Chapter 20
James: Right Here Waiting
The boys knew I was gutted about not getting to go and see Springsteen with Amy, so they got us some tickets to see Freddie Mercury last night.
Brilliant concert, all the greatest hits from Queen, including a slightly tongue-in-cheek performance of ‘Keep Yourself Alive’!
It was great to see him looking at peak fitness again.
If you’ve seen any footage of Queen’s segment at Live Aid you’ll know the look I mean.
It was a pitch-perfect performance, and he had the audience in the palm of his hand, of course, so yeah, a really cool gig – but not quite the same without the rest of the band.
And not quite the same going to the concert without Amy.
I checked in on her after we got back, and she seemed to be getting on well with Paul on the way back.
Really well, in fact. I suppose I should have seen that coming actually.
They’ve spent quite a lot of time together recently, with planning the wedding etc.
If I’m honest, I’ve got mixed feelings about this.
I knew I would. It was inevitable really.
But deep down I know it’s for the best. It’s not like I want to meet anyone else.
I’d happily wait for her even though I know that’ll be decades away.
If you’d met her you’d understand – you’d know she’s worth waiting for.
But me waiting for her up here is one thing.
Amy waiting for me down there would be another thing altogether.
She’s got full force feelings where she is.
At least I have the filter, albeit a faulty one.
So now all the Christmas snow has cleared.
Snow is completely different in heaven. It stays perfect, a pristine white the whole time, and then one morning you wake up and it’s gone.
None of that mess we’re used to back home, with the snow gradually turning from powdery white to a brownish grey slush.
No, as usual, everything is perfect up here.
Well, as perfect as it can be when you’re not with the woman you love.
The good thing is, with the snow now gone we can finally get people using these bikes we’ve been making.
And the delay has given us a chance to make even more, so we have loads.
We’ve discreetly put word around that we’re launching a cycling club – with a warning that everyone needs to keep quiet about it when The Boss or any of the AAs are around.
Not that the AAs necessarily agree with The Boss on his whole cycling prejudice thing.
I get the feeling some of them might secretly be curious about cycling.
Gabe’s asked me a few times what it’s like.
I nearly confided in him one time about making the bikes.
I’ve got to know him pretty well now, and I totally trust him.
But then I thought it wouldn’t really be fair to put him in that position, asking him to keep a secret from The Boss. So in the end I didn’t tell him.
And now, two weeks later, I can’t believe what a massive success the bikes have been.
Quite honestly, I had my doubts about how good they’d be.
It’s not like I’ve ever made a bike from scratch before.
But actually they’ve worked out brilliantly.
With all the parts coming out totally perfect, it also means everything is so quick and easy to assemble.
I’m loving this so much, it’s almost as good as the actual cycling.
And that is amazing on these bikes. Everyone loves them.
Last week Andy came up with the idea of having a racing event.
I’m not completely sold on the idea, at least not all of it.
The mountain bike races won’t be such a problem – they can be held on the courses we’ve made, which are tucked away in some woods here.
But the road races, they’re going to be harder to hide.
I’m torn really – there’s nothing better than cycling on the road, but it is a risk.
It’s just if The Boss finds out about the bikes, things could get tricky.
Who knows what he might do? It’s quite possible he’d just confiscate the lot.
He’s not made any secret of his contempt for bikes.
We’d all be so gutted if this cycling club got disbanded.
It’s become the main thing in my life up here, and I’m guessing that’s true for a few of the crew.
But The Boss has been busy lately with lots of problems on Earth.
And to be fair, even at the best of times, he doesn’t seem to be quite as all-knowing about what’s going on up here as he might like to think he is. So maybe we could get away with it.
Anyway, now I’m with The Boss for the evening.
He and I are walking to a little pub he knows in town.
He reckons it won’t be too busy as it’s early.
He prefers to go out when it’s quiet, so he doesn’t have loads of people coming up to him asking him things or just staring at him.
Honestly, it might seem like the best job, the power, the fame, having a best-seller written about him, but in a way it sucks to be him.
Perhaps I should be honest and tell him we just do need bikes up here.
Or perhaps I should save that conversation for another day.
Because right now I have more pressing problems to deal with.
‘Sorry to be a pain, Boss, but is there a way to switch off the audio on the viewer?’ I ask.
‘Sure. Why?’
‘It’s this bloody Sinead O’Connor song. I know I shouldn’t moan about it, but it’s driving me insane. She’s playing it over and over right now.’
‘Let’s have a listen.’ He tunes into Amy.
The Boss has a super viewer on his phone – he can see everything in everyone’s world, and in much better detail than the rest of us.
‘Ooh, I get what you mean. Here…’ He grabs my phone and taps on a few things.
He shows me the screen he’s reached. ‘Now, if you want to turn down the volume on the Earth viewer you just do this,’ he says, tapping the screen, ‘or this to mute it – and just press here to restore to default volume.’
‘Cheers. You’re a lifesaver.’
‘Well, not so much in your case.’
‘Hmm.’ Yeah, he’s got a point. I’d never really thought about it like that before.
‘Yeah, sorry about that. Still, your loss is my gain, and all that – if that’s any consolation.’ He’s looking a bit guilty now.
‘So, why didn’t you do something about it?’ I ask, suddenly feeling curious.
‘You mean stop you dying?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Oh. Yeah, I get that a lot. “Why me? Why am I here? Why did you take me so young?”’
‘And?’
‘Well, it’s not as straightforward as that. We have a system. And when the system says it’s time, that’s it. It’s time. I can’t go overriding every decision the system generates.’
‘Why not? You’re God!’
He sighs. ‘Do you have any idea how many people die in a day?’
‘No.’
‘Over 158,000, mate. Which means over 6,600 an hour. Which means about 110 a minute. Which means nearly—’
‘Two per second. Yeah, I get it.’
‘Exactly. A lot. Really a lot. So, you see my problem? I can’t check on every death decision. Obviously I used to, back in the early days, then the AAs started having to help out as the numbers went up, and up.’
He’s looking as though he has fond memories of simpler times.
‘Not that we didn’t have the occasional hiccup back then.
Some near-death experiences we could have done without.
There was Lazarus, of course – in fact he actually did die and had to be sent back.
And long before that we had a bit of a close shave with Abraham and his little boy.
Back in those days people used to like to bring me little gifts, offerings, you know.
They’d got in the habit with some of the other gods they used to worship who were into that kind of thing – like the Greek gods and goddesses, they loved all of that.
Not sure why. I mean, we’re deities after all.
It’s not like there’s anything we’re short of.
‘So, anyway, this one day, Abraham has decided he’s going to some kind of special mountain to worship me, and he wants to bring an offering.
So he sends up a prayer, asking me what he should bring.
And I honestly can’t think of anything, so off the top of my head I just send down the thought, “How about a sack of rice”.
But of course Abraham’s not listening properly, and he thinks I’ve asked for a “sacrifice”.
So then he asks, “Who?” – which obviously is a stupid question because if he thought I wanted a sacrifice he should have been asking what, not who.
I mean, what kind of tyrant does he think I am?
‘So, I just think he means who should bring the sack of rice. I can see Abraham’s got his hands full with other things, so I suggest, “Your boy”.
Well, I know his son, Isaac, is old enough to carry a bag of rice.
So now, Abraham thinks I want him to – well, you can see the problem.
And then I get distracted by something going on up here, and when I look back down, there’s Abraham about to finish off poor little Isaac.
Only just saved him in the nick of time.
Took Isaac a long time to get over that, I can tell you.
Not sure he ever really forgave his dad. ’
I’m kind of surprised by this story – I mean, didn’t The Boss do something rather similar himself with his own son? But maybe now’s not the best time to point that out. Or perhaps that whole incident didn’t quite go to plan either?
‘So yeah, nowadays manual intervention in every death, well, it’s just not possible,’ he continues. ‘And quite honestly it’s not necessary. We’ve got it all automated, and we just have to trust the system. It’s pretty reliable. Don’t often get problems with it. Not that I’m aware of, at any rate.’
He’s got a point. I can see it’s a ridiculously big task to monitor deaths. It would need an army of people to do it manually, and a big one at that. But I don’t want to let him off the hook too easily.
‘Still, you should perhaps look into your system. I mean, is it really operating fairly? Maybe you need to adjust the algorithms or something? There seem to be a lot of good people up here young and a lot of not-so-good people who get to carry on down there into old age.’
‘Well, to be fair, I leave the bad ones to the other guy – so he chooses when it’s their time – or his system does. And his system’s probably not exactly watertight, you know. That’s the sort of guy he is, I’m afraid. A bit slack, if I’m honest.’
Hmm. I’m feeling the buck stops with the systems, but what more can I say? It’s not really my place to question how these things work.
‘So, back to the audio thing,’ I say. ‘Is there any way I can send Amy a song?’
‘Well, there is. But what song are you thinking of sending? You know sending her a love song isn’t going to help.’ He’s giving me a mock frown.
‘Right. Yeah, I know.’
‘So what song is it?’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ I really don’t want to tell him.
‘Oh, don’t give me that. You were going to send her some soppy romantic song weren’t you?’
‘No, I—’
‘You were, weren’t you? What was it? “I Just Called To Say I Love You”? “You To Me Are Everything”? “How Can I Love You More”? I do love a bit of M-People.’ He starts humming and doing a bit of dad dancing.
‘No! None of the above!’ I retort. Jeez, when will he stop this guessing thing?
‘So, tell me then.’
‘All right. If you must know, it was Richard Marx.’
‘What, “Now and Forever”?’ he chuckles. ‘Like that’s going to help.’
‘No.’
‘“Should’ve Known Better”? Appropriate. You should’ve known better than to take that bicycle contraption out in traffic.’
I give him a scathing look.
‘Okay, okay. Not that then. So what was it?’ he persists.
‘If you must know, it was “Right Here Waiting”.’
‘Right Here Waiting? Is that a good idea? It hardly smacks of “time to move on”, does it? And she might even think you’re sounding a bit impatient.’
‘But you know when she writes her letters she’s always asking me to wait for her. She just wants to know I’ll be here for her when her time comes and she gets here. That’s not unreasonable is it? And if I can get it through to her, this song would let her know I will, I’ll be waiting for her.’
The Boss shakes his head.
‘You really haven’t got your head around this moving on thing have you? Not for her and not for you. If you really must have a Richard Marx song, I think you’d better send “Let Go” – that might do the trick.’
‘Bit on the nose.’
‘Oh James, will you never learn?’ He gives me a look of kindly exasperation.
We’ve arrived at the pub, and it’s not what I was expecting.
Not exactly salubrious, in fact something of an old spit-and-sawdust joint.
But The Boss seems keen, so we step inside.
Sure enough, there’s just a handful of customers in.
‘Here, I’ll get the drinks, you go and reserve the pool table,’ he says. ‘And if I win, you’re going on a date. A proper one, up here. Not some kind of virtual date with Amy. Got that?’
I’m saying nothing. I really don’t want to agree to this. The Boss might not be perfect at chess, but he’s an ace at pool.