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nuts.’
    Nico seemed to keep going on a diet of chocolate and white wine. Demetrius would organise great feasts in an attempt at international conjugality. Nico would absent herself.
    â€˜I can’t bear to think of all those lumps of food just rotting inside me.’
    She said she hadn’t had a shit in a couple of weeks. Echo said constipation was routine for a junkie. (Though he wasn’t sure if, in his case, it was the smack as he could only go in his own ‘po’.) I imagined Nico, once the gig was done, back at the hotel, curtains drawn, only the ghost flicker of TV, needle emptied, bathroom black, concentrated upon that still stubborn sphincter. Ole Dead Eye in the darkness, coldly staring at the stagnant latrine of romance, the Mediterranean.
    Northern Europeans go to Italy to relax, to feel human again in a more exuberant and demonstrative culture, more loving and maternal than their own. North of the Alps it’s the fight to stay warm. Nico had devised her own form of insulation – psychical and physical. (I noticed that even on cold days she’d often worn only a light shirt.) But when the smack ran out she soon got the shivers. It didn’t matter in the least that we were beside the golden Mediterranean. Nothing outside really impinged on her terrifying single-mindedness, her obsessive neurological and emotional need for heroin. Even La Dolce Vita turned sour.
    In Rome Nico got deep into withdrawal, her nerves scraping her bones. The money had shrunk, the shows were disappointing, the desperados were doing the drugs in very quickly. The promoters had arranged a lunch meeting with Italian Vogue for a possible photo session. Raincoat and Toby practised sucking in their cheeks. The pretty boys and girls dressed in their relaxed classics did not take immediately to Nico wrapped in an old blanket, eyes streaming, concerned only with her fee. I had an idea. Nico upholstered in Renaissance velvet, the needle scars on her tortured hands and arms, the grey flesh hanging lifelessly from those once unassailably high cheekbones. A powerful spread? There was some rapid consultation during which I heard the word ‘ pervertito ’, then they shook our hands, wished us a successful tour and left. Within seconds I’d blown everyone’s chance of a good lunch.
    I felt especially ostracised after that until near the end of the tour in Genova, when I got my big break to go and get the drugs with Echo. (As I knew three Italian words, Ciao, Vaffanculo and Arrivederci , I had a use.) A smooth transaction with some charming Moroccans, marred only by the later discovery that they’d substituted the heroin with salt.
    â€˜A hundred bucks an’ not even enough salt for a packet o’ staffords,’ lamented Echo.
    Nico’s reaction was less circumspect. ‘Assholes.’
    Things always ended up there.
    A heavy black brogue inserted itself into my room – followed by a dark overcoat, beard, glasses, the soft pale skin of one who toileth not in the fields, hummingbird flash of Vick inhaler.
    â€˜James … I feel I must speak to you.’
    I thought, This is it. My old pal Dr Demetrius come to administer the last rites.
    â€˜I wonder if you’re altogether happy …’ I’d heard it at the end of every job I’d ever had. ‘… with things as they are?’
    â€˜What can I do?’ I asked. ‘It’s alien territory. The guys are OK for a few seconds as they intersect normality in between getting out of their heads and sweating it out. The rest of the time it’s lunacy … Nico hates me …’
    â€˜Perhaps you should ignore them – after all, they are little more than circus creatures. Their needs are very basic, their joys are commonplace.’
    Things were stirring once more beneath the overcoat. From one of the voluminous pockets he pulled out a Bible. The page was marked with a membership card to