I Think I Love You (42 page)

Not bad. The voice was in good shape. Taken the melody down at one or two, perhaps, so as not to risk a strain or a crack on the peak of “hold you, mold you.” Never the best rhyme in the world, that one: made girls sound like pots. Bill looked at David’s audience. How many men out there? A couple of dozen, among the hundreds of women? Who was it, which bunch of guys had landed on an island populated by women only? Something in the furthest nook of Bill’s memory turned up the word
Argonauts
. That was it: Jason and the boys, landing on
Lemnos, outnumbered by the other sex but unable to hang around, having to move on. There was a golden fleece to find … How many guys had accompanied women to see David Cassidy down the years in the faint hope that some of that cherishing might come their way? Crumbs off the love god’s table. Crumbs would be okay, no shame in crumbs if you were famished.

Where was she? He couldn’t find Petra. Petra and Sharon, that is. Must be there somewhere. They wouldn’t have been late like him, not after waiting this long. At last he picked them out, half visible beside a row of five large ladies in matching green T-shirts. He sidled a yard down the aisle for a better angle, so that he could see Petra from the side. She was gazing at the stage with gleaming eyes, hands in her lap, swaying gently. He couldn’t see her feet, but he guessed they were tapping up and down. Sharon’s, too, most likely, but she was leaning farther forward, half out of her seat, hands clasped tightly together at her breast, like a young girl at her First Communion. She wore a smile of unmistakable rapture. As the song closed, the two of them, together with the rest of the crowd, took to their feet as if springs had gone off underneath them—hands over their heads, a blur of clapping right across the room. The singer took it well, his gratitude uncomplicated, nothing wistful about it; what did David’s expression look like, right now? It looked like Sharon’s.

With a glance at the usher, who nodded, Bill set off. He passed through the cheers, plowing a path down the aisle between waves of adoring women; none were looking at him, or were even aware of his passing, but yet, for a fraction of a second, he had a fraction of a sense of what it must be like—how it was, to be among the wants of the world. The only people who sneered at acclaim, he thought, were those who had had it and lost it, or grown too old and weary to enjoy it; or shy souls who shrank from the very thought of being known by more people than they knew. The ones you never heard from were the figures at the heart of the applause, the ones who could have told you, not in retrospect or hope, but face-to-face, with the fans going nuts: Look at me being loved. Be honest now; tell me you do not want this madness for yourself.

He found the row and inched along, past the large ladies, ranged
there like five green bottles.
OFFICIAL DAVID CASSIDY FAN CLUB OF IRELAND
, their T-shirts said. “Scuse me, scuse me.” Petra hadn’t seen him yet, even though he was just feet away; her gaze was still fixed on the stage. The lights had risen for the applause, but now they dimmed once more, as the audience resumed their seats, and Bill was bewildered for an instant by the dark. He tripped over someone’s legs and began to stumble, reaching out to stop and steady himself, heading for a fall. A hand took his, fitted into his and drew him up, as dancers draw each other to their feet. He didn’t fall, just slid neatly into his seat, with far more grace than he’d ever mustered in his life before. Petra smiled at him and didn’t let go, even when he was safely in his place. “Thanks,” he mouthed. Sharon leaned forward, from Petra’s other side, and greeted him with a busy wave, as if she were fifty yards away.

Up onstage, David was apologizing. He knew they wanted the songs from before, but, just once, he wanted to try something newer, you know, a little more up to date; a little number that explained how he was feeling
now
, at this wonderful juncture in his life, with all these great folks around him. The great folks shifted a little; you could feel them, brimming with goodwill (couldn’t blame the guy, could you, for wanting to break free of the past; give him a chance, right?), but also aware that any eagerness they could work up for this unknown song would be contrived—marks for effort, not freely given from the heart. And the man onstage took a breath, and sang softly into the mike:

And, of course, the place erupted. The old ones
were
the best, that was the point! The past is never dead! Not so long as they were alive. David,
their
David, was saying so, to them! Sharon was shaking, laughing, although if you had taken a photograph of her at that moment, and looked at it later, the next morning, you would have sworn that it showed a woman crying. She turned to Petra and Bill and shouted, “Oh, he’s a blimmin’
teeease
, he is!”

Petra laughed back and shouted something to Sharon that Bill couldn’t hear. At last, the riot subsided, and the song was under way. Petra looked at Bill and began to sing. No act of memory was needed to
summon the words; they poured out of her from the place she had kept them for a quarter of a century.

Bill gestured toward the stage. “He doesn’t know the words.”

“I know the words,” she said. Her hand was still in his.

They sat on a bench, all three of them, eating ice creams, in the heat of the night. Bill had chocolate and vanilla twist. Petra had strawberry, topped with something orange-brown that she hadn’t ordered and couldn’t identify, even after she’d licked it. Sharon had an Atomic Test Site, a specialty of the Nevada Ice Shack, which she
had
ordered; you needed two hands to eat it, since it came in twin cones, the mounds of unnatural flavor sprinkled with tiny silver balls. It was served with a lit sparkler, but that was long gone. Now she sat there, gripping it tightly, making an odd crackling sound. “Popping candy,” she explained to Bill. “And when you’re nearly done, you pull the cones apart. Something to do with fishing, the man said.”

“Fission, I think. Like the bomb. They tested them round here.”

“What, ice creams?”

“Atomic bombs.”

“Same thing, Bill
bach
, from where I’m sitting.”

For a minute, they said nothing, happy just to lick and crackle. The streets were crammed. Some people had children with them, even though it was ten to eleven at night, and none of them could go near a casino.

“It’s like Oxford Street,” said Petra, “during the sales.”

“Yes, except that when I last looked,” said Bill, “Oxford Street didn’t have a live volcano. I always thought it lacked something.”

“Where’s that, then?” said Sharon, talking through a mouthful.

“Well, this is Caesars Palace we’re outside now, as you can tell from the large garden sprinklers in the front. And the volcano is at the Mirage, I think, so I think it must be somewhere … 
there.
” Bill
pointed. “Hang around and wait for the wisps of steam, apparently. They tell you she’s about to blow.”

“Don’t talk about my friend like that,” Sharon said.

“And don’t mind
my
friend,” Petra said. “She can’t help it, poor love. Cooped up for decades in a small Welsh town. They go bananas when you let them out.” She licked her pink fingers. “Just asking for trouble, bringing her to a place like this.”

“Gerraway with you, I’m thinking about staying,” said Sharon. “Saw this ad in the program for David—it said you can train as a dealer, do it in a month, and then you start. Raking it in, you are. Or you can serve cocktails, at the Palace. And I get to wear this Roman goddess outfit, mind, with my boobs in a breastplate.”

“D’you think they’re, you know, actively looking for short Welsh blondes of thirty-eight?” asked Petra.

“Thirty-seven, if you don’t mind,” said Sharon. “Until next Friday.”

“What have you got planned?”

“Rissole and chips and I get to choose at Blockbuster.”

“Mal will take you out somewhere nice, won’t he?”

“Nah, save the pennies,” said Sharon. “David needs a new bike.”

She seemed to be able to traffic back and forth, Bill thought, between her life and her fantasies without changing gear—without
minding
too much. If more people in the world were like Sharon …

“So, when you become a roller-skating Roman gladiator–cum–cocktail waitress,” he said, “what will your husband do? Mal, isn’t it? And your little boys?”

“Oh, they’ll be fine. Boys, you know. As long as they wash their socks and comb their hair.” That seemed to settle the matter. Bill guessed that Sharon would die a hundred deaths rather than leave her family, but she didn’t need to say so.

“So, Boss,” she said to him, “what d’you think of it, then?”

“Which bit?”

“The concert.”

“Oh, I quite liked it, actually. Very professional. Good crowd. There was just this one thing that, you know, really got to me.”

“What?” Petra asked.

Bill went quiet. “I don’t know how to say this, quite, and at the risk
of being serious …” He looked up at them and frowned. “Which one was David Cassidy?”

“Oh,
stop
it,” said Sharon, and pushed him off the bench.

“How’s the jet lag?” Petra said to Bill.

“Well, I can’t feel anything below my knees, and I think my head may be facing the wrong way, but, apart from that, okay. You?”

“I don’t know, it’s odd. I don’t know whether to go to bed or have breakfast.”

“Don’t be daft,” said Sharon. “Gotta keep on going, girl. City that never sleeps and all that.”

“That’s New York,” said Bill.

“Well, it’s all America, isn’t it?”

It
was
all America. They had, at Sharon’s insistence, wandered over the road to Harrah’s, and watched the bartenders. “More like jugglers, mind,” Sharon said, by way of encouragement. She had read Petra’s guidebook, and tried to summarize her findings in advance. “Shake the cocktails, right, but with these things on fire on their heads.”

In the end, it wasn’t a bad description. Bill stood and watched the juggling, and found himself thinking of the Dog & Cart, in Turnham Green. There, years before, after Spirit Level hadn’t played too badly, he had tried ordering a martini for a girl called Serena Tombs, the most sophisticated girl he knew, and the angry old barman had looked at Bill for a long time and then
spat
at him. Now, here he was, in a desert, and the barmen were in flames.

“Another world,” he said.

“Sorry?” Petra stood at his side.

“Just thinking. Sorry.”

“Can’t hear you.”

Music and shouting walled them in. A right old racket, Bill’s parents would have called it. Can’t hear yourself think. That’s how
he
thought of it, too, nowadays, much to his shame; was that all middle age boiled down to—an irritable quest for peace? In front of him and Petra, Americans half their age danced in a superheated squirm like bacteria under a microscope.

“Shall we get out of here?” he said to Petra. He had to bend down
to make himself heard, and his mouth all but brushed her ear. He felt her hair against his face. She smelled of oranges.

Petra nodded. “Just let me tell Sha.” She leaned in close and spoke to Sharon, pointing outside, and Sharon nodded back. At least she
seemed
to be nodding, though it was hard to tell, since she was also jumping up and down, as if on an invisible trampoline.

They stood on the sidewalk, outside Harrah’s. The air was thick and warm, as if they were standing in a laundry, but it still felt refreshing after the fiery bar. That was like standing over a barbecue.

“Mustn’t move from here. She’ll panic if we do.”

“Absolutely. God knows where she’d end up if we weren’t here.”

“Oh, she’d be fine. Probably have more of a laugh, without us oldies.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Petra.

“So long as she doesn’t find that waterslide that goes
through
a pool of sharks.”

“She doesn’t have a bathing suit with her,” said Petra.

“And if she decides she doesn’t
mind
not having a suit, then our problems will
really
start.”

“Americans are a most polite people who are not standing for vulgarity,” said Petra. She never guessed she’d end up quoting her mother, let alone agreeing with her.

They sat opposite the Mirage. The city seemed to tilt in Petra’s head. Damn this jet lag.

“Anything you want to do?” she said at last.

“Lots,” he replied.

“I meant here.”

“So did I.”

Petra took a bottle of water out of her handbag, drank some, wiped it on her shirt and offered it to Bill. He took it and drank.

“Rather tragically, I do actually want to go to this place called Auto Collections.”

“To hire a car? In the middle of the night?”

“No, to look at cars. Very old ones. Best collection in the States, someone said. A weakness of mine, although, as weaknesses go, it’s not too bad, since I could never afford one.”

“But you’re a big cheese.”

“No, just sort of medium Cheddar. I don’t own the company, I just run it. And I don’t want to
drive
a Lamborghini Espada or anything, actually, I just want to look at it. When I was little, I wanted to drive one more than anything else in the world. Took me a long time to realize that what mattered wasn’t the driving—not with all the idiots on the roads—it was the wanting.”

“Like me and David.”

“Oh, come now, gentle reader, that’s not fair. You really
believed
he was yours. I mean, he was your destiny. That’s why you got so pissed off with me at Heathrow yesterday. Because part of him had turned out not to be him.”

“I’m sorry about that. I was such an idiot.”

Bill smiled and looked down at her. Something inside him tilted. He decided not to observe the feeling, for once, but to let himself go with it.

“What did you think of him tonight, honestly?” she asked, after a while.

“Honestly?”

“Mm.”

“Honestly, I spent the time …” He paused. “I spent the time asking myself what
you
were thinking. Of him.”