We carried on anyway, as we'd agreed if something like that went wrong. It would take too long to fix, and the effect was still impressive. Spots spotted, lasers lased, and the Burst (when the whole centre of the Curtain was blown out by small explosive charges), all worked fine.
We started side one of Nifedge.
I was sweating. I felt thirsty already, and the noise was intense; I didn't know whether we had the monitors turned up too high, the crowd were just exceptionally rowdy, or there was just some sort of weird resonance with the main speakers and the shape of the auditorium, tut the noise sounded deafening to me; an internal feedback. I had programmed myself well enough by that time (translation; I was professional enough) not to be unduly put off, so I still did my bit, played my part and my music, but I felt ... strange.
Perhaps, I remember thinking, we've hit that point in a tour when you've lost the initial impetus of enthusiasm, have yet to work up the momentum of routine, and cannot yet tap the energy of knowing it will all be over soon. Happens that way sometimes, I told myself.
We played. They listened. A few must have heard the album on import, or got their newly released copies very early (or been incredibly avid fans) because some of them seemed to recognise a few of the tunes, and even sang along with one or two of Christine's lyricless voice parts.
The Curtain had gone through its paces, firing all up, then all down, then sweeping through a whole slow staccato sequence of firings, flowing left-right, right-Ieft across the stage. The still-misfiring unit near centre stage made the whole display less than perfect, but you could tell just from the noises the punters were making the overall effect still impressed.
We got to the end of our twenty-minute (nearer twenty-five minutes, on stage) excerpt of Nifedge. That side, that movement (if you like), ends with one vast sustaining chord, punched out by every voice and instrument on stage, plus a synth key-triggered echo and reverberation sequence looping the resulting noise through a pre-figured programme for a digital analyser/sequencer which, at the time, was state of the art.
A stunning, sublimely furious noise, with the sound system at a hundred per cent plus whatever reverberations the venue could provide.
In Miami, the noise sounded like the crack of doom, like the whiplash of a galactic arm snapping, like an earthquake wave riding a major power line; we hit our individual assemblage of notes all at once, in a single blasting moment of impacted noise.
And brought a small section of the house down.
Ho ho, ha ha.
And killed Davey.
Because the dry-ice unit above him had blown a fuse, and the fan didn't work. Because the unit had been put up wrong; in the rush to construct the set, they'd put some part on upside down, and excess vapour and liquid couldn't drain away. Because the air in the hall was very humid, and the moisture in the air, the natural heat of that steamy city, and the collected body-breath of all those worshipping people, had collected around the great unused lump of granulated dry ice sitting way above the stage there. Because a bolt had been tightened up with a monkey wrench, not a torque wrench. Because this was before the days of radio mikes and leadless guitars, so we were all connected up, linked to the machinery.
So the whole lot snapped and crashed and fell. Missed Davey by a good few feet, but spilled its load of collected water all over him and his guitar and, in seconds, while we were still trying to work out what the hell had happened, and the audience were still applauding the spectacular effect (that burgeoning bursting bow-wave of water had happened to be caught in an accidentally delightful pattern of lights and lasers), the water rushed and/or seeped into some errant wire, some badly connected part of an amplifier, and promptly electrocuted our Davey.
Lasted... maybe two seconds, maybe five. Seemed like about three hours, but you could probably find some ghoulish bastard with a bootleg tape who could give you it down to the nearest tenth of a second.
Before we ran for him, before he fell, before that ghastly, jerking, stiff parody of a guitarist dropped from rigidity to slackness across the stage, before Wise William and his cohorts finally realised the circuit breakers — also too hastily installed, we found out later — weren't working, and cut the power manually.
And we gathered him up, and we took him to the stage exit. He was blue, silent, heart still beating weakly, but breathing only with the assistance of us all; taking turns at first until the paramedics in the ambulance took over. The medics and the ambulance were there according to the contract, but they only let Davey die slower. A chopper was ordered, but would take too long to get there.
We went with the ambulance, but it got us, effectively, nowhere.
The crowds were too great.
There were just too many people. We got him into the ambulance, we surrounded him with our own bodies, we did all we could, but none of it was enough, because there had been a mix-up with the tickets, especially with the number for sale at the door, and so there were even more people milling, ticketless and frustrated outside the auditorium than there were inside.
And we just couldn't get through the crowds.
I stood on the ambulance roof at one point. Stood there with its lights flashing round my ankles and its exhaust smoke rising around me, like some tiny image of our stage show, me the star at last, and howled at those people, looking down a crowded alley of them to a crowded street of them, and fists clenched, head back, I screamed with all my might, 'Get oot the fuckin WAY!'
... but did nothing, accomplished nothing, communicated ... nothing.
The swarming chanting tides close round the ambulance and its quiet, unminding cargo, like antibodies round an infection.
We all thought that he would somehow live, that he of all people would find a way to pull through; another crazy death-defying stunt ...
But, he didn't; a last practical joke.
DOA.
Davey Balfour. 1955-1980.
RIP
And that, folks, was very much the end of that.
end of (a) story
roll up that circuit diagram
finished with engines
shantih
THIRTEEN
'Good morning. Mr Daniel Weir?'
I looked at the two young, clean-shaven men on the grey screen. Coats, suits, ties. I said, 'Yes.'
The one who was speaking held a card in a little plastic wallet up to the camera. 'I'm Detective Constable Jordan, this is Detective Constable McInnes. Could we have a word with you, Mr Weir?'
I think I was silent for a moment or two. Then I said, 'Of course,' and let them in. I thought it must be something to do with the club called Monty's, and that broken aquarium. What had happened? Another death? Another chance catastrophe? Had one of the bouncers turned out to have a thin skull, or suddenly collapsed with a fatal blood clot in the brain? Had the cracked glass given way without warning and crushed or sliced in half some glazier or plumber? Nothing seemed too bizarre or outrageous.
I'd spent the first part of the night curled up on the floor of the bedroom, foetally tight, occasionally shivering, then climbed up to the tower's highest room, which is quite bare, just a couple of seats, and sat there, looking out over the city for a while. Then, still unable to sleep, still thinking about Christine, about Davey and about my own Jonah of a life, I went down to the crypt and tried to distract myself with music, composition, messing about with old tunes and new tunes, until I gave that up too and went for a cold, quiet walk through the mostly sleeping city, aimlessly wandering, growing cold and tired and coming back, and still not able to cry, and deciding that there really was very little left for me, that I had been responsible for both of their deaths and, if there was a God, then it was either a sadistic bastard, or didn't give a damn. And, if there wasn't, then the patterns and currents of cause and effect we dignify with the name 'fate' sure as shit seemed to be trying to tell me something.