Hari Kunzru - Gods Without Men

So he sent out his invitation. Two hours a night — two hours to atone for Lizzie, for the bombing raids, for all the misery of existence on Earth. As he scanned the skies, he saw many things: meteor showers, bright lights moving in formation over the Tehachapi Mountains. Sometimes military jets flew overhead, threading vapor trails through the blue.

One hot night he was sitting outside, dozing after his usual dinner of canned franks and beans. In the distance a coyote was whining, and the sound penetrated his sleep. He opened his eyes and stretched, thinking about going down into the bunker to get a cigarette. That was when he saw it: a bright point of light hanging low over the horizon. The sky was hazy, loaded with dust whipped up by a couple of days of high winds, and it took a few moments before he was sure of what he was seeing. As he watched, dry-mouthed, the object got larger, approaching at incredible speed. There was no roar of engines, no sound at all. As it came toward him, he saw it was disk-shaped, featureless but for a ring of iridescent lights round the rim, like gemstones or feline eyes. His body began to tingle with electrical charge, the hairs on his bare arms standing upright. The huge oval hovered overhead, hanging above the rocks as if surveying the ground. Then it descended, stately and imperial, landing in front of him without raising the slightest eddy of sand from the desert floor. It was, he thought, the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

Once it had landed, the craft began to pulse — that was the only way he could put it — glowing pale green, then modulating through purple and rose, a gentle throb like a heartbeat. He couldn’t suppress a gasp as a door opened in the hull and a ramp unfolded, like the tendril of a tropical plant. In the threshold stood two human figures, one male, the other voluptuously female. Their blond hair was agitated by some ethereal wind, though the night air was close and still. Their skin was so pale as to be almost translucent, and in each of their noble faces was set a pair of remarkable gray eyes, animated with profound compassion and intelligence. The pair were dressed in simple white robes, belted at the waist with bright metallic chains. They smiled at him, and he was bathed in a sensation of all-encompassing benevolence. Come , said a voice — not out loud but silently, in the depths of his mind. It was rich and sonorous. It resonated through him like a prayer. Come inside. We have something to show you . At last, he thought. Smiling, he stepped forward into the light.

Oh baby oh what you want went down to the crossroads got down on my mojo black cat whatever. In Nicky’s opinion, the whole Americana thing had gone beyond a joke. He watched the lads sprawled on the big leather studio sofas. Lol in his trucker cap. Jimmy trying to play slide on his shiny new National, making gravelly noises in his throat like he was some old bluesman instead of a skinny Essex electrician’s son with a smack habit. You’re all wankers, he told them. Uh huh unh unh, went Jimmy. Ned was on the phone to his accountant. No one looked up. Fuck it, he thought. Fuck this and fuck them.

Out in the car park the sun beat down out of a boring blue L.A. sky. Nicky smoked a fag and watched the Mexicans hanging about on the corner, same as every day. According to the engineer they were waiting for someone to come past in a lorry and give them a job. Gardening. Carrying stuff on a building site. What a life. Think about it, he’d said to Lol. One roll of the dice and it could have been us, know what I mean? Not me, went Lol. I’m too tall to be a Mexican.

What happened? Three years ago they’d been running round Camden, blagging into shows, doing crap speed in the bogs at the Good Mixer. Not a care in the world.

And now look.

Of course most people would sell their grandmothers to be in a band like theirs. If you get the big tap on the shoulder, hit singles and telly and that, then start moaning about how it’s not all it’s cracked up to be, you shouldn’t be surprised if you get treated like a mental case. You’re living the dream, right? So shut up. He’d learned pretty quickly to keep certain things to himself. Smile and talk bollocks to journalists. Don’t tell them you lie awake at night wondering why you aren’t more happy. Klonopin, Ambien, Percocet, Xanax. He ought not to point the finger at Jimmy. His own bathroom was like a chemist’s shop.

He was leaning on Noah’s car, a lovely old Merc convertible sprayed with multicolored hippie swirls. You could tell which one was the studio by the cars. All the buildings on the block looked the same: big gray bunkers with metal doors. Only one had this collection of motors outside. There was his own orange Camaro, rented back when they first arrived and he was excited by America; Jimmy’s Porsche, skewed across two spaces, big scratch down the passenger side where he’d scraped it against a pillar in a parking garage. Jimmy couldn’t drive for shit, even when he wasn’t twisted. Nicky wasn’t a hundred percent sure he still had a license.

So what was he going to do? Go back in and be a good boy and try and write songs with the bunch of cunts who used to be his mates? He couldn’t picture it, couldn’t see the point. Oh there were millions of points, of course, about two and a half million ones for him alone if you counted straight-up advance money, before you got into all the crooked record-company arithmetic and everything vanished again. They were supposed to be in L.A. making their West Coast record, the one with Sunset Strip and Laurel Canyon good vibes sprinkled over it like fairy dust. Instead, in three months, all they’d done was bicker and buy stuff and get wasted in bars full of people who looked as if they’d just been unwrapped from their packaging, all shiny and expensive, like audio equipment. People who came with curls of foam and polythene bags and cable ties.

Three fucking months. Break America? Other way round, mate. At first him and Jimmy thought all they had to do was drive up and down and absorb it and they’d suddenly channel the Byrds or someone and make good music. They drove up and down. They made crap — worse — crap that didn’t even sound like them. They’d have been better off in London, even with all the bullshit — Jimmy’s dealer hanging about, Anouk, the tabloids. In L.A. Nicky felt like a tourist. What was he going to do, write a song about palm trees? About lawn sprinklers? Bikram yoga? He told Jim he was homesick, but Jim didn’t want to know, went on about the nights back in Dalston when they’d got high, playing Gram Parsons and banging on to one another about cosmic American music. He was just beginning to get into the scene, he said. He wanted to shag actresses and go to parties in big glass houses where you could see the lights down in the valley. All Nicky really wanted was a kebab.

Sometimes he got wasted and went to bed with someone. He wasn’t exactly chuffed with himself, but at the end of the day, Anouk only had herself to blame. He wouldn’t have done it if she’d been around. He’d told her to come over, but there was a job in Moscow. Then another one, a TV ad in Phuket. The next time it was Paris fashion week. It was always fucking fashion week.

Don’t whine, she told him. She didn’t like it when he whined.

Nicky had a rule: Never get sentimental about birds . After all, half the world’s gash, at the end of the day. But Anouk was different. She didn’t fall for his act. In her funny, bored way, she saw right through him. He hated putting the phone down on her, but you had to play the game. Never let them get the upper hand.

After the fashion-week conversation, he did what he always seemed to do nowadays when he had a problem — worked through the minibar. First vodkas, then gins, whiskies, then whatever was left. He watched bad telly and looked at YouTube. He could feel himself spiraling into the dark place. Her voice had sounded so flat. Who was she with, over there in Paris? Most of the blokes in fashion were queer, which, if you were going out with a model, was a mercy, but there were always more than enough straight ones sniffing about. Photographers, for a start. Lecherous bastards all. And those fifty-year-old rich geezers you only seemed to see at fashion parties, the ones with orange tans and a thing for teenagers. Sick industry, when you came to think about it.