#Zero

by Neil McCormick

  For a moment nobody moved, then Cornelius shuffled up, bent over and snorted a line. Kilo looked at Beasley warily, then followed suit. Eugenie too was watching her boss. He rolled his eyes and she got down on her knees and snorted. Then Beasley, with a shrug of his shoulders, heaved his fat behind off his seat and, with surprising grace, leaned over the table and hoovered. Flavia’s lips were pursed, her expression inscrutable. For all her gothic styling, there was a taut rigidity to Flavia, something vicarious about the way she operated in the entertainment industry. She was like designated driver at a rave, determined to keep her wits while all about her were losing theirs. But she shook her head, muttered, ‘Oh, fuck it!’ in that prim English voice, and dived in.

  Then somehow we were all laughing, hooting at our ridiculousness, Beasley’s body vibrating with compressed mirth, Eugenie giggling girlishly, Cornelius sniggering merrily, Kilo softly yukking, Flavia uttering involuntary high squeals that embarrassed her so much it made everyone laugh even more. I slid to the floor, close to hysteria. I knew I had to clamp it down as I sucked in deep breaths, slowly regaining control. Calm, calm, calm. I let out a long, steady sigh, and picked up the Post. There were tears in my eyes but I couldn’t tell if they were from crying or laughing, I didn’t know if I was happy or sad, and anyway I had my shades on, so it didn’t matter, no one could see me, not really, not the real me, if there even was such a thing, if I hadn’t stopped being myself years ago, and slowly metamorphosed into this other Zero, this creature of awards shows and gossip rags, absolute Zero, Nothing to the nth degree.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Flavia.

  ‘There might be some film stills of Penelope and Troy embracing, you said. Embracing is what you do when you meet your auntie, you don’t grab Auntie’s tits and take her up the arse. Shit. She looks like she’s embracing his cock.’

  ‘I didn’t think anyone would publish them,’ Flavia replied. ‘And if you value my opinion, Zero, I stick by what I said, I think they are fake, inasmuch as I suspect they are scenes from the film surreptitiously shot by one of the crew. It is pure mischief and the Post should know better.’

  Cornelius had picked up the paper and was examining the evidence. ‘I don’t know. They look like they’ve been shot with a long lens in low light, which wouldn’t suggest a film set.’ Beasley glowered at him. ‘Just trying to help,’ drawled Cornelius, scooping up some stray coke to rub on his lips before retreating to the front of the limo.

  ‘Get Irwin Locke on the line,’ Beasley commanded and Eugenie was immediately speed-dialling the Hollywood studio boss. ‘Who is Penelope’s agent? Marisa Powers. Let’s patch her in. And get hold of Norris Sheehan, I want to examine legal options.’ Within minutes he was locked into a conference call with producers, agents and lawyers, stroking egos, concocting strategies and issuing understated threats, oblivious to everyone around him. There was nothing like a crisis to get him going. Then again, this was nothing like a crisis for Beasley. He was already calculating column inches. He had never liked the idea of his golden boy being led down the aisle. For all the charm he could muster, he treated Penelope more like a rival than a new member of the entourage. Now my affair of the heart was crashing and burning in spectacular fashion, a whole new blaze to keep the publicity inferno roaring, and he would have me all to himself again. Fuck. When he reached over and patted my knee, murmuring, ‘It’s going to be fine, you’ll see,’ I realised he always thought it would end like this. For all I know, he fucking planted the pictures. He’d done worse before.

  We crossed Queensboro Bridge and pulled into the parking lot of Mightybeat warehouse rehearsal studio complex. ‘I’m not getting out,’ I announced, to general apoplexy.

  Inside one of these vast hangars, a revolving circular stage was set up like a giant target zero, with full lighting rig, an enormous LED screen curtain that raised and fell throughout the production displaying a dazzling array of 3-D digital imagery, various off-lying platforms where dancers would strut their stuff, and in the centre of it all a Perspex bubble, inside which I would descend from the ceiling at the speed of a bungee jump for the intro, and in which, at the climax of the show, I would float into the air and apparently disappear in a black hole supernova of lasers, dry ice and assorted pyrotechnics. It was, as Beasley frequently reminded me, one of the most expensive musical productions ever to be staged, only made possible by our friendly sponsors at Budweiser, Apple, Mastercard and, incongruously, Max-Mart, a budget store chain trying to raise their global profile (Can’t pay the groceries this week? Make up the money you blew on a big night out with savings on generic household products). The production had been installed in Queens for a month, we were about to launch this spectacular in two days, and I still hadn’t managed to get through a full dress rehearsal. Carlton became so frustrated with my absences he hired a stand-in to work with the band, an American Idol reject from Seattle called Jan Duran who had achieved fifteen minutes of fame doing an impersonation of me on prime-time TV almost perfect down to every detail, apart from the minor problem that she was an overweight lesbian African American.

  ‘Jan can do the rehearsal,’ I whined, as Beasley subjected me to his most lethal glower.

  ‘And should she do the show at Madison Square Gardens on Monday as well, or do you think people might notice?’ my manager replied in his quietest, most commanding voice. He was doing the hypnotic thing with the finger again but I wasn’t falling for his tricks. I complained that I was tired, overemotional, my voice was sore from talking all day and I needed a short break to gather my strength for this evening’s awards show, all of which was true, and none of which was really the issue.

  I had developed a growing dread of rehearsal. I had a recurring dream that I was onstage and couldn’t remember the lyrics of any of my songs (which had never happened, and anyway, Carlton had installed hidden autocues to scroll through lyrics for my understudy). And another dream where I was halfway through my big opening number when I realised I was naked from the waist down (which my audience would probably enjoy). I affected nonchalance but I was secretly as perplexed as everyone in my team. I had never experienced stage fright in my life. I took to performance like I was born under the glare of the spotlight. Singing onstage I could sail free, liberated from the incessant barrage of my own thoughts, released into the beat until I was part of the music, a human conductor for soundwaves, not really there at all. Nothing came close, not even drugs, not even sex, not even a double-header orgy on crack cocaine and ecstasy with Penelope and a thousand-dollar-an-hour Vegas hooker, which had happened, and if the tabloids ever got hold of that we could kiss the sponsors goodbye.

  The thing is, I had never really toured live without The Zero Sums. My solo career had all been TV and Internet slots, awards shows and one-off promo specials, where everything was focused on the event. This arena tour of the States was like starting all over, and it didn’t really matter how many stage crew it took, how many virtuoso musicians we employed, how many special effects we dreamed up, I felt like I was going out there naked, with nowhere to hide if anything went wrong. I mean, I had a great band, but they were hired hands, they weren’t really a band at all, no one cared about them and they didn’t care about each other, it was all me, me, me. The way I had wanted it all along. But the closer it came, the more terrifying it seemed.

  Carlton was trotted out to plead that the band needed me. I argued that I knew the songs inside out (true); that I had gone through the whole set on many occasions (sort of true, just not in one go, in the right order); that I was at my best when improvising (debatable, but winging it certainly added an edge); and that anyway, we still had another couple of days’ rehearsal, which I solemnly promised to attend. Donut turned up, declined to get into the air-conditioned limo, just stood in the hot car park and shook his head in disgust, muttering that I shouldn’t expect him to bring me grapes in hospital when they were surgically removing firecrackers from my arsehole.

  Flavia confessed that she ha
d arranged for select members of the press to walk through during rehearsal, at which Beasley rolled his eyes and said, ‘Screw the press, they’re not exactly doing us any favours. They can see it on Monday night like everybody else.’

  So that was settled. The convoy turned around and headed back to the hotel.

  7

  Up in my suite, I picked at a buffet without an appetite. A whole hour of unscheduled time to myself was almost unheard of – I should have been leaping for joy or, better still, catching up on sleep, but instead I was pacing the floor, listening to alternative club mixes of my next single, ‘Life On Earth’, at head-throbbing volume and flicking through channels on the wall-mounted flatscreen.

  ‘You should try and relax,’ Kilo shouted above the din.

  ‘Yeah, you got anything to help me?’ I fired back eagerly.

  ‘I think you’ve done enough,’ shouted Kilo.

  But his job was not to question but to serve. ‘Enough is never enough!’ I yelled, as he tossed me a plastic pack of pills. ‘What are these?’

  ‘They’ll bring you down a bit,’ shouted Kilo. ‘Take two.’

  I took four washed down with a tumbler of vodka. I felt the beat of the remix pound through me and waited for the wobble, the blurring of edges, anything to tune down the static fizzing through my mind. I watched the Starship Enterprise boldly go where no man had gone before, then pressed the remote and my own picture came up, news footage of my hyperactive exit from the press conference, some clips of Penelope and me from the trailer of #1 With A Bullet and a shot of Penelope and Troy at the Oscars where they seemed to be holding hands. How the fuck had I never noticed that before? Then there was some phone footage of me standing in the middle of traffic, reading the New York Post. Shit. Everyone was paparazzi these days. It cut to the photospread with all the offending bits digitally obscured. I snapped out of my trance and changed channel, only to wind up smack in the middle of a rerun of Darker With The Day, right on the scene where Penelope emerges from a swimming pool in slo-mo wearing that one-piece black swimsuit, water dripping down her skin, shakes her wet hair and looks right at the camera, that scene where everyone fell in love with her. She must have been younger than I am now and she already looked like she knew everything worth knowing, that she was everything worth knowing. I felt the first ripples of deep space open up in my chest and then it cut to Michael Douglas in mirrored aviator shades leering lasciviously, so I changed the channel and watched a crocodile with its mouth open while little birds fluttered in and out, picking at parasites between its teeth. The music was still pounding out. ‘And I wonder if you know just where you are? / In the palaces of Mars or a dirty astrobar?’

  There had been some strategising on the ride back about how to handle the Penelope crisis, and another failed attempt to reach her on satellite phone. Irwin Locke stuck to the line that the film crew were doing deep jungle location work and were temporarily uncontactable. Well, I knew exactly what kind of deep jungle work that faithless bitch was interested in. He said there were plans to send a chopper in. Oh, I’d send a chopper all right, I’d send a chopper to chop off her head. My voice sang out in stereo, swimming around my brain, ‘It’s a blessing, it’s a curse / So beautiful it hurts / Do you believe … in life on earth?’

  I lurched into the bedroom, lay down and tried to get the images out of my mind but it wasn’t working. All I could see were endless permutations of Penelope and Troy and Eileen fucking like monkeys on heat, and what the fuck was Eileen doing in there anyway? She was way out of her league getting it on with a couple of Hollywood superstars.

  Last time I saw Eileen, she was standing in my old man’s living room in Kilrock, crying her eyes out under the painting of the sacred heart of Jesus. She had just given me a blow job in my bedroom, and then I told her I wouldn’t be coming back any more, and that I cared for her and would always care for her but that it was over, over, over, Kilrock was too small for me, I had places to go, things to do, and I was leaving the past behind for good. It was after that last shitty visit to London when she turned up with a big red suitcase and caught me with a couple of groupies in my hotel room, after the abortion, after that terrible, terrible day lurking outside that fucking awful clinic, not knowing if I was worried for my babe or sick for my unborn baby, or just feeling utterly nauseated at having come that close to being sucked into a life of domestic drudgery just as I was reaching escape velocity. I had hooked up with Beasley by then and made up my mind to split the band. The Zero Sums had returned from a European tour in disarray, nobody was talking to me anyway. I went back to Kilrock to get my things and break some hearts. I didn’t care if I never set foot there again. I didn’t have the courage or the meanness to tell Eileen before. Or maybe I was just greedy and wanted to feel her going down on me one last time.

  Actually, that wasn’t strictly the last time I saw her. Cause my brother Paddy came in and looked at me like I was dirt, and said he’d take Eileen home. I watched from the window as they got into Paddy’s car, a beat-up piece of rusting shit that he treated like it was a fucking latest model BMW. And she looked back up at the tenement at that very moment, and saw me, and blew a kiss, and shook her head, like I was making the biggest mistake I would ever make in my life, and then I ducked behind the curtain. And that really was the last time I saw her.

  I’ve never been back to Kilrock, not even to visit the old man in his new house on the hill, bought on the advance for my first solo album, or Paddy in his little boutique hotel, paid for by my first American number one. I heard Eileen left soon after. Went to live in Dublin, or maybe it was London. Cut herself off from everybody, her own family, her old friends, and I can’t blame her. There was really nothing for people like us in that fucking town.

  It was actually a relief when Kilo came in with a call from Flavia, anything to stop the memory-jacking. He handed me a bottle of water with the phone, then practically tipped my head back and poured it down my throat. Flavia proposed a damage-limitation exercise on Kitty Queenan, a half-hour exclusive interview, during which I would let it be known the pictures were just movie out-takes and melt her heart with tales of how hard it was being subjected to pernicious media assaults. ‘Give her the full charm offensive,’ instructed Flavia.

  ‘I’ll charm her fucking pants off,’ I said, although I was worried my head was starting to float away from my neck.

  ‘Are you fit to do this?’ Flavia wanted to know. ‘Put Kailash on.’

  Kilo spoke briefly into the phone, assured her I was fine, then chopped out a couple of lines. I greedily snorted them both. ‘One of them was for me,’ sighed Kilo. But I was feeling better already, if you discounted the slight twitch in my left eye. I put my mirror shades back on.

  Kitty wanted to interview me in my suite for the full at-home-with-a-superstar experience, hotels being as close to home as most superstars ever get. Kilo let her in, made sure we were plentifully supplied with hot coffee and iced water, then made himself scarce. My interrogator appraised the room with a sweeping gaze that seemed to suck in every detail before coming back to rest on me. For someone who should have been physically unimposing, a short, middle-aged woman swathed in a jumble of lace, patterns and costume jewellery, I was struck again by her aura of mischievous sharpness, as if the frumpy glamour of loud make-up and clashing layers was a disguise, something to blur her dangerous edges. When she was done admiring the hotel artwork and contents of the jellyfish tank, we settled on either side of one of the elongated sofas, digital recorder perched between us, notebook in her lap.

  ‘Would you mind taking your sunglasses off?’ she enquired.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said, while she warped in front of my stoned vision, a wolf in hippie clothing. There was something intimidatingly sensuous about such ripe confidence. Her eyes were predator sharp, and when she spoke, I got the uncomfortable feeling I might be the main course.

  ‘This business with Penelope and Troy is obviously bothering you, yet it goes with the te
rritory of celebrity unions, so … what is it about this particular story that has upset you so much?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say I’m upset,’ I lied. ‘Take the celebrity out of it, I’m just a guy in love with a girl, hearing horrible things said about her …’

  ‘Can we really take the celebrity out of it? I am not sure you are just a guy, and she’s certainly not just a girl, she’s one of the most famous women in the world, and there is a twenty-year age gap. She is old enough to be your mother…’

  ‘You’re old enough to be my mother,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Not quite,’ she retorted, a little wounded.

  ‘Half the women I meet are old enough to be my mother,’ I said, to smooth things over. ‘Usually the most interesting half. I’m drawn to character, I’m drawn to experience – girls my own age have nothing to teach me.’

  ‘Your own mother died when you were young, didn’t she? I notice that you never talk about her.’

  ‘I don’t actually remember her,’ I said. ‘I was very young.’

  ‘Nine is not that young.’

  Fuck, she was tough. ‘I think I was eight,’ I said. ‘My father was the dominant character in my life, anyway. He raised me really.’

  ‘So would you say he was both mother and father to you?’

  I laughed out loud. ‘No, I wouldn’t say he was a mother at all. Not much of a father either, sometimes. He was just my old man. He was what I was running away from when I ran into music. I wanted to find something I could make my own, a place where I was safe, and music was that place.’

  ‘A kind of womb,’ she suggested.

  I didn’t like where this was going at all. ‘A womb with a view,’ I joked, trying to divert her. ‘And the view was the whole world. Music wasn’t just about cuddling up somewhere nice and warm, it was about getting out in the world, getting away from Ireland, seeing new things, having new experiences, meeting new people, like you. Smart people, educated people, people I could relate to. That’s a nice dress.’ I reached forward and touched the fabric of her billowy frock. There was a trace of a blush in her cheeks but she wasn’t deflected for a second.