Chapter 8 Adam “The Rockafeller Skank” #3
“But on the subject of work…” I say. “Any thoughts about…future directions, regarding employee sustainability?” I fudge.
“Wow. Get you with the management speak.” Darius grins. “And there was me hearing that you’d long since turned down the opportunity of climbing that greasy pole yourself.”
Someone must have told him about me passing on that promotion, when I stepped back to help out with the kids.
“I was thinking of the rest of my team,” I say. “Doodles, obviously. But Kylie, Greg, Meredith, and the other guys too.”
“Ah, yes. Meredith Peterson. I hear she’s got promise. In fact, she’s working on a report for the board.”
The first I’ve heard of it.
“But enough shop talk,” he says. “I’m sure everyone will be taken care of and, like I told you, I’ve got your back.” He smiles. “Just like you had mine when we were younger.” He prods me playfully in the arm. “Always including me in the cool shit.”
He can’t possibly mean him DJing at that party, can he?
No way, because how the hell would he remember, even though I’ve not been able to stop thinking about it all week?
The same as I’ve not been able to stop thinking about Jules naked in the shed.
We’ve already done it three times since.
Another thing that’s been jump-started, it seems.
“But we were best friends,” I point out. “Who else was I going to include?”
Were. Oops. Not sure where that came from. Too late to correct it now and way too obvious a slip for someone as smart as Darius to have missed. Or maybe he thinks it too, after all these years apart?
“True,” he says. “Sometimes old friendships are the most powerful things we’ve got.”
I chuckle. “Sounds like something out of one of those crappy old self-motivation books you used to read.”
“Still read. In fact, I gave Nelly a new one this morning at work. Giles Wheatley’s Luck Is a River, So Let’s Fish.” He smiles.
Well, consider me prompted. “Ah, yes. Thanks. Again,” I say. “For giving her the office space.”
“Not that she needs my encouragement.” He smiles even wider. “A real grafter, that one. Impressive. Reminds me of myself when I got the bit between my teeth.”
“Yeah, but she’s still young,” I find myself pushing back.
“It’s not necessarily a good thing to be overly ambitious at that age, is it?
” Bloody hell, the second the words are out of my mouth, I realize I’m pretty much quoting Jules from our argument about Liam last week.
But do I want my daughter being as one-track-minded as Darius?
Because even if he has made all the money, he’s missed out on so many other things too.
“That might work for you, Adam,” he says, “but she’s different. She’s got real fire.”
Meaning that I haven’t?
“Yeah, but life’s not just about ambition,” I double down. “Or winning, or”—I find myself staring at his Rolex, which has got to be worth at least twenty grand—“stuff…”
“Of course not. But you’ve got to admit that one of the perks of winning is that you do sometimes get to have more fun.”
I notice another smile tweaking at the corners of his mouth. “What do you mean?”
“Troubadours d’Amour,” he says, laying on a phony French accent.
“Huh?”
“You know, our favorite band.”
Our. He means mine and his, but they’re actually mine and Jules’s. Who we’ve seen ten times, and I even know the drummer well enough to have an occasional drink with him when he’s in the Lion & Lobster.
“What about them?”
He reaches into his shirt pocket before waggling three sparkly old-school tickets at me.
“They’re playing in town in a few months. Opening night of their final reunion tour. As part of some festival.”
“I know,” I say.
“I got us tickets. You, me, and Jules.”
“But…but it’s our wedding anniversary,” I say. Not something I’d normally give a monkey’s about, seeing as we’ve never made much of a deal about it. But this one’s different. Our twenty-fifth. Especially considering how flat things have been between us—well, before the shed.
“Oh, okay.” His face clouds, but for just a second. “I did check with Jules and she okayed it this morning,” he says.
Huh. Something she didn’t bother mentioning to me. “Right, well, it’s just…I’ve already got us tickets too,” I explain. “For me and Jules. As a surprise.”
He grimaces. “Oh, shit, man, the last thing I wanted to do was tread on your toes.” He gives his tongue a little click.
“That said, these tickets are from this special VIP access site and include backstage passes, see?” He waggles them closer.
“But forget it, you’re right, it’s just stuff.
” Stuff—said dismissively, like I said it before.
“Yeah, forget it,” he continues, even though he’s clearly disappointed, “I can always just give them to somebody else.”
Leaving me feeling bad, especially after he’s gone to all this effort. Yeah, turning them down would be totally churlish, right?
“No,” I tell him. “Let’s do this. The three of us. We’ll go together. Yeah. It’ll be cool.”
“Okay, phew.” He looks genuinely relieved. “So some stuff can be good.” He smiles.
Too late, I see what he’s done. How he’s twisted what I said earlier so he gets a win.
Or maybe that’s just in my head?
—
Come six o’clock, Doodles has taken the back panel off the Sony and is examining the wiring, while Spandau Ballet’s “True” is playing on Radio X on my phone. It’s the first time I’ve been able to get him over since we discovered the machine.
I’m on tenterhooks, itching to see what he finds. Because Big D’s got to find something, right? Something different about this machine. Something technical that can explain how this is happening, something beyond just “magic,” like Jules thinks.
“I’ll be honest with you, Adman,” he finally says, scratching his arse crevice with his screwdriver. “The only unusual thing about this antiquity is that it’s still working at all.”
“You’re positive? A hundred percent? There’s really nothing odd about it?”
“Yeah. It’s like I said. Sony was just making music for the masses with models like this. Which isn’t to say you won’t get any bids,” he quickly adds.
He means when I put it up for sale on eBay.
The lie I told him to get him to come over and check it out for me before we head down to the pub to meet up with the rest of our team for our usual end- of-week drink—only not so usual this week, of course, because the company we all work for has just been sold.
“Okay.” I force a smile, but it’s almost impossible to hide the disappointment in my voice.
“Not that I think you ever should sell it,” he says, wiping the dust off his favorite LCD Soundsystem hoodie.
“No?”
“Well, it’s still in such good condition, why would you? I mean, you love all this old shit, don’t you?” He nods across at the shelves of vinyl and at the box full of mixtapes and CDs.
“Yeah, I guess.”
My phone rings. Meredith’s name flashes up on the screen, giving me that same jolt of connection I felt at Darius’s party. That same jolt that used to exclusively come from Jules.
“I’m just going to take this outside,” I say.
“Yeah, sure, whatever, bro,” Doodles says, already starting to screw the Sony’s back panel on.
Stepping out into the sunshine, I quickly walk away from the shed, out of earshot, before glancing over at the living room window, where I spot Jules and the kids laughing at something on TV.
“Hi,” I answer tentatively—because me and Meredith don’t speak much on the phone.
“So, you guys still coming to the pub, or what?” she asks.
“Um, sure,” I say.
“Good, because they need you, Adam. We all do. Everyone’s still feeling a little lost, a bit shocked.”
I feel my chest kind of puff out a little at hearing this.
That maybe I’m not just their boss, but something more.
And not just to them, to her. But then I glimpse Jules inside again and feel this splinter of guilt.
Even though I’m not actually doing anything wrong, am I? But then why does it feel so wrong?
Only then my heart stutters, hearing the opening bars of “Seven Nation Army,” by the White Stripes, thudding out of the shed. A 2003 classic that can only be from one of those tapes or CDs.
Doodles.
Christ. He must have just put it on.
“Shit, I gotta go.”
Heart pounding, cutting her off, I run back into the shed. Expecting what? To find Doodles frozen stiff with Exorcist eyes?
For a second, I do fear the worst as I spot him standing motionless in front of the Sony.
But then he turns to me and grins, blowing out a long plume of weed smoke.
“Why you looking at me like that?” he says.
“Um. Well. I…I just didn’t have you down as a rock fan, that’s all.”
“Hey, as digitally orientated as I am, I’m still allowed to dig Jack and Meg.”
“Yeah, sure. Of course,” I mutter, the words hardly coming out, my mind already racing again. Because it means that Jules is right about this too. Whatever this is, it really is personal.
This crazy machine of ours only does seem to work for us.
“And these are all yours and Jules’s, huh?” Doodles says, scooping his hand through the tapes and CDs. “Sweet. Only it all kind of died out with streaming, didn’t it? Like these days most people wouldn’t have the equipment left to make a new one even if they wanted,” he adds wistfully.
“Wha—? What did you just say?”
“How not everyone’s got the equipment—”
“Yes.” Oh my God. But I do, don’t I? I mean, if I wanted to, I could…
His Apple Watch tings. “Kylie,” he tells me. “She says they’re moving to a table up on the roof terrace.”
“Um, you know what? I think I might catch you up. There’s something I need to do first.”
As soon as I’ve waved him off, I scuttle straight back to the shed. What if he’s right? What if I can make more mixtapes? New ones that will allow us to travel back in time. That will allow us to continue all this even after we’ve burned through the others.
It takes me an age to find a blank tape among all the clutter. It’s a weird one too, a ten-minute tape. Something Dad must have bought, for God only knows what. Jamming it into the machine, I eye the red “Record” button.
But what songs? Obviously, something Jules would genuinely like, because that was always the point, wasn’t it?
But scrolling through my latest Spotify playlists, I can’t find anything new she’d even know.
Jesus. When did that happen? We always used to get into pretty much everything at the same time.
Then I find something. An old album. A vinyl. One we used to play together. Putting it on, I hit “Record” on the tape.
Ten minutes later, I head inside to search for Jules. I end up following the sound of laughter to where she’s still in the living room with the kids. Our old videotapes from way back when are scattered across the rug.
“Rewind. Show Dad,” says Liam, grinning up at me from where he’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, wearing a Resident Records black beanie.
Dad. Said with real enthusiasm. Like he’s not said it in quite a while.
Jules rewinds whatever they’ve been watching. A short clip of him and Nelly rolling around on the grass during a picnic in St. Ann’s Well Gardens. Christ, what I wouldn’t give to go back there just for a—
Only then I see what Jules is doing. She’s looking to see where she wants to travel back to next.
“We were just remembering all the happy times,” she says, smiling across at me.
Scanning the years on the tape spines, I see there’s not one from any time more recent than a decade and a half ago. Why? Because that’s when all the happy times were?
“Argh, Mum. The dog’s farted,” Liam says, quickly moving away from where Groucho’s lying by his side.
“Oh, gross,” Jules says.
As Groucho slinks guiltily off out into the garden, and the kids continue to howl with laughter at the TV, I beckon Jules into the hall, where they won’t be able to hear.
“Here,” I tell her, handing over the tape I’ve just made her. “It’s a new one.”
“What do you mean?”
“I recorded it for you. It’s just a couple of songs long.”
She looks down at the words I’ve written on it. Saturday Lift-Off. As in tomorrow. When we’re next planning to travel back.
“But why?” she asks.
“Because there’s a finite number of mixtapes and CDs left in the box and we’re getting through them fast. Don’t you think it would be nice to find out if we can make more?”
“Damn right. Oh, and what about Doodles? He find anything weird about the machine?”
“Nothing.”
She nods, like she thought as much.
“He also put a tape on.”
“What?” She looks aghast.
“I know. I didn’t mean him to. But he did.”
“And?”
“Nothing happened to him. Not like it does to us.”
“I knew it.” That grin again. “This is just for us.” She focuses back on the tape I’ve just given her. “But won’t this just bring me back to—”
“Today,” I say. “To now, to when it was given to you. Or just a few minutes before, I guess.”
Nelly shrieks with laughter, calling Jules back in.
“Did you notice she’s home on time and isn’t on her phone to her boss?” she says. “She’s even going out with Eva and some of her old school gang again tonight.”
I’m glad. Truly. Even if this might be down to Darius offering her that office space. Even if it’s a problem I wish I’d been able to solve myself.
My phone tings again and I walk through to the kitchen to check it. A message from Meredith, and again I feel it—that jolt.
Aw, so you DID turn up, after all… it reads when I open it.
There’s a photo attached. Of her and Doodles standing by the upstairs bar in the Lion & Lobster, both grinning. But I still don’t get it. Only then I see the beer tap on the bar between them. A guest ale called Outback. With a plump little cuddly koala staring out from its tap.