by Mike Hockney
Psychiatrists described him as an ‘eggshell’ personality. They said he had fundamentally low self-esteem that he’d spent years trying to hide, and he was ready to crack at any time. An arrogant egotist on the outside, deep down he was cripplingly insecure because of his deprived background, they claimed. When he encountered the Top Table, his greatest fears about himself were exposed. Everywhere he went, people flattered him and pandered to his every whim, but he was never comfortable with it. When he met Zara, he came up against someone who had no interest in him as a star and unconcealed contempt for him as a person. Her evaluation of him matched his own true opinion of himself.
Maybe some elements of that were right, but I know what the bottom line was when it came to Sam’s suicide. NexS killed him. I have no idea what it actually was, but I’d never experienced anything like it. It allowed me to feel what other people were feeling. It was the most exhilarating experience of my life. They say we’re made of stardust. Maybe it was like going back to the stars, where we all began.
Sam took a much higher concentration than the rest of us. He must have felt as though he were flying. When you’ve soared as high as you can go, can you ever return to earth?
Someone anonymously sent me an article from a science magazine. It was complicated and I didn’t understand most of it, but the gist was clear enough. It said that the pleasure and pain parts of the brain are linked and anything that affects one also affects the other. The worst lows follow the best highs – isn’t that what people have always said? Apparently there was now scientific proof that it was true. A hugely pleasurable experience also triggers the pain circuits in the brain. Eventually when the pleasure has gone all that’s left is the pain. The author of the article speculated that someone could have a pleasure overload that would ultimately trigger so much pain that the person might become suicidal.
I think that whoever sent the article was trying to explain what happened to Sam and the others. Was it Zara? I suspected Leddington. After all, he was the one who blabbered on about Thanatos, mortido and all that weird stuff. Death by pleasure? Just more speculation, really. I guess suicidal lows can follow ecstatic highs, but it doesn’t seem likely. Surely lots more people would kill themselves if it were true. Then again, I’d never experienced a drug like NexS. Who knows how much something like that could screw with your mind? Four people took concentrated NexS and all four were dead. Maybe others took it and didn’t die. There was no way for me to tell.
Nothing more was ever said about NexS. Mencken claimed to have lost all interest in it after what it did to Sam. I could understand that coming from anyone but him. Wasn’t he the one who said he was prepared to go all the way for ultimate pleasure? Sam had taken that final ride; shouldn’t Mencken have been burning with curiosity? For God’s sake, Jez and I had both done the NexS trip. At the very least, Mencken should have wanted to go as far as we did. It didn’t add up. But Mencken refused to explain himself, and that was that.
I confess that sometimes I wondered if NexS really existed. Maybe I had an incredibly powerful hallucination that night. A super strong dose of LSD might do that to you, perhaps. If NexS were real, where did it come from? Who supplied it? I couldn’t believe that something as potent as that could stay underground forever. It had vast commercial potential. If it ever hit the streets, it would become the most popular drug the planet has ever known. The supplier would become a trillionaire, just as Big Pat said. That’s how huge it was. But there were no answers. Zara was the only one who knew, and she wasn’t saying.
It didn’t take long for journalists to identify her as Sam’s femme fatale. Overnight, she became the most famous woman in the world. She and Leddington appeared on countless chat shows offering their opinions on almost every subject. I think many people were in awe of them, intimidated by how clever and glamorous they were. They admitted what I’d always suspected – that they were boyfriend and girlfriend, though in a very ‘open’ sense, as I’d already discovered. Somehow, no hint of scandal attached itself to them. Many details about the Top Table were revealed, but it was all regarded as just over-spirited student fun. Their reputations weren’t damaged in any way by their links to the suicide victims. Enhanced, if anything.
The Millionaires’ Death Club was never mentioned by anyone. There were no more mysterious suicides. I could never work out if Zara and Leddington had ever genuinely been at risk from the whole thing. Would they have taken concentrated NexS if they’d been chosen? I didn’t think those two had any kind of death wish. I suspected the card game used to select the victims was rigged. They made sure that only those who were attracted to suicide – and I’m including Sam in that – were chosen. If, somehow, it had been their turn, I think they would have got out of it.
Zara, Leddington and the others were the strangest, most compelling people I’ve ever met. I didn’t doubt for a second they were smart and brilliant, and that great achievements would soon be associated with their names, but I also suspected they were capable of anything in pursuit of their ambitions. Nothing would be allowed to stand in their way. Did I envy them? Well, who wouldn’t? I could understand why even a superstar was in awe of them. They represented something much higher, much more inspiring than the fools’ gold of Hollywood. Class, breeding, history – they had it all. In a way, they were, as a besotted broadsheet journalist lovingly said about them, ‘immortal, a representation of a timeless quality of elite humanity.’ It didn’t surprise me that their favourite philosopher was Nietzsche. I read that he was a mad, syphilitic German who wrote about an ideal human whom he named the Übermensch – the ‘superman’. That was their game, all right. They saw themselves as masters of creation, the best that humankind has to offer.
As for me in my humble little world, I’d actually become quite famous because of my association with Sam, especially in the States. I soon went back to my old routine, with much more interesting clients than before. I was in constant demand, and was able to make regular healthy payments to Far Havens Financial Services that kept the miserable Mr Graveson more than happy. The only problem was that I wasn’t the same person anymore. My dreams had changed. I was planning to make big alterations in my life, but something still held me back. I guess I still hadn’t come to terms with everything that happened. Above all, I needed something from Zara before I could move on. I wasn’t sure what, exactly. I didn’t even know if I’d ever see her again.
Sam and Jez’s new movie was finished using a look-alike and CGI. The only downside was that because the movie was successfully finished and not abandoned, the terms of Mencken’s insurance policy stipulated that he could only collect half of the hundred million he thought he was getting. Not that he was worried. They say it’s the most successful movie ever. Everyone wanted to see Sam’s final screen appearance. He’s right up there now with James Dean, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and the rest. The glamour of young death.
Jez gave several press conferences saying how devastated he was by the loss of his ‘close friend’ and that he was thinking of retiring from the movies. Word on the street is that he’s already signed up with Mencken for three new blockbusters.
As for Alphabet Love, a year ago it was a cheesy, sleazy underground game. Now you’ll find people playing it in every country of the world. It has become the latest ‘must-do before I’m thirty’ activity. Thousands have claimed it changed their lives. A shop-girl married an A-list celebrity thanks to it. Of course, not everyone approved of the game. The Pope called it, ‘Unfettered promiscuity; the latest abomination of a depraved and godless society.’
In a way, everyone came out of it OK. I miss Sam, of course. Did I really love him? I guess not. If you can recover from someone’s death in a few weeks, they can’t have taken up permanent residence in your heart. Maybe if I’d spent more time with him and got to know him better things might have been different.
When I think hard about what happened it makes me uncomfortable. All along, I knew Sam was in some kind of danger, but I nev
er tried to talk him out of it, not really. I stood by, more or less, while he hurtled towards his fate. Not only did I allow it to happen to him, I allowed myself to be part of it. Sometimes I ask myself how I can square my almost casual acceptance of his death with the deep feelings I had for him. When he needed me most I wasn’t there.
I didn’t confront Zara even though she was the maelstrom sucking Sam in. Why was I so ambivalent? I think something broke inside me when Sam threw me aside so lightly. Also, I believed that whatever happened I had to go along with it. I knew Sam couldn’t be talked out of it, so I didn’t make any serious attempt. Above all, I was curious to see what would happen.
Maybe there was something else. I remembered Marcus’s unfinished poem about Zara. ‘My death in the sun,’ he wrote. Sometimes I thought Zara actually was death. Leddington’s William Blake painting might as well have shown Zara clutching the dagger instead of that strange green figure. ‘Who is she?’ Sam kept asking throughout his video. He never gave an answer, but it was obvious anyway. Zara is Death, is what he meant.
She herself said that medieval paintings often showed a beautiful woman standing next to a skeleton representing death. Perhaps the experts were wrong. Maybe it wasn’t the skeleton but the woman who symbolised death. Beauté du Diable – even before I met her, was I thinking of Zara? If anyone had the devil’s beauty, she did.
Sam said he never realised death could be so beautiful. That will always stay with me. Now, when I think of Death, it’s not the Grim Reaper I have in my mind, it’s Zara. She was the new gold dream that killed everyone who dared to pursue it.
I know one thing for sure – it was the ride of my life, the magic bus trip I’d always dreamt of taking. In some way, the whole thing began with that newspaper article I featured in: Extreme Pleasure: the Search for the Perfect High. (Adventures of modern city girls seeking their personal Xanadu.) I can now say I’ve had the extreme pleasure part of the equation. NexS, whatever else it was, was certainly that. Did I find Xanadu? It doesn’t exist – not for anyone. Just look at Mencken, Jez, and Sam. As for the perfect high, I can’t say for certain. What I know is that those few days I spent with Sam will be forever like a glittering dream when life seemed, briefly, to have been painted in more vivid colours. But every bright colour fades in the end.
Chapter 43: All the World’s a Globe
I was amazed when Mencken phoned me a month later and invited me to attend a performance of Macbeth at the Globe Theatre. He said he was back in London on business and had an ‘opportunity’ to discuss with me. I wasn’t sure I wanted to meet him, but I persuaded myself there was no harm in listening to what he had to say.
I’d never actually visited the Globe, but it was certainly a striking building: timber construction, three-storeys high, full of authentic olde worlde touches, supposedly an accurate reconstruction of the Elizabethan theatre where Shakespeare worked. Open-air, circular, with a thatched roof, it really brought old London to life.
We stood close to the stage, with a view so good I could see the sweat on the actors’ foreheads. Three scary witches were on stage, cackling as they threw frogs into a cauldron. The words of the play kept distracting me. They seemed so eerily right for everything I’d experienced at the hands of the Top Table.
Fair is foul, and foul is fair.
I fidgeted when I heard something that reminded me of Sam.
Nothing in his life
Became him like the leaving of it.
I thought that if every time I substituted the word Zara for Macbeth, I was getting close to the heart of the matter.
Methought I heard a voice cry, ‘Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep,’ the innocent sleep.
The play even seemed to express the Top Table’s casual attitude towards Sam’s death.
A little water clears us of this deed.
Mencken made me a business proposition; a truly fantastic opportunity, as he kept repeating. He seemed to believe I wouldn’t need to think twice about it, despite everything that had happened between us. His idea was that we’d massively expand my set-up, creating a network of entertainment consultants in every big city in the world. Everything would be put on a much more professional basis than I’d ever managed. We’d become corporate. Anywhere on earth, if an event were legitimate and entertaining we’d know about it and would guarantee to get our clients in. High rollers would love our operation. We’d even incorporate Top-Table-type events into our programme. Mencken said he was a natural at the entertainment game, whether it was movies or anything else.
Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
It was such a strange experience for me. It was a particularly dark night, and light rain was falling. I kept expecting thunder and lightning to erupt overhead to reflect what was happening on stage, and in my mind. The play was all about the madness that ambition works on susceptible people. Now, here I was, being given a blueprint for how I could make all my dreams come alive. Everything Mencken said to me was what I’d once prayed I’d hear. I ought to have said yes instantly.
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
‘What is it you want?’ Mencken asked when I stayed silent. ‘I thought I was giving you all the things you desired. Why aren’t you happy? Is it Sam?’
A deed without a name.
‘Don’t you know what your dreams are anymore?’ Mencken peered at me, but I kept facing forward, staring at the stage.
All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.
I sneaked a glance at Mencken. Did his ambition come before everything else? The Hollywood Macbeth.
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?
‘I…I need time to think about it,’ I stammered.
Mencken smiled. ‘Sophie, you’re a sweet, charming young lady. Don’t spoil it by taking life too seriously.’
On stage, Macbeth had become as serious about life as you could get.
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Was that Sam’s life? My own? I felt like crying. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said to Mencken, ‘I’m not feeling well. I need to go.’
‘Sorry to hear that. Get better soon, won’t you?’ He lifted his hand and made a phone shape. ‘Call me.’
I fled outside.
A film crew was positioned near the Globe’s front entrance, filming an interview with Julie Regan, one of London’s hot new starlets, brilliant lights falling on her beaming, beautiful face. Paparazzi were swarming in the background, ready to pounce.
I came to a halt and stared in morbid fascination. I could see that familiar hunger in Regan’s eyes, that addiction to fame’s bright dream. You could see she was convinced she’d made it, that she only needed to stretch out her hand and she could take whatever she liked from life.
Did I used to be like that?
I heard her saying, ‘This is everything I ever wanted. It’s what you work for during all those hard years at drama college. You don’t think it’s ever going to happen to you, but then you wake up one day and you think you’ve won the lottery. I’m so excited, so lucky.’
I felt cramping pains in my stomach, and staggered over to a bin. Under the dim night-lights, I could make out insects swarming over a discarded, rotten banana. The smell was appalling. I was convinced I was going to collapse. I bent over double and threw up. No one offered me any help. I fished around in my handbag for tissues to clean myself up.
‘Are you OK?’ an American voice said.
I looked up and saw a young man and woman staring at me.
I didn’t answer.
‘You’re Sophie York, aren’t you?’
I nodded dumbly. Did they want my autograph? To slag me off? I didn�
�t need any hassle. I just wanted to get home, crash out on my bed and throw the covers over my head for days.
‘Sorry to catch you at an awkward moment,’ the young man said, ‘but we’d like a word with you.’
I squinted at them.
‘We’re from the FBI.’ They held up impressive gold badges.
‘FBI?’
‘We’d like to ask you a few questions.’
I felt light-headed. ‘What about?’ I croaked.
‘Zara.’
Chapter 44: Secrets
I’d never heard of the Behavioural Analysis Unit. Special Agent Thomas Carson said they profiled criminals: murderers, terrorists, rapists and serial killers. As for his colleague, Special Agent Hannah Levrov, she didn’t speak. She was standing near the window, arms folded over her slim body.
I was perched uncomfortably on a red plastic chair in front of a Formica-topped table in a whitewashed interview room in the American Embassy, wondering why I’d been stupid enough not to insist on having a solicitor with me. The digital clock on the wall proclaimed 21:00. Jesus. So much for snuggling under my duvet.
‘We’ve come a long way for this,’ Carson said. ‘We had to get special permission from your Home Secretary.’
‘I don’t know how you think I can help.’
‘You can start by telling us about the Millionaires’ Death Club. You’re a member, aren’t you?’
‘There’s no such thing.’
Carson smirked. ‘The London CID were scared of Zara and her creepy boyfriend, but those two don’t worry us.’
I almost smiled when he said that. He’d obviously never met Zara and Leddington.