Chapter 12 Adam “Happy” #2
Staycation 2014, it says on the CD cover.
In Jules’s handwriting in green biro. A gift from her to me in the year we didn’t have enough money to go on holiday, with every penny we had going into the San Francisco fund.
To keep the kids amused, we’d decided to turn the garden into a makeshift festival and adventure playground.
I picture the zip wire in my mind. Me climbing up the bay tree to tie it. How excited Liam was. Then I hear that screaming again, from later the same year.
No. I shouldn’t go back to this year. Absolutely not. In case I do try to change Liam’s future.
But do I have any alternative? Because the only thing I can think of that can fix everything else with Jules is also located in that year.
Quickly—before I can change my mind—I slot the CD into the Sony. Turning the volume down to 1, so no one outside of the shed will be able to hear, I hit “Play.”
The last thing I see are my old Star Wars figurines still lined up in a row on Dad’s old lathe, before “Happy” by Pharrell Williams starts tinnily pumping out, and I find myself sucked into that whirling tornado, and spinning so fast I feel sick…
***
Ahhhhhand… I cruise down onto the runway. I’m so used to it, I might as well be some first-class passenger with my Xanax timed to perfection, before hitting the ground running the second I disembark.
Wide awake, the first thing I see are my hands—okay, Young Adam’s hands—only not really that young anymore, because of course here in 2014 he’s already forty-two.
His hands still look younger than mine, though.
Less wrinkly, less hairy. His wrist brachialis looks thinner too, along with his flexor carpi radialis muscles.
Of course, because on this timeline I’ve only been working out for five years.
Meaning I’ve still got plenty more volleyball, marathons, Ironman comps, and cycling trips to truly toughen me up.
“I think you should make them longer,” Darius says.
“But then they’ll end up looking like dicks,” Adam responds. He’s talking about the two i’s he’s currently finessing on a piece of A4 paper as part of his smile-shaped design for the words Totally Sirius.
Of course. This is the exact same proto company logo that will end up pinned to the corkboard right here in the shed that I’ll then rip up on the night of Darius’s party. A logo that Adam still hopes might become as iconic as Atari, Sega, or Nintendo.
“What’s wrong with dicks?” Darius asks.
“Well, nothing, per se,” Adam answers. “But as part of a gaming logo, they might look a tad male…a smidgen aggressive…”
“What’s wrong with male and aggressive?”
“Are you serious?”
“Uh. Totally Sirius, bro,” Darius Bill & Teds. “Because that way the market will have to sit up and notice us and therefore take us Totally Sirius-ly too.”
“I thought the whole point of Totally Sirius was to look to the future, to offer gamers something new, not just the same old guns-and-testosterone crap…”
“Yeah, but the biggest market is still teen boys. And dicks—even just a hint of dicks in the logo—that’ll make them laugh. It’ll make the brand cool.”
The same old shit he’ll still be peddling with Quark’s new logo in ten years’ time.
“A hint of dicks?” Adam mocks him. “Maybe you should just launch that as a new aftershave instead?”
“Very funny,” says Darius, acting like it doesn’t bother him, when the truth is he already likes being talked back to less and less these days.
Especially in matters of business, still convinced he’s on an upward trajectory, despite several setbacks along the way.
Leaving Younger Me already playing beta to Darius’s alpha.
But enough already of this. Enough of them.
I know how this plays out. How Adam will fail to win this battle with Darius for the soul of Totally Sirius.
How all this excitement Adam is feeling right now—this whole thirst for the future—will fizzle out, doused by an increasing dread over the next two years that he and Darius are getting out of their depth, and that Darius is too confident, too reckless, and that Darius’s American uncle won’t come through with the promised finances, leaving Adam exposed to bankruptcy if they fail.
“Hey, where you going?” Darius asks.
Adam doesn’t reply. Or even look back—because Adam is no longer in control.
Walking him past the old Bang & Olufsen record player, I make him turn up the volume so the Van Morrison record that’s been playing drowns out Darius’s grumblings, then steer him on out into the blazing sunlight.
I turn him round to face the house, aiming to control him long enough to make him stride on up there so I can do what I came here to do.
Only then I see Liam and it shocks me how much he’s grown since I last saw him in Port de Pollenca in 2009, so much so that I relinquish control and just sit back inside Adam.
The sweet little six-year-old I left eating chips on that bench has now warped into a feral, cheeky-looking eleven-year-old, sitting with his best friend, Max, by the remains of last night’s staycation BBQ.
“Hey, guys,” Adam says, a little dazed from me having just imposed myself on him, and not really knowing why he’s wandered out into the garden.
Darius follows him out.
“So, Uncle Dar, have you got your Ferrari yet?” Liam asks, nudging Max in the ribs. A running joke, I now remember, from back when we all thought it would never actually happen.
“Still waiting for you to get your record deal, so I can pick you up from Wembley Stadium after your first sellout gig,” Darius teases back, not missing a beat.
Liam grabs his new, bigger acoustic, which is never far from his side these days, all covered in Royal Blood and Arctic Monkeys stickers, from where it’s lying by his feet, before firing off a dramatic, ironic three-chord boom-tish-boom strum.
I’m hardly even listening, though. Just staring at Liam’s left hand. At all of it. At all four fingers and his thumb.
And you know what happens when people fall…
What Mum said after Young Adam slid down that banister that first time I jumped back to 1989.
I thought it was just a criticism, but now I see it for what it really was. A prophecy, and one, no matter what the risks, I have to act on now.
I don’t give myself a microsecond more to think about it.
Imposing myself on Adam again, I march him back into the shed.
Emerging seconds later with a ball hammer and hacksaw, I stride past Darius and the kids and saw through the end of the zip wire’s rope where it’s wrapped around the tree stump at the bottom of the garden.
The second the forty-foot rope loses its tension, it jerks away from me, live as a snake, with its hated pulley and T-bar crashing down onto the lawn from where they’d been hooked around the top branch of the bay tree.
“Dad! What are you doing?” Liam yells.
“They’re dangerous,” I make Adam say. “I, er, read about it online.”
He’s confused, but inside I’m punching the air.
“But Dad…”
Liam can see it’s too late. The rope’s ruined. Him, Max, and Darius are all staring at me like I’ve just gone mad.
Who knows? Maybe they’re right. Maybe I have. But it’s too late now to go changing things back.
Grabbing the wooden pulley, I carry it over to the nearest paving slab and smash it to pieces.
“There,” I make Adam say, grinning up at the others, his heart pounding with exertion.
“Dad! That was mental.” Liam’s eyes are wide.
“Yeah, but he’s right,” Darius says. “I read that article too.”
He’s lying, but backing me up. Because that’s what friends do. Even when friends look like they’re totally losing their shit.
“Thanks,” I tell him.
Liam looks at me nervously and I make Adam smile reassuringly like it’s no big deal. “Just thinking of you, buddy. Keeping you safe.”
“So can you help us finish off our den?” Liam asks. “Like you promised.”
He’s right. Younger Me did promise and I’ve still got time. I’ve probably only been here fifteen minutes of what’s due to be a seventy-four-minute trip.
I give Adam back control. He stares from the smashed pulley and T-bar to the cut rope and back, disorientated for a second, mentally trying to come to terms with what he’s just done. Then he remembers what I made him say about the zip wire being dangerous. Him and Darius and the kids start to play.
“Oh, good,” says a voice a while later.
Looking up, I see it’s Jules—or Younger Jules—staring down at the wreckage of the zip wire. She’s dressed in straight-cut jeans and a black half-lace top—and I remember what we were like when we were still such a tight-knit team, before we failed to move to San Francisco.
“I was worried someone might get hurt,” she says. “I even told your dad not to put it up,” she tells Liam, “but he wouldn’t listen”—she smiles—“until now.”
And it’s only now that I remember that this is true. She did tell me this. Something else I’d forgotten. Or buried. Christ, how much strength must it have taken not to say this to my face over the years? To lay the blame firmly at my feet where it truly did belong.
“Here,” she says, handing me a CD. “A bit late, but here’s your summer holiday CD. And please do feel free to put it on. I don’t think I can take any more Van.”
“But we love Van Morrison,” Adam, Darius, and the boys protest.
“As do I,” she says, “but that’s the second time you’ve played the entirety of Moondance today,” she points out, waggling the CD until Adam takes it.
Smiling, he kisses her, just briefly, but enough to make the boys snigger and almost make me swoon, as I realize again just how far off this kind of casual intimacy we’d got before we discovered the machine.
But I also realize that now she’s given it to me, I’ve only got thirty-seven minutes remaining here, no more, but luckily only one thing left to do.
Jules heads up the garden, saying she’s going to fetch Nelly from Eva’s house. I set out for the living room, but Liam grabs me, still wanting to hang out.