Anyway, she made me totally paranoid. If she wanted to, she could find out about the band in five minutes. And then she’d get a hold of Eddie, and Lizzie, and then she’d find out that I wasn’t dying of anything—or if I was, I’d kept the news to myself. Plus, she’d find out that the disease I wasn’t dying of was non-existent.
In other words, I was freaked out enough to think I was in trouble. I took a bus up to Maureen’s, and on the way I decided I was going to come clean, tell them all about everything, and if they didn’t like it, fuck “em. But I didn’t want them reading about it in the papers.
It took us a while to get used to the sound of poor Matty’s breathing, which was loud and sounded as if it took a lot of effort. We were all thinking the same thing, I guess: we were all wondering whether we could have coped, if we were Maureen; we were all trying to figure out whether anything could have persuaded us to come back down off that roof.
“Jess,” said Martin. “You wanted us to meet. Why don’t you call us to order?”
“OK,” she said, and she cleared her throat. “We are gathered here today…”
Martin laughed.
“Fucking hell,” she said. “I’ve only done half a sentence. What’s funny about that?”
Martin shook his head.
“No, come on. If I’m so fucking funny, I want to know why.”
“It’s perhaps because it’s something more usually said in church.”
There was a long pause.
“Yeah. I knew that. That was the vibe I was after.”
“Why?” Martin asked.
“Maureen, you go to church, don’t you?” Jess said.
“I used to,” said Maureen.
“Yeah, see. I was trying to make Maureen feel comfortable.”
“Very thoughtful of you.”
“Why do you have to fuck up everything I do?”
“Gosh,” said Martin. “I can almost smell the incense.”
“Right, you can start it off then, you fucking…”
“That’s enough,” said Maureen. “In my house. In front of my son.”
Martin and I looked at each other, screwed up our faces, held our breaths, crossed our fingers, but it was no use. Jess was going to point out the obvious anyway.
“In front of your son? But he’s…”
“I haven’t got CCR,” I said. It was the only thing I could think of. I mean, obviously it needed saying, but I had intended to give myself a little more preparation time.
There was a silence. I was waiting for them to dump on me.
“Oh, JJ!” Jess said. “That’s fantastic!”
It took me a minute to realize that in the weird world of Jess, they had not only found a cure for CCR during the Christmas holidays, but delivered it to my front door in the Angel some time between New Year’s Eve and January 2nd.
“I’m not sure that’s quite what JJ is saying,” said Martin.
“No,” I said. “The thing is, I never had it.”
“No! Bastards.”
“Who?”
“The fuck-bloody doctors.” At Maureen’s house, “fuck-bloody” became Jess’s curse of choice. “You should sue them. Supposing you’d jumped? And they’d got it wrong?”
Motherfucker. Did it really have to be this hard?
“I’m not sure he’s quite saying that, either,” said Martin.
“No,” I said. “I’ll try and be as clear as possible: there ain’t no such thing as CCR, and even if there was, I’m not dying of it. I made it up, “cos… I don’t know. Partly “cos I wanted your sympathy, and partly because I didn’t think you’d understand what was really wrong with me. I’m sorry.”
“You tosser,” said Jess.
“That’s awful,” said Maureen.
“You arsehole,” said Jess.
Martin smiled. Telling people you have an incurable disease when you don’t is probably right up there with seducing a fifteen-year-old, so he was enjoying my embarrassment. Plus, he was maybe even entitled to a little moral superiority, because he’d done the decent thing when he got humiliated: he’d walked to the top of Toppers’ House and dangled his feet over the edge. OK, he didn’t go over, but, you know, he’d shown he was taking things seriously. Me, I’d thought about offing myself first and then disgraced myself afterwards. I’d become an even bigger asshole since New Year’s Eve, which was kind of depressing.
“So why did you say it?” Jess asked.
“Yes,” said Martin. “What were you attempting to simplify?”
“It just… I don’t know. Everything seemed so straightforward with you guys. Martin and the, you know. And Maureen and…” I nodded over to Matty.
“Wasn’t straightforward with me,” said Jess. “I was crapping on about Chas and explanations.”
“Yeah, but… No offense, but you were nutso. Didn’t really matter what you said.”
“So what was wrong with you?” Maureen asked.
“I don’t know. Depression, I suppose you’d call it.”
“Oh, we understand depression,” said Martin. “We’re all depressed.”
“Yeah, I know. But mine seemed too… too fucking vague. Sorry, Maureen.”
How do people, like, not curse? How is it possible? There are all these gaps in speech where you just have to put a “fuck”. I’ll tell you who the most admirable people in the world are: newscasters. If that was me, I’d be like, “And the motherfuckers flew the fucking plane right into the Twin Towers.” How could you not, if you’re a human being? Maybe they’re not so admirable. Maybe they’re robot zombies.
“Try us out,” said Martin. “We’re understanding people.”
“OK. So the short version is, all I ever wanted to do was be in a rock’n’roll band.”
“Rock’n’roll? Like Bill Haley and the Comets?” said Martin.
“No, man. That’s not… Like, I don’t know. The Stones. Or…”
“They’re not rock’n’roll,” said Jess. “Are they? They’re rock.”
“OK, OK, all I wanted to do was be in a rock band. Like the Stones, or, or…”
“Crusty music,” said Jess. She wasn’t being rude. She was just clarifying my terms.
“Whatever. Jeez. And a few weeks before Christmas my band finally split up for good. And soon after we split, I lost my girl. She was English. That’s why I was here.”
There was a silence.
“That’s it?” said Jess.
“That’s it.”
“That’s pathetic. I see why you came out with all that crap about the disease now. You’d rather die than not be in a band that sounds like the Rolling Stones? I’d be the opposite. I’d rather die if I was. Do people still like them in America? No one does here.”
“That’s Mick Jagger, isn’t it, the Rolling Stones?” Maureen asked. “They were quite good, weren’t they? They did well for themselves.” “Mick Jagger’s not sitting here eating stale Custard Creams like JJ, is he?”
They were new right before Christmas,” said Maureen. “Maybe I didn’t put the lid back on the biscuit tin properly.”
I was starting to think we were losing focus on my issues.
“The Stones thing… That’s kind of not important. That was just like an illustration. I just meant… songs, guitars, energy.”
“He’s about eighty,” said Jess. “He hasn’t got any energy.”
“I saw them in “90,” said Martin. “The night England lost to Germany in the World Cup on penalties. A chap from Guinness took a whole crowd of us, and everyone spent most of the evening listening to the radio. Anyway, he had a lot of energy then.”
“He was only seventy then,” said Jess.
“Will you shut the fuck up? Sorry, Maureen.” (From now on, just presume that every time I speak I say “fuck”, “fucking” or “motherfucker” and “Sorry, Maureen”, OK?) “I’m trying to tell you about my whole life.”
“No one’s stopping you,” said Jess. “But you’ve got to make it more interesting. That’s why we drift off and talk about biscuits.”