Asturias (5 page)

9

THE HEARTBEAT

ALEX'S STORY

“Okay, genius, how did you know?”

Max was never what you might call unapproachable, but in the early days Chrissie was the only one who felt comfortable treating him like one of the boys.

Tasha and her friend had just left, and he was sitting there in the booth like a cat with cream all over its whiskers.

“How did I know
what?”

Tim cut in. “How did you know that girl could sing like that?”

Max shrugged, but the smile on his face gave him away. “It's what they pay me for.”

“Bullshit, Mr A&R Executive! Bullshit, cow pats and bovine diarrhoea. I think it's because she's a blonde.” Chrissie hijacked the conversation, and for a moment I looked at her, confused. This was a strange sort of joke. I was waiting for the punchline.

Then I realised that although the smile was there and the tone was light-hearted it was no joke.

“I'm right, aren't I?” She stood up as she continued. “It's all about being absolutely PC, isn't it? You're positioning us already, before the band is even up and running.”

I looked at Max, and from the expression on his face I knew that Chrissie was scoring points, though for the life of me I couldn't figure out what she was talking about. I waited for her to go on, but Max spoke first.

“It's not like that —”

“No, of course not! And I'm the bloody tooth-fairy. At least be honest with
them,
man.” She indicated Tim and me with her hand, but her eyes never left his. “Or are you going to pretend it's all just a big happy coincidence? She can sing — great! I happen to think she's just what we need. And she's a nice kid, too. But you wouldn't even have asked her what her name was if she hadn't looked like she'd just stepped out of
Dolly.
Look, it's no big deal — not to me, at least. But you have to tell
them
the truth, Max. If this thing is going to work, it's got to be based on the truth, not bullshit … Or do you want
me
to?”

I looked at Tim. He was as much in the dark as I was. Max just opened his hands, and she went on speaking. To us.

“What we are, guys, is an equal-opportunity, politically correct, United bloody Nations. Do you think it's a complete accident that we've got one Hispanic, one” — she looked at Tim and smiled — “one WASP, and one female of the Asian … persuasion? And now we've got a White Russian for a front-man … person. We only auditioned girl-singers, of course — better demographics. Two females in a band of five — talk about an ABBA-complex! Enough for the guys to salivate over and good role-models for the girls. So the gender-mix is perfect.”

Max was saying nothing — a fact that spoke volumes. But strangely there was a kind of smile on his face.

“What if the black girl … what was her name?”

“Cindy,” Tim put in helpfully.

“Cindy. What if Cindy had cut it? I'll tell you. We'd have been looking for a bloody surfie for a drummer. Blond, blue-eyed … Just to complete the set. Well, we've got our blonde, so what are we looking for now? Maybe you could import a Zulu to beat the skins, or what about an Islander? They're supposed to have rhythm.” The sarcasm was so thick you could carve it.

I'll say one thing for Max. He's cool. He stood up and walked over until he was facing her.

“You want out?”

But Chrissie is ice herself when she wants to be.

“You
want
me out?”

For a moment they faced each other, then they both burst out laughing. He put a hand on each shoulder and looked straight into her eyes.

“As if!” Then he let go and took a step backwards. “Look, there may be a grain of truth in …” At the look on her face he paused. “Okay, you've got me. The UN you are. But maybe it's not quite as cynical as it first appears.”

He paused again, but Chrissie wasn't going to make it easy for him.

“You were saying?”

“I was saying … I'm not denying there's a marketing aspect, but —”

“A marketing aspect! So now we're a frigging hula-hoop!” She was having fun, but the serious edge was still there.

“It
is
part of the image, Chriss. It's an image industry. But that doesn't mean there can't be a positive side to it all.”

“I'm listening.”

“The message. What does it say to kids who see you up there on stage? Tolerance, cooperation. It's not ‘us and them', it's just a universal
us.
It's got to be better than some Rap band preaching death, destruction and discrimination. Instead of representing what
is,
we can show them what
could
be.”

Chrissie was softening, but she wasn't quite ready to give up a good fight.

“ ‘We are the world'. Very sweet! And we get to feel good all the way to the bank.”

“All the way to the bank. Look, Chriss, it's my project. My deal. I want it to succeed. Of course I do. But I'm not a complete sell-out. Not yet, at least. Maybe we can do it without destroying too much along the way.”

Finally Chrissie sat down.

“Okay. Benefit of the doubt. But it really wasn't about the race thing. Hell, we're all in it for the money.” She looked at the two of us and winked. “And for the art, of course. I just wanted to clear the air. It's about honesty, Max. Tell me the truth, and we can discuss just about anything. Screw with me, and I walk. I mean it.”

“What, turn your back on ‘fame and fortune'?” Tim jumped in to lighten things.

“Just watch me!”

She answered Tim, but she was looking into Max's eyes.

Sitting where I was, I could see what he saw, and I knew she meant every word.

Still, in the end it wasn't Max who found our heartbeat anyway. It was me. And a large chunk of blind luck. Not that Max minded all that much. He couldn't have made a more perfect choice, even if he'd sat down and worked it all out on a spreadsheet …

MARCO

Five o'clock.

He assembles the thin metal tripod and curses silently to himself. Damned trackworks. Twenty minutes waiting between stations. Enough of a delay to lose the chance at any of the good spots.

Tucked into the comer between the station entrance and the newsstand, he has barely enough room to move his arms. He looks at the sky. Rain coming. The rush-hour is on already, and he isn't even set up.

A fat man in a business suit pushes past and his brief-case catches the leg of the tripod that now holds a pair of old bongo-drums
—
the only real instrument among his whole collection of noise-makers. A reflex shoots out his right hand in time to catch them before they fall under the feet of the jostling crowd.

Old Sam leans across the counter of the news-stand, and cranes his neck around the corner.

“Late this afternoon, kid?”

Sam is a master of the obvious. The boy nods.

“Train was delayed.”

“Looks like you're stuck with me, then.”

“Could be worse.”

He smiles. The old man likes him and he knows it. His performance slows down the rush at times, so that someone might notice the headlines and stop to buy a paper or magazine for the trip home. Besides, it breaks the boredom of the afternoon shift in a job that just serves to keep you alive while you're waiting to die. Sam has been waiting to die since 1987, when his wife managed the trick and left him alone.

Sam returns his smile, then his head disappears around the corner of the stand, as a woman holds out a fifty dollar note to pay for a seventy-cent newspaper. She walks past Marco, followed by an expressive hand-gesture from the invisible old man behind the counter.

“Hey kid!” He looks up to see a tiny yellow projectile hurtling towards him. Instantly his hand is up, and he catches it centimetres from his face.

Juicy Fruit. Sam's habitual donation to the street culture of the city.

“Thanks, old man.” He tosses three sweet pellets into his mouth and cracks them between his teeth.

“You're welcome. Now get to work. Earn your keep. I don't know what I pay you for, I really don't.”

He laughs under his breath and begins his warm-ups.

ALEX'S STORY

I heard him before I saw him.

He was busking outside the entrance to the station, and I was trying to make my way up to the street against the flow of the evening rush. I had one hand on the hand-rail, dragging myself up towards the entrance, and with the other I was trying to stop my guitar from doing a permanent injury to one of the faceless commuters who were streaming past.

Progress was slow, and the rhythms he was weaving on his makeshift drum-kit began to register even before I hit the street.

And they were pretty impressive rhythms. Especially considering the equipment he was using, and the fact that he was keeping up a running conversation with the passing crowd as he played. He commented on the women's fashions and the state of the weather, thanked people for any donations, and told sick one-line jokes, all without missing a beat.

He had an old pair of hand-drums on a tripod, which he played with a couple of battered drumsticks. The rest of his “kit” was made up of three old paint-cans of various sizes, two coconut shells and something shapeless and metal that sounded a bit like a cow-bell. But he did more with that collection of cast-offs than most of the drummers I'd heard playing on the studio kits.

I was in no particular hurry. Claire was meeting me on Park Street at six, which gave me about forty minutes to do the ten-minute walk. So I stopped to watch him.

I stood near the entrance to the station, out of the wind and away from the stream of people heading home.

And, I thought, out of his line of sight.

Wrong.

“What you got in the case?”

I looked up to find him staring at me. He stopped playing and nodded towards my guitar. I had it resting against my legs. It was just a cheap steel-string acoustic I was lending to Chrissie's brother. I didn't answer. I couldn't think of an answer that wasn't obvious.

“You've left it a bit late,” he went on. “All the best spots go before four-thirty. Especially on Thursdays. You're new, aren't you? I haven't seen you around.”

I looked in his hat. There was maybe ten dollars in church money.

“You make much?”

I saw a look of suspicion cross his face, but he must have decided I wasn't any kind of threat, because it disappeared as quickly as it had come.

“Enough,” he replied. “But not tonight, I don't think. It's going to rain.” He looked up at the clouds. “Half an hour. Forty minutes, tops. If you're going to find a spot, you'd better …”

He indicated vaguely away into the distance with his head.

“I'm not looking for a spot,” I said. “I'm just going to meet my girlfriend. How long have you been doing this?” I nodded in the direction of his “drum-kit”.

He smiled. “About nine months. Four, maybe five days a week.”

I thought he was going to say more, but he just picked up his sticks and began playing again. I watched for a couple of minutes, fascinated. He really was good.

“You can jam if you like.” It was an offer of friendship. Street-style.

How could I refuse? I had time to kill, and it beat a cup of coffee at McDonald's.

A quick tune-up and I was into it. And if I'd been impressed before, it was nothing to the way I felt after a few minutes of “jam time”.

Jazz, blues, rock — even flamenco. He answered everything I threw at him. A couple of bars and it was like he was reading charts. I've played with some naturals, but he was … the best. And none of them ever did it on paint-cans.

I suppose I was vaguely aware of the crowds passing, but it wasn't until the thunder rolled somewhere in the near-distance, and I realised it was about to pour, that I stopped. I looked at my watch.

Ten past six.

Claire was going to kill me.

“I've got to go.” As I spoke I bent down to put the guitar into its case. It was then that the first drops began to fall.

“Me too,” he said. “It's about to bucket.”

He looked down into the hat, and what he saw must have pleased him. “Hey, man. We did pretty good. Grab a handful.” He held it out to me.

I was impressed by the gesture but I shook my head.

“It's your spot. I was just filling in time.”

He shrugged and began piling his gear into a hessian sack. The rain was getting heavier, and I began making up excuses in my head to explain to Claire why she'd had to stand around waiting for me. None of them sounded particularly convincing, so I decided to try the truth.

I came across this really amazing drummer and
…

Suddenly it hit me.

He was hefting the sack onto his back, ready to make his way down into the station, when I touched him on the shoulder.

“How come you aren't in a band? With your talent …”

I could see it was a question he'd been asked before. He gave a slight shrug.

“I could never afford the skins. Drummers are a dime a dozen. And they all have kits. Besides, I get by … There's lots of reasons.”

There was something he wasn't telling me, but I let it go.

“Look, I have some friends I'd like you to meet. If you have time. Could be good news … For both of us.”

For a long time he studied me, as if he could read something in my face.

“It's not drugs, is it?” There was a note of challenge in his voice. “ ‘Cause I don't do —”

“No,” I interrupted him. “It's not drugs. And it's not illegal. But if it works out the way I think it could, you might at least end up with a drum-kit you can't carry in a sack.”