Well, 'friend' was perhaps overstating the case. Neil Henderson showed up with a waiter from one of the restaurants where he and Davy had double-dated. The waiter himself seemed less than enthused about his sudden presence at the beach-house, given that he was only kept in place by Neil's grip on his collar.
"Here," Neil said, when Peter opened the door of the Pad, thrusting the waiter forwards.
Peter blinked. "Oh," he said. And then, since more seemed to be required, "I didn't know we were exchanging gifts. I didn't get you anything."
"Believe me, he's not a gift," Neil said grimly.
The waiter stopped thrashing wildly for a moment to note, "Hey, man – I'm missing a shift for this – the least you could do is say something nice about me."
Neil ignored him. "Well?" he asked Peter.
Peter considered the struggling figure in front of him. His hair was curly and he wore thick black-rimmed glasses.
"I like his shirt," he volunteered.
Neil Henderson growled in frustration while the struggling figure briefly stopped struggling to say, "Thanks!"
"Not – not that!" Neil said. "He's a waiter. I caught him looking at Jones."
"Hey – looking's free! You can't get into trouble for looking at someone," the waiter said.
"The way you were doing it, you could," Neil told him. "And you stole his napkin. I saw you put it in your pocket."
He shook the waiter, once, as a kind of punctuation to his words, before turning to Peter and saying, "So? What have you got to say?"
Peter stared at him.
"Well?"
He cleared his throat. "Theft is a-a serious societal issue – but in this case I really think you should take it up with the owner of the restaurant."
"I meant – that he's hung up on Jones. What are you going to say about that? He's a guy and he's hung up on another guy. You gonna tell him it's okay, too?"
Neil's eyes bored into him. Peter frowned and said, "No."
Some indefinable tension seemed to leave Neil as he repeated, "No. You're not?"
"Well, not right away, at least," Peter said. "I should probably introduce myself first. I'm Peter," he told the waiter.
"Harvey," the waiter said, extending a hand for Peter to shake. "Harvey Barak – Blue Door Restaurant."
"Davy said you do great roast beef," Peter told him.
Harvey scuffed his toe against the ground. "He really said that?"
As Peter nodded, he caught sight of Neil's face, full of some strange mixture of disappointment and relief. It kind of hurt to look at him. Peter stood back and gestured behind him. "Do you want to come in?" It was a safe enough offer, since Davy and Mike were currently scouring town for vital ingredients to reverse a sleeping potion – while Micky was upstairs lying face-down and motionless on his bed.
An hour later and the three were all sitting around the kitchen table, eyes closed.
" – now breathe out," Peter said, and demonstrated, before opening his eyes. He smiled at his companions.
"Hey – that's a neat trick," Harvey said. "Where'd you learn it?"
Peter shrugged. "I don't know. I just – started doing it."
"Well, it works."
"Yeah," Neil agreed. He looked furtively at Harvey before saying, "…I should pass it on to my sister."
"You know – this," Harvey made a little gesture that somehow encompassed the three of them as well as the kitchen table, "really hasn't worked out the way I figured it would."
"Oh?" Peter asked.
Harvey pushed his glasses up higher on the bridge of his nose. "Yeah. When this guy showed up and got mad at me for looking at your friend, call me crazy, but I thought no matter where I ended up, I probably wouldn't be having a good time."
"I don't think Davy'd mind you looking at him. Davy's nice to look at," Peter said. "I like looking at him."
"How can you say stuff like that?" Neil asked. "How can you – believe it?"
Peter thought about it. "I guess it's because I think it's true. It's always easier to believe things if you think they're true."
Neil just looked at him uncomprehendingly, while Harvey mused, "You know, we should make this a regular thing."
And that was how the club got started.
Really, it was kind of nice to spend time discussing Davy with like-minded people. People who appreciated the warm shade of Davy's eyes, the rhythm of his voice, the curve of his lips when he smiled…
Peter was used to dealing with this stuff on his own, but for the others, just being able to talk about it seemed to help. Harvey reported fewer restaurant breakages and an improved ability to remember customer orders, while Neil admitted that his sister was making fewer mistakes on the football field.
It filled Peter with a happy, warm feeling to know that he was helping them.
When Micky and Mike found out about it, though, they didn't see it quite like that.
"What in the world is going on here?" Mike asked, stopping in the middle of the kitchen with a particularly loud squelch, and staring at the four figures seated around the table.
Peter fidgeted a little under their confused gazes. "You're back early. I thought you two were interviewing for those jobs at the zoo?"
"Oh, we interviewed all right," Micky said. "Turns out 'shark-cage cleaner' is really more of a 'calling'. But on the bright side, I got a new shark's-tooth necklace out of it."
He brandished a large whitish object in his palm.
Absently, while still gazing at the group seated around the table, Mike started wringing water out of his hat. Finally, he said, "Looks like you've been pretty busy here, too. Mind telling us exactly what's going on, Pete?"
"This is the Davy Jones Discussion Group," Harvey informed him.
"The Davy Jones Discussion Group?" Micky wrinkled his nose. "He's Davy – how much is there to discuss? I guess you guys must really have to dig into the minutiae, huh?"
He clapped Harvey on the back, to share the joke, but Harvey just stared blankly at him, before turning to Mike and asking, "Are you guys looking to become members?"
"Oh, no, they're just my" – Peter began to say, but Mike held up a hand and said, carefully, "Well, I guess that depends. What do you have to do, if you're a member of the" – his eyes flicked briefly to Peter, " – Davy Jones Discussion Group?"
"It's all in the name, really," Harvey told him. "Mostly, we just discuss Davy. Things he said, the stuff he likes, favourite outfits…Oh – and we do breathing exercises."
"Uh-huh," Mike said, nodding very slowly. "So…to be a member of the" –
"Davy Jones Discussion Group," Harvey finished.
" – you've really gotta be a…fan…of Davy's." Mike's gaze felt like a weight on top of Peter's head.
"I'm just here for my sister – okay?" Neil said, jaw hard and fists clenching on the table-top.
Mike regarded him. "Okay man," he said softly. "I got it."
Neil relaxed minutely, and a brief silence fell.
"So…are you ever gonna introduce us to your new friends?" Micky prompted eventually.
Peter started. "Oh! Of course – where are my manners?"
"Probably in the same place as your common sense and keen wit," Micky said.
"This is Neil – Davy dated his sister for a while. You guys remember Neil, don't you?"
"Neil's…hard to forget," Mike agreed.
"Yeah – you sure left an impression," Micky said. "Mostly in the cement out back – that wasn't dry."
"And this is Harvey. Davy went to Harvey's restaurant once. Harvey – these are my friends, Mike and Micky."
"Nice to meet you," Harvey said.
"Likewise, I'm sure," Mike said, then raised his eyebrows inquiringly at Peter. Who raised his right back.
Mike sighed and gestured at the last person sitting around the table – a lanky, mousy-haired boy about the same age as Peter, who seemed to be following the proceedings with interest.
"Oh! That's Pavel," Peter said. "He just followed me home from the grocery store today."
"Well, you can't keep him," Micky said. "Remember what happened the last time someone followed you home?"
"I didn't know he was an escaped criminal," Peter defended.
"Yeah. Because stripes and handcuffs are just the latest trend."
Pavel launched into what was possibly an explanation, and from his hand-gestures, seemed to involve a variety of differently shaped fruit and vegetables. Unfortunately, since Pavel's words were all in another language, the Monkees just ended up staring blankly at him – though Harvey laughed, and clapped him on the back.
"What'd he just say?" Mike asked.
"Well, it's not really what he said," Harvey told him. "It's more the way he said it."
Micky's objections were quashed as soon as he found out that the continued existence of the Davy Jones Discussion Group meant continued access to Blue Door leftovers via Harvey.
"Maybe this is a good thing. I mean, face it, Mike – right now Pete's the only one bringing in any bread – even if it is the day old stuff."
And even though Davy didn't exactly know the reason why their refrigerator was suddenly full of confit and caramelized pears, and why canapés had become a staple breakfast food, he accepted it without question when Micky told him, simply, "Peter knows a guy."
"Peter knows a lot of guys," Mike muttered under his breath, as he bit into an amuse-bouche with little sign of enjoyment.
"I can't remember the last time I saw this much food," Davy marvelled. He patted Peter's shoulder, and said, "Whatever you're doing, keep it up."
Mike choked.
It turned out, however, that a potentially limitless source of dinner rolls and braised baby artichokes wasn't enough to allay Mike's misgivings, and he cornered Peter soon after breakfast and instigated a serious talk.
"Now, I'm not saying this – Fan Club – is a bad idea," he said, while Peter sat on the couch and watched him pace back and forth.
"It's a discussion group," Peter corrected.
Mike didn't take any notice. "I just don't think you've thought it all the way through is all."
"But I'm helping people," Peter said. "Harvey says he's getting bigger tips because he can finally concentrate on people's orders again, and Neil says his sister scored the winning touchdown in Saturday's big game. How can there be something wrong with that?"
Mike sighed. "Well, okay, when you explain it like that, sure, you're helping them. But, you gotta look at it from a different angle to get the whole picture. See – you're bringing these guys to the Pad – where Davy lives. And you're talking about Davy and thinking about Davy, and…when you look at it like that, you're just fanning the flames. And boy, are we ever not prepared to deal with an inferno here."
Peter thought about it, frowning. He was dispirited to realize that, "You're right."
"I'm sorry, buddy," Mike said. He stopped, pressing his lips together before he said, "Listen…I know it's…hard, dealing with those kinds of feelings, but, well…you see what you've got to do now, right?"
Peter could feel his eyebrows drawing together in determination. "I sure do."
"Good," Mike said. He patted Peter's shoulder. "I'm proud of you. And remember…if you need to talk about anything, I'm here, and Micky…" He paused. "…well, like I said, I'm here."
"You know, this wasn't really what I meant," Mike said, during the next meeting of the Davy Jones Discussion Group.
"It wasn't?"
"As a matter of fact, I was kinda thinking you were going to disband the club."
"Really?" Peter frowned. "I thought you were telling me I needed to take my leadership role more seriously, to send the club in a whole new direction."
"Not even close," Mike said, almost marveling at the miscommunication.
"New direction?" Harvey asked. "What's that?"
Peter cleared his throat. "I think we need to start working on getting over Davy."
"In that case, you're probably going to need a new name," MIcky said, through a mouthful of quail eggs. "How about the Anti-Jones Brigade? The Summer of Suppression?"
Pavel cut in with a rueful sounding suggestion, eyebrows raised.
Micky laughed. "Good one, Pavel."
Mike frowned at him. "How do you understand what he's saying?"
"Easy," Micky told him. "I just read the subtitles."
Mike considered it. "I guess that makes sense."
"Getting over Davy?" Harvey asked, suddenly bringing them back to the point. "What would that involve?"
"Probably not a lot," Micky said. "You've seen him. He's about the size of a speedbump. Go slow and you'll be over him in no time."
"It means hard work and relentless emotional honesty," Peter said. "But the reward will be worth it."
"Reward?" Harvey repeated.
"You won't be hung up on Davy anymore. You'll be free to find someone more suitable. Someone who feels the same way about you that you feel about them." Peter looked around at his fellow club members. "So – what do you say?"
Pavel seemed excited, and Harvey said, "I guess we could try it. What've we got to lose, right?"
Neil shrugged and said, staring down at his hands, "I'm only here for my sister, anyway, so…it doesn't matter to me."
But after the meeting was over, and Peter walked them to the door, he waited until Pavel and Harvey were gone, and then asked Peter in a low, urgent voice, "You really think you can change me?"
Peter looked at him for a long moment, the hard lines of his face, the set of his jaw, before telling him, "But…I don't wait to change you. I like you the way you are."
Neil looked away.
"I just want to help you-your sister," he corrected quickly as Neil's eyes snapped back to his face, "get over Davy. That's all."
Neil seemed to take this on board. He nodded, once. "I guess that's a start," he said, with a funny twist of his lips, before turning away.
As soon as Peter closed the door, Mike said, "You know this is going to be trouble, don't you?"
He sounded weary, but resolved, almost as if he didn't anticipate an answer to the question.
So, Peter asked him instead, a little guiltily, "Did you really expect me to stop the club?"
"Well, maybe not 'expect' so much as 'hope,'" Mike allowed. His eyes swept Peter's face, taking him in. "This thing's real important to you, huh?"
Peter nodded.
See…the thing was, it was too late for him. Peter'd felt like this for so long now that loving Davy was like…playing his guitar. He knew he hadn't been born able to play the guitar, but by now, it was so much a part of who he was that it kind of felt like he had. And it was the same with how he felt about Davy. Maybe it hadn't started out that way, but it was a part of him now.
Sure, he could pretend otherwise, but what would be the point? It would be like locking his guitar away and never playing it again. Even if he never picked it up for the rest of his life – he'd still know how to play it. Because there were some things that, once you knew them, there was no way to forget them. They just were.
But…it hadn't been until Mike had spoken to him that he had understood – it wasn't like that for the rest of the Davy Jones Discussion Group. They were beginners and they'd barely begun to master the basic chords. It wasn't too late for them to find a more suitable instrument.
And it was his job to help them with that.
Peter opened his mouth to try and explain, though all those thoughts – guitars, feelings, locked rooms and new instruments – seemed to mash together in his head into a kind of incomprehensible gravy.
Luckily, however, Mike didn't seem to need an explanation. He just sighed and said, "All right then. Once you know what you're getting in to." As if he couldn't help himself, Mike pointed out, "I mean – for one thing, how long do you think you can keep these meetings from Davy?"
Peter considered it. "I don't know." He smiled his most reassuring smile at Mike. "I guess we'll find out."
Mike, for some reason, did not appear especially reassured.
