Chapter 11

This second set I am matched with my mate Artie. He has his Max Roache guise on. We are recreating the set we did at Columbia University on June 4^th 2000.

If you weren’t there you should see it on Unitube, to get what we are at. Max is one of the only drummers who can keep up with my ideas, as my piano playing is percussion personified. As the drummer Sunny Murray pointed out when we were in Copenhagen. ‘I’ll follow you’, he said. I pity that poor piano after I’ve knocked it about a bit. We play non stop for 3 hours, my body is wreck but my soul is on another plain. We have played ourselves into a state of trance. I have to be helped from the stool and the audience is going mad. Max has a beam on his face as wide as 52 keys.

I flop onto the many cushioned sofa backstage and a poem starts to form. Yeh, Cecil writes poetry, has done since schooldays. The chip is still turned up to full so I am every part of him, poetry too. Cecil is the not the most elegant dresser, favouring a beani hat over a fedora, and he sometimes looks like a fugitive from Sing Sing, but don’t be fooled. His mind is full of the quest to knowledge, from an early age as interested in the written word as a music stave.

When I am recovered from the recital, I look for my tormentors Doil and Veronica L., but they seem to have gone off looking for more trouble. Max is chewing the drumming fat with the local percussionist, hands moving in paradiddles. I give him the goodbye wave and press the return button. The ecstasy lasts for the usual millisec. And I am back in the white room. The redhead with the ass leads me to a chair and attaches a metal crown to my head from which spring many wires. Somewhere in the back a buzzer beeps.

‘All in one piece. No bits left floating about a black hole.’

‘Have you ever had a Veronica Lake look-a-like in here?’

‘Why?’

‘I met her on this gig and would like to meet her socially so to speak.’

‘She didn’t come through this station, but for a consideration I could search the company records. We have about 20.000 stations scattered around the Uni. Lets say 10 thou a station. You may get lucky and I’ll find her after a couple of goes. But it may not be her. Veronica Lake is very popular as party get up.’

‘10 thou, forget it I don’t want to find her that badly. And another question is this you as you are, or just a disguise for the work?’

She wiggles her ass. ‘It’s all me Cutie, but not for you. O.K. all done. Go!

He pushes me out in to the green reception area. Standing on the edge of the travellator is Big V. Yes Veronica herself. She glows whitely, white skin, white hair white dress, clinging white dress, with appropriately a big V at the front showing milky white breast, and a slit up to the thigh. The only colour is her blood red lips, which she parts showing pearly teeth. I have a thought. What if when she smiles her teeth are another colour. Black say. Now that would be something. It would kill the effect stone dead. But I am entrapped, mesmorised by this shining creature.

That red head lied to me. V must have passed through her station. How else could she be here. But that is a naïf thought. She is an operative of the IGBI. They will almost certainly have there own MWD units

‘Is this just coincidence or are you following me?’

‘It’s you I want Honey, I have a soft spot for piano players. Nice strong sensitive  hands.’