Chapter One
RIVER
River Jackson didn’t care that the words Glastonbury and Piña Colada hardly belonged in the same paragraph. He had to go back. Instinct told him he had unfinished business. Besides which, he had a duty to a certain Mexican bottle, one which thankfully wasn’t yet adorning the bar. Since the day he realised he’d stopped raising either eyebrow at his mother for “becoming a goddess,” logic was an alien notion anyway.
It was something he was at least half questioning now though. His matted pony tail reeked of sticky Kahlua. Blake could have elected to slam dunk his head into a puddle of something cheaper. But River’s balaclava-attired attacker had reached for the three closest bottles to hand, sliding them along the length of the fully stocked shelf as if it were his xylophone finale in a requiem. Splinters of glass flew across River’s business opportunity, until they became a broken mirror, glistening their danger warning to a thirty-four-year-old who’d gotten way too ahead of himself. The Cointreau doused the freshly laid wooden floor, the Peach Schnapps’ heady scent coated the tables and chairs, and the Kahlua re-painted the bar’s counter creamy beige – alongside River’s twisted head, right shoulder and part of his torso.
He knew it was Blake as soon as the daylight dissolved the silhouette that had entered the bar. It was all in the eyes; the left green, the right hazel. Too tempestuously thick for his own good, nothing much had changed there. Neither had Lee’s role as passive observer; River detected that teenage nervousness was still part of his physique, emanating like a leaky tap he’d never got round to fixing. Lee shuffled from foot to foot in front of the bay window’s enormous blind – which he’d made a cack-handed attempt to pull over their intrusion; a stray tuft of flame red peeped from beneath the seam of his head gear.
“You’re lucky you picked on me,” said River, swallowing hard to stifle a fit of ill-timed giggles, despite the fact nothing about this was the modern definition of hilarious. “Don’t give up the day jobs just yet though. Probably best you don’t start raiding the bank—”
“Zip it, fucker,” said Blake. He yanked off his head gear and stooped to look River in the eye, excited spittle flying in all directions, “who the frick do you think you are waltzing back into town as if you own the joint?”
River felt his old school friend’s wrath anew through the thin black gloves, whose role of safeguarding identity revealing fingerprints, was equally laughable. Blake pressed River’s face harder onto the counter; further acknowledgement of his fresh burst of fury. Then all remained hauntingly calm, until he decided to spit his disdain at River’s forehead, before pulling himself away as if he’d come to his senses.
“You’re not wanted here. Isn’t that right, mate?” he said across the hazy bar to Lee’s ghostly shape.
The outline nodded in agreement and continued to transfer its weight from foot to foot.
River hoped the height of the action was over but didn’t dare move a fraction. His teenage years with Blake were reminder enough of his tendency to come back with a sudden and unexpected vengeance.
“Hey, beanpole,” said Blake, seemingly forgetful of their attempt at anonymity, and reminding River why his former friend was so shit at Cluedo as a kid. “Well? Don’t just stand there like a lanky moron, help me get rid of the evidence.” He beckoned Lee’s willowy figure over from the doorway.
Poor Lee, as much as he’d grown up, he’d obviously never managed to outgrow his moniker.
“Look, there’s no need, guys,” said River, somehow barely moving his lips for fear of reprisal. “Just leave it to me, yeah? It’s not like I’d totally finished decorating anyway. It’s cool, really. Least I can do—”
“And did I ask for your opinion?” Blake stood with authority, turning a triangular piece of glass over and over between comic book villain fingers as if contemplating its edges’ many uses. “It’s just that last time I made that mistake; last time I called you because I thought you were a mate… someone who gave a crap about my life when it was dangling by a thread… you were thousands of miles away on a stage in California.” He sniffed hard and tossed the glass behind him. A tinkle of destruction pierced the air.
“I know. I’ve been rubbish. Going to make up for lost time now though. It’s one of the reasons I’m back.”
“Did you hear that?” said Blake to his sidekick who was busying himself kicking shards of glass into a pile. “He thinks he can swan off with his F list entourage, jet around the world making millions with his two-a-penny voice, drummer and guitarist, forget about us until the novelty wears off, and then we’ll be waiting here with open arms.”
“Don’t work like that,” Lee finally found his voice although his gaze remained fixed to the drama decorating the floor.
“The kid’s right for once in his life; it doesn’t work like that,” said Blake with a menacing smile as he rubbed his hands together. “’Cos not only have you flounced back to Glastonbury, but you’ve also been dense enough to buy the pub where my old man, my very own flesh and blood, used to enjoy his one and only pleasure in life after my bitch of a mother did the dirty on him.”
Shit, how could River have forgotten the importance of the skittles? It was the life force of men of a certain era and ilk. Not just here but in towns dotted all over Somerset. No, he genuinely hadn't thought any of this through.
River’s heart pounded like it was backstage at his last gig in Guadalajara all over again. He knew Blake’s body language intimately. Too many high school science lessons exchanging secret looks before one or the other of them unleashed the stink bomb behind a gaggle of girls, ‘accidentally’ dropped the box of iron filings, or pestered Miss Willoughby with questions of ‘genuine concern’ about the correct application of condoms and all things reproductive.
“Remember that game we used to play at Tor Fair every September?”
“Um,” River began and then cleared his throat to buy some guessing time. “Hook the duck, the darts?”
Damn, why did he have to go and mention yet another pub game whose tradition was about as far removed from a cocktail bar as it got?
“River,” said Blake with the addition of several tuts and an unexpected kick to his private parts. “How could you forget?”
River yelped. It had been at least a decade since anybody had attacked him there (notwithstanding the ending of last year’s fling with the Parisian model). He breathed in deeply, whistling through clenched teeth, hoping to avoid a delayed reaction of effeminate cries.
“I’m uh, I’m sure it’ll come back to me… if you uh… if you jog my memory.”
“Is there anything you remember about your roots, Jackson? Or were there too many drugs on the road?” Blake sniffed at his empty palm in a pitiful attempt to imitate a coke head. “You’re just a traitor through and through. Back here to bleed the place dry selling Sex on the Beach to eighteen-year-olds now forty is on your horizon and the paparazzi are making a beeline for the younger models. Unless of course, you’d been smart enough to do the indie band shebang like HRH Chris Martin, which you most definitely haven’t.” He shook his greying head with more than a striking resemblance of Miss Willoughby on detention duty.
“No, man, no, it’s nothing like that. I promise.” He hissed inwardly at the mere mention of the paps, the local rag was already on his case, and he was praying he’d got away without attracting the lens of the tabloids. “It’s me, the real me. The River you know and love. And I’m back for good this time. I’ve turned my back on all that fame and fake crap. It’s meaningless, especially the money.”
“See, that, my man, is where you are very much mistaken.” Blake lowered his posture again so River was in no doubt he had something very serious to say – and that he really was sporting an interesting cluster of badger streaks. “You are not back for good.” He grabbed roughly at the day-old stubble on River’s chin, “neither are you wanted here,” and then released it.
He spat again at the floor, an impediment which appeared to be carrying him from the football field as a teenager and on into adult life. River held his breath wondering what was coming next as Blake began to pace around the bar, stopping here and there to mimic somebody admiring the portraits in an art gallery. One glove was removed now and he dipped his index finger into the Schnapps’ sticky river, swirling it thoughtfully as if it were the blood of his prey. He lifted it to his lips, the alcohol re-painting an evil grin.
“Peachy… but then you’d know all about that… because you weren’t just satisfied with obliterating a skittles team—”
“But I couldn’t stop The Ring O’Bells being sold, that wasn’t my fault. If I hadn’t bought it, somebody else would—”
“Shut it,” Blake yelled. “I’m doing the talking,” he continued softly.
“Now where was I? Oh yes, peaches… ripe juicy peaches, none more so than Alice’s rump.” He paused to laugh. Lee’s echo joined in a few seconds later, the double entendre catching on.
River’s pulse quickened as he too connected the dots.
“A derriere so pert and delicious, that not only did you steal an old man’s pastime, but you swiped my woman while you were at it too—”
“But that was years ago, man… a… a… one night stand,” River gulped. “It meant nothing… to either of us.”
“Nothing?” Blake cackled. “The love of my life meant nothing?”
He was a tornado of rage again. His face contorted with revenge as he reached for the chair behind him, slamming it into the wall. The legs buckled, debris scattered. Even Lee looked terrified this time.
The haunting silence returned, offering up a brief interlude until Blake decided he was ready to speak.
“Oh, incidentally,” he said, stooping once more to look deep into the pools of River’s eyes, “the fairground game I was referring to is called the Whack-a-Mole.”
River nodded. It seemed all words were probably best left to Blake now.
“It’s a game where this annoying little pillock,” he paused, and River sensed the direction of Blake’s thoughts before his attacker had chance to process them for himself, “hand me that bottle, Lee…” Blake pointed to a shelf that River had mistakenly thought was concealed to the customer’s side of the bar.
Holy shit: Not the Mexican elixir.
But Lee was a soldier, under sergeant’s command. His hands moved along the line of bottles, feeling for the most suitable weapon.
River tore his eyes away, praying silently that Lee would pick out any other bottle.
“As I was saying,” said Blake, “the annoying son of a bitch mole pokes its head up… uninvited,” he ran his hand along River’s jawline in a bizarre caress, “and so… what you do to this irritating excuse for a creature,” he beckoned to Lee who passed him a bottle in perfectly choreographed timing, “is you whack it back down into the hole again as hard as you can with a mallet.”
“Yeah, I re—”
But Blake’s fingertip welded River’s lips firmly together.
“Just a polite warning, buddy: you’re the mole, I’m the mallet; the steel mallet,” he raised the bottle high and smashed it, mercifully, against the counter as opposed to the skull, “and I will come back again and again with a vengeance to destroy this place, and its proprietor,” he paused and closed his eyes as if deep in thought, searching for his next words, “ex pop star or not, until I drive them to the brink of insanity and back to the city of angels where they belong.”