Walk on the Wild Side

The Slug



Martine was hammering away to the accompaniment of Lou Reed, tapedeck set at stun, and at first didn’t hear the knocking at her studio door. She set aside hammer and chisel, put Lou Reed on hold, and opened the door to discover Keenan Bauduret seated on her deck rail, leaning forward to pound determinedly at her door. The morning sun shone bright and cheery through the veil of pines, and Keenan was shit-faced drunk.

“Martine!” He lurched toward her. “I need a drink!”

“What you need is some coffee.” Martine stood her ground. At six feet and change she was three inches taller than Keenan and in far better shape.

“Please! I’ve got to talk to someone.” Keenan’s soft brown eyes implored. He was disheveled and unshaven in baggy clothes that once had fit him, and Martine thought of a stray spaniel, damp and dirty, begging to be let in. And Keenan said, “I’ve just killed someone. I mean, something.”

Martine stepped inside. “I can offer gin and orange juice.”

“Just the gin.”

Keenan Bauduret collapsed onto her wooden rocking chair and mopped at his face with a crumpled linen handkerchief, although the morning was not yet warm. Now he reminded her of Bruce Dern playing a dissolute Southern lawyer, complete with out-of-fashion and rumpled suit; but in fact Keenan was a writer, although dissolute and Southern to be sure. He was part of that sort of artist/ writer colony that the sort of small university town such as Pine Hill attracts. Originally he was from New Orleans, and he was marking time writing mystery novels while he completed work on the Great Southern Novel. At times he taught creative writing for the university’s evening college.

Martine had installed a wet bar complete with refrigerator and microwave in a corner of her studio to save the walk back into her house when she entertained here. She sculpted in stone, and the noise and dust were better kept away from her single-bedroom cottage. While Keenan sweated, she looked for glasses and ice.

“Just what was it you said that you’d killed?”

“A slug. A gross, obscene, mammoth, and predatory slug.”

“Sounds rather like a job for Orkin. Did you want your gin neat?”

“Just the naked gin.”

Martine made herself a very light gin screwdriver and poured a double shot of Tanqueray into Keenan’s glass. Her last name was still McFerran, and she had her father’s red hair, which she wore in a long ponytail, and his Irish blue eyes and freckled complexion. Her mother was Scottish and claimed that her side of the family was responsible for her daughter’s unexpected height. Born in Belfast, Martine had grown up in Pine Hill as a faculty brat after her parents took university posts here to escape the troubles in Northern Ireland. Approaching the further reaches of thirty, Martine was content with her bachelorhood and her sculpture and had no desire to return to Belfast.

“Sure you don’t want orange juice?” She handed the glass to Keenan.

Keenan shook his head. “To your very good health.” He swallowed half the gin, closed his eyes, leaned back in the rocker and sighed. He did not, as Martine had expected, tip over.

Martine sat down carefully in her prized Windsor chair. She was wearing scuffed Reeboks, faded blue jeans, and a naturally torn university sweatshirt, and she pushed back her sleeves before tasting her drink.

“Now, then,” she said, “tell me what really happened.”

Keenan studied his gin with the eye of a man who is balancing his need to bolt the rest of it against the impropriety of asking for an immediate refill. Need won.

“Don’t get up.” He smiled graciously. “I know the way.”

Martine watched him slosh another few ounces of gin into his glass, her own mood somewhere between annoyance and concern. She’d known Keenan Bauduret casually for years, well before he’d hit the skids. He was a few years older than she, well read and intelligent, and usually fun to be around. They’d never actually dated, but there were the inevitable meetings at parties and university town cultural events, lunches and dinners and a few drinks after. Keenan had never slept over, nor had she at his cluttered little house. It was that sort of respectful friendship that arises between two lonely people who are content within their self-isolation, venturing forth for nonthreatening companionship without ever sensing the need.

“I’ve cantaloupe in the fridge,” Martine prompted.

“Thanks. I’m all right.” Keenan returned to the rocker. He sipped his gin this time. His hands were no longer shaking. “How well do you know Casper Crowley?”

“Casper the Friendly Ghost?” Martine almost giggled. “Hardly at all. That is, I’ve met him at parties, but he never has anything to say to anyone. Just stands stuffing himself with chips and hors d’oeuvres—I’ve even seen him pocket a few beers as he’s left. I’m told he’s in a family business, but no one seems to know what that business is—and he writes books that no one I know has ever read for publishers no one has heard of. He’s so dead dull boring that I always wonder why anyone ever invites him.”

“I’ve seen him at your little gatherings,” Keenan accused.

“Well, yes. It’s just that I feel sorry for poor boring Casper.”

“Exactly.” Keenan stabbed a finger and rested his case. “That’s what happened to me. You won’t mind if I have another drink while I tell you about it?”

Martine sighed mentally and tried not to glance at her watch. His greatest mistake, said Keenan, was ever to have invited Casper Crowley to drop by in the first place.

It began about two years ago. Keenan was punishing the beer keg at Greg Lafollette’s annual birthday bash and pig-picking. He was by no means sober, or he never would have attempted to draw Casper into conversation. It was just that Casper stood there, wrapped in his customary loneliness, mechanically feeding his face with corn chips and salsa, washing it down with great gulps of beer, as expressionless as a carp taking bread crumbs from atop a pool.

“How’s it going, Casper?” Keenan asked harmlessly.

Casper shaved his scalp but not his face, and he had bits of salsa in his bushy orange beard. He was wearing a tailored tweed suit whose vest strained desperately to contain his enormous beer gut. He turned his round, bland eyes toward Keenan and replied, “Do you know much about Aztec gods?”

“Not really, I suppose.”

“In this book I’m working on,” Casper pursued, “I’m trying to establish a link between the Aztecs and Nordic mythology.”

“Well, I do have a few of the usual sagas stuck away on my shelves.” Keenan w as struggling to imagine any such link.

“Then would it be all right if I dropped by your place to look them over?”

And Casper appeared at ten the following morning, while Keenan was drying off from his shower, and he helped himself to coffee and doughnuts while Keenan dressed.

“Hope I’m not in your way.” Casper was making a fresh pot of coffee.

“Not at all.” Keenan normally worked mornings through the afternoon, and he had a pressing deadline.

But Casper plopped down on his couch and spent the next few hours leafing without visible comprehension through various of Keenan’s books, soaking up coffee, and intermittently clearing his throat and swallowing horribly. Keenan no longer felt like working after his guest had finally left. Instead he made himself a fifth rum and Coke and fell asleep watching I Love Lucy.

At ten the following morning, Keenan had almost reworked his first sentence of the day when Casper phoned.

“Do you know why a tomcat licks his balls?”

Keenan admitted ignorance.

“Because he can!”

Casper chuckled with enormous relish at his own joke, while Keenan scowled at the phone. “How about going out to get some barbecue for lunch?” Casper then suggested.

“I’m afraid I’m really very busy just now.”

“In that case,” Casper persisted, “I’ll just pick us up some sandwiches and bring them on over.”

And he did. And Casper sat on Keenan’s couch, wolfing down barbecue sandwiches with the precision of a garbage disposal, dribbling gobbets of sauce and cole slaw down his beard and belly and onto the upholstery. Keenan munched his soggy sandwich, reflecting upon the distinction between the German verbs essen (to eat) and fressen (to devour). When Casper at last left, it was late afternoon, and Keenan took a nap that lasted past his usual dinnertime. By then the day had long since slipped away.

He awoke feeling bloated and lethargic the next morning, but he was resolved to make up for lost time. At ten-thirty Casper appeared on his doorstep, carrying a bag of chocolate-covered raspberry jelly doughnuts.

“Do you know how many mice it takes to screw in a light bulb?” Casper asked, helping himself to coffee.

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

“Two—but they have to be real small!” Jelly spurted down Casper’s beard as he guffawed. Keenan had never before heard someone actually guffaw; he’d always assumed it was an exaggerated figure of speech.

Casper left after about two in the afternoon, unsuccessful in his efforts to coax Keenan into sharing a pizza with him. Keenan returned to his desk, but inspiration was dead.

And so the daily routine began.

“Why didn’t you just tell him to stay away and let you work?” Martine interrupted.

“Easy enough to say,” Keenan groaned. “At first I just felt sorry for him. OK, the guy is lonely—right? Anyway, I really was going to tell him to stop bugging me every day—and then I had my accident.”

A rain-slick curve, a telephone pole, and Keenan’s venerable VW Beetle was grist for the crusher. Keenan fared rather better, although his left foot would wear a plaster sock for some weeks after.

Casper came over daily with groceries and bottles of beer and rum. “Glad to be of help,” he assured Keenan as he engulfed most of a slice of pepperoni-and-mushroom pizza. Sauce obscured his beard. “Must be tough having to hobble around day after day. Still, I'll bet you’re getting a lot of writing done.”

“Very little,” Keenan grudgingly admitted. “Just haven’t felt up to it lately.”

“Guess you haven’t. Hey, do you know what the difference is between a circus and a group of sorority girls out jogging?”

“I give up.”

“Well, one is a cunning array of stunts ” Casper chortled and wiped red sauce from his mouth. “Guess I better have another beer after that one!”

Keenan missed one deadline, and then he missed another. He made excuses owing to his accident. Deadlines came around again. The one novel he did manage to finish came back with requests for major revisions. Keenan worked hard at the rewrite, but each new effort was only for the worse. He supposed he ought to cut down on his drinking, but the stress was keeping him awake nights, and he kept having nightmares wherein Casper crouched on his chest and snickered bad jokes and dribbled salsa. His agent sounded concerned, and his editors were losing patience.

“Me,” said Casper, “I never have trouble writing. I’ve always got lots of ideas.”

Keenan resisted screaming at the obese hulk who had camped on his sofa throughout the morning. Instead he asked civilly, “Oh? And what are you working on now?”

“A follow-up to my last book—by the way, my publisher really went ape-shit over that one, wants another like it. This time I’m writing one that traces the rise of Nazi Germany to the Druidic rites at Stonehenge.”

“You seem to be well versed in the occult,” observed Keenan, repressing an urge to vomit.

“I do a lot of research,” Casper explained. “Besides, it’s in my blood. Did I ever tell you that I’m related to Aleister Crowley?”

“No.”

“Well, I am.” Casper beamed with secret pride.

“I should have guessed.”

“Well, the name, of course.”

Keenan had been thinking of other similarities. “Well, I really do need to get some work done now.”

“Sure you don’t need me to run you somewhere?”

“No, thank you. The ankle is a little sore, but I can get around well enough.”

At the door, Casper persisted: “Sure you don’t want to go get some barbecue?”

“Very sure.”

Casper pointed toward the rusted-out Chevy wagon in Keenan’s driveway. “Well, if that heap won’t start again, just give me a call.”

“I put in a new battery,” Keenan said, remembering that the mechanic had warned him about the starter motor. Keenan had bought the clunker for three hundred bucks—from a student. He needed wheels, and wheels were about all that did work on the rust-bucket. His insurance hadn’t covered replacement for his antique Beetle.

“Heard you had to return your advance on that Zenith contract.”

“Where’d you hear that?” Keenan wanted to use his fists.

“My editor—your old editor—brought it up when we were talking contract on my new book the other day. She said for me to check out how you were getting along. Sounded concerned. But I told her you were doing great, despite all the talk.”

“Thanks for that much.”

“Hey, you know the difference between a sorority girl and a bowling ball?”

Keenan did not trust himself to speak.

“No? Well, you can’t stuff a sorority girl into a bowling ball!” After the university informed Mr Bauduret that his services would no longer be required as instructor of creative writing at the evening college, Keenan began to sell off his books and a few antiques. It kept the wolves at arm’s length, and it paid for six-packs. Editors no longer phoned, and his agent no longer answered his calls.

Casper was sympathetic, and he regularly carried over doughnuts and instant coffee, which he consumed while drinking Keenan’s beer.

“Zenith gobbled up Nazi Druids,” he told Keenan. “They can’t wait for more.”

The light in Keenan’s eyes was not the look of a sane man. “So, what’s next?”

“I got an idea. I’ve discovered a tie-in between flying saucers and the Salem witch burnings.”

“They hanged them. Or pressed them. No burnings in this country.”

“Whatever. Anyway, I bought a bunch of your old books on the subject at the Book Barn the other day. Guess I won’t need to borrow them now.”

“Guess not.”

“Hey, you want some Mexican for lunch? I’ll pay.”

“Thank you, but I have some work to do.”

“Good to see you’re still slugging away.”

“Not finished yet.”

“Guess some guys don’t know when they’re licked.”

“Guess not.”

“Hey”—Casper chugged his beer—“you know what the mating cry of a sorority girl is?”

Keenan gritted his teeth in a hideous grin.

Continued Casper in girlish falsetto, “Oh, I’m so-o-o drunk!” His belly shook with laughter, although he wasn’t Santa. “Better have another beer on that one!”

And he sat there on the couch, methodically working his way through Keenan’s stock of beer, as slowly mobile and slimy gross as a huge slug feasting its way across the garden. Keenan listened to his snorts and belches, to his puerile and obscene jokes, to his pointless and inane conversation, too drained and too weak to beg him to leave. Instead he swallowed his beer and his bile, and fires of loathing stirred beneath the ashes of his despair.

That night Keenan found the last bottle of rum he’d hidden away against when the shakes came at dawn, and he dug out the vast file of typed pages, containing all the fits and starts and notes and revisions and disconnected chapters that were the entirety of his years’ efforts toward the Great Southern Novel.

He had a small patio, surrounded by a neglected rock garden and close-shouldering oak trees, and he heaped an entire bag of charcoal into the barbecue grill that rusted there. Then Keenan sipped from the bottle of Myers’s, waiting for the coals to take light. When the coals had reached their peak, Keenan Bauduret fed his manuscript, page by crumpled page, onto the fire; watched each page flame and char, rise in dying ashes into the night.

“That was when I knew I had to kill Casper Crowley.”

Martine wasn’t certain whether she was meant to laugh now. “Kill Casper? But he was only trying to be your friend! I’m sure you can find a way to ask him to give you your space without hurting his feelings.”

Keenan laughed instead. He poured out the last of her gin. “A friend? Casper was a giant grotesque slug! He was a gross leech that sucked out my creative energy! He fed off me and watched over me with secret delight as I wasted away!”

“That’s rather strong.”

“From the first day the slug showed up on my doorstep, I could never concentrate on my work. When I did manage to write, all I could squeeze out was dead, boring, lifeless drivel. I don’t blame my publishers for sending it back!”

Martine sighed, wondering how to express herself. She did rather like Keenan; she certainly felt pity for him now. “Keenan, I don’t want to get you upset, but you have been drinking an awful lot this past year or so...”

“Upset?” Keenan broke into a wild grin and a worse laugh, then suddenly regained his composure. “No need for me to be upset now, I’ve killed him.”

“And how did you manage that?” Martine was beginning to feel uneasy.

“How do you kill a slug?”

“I thought you said he was a leech.”

“They’re one and the same.”

“No they’re not.”

“Yes they are. Gross, bloated, slimy things. Anyway, the remedy is the same.”

“I’m not sure I’m following you.”

“Salt.” Keenan seemed in complete control now. “They can’t stand salt.”

“I see.” Martine relaxed and prepared herself for the joke. Keenan became very matter-of-fact. “Of course, I didn’t forget the beer. Slugs are drawn to beer. I bought many six-packs of imported beer. Then I prepared an enormous barbecue feast—chickens, ribs, pork loin. Casper couldn’t hold himself back.”

“So you pushed his cholesterol over the top, and he died of a massive coronary.”

“Slugs can’t overeat. It was the beer. He drank and drank and drank some more, and then he passed out on the patio lounge chair. That was my chance.”

“A steak through the heart?”

“Salt. I’d bought dozens of bags of rock salt for this. Once Casper was snoring away, I carried them out of my station wagon and ripped them open. Then, before he could awaken, I quickly dumped the whole lot over Casper.”

“I’ll bet Casper didn’t enjoy that.”

“He didn’t. At first I was afraid he’d break away, but I kept pouring the rock salt over him. He never said a word. He just writhed all about on the lounge chair, flinging his little arms and legs all about, trying to fend off the salt.”

Keenan paused and swallowed the last of the gin. He wiped his face and shuddered. “And then he began to shrivel up.”

“Shrivel up?”

“The way slugs do when you pour salt on them. Don’t you remember? Remember doing it when you were a kid? He just started to shrivel and shrink. And shrink and shrink. Until there was nothing much left. Just a dried-out twist of slime. No bones. Just dried slime.”

“I see.”

“But the worst part was the look in his eyes, just before they withered on the ends of their stalks. He stared right into my eyes, and I could sense the terrible rage as he died.”

“Stalks?”

“Yes. Casper Crowley sort of changed as he shriveled away.”

“Well. What did you do then?”

“Very little to clean up. Just dried slime and some clothes. I waited through the night, and this morning I burned it all on the barbecue grill. Wasn’t much left, but it sure stank.”

Keenan looked at his empty glass, then glanced hopefully at the empty bottle. “So now it’s over. I’m free.”

“Well,” said Martine, ignoring his imploring gaze, “I can certainly see that you’ve regained your imagination.”

“Best be motivating on home now, I guess,” Keenan stood up, with rather less stumbling than Martine had anticipated. “Thanks for listening to my strange little story. Guess I didn’t expect you to believe it all, but I had to talk to someone.”

“Why not drive carefully home and get some sleep,” Martine advised, ushering him to the door. “This has certainly been an interesting morning.”

Keenan hung on to the door. “Thanks again, Martine. I’ll do just that. Hey, what do you say I treat you to Chinese tomorrow for lunch? I really feel a whole lot better after talking to you.”

Martine felt panic, then remorse. “Well, I am awfully busy just now, but I guess I can take a break for lunch.”

Martine sat back down after Keenan had left. She was seriously troubled, wondering whether she ought to phone Casper Crowley. Clearly Keenan was drinking far too heavily; he might well be harboring some resentment. But harm anyone... No way. Just some unfunny attempt at a shaggy dog story. Keenan never could tell jokes.

When she finally did phone Casper Crowley, all she got was his answering machine.

Martine felt strangely lethargic—her morning derailed by Keenan’s bursting in with his inane patter. Still, she thought she really should get some work done on her sculpture.

She paused before the almost finished marble, hammer and chisel at ready, her mind utterly devoid of inspiration. She was working on a bust of a young woman—the proverbial artist’s self-portrait. Martine squared her shoulders and set chisel to the base of the marble throat.

As the hammer struck, the marble cracked through to the base.


Afterword

Not much need be said, actually. Every writer—every creative person—lives in dread of those nagging and inane interruptions that break the creative flow. A sentence perfectly crystallized, shattered by a stupid phone call, never regained. A morning filled with inspiration and energy, clogged by an uninvited guest, the day lost. The imaginative is the choice prey of the banal, and uncounted works of excellence have died stillborn thanks to junk phone calls and visits from bored associates.

After all, a writer doesn’t have a real job. Feel free to crash in at anytime. Probably wants some company.

Nothing in this story is in any way a reflection upon this one writer’s various friends, nor does it in any way resemble any given actual person or composite of any persons known to the author. It is entirely a fictitious work and purely the product of the author’s imagination.

It has taken me five days to scribble out this afterword.

There’s the door...





Did They Get You to Trade?



Ryan Chase was walking along Southampton Row at lunchtime, fancying a pint of bitter. Fortunately there was no dearth of pubs here, and he turned into Cosmo Place, a narrow passage behind the Bloomsbury Park Hotel and the Church of St George the Martyr, leading into Queen Square. The September day was unseasonably sunny, so he passed by Peter’s Bar, downstairs at the corner—looking for an outdoor table at The Swan or The Queen’s Larder. The Swan was filling up, so he walked a few doors farther to The Queen’s Larder, at the corner of Queen Square. There he found his pint of bitter, and he moved back outside to take a seat at one of the wooden tables on the pavement.

Ryan Chase was American by birth, citizen of the world by choice. More to the point, he spent probably half of each year knocking about the more or less civilized parts of the globe—he liked hotels and saw no romance in roughing it—and a month or two of this time he spent in London, where he had various friends and the use of a studio. The remainder of his year was devoted to long hours of work in his Connecticut studio, where he painted strange and compelling portraits, often derived from his travels and created from memory. These fetched rather large and compelling prices from fashionable galleries—enough to support his travels and eccentricities, even without the trust allowance from a father who had wanted him to go into corporate law.

Chase was pleased with most of his work, although in all of it he saw a flawed compromise between the best he could create at the time and the final realization of his vision, which he hoped someday to achieve. He saw himself as a true decadent, trapped in the fin de siècle of a century far drearier than the last. But then, to be decadent is to be romantic.

Chase also had a pragmatic streak. Today a pint of bitter in Bloomsbury would have to make do for a glass of absinthe in Paris of La Belle Epoch. The bitter was very good, the day was excellent, and Chase dug out a few postcards from his jacket pocket. By the end of his second pint, he had scribbled notes and addresses on them all and was thinking about a third pint and perhaps a ploughman’s lunch.

He smelled the sweet stench of methylated spirit as it approached him, and then the sour smell of unwashed poverty. Already Chase was reaching for a coin.

“Please, guv. I don’t wish to interrupt you in your writing, but please could you see your way toward sparing a few coins for a poor man who needs a meal?”

Ryan Chase didn’t look like a tourist, but neither did he look British. He was forty-something, some where around six feet, saddened that he was starting to spread at the middle, and proud that there was no grey in his short black beard and no thinning in his pulled-back hair and short ponytail. His black leather jacket with countless studs and zips was from Kensington Market, his baggy slacks from Bloomingdale’s, his T-shirt from Rodeo Drive, and his tennis shoes from a Stamford garage sale. Mild blue eyes watched from behind surplus aviator’s sunglasses of the same shade of blue.

All of this, in addition to his fondness for writing postcards and scrawling sketches at tables outside pubs, made Chase a natural target for London’s growing array of panhandlers and blowlamps. Against this Chase kept a pocket well filled with coins, for his heart was rather kind and his eye quite keen to memorize the faces that peered back from the fringes of Hell.

But this face had seen well beyond the fringes of Hell, and as Chase glanced up, he left the pound coin in his pocket. His panhandler was a meth-man, well in the grip of the terminal oblivion of cheap methylated spirit. His shoes and clothing were refuse from dustbins, and from the look of his filthy mackintosh, he had obviously been sleeping rough for some while. Chalky ashes seemed to dribble from him like cream from a cone in a child’s fist. Beneath all this, his body was tall and almost fleshless; the long-fingered hand, held out in hope, showed dirt-caked nails resembling broken talons. Straggling hair and unkempt beard might have been black or brown, streaked with grey and matted with ash and grime. His face—Chase recalled Sax Rohmer’s description of Fu Manchu: A brow like Shakespeare and eyes like Satan.

Only, Satan the fallen angel. These were green eyes with a tint of amber, and they shone with a sort of majestic despair and a proud intelligence that not even the meth had wholly obliterated. Beneath their imploring hopelessness, the eyes suggested a still-smoldering sense of rage.

Ryan Chase was a scholar of human faces, as well as impulsive, and he knew any coins the man might beg here would go straight into another bottle of methylated spirit. He got up from his seat. “Hang on a bit. I’ll treat you to a round.”

When Chase emerged from The Queen’s Larder, he was carrying a pint of bitter and a pint of cider. His meth-man was skulking about the Church of St George the Martyr across the way, seemingly studying the informational plaque affixed to the stucco wall. Chase handed him the cider. “Here. This is better for you than the meth.”

The other man had the shakes rather badly, but he steadied the pint with both hands and dipped his face into it, sucking ravenously until the level was low enough for him to lift the pint to his face. He’d sunk his pint before Chase had quite started on his own. Wiping his beard, he leaned back against the church and shuddered, but the shaking had left his hands as the alcohol quickly spread from his empty stomach.

“Thanks, guv. Now I’d best be off before they take notice of me. They don’t fancy my sort hanging about.”

His accent was good, though too blurred by alcohol for Chase to pin down. Chase sensed tragedy, as he studied the other’s face while he drained his own pint. He wasn’t used to drinking in a rush, and perhaps this contributed to his natural impulsiveness.

“They’ll take my money well enough. Take a seat at the table ’round the corner, and I’ll buy another round.”

Chase bought a couple packets of crisps to accompany their pints and returned to find the other man cautiously seated. He had managed to beg a cigarette. He eagerly accepted the cider, but declined the crisps. By the time he had finished his cider, he was looking somewhat less the corpse.

“Cheers, mate,” he said. “You’ve been a friend. It wasn’t always like this, you know.”

“Eat some crisps, and I’ll buy you one more pint.” No need to sing for your supper, Chase started to say, but there were certain remnants of pride amidst the wreckage. He left his barely tasted pint and stepped back inside for more cider. At least there was some food value to cider in addition to the high alcohol content, or so he imagined. It might get the poor bastard through another day.

His guest drank this pint more slowly. The cider had cured his shakes for the moment, and he was losing his whipped cur attitude. He said with a certain foggy dignity: “That’s right, mate. One time I had it all. And then I lost it every bit. Now it’s come down to this.” Chase was an artist, not a writer, and so had been interested in the man’s face, not his life story. The story was an obvious ploy to gain a few more pints, but as the face began to return to life, Chase found himself searching through his memory.

Chase opened a second bag of crisps and offered them. “So, then?”

“I’m Nemo Skagg. Or used to be. Ever heard of me?”

Chase started to respond, “Yes, and I’m Elvis.” But his artist’s eyes began filling in the eroded features, and instead he whispered, “Jesus Christ!”

Nemo Skagg. Founder and major force behind Needle—probably the cutting edge of the punk rock movement in its early years. Needle, long without Nemo Skagg and with just enough of its early lineup to maintain the group’s name, was still around, but only as a ghost of the original. Rolling Stone and the lot used to publish scandalous notices of Nemo Skagg’s meteoric crash, but that was years ago, and few readers today would have recognized the name. The name of a living-dead legend.

“Last I read of you, you were living the life of a recluse at someplace in Kensington,” Chase said.

“You don’t believe me?” There was a flicker of defiant pride in those wounded eyes.

“Actually, I do,” Chase said, feeling as though he should apologize. “I recognize your face.” He wiped his hands on his trousers, fumbling for something to say. “As it happens, I still have Needle’s early albums, as well as the solo album you did.”

“But do you still listen to them?”

Chase felt increasingly awkward, yet he was too fascinated to walk away. “Well, I think this calls for one more round.”

The barman from The Queen’s Larder was starting to favor them with a distasteful frown as he collected glasses from outside. Nemo Skagg nodded toward Great Ormand Street across the way. “They do a fair scrumpi at The Sun,” he suggested.

It was a short walk to the corner of Great Ormand and Lamb’s Conduit Street, giving Chase a little time to marshal his thoughts. Nemo Skagg. Nova on the punk rock scene. The most outrageous. The most daring. The savior of the world from disco and lame hangers-on from the sixties scene. Totally full-dress punk star: the parties, the fights on stage, the drugs, the scandals, the arrests, the hospital confinements. Toward the last, there were only the latter two, then even these were no longer newsworthy. A decade later, the world had forgotten Nemo Skagg. Chase had assumed he was dead, but now could recall no notice of his death. It might have escaped notice.

The Sun was crowded with students as usual, but Chase made his way past them to the horseshoe bar and sloshed back outside with two pints of scrumpi. Nemo had cleared a space against the wall and had begged another fag. They leaned against the wall of the pub, considering the bright September day, the passing show, and their pints. Chase seldom drank scrumpi, and the potent cider would have been enough to stun his brain even without the previous bitter.

“Actually,” Nemo said, “there were three solo albums.”

“I had forgotten.”

“They were all bollocks.”

“I’m not at all certain I ever heard the other two,” Chase compromised.

“I’m bollocks. We’re all of us bollocks.”

“The whole world is bollocks.” Chase jumped in ahead of him. “To bollocks!” Nemo raised his glass. They crashed their pints in an unsteady toast. Nemo drained his.

“You’re a sport, mate. You still haven’t asked what you’re waiting to ask: How did it all happen?”

“Well. I don’t suppose it really matters, does it?”

Nemo was not to demur. “Lend us a fiver, mate, and I’ll pay for this round. Then Nemo Skagg shall tell all.”

Once, at the White Hart in Drury Lane, Chase had bought eight pints of Guinness for a cockney pensioner who had regaled him with an impenetrable cockney accent concerning his adventures during the Dunkirk evacuation. Chase hadn’t understood a word in ten, but he memorized the man’s face, and that portrait was considered one of his very finest. Chase found a fiver.

The bar staff at The Sun were loose enough to serve Nemo, and he was out again shortly with two more pints of scrumpi and a packet of fags. That was more than the fiver, so he hadn’t been totally skint. He brightened when Chase told him he didn’t smoke. Nemo lit up. Chase placed his empty pint on the window ledge and braced himself against the wall. The wall felt good.

“So, then, mate. Ask away. It’s you who’s paid the piper.”

Chase firmly resolved that this pint would be his last. “All right, then. What did happen to Nemo Skagg? Last I heard, you still had some of your millions and a house in Kensington, whence sounds of debauchery issued throughout the night.”

“You got it right all along, mate. It was sex, drugs and alcohol that brought about me ruin. We’ll say bloody nothing about scheming managers and crooked recording studios. Now, then. You’ve got the whole soddin’ story.”

“Not very original.” Chase wondered whether he should finish his scrumpi.

“Life is never original,” Nemo observed. The rush of alcohol and nicotine had vastly improved his demeanor. Take away the dirt and shabby clothes, and he might well look like any other dissipated man in his sixties, although that must be about twice his actual age. He was alert enough not to be gauging Chase for prospects of further largess.

“Of course, that’s not truly the reason.”

“Was it a woman?” asked Chase. The scrumpi was making him maudlin.

“Which woman would it have been? Here, drink up, mate. Give us tube fare to Ken High Street, and I’ll show you how it happened.”

At this point Ryan Chase should have put down his unfinished pint, excused himself, and made his way back to his hotel. Instead he drank up, stumbled along to the Holborn tube station, and found himself being bounced about the train beside a decidedly deranged Nemo Skagg. Caught up in the adventure of the moment, Chase told himself that he was on a sort of quest—a quest for truth, for the truth that lies behind the masks of faces.

The carriage shook and swayed as it plummeted through subterranean darkness, yanking to a halt at each jostling platform. Chase dropped onto a seat as the passengers rushed out and swarmed in. Lurid posters faced him from the platform walls. Bodies mashed close about him, crushing closer than the sooty tunnel walls briefly glimpsed in flashes of passing trains and bright bursts of sparks. Faces, looking nowhere, talking in tight bundles, crowded in. Sensory overload.

Nemo’s face leered down. He was clutching a railing. “You all right, mate?”

“Gotta take a piss.”

“Could go for a slash myself. This stop will do.”

So they got off at Notting Hill Gate instead of changing for High Street Kensington; and this was good, because they could walk down Kensington Church Street, which was for a miracle all downhill, toward Kensington High Street. The walk and the fresh air revived Chase from his claustrophobic experience. Bladder relieved, he found himself pausing before the windows of the numerous antique shops that they passed. Hideous Victorian atrocities and baroque horrors from the continent lurked imprisoned behind shop windows. A few paintings beckoned from the farther darkness. Chase was tempted to enter.

But each time Nemo caught at his arm. “You don’t want to look at any of that shit, mate. It’s all just a lot of dead shit. Let’s sink us a pint first.”

By now Chase had resigned himself to having bankrolled a pub crawl. They stopped at The Catherine Wheel, and Chase fetched pints of lager while Nemo Skagg commandeered a bench around the corner on Holland Street. From this relative eddy, they watched the crowd stroll past on Kensington Church Street. Chase smelled the curry and chili from within the pub, wondering how to break this off. He really should eat something.

“I don’t believe you told me your name.” Nemo Skagg was growing measurably more alert, and that seemed to make his condition all the more tragic.

“I’m Ryan Chase.” Chase, who was growing increasingly pissed, no longer regarded the fallen rock star as an object of pity: he now revered him as a crippled hero of the wars in the fast lane.

“Pleased to meet you, Ryan.” Nemo Skagg extended a taloned hand. “Where in the States are you from?”

“Well, I live in Connecticut. I have a studio there.”

“I’d reckoned you for an artist. And clearly not a starving garret sort. What do you do?”

“Portraits, mostly. Gallery work. I get by.” Chase could not fail to notice the other’s empty pint. Sighing, he arose to attend to the matter.

When he returned, Chase said, with some effort at firmness, “Now then. Here we are in Kensington. What is all this leading to?”

“You really are a fan, then?”

The lager inclined Chase toward an effusive and reckless mood. “Needle was the cutting edge of punk rock. Your first album, Excessive Bodily Fluids, set the standard for a generation. Your second album, The Coppery Taste of Blood, remains one of the ten best rock albums ever recorded. When I die, these go into the vault with me.”

“You serious?”

“Well, we do have a family vault. I’ve always fancied stocking it with a few favorite items. Like the ancient Egyptians. I mean, being dead has to get boring.”

“Then do you believe in an afterlife?”

“Doesn’t really matter whether I do or I don’t, does it? Still, it can’t hurt to allow for eventualities.”

“Yeah. Well, it’s all bollocks anyway.” Nemo Skagg’s eyes had cleared, and Chase found their gaze penetrating and disturbing. He was glad when Nemo stared past him to watch the passersby.

Chase belched and glanced at his watch. “Yes. Well. Here we are in Kensington.” He had begun the afternoon’s adventure hoping that Nemo Skagg intended to point out to him his former house near here, perhaps entertain him with anecdotes of past extravagances committed on the grounds, maybe even introduce him to some of his whilom friends and colleagues. Nothing more than a bad hangover now seemed the probable outcome.

“Right.” Nemo stood up, rather steadier now than Chase. “Let’s make our move. I said I’d show you.”

Chase finished his lager and followed Nemo down Kensington Church Street, past the church on the corner, and into Ken High Street, where, with some difficulty, they crossed over. The pavement was extremely crowded now as they lurched along. Tattooed girls in black leather miniskirts flashed suspender belts and stiletto heels. Plaid-clad tourists swayed under burdens of cameras and cellulite. Lads with pierced faces and fenestrated jeans modeled motorcycle jackets laden with chrome. Bored shopworkers trudged unseeingly through it all.

Nemo Skagg turned into the main doorway of Kensington Market. He turned to Chase. “Here’s your f*cking afterlife.”

Chase was rather more interested in finding the loo, but he followed his Virgil. Ken Market was some three floors of cramped shops and tiny stalls—records and jewelry, T-shirts and tattoos, punk fashions from skinhead kicker boots to latex minidresses. You could get your nipples pierced, try on a new pair of handcuffs, or buy a heavy-metal biker jacket that would deflect a tank shell. Chase, who remembered Swinging London of the Beatles era, fondly thought of Ken Market as Carnaby Street Goes to Hell. “Tell me again,” he called after Nemo Skagg. “Why are we here?”

“Because you wanted to know.” Nemo pushed forward through the claustrophobic passageways, half dragging Chase and pointing at the merchandise on display. “Observe, my dear Watson.”

Ken Market was a labyrinth of well over a hundred vendors, tucked away into tiny cells like funnel spiders waiting in webs. A henna-haired girl in black PVC stared at them incuriously from behind a counter of studded leather accessories. A Pakistani shuffled stacks of T-shirts, mounted on cardboard and sealed in cellophane. An emaciated speedfreak in leather harness guarded her stock of records—empty albums on display, their vinyl souls hidden away. An aging Teddy boy arranged his display of postcards—some of which would never clear the postal inspectors. Two skinheads glared out of the twilight of a tattoo parlor: OF COURSE IT HURTS read the signboard above the opening. Bikers in leather studied massive belts and buckles memorializing Vincent, BSA, Triumph, Norton, Ariel, AJS—no Jap rice mills served here.

“What do you see?” Nemo whispered conspiratorially.

“Lots of weird people buying and selling weird things?” Chase had always wanted to own a Vincent.

“They’re all dead things. Even the motorcycles.”

“I see.”

“No, you don’t see. Follow and learn.”

Nemo Skagg paused before a display of posters. He pointed. “James Dean. Jim Morrison. Jimi Hendrix. All dead.”

He turned to a rack of postcards. “Elvis Presley. Judy Garland. John Lennon. Marilyn Monroe. All dead.”

And to a wall of T-shirts. “Sid Vicious. Keith Moon. Janis Joplin. Brian Jones. All dead.”

Nemo Skagg whirled to point at a teenager wearing a Roy Orbison T-shirt. Her friend had James Dean badges all across her jacket. They were looking at a poster of Nick Drake. Nemo shouted at them, “They’re all dead! Your heroes are ghosts!”

It took some doing to attract attention in Ken Market, but Nemo Skagg was managing to do so. Chase took his arm. Come on, mate. We’ve seen enough, and I fancy a pint.”

But Nemo broke away as Chase steered him past a stall selling vintage rock recordings. Album jackets of Sid and Elvis and Jim and Jimi hung in state from the back of the stall. The bored girl in a black latex bra looked at Nemo distastefully from behind her counter. Either her face had been badly beaten the night before, or she had been reckless with her eyeshadow.

“Anything by Needle?” Nemo asked.

“Nah. You might try Dez and Sheila upstairs. I think they had a copy of Vampire Serial Killer some weeks back. Probably still have it.”

“Why don’t you stock Needle?”

“‘Who wants Needle? They’re naff.”

“I mean, the early albums. With Nemo Skagg.”

“Who’s he?”

“Someone who isn’t dead yet.”

“That’s his problem then, isn’t it.”

“Do you know who I am?”

“Yes. You’re a piss artist. Now bugger off.”

Chase caught Nemo Skagg’s arm and tugged hard. “Come on, mate. There’s nothing here.”

And they slunk out, past life-size posters of James Dean, mesmerizing walls of John Lennon T-shirts, kaleidoscopic racks of Marilyn Monroe postcards. Elvis lip-synched to them from the backs of leather jackets. Betty Page stared wide-eyed and ball-gagged from Xotique’s window of fetish chic. Jim Morrison was being born again in tattoo across the ample breast of a spike-haired blonde. A punker couple with matching Sid and Nancy T-shirts displayed matching forearms of needle tracks. Someone was loudly playing Buddy Holly from the stall that offered painless ear piercing. A blazing skull grinned at them from the back of the biker who lounged at the exit, peddling his skinny ass in stained leather jeans.

Outside it was still a pleasant September late afternoon, and even the exhaust-clogged air of Ken High Street felt fresh and clear to Chase’s lungs. Nemo Skagg was muttering under his breath, and the shakes seemed to have returned. Chase steered him across traffic and back toward the relative quiet of Ken Church Street.

“Off-license. Just ahead.” Nemo was acting now on reflex. He drew Chase into the off-license shop and silently dug out two four-packs of Tennent’s Super. Chase added some sandwiches of unknown composition to the counter, paid for the lot, and they left.

“Just here,” said Nemo, turning into an iron gate at the back of the church at the corner of Ken Church and Ken High Street. There was an enclosed churchyard within—a quiet garden with late roses, a leafy bower of some vine, walkways and benches. A few sarcophagi of eroded stone made grey shapes above the trimmed grass. Occasional tombstones leaned as barely decipherable monuments here and there; others were incorporated into the brick of the church walls. Soot-colored robins explored wormy crab apples, and hopeful sparrows and pigeons converged upon the two men as they sat down. The traffic of Kensington seemed hushed and distant, although only a glance away. Chase was familiar with this area of Kensington, but he had never known that this churchyard was here. He remembered that Nemo Skagg had once owned a house somewhere in the borough. Possibly he had sat here often, seeking silence.

Nemo listlessly popped a can of Tennent’s, sucked on it, ignored the proffered sandwich. Chase munched on cress and cucumber, anxious to get any sort of food into his stomach. Savoring the respite, he sipped on his can of lager and waited.

Nemo Skagg was on his second can before he spoke. “So then, mate. Now you know.”

Chase had already decided to find a cab once the evening rush hour let up. He was certain he could not manage the tube after the afternoon’s booze-up. “I’m sorry?” he said.

“You’ve got to be dead. All their heroes are ghosts. They only worship the dead. The music, the posters, the T-shirts. All of it. They only want to love dead things. So easy to be loyal to dead things. The dead never change. Never grow old. Never fade away. Better to drop dead than to fade away.”

“Hey, come on.” Chase thought he had it sussed. “Sure the place has its obligatory showcase of dead superstars. That’s nostalgia, mate. Consider that there were ten or twenty times as many new faces, new groups, new stars.”

“Oi. You come back in a year’s time, and I promise you that ninety per cent of your new faces will be missing and well forgotten, replaced by another bloody lot of bloody new sods. But you’ll still find your bloody James Dean posters and your bloody Elvis jackets and your bloody Doors CDs and your bloody John Lennon T-shirts, bullet holes three quid extra.

“Listen, mate. They only want the dead. The dead never change. They’re always there, at your service, never a skip. You want to wank off on James Dean? There he is, pretty as the day he snuffed it. Want head from Marilyn Monroe? Just pump up your inflatable doll.

“But. And this is it, Ryan. Had James Dean learned to drive his Porsche, he’d by now be a corpulent old geezer with a hairpiece and three chins like Paul Newman or Marlon Brando. Marilyn Monroe would be a stupid old cow slapping your Beverly Hills cops around—when she wasn’t doing telly adverts for adult nappies and denture fixatives. Jim Morrison would be flogging a chain of vegetarian restaurants. Jimi Hendrix would be doing a golden oldies tour with Otis Redding. Elvis would be playing to fat old cunts in Las Vegas casinos. Buddy Holly would be selling used cars in Chattanooga. How many pictures of fat and fading fifty-year-old farts did you see in there, Ryan? Want to buy the latest Paul McCartney album?”

Chase decided that he would leave Nemo Skagg with the rest of the Tennant’s, which should keep him well through the night. “So, then. What you’re saying is that it’s best to die young, before your fans find someone new. So long, fame; I’ve had you. Not much future in it for you, is there, being a dead star?”

“Sometimes there’s no future in being a live one, after you’ve lost it.”

Chase, who had begun to grow impatient with Nemo Skagg, again changed his assessment of the man. There was more in this wreckage than a drunken has-been bitterly railing against the enduring fame of better musicians. Chase decided to pop another Tennent’s and listen.

“You said you’re an artist, right? Paint portraits?”

“Well, I rather like to think of them as something more than that...”

“And you reckon you’re quite good at it?”

“Some critics think so.”

“Right, then. What happens when the day comes and they say you aren’t all that good, that your best work is behind you, that whatever it was you had once, you’ve lost it now? What happens when you come to realize they’ve got it right? When you know you’ve lost the spark forever, and all that’s left is to go through the motions? Reckon you’ll be well pleased with yourself, painting portraits of pompous old geezers to hang in their executive board rooms?”

“I hardly think it will come to that.” Chase was somewhat testy.

“No more than I did. No one ever does. You reckon that once you get to the top, you’ll stay on top. Maybe that happens for a few, but not for most of us. Sometimes the fans start to notice first; sometimes you do. You tell yourself that the fans are fickle, but after a while you know inside that it’s you what’s past it. Then you start to crumble. Then you start to envy the ones what went out on top: they’re your moths in amber, held in time and in memory forever unchanging.”

The churchyard was filling with shadows, and Chase expected the sexton would soon be locking the gates. Dead leaves of late summer were softly rustling down upon the headstones. The scent of roses managed to pervade the still air.

“Look.” Chase was not the sort who liked touching, but he gave a quick pat to the other man’s shoulder. “We all go through low periods; we all have our slumps. That’s why they invented comebacks. You can still get it back together.”

“Nothing to put back together, mate. Don’t you get it? At one time I had it. Now I don’t.”

“But you can get help...”

“That’s the worst part, mate. It would be so good just to blame it all on the drugs and the booze. Tell yourself you can get back on your feet; few months in some trendy clinic, then you’re back on tour promoting that smash new album. Only that’s not the way it is. The drugs and the booze comes after you somehow know you’ve lost it. To kill the pain.”

Nemo Skagg sucked his Tennent’s dry and tossed the can at the nearest dustbin. He missed, and the can rattled hollowly along the walkway.

“Each one of us has only so much—so much of his best—that he can give. Some of us have more than the rest of us. Doesn’t matter. Once the best of you is gone, there’s no more you can give. You’re like a punch-drunk boxer hoping for the bell before you land hard on your arse. It’s over for you. No matter how much you want it. No matter how hard you try.

“There’s only so much inside you that’s positively the best. When that’s gone, you might as well be dead. And knowing that you’ve lost it—that’s the cruelest death of all.”

Ryan Chase sighed uncomfortably and noticed that they had somehow consumed all the cans of lager, that he was drunker than he liked to be, and that it was growing dark. Compounding his mistakes, he asked, “Is there someplace I can drop you off? I’m going for a cab. Must get back.”

Nemo Skagg shook his head, groping around for another can. “It’s all right, mate. My digs aren’t far from here. Fancy stopping in for a drink? Afraid I must again impose upon you for that.”

In for a penny, in for a pound. All judgment fled, Chase decided he really would like to see where Nemo Skagg lived. He bought a bottle of Bell’s, at Nemo’s suggestion, and they struggled off into the gathering night.

Chase blindly followed Nemo Skagg through the various and numerous unexpected turnings of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Even if sober and by daylight, he’d not have had a clue as to w here he was being led. It was Chase’s vague notion that he was soon to be one of the chosen few to visit with a fallen angel in his particular corner of Hell. In this much he was correct.

Chase had been expecting something a little more grandiose. He wasn’t sure just what. Perhaps a decaying mansion. Nemo Skagg, however, was far past that romantic luxury. Instead, Nemo pushed aside a broken hoarding and slid past, waving for Chase to follow. Chase fumbled after him, weeds slapping his face. The way pitched downward on a path paved with refuse and broken masonry. Somewhere ahead Nemo scratched a match and lit a candle in the near-darkness.

It was the basement level of a construction site, or a demolition site to be accurate. A block of buildings had been torn down, much of their remains carted away, and nothing had yet risen in their place save for weeds. Weathered posters on the hoarding above spared passersby a vision of the pit. The envisioned office building had never materialized. Scruffy rats and feral cats prowled through the weeds and debris, avoiding the few squatters who lurked about.

Nemo Skagg had managed a sort of lean-to of scrap boards and slabs of hoarding—the lot stuck together against one foundation wall, where a doorway in the brick gave entrance to a vaulted cellar beneath the street above. Once it had served as some sort of storage area, Chase supposed, although whether for coal or fine wines was a secret known only to the encrusted bricks. Past the lean-to, Nemo’s candle revealed an uncertain interior of scraps of broken furniture, an infested mattress with rags of bedding, and a dead fire of charcoal and ashes with a litter of empty cans and dirty crockery. The rest of the grotto was crowded with a stack of decaying cardboard cartons and florist’s pots. Nemo Skagg had no fear of theft, for there plainly was nothing here to steal.

“Here. Find a seat.” Nemo lit a second candle and fumbled about for a pair of pilfered pub glasses. He poured from the bottle of Bell’s and handed one clouded glass to Chase. Chase sat down on a wooden crate, past caring about cleanliness. The whisky did not mask the odor of methylated spirits that clung to the glass with the dirt.

“To your very good health, Ryan,” Nemo Skagg toasted. “And to our friendship.”

Chase was trying to remember whether he’d mentioned the name of his hotel to Nemo. He decided he hadn’t, and that the day’s adventure would soon be behind him. He drank. His host refilled their glasses.

“ So, this is it,” Chase said, somewhat recklessly. “The end of fame and fortune. Good-bye house in Kensington. Hello squat in future carpark.”

“It was Chelsea,” Nemo replied, not taking offense. “The house was in Chelsea.”

“Now he gets his kicks in Chelsea, not in Kensington anymore,” sang Chase, past caring that he was past caring.

“Still,” Nemo went on, content with the Bell’s. “I did manage to carry away with me everything that really mattered.”

He scrambled back behind the stack of cardboard cartons, nearly spilling them over. After a bit of rummaging, he climbed out with the wreckage of an electric guitar. He presented it to Chase with a flourish, and refilled their glasses.

It was a custom-built guitar, of the sort that Nemo Skagg habitually smashed to bits onstage before hordes of screaming fans. Chase knew positively nothing about custom-built guitars, but it was plain that this one was a probable casualty of one such violent episode. The bowed neck still held most of the strings, and only a few knobs and bits dangled on wires from the abused body. Chase handed it back carefully. “Very nice.”

Nemo Skagg scraped the strings with his broken fingernails. As Chase’s eyes grew accustomed to the candlelight, he could see a few monoliths of gutted speakers and burned-out amplifiers shoved in with the pots and boxes. Nothing worth stealing. Nothing worth saving. Ghosts. Broken, dead ghosts. Like Nemo Skagg.

“I think I have a can of beans somewhere.” Nemo applied a candle to some greasy chips papers and scraps of wood. The yellow flame flared in the dark cave, its smoke carried outward past the lean-to. “That’s all right,” said Chase. “I really must be going.”

“Oi. We haven’t finished the bottle.” Nemo poured. “Drink up. Of course, I used to throw better parties than this for my fans.”

“Cheers,” said Chase, drinking. He knew he would be very ill tomorrow.

“So, Ryan,” said Nemo, stretching out on a legless and spring-stabbed comfy chair. “You find yourself wanting to ask where all the money went.”

“I believe you’ve already told me.”

“What I told you was what people want to hear, although it’s partly true. Quite amazing how much money you can stuff up your nose and shove up your arm, and how fast that draws that certain group of sharks who circle about you and take bites till there’s nothing left to feed on. But the simple and unsuspected truth of the matter is that I spent the last of my fortune on my fans.”

Chase was wondering whether he might have to crash here for the night if he didn’t move now. He finished Nemo’s sad story for him: “And then your fans all proved fickle.”

“No, mate. Not these fans. Just look at them.”

Nemo Skagg shuffled back into his cave, picked out a floral vase, brought it out into the light, cradling it lovingly in his hands for Chase to see. Chase saw that it was actually a funeral urn.

“This is Saliva Gash. She said she was eighteen when she hung out backstage. After she OD’d one night after a gig, her family in Pimlico wouldn’t own her. Not even her ashes. I paid for the cremation. I kept her remains. She was too dear a creature to be scattered.”

Ryan Chase was touched. He struggled for words to say, until Nemo reached back for another urn.

“And this one is Slice. I never knew his real name. He was always in the front row, screaming us on, until he sliced his wrists after one show. No one claimed the remains. I paid for it.

“And this one is Dave from Belfast. Pissed out of his skull, and he stuck his arm out to flag down a tube train. Jacket caught, and I doubt they picked up all of him to go into the oven. His urn feels light.”

“That’s all right,” said Chase, as Nemo offered him the urn to examine. “I’m no judge.”

“You ever notice how London is crammed with bloody cemeteries, but no one gets buried there unless they’ve snuffed it before the f*cking Boer War? No room for any common souls in London. They burn the lot of us now, and then you get a f*cking box of ashes to carry home. That’s if you got any grieving sod who cares a f*ck to hold on to them past the first dustbin.”

Nemo dragged out one of the cardboard boxes. The rotted carton split open, disgorging a plastic bag of chalky ashes. The bag burst on the bricks, scattering ashes over Nemo’s shoes and trouser cuffs. “Shit. I can’t read this one. Can you?”

He handed the mildewed cardboard to Chase, then poured out more Bell’s. Chase dully accepted both. His brain hurt.

“Bought proper funeral urns for them all at first,” Nemo explained. “Then, as the money went, I had to economize. Still, I was loyal to my fans. I kept them with me after I lost the house. After I’d lost everything else.”

The fire licked at the moldy cardboard in Chase’s hand, cutting through his numbness. He dropped the box onto the fire. The fire flared. By its light Chase could make out hundreds of similar boxes and urns stacked high within the vault.

“It’s a whole generation no one wanted,” Nemo went on, drinking now straight from the bottle. “Only I spoke for them. I spoke to them. They wanted me. I wanted them. The fans today want to worship dead stars. Sod ’em all. I’m still alive, and I have my audience of dead fans to love me.”

Chase drank his whisky despite his earlier resolve. Nemo Skagg sat enthroned in squalor, surrounded by chalky ashes and the flickering light of a trash fire—a Wagnerian hero gone wrong.

“They came to London from all over; they’re not just East End. They told the world to sod off, and the world repaid them in kind. Dead, they were no more wanted than when they lived. Drugs, suicides, traffic accidents, maybe a broken bottle in an alley or a rape and a knife in some squat. I started out with just the fans I recognized, then with the poor sods my mates told me about. After a while I had people watching the hospital morgues for them. The kids no one gave a shit for. Sure, often they had families, and let me tell you, they was always pleased to have me pay for the final rites for the dearly departed, and good riddance. They were all better off dead, even the ones who didn’t think so at first, and I had to help.

“Well, after a time the money ran out. I don’t regret spending it on them. F*ck the fame. At least I still have my fans.”

Nemo Skagg took a deep swig from the bottle, found it empty, pitched it, then picked up his ruined guitar. He scraped talons across the loose strings.

“And you, Ryan, old son. You said that you’re still a loyal fan.”

“Yes, Nemo. Yes, I did indeed say that.” Chase set down his empty glass and bunched the muscles of his legs.

“Well, it’s been great talking to you here backstage. We’ll hang out some more later on. Hope you enjoy the gig.”

“I’ll just go take a piss, while you warm up.” Chase arose carefully, backing toward the doorway of the lean-to.

“Don’t be long.” Nemo was plugging wires into the broken speakers, adjusting dials on the charred amps. He peered into the vaulted darkness. “Looks like I got a crucial audience out there tonight.”

It was black as the pit, as Chase blundered out of the lean-to. Nettles and thistles ripped at him. Twice he fell over unseen mounds of debris, but he dragged himself painfully to his feet each time. Panic steadied his legs, and he could see the halo of streetlights beyond the hoarding. Gasping, grunting, cursing—he bulled headlong through the darkened tangle of the demolition site. Fear gave him strength, and sadistic fortune at last smiled upon him. He found the rubble-strewn incline, clawed his way up to pavement level, and shouldered past the flimsy hoarding.

As he fell sobbing onto the street, he could hear the roar of the audience below, feel the pounding energy of Nemo Skagg’s guitar. Clawing to his feet, he was pushed forward by the screaming madness of Needle’s unrecorded hits.

Nemo Skagg had lost nothing.