by John Niven
‘Oh. Look who’s up!’ He came over and dropped onto his haunches, quite close. ‘Listen, I’m very sorry for the inconvenience. Should all be over in a few days, OK?’
Tandy grunted against the gag, enraged now, trying to speak. ‘MMMF! UNNGGHH!’
‘That’s a good fellow. Excuse me. Must get back to it …’
THIRTY-SIX
An hour or so of darkness on the highway – the radio blaring mad raga fizz, the driver making no attempt at conversation – and then, up ahead, a pyramid of light was materialising out of the desert night. They pulled up at the kerb and Lucius simply started handing the man banknotes until he held his hands up saying ‘Enough!’
He stood underneath the glowing sign for ‘INTERNATIONAL DEPARTURES’. There had been no air conditioning in the car and sweat was pouring in rivulets down his arms, coursing across his face, his great belly. Wandering a market square filled with locals in the dark had been one thing, stepping in here was going to be quite another. When had Lucius Du Pre (and it is worth noting that the third person was the default setting of even Lucius’s inner monologue) last set foot alone in such a place? Through the thick, lightly smoked glass he could see great crowds of people going back and forth, saying hellos and goodbyes, grappling with baggage, staring at the boards. He looked at his watch: 8.45 p.m. He had been gone less than three hours. They wouldn’t even have noticed yet. He could get in a cab and … how? How to get back into the grounds? No. To go back was … something about being more difficult than to go on. And go back to what? Then he remembered the TV reports – his fans, crying. They needed him. He checked his sunglasses were in place and took a deep breath …
Lucius stepped gingerly into the terminal, like a gazelle or an ocelot escaped from the city zoo might pad into a busy branch of McDonald’s, almost certain of the astonished looks that would greet him. It was overwhelming – the noise, the lights, the bustle and mayhem. He began tiptoeing across the marble floor, terrified, his eyes darting back and forth behind the thick, polarised lenses.
‘Sir? Sir?’
Lucius stopped and turned around – a man in uniform was looking at him. This was it. ‘Sir?’ the man repeated. Lucius now saw he was gesturing to the empty trolley he was holding. ‘Bags?’ the man said. Not police – porter.
Lucius shook his head, muttered ‘Help me, Jesu, POWEE!’ and hurried off, deeper into the throng, his head craning this way and that, something gradually dawning on him – he had no idea what to do. Lucius had never bought a plane ticket in his life. His interactions with reality had been mediated since he was a nine-year-old.
All the signage was unfamiliar, much of it in Arabic. The noise around him was increasing, reaching a crescendo in his head. He clutched his fanny pack tighter, wondering if he could just crunch a couple of Valium, wondering if … and then he saw it. Two letters, one red and one blue, the twinned mountain peaks (poor Jay, poor Marcus) of the two ‘A’s: AMERICAN AIRLINES. Lucius felt an instant connection to the motherland. He had even done a commercial for American, many years ago, in the late seventies, with OJ Simpson and one of the Burts, Lancaster, or Reynolds. He waddled towards the desk, where there was no line. An employee girl in uniform and full hijab sat, her fingers whirring on her terminal keyboard. ‘Ahlan,’ she said, turning to face him, her eyes faltering just a fraction as she took in Lucius’s sweating bulk.
What did one say? Lucius wondered, automatically looking around for PA, for tour manager, for bodyguard. ‘I … I need …’ he began.
‘Can I help you?’ the girl said, her face Arabic but her accent American.
‘A-A …’ Lucius stammered. ‘America.’
‘America?’
‘I go to America.’
‘Do you have a ticket? A booking reference?’
He shook his head fiercely, droplets of sweat flying. The urge to start singing ‘I LOVE JESU!’ in this woman’s face was very strong, but he sensed conventional behaviour was required here. He took a deep breath and just grinned insanely at her.
‘So you want to buy a ticket?’
Nodding now, his bulldog jowls flapping.
‘But to where?’
‘America.’
‘But –’ she pointed to the huge board hanging from the ceiling behind him – ‘Washington, Philadelphia, Detroit, New York …’
‘New York!’ Lucius exclaimed. The city of his comeback!
‘New York City …’ the girl said, her fingers already flying across the keyboard. ‘Okaaayyy, there’s room on the 22.30. Gets into Kennedy 17.15 tomorrow evening. Coach OK?’ Lucius looked at her. ‘Is coach OK?’ she repeated.
‘Airplane, fnargh,’ Lucius said firmly. What the fuck was this with a coach? No, wait, he’d heard of this, many years ago. The early days, the first tours with his brothers, it was a thing. Where all the people sat. What was the other thing called? The girl was starting to look at him like he was truly crazy now. It came back to him. ‘First,’ Lucius said, pleased with himself, like he’d been picked out by teacher and asked a difficult question. ‘First class,’ he embellished proudly.
‘First?’ the girl said doubtfully, taking him in, her fingers dancing on the keyboard once again. ‘You’re in luck. There’s one seat left in first on that flight. And coming back?’ Again he just looked at her. ‘Sir … are … are you …?’ She leaned forward, lowering her voice. Here it came. The autograph book. The phone for the selfie. The declaration of undying love. ‘Are you OK?’
What to say? What was normal? ‘Tired.’
She nodded. ‘When are you returning?’
Lucius shook his head.
She sighed. This was already a long night. ‘One way?’
‘Way?’ Lucius said.
‘You’re not coming back?’
‘No. Never back.’
‘OK … one way. First class. With taxes that comes to … fourteen thousand and fifty-seven dollars.’
She looked at him, part of her expecting this to be the end of the conversation, for the madman to just shuffle off back to the streets. But no, he surprised her by reaching into his fanny pack and, with a snick, laying a credit card down on the counter. She picked it up and looked at it, surprised to see a Platinum American Express and not a supermarket loyalty card, a library card. ‘Praise Jesu!’ Lucius said.
‘And your passport, Mr … McCann?’ Lucius handed it over. She looked at the photo. Then at Mr Fergal McCann. Then back and forth again. And again. ‘Are you, do you know … you really look like Lucius Du Pre? Here, I mean, in this photograph.’ She left the ‘not now’ unsaid.
‘I …’ Lucius said. ‘When I was younger.’
Yes, you could really just see it – the face of the man in the photograph, just visible in the fleshy puddle staring numbly at her now. It was an old passport, issued seven years ago. Jesus, this guy must have been hitting the buffet hard. Fuck it, she started issuing the ticket. ‘Luggage?’ she asked.
Would this horror ever end? Lucius was thinking, having no idea of the true horror that he was about to endure as he experienced another first – going through general security.
Later, reclining on his flatbed throne, a frosted tumbler of vodka in his paw and two Valium dissolving under his tongue, soothing Motown coming through his headphones while the stewardess went through the safety routine (the humorous indulgence reserved for first-class passengers, an air that says ‘of course all this doesn’t really apply to you guys, it’s for the fools in the back, but let’s go through the pantomime’), Lucius began to calm down.
He shifted in his seat, still stinging, still uncomfortable, still the wet, greasy tang down there …
First there had been a long grilling with a man in a glass booth, who seemed to find it difficult to believe that he was taking a fourteen-hour one-way trip to America with nothing more than the clothes on his back, a credit card and a few thousand dollars. But the American passport, it seemed, was still a powerful tool, something that could cow and intimidate. Finally,
grudgingly, granted permission to continue, Lucius had imperiously snatched back his documents and strode through some kind of passageway, ignoring the clearly insane maniac who was shouting stuff at him about liquids and laptops and shoes and belts. Whereupon all hell had broken loose – alarms going off and hands upon him.
The episode had concluded in a brightly it windowless room with the snap of a rubber glove somewhere behind him as he looked up into the unsmiling face of the security man he’d shoved back …
Now, Lucius had inserted his finger into many anuses. With KY, with saliva and even dry, he’d forced many a recalcitrant flower to blossom for him, had engineered his way into countless puckering anemones. He’d had it done to him too, by his father of course – the reek of whiskey in the Comfort Inn, the trucks smashing by on the interstate on the other side of the drywall – or by brisk proctologists over the years. But this had been something of a different order. The brief icy dab of jelly and then – boof – the sensation of filling up, of needing urgently to defecate.
Oh well, he thought, it was over now. He was returning home. To his people. How they needed him. He looked at the small TV screen on the robotic metal arm in front of him, which was showing some kind US news programme. A man Lucius did not recognise – he had an orange face and a crazy wedge of candyfloss hair, presumably an actor playing a bad guy – was talking soundlessly on the screen. At the bottom of the screen the text said, ‘President Trump says he decided to dismiss James Comey prior to recommendation from the Attorney General’s office …’ Oh, wait, was this Donald Trump? The real estate guy? Lucius had met him, back in the nineties, maybe backstage at Madison Square Garden? With his kids. The boys had been nice, but already too old for Lucius. What was he president of? Did they have real estate guys on the news now? Ah, real estate. His beloved Narnia. He would see it again soon.
But first he had business to take care of, in New York. He was going to get this show back on the road. He drained his glass as he felt himself being pushed back in his seat, his legs rising into the air. Ahead of him the great nose cone came up and the black ribbon of the runway unspooled fast below them as the jet reared into the night, banking, the lights of the airport quickly reducing to pinpricks in the desert as they climbed and turned, seeking America.
‘I love Jesu, he loves me. Me and Jesu are so happy …’ Softly, over and over. In this fashion Lucius sang himself to sleep.
THIRTY-SEVEN
‘And he sounds panicked, like real scared, so I don’t know what to do. I know if I call the police it’ll be all over the media, and who knows if it’s even real? Right? What if it’s all a hoax? Just some schmuck?’ Lance stops for a drink of water (he’s at least making a show of sobriety) and runs a trembling hand through his thinning silver hair before continuing. ‘I mean, a lot of people can do a pretty accurate impression of Lucius. Just watch the talk shows, right? So I decided to send one of our people up there to –’
‘Very good, Lance,’ Ruth says. ‘Though you might want a little more hesitation. Show confusion.’
‘It was good when you ran your hand through your hair like that,’ I offer.
‘Yep, nice touch,’ Ruth agrees. ‘OK, now you, Fred. Go …’
‘Right, so, I drive up there and I get out the car and start walking toward the house. Before I know it Lucius bursts out of the porch and starts running toward me. He’s screaming, terrified. Then Tandy, he comes out waving a –’
‘How do you know he’s called Tandy?’ Ruth says.
‘Right. Shit. This guy I later learn is Tandy comes out waving a rifle. So I pull my gun and tell him – “Drop it, mister.” Next thing that happens is he … I mean I … ah fuck. Sorry.’
Media training. Ruth and I are in her office, taking Schitzbaul and his bodyguard Fred through their paces. They are both going to be interviewed hundreds of times in the coming days and they need to be on point. I’m not too worried about Schitzbaul – he’s been managing major artistes for forty years, lying comes as easily to him as breathing. He’s the kind of guy who, as they say, will lie to you even when it’s in his best interests to tell the truth. But Fred, Fred needs some coaching. He’s extremely loyal to Schitzbaul, having worked for him for fifteen years, and loyalty, that golden virtue, is the reason he’s been chosen. But he’s not a natural actor. ‘Fred,’ Ruth says gently, but with an edge, clearly feeling the pressure, ‘keep it simple. You just need to learn the essentials of the script. Let’s try again. From the top …’
We’ll be bringing Du Pre back soon. Right now Terry is preparing the final details, up there in the Pinto Mountains. The next few days will not be pleasant for Mr William Tandy as he is kept captive in his own home while Terry transforms his basement into what the tabloids will call a ‘shrine’ to Lucius Du Pre, with a goodly smattering of hardcore gay and child pornography thrown into the mix. Nor will things improve much for old Bill when Terry takes him out onto the porch and shoots him in the chest with the SIG Sauer P320 belonging to Fred before placing Tandy’s own hunting rifle in his cold, dead hands.
So far so good. But we then need Fred – playing Du Pre Personal Security Guard Sent to Check Out Surely Bogus Claim that Du Pre is Alive – and Schitzbaul – playing Near Hysterical Manager – to do their bit. And it is clear Fred is struggling with the enormity of the bullshit that is being asked of him. This rankles a bit as he’s being paid one million American dollars for his part in this.
‘I … I saw he was armed, he meant harm, and I … I …’
‘Fred,’ I say, getting up, ‘what do you know about lying? In its purest form.’
‘Well, I –’
‘Get this – you are not lying. If you think you are lying then we are fucked. You need to imagine this scene all the time. Imagine yourself getting out the car, seeing Lucius running towards you, terrified, then this maniac wielding a fucking great blunderbuss is coming at you. You’re pulling your gun. You’re in the mountains. Your hands are cold and you can see your breath steaming. After you shoot him his blood will steam in the air too. This happened to you as surely as you had breakfast this morning. But most important of all …’ I sit down on the conference table, very close to him now, ‘the whole time you must be thinking this: the person I am talking to has no way of proving me wrong.’ Fred nods, seeming to get this. ‘Here,’ I say, picking up the remote, ‘watch this …’ I hit play on the compilation of clips I’ve put together. The four of us watch some of the greats: Stalin talking about how well collectivisation is working while millions of his own people starve, Goebbels talking about how the Jews are having a right old laugh in the Third Reich, Clinton saying ‘I did not have sexual relations with that woman’, Alan Clark telling Parliament with a straight face that we sold Iraq ‘machine tools’, Lance Armstrong, looking Larry King right in the eye and giving it ‘I’ve said it for longer than seven years. I have never doped’, literally off his nugget as he says it, his one mad ball dangling somewhere beneath the desk, Berlusconi smiling, saying ‘I’ve never threatened anyone’, Jonathan Aitken, incensed at the accusations he met with arms dealers, hitting back with righteous fire as he delivers ‘If it falls to me to cut out the cancer of bent and twisted journalism in our country with the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of British fair play, so be it. I am ready for the fight’, all the while knowing he’s been meeting with arms dealers like it’s going out of fucking fashion. And, interspersed between every other clip, the Man. The King. He’s saying stuff like ‘I didn’t want to go into Iraq’, saying ‘between three and five million illegal votes caused me to lose the popular vote’, saying ‘professional anarchists, thugs and paid protesters are proving the point of the millions of people who voted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN’, and saying, over and over again, uncountable times, ‘there was no collusion …’
I’m watching Fred, bathed in the light of the screen, strapped into all this, like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, his eyes pinned back, the lies and the bullshit and the evasion flooding
him, rushing into him, when my phone starts ringing – Dr Ali. Finally calling me back after the message I left hours ago. Fucking clown. Probably on the golf course. I slide the bar. ‘Ali. Fucking finally. Good news, pal. Get ready to co—’
‘Steven. I … we’ve got a problem.’
‘What?’
‘He … he’s gone.’
Oh shit. The cunt’s done him on meds is my first thought. Too much of that fucking propofol, the juddering paedo heart in that tiny, wrecked body, just going ‘pop’. Game over. See you later, Sooty.
‘He’s fucking dead?’
‘No. He’s gone. Vanished. Escaped.’
I drop the phone.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Lucius marvelled again at the queue – snaking away in front of him, endless, full of his fellow Americans in all their shapes and sizes. (And now he was one of those shapes, one of those sizes, that might, from the evidence on display here, be called ‘American Standard’.) He’d been through John F. Kennedy before of course, many times. But this was different. No security-manned golf buggy straight from the gate to the champagne pod of the VIP centre. No. Just an unsmiling Homeland Security official pointing him towards the queue marked ‘US Passport Holders’. And praise Jesus that it was this queue. While it was certainly long and slow, the other queue, the one marked ‘Non US Passport Holders’, seemed to end somewhere out on the tarmac. It was filled with Chinese, Hispanics, Africans, Poles, Russians, Turks, Greeks. All of them jabbering away in their own language, all seeming cheerful enough, unfazed by the fourteen-hour wait they were enduring. Up above Lucius a baffling portrait hung – Donald Trump again. They really did worship real estate here in New York. Finally, after much shuffling along, for the second time, Lucius confronted a man in a glass box. This man was American Standard himself – he filled the box, looking like a reptile that has grown far too large for its aquarium. He was staring at Lucius as if something was expected of him. Lucius smiled back innocently. ‘Hello,’ he said.
