Sweeter Life (52 page)

After their second day on the town, they returned to the Gore feeling drained but cautiously optimistic. Ronnie had been a dynamo since they’d left Hidey-Hole, never stopping for a moment, and that energy, that sense of mission, had spilled over to Cyrus. He was proud of the way he’d handled himself. He’d often heard others complain about the dreariness of promotion, but he couldn’t think of a better way to spend a few hours than to talk about his music.

As they waited at the front desk for their keys, Ronnie remembered he had left something on the front seat of his rental car and ran out to fetch it. A moment later the sound of commotion drew Cyrus’s attention to the front door, where he saw Ronnie struggling with a man. Cyrus was halfway to the street when the stranger, wearing a Tottenham Hotspurs football jersey, reared back and punched Ronnie in the face, sending him to the ground in a heap.

What came next, though, was even worse. Ronnie struggled to a half-sitting position, propped on one elbow. Blood was coursing down his face. The man in the Tottenham jersey kicked him under the chin and sent his
head crashing to the pavement. Then he picked Ronnie off the street and tried to push him into the back of a grey panel van.

Without thinking, without a single attempt at rational argument or civil interrogation, Cyrus, who’d been in only one fight in all his life and who had never successfully landed a punch, ran to the curb and grabbed the man’s arm, trying desperately to pry Ronnie free. “Stop,” Cyrus said through gritted teeth, baring down on those hard grubby fingers with all his might. “Leave my friend alone.”

Like that terrible dream of childhood when the monster turns away from its initial victim and sets its cold malevolent eyes on you, the man let go of Ronnie’s limp figure, which was now half in and half out of the van, and with no effort at all, like he was scratching himself or brushing a lock of hair out of his eyes, calmly grabbed Cyrus’s left hand and, in one surprisingly graceful motion, twisted it back with such force that he dislocated the bones of the wrist.

A blinding white pain, and the next thing Cyrus knew he was lying on the sidewalk. He had just enough strength to lift his head and see Ronnie disappear into the back of the van. Cyrus said something then, some bleat of incomprehension as the brute closed the rear doors and walked past him toward the passenger seat. It might have ended there—it would have ended there if Cyrus had done what was smart—but he lunged at the man, or tried to, managing only to sprawl on his side. The thug turned slowly and laughed. Then, as a kind of afterthought, he lifted his scuffed black boot as high as he could and stomped on Cyrus’s throbbing left palm.

When he opened his eyes again he was lying on a stretcher. Scenes came back to him, not in a flood but intermittently, like lights flicking on across a vast dark city. Ronnie falling to the ground. That big black boot. Turning to the door to see Ronnie struggling with the man. The twist of wrist with the bone nearly breaking through the flesh, the magnesium flare of pain and his weightless descent to the pavement. The sound of commotion and the turn toward the door, his stumble down the steps and into the fray. Tottenham Hotspurs, sour smoky breath. A policeman kneeling beside him, a kind and concerned expression on his face, a gentle voice. That big black boot poised above him. “Stupid git.” The crushing, obliterating pain. A jostling drive
through narrow city streets. “Good as new in no time, sir.” The look. The look in Ronnie’s eyes as he was stuffed into the van. The look of pure understanding and acceptance. No words exchanged but eyes locking on and not letting go until his head disappeared inside the van, no longer struggling. And at the hospital a nurse with a sweet round face. Doreen on her name tag. Doreen touching his shoulder and telling him to close his eyes and try to take deep breaths, they would have him feeling better in a jiff. But every time he closed his eyes he saw the boot and the wrist, and his dear old friend shoved unceremoniously into the back of a van.

When he opened his eyes a second time he was in a hospital bed, his left arm encased in plaster, from elbow to fingertips. The policeman was there. Doreen, too. She brought him a glass of water and placed the straw between his lips. She dabbed at his chin where a few drops had dribbled.

The policeman moved closer and opened his notepad. “Eyewitnesses described a struggle. The driver of the van, a man in a jersey, your friend and yourself.”

“Where’s Ronnie?”

The policeman cleared his throat and said, “We know where
you
are. We hoped you might help with the rest.”

Cyrus closed his eyes and immediately he saw it all again, from the first sound of commotion to that sickening crunch of heel on bone. Finally he opened his eyes and said, “He took Ronnie. A man I’ve never seen before.” Then he told the policeman everything he remembered.

Doreen gave him a sedative and told him to sleep. Later that day, Nigel brought the rest of the band around to visit. They were heading for Heathrow directly from the hospital and would await further developments in Toronto. But Cyrus had nothing to say to them and cared little what sentiments they had to offer. After twenty minutes or so of awkward small talk, they left for the airport, and Cyrus gave himself up to another sedative. When he opened his eyes again it was morning, and a doctor was looking at him.

“You’ll be discharged today,” he said. “We’ve done what we can for now, but there was extensive damage to the knuckles. You will require reconstructive surgery to regain even rudimentary mobility in the joints.”

Cyrus lay there without expression, unable to move or speak. Doreen
came into the room a few minutes later to confirm her own suspicions. She held his right hand and touched his fingernails, which were long and carefully shaped, a necessity for the kind of fingerpicking he did. She then inspected the left hand where it jutted from the plaster cast, the nails almost painfully short, the proud callused flesh on the fingertips. The hands of a musician, she knew, just like her son. And the sadness of her face was all the permission Cyrus needed to pour his bitterness into his pillow.

THE SEARCH FOR RONNIE CONGER LASTED THREE DAYS
, and each day the newspapers roused themselves to increasingly feverish speculation. The most popular fiction involved the drug trade, a theory accepted by many because Ronnie had been a noted figure in the music business. Those who knew him best denied such allegations and said they’d never known him to partake of illegal substances. Even so, there wasn’t a paper in all of Britain that could resist running a picture of Ronnie’s father, the Reverend Archibald Conger, along with all the sordid whisperings. The family, each story stated, had no comment.

The only solid lead the police had was the licence plate number of the van, which an eyewitness had jotted on his arm. Unfortunately, the vehicle had been reported stolen the day before, so no one could reliably suggest its whereabouts. In the end it was a security guard at a public garage in Putney who found Ronnie lying in a fetal curl and barely clinging to life in the back of the van, the victim of a vicious beating. A five-pound note was taped to his forehead.

From the beginning the reports from the hospital were not encouraging. Ronnie’s brain had suffered extensive damage; it was able to keep the heart beating, the lungs pumping, but not much else. A few reporters made the trip to East Kilbride. They published photos of the family home and the hall where Ronnie promoted his first show. When they approached Ronnie’s parents, however, they were met with stony silence. It was only on the first Sunday, as Archie and his ailing wife struggled up the steps of the East Kilbride Baptist Church, that anyone got a rise out of the old man.

One reporter shouted, “Will you be saying a prayer for your son?”

And Archie wheeled around and said, “My son and I do not worship the
same god.” Then he pushed through the great wooden doors, into the cooler sanctuary within.

Charles Doernhoffer, a reporter for the
New York Times
, eventually put two and two together and wrote about a music mogul in financial ruin, who had begged and borrowed to bring his latest protegé to prominence. In New York, bankruptcy proceedings had already begun, the story noted. Former employees of RonCon Productions were suing for back wages. Only Nigel had taken the high road and told Doernhoffer: “The heartbreaking part is that this latest project of Ronnie’s will probably be held up in the courts for quite some time. The banks have confiscated the master tapes. Everyone wants their pound of flesh, it seems. For my part, I have forgiven whatever money is owed. All I want is for my friend to get better soon.” Doernhoffer ended the article by saying, “Ironically, Conger’s quest for the future of music balanced on the unknown, and unlikely, shoulders of a young Canadian guitarist, may have cut short any possibility of a future of his own.”

Cyrus was so wounded by the disparaging tone of that last sentence that Nigel suggested they invite the press to Hidey-Hole to listen to the rough mix of the record so they could hear what Ronnie had been so excited about. “Right now you’ve got their attention,” he said. “Use them. The more they write about you, the closer you’ll be to a deal. And a deal would solve one of Ronnie’s major problems. Everybody wins.”

Several days later a horde of reporters descended on the studio. Nigel had spruced the place up. Patrick, outfitted in a tuxedo, walked around with flutes of champagne while Sophie, in chef’s whites, offered a sampling of hors d’oeuvres she’d prepared. Cyrus realized that he was not uppermost in Nigel’s mind, and that the effort and expense were for the benefit of Ronnie and his woeful financial situation. But Sophie, he knew, had worked especially hard on his behalf.

Before the listening, Cyrus forced himself to walk up to total strangers and introduce himself. Those he’d met before, he greeted warmly. It was not difficult to express his own excitement about the record and how glad he was that they had come. When asked for particulars about the project, he was able to ape Ronnie’s comments. Inevitably, though, they wanted to talk about the injured hand or poor Ronnie lying in his hospital bed.

Mid-afternoon, everyone filed into the studio. A set of headphones waited on each chair. The reporters took their places, while Nigel and Cyrus remained in the control room behind the mixing console. When Nigel started the tape, Cyrus excused himself and went outside to sit with Patrick and Sophie. She touched his arm and said, “It’ll be all right, you’ll see.”

“They won’t even hear it,” he complained. “It’s not music to them. It’s a story, and I’m the villain.”

“You can’t be,” she replied lightly. “You’re an artist. A creator.”

Cyrus was moved by her confidence. But it didn’t brighten his mood. He had looked in the eyes of those star makers, scanned their faces, and knew they thought poorly of him. They would weigh his music against Ronnie’s tragedy and be appalled.

NIGEL COULDN’T COUNT THE NUMBER OF TIMES
he’d previewed music for industry insiders—including this same sorry handful of reporters—and he’d thought he’d seen every reaction, from absolute boredom and irritation to ecstatic jumping and jiving. But he’d never seen this kind of serious reflection. In an odd way, with the eerie half-light of the studio seeming just then like an isolation booth, with the headphones, the grey, solemn faces, he felt as though he were watching a group of war criminals on trial. Except they were the judges. They sat unmoving on their twelve chairs. No one tapped a foot or a finger. Some sat with heads bowed and hands clasped. Others slumped in their chairs and stared bleakly at the baffles on the ceiling.

Nigel himself wasn’t sure what to make of the record, even after the hundred or so times he’d listened to it. The production was top-notch, of course; he’d done everything he could to help Ronnie in that regard. And the music probably deserved some attention if only because it confounded so many expectations. But somehow it didn’t feel right to him. The grooves were good, the chords interesting, the melodies strong. But it was missing a cock, he felt. There was no sense of the hunger that was central to all music. A young rocker’s appetite for sex, even Bach’s joyous desire for Jesu—it was all uplift and longing, and this record had none of it.

“You are right,” Ronnie had said when Nigel brought up his complaints,
“this is not about sex, it is about love. It is not about desire, but fulfillment. It is not entertainment, it is art.”

Nigel wasn’t surprised to hear Ronnie say this. He’d always thought of him as some latter-day Saint Jude, the patron saint of lost causes. He’d made a star of Jimmy Waters, so it had seemed conceivable that he could do it again with Cyrus. But now all bets were off. By the look of things, it would be a miracle if Cyrus played the guitar again. And the doctors doubted Ronnie would ever regain consciousness. It was asking too much, even of a saint, to work miracles from a coma.

I
n the weeks after Clarence’s funeral, as Ruby ambled stupidly up and down the aisles at the A&P and tried to think single portions, no leftovers, or sat knitting on the porch after a solitary dinner, she recalled the conversation she’d had many years earlier with Janice, who was still in high school at the time. “How can it be that there is one thing,” Janice had asked, “one thread, and you pull on it and the whole fabric comes apart? How could we not know our lives depend on something like that? Shouldn’t they teach us that at school?” Ruby had suggested that that was more properly a subject for religion, but now her answer seemed altogether too patronizing, and she wondered if maybe religion was flawed in that way, producing the kind of certainty that limits the natural range of sympathies.

Of course there’d been no shortage of sympathy flowing her way. Isabel invited her for dinner once a week. Hank kept her company on afternoon drives. The women in her church group were always talking about a bus tour somewhere. Even Janice called now and then to see if she wanted to tag along to Hounslow or wherever she was off to. Ruby had no complaints on that score. Everyone had been very kind. If she had any beef, it was that she had not had enough time to sit quietly by herself and make sense of her new situation. Janice had been right. There were times in a life when everything
comes undone, or threatens to. And while a well-placed stitch could hold it all together, sometimes it was better to let it unwind and start over.