Chance Card – Wayne 60

 

[For a quick guide go here: Quick guide.]

[Old back story is here: Story so far at 30 Nov 2020 and read more recent Wayne episodes especially this one.]

[Other back story through in-links.]

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“Glad we’re not going to Berkhamsted this week,” said Wayne.

“Why’s that?” asked Dave.

“Didn’t you see? Shooting outside the station.”

“In Berkhamsted?”

“Oh yeah, hot bed of gun crime…”

“Why on earth..?’

“Completely random, I think. Some guy with a gun took a pot shot. Poor old bloke in hospital now.”

“He alright?”

“Serious, but stable.”

The morning was well underway due to it being mid-summer. While daylight and sunshine was all well and good Wayne preferred the dark nights of Autumn and Winter. The times when the city became shrouded in darkness early and neon and street lights made their presence felt. Far more atmospheric, he thought. Far more his scene. 

“It’s so much chance, isn’t it?” said Wayne. “Like what if that were me coming it of the station at that time? What if he decided to take a pot shot at me?”

“Yeah, but you wouldn’t go by train, would you? You’d have your own limo and a chauffeur…”

“As if…”

“OK, and so by random you mean he randomly guns down one of the UK’s leading grime artists?” said Dave. “First thing, no one would think it was chance or random. They’d have you linked with a bunch of druggie criminal masterminds before the midday news. The notorious W.A.Y.N.E.”

Wayne laughed. Dave made to get out of bed but Wayne stopped him.

“We don’t need to do anything yet, do we?”

Dave thought about it briefly and decided not. Not immediately anyway.

“Have you ever wondered what would have happened if there were no pandemic?” asked Wayne. “I mean, given the chances of such a thing. Given how this has played out and everything. What if it never happened?”

“I’d still be complaining about your loud music I imagine,” said Dave. “And I’d be complaining about work, but in a different way, right? I mean, I’d not be trying to find staff every single day and worrying about the bank whenever someone goes off sick. Would be a lot easier and financially rewarding at least. What about you?”

“Dunno,” said Wayne. “Just more of the same I suppose. Write, record, tour… It’s a good life and everything. It was a good life.”

“You’d still be going head to head with the others on the grime scene? Still trying to outdo each other somehow, eh?”

“More collaboration maybe,” said Wayne. “Not just me and Jezzy.”

“Oh and would you still have three PAs instead of just Cath?”

“Oh yeah, three, four, maybe have a whole team looking after my every whim.”

“One person on Instagram, one on FaceBook, one Tweeting for you…”

“Someone to look after my wardrobe and tell me which baseball cap to wear…”

“What to do with your hair…”

“Where I’m going next and what to say when I get there…”

 “And of course someone to yell at when it all goes wrong.”

“Or even when it all goes right,” said Wayne. “I don’t care, I’ll yell at anyone, anytime for any reason at all. Or at least I did.”

“Instead,” said Dave, now getting up and not letting himself be dragged back, “You’ve just got me.”

He grinned and headed off into the kitchen. 

“That’s enough, thanks,” Wayne shouted towards him.

He picked up his phone and started to flick through it. The usual gratifying likes for the latest snippet of a track. The occasional disgruntled fan who thought he’d sold out. It was all here. At this point in time, Wayne realised, enough people had responded in enough different ways that whatever he wanted to find on social media he could find it. It could be uplifting or depressing, humorous or sad, heartening or maddening, it just needed him to decide what he would be today.

But then he received a new notification. An old account had just posted for the first time in a long time. It was a sincerely apologetic post which went on for some time about the music scene, the pressure of fame and what it could do to you, and how something could be taken out of context and used against the person who said it. Wayne’s eyes travelled faster and faster through the post getting to the conclusion he knew was coming.

BarnStormerz were getting back together. Not only that but Jezzy was quoted as saying it was the best thing that had happened all year. As he lay there, Wayne scrolled through the reactions - the fans who welcomed them, forgave them, the ones who wouldn’t. Whatever, BarnStrormerz had tracks ready to go and a team ready to push them out there.

‘More collaboration?’ thought Wayne, wondering how exactly he was going to talk to Jezzy ever again, this was going back to war.