Chapter Text
December 1977 - March 1978
A month or so after Chicago Billy fell ill with what seemed like every hellish infection that could be discovered hovering in the ether of the greater California area. He hacked through the larger portion of November, a brutal, rasping cough that felt like a rib cartilage tearing away every second of every minute of every night. He struggled to drink soup, nibbled at dry crackers and sat silently wrapped in blankets, eyes drooping in the evening while Camila licked her forefinger and flicked her way slowly through photography magazines. It occurred to him that it was also foreign for her, this unrelenting silence and the unreturned glances. He slept poorly in the spare room, ostensibly to prevent passing on the illness. In reality, it was more an uncomfortable arrangement with little to do with sneezing. His thin sheet and pillow ended up soaked by the pre-dawn sweat and dreams when he woke from whatever shuteye he could grab. The dreams were terrible traumatic identikits, a rolling viewfinder of a kaleidoscope of horror and hope: repeated phrases, her face in the shower, her face in Chicago, her face in Boston. He had signed up for treatment the first week back at the same facility as his first attempt in ‘75, but the infection knocked that back and straight out of him. He couldn’t have drunk anything even if he wanted to. He didn’t speak to anyone other than Julia and Camila. Julia watched them warily, waiting for any conversation to break out above an affirmative murmur when dinner was discussed. By December he wasn’t coughing as badly but he felt weaker than he’d ever been in his life and he couldn’t shake the fucking thing for the life of him. His doctor prescribed him all sorts of pills but he doesn’t put the script in to get them, when he looks at the scrawl it feels like the most dangerous lyric he has ever read.
The following week, after Camila puts Julia to bed, she presents seemingly pleasant ultimatums to Billy, designed to test every ounce of patience in him. It's her map, the way out of this grand ennui that has turned them into passengers in their marriage. She has taken the month and considered her position in the relative calm after the storm and has come to the sad conclusion that she has little support left to give. He considers it for a minute, that she waited till he was at his weakest without drugs or drink or Daisy Jones, and feels his mouth go dry as if he did have them. He can’t lie to her anymore, it’s been cut and ripped out of him like some disease parked behind an important organ, so he tells her he can’t promise her anything anymore, but he can try, that’s all he can honestly do. He tells her for the millionth time that he loves her and wants them to be a family. Camila gazes at the man who had, countless times before, pledged self-improvement or sworn off certain vices. A realisation settles in her - self-convincing is a task out of reach. There's a point that tipped the scales the wrong way and they can't pinpoint it; it’s not the betrayals with others it’s more precisely a fundamental shift in who they are as people and the effect it could have on their daughter. It's cordial, sometimes cold and ruthlessly efficient. They agree to consider all options once he's entered treatment, but she knows. She knows . That night she says goodbye without him knowing when she climbs into the spare bed and puts her head softly on his chest, listening to the wheeze as he doesn’t stir. She leaves him alone and heads back to her bed before the light comes and writes herself a letter about her life with him that she seals and places carefully into her mirrored vanity. They eat breakfast and chat about an upcoming school community nativity play.
The cough has made him weak and he feels old, like some ancient bible you find in a motel, thumbed through to the New Testament and eventually discarded once the real entertainment starts in the room. He’s sitting on the swing chair on their porch on a cool December morning, watching Camila hang his sheets to catch the last of the fresh dry breeze when Teddy and Rod drive up the hill in a vintage sports car and park next to Julia’s discarded cherry bicycle. Camila straightens her dress and gives him a look as if to say, ‘You can make promises, but you can’t keep them.’ He feels the first creeping arms of shame at the joy of seeing his friends. He can almost lip-read them in the car, Rod asking if Teddy wants to go in. Billy can feel the hairs on his arms rise and he chokes back a dose of fear.
Something’s happened. Oh God.
Camila, always the host, greets them with pecks on both cheeks and tight, precise hugs. Billy clasps them both to his chest and bites down a cough as he does.
“Nice place,” Rod mutters, scrutinizing the two-story hideaway and lighting another cigarette on the dying embers of the last. “Never had you down as the Grizzly Adams type though.”
Camila guides them into the living room and they sit on multi-generational crochet throws cast over sturdy walnut settees. Everything in the house screams rustic as if a dive backwards in furniture will push them towards the same feelings they once had. She offers them instant coffee and when she’s out of earshot Teddy must know because he softly says, “Everything is cool,” and Billy breathes as deeply as his chest can handle. Teddy watches Billy’s shoulders slump and can see that he’ll never stop carrying that boulder up to bedlam on the hill.
“Uh, do you have a lawyer Billy?” Rod inquires, opening the briefcase and extracting a sheaf of papers. “Might be a stupid question ‘cause, you know, the band never fucking had one on retainer.”
Billy lights up an ill-advised cigarette, pushing the skip cap further up on his head. He doesn’t answer, instead hacking something up that feels like a lung.
Teddy can feel a headache start up again. “We’ve tried everything we can, son. Can’t put it off anymore though, we ran out of road.”
Rod starts neatly laying pages out on the coffee table. Camila floats back in with three cups of coffee.
“Thanks,” Rod says and sips at it immediately. “The short version is you and the rest of the band are about to be sued off the face of the planet.”
Billy picks up one of the sheets. It’s on expensive heavy paper, a ridiculous demand from a promoter in Milwaukee, laying out costs, figures, and potential damages to reputation. He can make out words and phrases that sound more like a government response to a threat of war. There are another ten to twenty pages at least, each one a broken tour date promise.
“There were another fifteen dates to go after……” Rod takes another sip. “And then the European dates in February. Most of those are fine, there's an insurance cutoff and the tickets aren't at box offices for those. You, uh, we never had insurance for cancelled shows though.”
Billy picks up the last page. LA. The homecoming show at Dodger Stadium that never happened. He almost folds when he sees that it should be tomorrow. Camila sits beside him on the arm of the chair. Teddy notices they haven’t looked at each other or touched each other. They’re miles away.
“How much do they want?” Billy queries. His voice is trembling.
“Well, it’s complicated. The reputation argument is difficult to judge and they all are asking for three to four times the take.” Rod looks to Teddy for some support. “But there’s the legal bills on top of that if you challenge.”
“It works out to be around three hundred thousand.” Teddy offers like he is asking someone to turn the record over.
Billy can’t focus. He covers his mouth with his hand. It’s a lot.
“Well, the last quarter royalty check was good.” It was. There were significantly more numbers than there had been in the last one. “Everybody will be able to raise their share against a year of that, loans or what have you,” he mumbles because it’s all he can do, and wonders for a minute if he’ll have to cover Graham. Fuck knows what they spent their money on. Their Mother’s house probably. Billy could remortgage or they could sell some publishing, there were always options. Painful, horrible options.
Rod and Teddy share a glance. “Uh, that’s each Billy. Estimate anyway.”
“Fuck.”
Camila is engaged in some sort of breathing exercise. “That seems fairly…….excessive,” she manages.
Rod flips the shades down onto the table, takes a deep breath, pinches the bridge of his nose and composes himself. “Do you know how much the tour was making?” He doesn’t wait for him to answer. “Averaged out the big shows two-fifty a night. Some were bigger. The spend was huge though. You didn’t clear enough to sort this out.” He gently taps his finger on the table and chuckles. “This is America. You don’t just get your money back when someone fucks you over, you get their lives as well.”
Billy was sitting spinning plates in his head, trying to not think about a drink. Teddy notices the trembling fingers.
“There’s no good way out of this,” Teddy states with a hint of resignation.
“Why are you here Teddy?” Billy queries in a tight voice.
“You’ve got limited options, son. I know it doesn’t feel good right now.”
“You could pay,” Rod suggests.
“Nobody has that kind of money lying about Rod. Fuck.”
Rod sparks another cigarette and drains the coffee. “You could declare bankruptcy but it would probably mean repossession. You don’t have time to transfer holdings or anything and they would put claims and holds on it all. You would also all have to do that.”
Camila groans at that and examines the cracks in the ceiling that are never getting filled. “This fucking band,” she murmurs.
“Or……you finish the tour,” Rod murmurs.
Billy feels the air get sucked out of the room. “You’re not serious.”
“I can’t believe you would even offer that," Camila exclaims. “It nearly killed them.”
“I don’t make the decisions,” Teddy says with more than a hint of anger. “Now I don’t judge any of you. You know that. But this isn’t just about you, your actions have fucking consequences, man. Rod has been dropped from everything in ‘78, why do you think he's here? He's in the book as well. The crew haven’t been paid for two months right before Christmas. The label has covered some legal bills but there are fucking pieces of paper everywhere claiming something and none of it is happy ever after.” He gets out of breath at the end and Billy notices he’s not mentioned himself. “I’m not telling you what to do, you can decide that. I just thought…….it would be nicer coming from us when everyone is this…fragile. The other option was ten suits turning up on Christmas day serving papers and fuck knows how everyone would take that.”
Billy scratches at a week’s growth to give himself something to do. “Are you taking your medicine?” he asks Teddy.
“I could kill half of LA for a fucking steak, a cigarette and a whiskey. Yeah, I’m taking the fucking pills.” He gives him a wry smile underneath the gruffness.
“Would you like to stay for dinner? I can make something healthy?” It’s a pleasant enough offer but the way Camila is looking at them when she says it makes it feel like it wouldn’t be that pleasant.
“No, thanks but we’ve got to speak to the rest of them. Warren is closest.”
“I’m the first?”
Teddy nods before he and Rod gather the papers and rise. Rod hands him a card.
“Speak to a lawyer and an accountant man. Call that number and let them know what you want to do. As soon as,” Rod instructs firmly.
Billy doesn’t take the card. Camila picks it up and rubs it between her thumb and forefinger. Billy eventually takes it from her and gets up to show them the way out. He walks out onto the porch and sniffs at the air.
“I would say I'm sorry but it won't change a thing. Let me speak to Graham, I dunno how much he stashed.”
Teddy nods once and Rod pipes up, “Glad to see you're doing OK man,” even though it's plain to see he isn't.
Julia can tell something is going on at dinner time. Her parents are talking to each other for one thing.
“I’ll speak to Graham when he arrives on Thursday.”
“OK.”
The cutlery clatters. “What else can I do?”
“Nothing.” A pause. “Absolutely nothing.”
“Cam.”
She gets up and scrapes the potatoes and peas from Julia’s plate into the wrong bin. Julia sits tense and uneasy. She had already briefly asked her Mother about why everything seemed different these days and not received an answer that made sense.
“Remember my parents get here tomorrow. I’ll pick them up. Can you make up the camp beds?”
Billy forces a smile at Julia. “Sure.”
Later when everyone is in bed he sits adding up figures in a small spiral pad, and his swimming eyes can see quite clearly there is no fucking way on God’s green earth he can come up with that kind of dough unless he starts laying golden eggs. He makes a list in a spidery hand.
NO
Everybody hates each other
Agreements can be reached to pay it off???
Graham and Karen (!!!)
I may kill the bass player
Won’t see Julia
Alone
Everyone won’t do it
Daisy Jones
YES
Julia and Cam wouldn’t be homeless
My mother wouldn’t be homeless
I wouldn’t be homeless
It wouldn’t be for long
No money
Daisy Jones
He falls asleep in the chair and when he wakes up the pad has been moved to the kitchen counter. He spends the day making up camp beds and half listening to Julia complaining that her friends open their presents on Christmas Eve. If he could only stop coughing for a minute he would feel sorry for her having such a fuck up of a Father.
*
Daisy hasn't had a visitor in the nearly nine weeks she’s been climbing the walls and isn't sure if the loneliness of that is worse than the state she was in when she arrived. So, when Sally, the receptionist with peroxide hair and a mysteriously strong tan in the coffin depth of Winter, pops her head around to say some people are here to see her, Daisy says it must be a mistake. When she gets to the meeting rooms, carpeted and whisper quiet, she sees an oddly deflated Teddy and Simone Jackson nervously biting at a nail and wonders if she's hallucinating the last stuff out, but Simone grabs her and she feels real. Teddy gives her a little smile and pats down his hair.
“Are you taking the pills?” He chuckles a little too much at that, nodding gently.
“How are you, sweetheart?” Simone asks with a smile that doesn’t quite hit her eyes. “If we could have visited you sooner we would have.”
Oh God, something’s happened.
“Fine. Is everything OK?” she asks, her tone unintentionally too needy, too worried for him and she blinks back a curse. One step forward.
“Everybody is alright Daisy,” Simone reassures her with a strained smile
Daisy swallows a little nervously and can feel their gaze, casting their eyes over her body, her hair sitting in a ragged badly tied bun and the clothes a half-size too big for her. The Doctor who ran the place ( “Call me Steve”) had one rule - he only wanted to speak to Margaret. Daisy was persona non-grata in the sessions. So she slipped into Margaret's skin again for an hour or two every couple of days and tried to pinpoint where Daisy may have gone wrong. It didn’t really work but Margaret was feeling a bit better about Margaret again. She certainly didn't think it would work going forward, but they were going to let her out before Christmas as long as she peed in a cup twice a week on demand and brought the samples in. It seemed like a fair trade.
“There's an issue. A, uh, problem we want you to be…..aware of,” Teddy admits reluctantly. She was the last to know, they wanted to make sure everyone was on the same page before they decided to rip it out of the book and scrunch it into the waste.
Well, that wasn't fucking terrifying. “Oh?” She tries to sound nonplussed but can hear the tiny tremor.
Teddy is trying to pull out the right words but there's no rabbit or a hat.
“The band didn't finish the dates,” Simone exhales and shuts her eyes as if bracing for impact. “Everybody is getting sued.
Daisy isn’t sure what any of it means when they start talking. “Wait, wait, wait. They can’t do that.”
Simone pats the back of her hair down. “They can. You were all agreeing to bigger gigs as it went on, remember?”
“Not really,” she replies truthfully. She’s beginning to wish the no-visitors policy had been enforced more rigorously.
“They’re going back out to finish it,” Teddy says quietly, like he's telling a long-term lover he's found someone else but, ‘ really, it's not you, it’s me.’ It feels like her fault. Daisy noticed the emphasis on his first word, like when the staff started talking about the words want and need when she got here. She crosses and uncrosses her legs, the enormity of it all washing over her. That the past weeks have been something approaching her very definition of hell on earth wasn’t just down to the lack of drugs. It was the confinement, you couldn’t go anywhere without a fucking pass and it was regimented like the dry version of the army. She could see how Billy had taken to it the first time, it was how he would have run the band if he could have. Billy. That name again. She wonders if there will be a day when it stops stinging.
She realises Simone is saying something. “....there was just no way to pull that cash together, so they agreed to do it and, well, it will cover you. They all agreed to that. I think that’s why they did it.”
“I don’t need fucking charity, Simone. It’s just as much my fault after all.”
Teddy frowns and Simone bites her lip. Daisy can see the outline of a cigarette case in Simone’s bag and can almost taste the tobacco on her tongue when her friend lifts it out and lights up. They’re not anti-cigarette here but it is mildly frowned upon.
“When do we go back out?”
“Whoa there,” says Simone. “You’re not going anywhere until you clear this place and even then going back on the road is not happening.”
Daisy sighs and her fingertips cover her mouth. “I’m due out next week. I won’t let them do it alone.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Teddy says, and they stare each other out. Teddy blinks first. “But when have you ever fucking listened to me anyway?”
Simone changes the subject and they talk about Christmas and how 1978 is going to be different. Daisy can tell she’s hoping that the idea will wash away like the need for drugs or Billy Dunne. She takes a smoke from the packet. Nobody says anything about it.
*
After a week of getting shit from every part of the world, and a sobering $100 overpriced two-hour session with an appropriately slick lawyer who looked everything over with a few ‘ uh-huh’ , pushed a couple of fingers back through his oiled hair and told him in no uncertain terms how fucked they all were, Billy had caved in. Graham took it like he took the day their dog Scraps got out and then ran in front of an ice truck when Billy showed him the litigation and their options. Naturally, Graham in his traditional distracted, dishevelled state somehow only had a thousand bucks in the bank, he hadn’t paid much attention to any of it so besotted had he been with Karen. There were cheques everywhere but a lot of it had gone in the house back home, lost in the foundations and the manicured lawns. Camila said she understood but he can see she knows it’s over. No matter if Daisy is involved or not, every tour has smashed his life into a million pieces and Camila has run out of glue trying to put their hearts back into some kind of shape. She promises Julia will always be there if he can stay off the dope and the booze because she knows threats about herself don’t work anyway, and she packs him his large case. He repeats his apologies a thousand times but none of it sounds like he is genuine anymore. He restrings his favourite guitar, checks the noisy pots and spends an hour trying out different plectrum widths rather than facing anything. He received a call from Rod with details of a clandestine meeting in a gaudy Hollywood hotel conference room in all of two days. He comes out in a cold sweat when Rod slips in that Daisy will be there. He hadn’t even considered that she would necessarily be there given that Graham had mentioned she was in treatment.
They're all sitting around brightly painted tables when he enters the room: the band, Rod, Teddy, and Simone who has decided that she will have two responsibilities in her life for January and February - one to be there every hour of every day for Daisy and two, to give Billy Dunne some of the worst fucking side eye death stares he’s ever received in his life. Naturally, to make him feel worse they all stop talking and even laughing and stare at him as he walks in. Graham gives him the weakest smile possible and Eddie and Simone don't even look at him after the first snide glance. Daisy does. Her eyes are shark dead, he hopes she's holding back because if he's taken away that amount of light then he doesn't think he can put up with this. He considers turning round and making a run for the ocean, pausing only to leave a neat pile of clothes on the sand, steering some boat to the nearest island, population soon to be one. Instead, he envisions his family panhandling, pulls a chair out and sits down a full five feet away from the rest of them, the remnants of the cough enough to pretend it’s for their collective benefit.
“Well, now we're all here, maybe we can work out how this will go,” Teddy suggests and Billy can sense the sadness inherent in it. Rod opens a binder and Billy wonders when he became this professional. Probably when he got his full name typed neatly into a paragraph up front and in bold in a multi-million dollar lawsuit.
“OK ladies and gentlemen, glad we could all make it.”
Rod starts to tally things up, writing small notes in the margins of the squared paper. He reels off the venues - two nights in Milwaukee, two nights in Minneapolis, two nights in Kansas City, Tulsa, Fort Worth and Tucson for a night each, one bizarre night in Vegas at some hotel and then it was two nights only in some theatre in deepest LA as the stadium was booked solid. Twenty-six days and they could burn the lawyers' letters in some pagan ceremony out in the woods. They just need to decide on transport and hospitality. What feels like an hour of terrible silence follows.
“Can the band get a minute alone please?” He had forgotten the sound of Daisy’s voice and it was like a fresh sea breeze slapping on his face. Simone looks like she would rather take part in some human sacrifice as long as there was a Dunne involved but Teddy and Rod drag her out before she can complain. They pull the door shut quietly behind them and all that's left are fragile egos, the biggest fucking band in America in 1977 and a ticking wall clock that's stuck at ten-fifteen. Billy wishes it was 1975 again. Nobody says anything.
“Well don't look at me,” Warren eventually mutters.
“We don't have much choice in this. If we did, we wouldn't be here.” Daisy looks up at the ceiling and brings her legs under the chair. “I can't go through this carrying baggage and all the shit.” She looks round at them all but nobody returns it. “We say our piece here, get it out and get on with it. It comes out here and we leave it here.”
She looks like someone has sucked the entire life out of her, Billy thinks before realising that would be him. No one responds to her. It's like an arbitration after a year-long violent workplace strike.
“Agreed?” She says, much louder and they all shift, nod and grumble assent. “Who's first?”
Karen sighs. “I want to be a musician and I want to play music preferably with you all but the stuff that comes with it is just too much now. We do this and we walk away. Maybe someday….” She glances at Graham who is tapping ash from a half-smoked cigarette repeatedly into an empty Coke bottle. “Maybe someday we can be rational about it all but all I want is to do is be professional, be kind and…get it over with.”
Graham goes to snap something but Warren throws his hands up and jumps in. “We've got gigs to play. I'm down for it just….lay off the fucking drama.”
Billy rests his elbows on his knees and doesn't look anywhere in particular.
“You’ve fucking ruined everything man.” Eddie takes the straight-up approach and Karen doesn't like it.
“Oh stop fucking moaning Eddie and take your own medicine.”
“Fuck you, Karen. It’s the goddamn truth.”
“Hey, don't speak to her like that man,” Graham bolts upright.
“I can take care of myself, Graham.”
“Enough.” Daisy again pulls them in. Billy realises they're terrified of pushing her over the edge again because they drop into line like children who have been told to wait till their father gets home. “Eddie, tighten it up and lose the personal shit.”
Eddie snorts at that and jabs a finger across the room. He looks close to tears. ”The fucker told me I was out of the band on stage in Chicago. Didn't you? What, can't you answer?”
They all turn to look at Billy but all he offers is an unfocused gaze back at no one in particular.
“You fucked up the first time, you fucked us over again the second time. You fucking ruined Camila’s life and then moved on to Daisy’s…”
“That's enough,” Daisy says softly. He can see how tight her hands are clasped and makes a feeble attempt not to think back to when they were wrapped around his neck and in his hair.
“We've all done things we shouldn't have done.” He speaks bluntly and stares straight back and with some satisfaction can see Eddie redden and settle down.
“Let’s just get through it the best we can,” Daisy interjects, before they end up brawling. She runs a hand through her hair and it straightens at the touch. “We don’t need to be friends, we don’t need to be enemies.” It’s simplistic and she knows he’ll hear the callback to that first day at Teddy’s, but she can’t think of anything else to say and it suddenly feels like she’s back inside.
“Can we fly?” Warren asks rubbing at his chest.
“Not according to Rod.”
“What if we all get a bus each?” Graham says.
“We’re trying to save money here Graham, a fleet of fucking buses would bankrupt the Stones,” Karen groans.
“Three buses then?”
Warren rubs at his chest. “I shouldn’t have eaten that burrito.”
“Two buses partitioned off,” Karen offers. “Strict areas. You want to party, you get off the bus and find your own way to the next place. I’m sure we could all do with taking it easy for a month.”
Nobody says anything. Daisy feels the kindness in Karen's idea and nobody else seems to have any idea what to do. “Ok we're settled then,” she declares unconvincingly, as if trying to trick herself. She gets up, grabs her bag and then her flared jeans swish past him. The others collect their cigarettes and magazines.
“Dai…” he attempts. It’s all he can do now, try. Try not to be the asshole that ruins her life, or anyone else for that matter.
“Nope,” she says quickly, softly, and it feels like some inscrutable deity has squeezed every artery in his body, so lightheaded and defeated he feels. He opens his mouth to taste the breeze she carries past him. He slumps back down with his elbow on his thigh, his other hand on his knee. Graham, ever anxious Graham, stands above him.
“Not now, Graham,” Billy mutters, his attention elsewhere.
Graham takes the hint after a minute of silence and wanders away, huffing as he goes. The door clicks shut and he's alone again.
*
Daisy and Simone stay in Teddy’s house, watching TV and trying to cook something that they can’t burn. Daisy feels an indelible guilt at pulling her friend away from her lover. The night before the first rehearsal, Simone finally broaches the subject by going all in.
“What are you going to do if you end up alone together?” she inquires
“Nothing. I’ll be fine. Besides, you’ll be there,” Daisy reassures. It was true, Simone was going above and beyond on this. It made Daisy feel very small.
“I don’t think you can just file that away Daisy. It was three months ago.”
Daisy can feel her skin itch at the very thought. “Simone, I’m good. I’ve got fucking mantras and safe words and all the techniques you can name.”
“If you say so,” Simone says unconvinced.
When he had walked into the room she had to fight down the old urges. She had fought silently and squeezed them down somewhere she would have to search for a while, beside her Mother and the rising tide of men who had got what they wanted and took a piece of her. The only difference was he had taken a massive piece but hadn't got what either had wanted other than a collection of songs that didn't seem capable of running out of steam anytime soon. He was tired-looking, and stick thin, like somebody was erasing him out of existence layer by layer. He didn’t look like the Billy Dunne she had fallen in love with, he was like a negative left in the photo album.
At night Daisy tosses and turns and tries to stop the dreams and the intrusive thoughts. It’s better in the daylight when you can be busy and brush things away. In the dark when all you can hear is the odd cab driving past and young people laughing on their way out, it’s impossible to not think backwards, replaying every moment you felt you fucked something up. The near past is an ocean, and shaking off regrets feels like an impossibility. She wonders if he’ll sound the same and if their voices will work like they did in the past. If the band can get over the fact that they all seem determined to cause each other insane levels of anger and pain.
The past.
She laughs at herself, thinking like it was decades ago. Six weeks back she was wrapped around him, trying to merge her very soul with his. The desperation of being wanted. The frenzy of need. The despair that it would never be enough. She finally sleeps at four having bitten down the urge for booze.
*
They had all agreed to two days of rehearsal, a hatchet stripped to the marrow set list with an extra ten minutes of solos to maintain the mandated stage time. Daisy will leave the stage halfway through for a couple of songs and they'll do Suzie Q or another old cover and something off the first album they can do in their sleep. The first day is dismal and terrifying in equal measure; the music is lifeless. The room Teddy has hired is carpeted too thick and the PA squeals every so often. The room gets smoky and the thermostat is broken so they freeze their asses off. Cracks have appeared in voices, Graham barely tries and Eddie seems to be deliberately heading back to first-draft status. Teddy sits in a director’s chair, hood up, sipping coffee and reading press kits of potential bands while they plod their way through the set. Billy thinks he would probably ask for his money back if he watched them.
“We need to do that again,” he says at the end of a truly dreadful ‘Please ’ where he had gone to the next chord and the band hadn’t followed, instead meandering their way into a shambles that represented freeform jazz. When he turned round Warren was laughing at something with Graham. “Warren, Graham, man, pay attention.”
Eddie says something under his breath.
“Play the right thing and maybe you can stop muttering and say it out loud,” Daisy smirks, glancing at him. Simone brings her hot water with lemon. She stands with a hand on the mic, she hasn’t put much effort into it so far, feeling her way back and forth. His voice had been like a little burst of electricity though, it made her legs go a little weak at the knees when he did that low growl thing. No Words was a butterfly wing fragile thing that almost made her stop breathing.
Karen is wound tight given that Graham seems inclined only towards snide looks and some pathetic remnant of trying to be the knight in shining armour every time he forgets to pretend to hate her. Daisy smiles at her. Rod pokes his head in an hour in and then ducks back out when he hears Eddie moaning about an amplifier. Teddy eventually gets up and tells them to get on with it. The fact he’s standing up staring at them and only four feet away makes them play better and Billy sings a bit louder which sets Daisy to compete, and suddenly there’s a little slit in the blackout blind and a bit of the light comes in. Teddy gives them a little clap after Regret Me and she smiles for real for the first time this Winter.
*
It takes them two and a half miserable days of broken-down buses and half-terrified gazes to reach Milwaukee. There’s a blizzard seven hours in that halts them in their tracks overnight. Even Warren starts grumbling and asks again why they couldn’t get flights. Rod very carefully and semi-politely describes the fact that not a single company would insure them so, in essence, they were broke as the day they started until they got through it. It was boring business jargon about escrow and statutory laws about some such shit but the reality was every bridge they had ever built had been River Kwai’d into the mid-80s. One bus has Teddy, Daisy, Simone and Graham, and the other has Eddie, Warren, Karen, Rod and Billy. The techs have driven ahead to set up a day in advance. It’s a disaster movie on wheels. Warren drops an entire bottle of Blue Stratos which smashes on a tabletop and stinks the place out, burning eyes and nostrils, so they suffer January nights with windows open. Billy ends up in a hat and gloves, and he sits sharing a thin blanket with Karen who is uncomfortable as hell next to him. She’s like a board nailed into place in a seat until he tells her to relax. They eventually break into the easygoing chat they used to be good at before she started ignoring his behaviour and he started ignoring her ignoring his behaviour. They avoid everything to do with Graham and Daisy and argue about music. Eddie chimes in on Billy’s side when he calls You Light Up My Life one of the worst fucking songs he’s ever heard. Two hours in and they’re compiling lists of greatest albums and singles, arguing and agreeing to shift Revolver up two slots to number seven.
Teddy is beginning to regret coming along to make sure they don’t do something even more stupid than splitting up. If they don’t fix it he’s fucked as well, not that he would tell them that. Older and practically retired or sidelined due to ill health, and boy did he fucking resent that. But this bus, fuck me . Simone is in a bad mood and Graham keeps fiddling with a radio that clearly doesn’t work. Daisy is reading a book but hasn’t got through a single page. On top of that, he had assumed they would be in hotels, not in bunks you could barely turn in. Never assume anything, he reminds himself as he tips his nightly pill into his hand.
*
The first gig of the tour is always the worst so they say. Albuquerque was the exception to the rule but Milwaukee confirms it. Billy snaps a string first song and the tech who used to work with them had gotten fucked off over not having money for his kid’s Christmas presents and hit the road so now it was some pimply dude fresh out of an engineering degree at Cal tech who it turns out is unable to restring a guitar.
The sound is terrible on stage and Eddie misreads the setlist, misses out on a song completely and starts playing Flip The Switch. He's mortified, which is the one saving grace for Billy. Karen is…well, Karen, but Graham is tighter than one of the drums Warren hits way too hard. They stumble through an hour and twenty apologetic minutes and are saved from total calamity by Daisy still being the best in the business and being able to charm six thousand kids with stage presence.
Teddy stands with a stoney expression at the side of the stage. He's never been that bothered by live music, being more at home in studios but he pulls them backstage and tears a few layers off them, mainly how unforgivable it is to be so half-assed as to be pathetic. Billy nods like one of those toy dogs in the back of a car and Daisy just hovers against a back wall. Karen points out that there's a way to go and she doesn't want to be associated with how bad that was.
The next night their egos finally kick in and they try like fuck. Billy’s throat aches and they all bashfully catch each other’s eyes with something akin to professional pride. He gets through two packs of Winstons a day but he stays clear of the hard stuff somehow.
*
Tulsa is when the shit hits the fan at the speed of sound. It's been raining all day, with pools of water everywhere on a wild Friday. There's talk of postponement but the crowd is there early, dead-eyed and and restless. The local support band are some heavy mob with Marshall stacks, power chords and lyrics mainly about women's asses. It's dismal fare. The promoter's nephew is allegedly the singer. The promoter himself, a man used to the finer things in life without knowing their worth, was the instigator of the whole litigation post-Chicago. Word was he was mobbed up but as Teddy noted drily, the mob didn't sue. Rod didn't like the guy from the correspondence and the insane demands.
There had already been seven ambulance visits to the stadium by six o'clock and the vibe was both hostile and ugly in equal measure. When the buses pull up there are a few cheers but there is also a fuck ton of kids with vacant faces just staring at them.
Billy endures a tense ten-minute phone call just to hear his daughter's voice as Camila advises him they're heading to Pittsburgh as her Mother has to go into hospital to get a biopsy and she wants to be with her. He takes the Alvarez number down on the back of a pack of matches and they both sigh at each other. He forgets how much he fucking loves her. Loved her. Whatever it was he felt for her. Julia tells him some kid who lives down the road hit her with a marble and he wonders at a world where kids get hit with marbles until he remembers pushing ten-year-old Graham across a road in a shopping trolley at rush hour.
Halfway through The River , Billy realises he's daydreaming and sees a girl in the front row, maybe fifteen, with too much makeup on a face that doesn't need it and a heart open for what only Daisy can give her. She turns away angrily from something and Billy can see the guy behind her smirk, a guy he's seen a lot of in his life. Guys who think they're funny. Guys who can't be fucked being reasonable human beings. Guys who thought they could get away with anything. The girl turns back and sings along and Billy can see the guy rub against her and he heads over to the wings, missing his vocal part. Daisy frowns and looks over at him in animated discussion with Rod and two of the security who look like they’re drunk. He's shaking his head and the security guys are laughing at him. Daisy and Simone are trading lines with eyebrows raised and aren’t prepared for what happens next.
The security guy tells him to fucking get on with it and laughs in Billy’s face. Billy can smell the beer and the stale smoke and he closes his eyes and counts to ten but he can't get past three.
Fuck this.
He turns back to the sea of bodies and sees the girl is clearly uncomfortable, the guy has his arms around her now and is rocking her side to side. Billy pulls the telecaster over his head, drops it and jumps eight feet down from the front of the stage without thinking how fucking sore it will be. He lands feet first and miraculously keeps his balance. There's a roar and a surge. Security scrambles toward him. He can hear the band falter. He gets to the barricade and sees the girl, she's not fifteen, she's barely thirteen and shouldn't be here on her own on a Friday night. He thinks of Daisy in ‘68 on the strip. He thinks of Julia trying to watch something she loves in a few years. The guy laughs at him as if he's in on this elaborate stagecraft, but there's an uneasiness as well, that he's getting singled out. Billy hits the barricade with an open palm.
“You. Fucker.” He points to him. Security is on them now and he turns to a big guy fresh from an O-Line somewhere with a lanyard who looks like he didn't sign up for this kind of shit. “Get him the fuck out of here now. And get her backstage to talk to Daisy.”
The crowd are bewildered and the band are staring at him like he's just turned into a TV evangelist. A security guard punts him back up onto the stage and he picks up the guitar again and hits it hard. The band pick it up again. He can feel them looking at him, thinking he's gone mad.
Before the last notes ring out he’s backstage and he heads into the designated clean green room while the rest fuck off to wherever, gladhanding the radio crews asking if he's gone insane. He's lost all ability to pretend to care now, and today was like the doomsday clock in his head. Rod is standing arguing with a slug in a flared sand-coloured safari suit. There are two menacing dudes with a bad attitude and a smirk on either side and a gaggle of photographers and hangers-on from the area.
“Bullshit.” Rod is as angry as he's ever seen him and is tapping his watch.
“You were ten fucking minutes under. I get the fucking purse,” the promoter blows smoke in the air and flaps a contract in Rod’s face.
“No. You don't.”
The Safari guy laughs in his face. People are doing that a lot recently and Billy cannot be fucked with it anymore. It's straight into the top ten of things that are really fucking him off this year and it is one cramped list.
“You're a shit two-cent road manager for a shit band who got lucky because they have a chick everybody wants to fuck and she can sing like a bird. We're withholding the money - legally. You got a problem, take us to court you dumb fuck.”
Billy wanders over and makes his new years resolution: Fuck. This.
“Is there a problem here Rod?”
Rod doesn't know the look in his eye or the tone in his voice, it's somewhere between ‘Bring on the chaos’ and ‘Let’s go jump out of a plane’. He would worry for his health but then he's been doing that since he signed on to deal with this bunch of madmen.
“No, just having a pleasant disagreement Billy. I will deal.”
“Next time you decide to have a go at the crowd, frontman, let us know in advance so we can let you get your ass kicked. A lot of people would pay extra to see that.”
“Fuck you.”
“Those two sweethearts up there on stage with you,” Safari growls at Billy. “They look bored shitless. Maybe we'll take your money, take them out and show them a good time. The boys will enjoy that. Maybe they will appreciate real men. We’ll feed 'em some of the good stuff.”
Billy laughs a real humourless laugh, grabs at his ribs as if doubled up and looks at Rod who rubs at his temples. Something has changed in Billy, the light seems to rise like a current blazing towards a bulb about to burst and before Rod can tell him to relax it's all caved in and gone bright like he's heading for the pearly gates and Billy smokes the guy right under the ribs with a fast gut punch. The cigar flies out of the guy's mouth and Billy can hear him go ‘ooof’ as he hits the deck on one knee before he starts retching. Billy follows it up by catching him under the arm and the guy collapses. He's a big guy but he goes down quickly.
Billy Dunne has thrown a punch at all of six people in his life and he's never been proud of it. The McGregor brothers, two blocks down from his house, gave Graham serious shit for a month until he had to intervene when his young brother had come home with a burst nose. A drunk guy in a bar who pawed at Camila and wouldn't leave them alone and the inevitable tension built up and up until he had no option but to smack him. Camila didn't talk to him for a week after that even though there was nothing he could do about it. Eddie and ‘the husband’ last year although that felt like a decade ago. And now this prick.
“What the fuck are you doing? ” Rod screeches as the security grabs them. Billy grapples with the bigger one who throws him through three feet of clear space and the foldable table with the paper cups full of water and juice that go everywhere. The roomful of hangers-on scatters. He hits the wall and he's reminded that fights are fucking sore, but one thing you can say about him, he’s wiry and isn't frightened of being hurt. He plants his head square on the guy's nose and kicks him in the balls with as much force as he can muster. He can hear Karen’s ludicrous British scream and footsteps running from next door. He hears Graham shout something and he's certain he can hear Daisy yell, so he turns to tell them to beat it but instead, he catches a bottle square in the temple and it all goes dull and by the time his head hits the floor he's out. The last thing he's aware of is someone shouting “Billy!”
*
The first thing that shocks him is the pain. His head feels like someone has just thrown it down a lane to pick up the big four. It's half-light in the room and he groans. A cold flannel is dabbed at his temple.
“Welcome back, killer.” Simone half-whispers as she wrings out a flannel and gently dabs it on his head again. “You gave us a fright.”
“Where am I?”
“The hospital. You remember the gig?” He nods but it's sore. “How do you feel?”
He rubs his eyes gently. “Fucking horrendous.”
“Yeah well, a bottle to the head will do that for you,” Simone remarks evenly.
“Where are we?”
He can make her out in the slight gloom. She leans back and crosses her legs. “Still in Tulsa. I told you. Maybe we should get the doctor.”
“No, leave it. Where is….” His mouth is dry so he takes a sip of water.
She doesn’t let him say the name. “They're on the bus. Left right after you decided to go all Ali on us. Teddy and Rod said that they can't cancel so the band are going on even if you can't.”
“Fuck that, it's my band,” he spits.
“Mmm.”
“So you pulled the short straw?”
“Nah, no straws involved. Teddy doesn’t want to be anywhere near hospitals anymore.”
“I get the feeling you don’t entirely like me, Simone.”
She smiles at that. “You wouldn’t be wrong. You hurt my friend. Badly.”
He wants to tell her what he feels, he wants to tell her that he’s been wrong and that his life is mistake after mistake. He wants to tell her that he loves Daisy but he can’t even admit that to himself.
“I know,” is all he can say.
“Do you?”
He gingerly touches the lump on his head which feels like a football. “I know ,” he asserts, more forcefully.
He signs himself out despite the protestations of a far too young looking Doctor and signs a few magazine covers at the nurse’s station. Simone books a hire car that she floors as soon as they hit the highway. An hour in and they’ve barely spoken and Billy has read the same Bob Dylan interview four times. Eventually, he puts the Rolling Stone away once he sees Jonah Berg’s name beside a review. He shuffles uncomfortably in his seat and shouts a loud “FUCK ME!” as the car hits a bump and his head grazes the plastic near the handrail.
“Sorry! Sorry!” Simone exclaims.
“It’s OK.”
“Was it sore?”
He shoots her a wild look as she bursts out laughing. “Yes. Yes, it was.”
“Well if you didn’t go around beating people up you maybe wouldn’t be here. With a sore head. With me,” Simone remarks.
“I get it,” he mutters.
“Why’d you hit him anyway?” She’s curious, he’d give her that.
“A variety of reasons.”
“Oh? Enlighten me.”
“He was talking shit about us and he was going to hold back the money. I had enough.”
“Talking shit. About you all.”
“Yeah.”
“Anybody in particular?”
Billy sighs. “What do you want from me, Simone?”
Simone takes a deep breath. “I want you to promise me you won’t hurt her anymore.”
“Well, whatever I try that's what seems to happen, and my promises are worth shit. You may have heard that from either my wife, my bandmates or Daisy. Take your pick.” He shifts them on to some form of safer ground and they discuss New York and his daughter's love of disco tunes.
*
Simone gets him to the Will Rogers Memorial Center in Fort Worth barely a half hour before they are due on stage, in dark wraparound cataract sunglasses swiped from the hospital and a large woolly hat trying to conceal his face. They all stop talking when he comes into the backstage area and pulls off his jacket. Rod peers over his glasses. “Let’s try not to drag us into any more criminal disrepute Mr Dunne. We’re now officially banned in Tulsa.” Billy can see the cut on Rod’s lip, right next to the cigarette. Teddy walks over and gives him a little clap on the shoulder. Graham and Warren bound over like puppies and start to restage the fight, critiquing his stance during the nuts kick. Daisy stands cursing at the fact she is trembling at him being back again, terrified that he was dead until Simone comes up behind her and squeezes her arm and she pulls herself back from such patheticness. He pulls at a cigarette and guzzles down a tepid coffee from a half-filled pot before making his way along the table, picking up and nibbling pieces of fruit and pastry and trying not to look at her. Rod has hired a few more burly-looking guys to make sure he has some muscle behind him when he isn’t strumming a guitar for eighty minutes minimum on stage every night.
The shower on the bus isn't working so he heads to the private area they have backstage with a change of clothing because he smells of hospital and bruised mediocrity and failure. Naturally, she's coming out as he's going in. They freeze. They haven’t really spoken without at least another six people in the room holding their breath.
Daisy isn't sure her heart can take it, he looks terrible, like everything he has waited years for has been rolled into a ball and pushed off a cliff in super slow motion.
“Don't do that again,” she manages.
“Well, you'll have to narrow that down.” At least she’s talking to him now. It feels like a tiny victory in a long-fought campaign of disaster.
“Don’t stop being you. Don't become someone else.”
He wants to tell her it's all he can do as he isn't good enough for either of them or anybody, he just breaks whatever he has, but Simone has stepped out and is calling for her, so she walks off and he goes into the shower, locks the door and almost scalds it away.
*
“Can I ask a question?” Karen queries, checking her watch a half-hour after the gig.
“Sure.” Daisy has a towel wrapped around her head and a cup of tea in hand. If they weren't heading to wherever she would have taken them all out to a restaurant.
“How come suddenly it's you, me and Simone on this bus in silence and they're all over there having a good time? It’s outrageous,” Karen remarks.
The buses are held up by a traffic accident backing everything up for a few miles. While the women sat sipping drinks and reading magazines on one bus, the sound of Exile on Main Street (a Dunne favourite voted number five in the bus charts) and high-volume arguments about the rules of some card game were emanating from the other. Billy seemed to have been welcomed back into the fold due to his mystifying caveman antics, although Daisy had spent an hour speaking to the girl he had pulled out of the crowd, getting the story about why it had all turned into some form of an amateur wrestling match with added authentic violence while Billy was wheeled away in an ambulance as Graham walked about in circles trying to work out how to tell his Mother and Camila that he was dead. Karen told him to stop being so fucking dramatic and that had burst into a fully formed ‘fuck you ’ catherine wheel of an argument.
“You can go if you want,” Daisy says easily.
“Fuck that, they’re insufferable,” Simone mutters.
“It’s not about that, it’s about us on one bus and them on the other. That was never the arrangement. I mean even Teddy is over there and he’s getting over a heart attack for fucks sake!” Karen is almost into helium-voiced anger at this point.
Daisy continues to paint her toenails and whistles the melody to Ruby Tuesday. Simone finishes the love letter to Bernie.
“OH COME ON,” Karen wails before realising they are winding her up mercilessly. Ten minutes later Simone bangs on the other bus door.
“No autographs,” Eddie shouts through the window without looking. “Raise a buck.”
“I’ll autograph your ass with my boot, how about that?” Daisy shouts back and the next minute Graham is scrambling to open the door. “Can I help you?”
“Move it Dunne or I’ll tell Rolling Stone you still have a teddy bear.”
There’s a cheer when they get on and Daisy can’t help but laugh at it all.
“Oh fuck me, what have we done to deserve this?” Warren laughs as he shuffles the cards.
“Boredom and a hint of malice. What’s the buy-in?”
“Oooh,” Teddy smiles, trying to hide a cigarette from Daisy and Simone. “This could be bad.”
“I bet they cheat,” Graham adds.
Billy is just sitting with his elbows on the table and a deadly bruise on the side of his head and is smiling at the ease of it all. Where the fuck did this go? How difficult was it not to be total assholes? He was even able to put up with Eddie.
“Ten bucks. Too steep for you?” Billy laughs.
“Well, we are getting sued and I need a new bag,” Daisy states evenly. She still looks fragile, like a bird with a broken wing, but bit by bit there’s something of her coming back, like some archaeologist with a small brush wiping away the dust and excavating an ancient site of worship. She thinks it’s because she doesn’t need to think about him. After all, he’s there. She doesn’t want to think about what happens in ten days when they pack everything up and stick a label on it all saying ‘Do not reopen under pain of death,’ because then he definitely won’t be there and that’s when the thoughts change. Instead, she pulls out fifty bucks from her pocket and dumps it on the table with a flourish. Teddy shifts up and somebody hands around a bag of peanuts. She notices Billy is sitting next to Graham who is drinking. He’s not looking at the beer because he can’t drag his eyes away from her.
Soul Survivor fades out and heralds the end of Exile. Karen leans across and flips through the pile of cassettes, before shouting ‘ A-ha!’ and hitting play on The Faces. They all laugh. This was Karen’s band, she had introduced them all to the music and they had all bought in and she played them incessantly. The fact Daisy knew them when they all first met, having seen the band in ‘72, was another bonus that forged them all.
Teddy groans at them while glancing at his cards. “Can we for one night stop playing music by white guys pretending to be black guys, please? Hold.”
“Amen,” laughs Simone. “Call.”
“Well Teddy,” Billy smirks, asking for two, “you produced half of it so technically it’s your fault.”
“Hear hear,” says Karen, trying to light a cigarette one-handed. “Raise whatever that blue chip is.”
“That’s five dollars.”
“Yeah, whatever President that is,” Karen says, re-lighting after the first failed attempt.
Daisy notices there are a few beers around but no drugs. Bless them, she thinks. They’re really fucking trying. She wonders again what it must be like for them to be able to pick and choose a drug or a bottle.
“Too rich for me. Your call Jonesy,” Rod manages to say with a bottle and a cigarette in his mouth.
“How do you play this again?”
They all groan and Warren throws a cushion at her. Twenty minutes later with a bundle of Warren’s chips in front of her, Karen starts singing along to ‘You Wear It Well’ and they all join in again. Daisy lifts her head and belts out the chorus.
*
Daisy has never been to Vegas. They're booked into one of the original mob hotels that sprung up in the late fifties and had a major overhaul in ‘73, transformed into some gaudy Egyptian-themed temple with gold everywhere and two-foot-deep carpets in their rooms. It’s an uneasy feeling, watching women in flamingo pink three-quarter-length pants, hair piled high on heads that shake back and forward when they struggle to walk. There’s a lot left in the ideology of the 1950s for these people to hang onto and, going by the sniffs and the looks in the lobby, they are not Daisy’s people. She has absolutely zero memory of agreeing to Vegas, it feels like something she wouldn’t do, but it was probably when Nicky was hanging off of her arm and other things were scraping the sides in the rearview mirror that made you take your eyes off of the road ahead.
Her bath isn’t working so she tries to call down but the line chirps some interference with another room and she has no interest in room 4707 and their giddy request for strawberries and whipped cream. She takes the elevator down to the lobby and when the door pings open, it sticks slightly and it takes her weight to pull it fully open. There’s a queue of briefcase-wielding middle-aged guys in tan plaid suits and hairlines oiled sparingly across foreheads that were raised per their egos. She decides to avoid the nauseatingly boring fifty-year-old pick-up lines that are being used on the girls behind the counter and instead wanders out and down the main strip. It’s bright in the afternoon and although Rod had said Vegas had been hit harder with some worldwide energy crisis, there are streams of primary-coloured cars zipping and turning across bright white lines. Every place has music blaring out of it and there are girls in high heels and hotpants trying to entice people into casinos and magic shows. Teddy claimed people were settling in here for years at a time, gig after gig after gig in the same place, but that sounds like absolute hell on earth to Daisy. It’s like being trapped between motels, gas stations, circuses and your most annoying relatives wandering about with paper cups full of quarters. Billboards scream that whatever they are attached to is OPEN!OPEN!OPEN! - During our $3,000,000 EXPANSION!!!
Free champagne in every Casino is a dangerous gift so she skirts past that at pace. Some giant plastic-looking palace surrounded by fountains advertises a show called ‘Hallelujah Hollywood.’ It’s all sand to one side, delirium to another and miles of road split in between.
She spots Billy by accident but it seems nothing is ever an accident with him, he’s peering through windows with both hands cupped around his eyes, shielding them from the glare and she only spots him because he’s the only person around here in leather. She stops involuntarily and keeps a distance, looking up as if she’s taking it all in while squeezing out a side eye to see what he’s doing. He heads into a shop so she moves up and sneaks a look in. He’s talking to a girl behind the counter who seems like a world champ at blowing bored juicy fruit bubbles at record levels of ferocity. The girl hands him over a big soft toy, a chimpanzee with a worryingly badly stitched smile and a flag that says ‘Vegas Baby!’ and he nods and hands her over a couple of bills that look like tens. She rolls it up in crimson red crepe paper and then into a little bag that covers it all.
Daisy realises she’s being an oddball stalker which is something she may have to spend another few weeks in no drug bootcamp trying to remove from her genetic makeup when it comes to this guy.
Juicy Fruit seems to finally realise who it is buying overpriced tat from her this weekday afternoon and she gets excited. He buys her off with two spare tickets from his back pocket and Daisy can hear the screech from twenty feet away. With that, he’s turned and headed away so Daisy hides behind the postcards that shout ‘Wish You Were Here.’ He strolls around the other corner with the bag under his arm and lights a cigarette in one swift move. He doesn’t appear to be in any great hurry, so she dallies behind, unsure why she’s doing it other than a consistent fascination with him and a curiosity about the appallingly cheap-looking monkey. He heads round to the squat shopping mall, holding a hand up to traffic and she sees him go into the post office. Like some sort of marionette with tangled strings she casually wanders in. In this week’s episode of ‘How shit is your luck, Daisy Jones?’ he’s already posted whatever it is and is on the way out so almost bumps straight into her.
“Daisy?” he says, clearly confused, enhancing her belief she could be a private eye.
“Oh, what are you doing here?” Put him on the back foot.
“Um, sending a toy to Julia. I do it in every town. She likes stuffed monkeys.” Well, that’s rather sweet, the bastard that he is. “Why, what are you doing here?” He looks over his sunglasses.
“Sending a postcard.”
“A postcard?”
“That’s what I said, yes.”
“Who to?”
Shit.
“To Sally. At the…facility I was in,” she lies with added fake sadness.
He reddens at that so she takes it as a win. “I’m glad you…” He starts but she cuts him off.
“Let’s not go over old wounds shall we?” she suggests, ending the topic.
He nods slowly at that. “Are you heading back?”
They walk back slowly, not saying much. He starts to laugh at some point and she swings her bag in front of her protectively and asks him what’s so funny.
“I was just imagining what Simone would say if she saw this,” he smirks.
“Are you scared of her?” she asks, intrigued.
“Yes.” It was true. He hasn’t been this scared of a woman since his mother found his stash of nudie magazines amongst a Monopoly set in ‘67. Who the fuck played Monopoly with only two players, one of whom was her 13-year-old youngest kid?
“It’s an image. She’s all heart.” The smile evaporates. “She should be in New York.”
“Yeah, she was saying.” He can hear the regret, it practically smashes out of her every second sentence like the jackpot coins for three bells along the strip. He sees a chapel with flaming neon above it and a young guy and girl run out laughing and kissing and he remembers his wedding day - smock shirt, denim and a cheap white dress. Everyone was drunk as lords by seven and the dread kicked in about then, the wild thrusting terror digging into him like roots of some weed impervious to the poison. So he kept drinking the poison until even that didn’t work and he went for the pesticides as well. He thinks of her marriage on some commune in the Aegean, forced away into some fake’s arms because he couldn’t keep his fucking mouth shut. Ending up in a shower skirting the horizon with him praying to whatever was out there. Praying to himself.
Stop thinking.
It’s taken a while but she feels looser in their company, like the little winding sewing machine bobbins are well-turned and can cope with the odd quick spin. Like this, like walking down the street with him. She had told him to go, he had gone and now he was back. They were all back, it was like some giant fucking magnet kept pulling them back.
“LA should be good,” he says quietly, expressing some optimism.
Good. Like anything this uncertain and unfocussed was good. “Yeah. Maybe,” she says with a hint of more uncertainty. Somebody screeches at the sound of bells in one of the buildings and then the sound of coins. “I’ve never been here before,” she admits with a grimace.
“Me neither. It’s a shithole,” he concurs with a laugh.
“It really is.”
“Graham fucking loves it.”
They laugh at that. This is what it should be, easy, nothing rushed, nothing pushed. Nothing hurtful. They spin back through the revolving doors and Daisy gets out at the fourth floor and he gives her a wave as he heads up to six fighting every urge in his bones to step off with her.
*
Rod tells them when they are riding through the country to LA that their album is outselling everything in Britain at a rate of five to one. Karen is more delighted at this than anything they've ever experienced and does a dance down the aisle. They're spending the travelling time mostly together now and Billy wonders if maybe he had just done this instead of being on his own then things would be different, but then he remembers the husband and the fact he felt that he owed it to everybody not to fuck it all up. He's also trying to choke down the recent eruption of jealousy he felt watching Daisy flirt and bat her eyelashes at pretty guys and helpers the last two days. He's always been so secure in himself that he's never felt anything like jealousy so he strikes it down to another new emotion she has brought out in him. He starts toying with some lyrics about it.
Daisy, meanwhile, is amazed at what a sober libido is like. It has roared back around the corner like a Ferrari on a test run and she thinks at the very least they should promote how wild you felt when everything was flushed out of your system. She finds herself talking to guys who maintain eye contact with a thought behind it that could be on one of the flashing billboards.
Not yet, she thinks. But it'll have to be fucking soon.
It got so bad she had to excuse herself from dinner the previous night because she was sure the young waiter kept deliberately bending over the table in front and it suddenly felt like the heating had been put on. She watches Billy scoot off to a phone box for his twice daily call at a pit stop roadside diner as she stands with her back to the bus in the shade. Simone is next to her, fanning herself after spending half of last night on the phone with Bernie convincing her to come out for the last shows which has put her in a better mood. California was hot even in February.
“Remind me never to tour on a bus again,” she says. “God, the smell .” She presses down on a miniature atomiser and a mist of something lavender covers her.
“Do you talk to Bernie every day?” Daisy asks suddenly.
Simone is more than a little confused by the question but follows Daisy’s gaze to the phone box.
“Well, Bernie isn't my daughter.”
“Wife, though.”
“Mmmm.”
“What?”
Simone pats her hand against the bus and checks her watch. “Nothing.”
“What does mmmmm mean? You can't just mmmm someone and leave it at that.”
Simone doesn't answer.
“Come on or I’ll tell Bernie about that time you…”
“Enough with the blackmail Jones. He's talking to his kid, she's a bit mixed up just now.”
Daisy must have a confused face because Simone delivers her long patented sigh and rolls her eyes. “Teddy told me he's all but moved out. Killer time for a kid to grow up.”
The monkeys suddenly make sense. Daisy doesn't need to press for more.
“He made me stop on the way to Fort Worth to call her,” Simone breathes out. “When I asked him what he thought she would be like when she grew up he said, ‘ That depends where Camila decides to take her.’ ”
Daisy nods at that, forming the tiny questions into one bigger one.
“You're not completely different from the band, you know. He just thinks that everything he touches he breaks. The band, his marriage. Then it was you.” She looks at Daisy with tenderness. “I'm not telling you what to do, Daisy, but you all need some space and time to work out what the fuck is going on in your lives. You don't need to be in each other's pockets every hour of the day.”
“I know,” she says, but it feels like a sinkhole is opening up.
*
Teddy heads home for sleep when they hit LA while Ellemar, still grumbling and moaning behind their backs but smiling assassins in front, has spent big on a homecoming party and press day, so they haul ass into another hotel conference room. Billy is hooked to a payphone in the lobby seething at something so they line up without him and the cameras click and people shout, “This way Daisy,” and she tries to focus on who said it. Billy wanders back in with a BOAC bag over his shoulder and a scowl on his face. He puts his hand on Daisy’s back as he moves past to the end of the line of the band and she really thinks she's going to need to do something about that feeling that trails up her legs when someone touches her. Rod starts calling out names and the press guys flip their pads.
“Can I ask why the tour was delayed? There were a lot of rumours.”
“I had the flu,” Billy says.
“Why did you run offstage in Chicago?”
“Have you ever had the flu?” There are a couple of laughs, gentle things but they mask the desire for a story.
“What's it like knowing you're the biggest band in the world right now?”
“A little freaky,” Graham says.
“What we always wanted,” Karen says at almost the same time and they glare at each other.
“How was Vegas?”
“I won fifty bucks,” says Warren.
“I saw a tiger,” Eddie claims.
“Would you consider a residency there?”
Daisy and Billy both say no at the same time.
“Mark Willis, Spinout Magazine. Just wondering how you go about topping this album's success. And where are you in the process?”
“It's a good question,” Billy rubs at his chin. “You know we've not been together long as a band, most bands have to work harder on the road to get here. When you get this success there is a new pressure, a….” He struggles for the words.
“Vortex,” Daisy offers.
“Yeah. A vortex of pressure. You think about repeating it or getting better. I'm not sure that's healthy so I don't think we should think about topping anything. Daisy and I will continue writing. That's for certain. We’ll see what comes out of that.”
He can't look at her and he wonders how obvious it is.
“Is it Europe next?”
“We just do what we’re told, Mark.”
“I’ve always wanted to see Sweden,” says Eddie.
“I wonder if you guys could quash a couple of rumours.”
Billy isn't paying attention anymore but recognises the voice and breathes in a curse. Berg. Of fucking course. He looks across at Daisy who tells him to cool it with her eyes.
“I'm not sure Jonah, is Rolling Stone a gossip mag now?” Daisy has a habit of making you wince at certain words, they're like a razor whizzing past something it shouldn't. Berg has a nervous giggle and a few of the press share glances. He ploughs on regardless.
“Not sure if you’ve seen the latest Inquiry magazine?”
“What?”
“Five-page spread on Daisy Jones. I was just wondering where your husband is?”
Billy can’t be fucked with this guy. “We’re not here to discuss personal lives. You know where the door is if you don’t have a question about the music.”
They all tense at that. Rod does his famous routine that moves the situation on and they break into a casual mingle. Daisy sees Billy make a beeline for Berg and whisper something in his ear. Jonah puts down the bowl of olives, wipes his fingers down his trousers and smiles a crooked smile. He says, “OK,” and checks his watch as if he has somewhere to be before leaving.
*
It's three hours to the gig and Daisy has managed to get lost in the labyrinth backstage area. Doors are badly labelled and exits are just guesses in the dark. She's peeking through the dark glass when she hears the acoustic guitars chime away down a corridor and the sound of Billy Dunne singing. A thin harmony joins him and she smiles when she realises it's Graham. She pulls up just to listen to them sing Hank Williams. When they stop she feels warmth at their laughter. She should really move, but she can't.
“You played that at New Year's once.”
“Did I?”
“Yeah. Mom asked why you had to play something so depressing.”
More laughter.
“Well, Mom always preferred her Patsy Cline records.” Billy starts playing I Fall To Pieces, but he plays it slower, sadder than it could possibly be.
‘ You want me to act like we've never kissed
You want me to forget ( To forget )
Pretend we've never met ( Never met )
And I've tried and I've tried but I haven't yet
You walk by and I fall to pieces’
He falters and coughs and Daisy thinks she really should be getting the fuck out of Dodge but she can’t move. She can’t.
“I'm sorry Billy.”
“Graham man you don't have anything to be sorry for. You know that.”
“I should have said something.”
“It wouldn't have mattered.”
“What's it like?
Silence.
“What?”
“Your….problems.”
Silence.
“Remember the first time we went up to the Canyon? It was night and there was that unlit windy road?”
“Yeah. We nearly hit the sports car and went off the road.”
“It's like that. You can see in front of you and that's fine but you don't know where the road goes or if you're actually going to be on the road.”
“And it's always going to be like that?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
“Well, I'm here Billy. Whatever happens. And you've got Julia, even if Camila takes her back to Pittsburgh.”
She walks backwards on her tiptoes at that.
*
The kids still love them and there are a whole lot of celebrities and singers in the crowd. Billy sees Linda Ronstadt hugging Daisy backstage and Jackson Browne seems to be flirting with Karen to Graham's obvious annoyance. One of the lighting techs hands Billy a freezing cold bottle of beer and time stops. He can feel the shape of it, the glass moulded to the shape of his hand. His friend. The constant since he was sixteen. Alcohol. He can taste it. He feels a hand on his back and another hand takes the beer. Eddie gives him a nod and moves off, downing the bottle. Teddy corners him while he's mopping at his forehead with a pale green towel.
“Nicely done,” Teddy says.
“Yeah. Warren is still dragging on Let Me Down Easy. Eddie is a bar behind in the chorus.”
“Son, nobody cares but you.”
Billy smiles but there's nothing behind it.
“What are you going to do?” Teddy asks quietly.
“I don't know,” he says, visibly distressed. He presses the towel into his face. “I'm always going to need a band. Daisy won't. I don't know if I can do it without her.”
“You did it before.”
“Not as well.”
Teddy tuts and shrugs his shoulders. “If you could do anything after this, what would you do?”
He thinks for a moment. “I'd like to hear her sing. Every day.”
*
It’s thinned out a half hour later. The hangers on are off somewhere to continue the party but the band are taking their time clearing things out. Billy empties his BOAC bag and splits the scribbled lyrics into trash or keep. He chain smokes and doesn’t look at the band. Simone and Bernie are the first to come up to him.
“We’re going, Billy.”
He straightens and gives her the best smile he can.
“This is Bernie.”
He nods and says “Hi.”
“Take care of yourself, Billy. That kid of yours needs you.”
He can’t speak. He’s not the sentimental type but this stings. Simone can see it closing in on him so she gives him a short, sharp hug and he notices something is shining in her eyes as well.
“Thanks for helping out Simone. You didn’t need to do that.”
“That’s what friends are for. Look, Daisy is coming with us so if you want to say something….”
He shakes his head, gulps it down and heads back into the main dressing room area. Eddie and Warren are horsing around while Karen is animatedly talking to Daisy and Lisa, who are both giggling gently. Rod is on the phone to someone and Billy wonders again how it is possible to spend so much time with someone and know fuck all about them. Eddie sparks a zippo and Graham is looking at the floor.
He turns, flips the bag over his shoulder, and once he pushes through the stage door the beautiful LA night takes him again. He meanders along the road and tries to flag a cab to take him somewhere. Anywhere.
“Billy.”
He turns. It’s her. Standing there in a layer of cardigans, jeans and high brown boots. Her stage make-up is scraped off and her skin is fresh like the air tonight.
“Daisy.”
“Is that it? Without even a ‘See you later?’”
“What else is there?” He spies Simone behind the wheel parked up on the pavement. He moves towards Daisy like someone has thrown him a lifejacket, but stops halfway. The water is deadly.
“Nothing,” she says and claps her hands to her thighs. He can sense she may start crying, there’s that tremor in her voice. ”I’m tired of saying goodbye to people.” She looks him square in the eye. “What are you going to do?”
He grinds a cigarette out under his heel. “I’m going home.”
She nods.
“I need to start packing. Then I need to work out where Julia is going to be and I’ll take it from there. You?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.”
He walks up to her and reaches deep into his pocket, pulls out his favourite pen, the one that took the notes for everything she made better on the first album, and places it in her palm. “Write me something good,” he smiles and traces a thumb down her cheek, catching the light drip of a tear. She puts the pen in her pocket, smiles at him and turns back towards the car, climbing in and not casting a glance back as they roar off. He stands there for five minutes until he’s broken out of it by a horn beeping.
*
Teddy picks him up and drives him to Omertà, some new hip restaurant that the new kids on the scene were making their own. Even though it’s late, Teddy orders a steak, medium rare. Billy asks for something light. Teddy lights up once the menus are removed.
“You’re breaking just about every rule the doctor set you know.”
“You’re lecturing me about rules, Dunne? You sure about that?”
The waitress brings Teddy a whiskey and Billy pours himself some water.
“I got a proposition for you.”
“Oh?”
“I need a hand. In the studio. There’s a band…” He waves a hand as if to say ‘details.’
“I don’t know, Teddy.”
“It’s just a thought. I could really do with it, though. I can’t do the hours anymore, man. Getting old.”
Billy can see a cold dark day when Teddy Price isn’t here to save his ass anymore. They eat while Teddy tells him about what it was like in 1967 in LA. Billy takes care of the bill, and Teddy drops him home, watching him wave goodbye on the dark porch and unlock the door. Nobody home, he thinks.
Teddy drives back through downtown LA and the foothills of the mountains to Bel-Air, to his own house, where he finds Daisy strumming a guitar and writing in a pale red book, a slow song major to minor and back again.
‘Life goes on, just like you knew it must
It was me and then it was the two of us’