made that call, saying we’d pick up the mellotron the next morning, grabbed my bag, retrieved my car from the long-term car park and headed downtown.

During the forty-minute drive, Angus lectured me about my disappointing life. He didn’t have to be in the car to do that, because I could hear his voice perfectly well in my head.“You can’t keep running away from life, Michael, because when you finally decide you want to take part in it again, you may find it’s too late.”

***

Much as I generally prefer being alone, I could never feel comfortable in a place as remote as the one Angus had chosen. It was rather odd that gregarious Angus lived in the middle of nowhere, while withdrawn Michael always went to ground in the middle of a city.

My present digs suited me quite well: a loft renovation just west of Toronto’s downtown core. I’d bought the place when it wasn’t yet trendy to live in a renovated factory. Now they’re all turning into yuppie enclaves, and the prices have gone right out of sight. Since I didn’t want people (primarily the lead singer from my former band) to know where I live, I’d taken great pains to preserve my anonymity. The phone number was unpublished, the ownership of the loft was through a numbered company, and even my staff only knew how to reach me via cell phone.

Angus had commented on all that, too, the first time he’d visited. Regardless of whether his observations about me bore any credence, from an early age I’d always preferred my own company much of the time and didn’t find it strange nor wearing.

My place was in a four-storey, rather imposing brick structure almost a century old. They’d made typewriters and other office machines there, before the firm finally went belly up in the sixties. I’d paid a very good price for my loft because the developer had run short of cash before completing the renovation of the building. I’d got wind of that and offered to pay for mine up front at a reduced price.

I occupied the southeast corner of the top floor, the best spot because of the fantastic view of the Toronto Islands and the downtown core. The floors were the original wood, sanded and polished. It had twelve-foot ceilings, and not a lot of furniture: comfortable stuff, mostly old pieces I’d picked up at yard sales, and a few upmarket pieces that had caught my eye. The walls, painted in cream and brown, also had some art of the abstract kind. Early on, I’d succumbed to buying a big stereo but generally listened to recordings through headphones. My two extravagances were books I’d bought over the years which took up eighteen feet of wall, and a nine-foot Blüthner grand piano which sat in the outside corner of the sitting room, where I could look out the window as I played. Since my downstairs neighbour was seldom in the country, I could generally bang away whenever it suited me.

Putting my suitcase down in the entryway, I went over to the thermostat and cranked up the heat several notches. Outside, the wind was raging to the howling point, and I could tell from the way it drove tendrils of cold in around the windows that the night would see the temperature plummeting to the bottom reaches of the thermometer. After closing the curtains in order to keep as much of the frigid air at bay as possible, I headed down the hall to the kitchen with the idea of brewing a pot of tea.

Even though they’d been there so long I hardly noticed them any more, something caused me to stop and examine the gold and platinum recording awards that hung the length of the hall.

Several were for Don’t Push Me, Neurotica’s debut album, named after the song Regina, twenty-four years my junior, could sing. It had been a hit before she was born, for Christ’s sake! I didn’t know which made me more depressed: the fact that I’d slept with someone so young or the fact that her knowing my tune drove home so solidly that the best point in my life had taken place over a generation earlier.

I hadn’t aged badly, the reward for a careful life, I guess. The passing years had done good things for my face, seemingly bringingout the strong points and hiding the weak. I’d kept most of my hair, and there was little sign of grey among the brown. Years of slugging equipment in and out of trucks had kept me trim, that and the fact that I skipped meals too often. Turning away from the present, I looked into the past, a promo photo taken in my twenty-second year at the end of the hall, showing a six-foot lad with long brown hair and a rather ascetic, sharp-featured face. What I couldn’t deny, though, was the untroubled expression of a person who had the world by the tail and his whole life ahead of him. That certainly was no longer in my eyes, but life has a way of obliterating those sorts of things.

Those had indeed been heady days, everything happening so fast. One month we were just another struggling Brummy bar band with a solid local following, and the next, we had management and a major record label paying for us to record at a posh London studio. In short, we were being groomed as Rock Stars. Don’t Push Me turned out to be the success everyone had predicted. The album quickly went gold, then platinum, and eventually double platinum, meaning that we sold a boatload of recordings. The single did equally as well.

The tours had always been the best part of it for the rest of the band. The excessive lifestyle had suited them all—especially Rolly, who embraced it with Bacchanalian gusto. I lived for being in the studio. I enjoyed most the time after everyone had left for the day with the hangers-on, spending hours experimenting, re-arranging, tweaking, looking for that something special that would take every song to the next level.

I made two albums with Neurotica and left them with enough material for a third. Although I didn’t have anything to do with recording it, to my sad satisfaction, it showed in its mediocre sales. Rolly and I always took writing credit for the songs, me for the music and Rolly for the lyrics—even though towards the end he was too busy becoming a legend to do more than a cursory job. (“Yeah, yeah, Michael. Sounds fine to me. You might want to fix up the chorus a bit. The lyric’s bloody depressing.”) The material on the second album was consequently almost completely mine. It was during the tour in support of its release that the whole thing had imploded for me.

The kettle sang its steamy note, jerking me back to the present, and I sat brooding for almost an hour over two cups. It hadn’t been a good idea to visit Angus. I didn’t like it when the old trouble got stirred up. Regardless of what I’d said, I also felt guilty about leaving Angus with a twenty-four-year-old problem named Regina. Heaven only knew how she had taken it when she’d woken up to find me long gone. But her problems were not something I could or would get involved in. When it counted, I’d done my bit and helped out a fellow human being. What had happened between us afterwards had all been her idea. If she now felt any remorse or anger about it, then it was her problem. Right?

So how come I didn’t really believe that?

***

Next morning, I pried myself out of a pleasantly warm bed and looked out at a snow-covered city. The wind had died down during the night, and white stuff was falling in big lazy flakes.

Dressing, I couldn’t help feeling silly about the night before, allowing myself to wallow in self-pity over how life had changed the cards I’d been dealt. A lot worse could have befallen me.

I’d built a successful business, and I still had a generous income from the royalties of my youthful musical endeavors. I could indulge myself when I wanted, buying silly unneccesaries such as the BMW M3 which sat in the parking garage in the basement of the building, the Blüthner in my sitting room, and now the ultimate silly musical toy waiting in a shipper’s warehouse at the airport.

A quick glance at the clock showed me I’d better get my arse in gear if I wanted to pick up my latest vintage keyboard before noon. Toronto traffic could be horrible with even a small amount of snow. It’s an odd thing that in a wintry country like Canada, few drivers in its largest city seem capable of driving in even moderately bad weather.

On my way to the customs broker, I phoned up the shop, getting Johnny, my newest recruit and a total keener for the job. Sensing that about him right from the beginning, I’d given him his own key earlier than I normally would have with a new employee. My intuition had so far proven correct. He was always first to arrive and last to leave.

“Welcome back, boss!” he said when he heard my voice. “Kevin told me that you’d scored on your big game hunt ‘over ’ome’. Are we picking it up today?”

“Yes. I’m on my way to the shipper’s warehouse to sign the papers and pay the charges. Bring the small van and meet me in an hour.”

“You bet! This is going to be so cool. I’ve never seen one of the big mellotrons up close.”

“You’re probably going to be pretty sick of it before long, Johnnymy-lad, since it’s to be your responsibility to maintain it.”

***

As usual with these things, it took two times longer to bail out the mellotron than I’d planned, with the result that it was past twelve when I rolled into the industrial mall in the northern Toronto suburb of Unionville, where I had my business. Kevin and my other employee, Hamed, were busy loading our fourteen-foot box van with a small mountain of equipment rented for a movie shoot at a downtown location. Seems someone had taken it into their head to make a film about the trials and tribulations of a rock band on the road in the late sixties. Spare me!

“Where’s the ’tron?” Kevin asked as he stood in the back of the truck, sweating profusely, even though the cold in the warehouse was fairly intense because of the open door.

“Johnny’s behind me somewhere with it. I told him to take it slow, since the roads are rather slick.” Looking over the equipment contract on the clipboard, I noticed that several more amplifiers had been requested and added, “What in heaven’s name do they need all this for? You could play an arena with this amount of gear.”

Hamed took the clipboard from me and checked off another three amps. “That’s exactly what they’re doing. Apparently they have actors who can actually play a bit, and they’re going to stage a sort-of-real concert at Maple Leaf Gardens, or what’s left of it. They need the equipment for an extra week, too,” he grinned.

I’d actually played The Gardens with Neurotica back in the day. Partially dismantled, it was now a sad relic of the past, with all of the concert action having moved south to the Air Canada Centre and the super-large nightclubs on the waterfront. I hardened my resolve not to visit the movie set.

I found a week’s worth of phone and e-mail messages waiting when I sat down at my desk, and it took quite a while to wade throughit all. January was normally a pretty slow month, but the amount of business coming through the door was either a fluke or a very gratifying upturn.

Writing up work orders took pretty well the rest of the day, and after filling out a deposit slip, I decided to cut out a bit early to stop off at the bank on the way home. As I headed for the back door, Johnny was the only one around. The other lads hadn’t got back from the movie shoot delivery and would probably be several hours yet, since they’d have to set up all the gear and test it. That would be duck soup for Hamed, who could play guitar pretty well (imagine a Palestinian heavy metal guitarist, if you will) and loved showing off with some hot licks on a high-volume rig. Kevin could play bass well enough, too, so if a drummer could be found kicking around the set (not such an impossible thing), they would have everything needed for an impromptu concert. If there were some babes hanging around (also not hard to imagine on a movie set), so much the better, as far as they were concerned. I wished them well.

“Can we crack open the mellotron case tomorrow and take it for a test drive?” Johnny asked.

“Sure. Get out one of the Hiwatt stacks and a drum stool. Don’t turn it on, though, until I go through the check list the Rugely lads gave me. We don’t need the mellotron to eat its tapes as soon as we hit the mains switch.” I took a look at the next day’s duties on the clipboard. “If you want to get a jump on things for tomorrow before you leave, there’s that Hammond B3 and Leslie going out early. Make sure it’s working properly. I’ve marked which one I want you to send.” Handing Johnny the board, I walked to the door. “And don’t forget they want bass pedals. For heaven’s sake, send the good set!”

The cold hit like a hammer blow as soon as I opened the door, making me wish I’d decided to settle someplace like southern California.

On the way, I stopped at a supermarket for a few things, including a frozen meat pie for dinner, then made a beeline for home and warmth. Tonight was an evening for a roaring fire and a good book.

After dinner and a glass or two of wine, I wound up behind thepiano instead. I noticed with some disgust that the tuning had slipped again, mostly because I’d turned down the heat when I’d left for the UK.UK

I had a Mozart sonata I’d been casually fooling around with lately, and that kept my fingers and mind occupied for over an hour. Gradually, though, my thoughts started wandering into other channels, and my fingers followed suit. First it was a couple of jazz standards: “What’s New?”, “Lover Man”, moody things like that. Then the rock and roll started creeping out of the dark recesses: a mindless boogie progression in G. Finally something, from where I have no idea, insinuated itself into my brain, and my fingers began following its trail. A melody popped into my head, and I began humming over the chords. It started so innocently, and it felt like it always had in the past when the creative juices began flowing.

I jumped violently to my feet, knocking the piano bench over. Slamming down the keyboard lid as if the piano were somehow responsible for what had happened, I stomped over to one of the windows overlooking Lake Ontario, pulled the curtain aside and stared out. A few stars gleamed brightly in the cold, hard night sky. The air was so clear, you could actually pick out several craters on the nearly-full moon.

I stood looking out for a long time, thoughts both good and bad flipping through my brain at ninety miles per hour.

***

Next morning, I got my sorry arse out of bed at a reasonable hour. After taking a long, steamy shower and actually stopping for breakfast on the way, I arrived at the shop even before Johnny. As I had feared, the fourteen-foot van was not in its usual spot blocking the loading door. Hamed and Kevin had probably made a late night of it.

If someone were really determined to steal equipment, I didn’t harbour any illusions that it couldn’t be managed. I tried to make things difficult only to keep the casual thieves at bay. Good locks, an efficient alarm system and a big truck in front of the loading doors saw to that. Even if Kevin had gotten well into the booze or drugs, Hamed, who didn’t indulge in either, should have driven the truck back. I’d have to speak to them.

Two years earlier, I’d moved Quinn Musical Equipment out of an inadequate and over-priced space in downtown Toronto into one of those anonymous industrial malls that any big city has springing up in its nether regions like pimples on the landscape. I sometimes suffered a guilty pang from the knowledge that my business stood on what had once been a productive farm, but the mall had already been built by the time I leased space, and if it hadn’t been me doing it, someone else would have set up shop regardless. The farm was gone forever.

Almost the whole of our three thousand square-foot space was taken up by floor to (twenty-foot) ceiling shelving units containing amplifiers of all descriptions and wattage, speaker cabinets, drum kits, various keyboards old and new, monitor systems, a few small mixing desks, in short, anything that might be needed on a stage during a musical performance. Quinn didn’t supply sound reinforcement systems or stage lighting, since they were too specialized and needed trained crews to set up and operate them, but if a client requested it, I knew people in the business whom I could book for those duties. Recording studios were increasingly renting our vintage equipment, mostly keyboards, for various projects. Those contracts were lucrative and easy to deal with. The tough ones were one-day concert rentals. The first few of that type of gig I’d done when I was starting out made me aware of how much Neurotica had owed our road crew. Talk about a thankless job. Try moving a few tons of equipment twice in one day.

The front of the building housed my small office and a rehearsal studio/demo room, where clients could try out equipment before renting. I attempted to keep everything orderly but had given up most of that fight long ago. As long as the condition of the place didn’t cross the line into squalor, I could live with it.

In my office, after bringing my computer to life and checking emails, I listened to the answering machine. With nothing urgently needing my attention, I went back out into the warehouse area, where Johnny had taken my latest acquisition out of its baby-blue flight case. One of his mates must have picked him up the previous evening, since he couldn’t have opened it by himself. From my briefcase, I got out Rugely Electronic’s list of “Things to check before switching on your mellotron” and had the back off the cabinet with my head inside when Johnny arrived.

“Absolutely amazing,” he said, peering over my shoulder. “Who would believe that something like this could actually work! Does everything check out, boss?”

I flipped off my pocket torch and stood up. “Seems so. Connect a jack to the line out, and let’s fire her up.” Johnny had gotten out a classic Hiwatt stack to use for amplification. The mellotron had its own onboard speakers, but they’d sounded pretty wimpy when I’d briefly tried the instrument before buying it. “Turn it up to five,” I told him and switched on the mellotron.

It made an odd, soft clanking noise as it sprang to life. I glanced at the sheet Rugely had provided listing the voices and their location on the mellotron’s tapes.

“What do you want to hear first?” I asked Johnny.

“It’s got to be those violins.”

The classic mellotron sound. I looked at the sheet: right-hand keyboard, Station 2, Track A, and checking again to make sure I was doing it correctly, pushed the required buttons. The mellotron whirred and vibrated under my hand. Sliding back the cover, I could see the right rear cylinder turning. Everything seemed to be doing what it was supposed to do. Sitting down on the drum stool, I put my foot on the volume pedal and depressed it halfway. Fingers over the keys, I pressed down the notes for an open F Major triad.

That sound filled the room. Johnny’s jaw literally dropped open, and I have to admit that my heart beat a bit faster. I played a couple of chord progressions, and had just started the opening to King Crimson’s “Court of the Crimson King” when Kevin and Hamed arrived.

“Jesus...” Kevin said after I’d finished.

I stood and bowed, using my hand in a sweeping gesture to indicate the instrument in front of me. “Gentlemen, the Mellotron MkII.”

“It is very impressive,” Hamed added, coming around to look at the control panel. “How does it work?”

I handed him the repair manual I’d also purchased. Turning back to the instrument, I consulted the track sheet, pressed another button and began the opening to “Watcher of the Skies” by Genesis. The sound was even more spectacular.

“How come you know all this old stuff, boss?” Johnny asked.

I answered, sounding more disgusted than I wanted to, “Because it wasn’t that old when I learned it.”

On and off during the day, we all kept gravitating to the mellotron, putting it through its paces. Every sound was tried, and none found wanting. Some seemed like old friends because of the number of times we’d heard them on recordings: cello, mixed choir and flute (“Strawberry Fields” anyone?), but several were new to me, bass flute and French horn being the standouts there. Hamed liked the sustained guitar (another new one), and we all especially liked Gothic, a huge sound that was a blend of string section, mixed choir and pipe organ—very atmospheric and creepy to the point where it actually made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Shortly after Johnny had left with the organ delivery to a studio downtown, the buzzer on the back door sounded. I’d built a small room with a counter to keep customers out of the warehouse proper, so we couldn’t see who had entered. Hamed trotted off to find out. I had my head down fiddling with the reverb control on the mellotron when two sets of footsteps approached.

When I didn’t look up right away, Hamed cleared his throat. “Michael, this woman says she’d like to speak to you.”

I looked up distractedly, and there stood Regina. She didn’t really want to speak to me. She just reared back and gave my face the kind of full-handed slap you only see in movies.