#Zero

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#Zero Page 11

by Neil McCormick


  ‘AND SCREEN LEGEND PENELOPE NAZARETH …’

  ‘Are you gonna kill me or kiss me?’ she drawled.

  ‘I haven’t decided yet,’ I said.

  It was so fucking corny, I could feel my cheeks burning in the darkness. My screen self spun around, pistols blazing, and a CGI bullet rippled through the air towards me. Shot by my own gun. I wished it would put me out of my misery.

  ‘NUMBER ONE WITH A BULLET,’ announced the man with the gravel voice.

  I could sense eyes boring into me and sneaked a look sideways to find a round, bearded boy my own age staring, an enormous grin on his face. ‘You’re him,’ he said.

  ‘Shhh,’ I whispered. ‘I’m trying to go incognito.’

  ‘No problem, man, no problem,’ he reassured me, shaking his head in amusement. ‘Shit, man, you really are him.’ He started to nudge his girlfriend.

  On screen, Mickey Rourke was facing me in a gleaming hi-tech office, walls conspicuously bedecked with framed discs and posters of Penelope in her prime. ‘There’s only one thing you need to know about this business, son,’ smirked Rourke. ‘The artist is the enemy.’ He reminded me of Beasley. Cut to Penelope, drop-dead gorgeous, throwing a drink in Rourke’s face in a nightclub, drawling, ‘You don’t own me. Nobody owns me.’ Cut to Rourke, screaming down a phone in a helicopter, specks of spit flying from his lips. ‘She’s over, she’s finished, bring me the bitch’s head on a silver disc.’ Cut to me, kneeling in a confessional: ‘This is the last one, Father. After this, it’s over.’ Cut to Samuel L. Jackson as the priest, pulling a knife from beneath his cassock. ‘It’s never over, son.’ There was an inferno of explosions on the screen as my stunt double wreaked carnage through the city of LA, and then I was at a piano on a blacked-out stage in a single spotlight, singing my big ballad hit ‘Make It On My Own’. Cut to Penelope. ‘You really can sing, you know. Maybe there is a way out of this.’

  It sounded like a promise.

  ‘This is my girlfriend, Nicola,’ said my neighbour.

  A fleshy girl leaned over to grab my arm, saying, ‘I got all your tracks, all of them, we love you.’

  ‘She’s telling the truth,’ insisted her boyfriend. ‘Every one.’

  ‘I appreciate it,’ I whispered. ‘Just … we don’t want everyone to know I’m here.’

  ‘Not a whisper,’ she said.

  Somewhere behind us, the cinema doors opened, admitting a beam of light against which an usher was briefly silhouetted, and beside him, the unmistakeable form of Tiny Tony. Onscreen, Penelope was sliding out of her dress to reveal a shadowy hint of those voluptuous and entirely natural breasts, and I was grabbing her, throwing her back onto the bonnet of a sports car.

  ‘So what’s up with Penelope and Troy Anthony?’ my new friend wanted to know. The usher’s torch probed the darkness.

  The interminable trailer continued with me performing the title song in a heaving nightclub. Mickey Rourke snarled, ‘You got talent, kid, but a man’s only as good as the clauses in his contract. Do the deed. Then we’ll talk.’ Cut to me, gun in hand, racked with badly acted anguish, woodenly proclaiming, ‘The only thing standing between me and everything I ever wanted is the woman I love.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, I can’t believe they left that shot in,’ I muttered.

  ‘You look good,’ said the girlfriend. ‘Very handsome.’

  ‘I’d go and see it,’ agreed the boyfriend.

  People were shifting in their seats, necks craning, a ripple of Chinese whispers spreading through the theatre. Sam Jackson stood before a statue of the Virgin Mary, swigging from a bottle of communion wine, pistol held to his own head. ‘If you won’t do it for me, do it for your mother,’ he wailed. Cut to me, gun cocked, approaching Penelope on an empty stage. Cut to Mickey Rourke in a limo screaming, ‘Retire the bitch!’

  ‘Keep it down back there,’ said someone in the row in front of us.

  ‘It’s him. It’s Zero,’ explained the girlfriend, helpfully.

  Onscreen, Penelope was a vision of wounded sexiness, eyes only for me, a look of lovelorn betrayal burning through the celluloid. ‘I knew you’d let me down, you sonofabitch,’ she spat.

  The usher’s torch lit up my face.

  I stood and vaulted the seat in front but, without the aid of a Hollywood special effects department, I caught my foot on the back of the chair and crashed to the floor. Someone let out a yelp. People were standing up to see what was going on. I crawled under a seat, squeezing through into the next row, where I had a clear run to the end of the aisle. I bolted. Tiny Tony called my name.

  ‘Shuddup!’ bawled an irate patron.

  ‘Siddown!’ yelled another.

  ‘Zero!’ screamed a third.

  ‘NUMBER ONE WITH A BULLET,’ said the voice-over artist.

  I made it to the glowing exit sign and pushed the doors open. I could hear Penelope saying, ‘If you want me, you’re gonna have to come and get me.’ I didn’t hear my riposte, but I knew what it was.

  ‘I’ll track you down in hell, babe.’

  I threw myself down the stairwell three steps at a time, banged through a fire exit and out onto the street. An elderly black man stepped back, startled, but his stare was blank, without recognition. An old people’s home, I thought, that’s where I would be free. An old people’s home for the blind, deaf and dumb, just to be on the safe side. I put my hands over my face, covering my features the only way I could, and hurled myself into the lengthening shadows, running like a madman, ducking down the first adjacent alley, diving into the next street, mingling into the pedestrian traffic, trying to see through the spaces between my fingers. I bounced off someone. ‘Lookwhereyagoin, yafugginmoron,’ he snapped. ‘Whassamatterwidu?’ I pushed on, walking blind, the silliest disguise, but it was working, I was getting away with it, I was getting away. But then I glanced back to see a trail of curious faces following me, the murmur going up, ‘Is it him?’ ‘It’s him, I think it’s him.’ I picked up my pace, and they picked up too. I turned another corner, dropping my hands and running, but I was on Broadway again, right in front of the Pilgrim Hotel. How the fuck did that happen? Was there no way out of this nightmare? There were spotlights beaming into the early evening sky, and a crowd of fans pressing against crash barriers. I was running as fast as I could, about to be sandwiched between a pursuing horde behind and Zeromaniacs in front. The thought flashed through my mind that I could just run straight up the red carpet, race through the ballroom and, who knows, maybe I could still get onstage in time to pick up my award. Make a joke of the whole thing. ‘I went to take a leak, turned left when I should’ve turned right, and I’ve just been twice around Times Square pursued by screaming fans.’ Maybe they would buy it. Maybe it would be a headline grabber, which would keep Beasley happy.

  And then, like a vision before me, I spotted my white stretch limo, parked on a double yellow, the driver leaning against the bonnet, idly smoking. What was his fucking name? Why didn’t I ever get to know the staff? ‘Driver!’ I shouted inanely, making a beeline for him.

  He casually glanced up, then jolted to attention.

  The Zeromaniacs had spotted me. The New York mob were hot on my tail.

  ‘Gimme the keys!’ I screamed as I reached the limo.

  ‘I can’t just—’ he stuttered.

  ‘Gimme the fucking keys or you’re fired,’ I snarled.

  He handed me the keys and I threw myself behind the wheel. I heard a plaintive plea of, ‘Are you insured?’ as I started up. Hands were banging on the windows, faces pressing against the glass, but I was driving, I was moving, I was gliding into the traffic, I was on the road, I was leaving it all behind, I was accelerating, I was gone, I was real gone, I was real, real gone.

  I was free.

  11

  It was a long, long time since I had driven myself anywhere and I can’t say my handling was particularly smooth, what with the last blast of the setting sun bleeding into my eyes and light flashing and bouncing off eve
ry surface, other drivers honking, silhouetted pedestrians yelling abuse as I cut through red. Or maybe that’s what driving in New York is always like. It probably didn’t help that I was shit-faced on booze and worse but I grew up in Ireland, for fuck sake. I learned to drive while drunk. How else were we supposed to get home from the pub? But I had no idea where I was going, just away from THEM, just towards HER, and the car phone kept ringing while I was trying to get to grips with the automatic pedal action on a vehicle at least three times the length of my brother’s jalopy, which was the only thing I had ever driven before. Did I mention that I don’t have a licence? Anyway, there was no way I was going to pick that phone up, I knew exactly who it would be, but the fucking thing wouldn’t stop, it just kept ringing, ringing, ringing, so I tore it out of its mounting and (after pressing every visible button just to wind down the window) fucked it out onto the street. Goodbye, Beasley.

  Somehow I found myself in a long, wide tunnel, hemmed in by slow-moving traffic, fumbling with buttons and levers, turning on windscreen wipers and indicators in an effort to switch on the lights. I looked up just in time to slam the brakes without rear-ending the car in front as traffic ground to a halt. I wouldn’t have relished getting out to swap insurance details. An elderly woman sitting stationary behind the wheel in the next lane turned towards me and bared her teeth alarmingly. I had a moment’s panic but she was just admiring her reflection. Thank Christ for tinted windows. Then I was out into the dusk, the darkening sky streaked with pink and purple, everything picking up speed, road signs flashing past before I could get a fix on them, shiny articulated giants with tyres twice the height of my crawling limo overtaking with stern blasts of their pipes, like I should get a move on and stop hogging their highway. A vast, flat industrialised wasteland spread out to my right, a cityscape of distant towers off to my left, and it dawned on me that I had left Manhattan behind. A giant spotlit billboard on stilts directed me to an Adult Superstore next exit, where every temptation of the flesh was on offer, while directly opposite, an equally big black-and-white billboard informed me HELL IS REAL. As if I didn’t already know that.

  I had to get off this road, which was dividing and multiplying, adding lanes as if there was no limit to the amount of cars it could handle, traffic merging from every direction, a river of white lights coming towards me, a river of red tail-lights swimming ahead, but I was at a loss as to how I was ever going to stop this thing now. And then the traffic bunched and slowed and I realised I was heading into a trap, a long line of gated toll booths blocking my escape. I thought this is it, my flight is over before it has even begun. I never carried money. That was Kilo’s job. I hated anything to spoil the line of my trousers. But I reached into my pocket, more in hope than expectation, and pulled out my credit card and coke. My heart gave a little leap, although I doubted either would be acceptable currency to a toll-booth operator. But as I pulled up, ready to promise autographs and tickets and diamond-studded watches for a free exit, the gate raised and I kept moving. The limo must have been equipped with some kind of auto-pass. I laughed aloud. I was settling into my rhythm behind the wheel, comfortably looping around to merge with another traffic stream. Could I drive all the way to Brazil, Highway 666, straight to hell, boys, Amazon here we come, drive all night into the cheating arms of the woman I love? I had no fucking idea. All I knew was that if I stayed between the white lines I’d be OK.

  Talking of white lines, I opened up the packet. It was a little difficult to manoeuvre so I just stuck my snout in and inhaled. I was surging now, inside and out, foot down on the accelerator, burning through the disappearing world. Out of the darkness, brightly lit signs indicated I was on the New Jersey Turnpike, heading towards Philadelphia. That sounded all right to me. That sounded like a song. I reached over to turn on the radio, flinching slightly in case the first thing that greeted me was one of my own hits. But it was the Boss, telling me that tramps like us, baby we were born to run.

  And even though my hands were shaking and my teeth were grinding from the cocaine and fuck knows what other chemicals were coursing through my system, I started to feel OK, I mean really fine, for the first time that day, fuck it, for the first time in as long as I could remember. The sheer focus of driving was engaging all functional parts of my brain and the radio was colonising the rest and there was no room left for anything else. Just song after song, the lights of the road, the looming darkness of the continent beyond. I didn’t even have to think about what I had done because The Who were doing my thinking for me, telling me I was the seeker on a wave of power chords, searching low and high. The Eagles were there to remind me that life in the fast lane would surely make me lose my mind. Tom Petty chimed in to sympathise that love was a long hard road and the Rolling Stones let me know that though you can’t always get what you want, if you put in a bit of effort you might get what you need. There’s a philosophy to live by. I would have been happy to drive all night with classic rock for company but brash salesmen kept breaking in to bombard me with offers of new-model mobile phones, low-emission high-performance vehicles on easy payment schemes and better health insurance, terms and conditions may apply, so I flicked channels, quickly passing over pop and news and settling on everything country, a warm cushion of plush harmonies, silvery guitars and homespun wisdom. I felt safe there for many, many miles until some old fool started singing about the last time he saw his mama and I felt a catch in my chest and then she let go of his hand and my eyes suddenly filled up so I could barely see where I was going. ‘Mama are you there?’ he wailed. I hit search and found some grinding metal and that was better, I could go numb in the noise.

  I don’t know why music has this effect on me, but I suppose if it didn’t I’d still be back in Ireland working the family trade as a cap-doffing, back-scratching, shit-eating bagcarrier. Sorry, hotel service worker. And maybe I would be a whole lot happier. It is as if things don’t even come into focus unless there is a soundtrack attached. Parts of my life are a fog, a vague mist I can sort of detect shadowy shapes moving about in, and that’s OK with me. I think of that as pre-music, like prehistory, like when they used to teach us about the world Before Christ, and all the dates counted backwards, which must have been fucking confusing for the denizens. But play me certain tunes and everything sharpens up, I am overwhelmed by sensation; I can smell, taste, touch and see things long since left behind, each memory triggering another memory in a chain reaction. Like, I can’t even remember my own mother’s face but I could tell you the first CD I ever bought. It was Resurrection by Tupac, the ghost rapper. I haven’t heard it in an eon but it is still bouncing around the inside of my skull, with its tight beat and mournful rap predicting Tupac’s own death that squeezed my little heart so tight I thought I was going to burst. I can even describe the inside of the shop in Galway where I bought it, an Aladdin’s cave of pop junk, every inch of its walls thick with posters, layered up over one another, like nothing was ever taken down, just a new poster slapped on top. In some places the paper would be torn or peeling to reveal a mysterious glimpse of an image underneath, a portal to unfashionable fads and last year’s models. It smelled of paper too, musty and damp like a cat’s dirty litterbox. There was this one poster of a creature with a white face, black eyes and blood-streaked tears like the devil incarnate but it was torn right down the middle and you could just make out this raven-haired, blue-eyed icon in a gold suit shining like an angel trying to break through the darkness. I stared at that poster for ages, transfixed. I didn’t know who either of these deities were but I was pretty sure it had something to do with biblical battles between the forces of Good and Evil that Father fucking McGinty was always hammering on about in church on Sunday. And I remember a man with the sideburns cut at an angle and one silver tooth, who came out from behind the counter and explained that the devil was Marilyn Manson and the angel was Elvis Presley. That was actually the way he put it. He said that heavy metal music was the path to corruption but Elvis would always be th
ere to light the way back home. Then he laughed and the light glinted off his silver tooth. He had a black T-shirt that said Great Balls of Fire and a pair of tight denim drainpipes with a chain hanging from his belt. He pulled a face when I said Marilyn looked like he had just eaten Elvis for breakfast and I could tell he really wasn’t at all impressed when I asked him for the Tupac CD but he sold it to me anyway and winked and said, ‘Rock and roll will never die,’ as he handed over my change. I remember all of that but I don’t know what I was doing there, or who took me, or where I got the money to spend on rap records and what my old man thought about it all. That’s just the way it is.

  I was lost in my reverie, I must have been driving in a daze for hours, but traffic was building up, tail-lights trailing on every side, and I could see a black on black geometric silhouette in the distance, tiny coloured lights winking in the night, the city of brotherly love. I had been to Philadelphia before, of course. I had been to every urban population centre in the United States at least half a dozen times, criss-crossing the country in the back of aeroplanes, riding coach, every day a different state, every state three different cities, every city God knows how many radio shows, TV shows, record store signings, club appearances, local press, fan club meet ’n’ greets. We did four US stints, eight months in America working that first solo album and I swear it felt like I shook a hand for every unit sold. And in all that time I had never gone anywhere on my own. Never driven up, stopped the car and stood on the sidewalk without an itinerary. Without someone to carry my bags, mop my brow and wipe my backside, should it be required. What was I going to do? Where was I going to go? What would people say when they saw me, lost and helpless, with no idea how a human being was supposed to behave?

  I veered between lanes, horns shrieking in dismay. And then I was following an exit and somehow the streaming intensity of the interstate was just gone, like it had evaporated, and I was rolling through a wide, empty grid of suburban dreamland, past perfectly square lawns and blank-faced wooden houses lit like a movie set waiting for someone to say action. I switched off the radio. Crawling past row after row after row of identical plastic postboxes, I turned down one street, then another, and it was all the same, as empty as a model village. If there was any life here it was going on behind those dumb walls, in cosy family units where something as alien as a drug-crazed pop star on the verge of a nervous breakdown would never ever set foot, where Mom was doing the dishes and Dad was treating himself to a hard-earned beer and kids were hunched over laptops, phones and TV sets, flicking channels and fighting over the remote, perhaps idly pausing on reports of an award show where the headline act had mysteriously vanished. Occasionally I glimpsed someone watering plants or taking out garbage, but even they looked like they had been posed by a town planner trying to make his model more authentic. A group of pale teens from central casting gathered beneath a street light. They glanced up to watch me cruise past.

 

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