Gimme More (33 page)

‘What the consortium has in mind', Zalisky said, as if Tina hadn't spoken, ‘is an exchange.' He turned to look at George. ‘This is difficult,' he went on, clasping his hands between his knees. ‘As you know, I'm trying to be a friend to Birdie. I'm trying to protect her – to safeguard her future. But my backers have other ideas. I too have instructions to carry out. You must understand that I'm representing money and interests that are not my own. This, unfortunately, is business.'

‘Even so,' Tina persisted, ‘we can't negotiate with you.'

‘What the consortium proposes is a simple exchange – one cassette, plus those reproduction and transmission rights which Birdie wants withheld, in exchange for another cassette.' Zalisky held out his hand and the stocky man behind his chair gave him a video cassette of his own. ‘I'm afraid', he said, ‘that when Birdie finds out about
this
piece of tape she'll want to rethink her strategy. As I say, this is not my idea, and I'm quite devastated about it. But you'll have to see it so that you can make Birdie understand that the consortium means business.'

‘Hold on,' Tina said. She looked at George. ‘We should discuss this.'

‘What's on the tape?' George asked.

‘I haven't seen it,' Zalisky said, licking his dry lips fastidiously. ‘But I am assured that it's unpleasant. Birdie won't want it in circulation.'

‘I'll ring her.' George punched his radial button and a moment later heard Linnet saying, ‘Hi, how's it going?'

‘There's a snag,' George said, keeping his voice neutral. ‘Mr Zalisky wants the cassette, plus all the rights, in exchange for something you won't want to see in circulation. It's another video cassette.'

There was a short silence and then she said, ‘Have you seen it?'

‘Not yet. He wants to show it to us.'

More silence. George looked at Tina for help but she was watching Nash Zalisky with narrowed eyes.

Linnet said in a small voice, ‘George, do you think he's bluffing?'

Without warning, George felt his knees begin to tremble. He said, ‘Talk to Tina, maybe she knows.'

Tina took the phone and George sat down on the edge of the bed, staring at the blank TV screen.

He heard Tina say, ‘I think it would be wise to find out. OK, talk to you later.' She turned to Zalisky and said, ‘We'd better see what we're dealing with.'

She took Linnet's cassette out of the VCR and substituted Zalisky's.

Zalisky accepted the remote and said, ‘I think I'll use your fast-forward technique. I don't think any of us will want to view this in real time.'

What followed ripped through George's brain like an express train. It was black and white footage shot from a fixed camera position. The location was a hotel room with the bed in the centre of the screen. A man and a girl trotted jerkily in, dancing to and fro, tossing drinks down their throats, tossing clothes on to chairs, their bodies emerging rapidly from their colourless garb like trees stripped of leaves by a strong wind. A brief scene of jolting coupling was followed with barely a pause by another in a different position.

Zalisky stopped the film at a place where both faces were turned towards the camera. The man was at least three times the girl's age. He was heavy and balding. His meaty hands gripped the girl's slender hips holding her immobile on her knees. There was no expression whatsoever on her face. It was the same blank mask of immaculate young beauty she had shown George on the previous tape.

Zalisky said, ‘Sadly, I think we can all agree that we're looking at Birdie. What a shame. It really does undercut her bargaining power.'

George crossed to the window and opened the curtains. Outside, the sky was as grey as the picture on the screen. Behind him, he heard Tina clear her throat.

‘Let me get this straight,' she said. ‘What are you proposing to do with this tape?'

‘Nothing,' Zalisky said. ‘For myself, I'd burn it and all the existing copies. Unfortunately it isn't within my power to do so, and the owner of the tape has already received an interesting offer for it from a multi-media group. He would, of course, reject the offer and destroy the tape if we can come to a sensible agreement
with Birdie regarding the Antigua Movie and the audio material she claims to possess.'

‘I see,' Tina said. ‘So you'd like us to relay this offer to Ms Walker? She should give up all materials and rights to them in return for a promise to suppress a few minutes of pornographic film. Is that the deal?'

Zalisky replied, ‘I'm sorry to say that it isn't simply a question of pornography. If you force me to continue I'm told that we'll see the ingesting of cocaine, and at the end there is clear evidence that this was a commercial transaction.'

‘I should bloody well hope so,' Tina said. ‘No one goes with a pig like that for the fun of it.'

George turned to face the room again just in time to see Zalisky blinking in surprise. He said quickly, ‘You'd better call Ms Walker again, Tina, and see how she wants us to proceed.' The anger in Tina's voice calmed him, made him feel that his own emotional reaction was not entirely foolish.

While Tina was making the call Zalisky said, ‘This pains me. It really does. Please, please, assure Birdie that I'm doing everything I can to protect her. If only she'd
talk
to me I think she'd realise that I'm the only friend she's got. I do urge you to explain to her that where Jack's image and recordings are concerned we are the only game in town. No other record company will touch them once the contractual situation has been disclosed. And with this … er … pornography extant, I don't think anyone else will take her claims to title or copyright at all seriously. I would so much like to shield her from inevitable rejection and disappointment.'

George considered picking the fussy little man up by the scruff of his neck and dangling him out of the ninth-storey window until he shut up. Instead, he clasped his hands behind his back and rocked gently on his heels. The stocky man, who, was still standing at Nash Zalisky's elbow, seemed to be transfixed by the dirty grey image that was still shuddering on the TV screen.

Tina put down the phone, stepped across the three men and switched the TV off. She said, ‘Well, Mr Zalisky, you've given our client a lot to think about. In the meantime, thank you for coming. We'll be in touch.'

Zalisky said, ‘Is that all? Doesn't Birdie at least want to exchange tapes? I wish you'd let me talk to her.'

‘Our client is very disappointed with your counter-offer.' Tina sounded as if she were reciting lines. ‘She instructs me to say that she needs time to think it over.'

‘She has forty-eight hours,' the little man snapped. ‘Even I can run out of patience. She'll have to learn to take the hand of friendship and not to scratch it.' He rose to his feet and darted waspishly out of the room leaving his minder to scuffle around collecting pillows and napkins. The minder's last act was to snatch the video out of the machine and stuff it in his pocket before hurrying into the corridor.

‘Well, cheerio and
hasta la vista
to you too,' Tina said to the closing door. ‘Jesus Christ, George, what a bust! I apologise. Paranoia, in this case, is entirely justified.'

George sighed and sat down on the bed. ‘What did she really say?' he asked.

‘She was pretty upset. But what the hell – she got all her back tax paid. That's not bad going for letting that little prat watch a ten-minute video.'

‘We've still got it, haven't we?'

Tina patted her shoulder bag. ‘Right here,' she said. ‘I wouldn't give that extortionate little pile of parts a kick in the pants, let alone something he really wants.'

George allowed himself to smile at last. The afternoon had gone very badly, but at least he felt Tina was on the team. ‘I thought you were going to have one of your famous lapses of good nature,' he said.

‘Did you see his face?' Tina asked indignantly. ‘I thought he was going to lick the screen. You know what's really pornographic, George? It's men's expressions when they're watching it. Not yours though. You looked as if you were watching a tragedy. Which maybe you were. Oh, fuck it. Let's pack up the VCR and get out of here.'

‘I wonder what she'll do now,' George said, watching Tina fiddle with plugs and cables.

‘Mr Zalisky's one hungry little bastard,' Tina said from behind the TV set. ‘He'll be in touch again. Linnet's got something he wants. He isn't going to leave it there.'

There's a rock'n'roll cliché which goes, ‘If you screw up really badly on stage, pretend it's part of the act and carry on.' I tell all my baby bands that one. I also tell them not to be afraid of rock'n'roll clichés – they're there for a reason: they work.

Carrying on isn't always easy, especially if you need to carry on
con brio.
You can't buy
brio
in a supermarket. You can, however, buy it from a dealer who might call it by another name – like amphetamine sulphate or cocaine. That's another rock'n'roll cliché – one I tell my baby bands to handle with care. I'm in no position to advise not handling it at all, and besides it'd be a waste of breath. Bands do drugs or they don't. They pig out on them or they don't. It all depends on availability, personality and peer pressure. It does not depend on sensible advice from a woman old enough to be their mother.

A little white candy gives you time and space. It clears your head and returns all the
brio
you lost during the course of a horrible day. A sensible woman knows better than to take more than a little. A sensible woman knows the difference between
brio
and bouncing off walls. Besides, this particular woman only had a little. It was in her first-aid kit and it was there for emergencies.

I thought I could go home to Robin's house, to warmth and light and company. But after the way Nash turned my plans upside-down a sensible woman would keep her bolt-hole a secret and her family out of the firing line.

I am a sensible woman so here I am, back in the wretched dark
place Marielle used to call home, with only my first-aid kit for company.

Like cocaine, loud dirty music is a good antidote to a busted day. It courses through the veins, racing from hips to fingertips, chasing frustration and depression out of your system.

I look in the trade papers, I search through
Time Out,
but I can't find the music I'm looking for. So I go to see Inner Versions play upstairs at the Fleece and Firkin instead.

I'm late and the first set is almost over. There's something wrong with the band – they're all isolated from one another, heads down, not communicating. The silly, baby-bastards have been fighting again. This band does not know how to use its negative energy. Great bands do. Great bands do not go into sulks and take it out on their audience. Great bands explode from inner tensions – they do not implode with a sad farty sigh. However bad a great band is on any particular night it does not depress its fans, bring them down or send them home cold.

Inner Versions piss me off. I leave in disgust, but on the way out I have an idea – an old idea, but it makes me laugh. I walk down the street till I find what I want at an all-night deli. I buy a packet of trickery and half a pound of film-flam – the fixings for a bitch-brew.

Back at the Fleece and Firkin I make sure the band has seen me but I don't join them. They're doing what they do best – which is avoiding each other in a collective huddle like a dysfunctional family on holiday. They see me and clearly they think I should come over. What do they expect me to do? Give them a pep talk? Use all
my
charge to top up their batteries while they bring me down? No thank you, I'd prefer to sit in a dark corner and work any magic I still possess for my own benefit.

After a few minutes Sapper comes over. I knew it would be him. He begins with some tedious complaint against Flambo and Dram. I smile at him – warm, affectionate, amused. It's a good smile and it puzzles him because it's such an inappropriate response to his whinging. Mysteriously, while smiling, I'm cutting slits in sultanas with my little silver penknife and I'm doing it secretively under the table.

‘What're you doing?' he says, craning his neck, trying to see.

‘Shhh,' I say. ‘Don't be uncool.'

‘Oh,' he says as if he understands, and while he's watching I slice a fragment from a small shapeless cake of a grey-brown substance. I stuff the fragment carefully into the slit in the sultana and then surreptitiously I put it in my mouth. I chew slowly and sip a little dark rum. My splendid smile becomes heavenly.

‘What is it?' Sapper asks.

‘Shh,' I say again. ‘Serenity. Haven't you heard of it?' A good question to ask a young man who's both arrogant and ignorant.

‘Isn't that something they took in the 60s?' he asks.

I say vaguely, ‘It went out of style when the heavy chemists took over.'

‘What does it do?' he asks.

‘What is it called?' I counter. ‘That's what it does. Nothing spectacular. It's a natural substance. It just makes you feel better.'

‘Well then, lay some on me,' he says. ‘I'm ready.'

‘Sure?'

‘Bloody Flambo,' he says. ‘He really gets up my nose …'

While he's complaining and watching like a hawk I repeat the procedure with the tiny brown fragment and the sultana.

‘Chew it very slowly,' I say. ‘Keep it in your mouth as long as you can – especially under your tongue. A sip of rum helps bring the sweetness out.'

It's truly amazing what people will put in their mouths if someone tells them it will make them feel good. Sapper only has my word for it but he takes his medicine like a lamb. I have expertise on my side, a little silver knife, a dexterous way with a sultana, and a sliver of substance X. It looks like 60s arcana, it tastes good and by golly it'll do him good.