#Zero. Neil McCormick

expensive musical productions ever to be staged, only made possible by our friendly sponsors at Budweiser, Apple, Mastercard and, incongruously, Max-Mart, a budget store chain trying to raise their global profile (Can’t pay the groceries this week? Make up the money you blew on a big night out with savings on generic household products). The production had been installed in Queens for a month, we were about to launch this spectacular in two days, and I still hadn’t managed to get through a full dress rehearsal. Carlton became so frustrated with my absences he hired a stand-in to work with the band, an American Idol reject from Seattle called Jan Duran who had achieved fifteen minutes of fame doing an impersonation of me on prime-time TV almost perfect down to every detail, apart from the minor problem that she was an overweight lesbian African American.

      ‘Jan can do the rehearsal,’ I whined, as Beasley subjected me to his most lethal glower.

      ‘And should she do the show at Madison Square Gardens on Monday as well, or do you think people might notice?’ my manager replied in his quietest, most commanding voice. He was doing the hypnotic thing with the finger again but I wasn’t falling for his tricks. I complained that I was tired, overemotional, my voice was sore from talking all day and I needed a short break to gather my strength for this evening’s awards show, all of which was true, and none of which was really the issue.

      I had developed a growing dread of rehearsal. I had a recurring dream that I was onstage and couldn’t remember the lyrics of any of my songs (which had never happened, and anyway, Carlton had installed hidden autocues to scroll through lyrics for my understudy). And another dream where I was halfway through my big opening number when I realised I was naked from the waist down (which my audience would probably enjoy). I affected nonchalance but I was secretly as perplexed as everyone in my team. I had never experienced stage fright in my life. I took to performance like I was born under the glare of the spotlight. Singing onstage I could sail free, liberated from the incessant barrage of my own thoughts, released into the beat until I was part of the music, a human conductor for soundwaves, not really there at all. Nothing came close, not even drugs, not even sex, not even a double-header orgy on crack cocaine and ecstasy with Penelope and a thousand-dollar-an-hour Vegas hooker, which had happened, and if the tabloids ever got hold of that we could kiss the sponsors goodbye.

      The thing is, I had never really toured live without The Zero Sums. My solo career had all been TV and Internet slots, awards shows and one-off promo specials, where everything was focused on the event. This arena tour of the States was like starting all over, and it didn’t really matter how many stage crew it took, how many virtuoso musicians we employed, how many special effects we dreamed up, I felt like I was going out there naked, with nowhere to hide if anything went wrong. I mean, I had a great band, but they were hired hands, they weren’t really a band at all, no one cared about them and they didn’t care about each other, it was all me, me, me. The way I had wanted it all along. But the closer it came, the more terrifying it seemed.

      Carlton was trotted out to plead that the band needed me. I argued that I knew the songs inside out (true); that I had gone through the whole set on many occasions (sort of true, just not in one go, in the right order); that I was at my best when improvising (debatable, but winging it certainly added an edge); and that anyway, we still had another couple of days’ rehearsal, which I solemnly promised to attend. Donut turned up, declined to get into the air-conditioned limo, just stood in the hot car park and shook his head in disgust, muttering that I shouldn’t expect him to bring me grapes in hospital when they were surgically removing firecrackers from my arsehole.

      Flavia confessed that she had arranged for select members of the press to walk through during rehearsal, at which Beasley rolled his eyes and said, ‘Screw the press, they’re not exactly doing us any favours. They can see it on Monday night like everybody else.’

      So that was settled. The convoy turned around and headed back to the hotel.

      7

      Up in my suite, I picked at a buffet without an appetite. A whole hour of unscheduled time to myself was almost unheard of – I should have been leaping for joy or, better still, catching up on sleep, but instead I was pacing the floor, listening to alternative club mixes of my next single, ‘Life On Earth’, at head-throbbing volume and flicking through channels on the wall-mounted flatscreen.

      ‘You should try and relax,’ Kilo shouted above the din.

      ‘Yeah, you got anything to help me?’ I fired back eagerly.

      ‘I think you’ve done enough,’ shouted Kilo.

      But his job was not to question but to serve. ‘Enough is never enough!’ I yelled, as he tossed me a plastic pack of pills. ‘What are these?’

      ‘They’ll bring you down a bit,’ shouted Kilo. ‘Take two.’

      I took four washed down with a tumbler of vodka. I felt the beat of the remix pound through me and waited for the wobble, the blurring of edges, anything to tune down the static fizzing through my mind. I watched the Starship Enterprise boldly go where no man had gone before, then pressed the remote and my own picture came up, news footage of my hyperactive exit from the press conference, some clips of Penelope and me from the trailer of #1 With A Bullet and a shot of Penelope and Troy at the Oscars where they seemed to be holding hands. How the fuck had I never noticed that before? Then there was some phone footage of me standing in the middle of traffic, reading the New York Post. Shit. Everyone was paparazzi these days. It cut to the photospread with all the offending bits digitally obscured. I snapped out of my trance and changed channel, only to wind up smack in the middle of a rerun of Darker With The Day, right on the scene where Penelope emerges from a swimming pool in slo-mo wearing that one-piece black swimsuit, water dripping down her skin, shakes her wet hair and looks right at the camera, that scene where everyone fell in love with her. She must have been younger than I am now and she already looked like she knew everything worth knowing, that she was everything worth knowing. I felt the first ripples of deep space open up in my chest and then it cut to Michael Douglas in mirrored aviator shades leering lasciviously, so I changed the channel and watched a crocodile with its mouth open while little birds fluttered in and out, picking at parasites between its teeth. The music was still pounding out. ‘And I wonder if you know just where you are? / In the palaces of Mars or a dirty astrobar?’

      There had been some strategising on the ride back about how to handle the Penelope crisis, and another failed attempt to reach her on satellite phone. Irwin Locke stuck to the line that the film crew were doing deep jungle location work and were temporarily uncontactable. Well, I knew exactly what kind of deep jungle work that faithless bitch was interested in. He said there were plans to send a chopper in. Oh, I’d send a chopper all right, I’d send a chopper to chop off her head. My voice sang out in stereo, swimming around my brain, ‘It’s a blessing, it’s a curse / So beautiful it hurts / Do you believe … in life on earth?’

      I lurched into the bedroom, lay down and tried to get the images out of my mind but it wasn’t working. All I could see were endless permutations of Penelope and Troy and Eileen fucking like monkeys on heat, and what the fuck was Eileen doing in there anyway? She was way out of her league getting it on with a couple of Hollywood superstars.

      Last time I saw Eileen, she was standing in my old man’s living room in Kilrock, crying her eyes out under the painting of the sacred heart of Jesus. She had just given me a blow job in my bedroom, and then I told her I wouldn’t be coming back any more, and that I cared for her and would always care for her but that it was over, over, over, Kilrock was too small for me, I had places to go, things to do, and I was leaving the past behind for good. It was after that last shitty visit to London when she turned up with a big red suitcase and caught me with a couple of groupies in my hotel room, after the abortion, after that terrible, terrible day lurking outside that fucking awful clinic, not knowing if I was worried for my babe or sick for my unborn baby, or just feeling utterly nauseated at having come that close to being sucked into a life of domestic drudgery just as I was reaching escape velocity. I had hooked up with Beasley by then and made up my mind to split the band. The Zero Sums had returned from a European tour in disarray, nobody was talking to me anyway. I went back to Kilrock