Nico by James Young Read Free Book Online Page A

tricks of the trade. He was a professional flirt. He could make a woman feel really good, adored.
    In this way he would attach himself to strong professional women who might be feeling insecure about their femininity after a hard day breaking balls in the boardroom. He kept house for a smart young Irishwoman who ran a theatre company. She knew what he was really about but there was a kind of unspoken truce between them so long as he hoovered the house, fixed the dinner, called the plumber and performed prolonged oral sex on her every Friday night. This he was happy to do. It was a small inconvenience for a rent-free existence.
    I recognised him before we were introduced. His name had flitted like a ghost through conversations. Nico was continually asking after him, probably because he knew exactly where to find what she was always looking for. Toby had known him for years. Echo, though, was uneasy about him … he’d lent him a microphone a few months back. Raincoat had promised to return it but Echo knew it had been traded in for dope. Echo kept a strict inventory of the junk in his cupboard. ‘Whenever I look at ’im, I don’t jus’ see a second’and Sinatra, I see the microphone on a stand.’
    Raincoat was standing by the check-in desk at Ringway Airport. ‘We’ll get high, starry eyed.’ Like Demetrius, he was fond of a trilby but this one fitted, and had a beautiful red feather in the band. He had on a brown Donegal tweed suit with a yellow-checkered waistcoat and had his raincoat slung over one shoulder. He looked like an Irish bookie with Mafia aspirations. He looked good. But he’d left his soul a little too long under the dryer back at Vidal Sassoon’s.
    Raincoat, Toby and Echo were off the plane like a shot the minute the rear cabin opened. They mingled with the holidaymakers. Nico brushed past me as if I was a complete stranger, leaving behind her a wake of duty-free scent to baffle the ‘sneefer’ dogs. As I grabbed my hand luggage from the overhead locker a steward from Club Class tapped me. Would I follow him? ‘Snow’ clung to his uniform.
    Club Class had been transformed into the Christmas Experience. ‘Snow’ everywhere … small fragments of white styrofoam that had burst free from a pillow Demetrius had chewed and then ripped apart as the aircraft tear-dropped over Milan airport. He cowered in the corner of the cabin like a trapped beast. The last pair of Euro-execs were disembarking: ‘ Drogisti ,’ said one to the other, brushing the snow off his Armani lapels.
    Demetrius was babbling a psycho peptalk: ‘It’s a matter of centring … Locating the Axial Body Meridian … tapping into the Kundalini …’
    He breathed in deeply, yogically, on his Vick. Somewhere in the middle of Dr Demetrius was a thin hippy desperately signalling to be let out.
    The promoters stepped through the automatic sliding doors. A girl and two guys. The men looked tough, but it was only fashion-tough. Beneath the stubble quivered career anxiety, inside the leather pants was soft pasta flab. Their eyes scanned the arrival lounge. They seemed to look through us, past us, around us, but never directly at us.
    Nico stood there, slightly apart, an extra on life’s battlefield, in her black rags. You could read them. After they’d eliminated all the other possibilities, could this be her? The Bag-Lady of Rock’n’Roll.
    â€˜Neeeeee-co!’ The girl strode forward, grinning manically. ‘Here, in Italia, at last.’
    â€˜Are we late?’ Maybe Nico was joking. Behind the shades nobody knew. She wanted to go directly to the hotel. The promoter wanted to take her to a press meeting.
    Nico had other plans. Other needs. ‘I need to freshen up.’ She stomped off to the hotel in her motorbike boots, the straps of which she never bothered to buckle. With Nico, you always heard her spurs first.
    The