Let's Start Again

The key meeting took place secretly in his private Washington residence, about a year before.

Bob sat opposite and was permitted to smoke, while he (who must remain nameless) kept on beating about the bush.

“Sure Bob, it's a new millennium,” he continued in his raspy, Southern tones, “but we all know how things are really going. We're losing our edge, so many nightmares waiting to happen - protesters are just the tip of the iceberg. So we need new angles, to look things over fresh. Solid ideas with legs, brains... We need balls. It's absolutely imperative, there's simply no choice. We have to wipe the slate clean...”

He drifted off somewhere with his warrior eyes, sipping his Bourbon, parching his lips strangely. Bob stubbed one out.

“You know you can trust me.”

“Sure,” he looked Bob over frankly, almost affectionately. “You've never let me down, you play right. So let's get to it. The key thing these days is drama - as high as we can ratchet it. Epic threats to the nation, wham and bham, you know. That's what I'm talking. To divert attention completely, shake everything up like a snow glass, throw all those bastards up into our headlights and smash 'em down like flies. It can all be forgot – the WTO, globalization - all that bullshit nonsense. Business will get the kick it's due, we hand the politicians the ammunition, the weaponry. A clean sweep, that's what it is. Simple...”

He drifted off somewhere again, sweat glistening like oily dew all over him. Bob lit one up.

“You know you can trust me.” repeated Bob.

And suddenly he was all there, eyes steeled like the tiger of old.

“OK Bob. There's some evil in it, no denying. Some inevitable collateral damage. But let's not dwell. It's necessary. And honesty is important too - it's nothing less than what a million bastards out there would do right now if they had half a chance. But they're stupid bastards the lot of them. Impotent. You and I both know that. That always is and has been the problem. We're just too damn slick for 'em. But that's the beauty of this, Bob, because luck is with us - this time we've got one with enough brains, enough balls, enough of his own bucks. He just needs the wind blowing in his direction. He can be our man, Bob, if we're smart. Hell, he'd thank us if he could, we'll be his fairy godmothers. He'll even eat his own shit. We'll hold his hand when he goes to take a dump. Then we'll take him out with the trash. It could be so beautiful, Bob, believe me.”

Bob's stomach rumbled – it was burger night.

“All right.”

Another silent moment.

And finally, he spoke of it.

“Ever heard of a bastard named Bin Laden?”

“I've heard. Crazy murdering bearded bastard in a turban. You wanna play ball with him?”

“Sure. He'll do the pitching and the batting. We'll just phone the weather man. That'll be your job Bob. But don't worry - this guy brings his own balls. ”

*****

Perhaps truly fateful words resonate across dimensions, or perhaps time itself reverberates with great tides of change, but for whatever reason some months later two musicians on the other side of the Atlantic found themselves halting abruptly in their practice.

For several odd moments they shivered silently in the dusty air of the rehearsal studio, inexplicably pensive.

“Christ, that really was a bit shabby,” the guitarist broke the silence. “Let's start again. Coffee? I'll make it.”

“Good idea.” said the drummer (they both sang).

The guitarist put his guitar down, stood up to make the coffee.

“Sugar?”

“I don't take sugar. You know that.”

“Milk?”

“A smidgen – you know that too...”

“Just testing...”

He put the kettle on, scooped coffee, slouched whilst waiting for it to boil.

“You should change things up once in a while,” he drummed the table loudly with his fingertips. “Sugar and spice and all that, you know? It might help if we all shook everything up once in a while.”

“What has the way I take my coffee got to do with our music? Whatever you're putting in yours, I don't want it. ”

“I'm just saying. We're getting boring.”

“This is boring. This conversation. And that kettle's boiled. Just get on with it.”

“All right, all right,” he made the coffee. “But you know I think you might have hit something there. Boring. Yes. In fact, I'd go far as to say this conversation is indicative of our general state of being...”

“Oh please don't go all intellectual on me...”

“...of this whole enterprise we call our “band”. We do the same things, repeatedly. We rehash, re-stir, revisit the same old haunts in an endless mission... I don't know... to reanimate our souls I guess. We both know how difficult that's becoming. Perhaps, instead of reanimating, we should try animating.”

He paused for effect, stirring the coffee mugs.

“I know you know what I mean.” he said.

“Really? How does animation work? Fill me in a little would you.”

“I don't know exactly, of course I don't.”

He handed him a mug of steaming coffee.

“But it would be a little different. It would be something we've never tried. Some small yet fundamental change that could totally invigorate us.”

“A brilliantly vague idea. What do you suggest, besides sugar?”

“I don't know,” he sighed, sipped.

“But we definitely need something to sweeten our act.”

*****

Then of course the day itself arrived some weeks later: the birds had flown, the weather was perfect. Things would start again.

Of course Christine (along with many others) didn't yet know, and in any case had other things on her mind. In fact, at this precise moment she was hardly 'Christine' at all, but rather the being known as 'Miss' who, having induced Class 10-J to bury their heads deep in exercises, was taking the opportunity to hand out the freshly marked project work.

On her way round she stopped at the girl called Millie's desk. Millie was one of those students whose work tended to cause despair for the unfortunate Miss or Sir tasked with marking it.

Miss dangled the offending piece for Millie to see, steeling herself.

“Millie, I will not accept this. You can do so much better than this! You're going to have to start again.”

“But Miss!”

“No. You have failed to listen to my instructions, you have rushed the work and it is substandard because of it. This contributes significantly towards your final assessment. Let's start again and do it properly please. This is a new term.“

Miss removed the work from view, storing it in her pink folder.

“But I worked really hard on it!” pleaded the girl, looking, thought Miss, as if she too were in utter despair.

“No Millie. You need to work smart, not just hard. You have not completed the assignment as I asked you to.”

“Please Miss, don't make me do it again. Please!”

“No – I'm sorry. I really couldn't in good conscience give this work any more than an F. Come on, you can have until next week, that's quite a few more days...”

“But there's science and history and maths and... I don't have enough time!”

“And there's netball, and shopping, and boys... I know all about it. Make time Millie, make time. Let's just start again – you've already studied the material. I'm sorry...”

“Oh I hate you Miss.”

“I won't hear another word on it.”

Miss was done – she turned, strolling away as calmly as she could.

“You're not my best teacher any more, Miss. You're just like the rest of them, do you know that Miss?”

*****

So far immune to TV, Christine reluctantly met David for coffee straight after school, though he would have much rather at his or her place.

She looked a little stressed, he had to admit, but fuck it, so was he.

“Come on,” he continued their conversation pretty much where it had stalled the last time, “haven't you had enough of this? We're destroying each other. I mean, where are we going like this? Let's start again. Please. We've got to start again, or we're finished.”

Christine crossed her arms, remained silent, trying to recapture her true self as she looked away to the leaf flustered afternoon outside.

“OK.” he kept on “Just let me think. Let me think. There's got to be a way. I love you...”

She sighed, shaking her head.

“Come on,” he kept on, “think back. You remember how it was when we got together don't you?”

“Honestly, I don't.”

“Yes you do. I know you do. Tell me where we first met.”

“I don't want to.”

“OK. All right. Let me do it then. There was a gig... where was it? The Pig and Whistle, yes of course! The old Pig and Whistle...” he spoke reverently. “You were dressed all fifties vintage, polka dots, red lips, eye liner, pig tails. I was all clean shaven, Doc Martins, pony-tail. You were a little chubby back then too... so cute, so sexy. I was thin as sticks. We were such go-getters! Come on, you remember!”

She sighed, afraid to look at him.

“You're the one who's self-destructing,” she whispered.

*****

And so David rushed home that afternoon with his head in a blaze, fumbling into the drinks cabinet even before he'd removed his jacket. Alone and angry, he spilled the bottle over the half written letters.

“Nothing is as planned! Nothing!”

He shoved the letters to one side of his desk, pouring the first glass neat, deep, golden, knocking it back.

“Where'd it all go so wrong? If only there was more time.... a new millennium... 30 years old... For Christ's sake!”

The raw whisky hotness stung his mouth beautifully.

“And what time is there now to change? Your early twenties. Your teens. Those are the times... choosing, preparing, studying... taking time to learn, to figure things out. No such luxury now... pay the rent... pay the bills... no-one's going to want me! I'm a failure... that's why I'm loosing her... and who the hell's going to help me?!”

He sat and drank and poured another glass (adding a little tap water from the jug this time).

“I'd need a miracle! I need time! But no time! Just work. Need to stop, change things. But no money. Living day to day. No time to stop, change things. So tiring, working under a bunch of pricks. No skills, brainpower... sweet talking bullshitters fucking me up the arse! But I'm better than them, Christ, I could run that place – their success relies on keeping people like me down. Christ, it could be so much better...”

He poured another glass (dropping in water), sat, took rapid sips.

“I'll never change. I've missed out – don't have the right qualifications, the right connections,the right background, right personality, hair, dress sense, the right hobbies... everything about me is wrong! And that's never going to change! Never! Because I am what I am.”

He poured another glass (straight), emptied the bottle, sat, drank it down.

“I am pain personified.”

He sighed. The bottle looked very empty now that it was empty. So did the glass.

He sat, feeling empty himself, and sighed again. September winds ruffled the curtains.

As ever the TV sat in the corner, tempting him with it's false escapes.

“Fucking TV! Fucking world!”

*****

By evening of course very few in the world didn't know.

In the Pig and Whistle nobody really noticed the band, their new act. The guitarist strummed, the drummer drummed, they sang new harmonies, but everyone was transfixed by the news, the footage projecting itself from every television screen.

Images rolled endlessly; colours spectacular; destruction anatomised; explosions; collisions; epic topplings; the slaying of global icons. Hearts stopped to look and see, electrified with the talk of war. Blood ran high with the rush of history - the day's date seemed to repeat endlessly in peoples minds. 'On this day,' the thinking seemed to go,'On this day, September 11 2001, in this place, this time. Here we are. Here will we anchor our memories. We will never forget.' There was even a little majesty to the whole thing.

“This is what the word 'guttural' means,” thought Christine, disgusted, sat with her friends. David wasn't there, wasn't even invited to the old Pig and Whistle. Fuck David, she thought. Christine was fed up, just wanted to let her hair down for a change.

But the clips rolled on and on endlessly, intruding. Nobody could look away – little people like ants jumping from windows, little people screaming and running from falling buildings, little people talking hard, stern, ferocious words of death, revenge.

“Christ,” thought Christine.

The band started another tune. A girl climbed up onto the bar top and started dancing wildly – nobody seemed to care or even notice.

“What's going to happen now?” Christine asked her friend who always knew things.

“Oh,” she replied as if waking from a dream, “they're going to go mad for a while, then they're going to realise what an opportunity this really is and start everything again. I mean go after all those people they've always wanted to get at...”

“Who do you mean?”

But the moment Christine finished the question her mobile started buzzing on the table-top. She scrambled to turn it off.

“Christine you have dumped him haven't you?” her friend looked disappointed. “That's what you need to do. Just do it, honestly.”

Christine was going to nod in agreement but then the girl dancing on the bar top caught her attention again. A guy was touching her in full view, his hand sliding over her legs, her eyes closed, her young face shining with a fierce smile.

“That's how to really let yourself go...” thought Christine, a little enviously.

Only then did she realise who it was, that it was that annoying student from 10-J, Millie, all dressed up, tarted up.

“Christ. The little slapper...”

“Christine!” her friend kept on. “Please, tell me you'll dump him!”

Christine downed the rest of her gin and tonic.

There were only really two ways she could play any of it, she knew.

In a blink she decided: it was her life and she didn't give a shit.