July 27, 1999

"Ello Nik" I said to the life-size cut-out in the window. As the night rain wilted my hair and dotted my clothes, I thought about just how I’d ended up outside 75 Wilton Road in London, staring at just a picture of the girl I’d come to see.

You may recall the first story I told you about Nikki. She was the British girl who was performing as the left Nut with Kid Creole and the Coconuts at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas. Her presence on stage thrilled me. So I went back to her dressing room and asked her out on a date. She said yes and the next day we had about as much fun as one can have in that "bright lights city" without gambling or paying for a prostitute. We spent the night drinking and laughing and making plans to see each other again.

But Nikki was a bit surprised when I did, in fact, return to Las Vegas to see her a few weeks later. That I didn’t see her for the first two days of my three day trip was a pretty good sign that Nikki was really just being polite when she said we should get together again. While Nikki attended to "other matters on her schedule", I stared out of my hotel window down at the red Mustang convertible I’d rented for us. It looked real pretty in the glare of the desert sun.

After a while, I grew bored with smoking cigarettes and drinking Jack and Coke by myself, so I went to the Golden Gloves boxing gym where Mike Tyson, Evander Holifield, and scores of other famous boxers had worked out over the years. Inside that drab sweat box, I pounded away at the heavy bag and wondered why I’d been such a slave to my impetuous heart and such a stranger to my rational mind. It wasn’t the first time I’d done something this foolish, and later that day, when I called my buddy Don back in New York to tell him how shitty things were turning out, he told me quite bluntly, "Jim, you have to stop doing this. You’re not a kid anymore. It’s not cute to just jet across the country to see some girl you hardly even know."

Don was right, but I didn’t like hearing it. So I hung up with him and tried calling Nikki again. "Sorry, she’s out right now" her roommate (Eva, the Right Nut) said to me with a charming British accent.

Well that was that. I looked down at my rented Mustang again and decided I should get some use out of it. So I headed West out of town along Charleston Avenue listening to the mix tape I’d made for the road trip the two of us should have been taking. As Elvis belted out his last "Viva Las Vegas!" I passed the last neon sign at the city limits and entered the great Red Rock Canyon. A beautiful mosaic of reds and pinks and whites, the natural cathedrals of Red Rock Canyon made me forget Nikki for a bit and contemplate, instead, the existence of God. I’ve always felt closer to God in the West. The dome of a blue sky, the pleasant air, and the crunch of rock and sand beneath one’s feet seem much holier to me than the paved cities of the East Coast. I sat on a big rock for a long time staring at the awesomeness of all the awesomeness, until the sun went down and the chill in the air forced me back into my car and into my thoughts about Nikki.

The next day, Nikki finally did see me. But the weather was foul, so I couldn’t drop the top on the convertible. I headed back toward Red Rock Canyon, only to have Nikki tell me she’d already been there before. At a little touristy Old West town near the canyon, I suggested we dine on steak and baked beans and beer, but the presence of a filthy, sad petting zoo (and the white trash it attracted) repulsed us both. How unfortunate, I thought, that this is what Nikki was going to remember about America. How unfortunate, I thought, that this was how she was going to remember this particular American.

After a quiet ride back to town, Nikki and I settled in at the first place we could find: a Cuban restaurant / drive-through wedding chapel. The food was like the conversation. Cold and boring. I stepped awkwardly out loud through my own thoughts and all over her sentences. "Perhaps you can come to New York" I finally suggested. "New York is so much more fun than this."

"My schedule is pretty tight" Nikki said politely.

"Oh, come on. Perhaps this summer. It’ll be fun."

"I don’t think so."

"Why not?"

"Because I’m not like you!" Nikki snapped. "I don’t go flying around the world to be with a complete stranger."

Surprisingly that cleared away all the tension. The fear of saying something wrong was gone. For the next hour, we drank beer and smoked and talked about stupid stuff. But it was all very pleasant. Nikki warmed up a bit and I came to the realization that I would never see this girl again. Any fantasies of a relationship with a British stage performer slipped quietly away. We laughed about the absurdity of Las Vegas and of eating in a restaurant that boasted a drive-through wedding chapel.

On the plane home, amid a bitter stewardess who complained openly about her job, two ceaselessly bragging parents of a UConn law student, and a big fat guy who had an opinion on everything, I reviewed the events leading up to this disappointing weekend. By the end of the flight, I felt confident that I had learned from my mistakes and that I would not repeat that course of action in the future. Don was right; I wasn’t a kid anymore.

But then, a few weeks later, Nikki called. She apologized for her standoffishness in Las Vegas. It turns out she’d broken up with her boyfriend in London over the phone the day I arrived and was in an all-men-are-annoying-little-children mood. I told her that was okay. We talked and laughed for a while on the phone. Toward the end, I brought up the fact that my cousin had just begun working in London. "I’d love to come see you" I said hopefully. "I’d like that, too" Nikki said. "I’ll make up for everything that happened last time."

So, I got on the Internet and bought a ticket on Virgin Atlantic over to London. I’d never been to the England before and I was very excited to see it with a lovely native. The flight was wonderful. The food was great, the movies were entertaining, and the flight attendants actually attended. I landed at Heathrow, took the train to Paddington Station, and went back with my cousin to his place on Tatchbrook Street near Buckingham Palace. The chemical release that happens when one is travelling internationally was oxidizing at a great rate. I was wide awake and sucking in every precious moment. With bubbles and butterflies in my stomach, I called up my dear, sweet Nikki and said "Ello luv! I’ve arrived."

"Jim. Darling. So good to hear from you. Listen. I’ve been offered a part in a play in Manchester. It’s a musical called ‘Oh What a Night’. Seems the lead fell ill and my agent got me the part. I’m leaving in a half hour. I am soooo sorry, but I have to go."

My heart slowed down and my stomach chilled. "How far away is Manchester?"

"About four hours. But, I’ll be tied up in rehearsals all weekend. I’m terribly sorry. I really am. This is just how the Business is sometimes."

"I understand" I said. And I did, but I didn’t like it.

"Well, listen, I have to go. Have a great time in London. You’ll have to write me and tell me all about it."

"I will."

"Goodbye Jim."

I hung up the phone in slow-motion.

"So when are you going to see her?" my cousin asked.

"I’m not. She’s going to Manchester to be in some musical."

"Oh" my cousin said, not knowing what else to say.

"Well, you can’t just sit around here" he said after I was silent for a bit. "You’re in London for God’s sake."

So for the next three days, I bee-bopped around one of the great world capitals and saw as much as I could. Parliament, Westminster Abbey, St. James Park, The Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, 10 Downing Street, Camdentown. One day we took a ferry up the Thames and that night we played billiards in the town of Potter’s Bar with some pale, young girls and a travelling Casanova named Nick who was just back from a month of non-stop sex in Greece.

At Churchill's underground war room I saw where the PM uttered the famous line, "Never in the history of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few." At the museums’ gift shop, I bought a tape of vintage Vera Lynn music and listened to her mournful strains on my Walkman for the rest of the trip. One song in particular, "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square" was particularly poignant.

"The streets of town were paved with stars

It was such a romantic affair

And when we kissed

and said goodnight

a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square."

That’s what I’d wanted with Nikki. I wanted to walk around romantic London-town and hold hands and kiss under a gentle moon along a street paved with stars. But my fantasy weekend was not to be. Instead of hearing a nightingale sing in Berkeley Square, I saw a pigeon shit in one named Trafalgar.

Two nights before I left, I went to a party attended by a score of young American expatriates. I’d never met an expatriate before and I had visions of discussing high art and the great issues of the day with the great minds of my generation. (Just like the expatriate circle of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scot Fitzgerald, Ford Madox Ford, and Gertrude Stein.) Instead, these modern expatriates were all stock and bond people, with a few salesmen thrown into the mix. After a few Stella Artois, one girl who sold Lucite chostskys for corporate conventions started looking pretty good, but she got tired and left early and I was left holding my luke-warm long-neck.

So I went out to buy some more beer and that’s when I ran into a homeless Scotsman named Collin. He’d been in the army and had worked at a few jobs after that. But then his wife left him and he fell on hard times. I told him about the girl who’d left me and about this new girl I’d flown to the desert and now across an ocean to see. He felt my pain, but asked if I might hurry on a bit about getting that beer. So I left him for a moment and returned with some more Stella and some cigarettes.

As it started to sprinkle, Collin and I sat down on the curb and drank and smoked and sang gentle songs that put a little warmth back in both our hearts.

Then, across the street, in the window of a theater ticket office, I saw a girl who looked just liked Nikki. Actually, it was a life-size cut-out of a girl who looked like Nikki promoting the musical "Starlight Express." Collin and I walked over to get a closer look.

"My God! That is Nikki! She told me she’d been in that play! ‘Ello Nik!" I shouted excitedly.

"A nice looking one, she is" Collin said. "She’s the one you came to see?"

"That’s the one."

"I’d fly across an ocean to see her, too."

"But I haven’t see her. I’m staring at a fucking cardboard cut-out of her! How ironic is that?! I’ve been chasing a cardboard cut-out all around the world! I’ve been chasing an ideal. A fantasy. That’s the story of my life!"

We both started laughing.

"Well, you can look at it that way" Collin said. "But look at what you’ve seen in the process. You’ve been to the deserts of Nevada and to the historic city of London. Do you think you would have gone there on your own had you not been chasing this lass?"

"Probably not."

"Then be thankful, Jim. You’re a young man on a great adventure. Keep chasin’ after her, Jim. Keep chasin’ after all of them. Who knows where you’ll find yourself."

I thought about what he said for a moment.

"I wonder if she’s got any performances coming up in Egypt. I’ve always wanted to go there."

Collin laughed. "That’s the spirit. Now hand me another cigarette."

 

Broadway Jim Jenkins