7
JEM
Sara comeswith us to the party.Great.Hopefully, some other guy will pick up the slack once Sara realises she was a mistake.
We bundle the group into a couple of taxis and arrive at the old Victorian terraced house in Mile End, where the guys in the band live. Ruby leaves the club with the dickhead I saw pushing her about the other night and they follow us in his car. If she doesn’t live with the guys, does she live with him?
Not my problem.
Déjà vuhits me when I step into the narrow hallway of the house. In the tatty lounge room, a strong smell of cigarettes from the finished beer bottles full of fag ends, and the unmistakable scent of weed emanates through the smoky room. Bryn is aware too and glances at me. Test of my strength right here.
Sara hangs onto my arm; Jem Jones is her prize for tonight. There are a few single guys here checking the chicks out. If I’m lucky, and leave her long enough, she might hook up with one of them.
Will appears and slings his arm around my shoulder in an over-familiar way.
“Jem! Wow! Love that you came here!”
I peel his arm off and he holds his hands up in apology. I’m not into people touching me and tonight I’m smothered.
“Yeah, okay.” I bump my rear onto the dilapidated green velour sofa and question my logic in coming here. Bryn flops besides me and rests his feet on the scratched wooden coffee table. “Time warp, huh?” he asks, as we watch the kids around.
“I feel fucking old, man.”
“Y’ know, I love this,” says Bryn. “They don’t give a shit who we are.”
A small part of me hates that. What if Steve’s right? What if Blue Phoenix out of the spotlight equals Blue Phoenix disappearing down the drain? Here I am creator of some of the biggest songs in recent rock history and nobody cares—apart from Sara attached to my lap.
“Bryn, get me a beer,” I say.
“Nice try.”
“One?”
“I’ll get you a beer,” pipes up Sara.
“Don’t you dare,” growls Bryn.
Sara doesn’t look fazed. “Okay. I’ll get myself one.” She detaches herself and wanders out of the room.
“Why the hell is she still hanging around you?” Bryn asks.
“She’s a friend of the band’s, I think. Not sure, we didn’t talk much.”
“Mmm. Guess that’s a bit tricky when she’s got her mouth full.”
I huff as Bryn smirks. “Whatever, man.”
Before anyone comes over to me, or Sara returns, I head to the back of the lounge room and squeeze through the tiny kitchen full of bodies towards the garden. Outside, white plastic chairs rest on the cracked pavers and I pull one into the shadows to sit on, trying to figure out why I came here tonight.
The cool summer evening chills my bare arms and I curse the fact I left my leather jacket back at the venue. Will the jacket be there if I go back or is the item now the prized possession of a souvenir hunter? The smell of cigarette smoke drifts toward me from a couple in the corner of the garden. Out of all my addictions, this one proves the hardest to kick.
I stare at my combat boots, obsessing about asking for a smoke when the door to the house opens and someone slams it closed. Ruby flops herself against the wall of the house and drags a pack of cigarettes from her pocket.
“Can you move?” I ask her.
She peers through the darkness and pauses in her lighting of the cigarette. “Jem?”
“Yeah. Can you move away? You’re tempting me.”