Chapter 3
The House of Jones was a squat that Jonas had inherited when his roommates were arrested. He’d only been in the squat for a week when all three of the people who had set up the location had been busted with a variety of illegal substances on their persons. Jonas had recently moved into the squat so he could drop down to part-time at the music store and focus on getting his DJ career on its feet. He’d been living in a flat with very little tolerance for noise, and doing all his work while wearing headphones just didn’t cut it. A good mix was meant to be felt from the toes up. Jonas couldn’t feel his music through headphones.
There were a million DJs in Shoreditch, but the more time Jonas spent at his tables, the more he was certain that he had something different to offer the scene. Besides, he’d managed to be offered a manager position at Sweet Pipes, and that was simply not on. If Jonas continued on his current path, he was going to end up a junior executive somewhere. He was closing in on thirty and needed to take a leap. He’d spent entirely too many years working around flatmates and job schedules.
He DJed as Jones. People who knew him often thought the posters were misprinted, but Jonas was sticking to his guns. Jonas was a sensible guy with a decent job. Jones was a DJ, and nothing else.
He’d hesitated about using the name, but after his night with Dan Ashcroft, he’d never been able to get it out of his head, the way the name had felt right.
He’d seen Dan a few times after that fateful night, but if Dan saw him, he gave no indication. Jonas hadn’t expected anything different. He might have hoped for something different, but he had fully expected Dan to try and forget him. Claire had survived for nearly a week before passing away while still in a coma. It had been a devastating end to her young life, and it had left a lot of people shaken. Jonas had given up the party scene for almost two years, throwing himself into what had felt like a normal life before he’d realized he hated it. Once he got used to living in a proper flat, with a regular income and regular meals, he was lulled by the boring safety. It was turning 29 and realizing his twenties were nearly over that shook Jonas from his complacency and back to his tables. He had the rest of his life to be responsible, but there was a much narrower window of opportunity for being a Shoreditch DJ. Like everyone who had been affected by Claire’s death, Jonas had briefly lived his life to the fullest before going back to watching telly, because living life to the fullest took a lot of energy and was boring as shit. Everyone wanted to give her death meaning, but there was only so long a person could stay motivated without an actual goal. Ned Smanks, a graphic designer from Sugar Ape, had gotten a job in America working for the New Yorker and was the toast of the town before coming back to England. Ned said it was because the tea in the States had been so bad, but Jonas knew the real reason - working for a respected publication was hard. At Sugar Ape, Ned could pump out designs in his sleep and work never had to interfere with his good time. Respected magazines expected professionalism, which, like living life to its fullest, took a lot more effort than slacking off.
Jonatton Yeah? had worked his way up to the editor of Sugar Ape. Once he was in charge and able to put a personal stamp on the magazine, Jonatton had immediately fallen back on the usual nonsense. The dry wit and caustic observations that had defined his writing disappeared, and his voice was most often heard demanding more nudity for each issue. While Claire’s death had seemed to inspire Jonatton to work harder, the effect was as temporary on him as anyone else, and when Dan left the magazine, he seemed to take its (nearly frozen) heart with him. Sugar Ape had become a cynical mess, and the sales were up.
Dan had left Sugar Ape and become a myth/cultural icon/tramp. No one was quite sure what Dan was up to, but there were always sightings. Dan would occasionally crash at the flat of an old friend, and Shoreditch would be abuzz with stories of his beard and long hair. The rest of the time, Dan Ashcroft took a backseat to the Preacher Man.
The Preacher Man scrawled diatribes on the walls and the sidewalks. He berated the shallow and the dim and was adored by the same. After Ned had created a tribute to the Preacher Man for Sugar Ape, the Preacher Man’s response was epic: a diatribe spray painted on the walls of Sugar Ape, called The Rise of the Idiots. Jonatton had the entire piece photographed and ran it in the next edition. Sometimes Jonas walked the streets of Shoreditch in hopes of running into Dan. He was equal parts hopeful and anxious about making contact. By some accounts, Dan was a mad drunk living in the streets, completely deranged. By other accounts, he was a mad drunk who sometimes slept on the streets but really wasn’t all that different from his Sugar Ape days. The closest Jonas had come to interacting with Dan was a few weeks after inheriting his flat, when he’d woken up one morning to find “House of Jones” spray painted on his door in the style of the Preacher Man himself. The idea that Dan knew where he lived, and that he was going by Jones, and cared was tantalizing. He wanted so badly to be in Dan’s thoughts. He sometimes wondered if Dan ever realized he’d been calling Jonas by the wrong name. Other times, he wondered if Dan even realized he was the ‘Jones’ of that fateful night. Maybe Dan had only tagged him because he was another idiot in Shoreditch. Maybe it wasn’t Dan at all, but one of his copycats, and it was just a coincidence.
Jonas sometimes looked for Dan, but never found him. Then Dan found Jonas.
“Got any spare change? You know, money you don’t need.”
Jonas stopped because it was such a strange way to ask for money. The delivery was dry, almost sarcastic.
“C’mon, pal. With all the money you save by cutting your own hair, you must have a few pounds to give a stranger.”
Jonas stood still while the stranger approached, feeling anxious but not quite afraid. He’d been mugged a few times in his life, and despite the stranger’s well-reasoned argument, he didn’t have any money on him. Jonas never carried anything worth stealing at night.
He turned to the panhandler and immediately regretted it. He was a towering figure with a long, thick and scraggly beard, and while Jonas was fairly certain the man simply had a head of wild and unkempt hair, he couldn’t shake the feeling that his beard was actually engulfing his entire head. He was dressed in layers of clothing, but some of the layers looked quite nice and expensive. Perhaps a tramp of discerning tastes.
“Just give me money before I sober up and get mean,” the man growled. His tone was intimidating, but he made no threatening movements. In fact, he kept a polite distance and slouched, as though apologizing for his considerable height.
“Don’t have any,” Jonas admitted. “I’m totally skint ‘til I get paid Thursday. If I had money, I’d give it to you, Dan.”
Dan blinked a few times before asking, “Then do you have any food or booze? Or fags?”
Dan’s small eyes were blurry and blank, and Jonas wasn’t sure if Dan honestly didn’t recognize him, or if he was playing up his infamous indifference. When Jonas had spent a night with him, Dan had already cultivated an air of being above the rabble, but now Dan was an actual outsider. He was a tramp/prophet. That was pretty niche.
Jonas wanted Dan to recognize him. He wanted to be remembered.
“Come to my place, Dan. I’ve got some takeaway in the fridge, and I think there’s some beer.”
Dan stared Jonas down until he began to regret his offer. Perhaps Dan wasn’t on the streets after all. Maybe he just dressed like a hobo.
“Nothing goes in anywhere without a johnny,” Dan said in a monotone. “No fucking arguing or negotiating.”
Jonas was rocked by the flat statement. He felt sick, like the time he’d caught Father Christmas shagging his mum from behind on Christmas Eve. Learning it had been his actual father in the Santa Claus suit hadn’t improved the situation at all. The idea that anyone could take advantage of Dan’s situation shook Jonas. He’d been in some awkward positions himself when he was skint, but he was tiny and a bit girly-looking. He’d been warned by his parents from puberty to watch his back, literally and figuratively. Dan, on the other hand, was a big, manly guy with a beard and a cult following. Jonas had always assumed Dan had enough friends and admirers that he wouldn’t have to worry much about food or shelter. People were making their careers on Dan’s graffiti. How could someone like Dan end up willing to exchange sex for the dubious pleasure of spending a night in Jonas’s crappy apartment? The world had gone completely wrong.
“I’m not… whoa, just… No strings, just food and booze,” Jonas stammered, frustrated to feel his cheeks turning red.
Dan smirked. “No one ever plans strings, they just pop up all around you. Around your neck.”
Dan mimed pulling a rope around his neck, and Jonas hoped he was being metaphorical.
“I won’t try anything,” Jonas promised. “I’m not like that.”
Dan raised his eyebrows.
“I mean, I am like that, but not like… I don’t want you to be hungry, that’s all.” Jonas stumbled over every word. Dan’s eyes were boring into his soul. Jonas tried not to look guilty, and Dan seemed satisfied.
“You’ve got beer?” Dan asked quietly, in stark contrast to his earlier aggressiveness. It made Jonas uncomfortable to think about Dan being drunk in his apartment. Other than the fact he was likely on his way to drinking himself to death, alcohol probably played a big part in Dan being for sale. Sober, it would be a challenge for anyone to make Dan do anything against his will, but drunk? Dan had been a blackout drunk in his glory days. It was part of the Dan Ashcroft legend that he would disappear after parties, only to turn up in inexplicable places. At least six people had told Jonas that they’d found Dan Ashcroft sleeping in their cars. Jonas knew most of the stories were bullshit, just attempts to leech off Dan’s drunken glory, but there was no doubt the man drank with reckless abandon.
“Fag?” Dan asked.
“I don’t smoke,” Jonas replied, feeling honestly sorry when he saw Dan’s face fall. “But there might be some at the flat. I had flatmates but they… had to move out suddenly.”
Dan smirked. “Serving at Her Majesty’s pleasure?”
Jonas felt guilty about laughing. While he didn’t carry the kind of gear his roommates did, he was certainly no stranger to illicit substances. He had been lucky to move through his wildest days unscathed. He’d played with drugs and drink while people around him developed serious addictions. Sometimes he felt something akin to survivor’s guilt for never having become dependent on anything but coffee.
“Yeah. They won’t be back for a while.”
Dan looked thoughtful.
“Is there anyone else staying there?” Dan eventually asked, after what seemed to be a great deal of thought.
“No. I’m trying to keep it quiet. I mean, I’m trying to keep it quiet that I have space,” Jonas explained, thinking of how the building sometimes vibrated with his music. That was how music was meant to be felt.
“You should make yourself a nice little arty collective,” Dan suggested. His tone carried authority and his eyes were suddenly sharp and clear. For a moment, he looked like old Dan in a mad tramp suit. “My sister always wanted to do that, have some artistic types just hanging around, being boring and overly earnest together.”
“Did she ever try?” Jonas tentatively asked.
“Yeah,” Dan said with a smile. “But she was awful to live with. She was so bossy, no one would ever stay…”
“Except you.”
“We weren’t exactly Warhol’s Factory,” Dan sneered.
In that moment, Jonas could imagine an alternate reality where Dan hadn’t followed him into the bathroom for coke and anonymous sex. It was surely a scenario Dan had played out in his head a million times. Dan sees Claire and swallows his pride, going to his sister to make amends (without ever acknowledging there had been a fight, of course). Claire remains safe and sound inside. Maybe Jonas would have followed Dan and met Claire. Maybe he could have been their flatmate. He could have spent the last seven years working on his music for real instead of spinning his wheels. Maybe he would have still hooked up with Dan, maybe not. Jonas was shaken from his reverie by conspicuous whispers in the distance.
There were a couple of studenty types walking towards them. Jonas could see they were debating moving to the other side of the street, weighing the pros and cons of trying to avoid a crazy-looking homeless man and his crust punk pal.
“You guys look like you have beer and fags,” Dan yelled. “Come give me some.”
The fashionably androgynous students stopped in their tracks.
“Come on, you gits. This is your chance to have an encounter with the Preacher Man. Maybe you can write a poem about it. Read it at a coffee shop while someone accompanies you on the mandolin or a fucking tabla.”
The students conferred before the smaller one asked, “Are you really the Preacher Man?”
“Course I’m the fucking Preacher Man, now let’s get this magical encounter under way,” Dan growled. The taller student, who Jonas was fairly certain was a girl, hesitantly approached while holding a pack of cigarettes out in front of her, like Dan was a wild dog. Dan obliged her by snatching the pack from her hands with a feral grunt. In one fluid gesture, he had two cigarettes in his mouth and was miming for a light. The girl’s hand shook as she held the lighter, and both she and her friend jumped when Dan slapped his hand over hers to keep the lighter steady.
“Booze?” Dan asked, looking at the second student, who was slowly closing in.
“Just a bit in a flask,” replied the apparently male student. He held out an old-fashioned flask that caught Jonas’s eye. As a frequenter of secondhand shops, Jonas had an eye for quality and a soft spot for old, abandoned objects.
Dan took a swig and let out a stream of curse words. Despite his apparent disgust for what smelled like cheap vodka and sugary schnapps, he finished off the flask before handing it back.
“Okay, ask a question and then I’ll piss off, because I’m tired.” Dan spoke as if from a script. Jonas thought of the flowery tales he’d heard of the Preacher Man dispensing wisdom on the street.
“Is it true that Stewart Copeland ran over your sister, and that’s why the Eurythmics broke up?” the female asked.
“Stewart Copeland is from the Police,” Jonas interjected. “You’re thinking Dave Stewart, who is from the Eurythmics… and who also has nothing to do with anything…”
“Jones is being too harsh,” Dan sneered. “Doug Rocket of the Veryphonics jumped a curb while drunk and hit my younger sister. However, since Doug Rocket is a second-rate Dave Stewart/Sting, that’s probably close enough for jazz. Great meeting you. Thanks for the disgusting drink and the half-decent fags.”
Dan began walking away, with Jonas scurrying to keep up in his fashionable but impractical boots, but the girl called out to him.
“But why?”
Dan turned around. “Why did he kill her?”
“Why…” the girl gestured towards Dan in a vague manner, but Dan seemed to be familiar with her unasked question.
“There’s no reason. There’s no lesson to be learned. If Claire were alive, I’d be a mad drunk writing for Sugar Ape. She died, so I’m a mad drunk who writes on walls. What’s the fucking difference? Go to school, work hard, get a good job, meet a nice whatever, and settle down.” Dan’s stare was so intense, the students and Jonas all backed away like they might be smitten by his rage. “Maybe it will work out and you’ll be happy. Maybe you’ll get lung cancer. Maybe you’ll trip over a small dog and break your neck. It doesn’t matter. You can’t do a thing to control the world around you. There is nothing you can do to avoid my tragic fate or emulate my small-scale cultural relevance. It’s all bullshit, so have a fag and a drink and screw… or don’t. I don’t care. I don’t even know you.”
The male student mumbled, “Cheers,” as the two scurried away.
“That was quite a sermon, Preacher Man,” Jonas observed, hoping his tone was suitably inoffensive.
Dan gave him a feral smile. “It’s show business. You’ve got to give the people what they want.”
“They seemed pretty scared.”
“All great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity. Nietzsche said that. I wrote an essay about it at uni,” Dan explained, suddenly seeming quite calm.
“Does that mean you’re a great thing? Or your ideas…” Jonas suddenly felt dim. His brain couldn’t produce the appropriate words fast enough to convey what he was trying to ask.
“It means people, even great philosophers, fetishize scary things. It’s bollocks. It doesn’t mean anything, and neither do I,” Dan explained, mumbling as he lit yet another cigarette.
Jonas was pretty sure that not even Dan believed what he was saying, but he didn’t have the words to argue. Dan had words, Jonas had feelings. He wondered if they were going to be able to keep up a conversation.
“Fag?” Dan asked for the second time that night, holding the pack out to Jonas.
“I haven’t taken up smoking since the last time you asked, but thanks for offering.”
Dan gave him a look that was neither a glare nor a smile. Jonas didn’t know how to describe it, but he liked it and instantly craved more.
There were a million DJs in Shoreditch, but the more time Jonas spent at his tables, the more he was certain that he had something different to offer the scene. Besides, he’d managed to be offered a manager position at Sweet Pipes, and that was simply not on. If Jonas continued on his current path, he was going to end up a junior executive somewhere. He was closing in on thirty and needed to take a leap. He’d spent entirely too many years working around flatmates and job schedules.
He DJed as Jones. People who knew him often thought the posters were misprinted, but Jonas was sticking to his guns. Jonas was a sensible guy with a decent job. Jones was a DJ, and nothing else.
He’d hesitated about using the name, but after his night with Dan Ashcroft, he’d never been able to get it out of his head, the way the name had felt right.
He’d seen Dan a few times after that fateful night, but if Dan saw him, he gave no indication. Jonas hadn’t expected anything different. He might have hoped for something different, but he had fully expected Dan to try and forget him. Claire had survived for nearly a week before passing away while still in a coma. It had been a devastating end to her young life, and it had left a lot of people shaken. Jonas had given up the party scene for almost two years, throwing himself into what had felt like a normal life before he’d realized he hated it. Once he got used to living in a proper flat, with a regular income and regular meals, he was lulled by the boring safety. It was turning 29 and realizing his twenties were nearly over that shook Jonas from his complacency and back to his tables. He had the rest of his life to be responsible, but there was a much narrower window of opportunity for being a Shoreditch DJ. Like everyone who had been affected by Claire’s death, Jonas had briefly lived his life to the fullest before going back to watching telly, because living life to the fullest took a lot of energy and was boring as shit. Everyone wanted to give her death meaning, but there was only so long a person could stay motivated without an actual goal. Ned Smanks, a graphic designer from Sugar Ape, had gotten a job in America working for the New Yorker and was the toast of the town before coming back to England. Ned said it was because the tea in the States had been so bad, but Jonas knew the real reason - working for a respected publication was hard. At Sugar Ape, Ned could pump out designs in his sleep and work never had to interfere with his good time. Respected magazines expected professionalism, which, like living life to its fullest, took a lot more effort than slacking off.
Jonatton Yeah? had worked his way up to the editor of Sugar Ape. Once he was in charge and able to put a personal stamp on the magazine, Jonatton had immediately fallen back on the usual nonsense. The dry wit and caustic observations that had defined his writing disappeared, and his voice was most often heard demanding more nudity for each issue. While Claire’s death had seemed to inspire Jonatton to work harder, the effect was as temporary on him as anyone else, and when Dan left the magazine, he seemed to take its (nearly frozen) heart with him. Sugar Ape had become a cynical mess, and the sales were up.
Dan had left Sugar Ape and become a myth/cultural icon/tramp. No one was quite sure what Dan was up to, but there were always sightings. Dan would occasionally crash at the flat of an old friend, and Shoreditch would be abuzz with stories of his beard and long hair. The rest of the time, Dan Ashcroft took a backseat to the Preacher Man.
The Preacher Man scrawled diatribes on the walls and the sidewalks. He berated the shallow and the dim and was adored by the same. After Ned had created a tribute to the Preacher Man for Sugar Ape, the Preacher Man’s response was epic: a diatribe spray painted on the walls of Sugar Ape, called The Rise of the Idiots. Jonatton had the entire piece photographed and ran it in the next edition. Sometimes Jonas walked the streets of Shoreditch in hopes of running into Dan. He was equal parts hopeful and anxious about making contact. By some accounts, Dan was a mad drunk living in the streets, completely deranged. By other accounts, he was a mad drunk who sometimes slept on the streets but really wasn’t all that different from his Sugar Ape days. The closest Jonas had come to interacting with Dan was a few weeks after inheriting his flat, when he’d woken up one morning to find “House of Jones” spray painted on his door in the style of the Preacher Man himself. The idea that Dan knew where he lived, and that he was going by Jones, and cared was tantalizing. He wanted so badly to be in Dan’s thoughts. He sometimes wondered if Dan ever realized he’d been calling Jonas by the wrong name. Other times, he wondered if Dan even realized he was the ‘Jones’ of that fateful night. Maybe Dan had only tagged him because he was another idiot in Shoreditch. Maybe it wasn’t Dan at all, but one of his copycats, and it was just a coincidence.
Jonas sometimes looked for Dan, but never found him. Then Dan found Jonas.
“Got any spare change? You know, money you don’t need.”
Jonas stopped because it was such a strange way to ask for money. The delivery was dry, almost sarcastic.
“C’mon, pal. With all the money you save by cutting your own hair, you must have a few pounds to give a stranger.”
Jonas stood still while the stranger approached, feeling anxious but not quite afraid. He’d been mugged a few times in his life, and despite the stranger’s well-reasoned argument, he didn’t have any money on him. Jonas never carried anything worth stealing at night.
He turned to the panhandler and immediately regretted it. He was a towering figure with a long, thick and scraggly beard, and while Jonas was fairly certain the man simply had a head of wild and unkempt hair, he couldn’t shake the feeling that his beard was actually engulfing his entire head. He was dressed in layers of clothing, but some of the layers looked quite nice and expensive. Perhaps a tramp of discerning tastes.
“Just give me money before I sober up and get mean,” the man growled. His tone was intimidating, but he made no threatening movements. In fact, he kept a polite distance and slouched, as though apologizing for his considerable height.
“Don’t have any,” Jonas admitted. “I’m totally skint ‘til I get paid Thursday. If I had money, I’d give it to you, Dan.”
Dan blinked a few times before asking, “Then do you have any food or booze? Or fags?”
Dan’s small eyes were blurry and blank, and Jonas wasn’t sure if Dan honestly didn’t recognize him, or if he was playing up his infamous indifference. When Jonas had spent a night with him, Dan had already cultivated an air of being above the rabble, but now Dan was an actual outsider. He was a tramp/prophet. That was pretty niche.
Jonas wanted Dan to recognize him. He wanted to be remembered.
“Come to my place, Dan. I’ve got some takeaway in the fridge, and I think there’s some beer.”
Dan stared Jonas down until he began to regret his offer. Perhaps Dan wasn’t on the streets after all. Maybe he just dressed like a hobo.
“Nothing goes in anywhere without a johnny,” Dan said in a monotone. “No fucking arguing or negotiating.”
Jonas was rocked by the flat statement. He felt sick, like the time he’d caught Father Christmas shagging his mum from behind on Christmas Eve. Learning it had been his actual father in the Santa Claus suit hadn’t improved the situation at all. The idea that anyone could take advantage of Dan’s situation shook Jonas. He’d been in some awkward positions himself when he was skint, but he was tiny and a bit girly-looking. He’d been warned by his parents from puberty to watch his back, literally and figuratively. Dan, on the other hand, was a big, manly guy with a beard and a cult following. Jonas had always assumed Dan had enough friends and admirers that he wouldn’t have to worry much about food or shelter. People were making their careers on Dan’s graffiti. How could someone like Dan end up willing to exchange sex for the dubious pleasure of spending a night in Jonas’s crappy apartment? The world had gone completely wrong.
“I’m not… whoa, just… No strings, just food and booze,” Jonas stammered, frustrated to feel his cheeks turning red.
Dan smirked. “No one ever plans strings, they just pop up all around you. Around your neck.”
Dan mimed pulling a rope around his neck, and Jonas hoped he was being metaphorical.
“I won’t try anything,” Jonas promised. “I’m not like that.”
Dan raised his eyebrows.
“I mean, I am like that, but not like… I don’t want you to be hungry, that’s all.” Jonas stumbled over every word. Dan’s eyes were boring into his soul. Jonas tried not to look guilty, and Dan seemed satisfied.
“You’ve got beer?” Dan asked quietly, in stark contrast to his earlier aggressiveness. It made Jonas uncomfortable to think about Dan being drunk in his apartment. Other than the fact he was likely on his way to drinking himself to death, alcohol probably played a big part in Dan being for sale. Sober, it would be a challenge for anyone to make Dan do anything against his will, but drunk? Dan had been a blackout drunk in his glory days. It was part of the Dan Ashcroft legend that he would disappear after parties, only to turn up in inexplicable places. At least six people had told Jonas that they’d found Dan Ashcroft sleeping in their cars. Jonas knew most of the stories were bullshit, just attempts to leech off Dan’s drunken glory, but there was no doubt the man drank with reckless abandon.
“Fag?” Dan asked.
“I don’t smoke,” Jonas replied, feeling honestly sorry when he saw Dan’s face fall. “But there might be some at the flat. I had flatmates but they… had to move out suddenly.”
Dan smirked. “Serving at Her Majesty’s pleasure?”
Jonas felt guilty about laughing. While he didn’t carry the kind of gear his roommates did, he was certainly no stranger to illicit substances. He had been lucky to move through his wildest days unscathed. He’d played with drugs and drink while people around him developed serious addictions. Sometimes he felt something akin to survivor’s guilt for never having become dependent on anything but coffee.
“Yeah. They won’t be back for a while.”
Dan looked thoughtful.
“Is there anyone else staying there?” Dan eventually asked, after what seemed to be a great deal of thought.
“No. I’m trying to keep it quiet. I mean, I’m trying to keep it quiet that I have space,” Jonas explained, thinking of how the building sometimes vibrated with his music. That was how music was meant to be felt.
“You should make yourself a nice little arty collective,” Dan suggested. His tone carried authority and his eyes were suddenly sharp and clear. For a moment, he looked like old Dan in a mad tramp suit. “My sister always wanted to do that, have some artistic types just hanging around, being boring and overly earnest together.”
“Did she ever try?” Jonas tentatively asked.
“Yeah,” Dan said with a smile. “But she was awful to live with. She was so bossy, no one would ever stay…”
“Except you.”
“We weren’t exactly Warhol’s Factory,” Dan sneered.
In that moment, Jonas could imagine an alternate reality where Dan hadn’t followed him into the bathroom for coke and anonymous sex. It was surely a scenario Dan had played out in his head a million times. Dan sees Claire and swallows his pride, going to his sister to make amends (without ever acknowledging there had been a fight, of course). Claire remains safe and sound inside. Maybe Jonas would have followed Dan and met Claire. Maybe he could have been their flatmate. He could have spent the last seven years working on his music for real instead of spinning his wheels. Maybe he would have still hooked up with Dan, maybe not. Jonas was shaken from his reverie by conspicuous whispers in the distance.
There were a couple of studenty types walking towards them. Jonas could see they were debating moving to the other side of the street, weighing the pros and cons of trying to avoid a crazy-looking homeless man and his crust punk pal.
“You guys look like you have beer and fags,” Dan yelled. “Come give me some.”
The fashionably androgynous students stopped in their tracks.
“Come on, you gits. This is your chance to have an encounter with the Preacher Man. Maybe you can write a poem about it. Read it at a coffee shop while someone accompanies you on the mandolin or a fucking tabla.”
The students conferred before the smaller one asked, “Are you really the Preacher Man?”
“Course I’m the fucking Preacher Man, now let’s get this magical encounter under way,” Dan growled. The taller student, who Jonas was fairly certain was a girl, hesitantly approached while holding a pack of cigarettes out in front of her, like Dan was a wild dog. Dan obliged her by snatching the pack from her hands with a feral grunt. In one fluid gesture, he had two cigarettes in his mouth and was miming for a light. The girl’s hand shook as she held the lighter, and both she and her friend jumped when Dan slapped his hand over hers to keep the lighter steady.
“Booze?” Dan asked, looking at the second student, who was slowly closing in.
“Just a bit in a flask,” replied the apparently male student. He held out an old-fashioned flask that caught Jonas’s eye. As a frequenter of secondhand shops, Jonas had an eye for quality and a soft spot for old, abandoned objects.
Dan took a swig and let out a stream of curse words. Despite his apparent disgust for what smelled like cheap vodka and sugary schnapps, he finished off the flask before handing it back.
“Okay, ask a question and then I’ll piss off, because I’m tired.” Dan spoke as if from a script. Jonas thought of the flowery tales he’d heard of the Preacher Man dispensing wisdom on the street.
“Is it true that Stewart Copeland ran over your sister, and that’s why the Eurythmics broke up?” the female asked.
“Stewart Copeland is from the Police,” Jonas interjected. “You’re thinking Dave Stewart, who is from the Eurythmics… and who also has nothing to do with anything…”
“Jones is being too harsh,” Dan sneered. “Doug Rocket of the Veryphonics jumped a curb while drunk and hit my younger sister. However, since Doug Rocket is a second-rate Dave Stewart/Sting, that’s probably close enough for jazz. Great meeting you. Thanks for the disgusting drink and the half-decent fags.”
Dan began walking away, with Jonas scurrying to keep up in his fashionable but impractical boots, but the girl called out to him.
“But why?”
Dan turned around. “Why did he kill her?”
“Why…” the girl gestured towards Dan in a vague manner, but Dan seemed to be familiar with her unasked question.
“There’s no reason. There’s no lesson to be learned. If Claire were alive, I’d be a mad drunk writing for Sugar Ape. She died, so I’m a mad drunk who writes on walls. What’s the fucking difference? Go to school, work hard, get a good job, meet a nice whatever, and settle down.” Dan’s stare was so intense, the students and Jonas all backed away like they might be smitten by his rage. “Maybe it will work out and you’ll be happy. Maybe you’ll get lung cancer. Maybe you’ll trip over a small dog and break your neck. It doesn’t matter. You can’t do a thing to control the world around you. There is nothing you can do to avoid my tragic fate or emulate my small-scale cultural relevance. It’s all bullshit, so have a fag and a drink and screw… or don’t. I don’t care. I don’t even know you.”
The male student mumbled, “Cheers,” as the two scurried away.
“That was quite a sermon, Preacher Man,” Jonas observed, hoping his tone was suitably inoffensive.
Dan gave him a feral smile. “It’s show business. You’ve got to give the people what they want.”
“They seemed pretty scared.”
“All great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity. Nietzsche said that. I wrote an essay about it at uni,” Dan explained, suddenly seeming quite calm.
“Does that mean you’re a great thing? Or your ideas…” Jonas suddenly felt dim. His brain couldn’t produce the appropriate words fast enough to convey what he was trying to ask.
“It means people, even great philosophers, fetishize scary things. It’s bollocks. It doesn’t mean anything, and neither do I,” Dan explained, mumbling as he lit yet another cigarette.
Jonas was pretty sure that not even Dan believed what he was saying, but he didn’t have the words to argue. Dan had words, Jonas had feelings. He wondered if they were going to be able to keep up a conversation.
“Fag?” Dan asked for the second time that night, holding the pack out to Jonas.
“I haven’t taken up smoking since the last time you asked, but thanks for offering.”
Dan gave him a look that was neither a glare nor a smile. Jonas didn’t know how to describe it, but he liked it and instantly craved more.