Free Nico by James Young Page B

whose constant tread reverberated throughout his daily life, possibly more urgent even than his routine search for mood-altering drugs.
    America had everything. Flame-haired girls in cowboy boots who drank Bud from the bottle and told dirty jokes. Twisters, shapers, sharks and fraudies. People who could tell a good story … and they all lived at the Tropicana.
    *
    Back at H.Q. Echo, the pretext was rehearsal, but the reality was more sanguinary.
    Nico hits the excited vein on the crown of her foot. Blunt needles, disappearing veins. A small trickle of blood weeps down the side. ‘Even when you have the stuff, the needles are dead,’ she says.
    Echo was eyeing up the cottons that absorb any morphine sediment left in the spoon. (A bit like scraping up Mum’s cakemix.)
    â€˜Auntie Nico?’ It was little Mercy. ‘Have you hurt your foot?’
    â€˜Not now, chuck.’ Echo steered the child towards Faith in the kitchen.
    Faith was scrubbing away the shame, furiously trying to maintain a semblance of domestic normality, as if this was a typical suburban household with a slightly eccentric aunt from Germany on an extended visit. She’d guard the children’s lives from any accidental encounter with the arcane and perplexing objects that attended Nico’s habit. Bent spoons held over sacred flames, sharp syringes – the shining vessels of faith, mysterious scars on her man’s arms – the stigmata. For a Catholic girl it was a monstrous sacrilege, the hideous mirror of her family’s degradation.
    But we were all hooked on something. We’d all been connected by Demetrius’s need for stimulation. He liked to experiment with personalities, test loyalties against each other. Like a bizarre shadchen or matchmaker, he was curious to see what issue would arise from such unlikely marriages of temperament. It became impossible to distinguish who was using whom, forms of desperation were so varied: Drugs, Money, Sensation, Sex, Travel, Change, Adventure. We’d claimed our appropriate share of these from him in exchange for the subjugation of our individual will. It would be too grandiose to call it a Faustian bargain, yet, on our own gossipy malodorous level, there was the slight stink of sulphur about it, a cloven hoof impressed upon the seal.
    *
    I was taking a piss in Echo’s bathroom. Children’s clothes, mould, never dry. I could hear Nico and Demetrius talking outside the back door.
    â€˜â€¦ always hanging around. Why? The more of them, the less for me. I can go to America aloone.’
    â€˜Most inadvisable, Heartette. Singermann’ – the U.S. promoter – ‘has specified a group. America wants rock’n’roll. You’ll be performing for audiences who revere the sacred memory of the King Himself. Much as I love you on your own with the harmonium – the singer/sewing machine – one has to think theatrically, Nico. I must urge you to see the professional sense in performing with a group.’
    Nico was silent … there was a lot to assimilate. Then I heard her say, ‘But them?’
    â€˜Darling one, what d’you expect? They come cheap.’
    â€˜Even so, they’re always eating – and yooooo tooooo.’
    Demetrius coughed. ‘Errr – they use up a lot of energy.’
    â€˜Not on the music they don’t … That Jim, with the girls all the time …’
    I blushed. I was hearing my death sentence.
    â€˜He’s classically trained.’
    â€˜He sure is … he won’t play like I want. That stupid synthesiser thing he’s got, he has no idea. He makes it sound like a kazooooo or something … reedeeculouss.’
    â€˜He’s very good,’ Demetrius insisted. ‘He plays a charming little study by Erik Satie: “Gymnasium” or something … how does it go? Dum da di da, da di dum da di da … or is it da di dum, da di da da di