“Evenin’, doctor, if it really is you,” said Bushy as I opened the car door. “Lookin’ good, lookin’ good. You made the right choices, the pukka decisions.”
“Thank you, Bushy, my friend,” I said. “I can always rely on you for an accurate review. What do you think?” I asked Miriam, who was wearing a combination of black spiders’ webs in various materials, more or less her everyday look, apart from the miniskirt. “Miriam?”
“I’ve lost the power of speech.”
“Put that camera down!” I said, trying to grab the phone she was holding up.
“Get off! Just one for the kitchen wall!”
“No-no!”
“Girls, girls!” cried Henry as he got into the car. “Save your excitement for later.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Not far across the river at Vauxhall, we came to a line of railway arches which were used as motor workshops. One of the doors was painted black, and there were a few people gathered around it. Pushing through three thick curtains, we were greeted inside by a middle-aged couple who had known Bushy when he worked in a warehouse nearby.
We helped Bushy unpack his stuff and carry it into the crepuscular Sootie. Henry found a way to light Bushy on a little raised stage at the back of the place. Miriam was attempting to powder his sweating face; Bushy was shy about having his nose overilluminated. He was nervous and oblivious to the fact that everyone around him was dressed in unusual clothes, and even that they were beginning to kiss and caress one another.
The place was filling up. Bushy sat down in his position, tuned up and began to play a quiet blues. To encourage him, Henry and Miriam cheered and whistled as they did while watching trash TV. “All I need is me guitar, an amp, a joint and my doctor,” Bushy said, pointing at me.
I donned my mask and walked through the numerous tunnels and rooms of the Sootie, wondering at the people and their lives.
I turned a corner, and she walked past me. My wife was tall in the heels I’d bought her years ago, when I still believed in our love. Her legs were long and she looked good in her clothes. I was surprised to see her but not unhappy. Often, when we met outside the house, we found we got on. We wouldn’t speak all day at home, but then, in the evening, at a party, we’d ignore everyone else and begin talking as if we were friends who hadn’t seen one another for a year. But tonight she seemed to be in a hurry, walking about alone, looking for something or someone, and I didn’t want to follow her.
I could hear that Bushy had begun in earnest, and I wanted to see him. By now his foot was bouncing, his muscles pulsing, his voice like dirty metal and Captain Beefheart.
He was competent in most styles, with great technique, but he couldn’t complete a tune, as though he wanted to play everything at once, like some kind of psychotic jukebox. As he switched among complicated jazz chords, bits of blues and popular tunes, he talked or rambled. He had studied the bluesmen and remembered the dates, saying this song was written in March 1932 or whenever. Sensing some interest, he’d give you more: Did you know John Lee Hooker was a Jehovah’s Witness? He’d do an impression of Hooker, almost a skit-the voice, the whole thing-coming to your house with his Bible, a copy of the Watchtower and a tune.
Bushy was compelling, keeping people from sex. What higher compliment could there be for an artist? Henry stood there proudly, leaning against a pillar. When a man approached to ask whether he was Bushy’s manager, Henry said yes. The man gave Henry his card, took Henry’s number and promised to get in touch. “Bushy will always work now,” Henry said to me. “I wish it had occurred to me before to represent talent for a living.”
Later, beyond a heaving pile of what looked like colourfully decorated slugs, I came upon a screen with slits and holes in it, and a chair behind it. I was looking through it as two men led her in. She seemed determined now in her search for the holy grail of pleasure, the paradigm of luxurious abandonment.
I sat to watch as Josephine lay down, with her face turned towards me. I was so startled-it was as though she could see me. I thought for a moment that my ears might burst-I almost fled. I was more than tempted to lie in her arms again. To do it anonymously would be one of the oddest things I’d done.
I walked towards her as she lay there with her throat exposed, the other figures rising and falling in the mirrored wall, reminding me of how she liked sex in front of a mirror, with one leg up on a chair; little of me would be visible, just my dark hands moving over her fair skin as she watched herself.
I thought: in an opera, at this moment, someone would kill her. I was trembling, and wondered if I might fall down.
She was excited: her face appeared to be glowing. She lived in fear of blushing-“an erection of the face, along with the desire to be looked at,” as someone described it, which made her even more self-conscious. At times she didn’t want to go out because of what she saw as her “embarrassment.” Shame would have been the better word. When she became angry her face seemed to pulsate with blood pushing to the surface. “An exploding strawberry,” I called her, helpfully.
Now it was my turn; she whispered in my ear as though she knew me. “Hallo,” she said, and “Please” and “Yes, yes.” I said nothing, smelling the other men on her, wondering if she’d know me by my flickering eyelashes, which she’d often commented on.
In the low light, I was able to see, in her hair on the back of her neck, a mole I hadn’t noticed before, which I kissed. Not far away Bushy was singing a Mavis Staples song, “I’ll take you there…I’ll take you there…” I could almost have fallen in love with her again as I thought: a better man than me would announce himself, pick her up, cover her, and carry her out of here, to a cleaner place. I wasn’t sure anymore what it was to love an adult, but looking at her familiar white limbs, I knew I preferred her to anyone else.
I noticed Bushy was no longer playing. I was going to the bar when Henry found me.
“I’ve been looking all over for you,” he said, pulling anxiously at his beard. “Bushy won’t come out.” He pointed at the disabled toilet. “The Security here can force him, but it would be easier if he heard your voice.”
I knocked on the door. “Can I come in?”
“Git out!”
“Can I talk to you-about the music?”
There was a silence. The door opened, and I entered the lighted box, Bushy locking the door behind us. The taps were running and the strip light was buzzing. The dryer had jammed and sounded, in that space, like a motor mower. It was hot in there. Perhaps I was stoned: Bushy’s body was almost anamorphically distorted. I had interrupted this dirty Orpheus naked in front of the mirror, examining his scabrous hooter with a razor blade in his hand. His eyes, wide and unblinking, appeared in the strange light to be buried in one yellow socket and one that was lurid blue.
“Don’t get the wrong idea.” He had suspended the blade over his nose, as though looking for the ideal spot. “I’m not cutting it off. I’m going to nick into a section of it. I’m going to prune it-that way it won’t toilet me no more.”
“You can’t slash your snout. You’ll get blood everywhere.”
“Why else would I be undressed?” He glanced at me and tapped his nose. “You think this is the right place?”
“It’s not the right place and this is not the right time. You’ll make a mistake,” I said, coming up behind him with his clothes gathered up under one arm.
He said, “Keep off!”
“I can’t help it, friend, we’re in a toilet together. People are backed up out there, waiting to pee.” I put my other hand out. “Don’t let everyone down now you’ve got them interested.”
He dropped the blade into my palm. He took the clothes and began to dress. “You haven’t said anything about the music.”