Дэвид Митчелл - Utopia Avenue

Dean sees a cold cabinet with bottles of milk.

It’s been a long walk. A nice cold glass o’ milk …

The shop smells of overripe fruit and brown paper. The Sikh shopkeeper has black glasses, a navy turban and a white shirt. He’s reading Valley of the Dolls and eating grapes. Bottles of spirits line the shelves behind his till. He sizes Dean up. ‘Fine day.’

‘Let’s hope so. Just came in for a bottle o’ milk.’

He nods at the cabinet. ‘Help yourself.’

Dean gets a half-pint and holds the cold glass against his face. He brings it to the counter. ‘Twenty Marlboro, too.’ There’s a rack of postcards. Dean picks one out of the Golden Gate Bridge.

‘Sixty cents.’ He sounds as American as John Wayne. ‘For sixty-two cents, I’ll throw in an airmail stamp.’

‘Cheers.’ Dean digs out the coins. ‘Could I rent yer biro? Yer pen?’

The Sikh deposits the coins and hands Dean a pen. ‘On the house. You’re welcome to use the table at the back.’

‘’Ppreciate that.’ Dean finds a stool under an old school desk with a liftable lid and inkwell. He sits, looks at the message-side of the postcard, and wonders where to start. Maybe I ought to ask Elf. Dean drinks half his milk. It’s refreshing. What matters is the fact I’m writing. Dean takes up the pen:

Yeah, that’ll do. He writes Ray’s address, and stands up as one, two, three men stream into the shop, wearing balaclavas. Like bank robbers in a film , thinks Dean, just as they pull guns out. Real guns – the first Dean has ever seen. One yells, ‘Hands in the air, Ali Baba!’

Glowering with contempt, the shopkeeper obeys.

The robbers haven’t noticed Dean but he decides he’d better follow suit. All three robbers turn their guns on him and Dean cringes. ‘Don’t shoot! It’s okay! Don’t shoot!’

Chief Robber demands, ‘What’s he doing here?’

‘Just a customer,’ says Dean. ‘I’ll leave if, uh—’

‘Stay right there !’ Chief Robber turns to a shorter partner in crime. ‘The joint was s’posed to be EMPTY. ’

Short Robber’s freckles are visible through his eye-holes. ‘I was watching the store for five minutes. No one came in. That’s why I gave you the all-clear.’ He sounds young, fifteen or sixteen.

Chief Robber snaps back, ‘Did you check the aisles ?’

A pause. ‘This is my first stake-out. It’s a—’

‘You shitferbrains ! Now we got us a witness !’

The tallest robber thrusts a bag at the shopkeeper. ‘Fill it.’

‘With what?’

Chief Robber barks, ‘No! He’ll stuff it with small notes an’ shit an’ say, “That’s all I got . ” Get him to open the till, then you fill it.’

Tall Robber tells the shopkeeper, ‘Step back and open the till.’

The shopkeeper pauses. ‘How can I open the till after I’ve stepped back?’

Short Robber shouts, ‘Play the SMART-ASS with us, I’ll shoot your FAG ASS OFF.’ His voice squeaks on the ass . He sounds about fourteen , thinks Dean. ‘Open the till first . Then step back.’ The shopkeeper sighs and does as he’s told. Tall Robber transfers its contents into the cloth bag. It doesn’t take long.

‘Now take out the cash-drawer,’ says Chief Robber. ‘The real money’ll be hidden under there.’

Tall Robber rattles at the drawer. ‘It won’t budge.’

Chief Robber waves his gun at the shopkeeper. ‘Do it.’

‘The cash-drawer doesn’t come out of that till.’

Short Robber shouts, or tries to: ‘TAKE IT OUT!’ There’s a coked-up jaggedness to him, Dean notices, with concern.

The shopkeeper looks over his glasses. ‘It’s a till from the forties, son. The drawer isn’t removable. There’s nothing more.’

Chief Robber snatches the bag from Tall Robber and peers in. ‘There’s only twenty-five bucks? You’re shitting us.’

‘I sell liquor and groceries. Not diamonds. It’s nine a.m. on a Thursday morning. How much were you expecting?’

Tall Robber levels his gun. ‘Open the office safe.’

‘What office? There’s a stockroom the size of a closet and a broke-ass john. Why would I keep money on the premises in this neighbourhood? Too many robberies. That’s why I put the sign up on the way in, “No Money Kept on Premises”.’

‘He’s lying,’ growls Chief Robber. ‘You’re lying.’

Short Robber has gone to the door. ‘Wait up.’ He reads, with difficulty: “No Money Kept on … Promises”. He ain’t lying, Dex.’

‘No fucking names !’ shouts Chief Robber.

Now Tall Robber turns on Dex the Chief Robber. ‘ You staked this job out. You said we’d clear two hundred bucks each, easy .’

‘Each? Six hundred dollars?’ The shopkeeper is flabbergasted. ‘On a graveyard shift? Do you know the first thing about retail?’

‘Shut up ,’ snarls Chief Robber, ‘and give me your wallet.’

‘I never bring my wallet to work. Too many muggings.’

‘Bull shit – what if you need to buy something?’

‘I mark my purchases in the stock book. Search my pockets.’

What a bunch o’ bloody amateurs , thinks Dean.

Chief Robber turns to Dean. ‘What’re you looking at?’

‘Um … an armed robbery?’

‘Shorty, get his wallet.’

Short Robber waggles his gun: ‘Wallet.’

Dean has about ten dollars, but coked-up idiots and guns are a bad combination so he places his half-drunk bottle of milk on a pile of Pinkerton’s pretzel boxes. He reaches into his inside jacket pocket for his wallet, just as a car screeches to a halt outside the shop. Startled, Short Robber turns and biffs the tower of boxes, knocking off the milk bottle. As Dean tries to catch it, a demonic force flings him back …

Disjointed sentences reach Dean, as if from radios swinging by on long ropes. ‘You dumbass motherfucker!’

I’m shot … I’m actually bloody shot …

‘He was reaching for a gun, Dex.’

‘I told him to give me his wallet!’

‘Who keeps his wallet in a jacket?’

I can’t die … I can’t die … Not now …

‘He does! Look! He’s holding it!’

‘But he moved Dex, and … and …’

Not like this … this is too, too stupid …

‘Don’t use my name, you dumbass motherfucker!’

I WON’T DIE … I WON’T … I’M STAYING …

‘You can’t, Dean, I’m sorry.’ Chayton is here.

How can yer be here? Yer at Jerry’s house …

‘Don’t be afraid. I’ll walk you up to the ridge.’

But I’ve still got songs I need to record.

‘You’ll have to leave them here.’

Elf, Jasper, Griff, Ray … can’t I just tell them …

‘You know how this works, Dean.’

The voices in Eddy Turk’s General & Liquor Store dwindle as the velocity increases. The Sikh shopkeeper is barely audible: ‘I’m calling an ambulance for my customer. Shoot me if you want. Then you’ll be looking at Death Row. Or just run and take your chances.’

I don’t need an ambulance , Dean thinks.

‘People not yet born will play your songs,’ says Chayton.

Will Arthur play my songs?

‘I reckon so. It’s time now.’

Dean is falling upwards.

No last words …

‘ All bands break up ,’ Levon Frankland writes in his memoir, ‘ but nearly all bands get back together again. All it takes is time and a hole in the pension pot. ’ When Jasper, Griff and I disbanded Utopia Avenue in 1968, we well and truly meant it. Our friend and bandmate Dean Moss had been shot and killed in a grocery-store robbery in San Francisco, and we didn’t have the heart to carry on. The very next day calamity compounded our grief when a fire broke out at Turk Street Studios and robbed us of Dean’s last work. A Utopia Avenue album without Dean’s musicianship, vocals and songwriting would, we felt, have violated the Trade Descriptions Act. And so, for half a century, Utopia Avenue persisted as one of those exceptions that proved the validity of Frankland’s Law. So how has it come about that now, fifty-one years after our last show, I am writing these sleeve notes (as they used to be called) for a new Utopia Avenue LP featuring Dean Moss on bass, vocals, harmonica, and a twenty-three-minute trilogy of original Moss songs? An explanation is in order.