I Love the 80s (5 page)

And now he was standing in front of Jenna minus the trademark shock of snow-white hair he’d started sporting in the early Nineties. This version of Duncan Paradis was slimmer, trimmer, and unquestionably younger. This version, in fact, was one Jenna had only seen in those colour-photo centrepieces they always stuck in the Unofficial Biographies.

‘Babe,’ Eugenia Wentworth purred. ‘At last.’

Jenna watched in astonishment as Tommy Seer’s fiancée flitted from the stage to Duncan’s side. She towered over him, but that only made it seem more lascivious when she leaned down and kissed him. With evident delight, and visible tongue. Ew. Despite the fact she was supposedly engaged to the man standing right in front of her, and Duncan had moments before referenced his wife and kids.

Was it really that hard for engaged people to remember who they were engaged
to
, Jenna wondered – not that she was taking it at all personally.

The most shocking part of the whole thing was that Jenna was the only one who looked the slightest bit surprised by this development. Even Tommy, the nearest wronged party, looked bored.

How someone who could have Tommy Seer would choose … anyone else, ever, was a mystery to Jenna. Much less a man who – while admittedly powerful – looked like Karl Lagerfeld’s less attractive brother. Jenna wondered if her subconscious had finally gone round the bend, because this dream was starting to creep her out.

‘Tommy’s being a complete wanker,’ Eugenia tattled, obviously enjoying herself. She rubbed herself against Duncan, who didn’t look thrilled with the attention – but didn’t push her away, either. ‘No one seems to be able to talk any sense into him. I told them they have to do the live show, babe, but no one will listen to me.’

‘No one will listen to you because you don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Tommy snapped from his place on the stage. He hadn’t moved, but Jenna was close enough to him that she could see he’d tensed up almost imperceptibly at the sight of Duncan. Or maybe it was the sight of his fiancée after all, as she practically licked Duncan’s face.

‘All I know is that we’re running out of rehearsal time,’ Harrison T. complained. He lit another cigarette and made a lazy smoke circle in the air. ‘We’ve already kicked out the entire crew, who are sitting on their asses somewhere, waiting to hear what happens next, and we have to start
the live show in forty-five minutes. This argument has gone on for way too long.’

This was the most Jenna had ever heard Harrison T. speak, given that he had spent the bulk of his on-air time looking pensive and/or troubled and saying things like, ‘What can
anyone
say about “Boys Don’t Cry” that’s not in the title?’ He had been emo long before there was a vocabulary word to describe it.

‘Why don’t you take ten minutes?’ Duncan asked him pleasantly. Harrison T. merely shrugged. Jenna wasn’t fooled by Duncan’s pleasant tone, which was maybe why his eyes turned to her, then flicked to Tommy. ‘Who is this?’

‘Booking,’ Tommy said tersely. ‘Apparently.’ They both looked at Jenna. Not, she thought, nicely. She could feel it in her stomach, like an ache.

‘Yeah,’ Harrison T. said, as he drifted to his feet, sounding amused. ‘And more to the point, Ken Dollimore’s eyes and ears.’ He smirked. Or, possibly, that was his smile. Jenna had never seen it before. No one had, as far as she knew. One of the great mysteries of the Eighties, aside from the popularity of the
Breakin’
movie franchise, was whether or not Harrison T. had teeth.

‘Jen’s his protégée,’ Harrison T. continued in that mocking sort of tone, and then headed for the studio doors. ‘We consider her Ken in a miniskirt.’

‘It’s Jenna, actually,’ she murmured, but no one was paying any attention to what she was saying. They were all much busier glaring at her as if they would each,
individually, like to murder her. Jenna had to lock her knees to remain upright.

‘Far be it from me to kick out Ken’s eyes and ears, in a goddamned miniskirt,’ Duncan said scathingly. His famously heavy-lidded eyes bored a hole into Jenna’s forehead from across the room. She ordered herself not to feel for blood. ‘Whatever the esteemed vice-president of Video TV wants, he gets. You can feel perfectly comfortable telling him I said so.’

Jenna’s head began to spin. Ken Dollimore. The vicepresident of Video TV back in the day, credited with the bulk of the creative programming that had made the station a viable contender against the MTV behemoth. Which Jenna knew because she spent a lot of her working hours on Wikipedia, when she wasn’t napping behind her desk. Oh, okay, and because she was proud of the fact she worked at Video TV, like her favourite aunt Jen before her. It was practically the family business, she felt, and she knew all the trivia. Like the fact that Ken Dollimore was considered the genius behind Video TV, which was supposedly the root of his bitter feud with Chuck Arendt, the CEO from 1981 to 1989 and Ken’s onceupon-a-time mentor—

That was the moment when it occurred to Jenna that Elfin Jon Cryer had looked a lot like those old posters of Ken Dollimore they were forever dragging out of storage and festooning about corporate events.

Huh.

Jenna didn’t know what it said about her subconscious
that it was this detailed – that it was subtracting over twenty years from everyone’s age and waiting for her prowess in Eighties trivia to catch up with the show.

Jenna wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Aimee, she was certain, would have a field day with this dream. Adam, for that matter, who had always treated her devotion to the Eighties like a strain of leprosy, would consider it evidence that she’d finally achieved the truly spectacular level of lameness he’d always suspected she would. The jerk.

‘Um, I’ll be sure to tell Ken he has your support,’ she heard herself say to Duncan, who ignored her. But Tommy flicked her a sideways sort of look that Jenna confidently interpreted to mean
faintly amused
, as she was an expert on reading Tommy Seer’s numerous facial expressions.

Tommy thought that was funny
, a little voice in the back of her head chortled. Jenna tried to hide her smile of pleasure.

‘So,’ Duncan said when Harrison T. closed the set doors behind him, leaving a cloud of smoke and petulance in his wake. ‘I asked what the hell was going on in here.’

‘Haven’t I just told you?’ Eugenia complained. Jenna decided her accent was, actually, physically grating.

Duncan set her away from him, not dignifying her with a response, and marched towards the stage.

‘I can’t believe what I’m seeing,’ he said in a gravelly, low voice that made Jenna nervous, suddenly. And she could see that she was not alone in that. He looked at Sebastian and Richie, who broke physical contact as if
scalded. ‘You two are all over each other, when I explicitly told you we’re selling you both as straight.
Straight
. Save it for your private time. And here’s Tommy parading around without even pretending he’s English, and who knows who heard him.’

‘We’re not onstage,’ Tommy retorted, in an angry sort of tone Jenna had never heard before. Not from him.

‘And you’re not likely to be onstage ever again if you don’t do what I tell you,’ Duncan snarled. He stuck his face close to Tommy’s. ‘Remember who owns you, you little shit.’

In Jenna’s mind, Tommy Seer was like a god, and he didn’t take that kind of crap from anyone.

But this
was
Jenna’s mind, and instead of smacking Duncan down in some satisfyingly heroic way, Tommy’s jaw tightened and he otherwise made no response.

Jenna wanted to punch Duncan in the face on Tommy’s behalf. But she caught herself. For some reason, she sensed this was not the sort of dream in which she could suddenly act like Buffy.

‘All right then,’ Duncan said, a note of triumph in his voice when Tommy continued to do nothing. He turned to look at Eugenia. ‘Did I hear you say you want them to perform live?’

‘It’s high time,’ Eugenia said, striding towards the stage, casting an imperious look over the band. ‘They’ve ignored me for years now—’

‘Because it’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,’ Duncan growled. ‘You’re supposed to be acting like a besotted,
supporting fiancée, Eugenia. Has your job description changed even a little bit since the beginning? No. So tell me, what part of
being Tommy’s girlfriend
involves giving the band creative direction?’

Colour flamed bright and high on Eugenia’s porcelain British cheeks.

‘Everyone’s clamouring for a live performance,’ she said, her voice notably less strident, ‘and this is the perfect opportunity …’ Her voice trailed away.

‘Let’s think about your areas of expertise,’ Duncan suggested in that quiet, horrible voice. Even Jenna, no fan of Eugenia’s, was quite certain she didn’t want to hear what he was about to say. Duncan looked Eugenia up and down, his expression cruel.

He didn’t have to say another word.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her face even redder.

‘Why don’t you sit down, shut up, and leave the music to the professionals?’ Duncan ordered her.

As Eugenia did so, everyone else seemed to stare off into space, expressionless. Avoiding being the next target, more likely.

‘So,’ Duncan said when Eugenia was seated, and the moment had become so actively uncomfortable that Jenna had to clench her knees to keep from literally shaking in her boots, while her stomach cramped. ‘How much of a disaster is this thing?’

‘Video TV wants a live performance,’ Sebastian said, jiggling his knee in obvious agitation. ‘They’ve been promised a live performance.’

‘And we can’t deliver,’ Tommy said, in his English accent, which, now that Jenna had heard his American one, sounded odd to her ears. But there was no denying the slightly mocking tone. ‘The moment we become a live band on national television, we lose our edge. Look what happened to Duran Duran.’

‘Simon is a friend,’ Nick retorted, enraged again. Or still. ‘Arcadia is a fantastic band and I don’t know why everyone’s all excited about Powerstation in the first place and besides, they haven’t broken up! Why does everyone think they’ve broken up?’

‘
Simon’s a friend
,’ Sebastian imitated him, with much derision. ‘Listen to yourself. You sound like a groupie. The original line-up is gone and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Live Aid was over two years ago.’

Everyone started yelling again, while Jenna’s Eighties-obsessed brain tried to make sense of what she was hearing. Live Aid, of course, was the brilliant British charity concert to help with famine in Ethiopia. A year or so before the concert, assorted British artists released the fantastic ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ single on an unsuspecting world. Bethie Ridgeway had given Jenna the special ten-inch single for Christmas that year, bless her. The American response was the decidedly sub-par ‘We Are the World’, which if Jenna never heard it again would be too soon. The very thought of the sickly-sweet chorus, heavily centred on Michael Jackson, made her feel ill.

Which was all a roundabout way of her figuring out
that this bizarre dream of hers was apparently taking place in 1987.

Sometime late in the summer of 1987, if she had to hazard a guess, based on the lack of coats and hats and Tommy’s ragged denim vest that he wore in place of a shirt. Which meant Tommy was a mere two months away from careening over the side of that bridge. 1987 was a dark year. Jenna could probably list off the band’s every accomplishment during that year – that was the level of her geekiness where the Wild Boys were concerned. She had gone over those accomplishments with a fine-tooth comb many, many times after 1987, and a great deal over the last eight months, believing that there had to be a clue somewhere in those details that would explain what had happened to Tommy. A clue about what was to come in October. So she probably knew the Wild Boys’ 1987 schedule better than they did.

Including, now that she thought about it, their revolutionary Video TV appearance in late August of that year.

Jenna’s breath caught. Was this supposed to be
that
fateful day?

She looked at each of the band members, unable to contain her sudden joy. This was
the best Wild Boys dream ever
, no matter the weird dream asides regarding accents, faithless fiancées, and Duncan Paradis recast from fatherly supporter to nasty, adulterous bully. All of that was probably her brain’s anxiety concerning her usual issues – thirties, Manhattan, betrayed and alone – coming out in strange new ways. But the idea that she might get to take
part in that hallmark of Video TV appearances? That was worth whatever weirdness might come!

Jenna could see the whole thing in her mind’s eye, as if she was once again twelve years old and sitting two inches away from the television in her parents’ study, almost hyperventilating with excitement.

She had only ever seen similar excitement amongst Harry Potter fans. Or those girls screaming over Edward Cullen from
Twilight
in the mall. Or the crazy people in South America or somewhere who nearly capsized the Backstreet Boys’ tour bus, that was how much they loved them.

Everyone had expected a live performance. There had been rumours for months in all the teen magazines, on MTV and Video TV. The Wild Boys were in the studio finishing up their next album, the follow-up to their record-breaking international hit
Fancypants Afire.
They were a high-concept band, all about the videos. Their limited live shows were pageant-like events in arenas with enormous video-screen backdrops, during which the Boys paraded around in a variety of costumes and produced huge new videos that became iconic. They put on a slick, visual experience, and, now that Jenna thought about it, probably lip-synced the whole time.

But the rumour was that they’d be playing an acoustic set on Video TV.

Instead, the Wild Boys had made television history by performing their videos.

Not their songs, their
videos.

As the videos of their hit songs played against the backdrop, the Wild Boys stood in front of the videos and acted them out as they went. Put like that, it didn’t sound like anything exciting, but for the twelve-year-old with her face practically
inside
her parents’ television, it was breathtaking. Some of Jenna’s fellow online fans felt Mystery Science Theater had stolen the idea for their franchise from this groundbreaking appearance.