Walk on the Wild Side - By Karl Edward Wagner Page 0,69
your Beverly Hills cops around—when she wasn’t doing telly adverts for adult nappies and denture fixatives. Jim Morrison would be flogging a chain of vegetarian restaurants. Jimi Hendrix would be doing a golden oldies tour with Otis Redding. Elvis would be playing to fat old cunts in Las Vegas casinos. Buddy Holly would be selling used cars in Chattanooga. How many pictures of fat and fading fifty-year-old farts did you see in there, Ryan? Want to buy the latest Paul McCartney album?”
Chase decided that he would leave Nemo Skagg with the rest of the Tennant’s, which should keep him well through the night. “So, then. What you’re saying is that it’s best to die young, before your fans find someone new. So long, fame; I’ve had you. Not much future in it for you, is there, being a dead star?”
“Sometimes there’s no future in being a live one, after you’ve lost it.”
Chase, who had begun to grow impatient with Nemo Skagg, again changed his assessment of the man. There was more in this wreckage than a drunken has-been bitterly railing against the enduring fame of better musicians. Chase decided to pop another Tennent’s and listen.
“You said you’re an artist, right? Paint portraits?”
“Well, I rather like to think of them as something more than that...”
“And you reckon you’re quite good at it?”
“Some critics think so.”
“Right, then. What happens when the day comes and they say you aren’t all that good, that your best work is behind you, that whatever it was you had once, you’ve lost it now? What happens when you come to realize they’ve got it right? When you know you’ve lost the spark forever, and all that’s left is to go through the motions? Reckon you’ll be well pleased with yourself, painting portraits of pompous old geezers to hang in their executive board rooms?”
“I hardly think it will come to that.” Chase was somewhat testy.
“No more than I did. No one ever does. You reckon that once you get to the top, you’ll stay on top. Maybe that happens for a few, but not for most of us. Sometimes the fans start to notice first; sometimes you do. You tell yourself that the fans are fickle, but after a while you know inside that it’s you what’s past it. Then you start to crumble. Then you start to envy the ones what went out on top: they’re your moths in amber, held in time and in memory forever unchanging.”
The churchyard was filling with shadows, and Chase expected the sexton would soon be locking the gates. Dead leaves of late summer were softly rustling down upon the headstones. The scent of roses managed to pervade the still air.
“Look.” Chase was not the sort who liked touching, but he gave a quick pat to the other man’s shoulder. “We all go through low periods; we all have our slumps. That’s why they invented comebacks. You can still get it back together.”
“Nothing to put back together, mate. Don’t you get it? At one time I had it. Now I don’t.”
“But you can get help...”
“That’s the worst part, mate. It would be so good just to blame it all on the drugs and the booze. Tell yourself you can get back on your feet; few months in some trendy clinic, then you’re back on tour promoting that smash new album. Only that’s not the way it is. The drugs and the booze comes after you somehow know you’ve lost it. To kill the pain.”
Nemo Skagg sucked his Tennent’s dry and tossed the can at the nearest dustbin. He missed, and the can rattled hollowly along the walkway.
“Each one of us has only so much—so much of his best—that he can give. Some of us have more than the rest of us. Doesn’t matter. Once the best of you is gone, there’s no more you can give. You’re like a punch-drunk boxer hoping for the bell before you land hard on your arse. It’s over for you. No matter how much you want it. No matter how hard you try.
“There’s only so much inside you that’s positively the best. When that’s gone, you might as well be dead. And knowing that you’ve lost it—that’s the cruelest death of all.”
Ryan Chase sighed uncomfortably and noticed that they had somehow consumed all the cans of lager, that he was drunker than he liked to be, and that it was growing dark. Compounding his mistakes, he asked, “Is there someplace I can drop you off? I’m