Nico

by James Young

  I knew it was a bad idea to remind the Tropicana management of our continued presence in their establishment. They kicked us out. Echo was relieved in a way to abandon the ghost of his absent hero and was consoled, to a degree, by a complimentary unedited copy of Planet Pussy. Nico was shunted off to another fan’s sofabed. The rest of us spent the night at a friend of Axel’s in East L.A., near Boyle Heights – a barrio shack with hungry dogs straining at the end of tethers, rabid jaws salivating for a taste of those gringo sweetbreads.

  In the back they were having a barbecue, the top of an old oildrum converted into a brazier. It was hot, sticky, I took off my leather jacket. Immediately a Mexican guy picked it up and tried it on for size, I didn’t dare argue. Luckily it didn’t fit.

  The place was owned by a girl called Rosa. She showed us around indoors. Everything was black – a black shack. Promptly and proudly, she revealed her bedroom, dominated by a black rubber waterbed. On the walls were various hooks and rings from which dangled an intricate assortment of whips and manacles. Rosa was about five foot ten with waist-length black hair and powerful tattooed arms. She looked as if she worked out regularly … on other people.

  Later, after the nerve-wracking barbecue, in which the Hispanic guys refused to speak English, confining us to a corner huddle of English wimpishness, we found a patch of bare board to call our own in the living-room. In the half light of early dawn amid snores and farts and Bags’s stinking feet, I heard Rosa’s door open. I sneaked a look and saw her standing over Echo, staring intently at her sleeping prey. She was wearing a black leather corset encased in a breastplate of twisting metal rosebranches with fierce steel thorns. Echo awoke but remained where he was, paralysed. Rosa knelt down, slid her arms under his passive torso, lifted him up lifeless from the cross and carried him to her Chapel of Correction.

  The last thing anyone heard of them for twelve hours was the locks on Rosa’s bedroom door click shut … one by one by one.

  ‘’Ave yer ever’ad an enema?’ Echo asked me. ‘It gives yer’ard-on the size of a baby’s arm.’

  We were driving along Big Sur. Strange sea-plants, mist, Kerouac, Ansel Adams, and a baby’s arm.

  ‘Have you ever read On the Road?’ Nico asked me.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Neither have I. I couldn’t finish it … too many woords. She drifted back into the mist.

  ‘It stays up fer ’ours,’ Echo continued.

  Bags wriggled in his seat to accommodate his emergent stiffy. He could whip up some cream right now.

  ‘Did you hear that, Axel?’ Nico asked. ‘Up for hooours.’

  Axel was beginning to get a little less self-confident. Two people in the car had serious designs upon his body, and they were making their intentions abundantly clear.

  Nico was in one of her weird, slightly hysterical moods, just on the edge of withdrawal. ‘My father was Turkish … you know what that means, Axel, don’t you? I like it the Turkish way … Axel … did you hear?’

  He didn’t respond.

  ‘’Ear that, Axel?’ said Echo. ‘She prefers the tradesman’s entrance.’

  Axel turned up the Twisted Sister.

  Echo fell back into reverie. Further down the road he nudged me. Through the window the sign read: Welcome to Santa Rosa.

  Later Nico picked up some good clean heroin. She soon got Echo fixed up tight with his habit again. It wasn’t an act of kindness, she just got sick of Public Enema No 1.

  We pulled up for provisions in Redwood country. The truck-stop was a log cabin and there was a picnicky, jolly atmosphere to the place. We could hear children’s voices. At the side of the log cabin was a play area.

  ‘Hi there!’ said a voice. ‘I’m Ronnie, the Redwood Mouse.’

  We turned round. There was a giant mouse talking down to us. It must have been ten feet high, the guy inside operating some sort of stilt device.

  ‘And what brings you to Giant Sequoia country?’

  ‘We’re musicians, on tour,’ said Smiler, teeth ablaze.

  ‘Oh, reeaally?’ the voice was slightly camp. ‘Are you a group? Who are you?’ The mouse was getting excited.

  ‘We’re in the Nico band …’

  Ronnie wouldn’t let him finish. ‘Oooh – I don’t belieeeeve you … not Nico of the Velvetth?’ The mouse had a lisp. ‘But where is sheee? I thimply mutht thpeak to her.’

  This could be an exchange of historical significance. Nico came out of the store carrying a carton of Chocomilk. Echo pointed her out to Ronnie.

  ‘That’s ’er, in the pilot glasses.’

  ‘Hoooeeeee, Nico!’

  She came over and stood before the mighty mouse in her boots and leathers, clutching her Chocomilk.

  ‘Thaaay, Nico, I’m your number one fan. I just luuve Desert Shore and The Marble Index. I wish I had them here with me now, tho you could thign them.’

  ‘Can you read and write as well?’ asked Nico.

  ‘Heeey, Thweetie, I’m not a real mouse.’

  ‘I knooow,’ she laughed.

  We left them in complete accord. In rodent Ronnie, Nico had, at last, found someone who was genuinely interested in the future of her career.

  Wrong Side of the Salt

  By the Great Salt Lake was a vast grey mudflat, covered in fat black flies. God knows what they fed on in the alluvial slime – the lake itself was dead. They flew up into your face with each step. By the lake was a funfair … a kind of water-chute that looked like a tunnel of plastic dustbins, and a bouncy castle. Children were playing in the mud, making mudpies and mudcastles. The flies soon covered their work, a buzzing tide of disgusting little black bodies.

  It was so flat, so lonely, so far away from anything beautiful. These were poor people and this was their beach, a thousand miles from the sea.

  Salt Lake City had the best thrift stores in America, yet the most monotonously dressed people. It made no sense. ‘This is the place!’ Brigham Young had declared, settling on a flyblown mudflat for his New Jerusalem.

  We met a nice waitress in a diner on the outskirts of town. She begged us to let her come with us to New York. Perhaps we’d been putting on too much of the phony English charm. She was desperate, though. We explained what kind of vehicle we were in. Not really intended for individual comfort and privacy. It was a heck of a shame, but this was a rough, tough, man’s kinda job.

  ‘Tougher’n Duke’s saddle,’ said Axel. She didn’t mind, she’d still come.

  We slipped out quietly, mustering the best tip we could for her. On the way back to the car, Spider excused himself. He needed a piss. I watched him walk past our table, scoop up the shrapnel of cents and dimes and disappear into the WC.

  ‘the kingdom of heaven awaits the pure in heart’ said the scripture board on Highway 80 as we limped penitently back across the continent.

  It’s Up to Yooooo

  Bags leapt out from under his parka, came out from his fetid shoebox and exposed to the world his most latent desire – to meet Andy Warhol. Bags was bugging Nico for an intro, but the Great Wigola was unavailable, out of town, not answering, reticent as ever. Art object or full-frontal lobotomy? Keep’em guessing. Bags wanted some business tips.

  ‘Say you want the address of his wig-maker,’ I suggested.

  ‘Ask’im if’e’ll sign me,’ added Echo.

  Nico told us she wanted to be dropped on the Lower East Side. She made it clear that we wouldn’t be welcome tagging along. Echo believed she would probably try to pull in some of her old musopals and dump us. ‘Can’t blame’er … anyone’ere’s better than us, even them spotty kids tryin’ out Strats in the music shops.’

  Well, she didn’t get rid of us. Maybe she was too preoccupied with getting high. However, she had, in the two days that preceded the gig at the Danceteria, been working on a demo of ‘New York, New York’, Ol’ Blue Eyes’s eulogy to the Great Meritocracy, with which she would prelude the show.

  The Danceteria pulled a good crowd for a sweltering August night
. The freaks were in town. Backstage Axel had finally got himself well and truly greased. After six weeks on tour with Nico he’d got the taste and didn’t mind the bad taste. He looked green and queasy.

  ‘You shouldn’t swallow,’ said Nico pitilessly.

  The lights went down. On came the tape. Nico lugubriously intoned: ‘Start spreading the noos/I’m leaving toooday …’

  We followed her ‘vagabond shoes’ up the spiral staircase to our appointment with Destiny.

  ‘It’s up to yoooooo/Nooooo York/Nooooo York.’

  It was so hot up there, nerves just melted away in the effort to breathe. No matter where it is, if you’re playing up close to people, there’s always someone who tries to blow your cool. They’re there to outface you – and why not? My tormentor stood just three feet away from me with pierced nipples, long blonde hair, lipstick, and was covered head to toe in gold body-paint. He fixed me with a relentless, empty, mannequin-like stare. Weirder still, he had on a Walkman. He looked like a transvestite cybernaut.

  I could feel a smile cracking the expressionless mugshot I’d been perfecting. I tried to suppress it so hard I thought I was going to faint. But it was useless. I could blame it on the weeks of contained hysteria and enforced intimacy with people I’d normally pay to avoid. Whatever the reason, I was pissing my pants. I had to stop playing. I turned and saw the drummer beaming the inane grin of a man happy at his work. I was biting my hand in an effort to find a pain substitute for laughter. Echo saw me. He started laughing. Boom, woosh – woosh. Spider Mike took a look at us and had to turn the other way again to conceal the irrepressible smirk creeping across his sourpuss face. Then Nico caught it, in the middle of ‘I’m Waiting for the Man’:

  I’m . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

  Chugga chugga chugga chugga

  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ------- / --- / --

  Chikka chikka chikka chikka

  --- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

  Chugga chugga chugga chugga

  . . . . . – / ------- / – / my

  Chikka chikka chikka chikka

  ---- / . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

  Chugga chugga chugga chugga

  . . . . . . . . . . . . .26 dollars? . . . . . . . . . . You must be kidding!

  Chikka chikka chikka chikka

  [Permission to reproduce lyrics refused]

  She stopped singing, clipped the mike back on to the stand, and turned to the four of us. She was clapping her hands and stomping her heels, like a flamenco Brünnhilde. And laughing, laughing, laughing.

  Outside in the street lay a Viking burial. Axel had literally torn the car apart with his hands and then set fire to the remains, releasing the handbrake as it rolled off into SoHo.

  We gazed silently at the smouldering wreckage for a few minutes, said our respects, and split. We couldn’t wait to get away from each other.

  Nico disappeared into the arms of the past, Lower East Side cronies who’d share a bit of stuff with her just for the anecdote value.

  Echo headed straight for the shooting galleries of the Bronx. ‘Yer walk in … it’s pitch black … yer shout yer order … they lower a bucket … yer drop in the ackers … the bucket comes back a minute later with an’alf g wrap … convenience shoppin’ I s’pose, takes the waitin’ out of wantin’ … Tho’ I’ve never been much of what yer might call a shop-a-’olic.’

  Bags bought himself a brand new pair of Big Boy jeans with six-inch turnups and then whirled away on a helicopter tour of the Manhattan skyline. Once he’d sized the place up, he took his meat on down the street … a cruise missile in 42” Levis. Like his idol, his art was his life. But still Andy wouldn’t pick up the phone.

  Spider Mike took the first available flight back to Manchester, disillusioned with the American Way. Now no one back home at the Old Cock would stand him a pint as he traded anecdotes about the legendary meeting between Spider Mike and the only man on the planet he’d ever buy a drink – Lonesome Bob.

  Smiler? We asked around next day. No one was sure … we heard later he’d gone to New Orleans with a beautiful dancer and was ripping up the rhythm every night, playing drums in a swing outfit, earning ‘best brass’. I had a feeling he might come out ahead – he didn’t take drugs and wore a clean and pressed pair of slacks every day.

  ‘It’s funny,’ said Echo on the return flight, ‘’ow yer think that someone’s just a phase in your life – when yer might just be a phase in theirs.’

  ‘ZE CARNEGIE ’ALL’

  I never earned a cent from the American tour. Demetrius deferred all responsibility to ‘our mutual patroness, Frau Christa Paffgen’, who, of course, pointed me straight back to Demetrius. He explained that I should be satisfied with getting such interesting ‘trips out’.

  It transpired that the promoter had actually tried to be decent and had sent some of our back pay to England. The good doctor had immediately spent it on whores and roulette.

  We were back on Echo’s sofa. Cheese and pickle sandwiches. Endless brews of PG Tips, percolating grievances. The goldfish had died and been replaced by a tank of pondwater and some black snails. More significantly, the Venus of the Fireplace had been removed and in its place was a picture of the Virgin of Fatima, swathed in rosary beads.

  Nico had a piece of opium the size of a Hershey Bar. She was now on first-name terms with every witchdoctor in town. They were happy to do business with her … and Demetrius loved to indulge her. To gain the affections of one so wicked and heartless was reward in itself. Nico, of course, continued to abuse him behind his back.

  ‘Thinks he’s the big impresario, strutting around like that, while I play provincial toilets.’

  Le Kid chirped in, ‘Yezz … my muzzerre should play ze Carnegie’All.’

  We had Germany and France united once more against the Common Enemy. Le Kid had innate pedigree and, after all, he’d grown up in the company of the Beautiful People – he could do without humiliating handouts.

  ‘’Ee is so voolguerre – really.’

  Demetrius and the children returned with some friends for the snails. Each of them carried a plastic bag of water with a fish in it. They were like fancy finned goldfish, but black.

  ‘More dependants,’ lamented Echo wearily.

  Ari went into flip city. ‘Zat you spend all ze time in frivolité and my muzerre’as no monnaie.’

  Demetrius pointed out that if Nico chose to spend her income on drugs instead of food and rent like normal people, that was her choice – and not his responsibility.

  ‘The Miseries – why don’t you just damn well cheer up? Ask yourselves what spiritual and moral right you have to sit around all day denigrating the efforts of people who at least try to do something.’

  I went to the bathroom to escape for a minute and clear my head. There were three fish in the sink. I closed the toilet seat, sat down and lit a cigarette. My hands were shaking. Nico started to bang on the door.

  ‘Hurry up, Jim, pleeeease.’

  I let her in. She immediately got out her toolbox and arranged her works – all the refinements, the lemon, the candle. It was a genteel diversion for a middle-aged spinster lady, a bit like needlepoint.

  I picked something up … Echo’s methadone bottle. On the label was a warning: ‘Keep In A Safe Place Away From Children.’

  May ’84:

  A TUESDAY NIGHT IN PARADISE

  Nico was listening to Chopin and eating chocolate. Candle burning in a saucer, coloured scarf draped over bedside lamp. Smell of paraffin wax, Marlboro smoke and cooked heroin.

  ‘You want some chocolate?’ she asked.

  ‘No thanks … it gives me spots.’

  ‘Good … then I can squeeze them for you.’

  She tutted away to herself: ‘Look, he keeps giving me poems.’ She nodded in the direction of the next room. Demetrius’s room. ‘Look …’ She handed me a piece of hotel stationery; on it was written in manic, spiky ha
ndwriting:

  Museum Hotel, Amsterdam

  Omega

  I, who, neurasthenic, trembling,

  Yarmulka atop my prematurely bald adolescent crown,

  Convey Mrs Rabinowitz and Aunty Rene

  In auto-erotic Escortina

  To Cousin Naomi for tea,

  Am the same He

  Who stands before thee, erect,

  Upon this wild and foaming shore,

  Where spermatozoic dolphins crest the libidinous

  waves

  That repeat and repeat evermore:

  Omega. Omega.

  I gave it back to her.

  ‘What do you think?’ she asked.

  ‘From a literary point of view?’

  ‘No, no, no,’ she tutted again, ‘What do you think, that he should do such a thing? That he puts this stuff under the door?’ She threw the sheet of paper contemptuously across the bed. ‘You know he calls to me like a wiiild aanimal from his bedroom.’ She imitated him, her voice booming even lower: ‘Neee-co! Neee-co! I don’t answer him. He asks me what I think of his poems, but I know what he reeeally wants … it drives me craaaazy! Pestering me like some teenager.’

  ‘I think he’s got a crush on you,’ I said.

  ‘Jesus, you’re not kidding. D’you know what he does? In the middle of the night?’

  ‘No.’ But I could guess.

  ‘Slap. Slap. Slap … I can hear everything, these walls are like paper.’ She turned up the Chopin.

  I noticed a pile of used disposable hypodermics on the bedside cabinet. She went through them fast. It’s hard to imagine that sharp metal bursting through the thin walls of a vein could become blunt so quickly. She didn’t have many accessible veins left. They were becoming harder to find, collapsing (or cowering) beneath the surface of the skin. Now she was injecting into her hands – a very conspicuous act for a celebrity junkie. She would cover up her scars with bits of rag, especially if the audience was close to the stage. When you’re the wrong side of forty you want to be left alone to get on with it, your habits are your own. They pay to hear the songs, that’s enough, surely?