Chapter Two
The day didn’t start well. Ian St. James sprawled in his hotel room, cheek glued to the floor in dried vomit. One eye fluttered open, revealing a red bull’s eye. St. James emitted a low, animal noise. He lifted his head with a disturbing ripping sound, then set it back down again. Any movement caused his equilibrium to froth like the North Atlantic.
St. James waited a few minutes and tried again. Ever so slowly he sat with both hands on the floor to steady himself and watched the universe revolve around him. The floor felt like a Tilt-a-Whirl. Lovely.
The room was barely large enough to swing a dead cat. Twenty-four CZKs a night. Oh snap! Where the fuck is my wallet? St. James slapped his pockets and filthy fringed leather jacket until he located the emaciated folder in an inside pocket. He took it out and looked inside. He had 84 CZKs plus the forty bob hidden in his belt.
He’d come to Prague for a gig at the Zipper Club, five nights guaranteed, 100 CZK a night. When the proprietor didn’t answer his phone, St. James took a taxi to the Zipper Club. Its blackened embers were sealed off from the sidewalk by hurricane fencing and plywood sheets. A busker, guitar case open at his feet, sang “All Along the Watchtower” in an adenoidal voice.
St. James dropped a note into the case and the busker nodded.
“When’d the club burn down?” St. James asked.
“Last night, buddy,” the man replied in a Czech accent. “They think he did it for the insurance.” The busker peered hard at St. James for a second, then shrugged and picked up where he’d left off.
Good.
Last thing St. James needed, some moon-eyed fan still hanging on any contribution to pop music he might have made in years past. Ian St. James was a pimple on the ass of pop music. No, less than that. He was that most dismal of creatures, the failed scion of a famous parent, in this case Oaian St. James, drummer for the late, unlamented, but indisputably great and destined to be a source of controversy forever, satanic metal band Banshees.
It was probably for the best. He could have used the money, but he had no desire to be gawked at by the same people who watched Wetten, dass…? His first record had been critically well received. Even sold a few. The second record was a disaster, and St. James now had the same appeal as a train wreck or Gloria Gaynor. People came to watch him make a fool of himself, cameras hovering.
He returned to the boarding house, which smelled of kraut.
“Fuck me,” St. James muttered to the dismal room. Uh oh, here come the heaves. He couldn’t even remember last night, but the feeling of waking up in the morning—or afternoon as the case may be—hammered and reeling from drinking, smoking, or snorting was not unfamiliar. Jayzus, he felt like shit! He hadn’t felt this bad in weeks.
He needed to piss, throw up, and drink two gallons of water. The miserable room had no bath. There was a communal bath down the hall. It may as well have been at the summit of K1.
“Attitude,” St. James snarled, feeling phlegm in his throat the consistency of Silly Putty.
Why were his knuckles bruised and bloody?
First step, get your skinny arse up off the floor. St. James got to one knee, head reeling, stomach flexing. Breathe in, he told himself. Breathe out. It was all about the breath control, or so a cute Belgian yoga instructor had once told him before leaving him for a football player. She had been lovely. Couldn’t seem to hold onto anyone or anything these days.
Next: place your hand atop the cheap pressboard bureau and pray it can support your weight. Now slowly, slowly, let us rise to our feet like proper English gentlemen … and VOILA! We are upright!
St. James’ stomach spun in its grave. Wild-eyed, he looked around the room, settling on the cheap stamped metal wastebasket with white daisies on a rusted black background. He lurched forward and heaved, stomach tossing up a thin acidic gruel that was all that was left after last night’s expectorations. St. James went down on his knees. “As I lay me down to sleep,” he said. Another eight count. Gradually, he got the spasms under control.
Water. He needed water.
A rude, obnoxious pounding shook the ancient wooden door with metronomic regularity followed by the fishwife’s shriek. “Past noon, Mr. St. James! Past noon! You stay, you pay!”
At times like these St. James wished Czechoslovakia had remained beneath the German boot. It would serve them right. First, they sucker him to Prague with a bogus gig, now this.
“I know you are in there, Mr. St. James! If you do not pay me, I am going to the police. You stay, you pay!”
St. James sat on the creaking bed with his legs splayed staring at the door. She’d given him the stink eye when he’d taken the room yesterday, but she liked the color of his money. Unfortunately, he’d blown his wad last night at—what was the name of that club? Who knew? Prague was suddenly filled with clubs blasting disco, jazz, rap, and rock. Seemed like half the Bright Young Things in England were here opening up web design or coffee shops.
The pounding continued a moment longer, resonating within his skull. St. James heard the woman shuffling away, muttering in Czech. He was in for it now. There wasn’t a doubt in St. James’ mind that she’d gone to get the cops. It had been St. James’ experience that police had little use for transients and disrespected the rock community.
Using the steel bed frame, St. James hauled himself to his feet like a castaway climbing a rope ladder. He wobbled and nearly fell, one hand shooting out to grab the ancient bureau. For a second, like an optical illusion, he caught a glimpse of himself in the opaque mirror: a tall drink of water with long, unkempt hair, nose like a tomahawk, face of a hard drug user, wearing a tattered leather jacket from which much of the fringe was missing.
“I look like a child molester,” St. James muttered, throwing his few belongings into his backpack. It hit him in the gut, and he had to sit on the bed, all the air going out of him like a deflating balloon. He was thirty-eight years old, living out of a knapsack. His only means of support were the royalties he received from his debut record which had come out eighteen years ago, plus the odd gig from clubs that liked to feature tribute bands.
Slipping into his backpack and grabbing his guitar case, St. James made a pit stop in the bathroom, where a man the shape and texture of a black bear squatted on the toilet grunting atonally and working up a storm. What kind of person puts the crapper right out in the open like that?
The man smiled cheerfully as St. James entered.
“Good morning!” he boomed in heavily accented English. St. James wished he would disappear.
“Good morning,” St. James croaked, walking to the other toilet and unzipping his trou, then hovering over the bowl. Come on, kidneys, come on. Drinking will do that to you. His old man had been a world-class drunk, and so was he. St. James inherited Oaian’s taste for liquor and his facility with musical instruments. That was about it. The sum total of Oaian’s fortune.
Come on old thing. Dribble for Ian.
He tried holding his breath, then he tried breathing through his mouth.
The squatter thundered, releasing a stench from hell.
Leave, damn it!
“Having trouble?” the bear asked, wiping his ass.
St. James’ head felt like a cement mixer. His mouth felt like a drain. He was in serious danger of dropping into the urinal. He made a gesture as if to say it’s nothing. Would the man never pull up his pants and leave? The bear finally stood, buckled his belt and shuffled to one of three stained porcelain sinks where he performed noisy ablutions, cleaning his hairy armpits and splashing water all over. He finally concluded his toilet and prepared to depart.
“Well, goodbye!” he said.
“Goodbye,” St. James said through gritted teeth, waiting. Almost reluctantly, the fellow left. Eventually St. James’ bladder did its work. St. James did his best to wash his hands and face using paper towels made from recycled railroad timbers. Cupping one hand, he bent his head down to the faucet and slurped water. He left the bath and took the narrow stairs three flights down to street level, exiting the building just as the landlady approached with a cop in tow.
Thrusting one hand in his jacket pocket, St. James booked. The hand encountered a piece of paper. St. James hot-stepped it a block and turned the corner onto Uhelny Street where an outdoor cafe emitted the overwhelming odor of fresh coffee. He looked up at the clock on the bank across the street. It was one-thirty. He checked his pockets. Just enough cash for coffee and a pastry.
He waited for the frenzied traffic to die down. They all drove like madmen. He hot-footed across the street and slid onto one of the black wrought iron chairs chained to the wrought iron table which was chained to a wrought iron fence set in concrete. He set his guitar case on the chair next to him and slipped out of his backpack. A blue/black pigeon strutted his way with a hopeful gleam in its eye.
His hand found the piece of paper, and he drew it out. He was about to crumple it up and throw it away when he realized it might provide a clue as to where he’d been last night. Not that it was important. Strictly as a clinical exercise, the “Last Days of Ian St. James” and all that. He unfolded the sheet. It was a flyer for some place called the Phoenix Club; the date was for today. There was a graphic of a hand making the horned demon sign. The flyer said:
FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY
LEGENDARY ROCKERS
THE BANSHEES!
And then it hit him like a bunker buster. The Banshees died in 1975. He’d been two years old.