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That was the night Liam Gallagher punched Vincent and Kate Nash helped me find my prosthetic eye in the men's toilet at The Electric Ballroom in Camden.
Noel's the nicer one, right? Kate said he's a sweetheart so yeah. I'm certain it was Liam.
I should have eaten before Vincent and I appeared on Graham Norton. The Indian restaurant at BBC Television Center had Kerala chicken on special but I was superstitiously certain I'd dribble something curried over my wool trousers, or the great looping bow of my black silk blouse. I handed my menu back to the waiter and ordered another double gin and tonic.
At the studio I downed two glasses of wine in the green room and had a few more during taping. That girl from "Stranger Things" sat between Vincent and David Mitchell plugging her new movie. Once she started knocking them back I felt oddly compelled to keep up.
When did Eleven turn eighteen?
Fuck it. After two weeks in the hospital and a dozen days hiding out at Maxim's flat I deserved a reason to shine up and show off.
The house lights were up and the audience long gone but I was vibrating, volatile. Ravenous and full of stored energy.
I wanted more. And I wanted very much to form the needy nucleus of an excuse for Vincent to ditch the parasitic bitch he hired as his talent agent and come run wild with me for one night on the streets of London.
I closed the green room door and texted to request Vincent's exclusive participation in the pursuit of base behavior.
He declined. I did not hesitate to play the eye card.
I popped my new prosthetic loose and sent Vincent a ghastly selfie of me pouting, tracing an imaginary teardrop with a fresh French-tip fingernail under the raw red pocket in my head. Without the prosthetic in place the black mascara on my slack eyelids resembled the zipper teeth of a smoky blue tote with a crushed rosebud stuffed inside.
In reply Vincent sent an enlarged laughing-crying emoji with a black X slashed over one crinkled eye.
where & when ?
I took an Uber from White City to Granary Square and waited for Vincent in the downstairs bar at Dishoom.
Twelve hours later the tabloid press would confirm that Vincent and I finished dinner, generously tipped our waitstaff and then went after it like a couple of party Cossacks. Drew sabers, spurred our mounts bloody and charged without fear into the breach.
I was doubling up on my painkillers by then and I believe that set the stage for shit to get well out of hand.
The blast left me unconscious. Post-op I awoke beneath an enormous nurse with a paper poppy on her nametag and an upside-down timepiece tacked over one watermelon tit. She corralled my hands beneath the bedcovers to keep me from touching my face, shushed and soothed me as I struggled. Stroked my hair when I submitted and stood to fiddle with my drip.
Her image split and doubled, then spliced into a single fuzzy form as she leaned in close and assured me Vincent was hurt but not hospitalized.
Brady never mentioned casualties or fatalities when he visited me in the ICU. I didn't learn about the second bomb until my condition stabilized and they moved me to a room with a television.
I wore out the remote control, fought through crushing headaches and heavy sedation to focus my only eye on an endless parade of long-winded experts dissecting the short life of Blake Rex Lawrence-Grimes, the Earlham Park Bomber.
Blake fit the typical template. He was a friendless 4chan incel shut-in who collected zombie knives and Airsoft guns, posted praise for ISIS atrocities online and enshrined American school shooters on his Facebook page. In their rush to devour and divine meaning from the misspelled manifesto he left behind on Google Docs, the media simultaneously condemned Blake's actions and rewarded him with an eternal legacy of infamy.
Each in-depth interview with baffled neighbors and tearful teachers added amperage to his celebrity identity. Every lingering close-up of a class photo or stone-faced selfie helped elevate that twenty-year-old bedwetter into a brand-name bogeyman.
In an official statement ISIS reaffirmed their fatwah against Dayglo Dave but denied Blake's claims of affiliation. Blake never formally converted to the group's Manson Family interpretation of Islam, and while ISIS appreciated his freelance efforts, they made it clear he wasn't the kind of cuckoo they wanted popping out of their ideological clock.
In life, Blake's rejection was limited to the people in his community. It was localized, homegrown and artisanal, like a farm-to-table rejection. In death the scope of that scorn scaled up to something commercial-industrial, global-viral.
He was never going to be anyone's first choice for the things that matter, but nobody could say Blake wasn't a self-starter.
That nutty kid wanted the world's attention and he got it. Even though he filled my legs and abdomen with sheet-metal screws and turned my eye into a sightless meatball I had to give him an A for effort. Further investigation revealed Blake jumped repeatedly from a second-story window at his mother's house until he fractured his own fucking leg. The NHS pulled his crooked parts plumb and equipped him with a plaster cast and the tubular aluminum crutches he would load with a homemade explosive compound and junk-drawer shrapnel.
Blake bought a disabled festival ticket that afforded access to the cordoned area in front of the stage, a vantage near enough for an angry indoor kid who couldn't kick or catch a ball to chuck two crutches like javelins and kill a comedian for the Caliphate.
His manifesto named Dayglo Dave as Blake's primary target but the investigators suspected his homemade ignition system was faulty. Dave's act ended before Blake could prime the charges, and Citizen Samurai took the stage just in time to become new targets of opportunity.
The security guard who grabbed one of Blake's crutches most probably saved our lives. She was killed outright and three of her colleagues, two fans in wheelchairs and a care provider died of their wounds on the scene or in transport. Twenty-four were injured, plus me and Vincent. If your math included Blake Rex the death toll was eight but most memorials, official and informal, deducted the perpetrator and honored his victims with floral arrangements, wooden crosses, candles and stuffed animals in groups of seven.
Fearing Blake's leg cast was another lethal device in disguise, the bomb squad chased away the medics working to revive him. They deployed a robot to fire shotgun blasts at his limb and prudently reduced it to a gory, inert pulp. It's amazing what you can do for the greater good with some buckshot and a bunch of ones and zeroes.
The days of my convalescence dissolved into an unsettling montage of bland meals, painful debridement treatments and a ceaseless news cycle. Never completely rested nor fully alert I existed within shuffled slices of time stripped of sequence, cut off from cues like morning light and sunset dusk, afternoon hunger or bedtime fatigue. Sleeping for five hours or fifteen minutes scrubbed my memory coma-clean. I repeatedly phoned Melanie upon waking to turn down media offers I'd already rejected, unaware we had spoken earlier.
I dreamed in black and white. Nightmares came wrapped in shades of red and I woke up screaming with nurses gripping my wrists to stop me from tearing at the dressing on my eye.
Vincent sent me a YouTube clip of Bill Maher mocking Blake's failure to mate or even date. Maher reckoned the boy was fortunate to die a baptized Christian.
Can you imagine anything more awkward than being a recently deceased terrestrial virgin, tasked with satisfying seventy-two virgin brides in the afterlife? It's so ludicrously tragic, like if O. Henry wrote "The Gift of The Magi" as a gang-bang gone wrong. Picture this, you've just sacrificed yourself to kill some infidels, okay? You made the cut and it's your first night using your Rewards Card in martyr's paradise but you squandered the search-and-destroy exploratory years of your puberty sitting in front of a computer screen, turning tube socks into freestanding sculpture so you don't know what the fuck to do with a warm and willing body. The girls certainly aren't gonna make the first move because they're virgins, remember? Together you're a seventy-three-piece flat-pack orgy kit from IKEA but nobody's got a fucking hex wrench.
I gasped. Took a deep breath that left my medicated head light and throbbing, filled my chest with a feathery sensation like hot cotton candy and when I felt something bigger coming I let it all go.
It was the first time I laughed since the bombing. I snorted and hacked up a jelly-thick blood clot from my sinuses. Brady sprang to the doorway to flag down a nurse as I coughed into a handful of tissue. I blotted pinkish tears leaking from my wound, wiped the liver-colored wad off my lips and chin and waved for Brady to stand down.
Brady, I said. I'm fine, come on back. We're not done discussing this.
My perpetual headache flared beyond its baseline level of steady torture. I was exhausted, crying blood like a popeyed Catholic miracle, scheming to devise another Jedi mind-trick that might rewire Brady's will and convince him not to leave Five Ways.
Brady stood in the doorway. Sighed and looked up at the ceiling.
I'm not Bowie, he said. I can be replaced. You saw how quickly we lined up new bass players and they weren't lured by money. There's a waiting list to fill Kev's spot, did you know that? Kim Deal. Robert Trujillo, fucking Flea? The bombing turned this tour into some kind of symbol, it's like a popular movement for creative free speech and suddenly we're hot again. Bigger than before, even at our peak. Mike's booked us on Good Morning Britain, Saturday Night Live, Graham Norton, Jools Holland. We'll be playing dates through the new year and the boys are badgering me to pen a Christmas number one. I was only tired before but now I'm truly sick of it Margaret. Sick to fucking death so why can't you understand?
He sat beside me. Reached over the bedrail and carefully gathered my hand.
My wife was very nearly murdered in an act of terrorism, Brady said. If I dropped out to care for you I'm sure the fans would forgive me.
He smoothed the hair on my blind side. I startled under his touch.
Fifteen days had passed since our cursed tour departed France, oozed under the Channel like sewage and bubbled up in Norwich without a bass player. Before our driver could cut the engine Brady dashed from the coach to gather the band and welcome John Hassall, Kev's temporary replacement.
John was a quiet veteran of brutal battles waged onstage between Carl Barât and Pete Doherty. His resumé of traumatic exposure to that genius Gemini-Pisces timebomb at the heart of The Libertines meant John would find the task of filling in for Kev about as challenging as drawing a warm bath.
I got my access pass from Brady's assistant and left Earlham Park in an Uber to anonymously explore Norwich by night. Picked up The Sun, a pack of cigarettes, The Mirror and The Daily Mail. Read the latest coverage of Kev's death and my wedding over a disgusting basket of oily fish and chips and texted a single question mark to Dayglo Dave.
I walked for blocks to shake the road from my bones and when I looked up I was blissfully lost in a curved canyon of identical two-story homes. The repeating pattern of brick chimneys and duplex roofs cut a houndstooth hem from the deep blue fabric of night.
I checked my phone, eager to find some sign that Dave was open for business. He forewarned me operations in Great Britain wouldn't go live until he retrieved his stash and established a secure line of communication with a new burner phone.
I sent a smiley face to Dave and watched the screen. Waited just long enough to go from feeling jonesy and impatient to sad and desperate. Absolutely tumbleweed lonely.
My breaths came short and shallow as a rising dread crowded my lungs and my stomach bucked. I staggered into a low brick wall, pitched forward and vomited chunks of breaded cod and nibbled chips all over some innocent oleander and chrysanthemums. Squinting through watery eyes I crossed the street, sat on the curb and calmed my troubled gut with a smoke until my Uber arrived.
I returned to the coach with a cold six-pack and a take-out taco honeymoon dinner. Brady was bent over at the waist, hyperventilating on the couch in the lounge. I lifted his chest off his knees and rubbed circles between his shoulders until his breathing slowed and his words made sense. He told me he wanted to quit the band.
I opened two beers and sat back with mine while Brady's got warm and he explained in gloomy detail how much his ass was hurting from laying golden eggs. Then I went to work on his beer as he sobbed through a list of all the ways his lucrative music career had soured into a curse that left him creatively dissatisfied, uncomfortably comfortable.
Poor fucking baby.
I fetched a tissue for his tears. Found an empty pizza box and flipped it over in my lap. Picked up a scarlet Sharpie and walked my skinhead newlywed husband through a greasy worksheet of assets, liabilities and equity. I found some cost-of-living forecasts online, converted the American dollar to pounds sterling and projected eighteen years of child support that would commence once the cells Brady left inside his partner were done dividing, started breathing and needing things like new shoes and tuition.
Brady sniffled quietly over the bottom line of my financial intervention.
That's without adjusting for inflation, I said.
He flinched when I pressed my palm against his cheek with the setting of my wedding ring aimed inward. I wanted to remind him who the fuck I was. Reinforce the fact that we were in this together.
I know you're hurting without Kev, I said. But this is business. Can you get your shit together and do business with me?
Brady blew his nose and nodded. He folded the tissue to a blunt point and swabbed each nostril in turn, a repulsive habit that made me think of that gross kid in grade school, the one who threw up on every field trip and was always sick with something.
I made Brady wash his hands and took him to bed to positively reinforce his stiff-upper-lip British behavior. It was the first time we were intimate as man and wife and it was awkward. Mechanical and frustrating, like moving furniture around tight corners and up steep stairs with a partner who insists on turning to his left instead of your left. We stopped without speaking and separated in the darkness.
In the morning I feigned sleep as he dressed for a press event. I hurried to the window and watched Brady walk away like a cartoon character shadowed by a raincloud on a sunny day, hands in his pockets, back slack under stooped shoulders.
Manipulating him to finish the tour was the right move. Citizen Samurai recovered some of its online following once Brady put a ring on it and promoted me from homewrecking road-fuck to the real thing. Unsold tickets disappeared overnight thanks to the media storm we kicked up in France, and Melanie was fielding press inquiries around the clock.
I would do anything to delay midnight's arrival. Postpone the inevitable moment when the wheels would wobble off my Cinderella coach to leave me in the street as fortune found me: barefoot, dressed in last year's rags, working nights and straddling a motherfucking pumpkin.
The only part that stung was the sight of Brady looking like someone shot his dog and made him watch. I wasn't conflicted about breaking him in, but I never wanted to see him broken.
Now he sat stiffly at my hospital bedside, biding his time behind a bored smirk as I rambled and stuttered, halting when my clumsy thoughts reached a cliff and the next word wouldn't come.
The bombing somehow hardened his wet-spaghetti spine into a piece of steel pipe and I was the broken one, rendered a miserable wreck with foul body odor, heavy ladyfunk, bad breath and greasy hair.
Pharmaceutically hobbled, my mind was a dull instrument incapable of persuasion. Working a subtle angle against Brady was like trying to pick a lock with a soft stick of butter.
Brady dragged his chair around the foot of the bed to my sighted side. He muted the television, sat with clasped hands and waited until I met his eyes with mine.
A prickly veil of irritation settled over my skin as Brady cleared his throat and issued a stale arrangement of facts he had planned and canned to serve up on that very occasion.
Five Ways, he said, is not a warm and fuzzy brotherhood. It's a corporation and I'll have a piece of the pie no matter who stands on that stage. John's spoken to Pete Doherty about taking my place after Glastonbury. Our streaming sales are breaking some of Taylor Swift's records and I've used the advance from my publishing deal to establish a trust for Suzannah the baby.
He huddled closer in his chair. Sore and swollen in its socket, the remains of my gouged eye turned like a worm in rotten fruit, faithfully tracking the path of my good eye as I watched Brady reach inside his jacket pocket.
I can retire from performing, he said. Get you specialized care without humiliating myself on a reality show baking pies. Eating bugs in the fucking jungle, none of that.
He held up his phone.
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And I've found a home for us. Margaret. Look at it.
I strained to focus as he swiped through pictures of a country manor house. Green fields, dry-stone walls. A pond bristling with ragged robin and reedmace. A remodeled stable with skylights set between hand-hewn rafters.
Son of a bitch. I was looking at Brady's rabbit ranch. An elaborate dimwit dream he described one night while we were talking deep and real after a show in Prague. He imagined a rustic rural property with room for free-range chickens, a vegetable garden and a separate structure suitable for use as a recording studio. Brady was eager to embrace his inner Eno, produce new talent on his own label and leave his boy-band days behind.
How the fuck did this happen? The explosion that left me horribly disfigured and unable to walk to the bathroom without assistance somehow boosted Brady's career with booming back-catalog sales and a publishing deal.
The offers Melanie forwarded to me were not star-caliber queries but sideshow scraps. Invitations to melt down under the supervision of a daytime talk-show host and a live studio audience. Pity pieces for Parade or People Magazine where I'd reveal how yoga and journaling helped me find myself and move forward. Uplifting fluff filled with photos of Brady and I preparing a meal in a sitcom-clean kitchen, grinning like idiots and walking hand-in-hand along the water's edge at sunset.
My most profound revelations would appear in breakout quotations on each page. Smug bits of wisdom like tidy haiku about the alchemy of silver linings. Tragedy plus love over time.
This painful journey
has shown me I am stronger
than I ever knew.
Had I been blinded in both eyes they might have knighted Brady. If I'd been killed? Perhaps they would have made him king.
I'll hire a visiting physio team to help with your balance, he said. Get you back on your feet, get you playing again. The master bedroom has-
I snatched Brady's phone and flung it into the hall. Unmuted the television and glowered as the spinning Sky News weather globe slowed to show the temperature in Windhoek.
Brady calmly stood and left the room to retrieve his phone. I wouldn't see him again until the morning after The Graham Norton Show.
I fell asleep between bleached sheets and dreamed in suffocating color. Saw myself with both eyes intact, standing at the edge of a crowd watching masked dancers perform on a cobblestone street. The troupe whirled past in flapping costumes and whisked me into their orbit but I didn't know the steps. I froze in place and the dancers collided. Surrounded me. Clapped their hands and came closer.
The cracks between the cobbles became crevices that trapped my feet and grew wider. I sank past my knees, arms paralyzed at my sides. The dancers looked down through smoking holes in their masks and they applauded as I slipped beneath the surface of the street.
A shaky image of the Union Jack in blurry black and white snapped into view. The intersecting stripes rose and fell with my breathing. I heard the horns and strings of the Sky News weather fanfare and I knew I was awake.
I reached to touch proof and verify the scene before me. Vincent took my hand and he appeared in full color at my bedside, wearing body armor airbrushed with the ashtray tones of a Banksy Union Jack.
Are you real right now? I asked.
I'm here, Vincent said.
I pushed damp strands of hair from my eye, elevated the back of the bed and sat up.
Why are you wearing a bulletproof vest? I asked.
Vincent thumped his padded chest with his fists.
It's a stab vest, he said. People stab each other in London. It's a gift from Stormzy. You got one too.
Vincent heaved a bulging nylon duffel onto the bed and dragged an identical vest over my legs.
I cradled its soothing weight in my lap. The slim saltires of the St. Patrick's cross weren't dark gray as I'd first thought, but a dull muddy red. The smell of new nylon and fresh paint rose above the heated-yeast and old-socks odor of my healing eye.
In what version of this universe could you possibly be friends with Stormzy? I asked.
Maxim put me up in one of his flats, Vincent said. Last night he and Ce'Hara took me out to a club and we shared a VIP booth with Stormzy. He asked me how you're doing. The vests were delivered today with a case of Champagne. They're his trademark, you know? Like that Spice Girl's dress. He signed them on the inside.
Vincent unbuckled my vest and held it up for me to read.
A phone number and these words were written in silver paint pen:
be well Mags
Stormzy's name wasn't a scribbled autograph for a fan. It was signed like the kind of low-key reminder a roommate sticks to the fridge when it's your turn to buy more milk or do the dishes.
What does yours say? I asked.
'Stay safe bruv' and his phone number.
Vincent returned my vest to the duffel and dumped a pile of clothing and travel-sized toiletries onto the bed. A new toothbrush, deodorant and toothpaste. Fluffy lipstick-print ankle socks and a pack of black boyshorts. Snap-side track pants with brass knuckles embroidered across the ass in gold thread from hip to hip. An oversized sweatshirt featuring a sugar-skull Dia de Muertos T-Rex DJ wearing headphones, tiny forelegs furiously working two turntables.
Vincent draped a wool stocking cap over his forearm like a waiter presenting a fine wine. The patch on its front bore the logo of a red-eyed robot with giant metal tits smoking a joint. My eye boiled in its socket, unable to bear the sensory overload of so many colors and textures.
The stoned robot was so absurd it transcended classification as art and approached the status of something sacred. I pulled the cap down over my ears as Vincent arrayed six canvas sneakers on the bed, three pairs in different sizes styled with neon animal stripes and rhinestones.
British shoe sizes don't make sense, he said. They're metric or something so I brought you the full Goldilocks range.
Everything I'm looking at is hideous, I said. Sensationally offensive. The hat makes me smile but I'm at a loss to understand what's happening in this room right now.
Just find the ones that fit, he said. You can't stay here.
Vincent gave me a copy of The Mirror. I made the fucking cover again.
BRAVE MAGS RECOVERY HELL
Some bold bastard got right up in my disfigured face and snapped an image of my ruptured eye, my blood-soaked blow-out, my lips snarled around a breathing tube. I was still wearing the tattered top I had on when the bomb went off.
A series of wide shots caught me hung like wet laundry between two nurses in a corridor, grimacing in socks and a gown, my flat-ironed curls fighting their way back into a kinky corona as I struggled to walk to the vending machines and back.
Pictures taken through a gap in the door of my darkened hospital room showed Brady spoon-feeding me from a tray, then sprawled asleep in a chair at my bedside.
A surge of fury sharpened my vision and gave me the energy I needed to get dressed. Vincent dropped the bedrail with a clang and I sat with my feet dangling over the edge, brushing my teeth and spitting minty foam over the pillows while he ransacked the room and packed up my things.
I stepped into shoes for the first time in weeks and planted a hand on Vincent's head to steady myself as he knelt to tie the laces.
Get me out of here, I said.
Vincent stood, smoothed his hair and held up a finger.
Hold on, he said.
He jerked a black trash bag from the duffel and bounced it onto the bed. Untied its knotted top and hauled a butchered pig's head by its ears from the rustling plastic.
Vincent plopped the bubblegum bulk of dead flesh on top of the covers and wrote CUNTS in Sharpie between the animal's eyes. I plugged my ears and backed out of the room as he maxed the television volume, crammed the remote into the pig's mouth and aimed its snout toward the door.
I waited in a wheelchair outside the frosted-glass front of an administrative office while Vincent went inside to demand a take-home supply of my medication. I took deep breaths and listened to a polite chorus of concerned professionals explain the fragility of my condition, describe the danger of my early release from inpatient care.
When Vincent spoke again the civilized tone of his voice fell to a low and unfamiliar register. It rumbled like thunder approaching from somewhere dark, threatening to deliver something darker. He spoke for five minutes without interruption and exited the office with his jaw locked, rubbing the back of his neck with one shaking hand. The needle teeth of distress chewing through my diaphragm disappeared as he rolled me toward the elevator in furious strides that sent cool air whistling over my ears.
A sprinting porter caught us in the lobby to hand off a fat paper sack filled with antibacterial eye wash, square packets of gauze and a rattling array of prescription medication. Vincent tipped her with a fifty-pound note and politely refused to take it back.
He shoved me through the automatic doors and into the sunlight. My knees flew to my forehead as every muscle in my body contracted to surround and protect my eye. Vincent helped me stand to get into our Uber but I was suddenly wide awake in the fresh air, electrified by anger and proud to be holding up my own weight. I told him I wanted to walk.
I clung to Vincent's arm and huddled behind his shoulder to shade my quaking eye from strobe flashes and the afternoon sun. Camera shutters snipped and chattered as he tipped the driver and declined the ride.
He led me for blocks, guiding me over the pavement's edges and stopping to bark threats at the jackal pack of photographers on our trail. I held onto his belt, buried my forehead in his back and concentrated on my balance and breathing. A lacy gray storm clouded the borders of my vision and I pulled Vincent to a stop in front of a Vietnamese restaurant. We sat in a booth at the back, away from the windows.
I fished noodles, tripe and tendon from a bowl of hot phở and inventoried my new stockpile of medication. Picked out the prescribed dose of antibiotics, then selected a rock-star assortment of the fun stuff. I stacked them all together in my curved ceramic spoon, a therapeutic carpool of glossy capsules and chalky pastel tablets, the good kids riding with the bad kids to the same school dance. I tipped them into my mouth, sipped cooled broth from the bowl and sent the whole batch down the hatch.
Vincent craned his neck forward from the stiff shell of the stab vest and got lost in The Mirror. I felt dozy, well fed and warmed from case to core as the narcotics found the sharp parts inside me and made them soft, rounding every rough edge smooth as sea glass.
My movements were oiled and easy, muscles rubbery and relaxed and I was suddenly overcome by a simple appreciation for each individual fiber of my fresh clean underwear. I fanned my toes inside my weird new shoes and settled deeper into the cushioned booth, twisting my ass firmly, the way you'd grind a lit cigarette into your skin if you knew you deserved it and you wanted to make it hurt.
Vincent caught me leering as my pharma-euphoria sprouted wings and got off the ground. The sight of him made me laugh out loud.
So what did you say to them? I asked. Those hospital fuckers.
I held up my phone, he said. Like I was recording everything. I told them Brady and his lawyer were watching. That got their attention. I said something like, "You can join the list of those who've failed Margaret, or you can be the first who try to make things right."
He handed me a business card.
She's the boss, Vincent said. The boss-boss, that's her cell number on the back. You can arrange refills and follow-up care directly through her. She's working on a referral for you to see a specialist. I guess it's crucial that you fill your, ocular cavity? With a conformer at least, if you want to preserve the shape of your face. Here.
Vincent pushed a slick tri-fold pamphlet across the table. Large type and clinical diagrams depicted the installation and removal of a lozenge-shaped prosthetic eye, a staring spare part that appeared to snap into place like a piece of Lego.
Very sexy, I said.
The physical pain, the reality of my injury, the prospect of everything I would have to face tomorrow and for the rest of my life could not eclipse the good vibe growing inside me.
I reached for Vincent's hand, pried his fingers open and rubbed the patches of callused skin. The urge to bite him surged inside me.
Well, thanks, I said. Thanks for that. Standing up for me and busting me out of there. Thanks for my new underwear.
He shrugged and drew his hands into his lap.
All I did was name-drop your celebrity husband, he said. And I think this vest scared the shit out of them. Where's Brady today?
He's checking out some property, I said. A house for us in the country. How's your fugitive vegan girlfriend?
Vincent manufactured a shallow smile, tugged on his dirty kite-string Kabbalah bracelet and ducked back into his reading.
Yeah, naw, he said. S'not going to work.
Vincent never mastered the subtle art of changing the subject. He simply dropped uncomfortable topics and pressed on, the way a juggler might lose his grip on a flaming chainsaw and continue with his act. He turned to the end of the tabloid and slowly leafed back to the center spread of my leaked photos.
So who sold you out? he asked. My money's on housekeeping staff. Maybe someone visiting another patient. Colonel Mustard?
He tapped his finger on the picture of me with the nurses in the corridor.
Okay, these two? Every time we came to see you these chubs in scrubs were glued to their phones, he said.
I reached over my empty bowl to take the tabloid from him.
I pointed to an ambush shot of Vincent leaving the hospital with one wing in a sling and a bird-faced blonde on his other arm.
Is this we? I asked.
She's my agent, Vincent said.
We're under contract with Mel, I reminded him.
Citizen Samurai have a talent-management contract with Mel, Vincent said. Peachy's my agent.
Wait. Wait, say it again. So I know you're not fucking with me. Her name's Peachy?
She's managing my brand.
I snorted.
Really. You're a brand now?
I'm getting contacts, Vincent said. Offers. A lot of shit happened while you were in the hospital. Let's get you settled at Maxim's place and I can bring you up to speed.
Yes please, I said. I'd love to hear how you became a brand worthy of agency overseen by a skinny bitch in mom jeans named Peachy.
Vincent sagged.
She's British, he said. Just like Brady. You'll like her.
Dude, I said. Don't fucking do that. Don't tell me who I'm going to like.
Vincent rubbed the back of his neck like he was searching urgently for a hidden switch to shut off something loud. He jacked his jaw from side to side. Settled down and moved the mood into a serious gear.
You're being a king-size dick, he said. Peachy made all this happen.
All this what? I asked.
Breaking you out. Winning our fans back. Baiting the media and getting them to bite.
He pointed at the picture of my bloody face.
This right here? This pissed me off, like you have no idea, he said. I was ready to come to the hospital, make some kind of fuckin' scene but Peachy talked me down. Asked me to consider whether my actions were likely to generate positive or negative publicity. She said, Do you have an actual message, or are you just mad? She offered to manage the situation for me and holy shit man. That girl absolutely handled it.
Handled what? I asked.
Vincent smiled like he was describing a scene from his favorite movie.
It was incredible, he said. She dumps her purse out on the table and she's got like, five or six phones. She plugs in her laptop, tells me to make some tea and before the water's boiling she's tipping off TV stations and tabloids that you and Brady are suing the hospital. We're dunkin' teabags and she's asking Maxim to mobilize the Pentafans on Twitter. By the time she's ready for a second cup there's a few million people swamping the hospital switchboard and cussin' out the NHS on social media.
Okay, I said. That's pretty slick. But the pig's head. That's a big red flag, don't you think? And what the fuck were you smoking when you picked out these clothes?
Vincent became more animated as he explained his contributions.
The pig was my idea, he said. I saw it in a butcher shop on my way to get your toothbrush. The clothes came from a couple of boutiques in Soho. Peachy told them you'd be photographed leaving the hospital and they hooked you up to get some exposure. There's way more back at the flat. It's all couture.
I wanted to slap him.
You don't even know what that means, I said. Nothing I'm wearing says "boutique" to me, this entire outfit screams "bin". I look like Billie Eilish if she got styled for a dogfight by a methed-up rodeo clown.
Vincent plugged his tongue into one cheek, rolled the tabloid like a baton and tapped it on the edge of the table. He wouldn't look me in the eye.
You know, he said. You can be a bitch about this, if you want. But Peachy put a lot of time into helping you today. Pulling strings, getting the public on our side. That's what she does for a living and she's really fucking good at it. She coached me on how to handle those hospital administrators. Got you new clothes for nothing. She even picked out your underwear, she knew you'd want "fresh knickers" after being stuck in the hospital. So. Maybe when you meet her? Maybe you could try to be nice. Show just a little bit of gratitude.
Vincent straightened inside his Stormzy vest. He looked over my head to catch our server's eye and smiled broadly as he pretended to sign his name in the air. I went to the restroom while he boxed up our spring rolls and paid the check.
The toilet was filthy but I was too weak to hover, too stoned to give a shit about germs. I finished peeing, popped apart the sides of my designer track pants and nearly toppled from the toilet while kicking my feet free.
I pulled Peachy's hand-picked boyshorts over my glittering shoes, stomped them to the floor in a kinked figure eight and kicked them under the partition. If Vincent wanted to hump his agent's leg raw for being a public-relations maestro that was fine by me but I wasn't going to spend another second wearing some bitch's pity knickers.
I collapsed onto the toilet seat as the full effect of my recreational dose swelled to a high tide. I wasted that ten-minute sweet spot nodding in a toilet stall, fumbling with marshmallow fingertips to fasten the chromed snaps on my couture britches.
From a thousand miles away I heard Vincent tapping on the restroom door, asking if I was okay. I wiped a web of drool from my lower lip with one numb hand. Stacked my flimsy legs to fill the vast gap between my ass and the floor. Refused to face my reflection in the mirror as I lurched through the door and crashed into Vincent's arms. He snared me tightly against him, guided me out of the restaurant and into an Uber.
"Owen" was playing on the radio. I asked the driver to change the station, dropped my head in Vincent's lap and slept all the way to Maxim's flat.
I woke up dehydrated, slick with sweat, tangled in a twin bed. The British led the world out of darkness and into the industrial age, but their failure to embrace air conditioning was baffling. I chalked that up as an austere aftershock of the island nation's empire culture. Just another trait unique to a people mad enough to subjugate scorching subcontinents while wearing wool and drinking hot tea.
I sat up, opened my eye and a wave of dizziness slapped me back to the damp mattress. The room's open window remained burning over my retina like a white-hot brand. It faded as I relaxed my jaw, rubbed my temples and drew a dozen deep breaths.
The smell of hot shawarma and grilled halloumi wafted up from the ground floor, taunting my upset stomach as I worked to find my center. I slowly sat erect with my feet planted on the floor. Eased my eye open and blended the sight of the sunlit room with my meditated illusion of a summer field.
My nausea subsided. The layers of pain dissolved like frost in warm light and I stared without blinking at a level horizon where the green grass ended and the blue sky began, floating just outside my window over a busy street in Peckham.
In that oblong room above a Lebanese restaurant I taught myself to walk again.
The flat was one of several investment properties Maxim had stripped with plans for renovation. Each morning I followed a narrow course of bare floorboards from the bed to the window and back again, treading heel to toe like a woman on a highwire with my chin up, eye fastened firmly on my conjured skyline.
By the second day I hardly stumbled. After the third I could do it with my arms at my sides. On the fourth day I ordered take-out from Sultan Beirut on the ground floor and added climbing stairs to my routine.
There was no television in the flat. On the kitchen table Vincent left two neat stacks of tabloids ordered by date, tagged with Post-Its:
BEFORE
and
AFTER
Between the piles a black asterisk was drawn in Sharpie on the wooden tabletop. I placed a snack-size Pringles can on that spot and used it as an ashtray while I went down the rabbit hole to catch up on everything I'd missed.
There was nothing informative in the short BEFORE pile. The first issue on top of the AFTER stack ran a photograph of me and Vincent on the cover, a single frame taken from a fan's shaky Gen-Z Zapruder film of the bombing. It was an instant of my life witnessed by thousands, publicized globally as an infamous matter of record, yet I had no native memory of the event.
The study of that image severed my orientation to time and place. My entire understanding of what happened to me onstage was based on my eye's ability to process the light reflected from an ordered galaxy of CMYK dots printed onto paper, sold on a corner and left on a table for me to hold in my hands while I sat frozen, unable to turn the page, moving only to light one of several cigarettes I let burn untouched from tip to filter.
In that photograph I lay limp, bent and bleeding in Vincent's arms. He bowed over me like a statue carved to portray a figure of strength felled by a vision of great tragedy.
Reprinted in trash tabloids and mainstream press coverage the photo appeared again and again in the AFTER stack. The Guardian examined its evolution as an online meme. Vincent and I were rendered in slashes and fans of spray paint as a fifteen-foot-tall mural in Farringdon. We even became a popular tattoo.
A somber political cartoon in The Evening Standard illustrated blood flowing from my wounds and filling the red stripes of a Union Jack like plumbing. The flag's white stripes splintered into roots that twined to form a scripted stanza from the Wilfred Owen poem Vincent excerpted in our song. Booksellers reported difficulty keeping Owen's works in stock and there was talk of a biopic with Harry Styles in the lead. Citizen Samurai's single "Owen" broke download records even though we were playing "Daisy Breaker" at the time of the bombing.
I read how Blake's mother suffered for his sins. The press sat on her house and they followed her the day she broke cover and went into town with her toy spaniel to claim her son's cremains. She was photographed in a dog park walking in circles under a willow tree, scattering Blake's ashes from a cardboard box concealed in a plastic Poundland bag.
Those images revealed enough geolocation clues for someone to identify the park online. A small mob hacked down the willow tree and fouled the site with trash. The local council dug up the stump, scalped the tainted radius of turf from the earth and had it removed.
It was still light out when I reached the bottom of the AFTER stack and saw Vincent dressed in his Stormzy vest on the cover of The Mirror, wheeling me away from the hospital sporting Soho's finest crackhead couture.
The dog park where Blake's mom returned his atoms to cosmic circulation was within walking distance. I assembled the least absurd outfit I could manage from the jumble of novelty clothing and kitschy accessories Peachy left behind. I hid my bandaged eye behind a pair of Jackie O saucer shades and ditched the before-and-after tabloids in a bin on my way down the street.
The offending site was cordoned off and covered under thick squares of sod, a lush green variety that contrasted sharply with the rest of the browning grounds and made Blake's final resting place visible from orbit. I lit a smoke and strolled the circumference of new growth. Each time I tipped my ash I said Blake's full name aloud.
I went back to the flat and swallowed my antibiotics. Rinsed my eye, changed the dressing and popped my PM party pills. A lovely fog filled the room as I removed my blouse and my bra, buckled myself snug inside Stormzy's stab vest and settled into an armchair by the window to watch the sunset and enjoy the ride.
continued next chapter ...