#Zero

by Neil McCormick

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, smiling indulgently. ‘So do you think the fact that you never really mourned for your mother has shaped your attitude to women?’

  Fuck sake, she was like a dog with a bone. ‘I am sure I mourned my mother,’ I said. ‘Everybody has to bury their parents eventually. Death’s part of life, that’s what my old man used to say.’

  Was it? Did he really say that? I don’t know where that came from. I don’t remember him ever talking about death at all, certainly not my mother’s.

  ‘Look at the orphans in MedellÍn, they’ve got nobody, but they survive, living on the streets, fending for themselves, it’s what you do, that’s what being “never young” means. You’re forced to grow up fast.’

  ‘When you were having your photo taken this afternoon, my photographer, Bruno, asked about your mother’s family …’

  She didn’t miss a trick. ‘My mother didn’t have any family. We were her family. I am her family.’ I could feel panic rising – it was time for desperate measures. I reached out and touched her arm. ‘Why are you so interested in my mother?’ I said.

  ‘Maybe because you don’t seem to be.’

  ‘I don’t think about her very often,’ I said, and reached forward and turned off her recording device. ‘Can we go off the record for a minute, is that OK? If I wanted to go to analysis, Manhattan’s full of shrinks. And they’ve got diplomas from medical school, not journalism courses. I just don’t believe in navel-gazing. Music is therapy and I’ve got music coming out of every orifice. I can fart and it sounds like a symphony. Please don’t quote me on that.’

  ‘Are you trying to be obnoxious or does it just come naturally?’ said Kitty, with a sly, mocking smile.

  ‘I’m just kidding with you, you make me nervous,’ I said, gently stroking the back of her hand and holding the tips of her fingers. I picked that move up a long time ago. If she pulled away, I could pretend it was just a friendly gesture. But if she lingered, we both knew it was on. The truth is, they never pulled away. Not any more. So I was a bit flummoxed when she reached forward and turned the recording device back on.

  ‘Why would you be afraid of a few questions, you’ve been batting them back like a pro all day?’ she said. ‘I’ve been watching you. You don’t let anyone under your shield.’

  ‘It gets exhausting talking about yourself all the time,’ I pouted, caressing her fingers again. ‘Why don’t you tell me what you think about me instead?’

  ‘Oh, I think I better save that for my readers,’ she smiled. ‘When was the last time someone said no to you?’

  ‘I’ve got a feeling someone just did,’ I said, letting go her hand. The woman confused me. I was usually good at this. But I couldn’t tell where her questions where leading, or how to bamboozle her with my bullshit.

  ‘Are you happy, Zero?’ she asked, with a quiet intensity that left me reeling behind my shades. I felt her warp in my vision again. This time she didn’t look like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, she looked like the holiest little sheep you ever saw, as meek and mild as the lamb of God itself, soft bright eyes dewy with concern for my well-being. Maybe I had taken too many drugs.

  ‘What kind of question is that?’ I retorted, my mouth dry.

  ‘One that people ask themselves all the time,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve got everything I ever dreamed of,’ I said, getting up to refill my vodka glass. ‘I’m only twenty-four, for fuck’s sake.’

  ‘Twenty-five,’ she corrected me. Jesus fucking Christ, where does the time go? I was getting old. Pop stars are like dogs. Every year counts for seven.

  ‘I’m ludicrously rich,’ I continued, making a joke of the whole thing. ‘I’m ridiculously famous, engaged to the most beautiful woman on the planet. And you’re asking me where it all went wrong?’

  ‘That’s not what I asked,’ she smiled. ‘But let me put it another way. When was the last time you clearly remember being happy?’

  I stood gawping like a beached fish, my mouth dry despite the swill of vodka. I could see stretched reflections on the surface of the jellyfish tank, where luminous, transparent blobs drifted blindly in their liquid element. Outside, through slanted blinds, my billboard loomed in the sunlight, giant eyes following my every move. All the while, Kitty sat calmly absorbing my discomfort, quietly scribbling in her damned notebook. I was supposed to be charming her, seducing her, recruiting her to the cause, but I couldn’t even talk to her. I knew I needed to give her something. So I just told her the first story that came to mind.

  ‘When my brother and I were small, I don’t know what age, we mitched off school,’ I said. ‘It was a beautiful day, just like this one, the sun was out, and we just couldn’t stand the idea of being cooped up indoors.’ Where was this story coming from, suddenly so vivid in my mind? ‘I don’t know whose idea it was – probably Paddy’s, he was older – or what we were doing, really, roaming about the hills, we were going to get into so much trouble. But then the strangest thing happened. I don’t think I’ve ever told this story to anyone. You’ll have an exclusive. There was this truck, rattling along in the middle of nowhere, on the road down below us, we weren’t paying it much attention, but suddenly it jack-knifed. I don’t know what happened, maybe the driver fell asleep, maybe its wheels went into the ditch along the side, maybe it hit something, but it just tipped right over, crash, came skidding to a halt below us.’

  Kitty looked up at me curiously. But I didn’t feel like I was talking to her any more. I was just remembering, with a sense of wonder. ‘It was a pretty remote place, Kilrock. There was nobody around, just us and some sheep and this fucking truck lying on its side. I didn’t know what to do. I was only little. But Paddy ran down, he didn’t hesitate, he clambered right up on the side of the thing, and he got the door open, and he was calling me to help him, but I don’t know what help I would have been, I was just a lad. Paddy wasn’t much bigger himself. Next thing, he’s pulling this guy out. He’s all bloody and dazed, the driver, but Paddy gets him out. He gets him down. I just stood there watching. I was terrified. The truck is on fire now. Paddy’s dragging the guy as far from the truck as he can, like it’s going to blow up, like in the movies. It didn’t blow up but that cab was burning, the flames were licking everything, he’d have been gone for sure if we hadn’t been there, mitching off school. So he has a phone, and we call the police, and soon the place is crawling, there’s an ambulance and fire truck, everybody’s there, even the headmaster, and we’re like these great heroes. You saved his life, boys! You saved his life. We got a medal, I think. Or anyway, there was some kind of presentation in the school hall later, like a while later, a couple of weeks, with the mayor and all. And that’s what I really remember. Cause it was the first time I’d ever been on stage. That’s the truth. The first time I’d ever been up there with people applauding and flash lights going off from photos being taken. It was in the papers. The guy’s whole family had come. Jeez, even my dad was happy, and he should have been tanning our backsides for skipping school. And I was happy on that stage, really happy, I remember that. I felt like I belonged up there. It was electrifying, standing above the audience, looking down at them, while they’re clapping and cheering. Electrifying. Still is. But you know what else I was thinking, the whole time?’

  I waited. I had her now. And if she asked, I’d tell her the truth. ‘What were you thinking?’ she finally said, breaking my stage-managed silence.

  ‘I don’t deserve this,’ I said.

  She smiled sympathetically. That’s when I knew I had her. Still, she had to push it. That was her nature. ‘Was your mother there?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t remember,’ I insisted. But she must have been, mustn’t she? You’d expect your mother to be there, on the greatest day of your life. But maybe she had vanished already by then, faded out of my life, as if she’d never been there at all. Just a black hole, where love should have been.

  8

  ‘How did that go with Katherine?’ enqui
red Flavia.

  ‘I think it went well,’ I said.

  ‘She seemed happy,’ said Flavia.

  Oh, I hope she was happy. I hope, at least, someone was happy.

  I was starting to come down from whatever plateau the drugs had put me on, but I wasn’t ready to crash, I preferred it up here, gliding high above my emotions. So I summoned Kilo into my bathroom and we did a couple more lines, then Linzi and Kelly got me suited and booted: dark Black Irish jeans, classic Converse, impossibly thin fake calfskin leather YSL three-quarters hooded frock coat and a retro Suicide Blonde T-shirt to send out the message that Penelope was still mine, the latter being Flavia’s idea. We headed for the limo to drive a hundred yards to the hotel next door and make a red-carpet entrance for the Generator awards, working the crowd in the early evening sunlight. Flavia guided me by the elbow, pausing to offer sound bites to big-toothed boys and girls carrying oversized broadcast mics: ‘Penelope’s fine, thank you for asking, I’m more worried about Troy, he seems to have nothing below the waist but pixels.’ Blah de fucking blah.

  I exchanged a knuckle-banging salute with gold-plated trap sensation EgoPuss, while he flashed a mouthful of jewel-encrusted teeth and croaked, ‘S’all good, know what I’m sayin’, s’all good.’ I had no idea what was supposed to be so fucking good about it but I smiled right back. A lean, tattooed, spiky-haired quartet of lookalikes gave me the two-finger devil-horn salute from the top of the stairs. I hadn’t the faintest idea who they were supposed to be but I flashed those devil horns right back at ’em. My path intersected with Elton John at the doors, the legendary songwriter done up like an overstuffed peacock in a crushed velvet coat, and we briefly admired our own reflections in each other’s sunglasses. Elton grabbed my shoulders, whispering, ‘Dear boy, dear boy,’ with a warm, gap-toothed smile, ‘Don’t let the bastards grind you down.’

  Then it was into the lobby and somehow I had a glass of champagne in my hand, and on into a vast antechamber where long-limbed models in low-cut gowns and plastic porn babes in lacy mini-frocks and dirty record-biz girls in butt-hugging skirts all swished about. There were hot girls everywhere, eye candy for the candy factory, hovering at the edge of my entourage, laughing too loudly at the attention of men in black designer suits (the stars came in character, everyone else was dressed for a ball), catching my eye with blatant come-hither stares, a circus parade of gorgeous women breathing electric perfume in the air. But Beasley wanted me working the room and only bigwigs and famous names made it through my tight ring of people.

  The pecking order was subtly graded: stars surrounded by celebutantes, scenesters, liggers, posers, has-beens, wannabes and fifteen-minute wonders from the bottom of the alphabet trying to get flashed with the A-B-Cs. You could always tell which way the big dicks were swinging. Swirls and eddies formed around us as we moved like centres of gravity through the swell, occasionally merging in a star-crossed melee of air-kissing, back-slapping, shoulder-hugging and small talk. Most of which was about whether we were taking part in Softzone’s charity project, like anyone was going to say no to the orphans.

  Saint Bono, Irish superstar, statesman and God’s celebrity representative on Earth, was holding court in a rock-and-roll epicentre, an uberfame vortex into which all other celebrity eddies would eventually and inevitably be consumed. I had met my countryman a few times, bathed in the mega-wattage glare of his touchy-feely compassionate charisma, been given the famous Bono talk about how to steer a true artistic and moral course through the dark terrain of fame, and felt irradiated by the holy spirit of his undivided attention, but I was rather dreading it now. I steered a course towards the safer shores of Amber Smack, the lairy Scottish soul diva, with whom I once got absolutely hammered and sang a karaoke duet of Frank Sinatra’s ‘That’s Life’ backstage at an LA radio festival. ‘Fuck sake, Zero,’ Amber brayed, air-kissing. ‘Don’t wanna get lipstick on your cheek, know what I mean? Oh my God, are you going to sing on this charity thing? I’ve gotta give out a gong and get the fuck out before they catch me.’

  ‘We can blow the joint together,’ I grinned. ‘I’ve got champagne on ice and a karaoke machine in my suite.’

  ‘I’m a married woman,’ she sniffed, indignantly. ‘But thanks for asking. I hear Baby BooBoo’s gonna give it a go, did you hear that?’ And she sang a sexy, sinuous blast of ‘You make me feel like a motherless child’. ‘It is a chewn, oh God, that is a chewn.’

  ‘So you going to do it then?’ I asked.

  ‘Shit, it’s for the orphans,’ she sighed.

  Oh, Amber, I thought, not you too. And then we were moving again through rounds of introductions and interruptions till I didn’t know who I was talking to and what I was talking about, while beautiful hostesses refilled my champagne glass and I felt myself being sucked into the maw of the beast, until he was there, before me, in blue wraparound shades, giving me a bear hug and rubbing stubble against my cheek. ‘Are you all right?’ the sainted Bono whispered in my ear. ‘You know I am always here for you.’ And I felt a little lurch, like I was in danger of bursting into tears right there, throwing myself bawling at his feet and begging for forgiveness. Maybe because he reminded me of the parish priest who had once led the flock in Kilrock, Father Martin his name was, he had the same gift of empathy, a way of making you feel you were the most important person in a room, the only face he saw in a crowd. And he had come and put his hand on my shoulder once, in the harsh fluorescent light of a hospital room, smoke was hanging in the air, there were tubes and coloured liquids and blinking lights, and he said those exact same words, ‘I am always here for you.’

  Fuck. Where did that come from? It was as if a crack had opened up in the middle of the room that no one else could see, a fissure in my personal space–time continuum, and I was clinging to the present by manicured fingernails, feet kicking above the abyss, trying not to spill my complimentary champagne. Bono’s lips were moving but I couldn’t hear a word he was saying. I was transfixed by the silver crucifix dangling around his neck, just like another crucifix, swinging at the end of black rosary beads in Father Martin’s hand, the smell of antiseptic in the corridor, my father howling like a wounded dog, Paddy weeping, everybody weeping. ‘I am always here for you.’ But he hadn’t always been there for me, had he, the fucking liar? He was drummed out for making one of his congregation pregnant, a girl in sixth form at Kilrock Comp. And we got fire and brimstone Father McGinty instead, who assured me one day I was going to go to hell for all my acts of vandalism on church grounds, sticking a cigarette in the mouth of the Virgin Mary, chopping down his Christmas tree and dressing the statue of Christ on the cross in a T-shirt bearing the legend The Pope Smokes Dope. ‘You go to hell yourself, Father,’ I told him, ‘and say hello to Mother Teresa when you get there.’ I wasn’t worried about God. I had long since given up on Him. But not before He gave up on me. I was more concerned about how my old man would react but he was so fucking unpredictable, he listened to McGinty’s complaints and just said, ‘Ah, the boy’s a bit high-spirited, Father,’ and sent him on his way. I heard him in the kitchen later, muttering, ‘The pope smokes dope,’ and laughing out loud. Mind you, even he had stopped going to church by then.

  Adam Monk had joined us now, and was enthusiastically explaining that a makeshift recording studio had been set up backstage. Stars would be walked through one at a time as we came offstage and legendary producer Ezra Wise would be on hand to guide us through a vocal take. ‘The track is a monster,’ enthused Bono. ‘You’ll do it proud.’ Then Madonna arrived and the centre of gravity in the crowd shifted again, and I was able to back away, accepting another glass of champagne, feeling the bubbles fizz on my tongue, ignoring the acid burn in my gut. The waitress’s smile was dazzling, she had the most perfectly even white teeth, and gorgeous dimples, and her pneumatic breasts were straining at the leash of a sleek, low-cut silk and chiffon dress that rose and fell in all the right places. They must pay waitresses in New York a lot if they can afford enhancem
ents like that, I thought.

  ‘I hoped I would see you here,’ my waitress was saying, clinking her glass against mine, and I realised it was Mindy, lovely Mindy, FNY TV’s jumped-up weather girl.

  ‘Mindy!’ I shouted with delight. ‘It’s been so long!’

  ‘About twelve hours,’ laughed Mindy. What lovely laughter, it rose up and floated in bubbles all around me.

  ‘A lot can happen in twelve hours, Mindy,’ I said. The background music was blending with the chatter, light was refracting, Mindy was talking but it was hard to concentrate. Someone was hovering, waiting for an opportunity to interrupt, but I shut them out, focusing hard on Mindy’s mouth, champagne foam fizzing on her voluptuous lips as she took another sip.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Kilo, breaking in. ‘Excuse me, Lamont Walker wants to say hello.’

  I turned to see a huge, white-haired man in baggy Armani, my American label boss, one of the most powerful men in the music business, but no way as pretty as Mindy. I grabbed her elbow to keep her by my side while paying my respects to the man Beasley referred to as The Money. Or maybe he was paying his respects to me, The Cash Flow, it was hard to tell. I couldn’t understand a single word Lamont was saying, all I could see were numbers and dollar signs spilling out of his mouth. I was struck by the certain revelation that this was how The Money heard music: not as a flowing series of notes, melody and harmony and rhythm coming together in a confluence of sonic beauty, but as pure mathematics, the cosmic order of the cash register. I watched with amazement as the numbers danced in the air and flowed mellifluously into the ear of Beasley, who smiled as if he understood, then opened his own mouth and distinctly said KER-CHING!