Minerva shooed the cat outside. She shut the door and peeled off Spike’s shirt and trousers. With the stockings she wore to the funeral, she tied his wrists to the table legs. Two pairs of tights secured his legs, while a third pair, pulled apart at the crotch, were wrapped tightly around his waist and under the table. She went to the sink and washed her hands. Spike was moaning quietly to himself. She bent over and felt his forehead, then dabbed antiseptic on the inside of his elbow and squeezed in the contents of a syringe.
By the time she had fetched a bowl of water and towels, he was unconscious. Meticulously she washed his stomach, where the cat had been, and then his genitalia, gently stretching back his foreskin, lifting the scrotum carefully to clean in all the creases. She patted him dry with a clean cloth. Then she prepared another hypodermic. Prostaglandin E1, fascinating drug, was a favorite with the junior doctors. It was made to treat babies with respiratory problems, but someone had discovered that injected into the penis, it gave an enormous erection that lasted for over an hour. Almost instantly, Spike’s flaccid cock unfurled and puffed itself out like a party blower.
Smiling and singing to herself, Minerva opened the small black case on the chair. It was amazing what you could get in South London with ready cash. She plugged it in—it had a nice long lead, so she didn’t need an extension cord— and placed it carefully by Spike’s waist. She leant over him and lifted his penis. The tattoo gun roared into action.
It was an awkward position to work in, and the vibrating gun was harder to control than she had anticipated. She skidded as she started to make the first straight line. Shaking a little, she stopped, wrung out a clean tea towel in the bowl of water, and dabbed at the blood. His groin had an angry, swollen blush. It might be a better idea, Minerva thought, to write the letters on first with a pen. With a firm grip on his cock, she started outlining on the underside MINERVA. But it didn’t look right. She rubbed the letters out with cotton wool and antiseptic and started again. This time, using capitals, she spelled out the name he had always used for her, MINI.
Blood and ink mingled as the needle pierced his skin at thirty jabs a second. Every now and then she would stop and dab on some antiseptic. When it was finished, she stepped back to admire her handiwork. Good, she thought, but somehow unfinished. There was nothing on the top side. She pulled it toward her, elongating the skin like chewing gum, to write on her last name, SMALLWOOD.
Spike drifted in and out until the pain slapped him back to consciousness. He could hear a hysterical, high-pitched buzzing that seemed to be coming from way off. There was a weird taste, like burnt peppermint, in his mouth. His cock was burning. He tried to get up, but he couldn’t move. By jamming his chin into his chest he could make out an enormous, blurred stiffie. And someone holding what looked like a power drill. The look on his face was more surprised than hurt.
“Fuck me,” he said, and passed out.
PATRON SAINT OF AMPUTEES
Prostrate on a poolside lounger at the Eden West hotel, Pussy was bored. Only boredom implies an awareness of something lacking and Pussy wasn’t conscious of anything. Braindead, only no one had bothered to switch the life-support machine off. She stared at the pool, because that was where her head was pointed, at the halfhearted whorl around the inlet pipe. Almost noon. Four hours until the meeting. Drinking was an option, but whether it was worth numbing numbness was far too complex a question. A waiter deposited a large vodka and cranberry juice on her side table. The decision appeared to have made itself.
Lyrics. Pussy took a sip. The middle-aged actor on the other side of the pool nodded at her glass, raised his own, and smiled. He appeared to have a baby’s head stuffed down the front of his beige swimming trunks. This surprising sight momentarily unblocked her brain. Sitting bolt upright, picking up her notepad, she wrote down the first words that came into her head: “It’s a scary world but we have to live in it. The wind is blowing in hot from the desert and all the scorpions have wings. There are dangers all around, animals that eat you, things that sting.” She scribbled it out. She couldn’t shake the dream she’d had the night of the party.
She was a little girl at the seaside, digging in the sand with a plastic spade. It was nighttime but the moon was bright. The little girl dug deeper and deeper. She peered down into the hole, and at the bottom was an enormous crab, transparent, like a giant jellyfish with claws. There was something trapped inside its body; it looked like a human head. As the moon moved over the hole like a searchlight she recognized it as her own face, as it looked on the last Pussy album sleeve. The crab crawled up onto the sand and a crowd of people came rushing over. The crab tried to dart back into the hole, but they fell on it, ripping it to pieces, stuffing it into their maws. Pussy woke up with Churchill’s penis in her mouth. “Good morning,” he said. “I’ve written you a poem.”
They were on a king-size bed in Irving’s guest house. A wall of windows looked out onto the ocean. Everything in the room was gleaming white. It looked like it had been repainted every night, like Disneyland, when the crowds have gone home. She remembered the poet–TV presenter interviewing her on camera at the party, but she had no recollection of picking him up. Quite pleased with herself that she had, though. She checked him over. Young, good body, big fleshy mouth. If you fell off a tall building and landed on those lips you would walk away unbruised. A mouth, Pussy decided, made to give, not to receive. Gratifyingly, he was a fast learner.
“FOCUS!!!” she wrote on the notepad, outlining each letter and adding three thick exclamation points. Studio time was expensive, as Jack, her manager, kept reminding her, and if she didn’t like the lyrics he’d written then she’d better pull her fucking finger out and write her own. Jack was pissed off with her. Pissed off that she wouldn’t record his songs. Pissed off that she didn’t take him to Irving’s party. Even more pissed off that she hadn’t come back to the hotel that night and had missed the record company meeting the next morning. She rolled over and grabbed her bag, dug out her cell phone. She was about to call Churchill at the TV station when some odd sense of decorum made her stop. She rummaged in her bag for her cigarettes and then, remembering she was in California, frowned and put them back. She saw that slotted into the cellophane wrapper was the limo driver’s business card. She had asked him for it after he dropped her off from the party. His private number was handwritten on the back.
Stepford Limo Man. That was her first impression of him. Immaculately dressed and primed, like an actor about to hit the boards. He had picked her up, driven her to the beach, and waited in the car for her all night—she’d had so much to drink she’d forgotten to tell him to go home. When at around noon she had stepped out into the sun, bleary, hair wet from the shower, and found him still waiting in the driveway, he’d just smiled discreetly, not a word of reproach, opened her door, got back behind the wheel, confirmed her destination, and asked if there was anything she needed before pulling smoothly out of the drive.
They’d gone a short way when she noticed for the first time the icon that hung from his rearview mirror.
“Saint Dymphna!” exclaimed Pussy.
The driver saw her lips move in the mirror and pulled back the glass divide.
“The medallion,” she said. “Saint Dymphna.”
“That’s right,” he said. He looked a little taken aback.
“She’s my favorite saint,” said Pussy. “So beautiful. I first heard about her when I was a little girl, and I fell in love with her. Her father tried to have sex with her and when she said no he chopped her head off. She died a virgin. No head.” She gave a little laugh. “But in every other way intact.”
“The patron saint of amputees, lost souls, and the mentally deranged,” said the driver.
“And which of those,” she asked, “are you?”
And, staring straight ahead at the road, Reeve explained how before he’d become the perfect limo driver he was the consummate Jim Morrison. He told her about the car crash, the epiphany, his Doors trib
ute band, the hit TV show he had in Germany, and how one day he woke up and knew he couldn’t do it anymore and just walked away. Pussy listened with rapt attention. She shuddered as if someone were walking over her grave.
The limo might have been a funeral car, the way that half the people it passed on the street stopped and stared with a mix of curiosity and respect. “Heaven,” said Pussy, “will have tinted windows. So I can see them but they can’t see me.”
“I heard somewhere,” the driver answered, “that they reckon there’s a separate heaven for celebrities. Because even after they’re dead people still want to look at them.”
“Paparazzi angels.” Pussy shivered again. “An eternal audience of ghosts. That would be hell. You know,” she said after a long silence, “when I was young I was so afraid of crowds that my mother took me to see a psychiatrist.”
“Not a great career choice then.” She saw his smile in the rearview mirror. She smiled too, but her face was sad. She told him everything that had happened to her—the deaths, her disappearance. The glass screen separating them made it feel like a confession box, a separate confession box for celebrities, with minibar, TV, and luxury, cream leather seats.
“Hey, do you have to be anywhere?” she asked. He shook his head. “Then would you mind if we just drove around for a while?” Reeve indicated left, turned at the lights, and headed back down to the beach.
It was late afternoon when she got back to the hotel. Jack was in the lobby, fuming. He might have been there all night. “Where the fuck have you been? No, don’t tell me. I don’t fucking want to know. What I do want to know is, is it really worth me being out here working my fucking ass off for you”—she noticed he said “ass,” not “arse”; he was already going native—“when you can’t be arsed”—this time she noted he said “arse”; curious—“to show up for the most Crucial Fucking Meeting of this Whole Fucking Trip? Hello?” He was talking now through the mouthpiece of his headset, his voice all humility, charm. It was the record company A&R department; they’d finally taken his call. “Sure,” he said. “Absolutely. I know how busy he is. But you know those stomach bugs, I thought it best if she see a doctor. Absolutely. Thursday at four? Thank you so much. I appreciate it, truly.” His voice switched back to a bark. “You hear that?” Pussy nodded confirmation. “And you look like crap,” he said, though actually he thought she looked beautiful. Bruised mouth, too-bright eyes smudged with yesterday’s eyeliner, tangled brown hair. She’d ignored all his entreaties to bleach it blonde again.
She changed her mind about calling Churchill. Maybe she’d get him to write some lyrics. See how Jack would like that. Talking of Jack, he was heading in her direction, dressed in swimming shorts and clutching a towel. “Drinking?” he said, glowering at the empty glass. “I don’t have to tell you how important this afternoon is.”
“No you don’t.” She shot him a radiant smile.
“Good,” he said. “Three o’clock. On the dot.”
“It’s only twenty minutes away.”
“I’m not taking any chances this time. And don’t stay in the sun too long—I want you clearheaded.” He dived into the pool, swam a length underwater, stood up in the shallow end, shaking his dark hair like a Labrador, and got out. Two women in one-piece bathing suits dived in from opposite ends of the pool, surfacing at the same time, like water ballet stars.
Pussy tried to get a waiter’s attention, but they were all running about fetching endless cocktails for a knot of unprepossessing young men in shabby rock T-shirts. English music journalists. She recognized the type. She followed their gaze to the lobby door, where a party of people were coming through. Pussy recognized the psychiatrist first—Dr. Hank’s picture had been all over the Shining Star Institute. And then she saw Cal West. Her heart skipped momentarily; even stars get starstruck. She’d read that he was making a comeback. Right now he looked like he wanted to run away. Hank’s palm, flat in his back, ushered him into a roomful of people.
At three on the dot, like he said, Pussy’s room phone rang. “The car’s out front,” said Jack. “I’ll come by your room.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’ll meet you in the lobby.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
“If you’re not there in five I’m coming to get you.”
Stuffing her cigarettes in her purse, she took a last look in the mirror. She’d made an effort; Jack couldn’t complain. She was wearing the tiny silk dress she wore to the party. It had worked on Churchill.
“Well, look at you!” Jack held out his arms in the lobby. “Sweetheart, you’re fabulous. Just the ticket. Come on, let’s get this business over with and then I’ll take you out on the town.” There was something they needed to talk about; he couldn’t keep putting it off. He guided her into the car, simultaneously announcing to the record company through his mouthpiece, “We’re on our way.” The car cut into the sluggish traffic and joined the slow crawl west through the tunnel of palms down Sunset Boulevard.
The A&R man kept them waiting more than half an hour—part punishment, part power game. Finally they were fetched up to the conference room. Various record company people Pussy vaguely recognized were shuffled around an enormous polished table shaped like a giant surfboard. “Well hey there!” said a plump, tanned guy with the formless face of a fetus dunked in Orangina. “Terri Allen. My favorite star.” He got up from his leather seat and wrapped a soft arm around Pussy’s small shoulders, pumping Jack’s hand with the other, then handed them back to the assistant to lead off to the far end of the table where the lighting was harsher. “Make yourself comfortable.” The room appeared to have been specifically chosen for its discomfort factor.
“I believe you know everybody?” He indicated around the table, then looked at his watch. “Okay, let’s hear what we’ve got.” All eyes followed Jack as he walked the length of the room to the sound system. The A&R man rolled back his chair, put the disk in the machine, pressed play, then put his feet up on the table.
“Well,” he said, a full minute after the music had stopped. His colleagues looked at him to see what facial expression they should wear, Buddha Boy’s having remained benignly neutral. “I gotta say you are one sweet sounding woman. Your voice is better than ever, babe. Pure fucking sex. Better than sex. Those young boys are gonna cream on you all over again. But”—he swung his feet back down to the floor—“a voice as good as that comes with a price, and do you know what that is? Songs that do it justice. A band that does it justice.
“I love you; as far as I’m concerned you’re fucking perfect. If it was down to me”—he waved his girlish arms around the room—“I’d shake this company upside down by the ankles and give you all the money we got and say, take it, do what you want with it, just make me a fucking record. But the market, babe, is a bitch. It don’t give a fuck that you’re a genius. It don’t care that you can sing anybody in this goddamn business, anyfuckingbody you can name, under this table. You gotta give the market what it wants, and what it wants is you plus. Plus great songs. Plus great band. And angel, I’d be hurting you if I didn’t tell the truth, I don’t hear them here.”
Everyone at the table shook their heads mournfully from side to side.
“But I tell you where I do hear it,” he said, slapping both palms on the table, his face all joy. “Pussy. There was a reason that band was a legend, and in these troubled times that’s what the people want again.”
She shot her manager a desperate look, but his eyes were glued to Buddha Boy.
“What the world needs now is Pussy.”
“Pussy,” echoed the voices around the surfboard. They were all smiling; a couple of true disciples slapped the table with their palms as well. “We want Pussy!”
“Frank,” she whispered, “you’ve got to say something.”
“It’s all right.” He patted her thigh, soothingly, his focus on Buddha Boy a little impaired by the electricity that shot through his groin as his hand touched her bare fl
esh.
“Then I’m saying something,” she hissed. She stood up. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I thought it had been made clear. Pussy is not an option.”
There was a long silence. She could hear a bass beat pulsing through from the other side of the wall. Buddha Boy pushed himself out of his chair and walked over to them, his shoes creaking on the polished floor. They weren’t new; he didn’t do much walking. He shooed a young man out of the chair next to Pussy’s and sat down. She was sandwiched between the A&R man and her manager, the three of them close enough to sing harmonies on one microphone.
Buddha Boy took her hand in his, stroked it slowly. “Let’s talk a moment,” he said, gently, “just you and me. There’s nobody else in the room, Terri. They don’t matter. This is all about you, your music, how to make it work for you. That’s all I’m here for, you and your music. You gotta trust me on this one, work with me. The environment has never been tougher than it is right now. People aren’t buying records like they used to. They want a sure bet, something they know they’re gonna like. It’s a comfort thing. And they like Pussy—no, no,” he said, squeezing her hand, “don’t say anything, listen to me for a moment. One Pussy album. That’s all I’m saying. To get your face back out there. And when it’s the monster hit I guarantee you it will be, then we’ll do a solo album.”
She pulled her hand away, shook her head. “Pussy is dead.”
“And ready to rise from the ashes,” smiled Buddha Boy.
“That is not going to happen,” she said, working hard to control her voice.
Buddha Boy hesitated for a moment. Jack was staring at him hard, willing him not to divert from their agreed script. But the A&R man was in improvising mode. He looked her straight in the eyes. “I’ve spoken to the band,” he said, “and they’re a hundred percent up for a reunion.”
Too Weird for Ziggy Page 19