Too Weird for Ziggy (11 page)

After a while Leo's stomach appeared, its pale skin imprinted with the bandage's waffle marks. Next came his upper abdomen, white as an overexposed photograph. Only his chest left to go. As Leo tugged the last sweat-tight layer from under his armpits, two small, round, pert breasts popped out.

“Well, fuck me,” said Murray as he let himself into the room, ready for any emergency, except this one. Two faces side by side gawped at the sight in the mirror.

“Jesus Christ, Leo.” Murray gave a nervous laugh. “Like 'em so much you've grown your own?”

“Shut the motherfuck up!” wailed Leo, turning so fast from his reflection that he hit himself hard on the back of a chair. Which reopened the wound, sending the blood coursing a little more heartily down his thigh.

“Whew,” said the tour manager, shaking his head. “I can see you're on the rag. I'd better keep out of your way.”

As Murray left the room, Leo collapsed onto the chair. Only his breasts stayed perky.

When the tour manager returned, he was all efficiency. “Right, I've found a doctor, and he thinks it could be an allergic reaction to the bandage. You know, like some people get with a Band-Aid and their skin all puffs up?” In his short absence, Leo had crawled into bed and covered himself with the blankets; the swellings looked less obvious when he was lying down. His face peered up out of the sheets, glumly. “He'll be over within the hour to give you a shot.”

“I ain't going onstage like this,” sulked Leo. “You're gonna have to cancel tonight's show.”

“Aw, come on,” said Murray brightly. “The doc'll fix you up in no time. Think of it as a couple of big mosquito bites. They look worse to you than they really are.”

The doctor arrived, examined Leo's chest, then turned him over and stuck a needle in his buttock. He wrote out a prescription for a course of antihistamines and antibiotics.
“You're not to drink alcohol with these,” he told Leo, and the singer nodded obediently. “Make sure he doesn't,” he told Murray as if he were the patient's father, handing him the prescription, “or they won't work.”

“I'll be back with these in a moment,” said Murray, leaving with the doctor. Leo could hear them murmuring in the corridor. He sat up slowly in bed, checked his reflection in the mirror, hoping to see the mounds shrinking. They weren't.

“How the motherfuck am I meant to go out there like this?” Leo whined. He and Murray were backstage in the dressing room; the rest of The Nympholeptics were out sound-checking onstage. Leo's tight black T-shirt clung tightly to the small, round protrusions. “I see what you mean,” said Murray, rubbing his chin. “Only one thing for it: We're going to have to bind 'em down.”

“I'm not getting back in that motherfucking bandage.” Leo shook his head and backed off. “I'm allergic, remember?” Murray was already reaching for a roll of gaffer tape. “No, forget it,” said Leo. “You're not taping me up with that.” But he did. Taking it off wasn't pleasant; what few chest hairs Leo had went with it. If Leo ever needed a drink, this was the moment. As for sex, it was out of the question. While the rest of the band were getting drunk or laid, Leo went to bed alone, early, sober, and utterly depressed.

“Do you think they're going down?” Leo twisted his body sideways in front of the mirror. For four nights, the singer had been following the doctor's orders, to no avail. What could have just about passed as oddly overdeveloped pecs before had blossomed into a bosom any fifteen-year-old
girl would have been proud to display. Murray shrugged and said he thought they were. Through the concrete walls of the backstage room, Leo could hear the band laughing at Ian the guitar player's impersonation of him as they sound-checked.

“I've been thinking,” Leo said as Murray bound him up again—the gaffer tape had been replaced by a stiff, white cotton bandage; allergy-free, the tour manager had pointed out—“that it might have something to do with those two weeks I went without sex. You know, when Phoebs was there? I mean think about it, it can't be healthy for the body to just
stop
like that. You know, when you're gagging for it all that time and you can't get it?”

“Hmm,” said Murray thoughtfully. After the non-stop fuckathon The Nympholeptics tour had been, he mused, the singer could have a point. “You mean it might be some sort of trapped testosterone? Kinda like trapped wind?”

“
I
don't know! But you try lying in bed with Phoebe Fitzwarren every motherfucking night for two weeks with a hard-on.” The tour manager quickly swatted the agreeable image from his mind.

“Anyhow,” Leo continued, “I figured that maybe I should start shagging again.” Before Murray could point out the obvious publicity hazards he added, “With the bandage on, of course, and a shirt. Just try and undo this blockage, or whatever it is. Get my system moving again.”

“Gotta be worth a go,” said Murray solemnly, as if contemplating a risky operation. “I'll line 'em up for you after the show.”

For the next week, Leo applied himself to the task assiduously. And although, as he resumed his alpha male role,
band relations became smoother, Leo's chest didn't. Every night when Murray unwrapped him, behind locked doors when the concert was done, his breasts appeared plumper than ever. Leo returned to the path of abstinence.

“You know,” the tour manager suggested when they reached New York, “maybe we should try leaving the bandage off? Could be all it needs is some air circulating around it.”

“What! When I'm onstage?” shrieked Leo. “How the fuck is that supposed to look? Like the Britney mother-fucking Spears show?”

“I don't know.” Murray shrugged. “I'm just trying to help. The doctors don't have any fucking idea what to do.” Three more had been summoned, shaken their heads, and prescribed anti-inflammatories that didn't work. The pair sat in silence for a while, then someone was bashing at the door and rattling the handle. “Open up!” the guitarist yelled. “What the fuck are you two doing in there that you've got to lock yourself in?”

“We'll be out in a minute,” Murray called back. Turning to Leo, he said, “You could wear one of those thick leather biker jackets. If you zip it up, no one will see a thing. Should be no problem picking one up in this town.” The wardrobe girl was duly dispatched, and finally tracked one down in a cheap cutouts shop.

“What the fuck is that?” said Angus, the bass player, when Leo walked out wearing it that night. Angus was clad in the tiniest rag of a T-shirt; the arena was hot as hell. The crowd at the front were pressed in so tight they went home with their T-shirts steam-ironed.

“What's it to you?” snarled Leo. Angus threw a glance at Ian, who lifted his right hand from the guitar strings and made the “wanker” sign. It was not a great show. When it was over, Leo, lobster-faced and squelching with sweat, ran into the dressing room and bolted the door. Murray had to usher the band to an empty bunker at the end of the corridor.

“What the fuck is up with Leo?” Ian asked. His pants were around his ankles; a young woman's head bobbed in his lap.

“LSD,” said Angus, unscrewing the cap from a whisky bottle. Lead Singer Disease.

“Can I have that when you're done?” said Kevin, the drummer. Angus held up the bottle. “No, that.” Kevin nodded at the guitar player.

“I mean what's with that fucking jacket? It looks like shit.”

Angus nodded. “He looks like a girl.”

“It's like he's not even part of the band anymore,” said Ian. The girl lifted her head, took a lipstick out of her purse, and put it on without looking in the mirror. Kevin gestured for her to come over. “I mean, all this shit with his own dressing room. Locked doors all the time. The only person he spends time with these days is Murray.”

“Maybe he's turned queer,” said Kevin, unzipping.

“The Judas Priest circa 19-fucking-80 jacket doesn't hurt your argument,” said Angus, taking a long swig and burping.

“We should insist on a band meeting,” said Ian. “Get everything out in the open.”

Leo, his curves concealed by a thick, loose sweatshirt, unlocked the dressing room door and peered along the corridor. At one end two groupies in tight blue spandex, chained together, stared at him. Leo stared back, for a long time, but without lust. If he was looking at anything, it was for whatever part of himself could be found in them. He came up blank and turned toward the exit. Murray leaned out and beckoned them into the room.

“Hey, Murray, look at this!” shouted Leo. In the dressing room in Detroit, two days later, he'd found an old copy of the
National Enquirer
, and he was pointing at an article in it. It was a report on the increasing amount of female hormones in urban American water supplies. “Look. There was a study done in Kansas City—motherfucking
Kansas
! That's where
we
were! All these women taking the pill and pissing—that's it! I've been drinking female motherfucking piss-hormones!” Leo made a face and put down his bottle of mineral water.

“But you haven't been drinking tap water,” said Murray, calmly.

“But the fucking caterers are cooking in it, washing the food in it. You should have insisted they use bottled water. If you'd been doing your job properly—“

It was against all the laws of nature for a tour manager to hit a star, but by Christ, did he feel tempted. “From what I've read,” he muttered, “there are more hormones in American meat.” By that night, Leo was a strict vegetarian—the reason Murray posited for the nagging stomach cramps that Leo had started to complain about.

Leo's breasts were blossoming on his new healthy diet. Since he'd stopped drinking, he'd slimmed down, so
they looked even bigger. Leo thought his voice was becoming thinner too. ‘That's it!” he announced as Murray appeared in his hotel room one night to put on the bandage—Leo had promised at the band's “openness” meeting not to lock them out of the dressing room anymore, but he had yet to mention the mammaries. “I've had it. I'm out of here,” he said. Zipping the leather jacket over his naked chest, he picked up his suitcase—for the first time since he'd been on tour—and headed for the door. Murray blocked his path.

“Wait! MacFee's on his way over. He'll sort it out.”

Clive MacFee, Leo's manager, was in Florida, where he'd been busy closing a deal on a substantial waterside property funded by his share of The Nympholeptics' hits. He was not happy at having to fly out to baby-talk his client, even if the plane ride wasn't exactly long; that was Murray's job. But the tour manager's calls had become increasingly agitated: MacFee's golden egg was sprouting ovaries. From what Murray said, Leo would be looking for work as a lap dancer if someone didn't do something quick.

“Leo wants to pull the tour,” Murray had told him. “Impossible,” MacFee had answered. “The promoters would sue the bollocks off of us—apart from which, the album's heading for number one in the States and I'm not having it fall back now. Call a fockin' doctor.”

“I have. Three of them.”

“Then call afockinother one. What do they say it is?”

“No one fucking knows.”

In Leo's room, Murray's cell phone chirped. “It's MacFee. His plane has landed. He'll be here in twenty minutes.
He's got a specialist with him,” he repeated every line to Leo, who was trying to dodge past him, badly, like a girl playing football. “He'll take care of everything. He'll know what to do,” he soothed, leading Leo back to the bed, helping him off with his jacket like a child.

MacFee blustered into the lobby, ignoring the concierge, still talking on his phone to Murray as he got into the crowded lift, the doctor three yards behind. The tour manager opened the door.

“Oh my good fockin' God,” MacFee spluttered when he set eyes on his singer's B-cups. The doctor opened his bag and sat on the edge of the bed. The manager could not stop gawking.

“What the fuck am I going to do?” whimpered Leo. “I'm a worm, a cockroach. I'm a motherfucking freak.”

“Don't talk like that,” admonished MacFee. “You're a fockin' star. Top of the charts in the U.K. Thundering up the fockin' charts over here. Top five next week. Number one, I fockin' promise you, by the time you get to L.A.” The last date on the U.S tour.

The doctor took out a hypodermic. “I've sedated him,” he told Murray and MacFee as Leo dropped off to sleep like a baby. “He'll be out until morning. We need to calm his system down. He appears to be suffering an acute stress reaction.”

“Ain't no one more fockin' stressed than me and
I'm
not sprouting tits,” growled the manager.

“People react to stress in very different ways,” said the doctor, patiently. “An imbalance in the endocrine glands is one of them.”

“Can't you give him testosterone shots or something?”

“I think it will take more than that,” said the doctor. “What he needs is to be isolated from all potential sources of tension.”

“Well, right now,” said MacFee, “he can't. “After Los Angeles he can have some time off—I'll book him in somewhere, get it dealt with. When the tour's finished he can do what the fock he wants—get a job as Madonna's fockin' body double for all I care at this present moment in time. Or have 'em off—there's always surgery. Thank fock there's no gig tonight.” He looked over at Leo, sleeping peacefully. “I can rely on your cooperation,” he addressed the doctor and Murray jointly, “and, it goes without saying, your discretion. Do whatever you have to do, but read my lips: The show stays on the road.”

“In his present mental state, that might be difficult,” said the doctor.

“Then we'll get him a fockin' shrink,” barked MacFee. “A lot of bands have them on the road these days. Arrange one and send me the bill.” He looked at his watch. “I'm out of here—meeting in Miami. You finished?” he asked the doctor as he strode out of the room. As he did so, a door down the corridor opened and Ian emerged.