#Zero

by Neil McCormick

  I kept driving, through mile after mile of relentless sameness. There was nothing for me here. Street lights grew fewer and further between, the houses and yards pressed closer together. Black boys shot hoops, spotlit behind wire mesh, grunting and shouting into the night. Some houses were boarded up, others sported broken windows like black eyes. There was rubbish piled in yards, discarded refrigerators and burned-out ghost cars. The more beaten up and abandoned the place looked, the more people could be seen, sitting on stoops or gathering in streets talking and laughing, or drinking from brown paper bags outside a store bristling with barred windows and branded neon. A red sports car with the muffler removed from its exhaust roared past and screeched as it whipped around a corner. Multi-storey tenements loomed ahead, forecourts lit like prison yards, walls tagged with elaborate graffiti. I felt conspicuous in my white stretch limo but as I turned down one street and then another I just seemed to be getting deeper and deeper into the urban jungle. The fuel gauge was blinking on my dashboard. When I paused at an intersection there was a sharp rap at my window. A black face loomed at the glass, lazy eyes, a livid scar across a dented nose. I pressed a button and the window rolled smoothly down. ‘You lost, dawg?’ enquired my visitor.

  ‘I am lost,’ I nervously admitted. He wasn’t any older than me, tall and gangly but muscular, standing proudly in the middle of the wide road dressed in a baggy vest that bore the slogan HEADZ YOU LOSE. He wore a black stocking cap over his skull. A thick faux-gold chain hung round his neck as far as the hem of his boxers, poking out over low-slung baggy jeans. Behind him, on the sidewalk, a gang were gathering, oversized boys in supersize clothes and skinny girls in next to nothing, thongs pulled high, jeans dropped low, lots of cheap bling, bandanas tied round heads and hats worn backwards, sideways and inside out. Maybe accelerating out of there would be the smart move. But a bone-rattling roar alerted me to the return of the red sports car, a heavy-set Mitsubishi pimped up with rims, spoiler and underside neon, which came down the cross street and screeched to a halt in front, blocking my exit. ‘Who you carryin’ back there?’ asked Scarface.

  ‘Nobody,’ I said. He did a double take and his poker face was replaced by an incredulous grin. ‘What the fuck, man! You on MTV, I know you. What the fuck?’ Behind him, one of the girls started to squeal and jump up and down.

  ‘Zero, omigod, it’s Zero!’ And that was a cue for everybody to move forward till the car was completely surrounded, and there was nothing for it but to open the door and get out.

  I’d been in the thick of crowds before but usually I had bodyguards to keep them at bay. Hands were feeling the cloth of my coat, patting me on the back, banging my knuckles and engaging me in elaborate hip-hop shakes. Questions and exclamations popped in my ears. Girls pushed forward to get pictures taken by friends wielding mobiles, one small curvaceous babe shoving her rocket breasts at me. ‘Touch them if you want, they’re real,’ she assured me. A man mountain of lardy flesh pushed her unceremoniously aside to demand I listen to him rap. ‘You gonna want me on your nex’ beat,’ he insisted in a squeaky voice. ‘I’m undiscovered, brother, hear me spit you won’t recover! Never ever love another, hit the pitch, bitch, don’t even bother …’ The tall scarface who stopped the car made an attempt to assert proprietorship by throwing a long arm around my shoulder and declaring, ‘Give a dawg some space.’ The doors of the red sports car were open and a big, burly man with long, swinging dreadlocks approached, surrounded by swaggering homies. The small crowd parted. He had a few years on everybody else, deep-set panda eyes, neat little goatee beard, smoothly decked out in black baseball jacket and clean white T. ‘What we got here, boy?’ he said in a deep, ominous growl but the threat quickly subsided as he too broke into a grin, prominent gold flashing in his mouth. ‘Zero! Come here, cuz!’ he declared, wrapping me in a bear hug like we were old amigos. ‘Welcome to the hood, cuz. Welcome, welcome, welcome.’

  Right on cue, with a boom-shaka-boom, beats started dropping, like some unseen choreographer was staging an urban musical: hey, kids, let’s put the show on here. A humungous ghetto blaster with bass bins emitting subsonic frequencies that could loosen your bowels was hoisted onto the roof of the limo, and Fat Boy started urgently rapping at me in a high, quickfire voice while girls danced lasciviously around, eyes swivelling to make sure I was checking out the cargo. A party was breaking out in the warm night air. The crowd around the car was swelling by the minute, someone opened the passenger doors and people swarmed through, fighting their way in, grabbing bottles of champagne and vodka. Even the bananas were doing the rounds. I was squeezed between dreadlocks (who the others respectfully referred to as SinnerMan) and Scarface (who introduced himself as Hard Head), who formed a spontaneous security detail, backed up by SinnerMan’s posse, Evildoer, Assassin and Karnivor. The fat rapper was Master Beatz. The girl with the bazookas was Bountiful. ‘Of course,’ I said, laughing. That’s why I fell in love with hip-hop: the self-invention. Everybody can be their own superhero no matter how shitty their circumstances. I should know.

  Lights were going on in surrounding buildings, more and more people pouring into the street. The liquor store was soon doing a roaring trade. There were children running about while girls who didn’t look old enough to be mothers half-heartedly tried to corral them. Everybody was talking to me at once. I pressed flesh, signed autographs, posed for pictures. I might as well have been back at the Generator awards, only with more elaborate handshakes, all double-clutching and slithering palms. A pretty prepubescent in a pink tracksuit hopped giddily around, brimming with childish glee as she sang ‘Never Young’ at the top of her voice. Somebody held up a baby for me to kiss. I laid one on his little bald head. ‘A’ight, Zero, one for good luck,’ gushed his young mother. ‘I’m never gonna wash his head again. My little superstar gonna be as rich and famous as you one day.’ Be careful what you wish for, I thought. But I let the feeling subside, it was too much fun watching Master Beatz sweating and gasping in verbal battle with a muscle-toned rival who announced himself as Roc Bottom, while a skinny girl with multicoloured pseudodreads jumped onto the hood of the limo and started spinning in wild circles. Growing up I had no one to do hip-hop battle with but my reflection. No bitches, no hoes, no guns, no gangstas, just me and my mirror, spitting vengeance at playground bullies.

  ‘Is it always like this around here?’ I asked my self-appointed protector. Apart from some washed-out and wasted oldies, most of the real adults were women. Although he probably hadn’t hit thirty yet, SinnerMan was a man among boys.

  ‘MTV don’t live on these streets,’ he replied, passing me a bottle of my own champagne. ‘American Idol, shit, they don’t run auditions in the projects. For mos’ these kids, you stepped right out of television, cuz, you know what I’m sayin’?’

  I took a swig from the neck, bubbles fizzing up my nose.

  ‘Hey, Zero, you gonna show us what you got?’ shrieked a big-ass girl, shaking her booty in ripples of flesh. I could feel the monkey rising. He was never far away. What the fuck. All the world’s a stage, after all. I swung up onto the bonnet next to the Asian dancer and the crowd started clapping along and whooping. Zero! Zero! Zero! The local rappers were doing a good job but I was way beyond local. I was global. I started laying it down. I had so many rhymes, so many lines learned in my bedroom flying solo, so many couplets cooked up in the classroom when I was supposed to be studying mathematics or geographics or anything that would have kept me in an honest trade and out of trouble back in Kilrock, where I was the only nigga on the block. I could freestyle like a downhill racer in an avalanche.

  My people, my people

  Let’s all count to Zero …

  You get NOTHING for the money

  NADA for the show

  And MINUS ZERO to go man go

  Let’s roll, let’s blow, let’s rock the joint

  Drop the taunts, what’s the point?

  It’s a new way of talking – s’alphabetti spaghetti

&nb
sp; Droppin’ rhymes like confetti, emergency spit

  I can keep up this shit, baby, all night long

  You can say it don’t make sense but you can’t tell me that I’m wrong

  Let me tell you my story, the pain and the glory

  There was nothing before me, and nothing came after

  But tears and no laughter, the things that you haveta

  Do to strike lucky, lie down and let ya fuck me

  Like a paparazzi Nazi stickin’ cameras up my ass-y

  Play me like a patsy, suck on the lens, boo

  ‘Was it good for you, too?’ Smile and swallow

  There’s more to follow, so where do I sign?

  Show me the dotted line, sell your soul to Satan

  For silk and satin, can you see a pattern?

  Moët on ice, that’s nice, limos on call

  We havin’ a ball, we havin’ it all, blowin’ bubbles

  With this year’s model, it’s a doddle, the latest thing

  Ten sex symbols on the head of a pin

  Sub-atomic fashion under your skin

  Who says there’s no such thing as an original spin?

  What goes around runs aground

  You got your mind made up but your knickers down

  Cause I been looking for a reason, I been trying to come clean

  I’ve been looking for salvation in a dirty magazine

  Help me, Father, I’m fallin’, can’t you hear your child calling?

  No excuses, no stallin’, no more bangin’ and ballin’

  Cause Nothing from Nothing leaves Nothing

  Even a Zero need a little something

  So here’s the prize, guys, look in my eyes

  What you see inside will not be denied

  You can run … BUT YOU CAN’T HIDE!

  I could spin it out all night if I wanted. So what if it doesn’t always make sense, it’s the flow, it’s the show, it’s the braggadocio. The Philly kids understood that, at least. Master Beatz took up the battle and I jumped down from the limo, SinnerMan’s posse manoeuvring me to the sidewalk, where we set up a command post in a tenement stairwell. He kept the shimmying girls at bay by showing the palm of his hand while his homies glowered threateningly. ‘No cameras,’ snarled Evildoer whenever someone whipped out a smartphone. I wish my usual security had been half as effective at deterring selfie-seekers.

  An enormous spliff appeared and was ceremonially handed to SinnerMan, who sparked a light, sucked in, held it tight, then seemed to vanish for a moment in a blue cloud of exhaled smoke. ‘So what’s a five-star motherfucker like you doing on my turf?’

  It was a reasonable question but how could I explain that I was running away from everything these people were running towards, especially when I didn’t understand it myself? I shrugged helplessly.

  ‘You drive your own ride these days?’ he pressed, handing the spliff to me.

  ‘My old lady says you run out on a TV show,’ sniffed Hard Head. ‘She seen it on the news.’

  ‘Your mama too busy suckin’ on a crack pipe to follow Scooby Doo, never mind CNN,’ sniggered Assassin, whose short stature and fluffy moustache belied his name. All the other homies laughed, including, curiously enough, Hard Head.

  ‘Woman’s fucked up,’ he agreed. ‘Wha’m I gonna do? She my mama.’

  ‘I fuckin’ heard that, you little cocksucker,’ shouted a rake-thin, drawn-faced, half-dressed woman at the bottom of the stairs, before hurling a beer bottle that smashed somewhere behind us. ‘When yo’ daddy get out, don’t think you so big he can’t paddle ya backside.’

  ‘He doin’ life no parole, Mama,’ Hard Head pointed out. ‘We all be dead before he get home.’

  Everybody laughed some more, though it may have been the saddest wisecrack I ever heard. I pulled on the joint and felt the whole world lurch.

  ‘What’s in that thing?’ I coughed, heart pounding and the stairwell turning 360 degrees.

  ‘Little skunk, little rock, little smack, you know,’ sniggered Assassin. ‘It’s a SinnerMan special.’

  Shivery pulses ran through my body. Fuck, that was nice. If only the world would stop helicoptering. ‘I’m driving to Brazil to find my woman and tell her I love her,’ I groaned.

  ‘I’d say you a little fuckin’ lost, a’ight, dawg,’ said Hard Head, to more laughter.

  ‘You in trouble, cuz?’ enquired SinnerMan.

  I felt like I was melting through the floor but otherwise I couldn’t think of any immediate danger. ‘I just had to get out of New York,’ I said. ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘What you gonna do ’bout Gorgeous Troy when you get there?’ said another of the homies, I think it was Evildoer, to more sniggering. Oh but news travels fast in every direction these days, doesn’t it?

  ‘I’m gonna fuck him up,’ I announced, lifting my head with great effort. ‘The only movies he’s gonna be making from now on are horror movies.’

  ‘You bad, dawg,’ grinned Hard Head, high-fiving me.

  ‘Whole world’s fucked up,’ announced the previously silent Karnivor. ‘Every day it just gets fucked-upper, fucked-upper and fucked-upper until one day it’s gonna get so fucked up we gonna go, oh shit, it’s on. Armageddon time. Pestilence. Leprosy. Plagues. Zombies. We’re gonna have all type of shit. Earthquakes in South America, shit, right on our own border, orphan kids running round get whacked by they own peeps? S’already happening, man. It’s coming. We treat the world like shit, one day it’s gonna come and smack us right in the grill.’

  ‘That shit’s raw,’ concurred Assassin.

  ‘Karnivor’s a philosopher,’ explained Hard Head.

  I looked back to see Karnivor glowering in the shadows of the stairwell, a slack-jawed, oval-eyed, scowling Bad Buddha. His eyes burned into mine. ‘You think you got troubles, superstar? You got the cheese, the ride, the bling-a-ding-ding, you gots everything all these peeps pray to Jesus Christ and Allah for every night. You may have had a hard day, but we talkin’ about hard lives. Years of hardness, that’s the American nigga experience. Does that sound like some sort of philosophy to you? No, it’s the truth.’

  ‘You gotta stop smokin’ all that weed, bro,’ rumbled SinnerMan. ‘It’s making you depressing.’

  ‘You make your records, talk all that shit you don’t even give a fuck about and make all that dough but the kids hear it and they believe it. Because TV tell lies,’ Karnivor continued, spitting poison darts in my direction. He had a slight lisp, which added peculiar weight to every word. I could feel his animosity pierce my skin, pumping paranoia round my system. ‘See those kids dancing at your feet, they believe your shit cause they got six hours a day watching that glass tube, you know what I’m saying? TV’s the biggest drug of all. Kids sittin’ there watching that shit all day, television programmes – who’s being programmed, the TV or the person watching the TV? Real life ain’t never allowed on TV. This is real life, right here, us talkin’ here. You can’t even get this much time for talkin’ on TV, you get maybe one minute of real life surrounded by a bunch of illusions. These kids is watching the videos, it’s programming they minds, man, they watching MTV, it ain’t never like that, never like TV.’

  ‘Leave the nigga be, he just working his side of the street, like all of us,’ growled SinnerMan.

  ‘He ain’t no nigga, they ain’t got niggas in Irishland,’ whinged Karnivor. ‘Brown-skin Latino motherfuckin’ fake-ass superstar.’

  He had me till he started in on the skin. I’d been listening to that kind of crap all my childhood days. ‘Brown is beautiful, haven’t you heard? Or you too busy getting your cape ready for Klan meetings?’ I shot back. ‘You think I grew up in a TV set? Maybe in a crib in a Beverly Hills sitcom with a comedy butler? I grew up in a place just like this, bro. Home sweet fucking home.’ It was true. It might have been on a smaller scale and a whiter shade of pale, but a tenement in Kilrock is as salubrious and inviting as a tenement in Philadelphia. Rusty swings and broken glass in a children’s play
ground. That’s always a sure sign no one cares any more. Not even the people who live there.

  SinnerMan yukked with laughter. ‘You see that. You see what I’m saying? He’s a nigga all right.’

  ‘I gotta take a piss,’ said Karnivor, who turned his back and started urinating in the stairwell. The yellow liquid ran round his sneakers and formed a puddle, dripping down the concrete stairs.

  ‘Dirty motherfucker,’ yelped Assassin, jumping out of the way. Everybody got to their feet.

  A police cruiser rolled cautiously past, two pinched white faces staring out at the street party. There must have been fifty or more people down there now, dancing round ghetto blasters, facing off in rap battles, passing around bottles, kids clambering in and out of the limo. The cruiser stopped opposite the throng at the bottom of the stairwell but when a group of sullen young men faced it off, the squad car crept on.

  ‘They callin’ it in,’ said Evildoer.

  ‘We gots to go,’ nodded Assassin.