'Who would want to live with us, man? Come on, get real. He has enough work to do: the academic stuff and his second book.'
'Do you think he will let us read it?'
'I don't know. I mean, I'll ask.'
Tom gazes past Dante to the carpark outside. 'I tell you, buddy, the other thing that's weird, is him and his bird liking our album. I mean he's an old guy. A philosopher.'
'So? He's flattered. His book was written fifteen years before we were born and we want to do a concept album on it.'
'Yeah, but it's rock music. Does he even know who the Stones are?'
'That's irrelevant. He knows we have a goal. A need to transcend all of this. That's what Banquet for the Damned is about. Our record will show it's still valid. Timeless. It can appeal to a man in his twenties today, or someone born in Eliot's generation.'
Tom nods. 'Yeah, and I'll tell you something. When the second record is released, if the critics write us off again, I'm off to London with a pistol in my belt. They fuckin' killed us.'
'They killed him too.'
'Did we waste our time?' he asks Tom at a motorway service station near Carlisle. Because now it's his turn for doubt. The closer they get to Scotland the more ludicrous the whole expedition begins to feel. It's choking and he can't keep it down.
Tom fiddles with the zip of his jeans, having just returned from the gents'. 'With what?'
'With the band.'
'Where did that come from?'
'Driving in the slow lane at fifty miles an hour, where the caravans overtake you. Gives a man a lot of time to think.'
'How's the wagon doing?'
'OK. Seventeen to the gallon and the bearing is holding out.'
Tom taps a cigarette into his hand from the red and white packet he keeps tucked under the sleeve of his T-shirt. He flicks the cigarette into the air with his thumb and then catches it between his teeth on the way down. He rolls it between his incisors before embracing the filter with his lips. 'Materially, it was a joke. Blowing our own money like that. Personally, it was a huge achievement. We're just ahead of our time.'
Dante smiles. After shuffling further up the Land Rover's bonnet, he gazes about the carpark, takes a long drag on his Marlboro and points at the surroundings. 'Doesn't this just get to you, though? I'm twenty-six and still in fancy dress. I don't have a pot to piss in. Look over there at that couple in the BMW. They're what, our age? She probably got that tan in the Maldives. Just look at them. Plenty of disposable income. Great jobs. Fucking home owners. Mate, we've got one mobile phone between us and it's been out of credit for two months.'
Tom shakes his head for the entire time Dante speaks. 'Man, I hate it when you talk like this.'
'But what if we never get anywhere, if this Scotland thing is a mistake, if the second album dies a death? We have nothing, we're nobody, we're mediocre, exactly what we've been trying to avoid.'
'Buddy, if that guy over there with the Beamer took one peek into our lives, he'd trade places in a flash.'
'Piss off,' Dante says and grins, secretly adoring the fact that he's kick-started Tom along the familiar path of reassurance he can't do without.
Tom slaps his thighs. 'We're on the road, baby! Shooting up to Scotland with a bag of pot, two guitars and a prayer. We've got edge. More edge than you can shake a stick at. Have we ever gone hungry, not had a smoke, or good company, and a few cool tunes?'
Laughing, Dante looks through the grimy Land Rover windscreen at the plastic bags containing every thing they own in the world. 'It's a mockery, man.'
Tom laughs. 'Now you mention it, let's just end it right here. Who in their right mind would drive this piece-of-shit four hundred miles to hang out with some old bloke they've never met? It's one long explosion from start to finish.'
'But it always sounds so rock'n'roll when you say it.'
'M90, M9, who gives a . . .'
'Tom, we've put about fifty miles on the clock, and that's about a grand's worth of fuel in