by Mike Hockney
My skull was pounding as though the whole world wanted to cram itself inside my head. Who was I? I couldn’t tell any longer. And then I came, almost screaming with pleasure and I knew exactly who I was. I was Sam and I’d just had the greatest experience of my life.
And now I had nothing left.
Chapter 40: The Lazar House
When I awoke, I was lying on the floor with a red blanket over me. Most of the others were asleep but some, in white bathrobes, were sitting up drinking coffee.
Sam! I looked around in panic and then I saw him, curled up a few feet away, sleeping. Not dead. No bizarre suicide note. Nothing. I almost laughed.
But I couldn’t dismiss last night as any sort of dream, could I? Something incredible had happened to me, or maybe miraculous was a better word. Not an out-of-body experience but an in-everyone-else’s.
‘That was the best yet,’ someone said. I turned my head and there was Leddington, smiling at me rather too warmly. He casually placed his hand on my upper thigh and gave it an intimate squeeze. God, I’d fucked him, hadn’t I?
‘I was afraid he’d kill us,’ he said, glancing at Sam. ‘He was so hot for Zara, I thought he’d make us vomit, piss, shit and come all at once: total fucking simultaneous evacuation of every orifice.’
‘What happened?’ I mumbled. Everything that happened last night seemed infinitely strange. It was as though I’d found myself in a secret universe where all the rules had been altered in some way. I had been left as someone who looked like me but definitely wasn’t me. I could barely remember my name.
‘God Almighty,’ I said, ‘what was that stuff?’
Leddington smiled. ‘I forgot you were a NexS virgin.’
He lay back, resting his head on his hands. ‘NexS gets its name from nexus and excess. It’s a connection drug. What it does is allow everyone to come together to share the same experience, but it’s not an equal experience because the Chosen One gets a much higher concentration than everyone else. They feed off his pleasure. But he can also feel their pleasure, and that increases his own. It ends in a kind of pleasure overload.’
‘Where does it come from?’
Leddington shook his head. ‘Zara has an arrangement with the supplier, that’s all I know. She never talks about it and no one’s allowed to ask.’
I looked away. I didn’t know why but I wanted to cry. I was so lonely.
‘Post coitum omne animal triste est,’ Leddington remarked.
‘What?’
‘After sexual intercourse every animal is sad,’ he explained. ‘Don’t worry about it, Sophie. When the show’s over, you always feel empty. One second you’re energised like you’ve never been in your life, the next it’s all gone. My first time, I thought someone had grabbed me by the neck and plunged me into an ocean of hurt.’
As far as I was concerned, hell was more like it.
‘You said you’d show me the Lazar House some time. It’s something to do with this place, isn’t it?’
Leddington gave me an odd smile. ‘The old hospital up top was once the Lazar House for the whole of London. Before that, the lepers...’
‘They lived down here, didn’t they?’
Leddington nodded. ‘This was the place Lawrence mentioned in his suicide note. It was originally a maze of underground caves. The MOD converted it into a nuclear command bunker in the early 1950s.’
‘I need some fresh air,’ I said.
Leddington found me a pair of slippers and a snorkel jacket.
‘It’s freezing outside,’ he said.
He led me through a maze of neat, magnolia corridors. When we came to a staircase, he said we were almost there. At the top, there were two metallic doors with levers, wheels and buttons attached to them; everything except straightforward handles.
‘When this place was operational, these blast doors had to be sealed gas-tight,’ Leddington said. It takes minutes to open and close them.’ He pressed a button and they swung open. ‘We’ve had them modified, of course.’
Daylight flooded in, making me shrink like a vampire. We stepped outside and I heard birds twittering. There had been an overnight snowfall and everything was white. We were in the centre of the overgrown hospital garden. I glanced back and saw that we’d emerged from a thick concrete block painted in camouflage.
The daylight was feeble, almost sickly. I figured dawn had only just come up. The hospital, covered with snow, looked like a ghostly apparition.
‘It was built in Victorian times,’ Leddington said. ‘They closed it at the end of the Second World War and it’s been derelict ever since. Zara bought it a couple of years ago, mostly because of this bunker. It’s a huge space. There are fifty rooms in total, including three decontamination rooms, a central control room, a canteen, a kitchen, dormitories, rest rooms and conference rooms. We’ve mothballed most of the complex but Zara has big plans for it. She intends to convert it into…’ He glanced at me. ‘…a unique sex club for the super-rich.’
More weird nonsense, I thought. ‘I’m exhausted,’ I mumbled. ‘I need more sleep.’
‘Be careful,’ Leddington said, ‘the sleepy heads always miss the real action.’
Chapter 41: Ice Heart
Shit, why had I gone to sleep again? Now I was in my car and driving fast towards the Aggiornamento, hoping I wasn’t too late. I didn’t know if I was in a fit state to be behind a wheel but I had no choice. They told me Sam had left with Zara over an hour earlier.
‘He’s not coming back,’ the others said. Apparently, he’d asked to be dropped off at the hotel and wanted Zara to go with him. I tried to convince myself everything would be OK. He was a Hollywood legend, for Christ’s sake.
When I reached the hotel, I leapt out of my car and ran into reception. The manager was there, talking to one of his staff.
‘Is Sam here?’ I blurted.
The manager nodded. ‘He went to check his, er, surprise. He said he didn’t want to be disturbed.’
‘I need to see him right away.’
‘Well, since it’s you...’
I bolted for the pool. When I reached the double doors, I was almost too frightened to put my hand on the handle. It creaked and I managed to push it open a few inches. I couldn’t see anything inside. There were no windows. All the light came from a few overhead strip-lights.
I stepped into the room, my head bowed.
‘Sam?’ I whispered.
Only my faint echo came back.
I said it again. Nothing. I knew, I knew. Why did you do it, Sam? Didn’t you get what you wanted?
I inched my way to the poolside, my eyes practically closed. When I opened them…
Sam was lying face up on the floor of the pool in about an inch of water. Not moving.
I wanted to throw up. I felt so dizzy. I couldn’t…
*****
I had the strangest feeling I was outside, standing on the hotel’s lawn near the edge of the lake. A woman was talking to me, asking if I was all right. I ignored her and stared at the blue sky. The sun was shining so brightly, even though it was November. A perfect day, the weatherman had said on my car radio that morning. Everything seemed different. All the colours around me had faded, except blue. That was all I could see – blue – like Zara’s eyes, like the sky trapped inside ice, like kisses trapped inside the Snow Queen’s palace. I heard more voices. They were asking if I’d been crying.
‘She’s upset about Sam,’ one of the voices said. ‘Did she know him? Haven’t I seen her before somewhere?’
I had to get away.
‘Come back, come back…we can help you.’
I ran as fast as I could. Did Sam have any idea what he’d got himself into? He’d never met people like Zara. She was more than a beautiful woman: she was history, a bloodline, an accumulation of centuries of power and dominance. What chance did Sam have? He was just a movie star.
*****
My eyes flashed open. I was sitting in a little ball at the edge of the swimmin
g pool, with my knees pulled up to my chin. Maybe I’d blacked out. Did I hallucinate? I refused to look into the pool. Maybe I’d imagined that Sam was dead. You can’t kill Hollywood legends. Everyone knows that.
Something made a sound, a low whirring. Perhaps I’d heard that noise all along and just not paid attention…Sam’s camcorder.
Numb, I went over, picked it up off its tripod then sat back down at the side of the pool to play back the pictures Sam had recorded. I stared at the images on the little LCD screen. The first thing I saw was Sam just after he’d switched on the camcorder. He stared into the lens, his eyes struggling to focus. His hair hadn’t been combed and his face was covered with stubble. I reached out and touched his face on the screen.
‘Can you see?’ he asked.
He gestured at the scene behind him, at the collection of ice sculptures in the swimming pool. Picking up the camcorder, he walked round every one of the ten sculptures, cataloguing the details of each of the ice couples, but rarely letting the focus stray from Zara’s face.
‘Who is she?’ he babbled. ‘I guess I knew all along. Could anything have stopped me?’ He turned the camcorder onto his own face. ‘When you meet her, you know the idea of stopping no longer exists.’
‘What’s her name?’ He pointed at another of the Zara sculptures. ‘We all know.’ He continued to walk round, filming the different Zaras from every angle. ‘At first, I thought she was just another beautiful girl, an English version of a spoiled Manhattan heiress. I’ve known enough of them. No big deal. How little I understood.’
He replaced the camcorder on its tripod, walked back into shot and smiled; such a sad smile. Then the smile became a grin, and then – what’s that word? – rictus. It was fixed, rigid, mad.
‘I asked her to come here to see my gift.’ He was mumbling now. ‘She refused, of course.’
He took something from his pocket – a piece of paper or card – and stared at it. He shook his head then said the word ‘Belladonna’.
‘Why didn’t I recognise her straight off?’ He babbled to himself for a few seconds. ‘Who is she?’ he asked again.
He brought his face right up to the lens of the camcorder. ‘I told you, we all know her name. We all meet her in the end.’ Distractedly, he swept his hand through his hair. ‘It was my destiny to be here like this. I guess it’s what I always wanted.’ He took a pen from his pocket and scribbled something on the back of the piece of paper. ‘Even now I need a script.’ He gave a sad chuckle. ‘I suppose it’s only fitting that someone else should provide an actor’s last words.’
As he walked past one of the Zara sculptures, I noticed that it was melting. Raising his hand, Sam placed his palm against Zara’s cheek. He was crying. ‘I never realised death could be so beautiful.’
He walked into the middle of the pool. A puddle had started to form. Then he stepped behind one of the sculptures, blocking much of the view. I think I saw him putting something in his mouth, but I couldn’t be certain.
He muttered some words, but the camcorder’s microphone didn’t pick them up. Then he just stood there, as frozen as the sculptures. They were melting quite rapidly now. He must have switched off the refrigeration equipment.
The rest of the video played out in silence apart from the dripping of water from the sculptures. Occasionally, an individual finger, hand or arm fell off. A couple of times whole heads fell off. All the time, Sam just stood there.
After fifteen minutes, he collapsed, clutching his heart. His breathing was shallow, then I couldn’t hear it at all. Just that dripping sound. More and more water filled the pool. Then there was nothing, until the camcorder showed me entering the room.
I tried to feel something, but I couldn’t. I might as well have been stone. Maybe that’s what you had to become to survive in this world. Look at Sam. He craved Zara, but never got her, except through the touch of his rival. He’d lost Alphabet Love and yet for a while he must have been able to delude himself that he’d won. Then the truth cracked his mind. His feelings were fake, stolen from Jez. All he’d done was taste Jez’s absolute victory.
Maybe if my name started with Z instead of S some of the trouble could have been avoided. Alphabet Love…how much of a role did it play, or was it just a sideshow? I think Zara could have been called anything and not a thing would have changed.
I’d got so close to Sam, but perhaps it was no more real than how close he got to Zara. I didn’t want to talk to the police. Sam was dead. I had no doubt he killed himself. What else was there to say? I agreed with Zara about omerta. I wouldn’t say a thing and I knew that’s why I’d been allowed to play the game in the first place. I liked to think I had what Zara had – class, breeding, loyalty. It’s a question of doing the right thing. If you don’t have honour, what are you?
I wondered what was in the letter Zara sent to Sam that day in the costumier’s in Mayfair. Words? A picture? It might as well have been a death warrant. I realised the answer was right here – the item Sam had stared at in the pool. I scrambled down the steps and into the pool. I splashed through the thin layer of water, frantically searching for it, but I didn’t go anywhere near Sam’s body.
The piece of paper was floating on the surface of the water, a few feet from Sam’s body. I snatched it up, my hands shaking. It was sopping wet but I could still make out the image: a photograph of Zara wearing a designer white raincoat, her hands provocatively placed on her hips so that the raincoat was pushed back to reveal what she had on underneath. In fact, she was stark naked apart from six-inch transparent high heels.
I flipped it over, to see what Sam had written.
“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
I suppose it was inevitable that Sam’s last words would be the final lines of Zara’s favourite poem, but all I could think of was a remark he’d made months ago. When Jez asked him how he wanted to die, he’d replied, ‘I’d like to drown in a pool of women’s tears.’ As it happened, he drowned in his own, dying in a swimming pool, just like Jay Gatsby.
*****
The next hour passed in a haze. I think it was the hotel manager who found me. He must have called the police. They took the camcorder away and made me hand over Sam’s photo of Zara. They asked me lots of questions but I can barely remember any of them. Some part of me wanted to make sure the truth came out about the Top Table and what they did to people, but I didn’t reveal anything. I couldn’t have looked Zara in the eye if I’d broken my word. Somehow, now that Sam was dead, I was taking on his troubles. I needed some kind of closure with Zara and I had no idea how to do it. I loathed her, yet, in some weird way…God.
The police knew I was lying to them. ‘Where are your feelings?’ one of them yelled at me at one stage. It was the only thing that made an impression. ‘Is there nothing inside you?’ he bellowed. ‘Are you all hollow?’
That last word startled me. Was that why Zara and the others liked that poem so much? Was I becoming like them? Truth was I didn’t know anyone who wasn’t hollow. If we really felt – I mean, really – we couldn’t live with the things we’ve done, the people we’ve become. It was never meant to be this way but what other way could it be?
Over the last few years, I’d gone from being a teenage wannabe on the party circuit to an entertainment consultant taking advantage of rich middle-aged men, to someone who’d lived intimately in the highest circles with top A-listers. I’d been plunged into a world where I was exposed to as much fame and glamour as I’d ever desired. All the way through I’d been a fraud, defrauding even myself. I used to have so many illusions about A-listers. I thought I’d be saved if I could share their lives.
But they were the most fucked up people of all.
Chapter 42: Belladonna
It shouldn’t have finished the way it did, but life doesn’t do happy endings, does it? It took months for the scandal to fade. I heard that the American government was keen to send over an FBI team to investigate Sa
m’s death. It seemed no one could accept that such a huge star had committed suicide. Maybe they thought that if the man who has everything kills himself, what’s to stop the rest of us?
The post mortem revealed that Sam died in the same way as Lawrence, Chloe and Marcus: atropine poisoning. It wasn’t established where he got it from. One interesting detail that came out in the newspapers was that atropine was extracted from a plant called deadly nightshade, or Belladonna. It meant ‘beautiful woman’ in Italian. That’s exactly what Sam died from.
The police never discovered anything about how and where Sam spent his last night. I was interviewed, as were Jez and every member of the Top Table, but none of us told the police anything. Unofficially, the police complained of a lack of cooperation. There was little they could do. After all, there was no doubt Sam killed himself. When a policeman leaked Sam’s camcorder film to a cable channel, it became the most publicised suicide in history: the whole world watched it. Sam’s photo of Zara was also made public. At first, she was referred to as a ‘mystery supermodel.’ I think she would have preferred something rather grander, reflecting her class and supreme intelligence.
Commentators queued up to offer opinions. Unrequited love was the favourite theory. They said Sam was a hopeless romantic who died from a broken heart. Others said he became disillusioned with the falseness of Hollywood and the pressures of being a star. A philosopher claimed Sam was consumed by his own hyperreality, and that we’d all be sharing his fate unless we found our way back to the real world. One cynical commentator declared that a deluded snob met even more deluded snobs, with fatal consequences.