Читать книгу #Zero - Neil McCormick - Страница 15

‘How did that go with Katherine?’ enquired Flavia.

‘I think it went well,’ I said.

‘She seemed happy,’ said Flavia.

Oh, I hope she was happy. I hope, at least, someone was happy.

I was starting to come down from whatever plateau the drugs had put me on, but I wasn’t ready to crash, I preferred it up here, gliding high above my emotions. So I summoned Kilo into my bathroom and we did a couple more lines, then Linzi and Kelly got me suited and booted: dark Black Irish jeans, classic Converse, impossibly thin fake calfskin leather YSL three-quarters hooded frock coat and a retro Suicide Blonde T-shirt to send out the message that Penelope was still mine, the latter being Flavia’s idea. We headed for the limo to drive a hundred yards to the hotel next door and make a red-carpet entrance for the Generator awards, working the crowd in the early evening sunlight. Flavia guided me by the elbow, pausing to offer sound bites to big-toothed boys and girls carrying oversized broadcast mics: ‘Penelope’s fine, thank you for asking, I’m more worried about Troy, he seems to have nothing below the waist but pixels.’ Blah de fucking blah.

I exchanged a knuckle-banging salute with gold-plated trap sensation EgoPuss, while he flashed a mouthful of jewel-encrusted teeth and croaked, ‘S’all good, know what I’m sayin’, s’all good.’ I had no idea what was supposed to be so fucking good about it but I smiled right back. A lean, tattooed, spiky-haired quartet of lookalikes gave me the two-finger devil-horn salute from the top of the stairs. I hadn’t the faintest idea who they were supposed to be but I flashed those devil horns right back at ’em. My path intersected with Elton John at the doors, the legendary songwriter done up like an overstuffed peacock in a crushed velvet coat, and we briefly admired our own reflections in each other’s sunglasses. Elton grabbed my shoulders, whispering, ‘Dear boy, dear boy,’ with a warm, gap-toothed smile, ‘Don’t let the bastards grind you down.’

Then it was into the lobby and somehow I had a glass of champagne in my hand, and on into a vast antechamber where long-limbed models in low-cut gowns and plastic porn babes in lacy mini-frocks and dirty record-biz girls in butt-hugging skirts all swished about. There were hot girls everywhere, eye candy for the candy factory, hovering at the edge of my entourage, laughing too loudly at the attention of men in black designer suits (the stars came in character, everyone else was dressed for a ball), catching my eye with blatant come-hither stares, a circus parade of gorgeous women breathing electric perfume in the air. But Beasley wanted me working the room and only bigwigs and famous names made it through my tight ring of people.

The pecking order was subtly graded: stars surrounded by celebutantes, scenesters, liggers, posers, has-beens, wannabes and fifteen-minute wonders from the bottom of the alphabet trying to get flashed with the A-B-Cs. You could always tell which way the big dicks were swinging. Swirls and eddies formed around us as we moved like centres of gravity through the swell, occasionally merging in a star-crossed melee of air-kissing, back-slapping, shoulder-hugging and small talk. Most of which was about whether we were taking part in Softzone’s charity project, like anyone was going to say no to the orphans.

Saint Bono, Irish superstar, statesman and God’s celebrity representative on Earth, was holding court in a rock-and-roll epicentre, an uberfame vortex into which all other celebrity eddies would eventually and inevitably be consumed. I had met my countryman a few times, bathed in the mega-wattage glare of his touchy-feely compassionate charisma, been given the famous Bono talk about how to steer a true artistic and moral course through the dark terrain of fame, and felt irradiated by the holy spirit of his undivided attention, but I was rather dreading it now. I steered a course towards the safer shores of Amber Smack, the lairy Scottish soul diva, with whom I once got absolutely hammered and sang a karaoke duet of Frank Sinatra’s ‘That’s Life’ backstage at an LA radio festival. ‘Fuck sake, Zero,’ Amber brayed, air-kissing. ‘Don’t wanna get lipstick on your cheek, know what I mean? Oh my God, are you going to sing on this charity thing? I’ve gotta give out a gong and get the fuck out before they catch me.’

‘We can blow the joint together,’ I grinned. ‘I’ve got champagne on ice and a karaoke machine in my suite.’

‘I’m a married woman,’ she sniffed, indignantly. ‘But thanks for asking. I hear Baby BooBoo’s gonna give it a go, did you hear that?’ And she sang a sexy, sinuous blast of ‘You make me feel like a motherless child’. ‘It is a chewn, oh God, that is a chewn.’

‘So you going to do it then?’ I asked.

‘Shit, it’s for the orphans,’ she sighed.

Oh, Amber, I thought, not you too. And then we were moving again through rounds of introductions and interruptions till I didn’t know who I was talking to and what I was talking about, while beautiful hostesses refilled my champagne glass and I felt myself being sucked into the maw of the beast, until he was there, before me, in blue wraparound shades, giving me a bear hug and rubbing stubble against my cheek. ‘Are you all right?’ the sainted Bono whispered in my ear. ‘You know I am always here for you.’ And I felt a little lurch, like I was in danger of bursting into tears right there, throwing myself bawling at his feet and begging for forgiveness. Maybe because he reminded me of the parish priest who had once led the flock in Kilrock, Father Martin his name was, he had the same gift of empathy, a way of making you feel you were the most important person in a room, the only face he saw in a crowd. And he had come and put his hand on my shoulder once, in the harsh fluorescent light of a hospital room, smoke was hanging in the air, there were tubes and coloured liquids and blinking lights, and he said those exact same words, ‘I am always here for you.’