Too Weird for Ziggy (18 page)

Celebrities clutching cocktail glasses milled around. Some made small talk, most just checked one another out. There were stars from the film, art, and theater world, but mostly there were musicians—fifty-something rockstars, the Baroness's contemporaries if he'd still been alive. All of them had tight pants and tighter teenage wives. Their hair tumbled to their shoulders like it was running away from the balding bit on top. There were musicians too from a younger generation whose goatees and hairdos the Baroness had happily filched. And, honoring his final incarnation as a dissipated rock ‘n' roll Dracula, there was a flock
of neo-goths: girls in webby black dresses and pale men thin as skewers, picking at the hollows of their cheeks with long pointy fingers and gazing like jilted heroines out to sea. Those, that is, who weren't gazing at the hole.

The TV camera sucked them all in, then swung round to close up on Churchill: MTV's current star presenter. A designer boy-poet with Byron's curls and Johnny Depp's eyes.

“Rock 'n' roll, to quote the great god Neil Young, will never die,” Churchill testified. “But rock ‘n' rollers?” A pause while he pulled his perfect face into a mask of tragedy. “Ah that, my friends, is a whole different story. They just keep on dying. John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain—God sure knows how to pick a band.” The upper right-hand corner of Churchill's lip started to twitch. This, the cognoscenti knew, signaled possession not by Elvis but the Spirit of Poetry. Verse was coming through.

“Mangled on the highway, disemboweled by stalkers Fried by faulty wires, tumbling out of planes Pierced like San Sebastian by a million hypodermics Stardust to dust, the end of the game—or is it?

“Tonight, exclusively on MTV, you and I and a galaxy of stars will witness the making—or I should say
re
-making—of rock ‘n' roll history. The ultimate comeback. Here, live on this beach in Malibu, California, at the multimillion-dollar home of legendary rock ‘n' roll manager Irving Roth, one of the most influential figures the world of rock has ever known, so cruelly taken away from us last December, will stand and walk among us again. The venerable; the mythical; the forever cool, forever young,
The Baroness
. So”—he
flips a casual hand at the lens—“you say you wanna resurrection? Stick around.”

Cut to the commercials: Linkin Park's retrospective ten-album box set, the latest Nike trainers, cherry-scented tampons, strawberry shampoo, ‘Scream 7' and ‘Aliens 8,' two for Pepsi and a plug for the upcoming MTV special, an exclusive interview with Rex on why he broke up Shoot 2 Kill.

Meanwhile Churchill pointed out the stars he wanted for sound bites. His producer noted them down meticulously on her clipboard. He looked around. “Where's Ziggy?” he asked.

“Gone,” she said. “Came and went. Said it was
too weird,”
and laughed like it was the craziest thing she'd heard.

“Too weird?” he grunted. “For Ziggy? Like he just sits around in Miami reading fucking books all day? Note it down: I am
officially
pissed off.”

“Okay. Pussy's just arrived though.”

He looked up.

“Do you want her on the list? She's on. And don't forget the lucky winner.” The producer nodded over to where an assistant was babysitting the whey-faced winner of a competititon to present the reanimated Baroness with a platinum album for one million posthumous U.S. sales of his CD
Unplugged
. Wide-eyed and trembling, the girl stared at the poet with barely disguised adoration. He flashed her his sweetest smile. “Fat slut,” he muttered. “Can't they make them send in photos with their entries?” Unconsciously the girl snapped off the head of the single white lily she clutched in her hand.

The covers band had left the seventies and moved on to the Baroness's biggest hits from the eighties. A few of the celebrities had climbed onstage to jam. Their women offered up exaggerated support down below, dancing, clapping, whooping. The TV camera watched them for a while and then left them to it, heading off with Churchill for his round of interviews.

Resurrecting the Baroness, the first star told him, was a blessing. The next one said it was a curse. One called it a brilliant back-catalogue-shifting publicity stunt, another said it was a sick joke. His ex-wife wept all down her orange dress and said how much she'd loved him. The young singer with an L.A. nu-metal band put his arm across her shoulder and whispered, “You're only as dead as your last album. The Baroness
lives
.”

“The Baroness,” one of his many former bandmates said soberly, “was always dying and being reborn. He never lost the capacity to change and to surprise. He was a calculating man but I would say—and I don't use the term lightly—a fucking genius. The Baroness knew instinctively how to go for effect.”

“The Baroness,” slurred a drunker friend, “was an artist—a glorious fucking rip-off artist. He'd mug you for your ideas as soon as look at you, then squirrel them off to his bank account. A huge great stockpile of his friends' and enemies' bright, shiny ideas. But what that fucker made with them was beautiful. Beautiful.” He held his hand up to the camera lens. “Turn that off, I don't want you to see me fucking cry. He was a brilliant man, the Baroness, with a wicked sense of humor. Yeah go on, dig him up. He
would've appreciated it. Ziggy'll tell you—Ziggy was his best friend. Ziggy!” he shouted.

“Ziggy's fucked off,” said his male companion, dragging him away. “Didn't want anything to do with it.”

“I don't fucking believe you. Ziggy!”

Irving was speaking on camera. “The Baroness,” he told Churchill, “was an artist in the true sense of the word. A Renaissance man in an era that rewards mediocrity. Have you ever seen his paintings? He gave me one once. He painted it in the French château where he made
Madonna of the Lipgloss
. A masterpiece. Greatest album of love songs ever made and I'll stand on John Lennon's white grand piano and say that. Legend had it that the château was haunted by the ghost of Chopin, the classical composer. The Baroness told me how he and Chopin would sit up all night playing duets and drinking the finest Bordeaux wine. So to answer your question, no, he wouldn't find this at all weird. The Baroness was no stranger to elegance and death. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a resurrection to get on the road.”

He slipped out of the lights and walked toward the house.
Madonna of the Lipgloss
, where the fuck was she? He was starting to feel anxious, and anxious was something that Irving didn't do.

The aide was on the terrace, still speaking into his headset. “We can't reach her,” he said, anticipating the question. “Her cell phone's off. But Kelly managed to get hold of her housekeeper and she said she was definitely dressed for a party when she left.”

Kelly anticipated the next question. “Almost two hours ago. Limo. The housekeeper didn't know which company—
the guys have been on the past half hour trying to trace it. We'll buzz you the second we know anything. I reckon we've got, uh,” she looked at her watch, “fifteen minutes, twenty tops. You're on after Churchill. Mr. Narcisse is ready whenever you are.”

The music had stopped playing, the band had left the stage, and Churchill had taken their place. He was reading an epic poem he had written for the occasion titled “On the Third Day.' Afterward one of the goths came up and put a skeletal arm around him. “Hey man, I always thought you were a phoney, but that was great, dude, really great.” His girlfriend lifted her voluminous black skirt to reveal her mound of Venus, draped in black crepe since the Baroness's death as a mark of respect.

Then it was Irving's turn. He clicked off the cell phone in his pocket, climbed the wooden steps, and stood at the microphone in the middle of the stage, directly under the spotlight. He asked for silence. He told them why they had been invited. He spoke eloquently of the Baroness and of their “long, special relationship,” of the “misunderstanding” that broke it up, and of “that wonderful week” at the family house in Switzerland where they “hugged and kissed and reconciled.” And then—the spotlight turned a dramatic blue—just one month later the terrible late-night phone call. The long flight, the tears, depression, comforting the widow (ah, the widow, he thought, why hasn't she come? This was all for her, the whole fucking lot of it, the Baroness could rot in Hell for all he cared, but if that's what she wanted then goddammit, he'd go find him, fetch him back, have him stuffed and mounted in a corner of the bedroom if that's
what it took for them to be together. Where the fuck is she?) The world lost a genius, he said. He lost a friend. And then one day, one incredible day, he heard about a man in New Orleans. A necromancer. A reanimator. He spent weeks tracking the man down, several more checking him out, and still more in negotiation. “And if you know me,” he smiled, “and you know how I do business, then you know (the Madonna of the Lipgloss knew) that I don't take no for an answer.

“And so, ladies, gentleman,
friends
—I give you: The Return of the Baroness.”

The spotlight slid away from Irving and across the beach to Narcisse, who was arranging the contents of his case on the table by the hole. One corner of the table had sagged into the sand. There was a box of matches on it, a ball of fuse wire, gaffer tape, a candle, a jar, a sponge—like one of those PBS children's TV shows where you get to make a windmill out of familiar household objects. The celebrities, who had been drifting over, now arrived en masse. The only straggler was Pussy. She was drunk and her stiletto heels had sunk into the sand. She leaned back, like a road sign warning of an upcoming hill, staring down at her glass, which sat wonkily, upturned, on the beach.

Off in the distance, a mournful New Orleans brass band was playing the Baroness's most poignant ballad as a procession made its way slowly toward the sea. An androgynous young male majorette led the parade, slowly twirling a neon tube. Close behind were four young men, slim as dancers, dressed in top hats and leotards. They shouldered a coffin covered in tiny mirror tiles that twinkled here and there like a defective mirror ball. Behind the coffin, walking
gingerly on high heels and carrying a silver tray, was an enormous but graceful black drag queen. The tray held a silver mirror, champagne, and cigarettes.

The procession halted beside the hole. The coffin was gently lowered into it. The drag queen put down her tray beside the hole and dabbed her eyes dramatically with a large black lace handkerchief. The prizewinner, now nervously clutching the platinum disc, darted prematurely forward, realized her error, and froze under the spotlight. A production assistant abruptly pulled her back. The music crescendoed, then stopped.

Deathly silence. All eyes, black and widened, were on Narcisse. He was squatting by the hole. From out of his cape he took the ball of wire. He leaned down and attached one end to the coffin handle. Slowly he stood up and walked back to the table, unraveling as he went. He coiled the other end of the fuse around the candle. He gaffer-taped the candle to the tabletop. He unscrewed the jar and dipped the sponge into it. He carried the sponge carefully back to the hole. He held it high over the coffin, squeezed it six times, then stopped. Six more, a pause, then another six.

He shot around suddenly as a woman rushed into the camera lights. She was statuesque, sad-eyed, with oversized, slick, incandescent lips. Visibly distressed, she thrust a fur coat into Narcisse's hand. “He'll be cold,” she told him, “he'll want this,” then she turned and hurried off.

Irving spotted her from the stage. He cried out her name but she didn't hear him; the microphone had been turned off. He tried to keep sight of her as she moved further from the camera lights and into the darkness. He ran
down the steps and dashed toward the spot where he last saw her go. Narcisse lay the expensive coat down by the water. The sea sucked greedily at one arm. He stared briefly into the hole, muttered something that wasn't English, and walked back to the table.

Narcisse struck a match and lit the candle. The flame leaned sideways in the breeze, pulled itself back upright, then went out. The crowd exhaled. One of Irving's aides ran over and wedged some big stones around the sinking table leg—awkwardly, since everyone was watching. Everyone except Irving, who was now some distance down the beach. He was on his knees in the cold sand, his feet in the lapping water, shoulders stooped, face buried in the stomach of the tall, thin woman with the shiny mouth. She stood there, motionless. At a distance their conjoined silhouettes looked like the buttress and wall of a church.

Narcisse looked over at them briefly, his face impassive. Then he turned back to the table. Casually he struck another match. The flame hovered for a moment, flared, then bit into the top of the fuse. It snaked swiftly down and around the candle. Spitting and sparking, it hissed along the wire toward the wet, black hole.

We were in the hotel bar after the show, it was just gone two, you could see that the bartender was impatient to go home but, hey, only four more hours till our flight so no point going to bed. There were six of us—me and my photographer, Eric; Jerry and Ted from
XO
magazine; Paul from
Hundred% Heavy;
and Rollo, the publicist, the man who'd brought us all over to the States and was right now buying drinks at the bar. All of a sudden this girl comes up on my blind side and taps me on the shoulder and says in a soft Southern accent, “Pardon me, are you with the band?”

“Certainly is,” Eric shot back. “Shoot 2 Kill's chief knob-sucker. Four foot tall, no teeth—made for the job.” “Fuck you,” I said with no particular malice. Photographers are all sociopaths—something to do with always looking at the world through a lump of glass—plus it was as good an answer as any to the “Are you with the band?” question that rock journalists are always asked.