#Zero. Neil McCormick

      Kilo handed me a phone as I came out of the bathroom in a blast of escaping steam, towel wrapped around my waist, which was just as well because my bedroom was filling up. Hair and Wardrobe. ‘Make yourselves at home, girls,’ I said, grinning to cover another stab of irritation. Six fucking fifteen and there’s already four people in my space, if you count the flunky delivering breakfast as an actual person, which I always do. Linzi had clothes laid out on the bed, Kelly got her fingers straight into my hair while I took the first of the phoners, sipping a double espresso and munching a croissant.

      It was an easy one for starters, a mid-morning pop show in Dublin. The DJ, Barry Barrie (just Barry to his friends), tried to come over like a close personal amigo and why not? I used to listen to his show when I was a kid. It was meaningless banter and I’m good at that, the more shallow and vacuous the better.

      ‘How’s New York?’ he asked, of course he did, of course.

      ‘So good they named it twice … once for the night before, and once for the morning after,’ I shot back, ignoring Kilo’s raised eyebrow, like I should be paying royalties for stealing his crap jokes. It’s all about timing and mine is better than his.

      It didn’t take long to get on a roll. I was talking louder than strictly necessary, firing stealth bombs that surprised myself. It was like the unholy spirit had descended. It doesn’t matter if it’s Madison Square Gardens or a wake-up call with an ingratiating Dublin DJ, it is showtime and the monkey’s got his groove on. But then the insensitive fucker had to go and bring up the subject of Penelope. ‘So where’s the gorgeous Ms Nazareth while you’re taking Manhattan by storm?’ was all he said but it was enough to give me a lurch, a pocket of un-expected turbulence. Maybe it was the realisation that every single person I spoke to today was going to ask the same fucking question. And last time I looked we had about a zillion interviews scheduled. I spun a line about how Penelope wasn’t invited because ‘I don’t like being upstaged at my own parties’ and we had a good fake chuckle together, my showbiz buddy Barry Barrie and me. Then he hit me blindside. ‘So you’re still very much an item, despite what some of the more, shall we say, scurrilous scandal sites have been saying about Penelope and Troy Anthony?’

      I felt dead airtime opening in front of me. I had to say something before my host was compelled to fill it for me. ‘Troy is co-star in her new movie,’ was the best I could come up with. ‘I’m co-star for life.’ It was so cheesy it might have made me puke if I hadn’t already emptied the contents of my stomach.

      ‘That go OK?’ said Kilo, already consulting his call sheet and lining up the next interview. Linzi was teasing gel through my hair, Kelly was comparing T-shirts, everyone carrying on like it’s business as per fucking usual.

      I decided to play it cool, which lasted all of, oh, maybe one fifteenth of a microsecond. ‘What the fuck are they saying about Penelope and Troy Anthony?’

      ‘You know I never pay attention to that shit,’ said Kilo, with the same blank face he pulls walking through customs, although I knew nothing of the sort. Kelly held up an ensemble of artfully torn designer leather jacket and jeans, the anti-bling look they call it, Black Irish (registered trademark), and shot me a reassuring smile. Now she definitely read that shit.

      ‘I think we should go with the branded Year Zero T-shirt for Breakfast and then change into something more retro for MTV,’ she announced, as if anyone was fucking interested. Something was not right but Kilo was telling my next caller he had Zero on the line.

      ‘What time is it in Brazil?’ I hissed. ‘See if you can get hold of Penelope.’ And then I was on air, bright and breezy with some smart-arse motormouth in London, one of those self-amused pranksters who wants everyone to know how fucking clever he is and spends the whole interview trying to make you walk into his punchline. I picture them nodding and winking in the privacy of their own sound booths as they dream up stupid questions. ‘So, Zero, if you were never young, how old are you now?’

      I mean, what the fuck are you supposed to say to something like that? ‘Age is just a number, and as long as I’m number one, who’s counting?’ I wanted to kick everyone out of my room, pull the covers over my head and sleep for a thousand years. Instead I was bouncing around, jumping on the furniture, trying to do verbal battle with a disembodied voice from the other side of the Atlantic.

      ‘Your new album, out Friday, is called Year Zero,’ announced my persecutor. ‘Love the subtle pun on your name there. Did it take you long to think that up?’

      ‘I have teams of people working round the clock,’ I said. Actually, that’s true.

      ‘I’ll bet you do. Your first solo album was Zero Hour, that was another good one. And I hear your old band The Sums are recording an album without you. It’s going to be called Minus Zero.’

      ‘The Sums did release a record without me,’ I said, struggling on. ‘You probably didn’t notice because it sold zero copies.’

      ‘Ouch,’ he said. As well he might. But it got worse. He started telling me about his fixation with Penelope. ‘I used to have a pin-up of your fiancée on my wall when I was, well, just a bit younger than you are now, I guess. You know the poster, I’m sure, Suicide Blonde, very sexy pose, it was in every red-blooded boy’s bedroom back in the day. Did you ever look up at that poster and think “That’s the woman I am going to marry”? I know I did.’

      I got that all the time, the implication being that I was acting out some adolescent infatuation, and our great romance could be reduced to an act of celebrity stalking. People had a sense of ownership over Penelope. She had been a sex goddess since biblical times, or at least pre-Google, then some Irish runt who was filling nappies when she had her first hit comes along and snatches her away. Well, fuck ’em all. True love never was predictable, otherwise what would we write songs about?

      ‘Some of us get the women of our dreams and some just go on dreaming,’ I said. ‘Have you still got that poster, or did your mother make you take it down?’

      It was just banter, five minutes of trivia to promote my new album, but daggers had been drawn. I wanted to reach down that phone line and stab him in the throat. But he was too quick for me.

      ‘No, I’ve got a poster of Penelope and Troy Anthony now,’ he said.

      I managed to squeeze out a hollow laugh but it was too early in the day for this. I didn’t have my force field up yet. Fucking interviewers. They worm their way inside your head, burrow under your skin, probing away for sensitive tissue, armed with erroneous facts and figures, clippings full of every stupid remark you ever made, ready to throw it back in your face. Never trust a journalist. Beasley told me that. ‘They’ll sing your praises, laugh at your jokes, hang on every word like you are the most fascinating being to walk the earth since Jesus pissed off to heaven, but all they are interested in is a headline.’

      This was a whole rap he laid on me when we started out together. ‘The media is a whore,’ was another one of his maxims. ‘You can fuck them any which way you want but they will always make you pay.’

      He was full of this shit; his Bad Wisdom he called it when he was feeling particularly pleased with himself, which was most of the time. I don’t know why I ever listened to him. Because he was usually right, I suppose. Or maybe because he was telling me what I wanted to hear. About how we were on a quest, a mission to the stars, strapped to a guided missile blazing its way to the centre of the entertainment universe. And when it detonated, stand back, cause this was gonna be the supermassive supernova of superstardom, not just a global brand but a celestial event, Elvis, Madonna, Mickey Fucking Mouse and Jesus H Himself, all collapsed into one, The ONE, preceded by a dollar sign and followed by an endless procession of Zeros, me to the power of infinity. But, as he never ceased to remind me, you can’t get something from nothing. Beasley did what no teacher in school ever managed to: tap my inner workaholic. Life with Beasley was fucking relentless.

      Speaking of the devil, the smell of cordite came wafting to my nostrils, the stench of one of his godawful cigars. Beelzebub was in the house. The bedroom door swung open, briefly revealing a clatter and