Chapter I: The Love Potion
Chapter II: The Avowal
Chapter III: Brangwin
Chapter IV: Plot and Counterplot
Chapter V: The Assignation at the Brook
Chapter VI: The Ordeal
Chapter VII: Asses Ears
Chapter VIII: Discovery
Chapter IX: The Cave of the Lovers
Chapter X: Banishment
Chapter XI: The Parting
Chapter XII: Isolde of the White Hands
Chapter XIII: The Wedding
Chapter XIV: Tristan Returns Again
Chapter XV: The Poisoned Spear
Chapter XVI: The Death of Tristan and Isolde


Chapter I
The Love Potion


It really wasn’t my fault.
If Issy hadn’t nicked that bottle of champagne out of my bag there would be no story. Sure the gossip columns would have dripped with shit as usual, but the whole thing with Tris would never have got started, and Marcus King could have popped her cherry instead of mine, the dirty old sod.
I mean, it was a weird situation. Really weird. What sort of forty-year-old record producer insists on marrying a virgin? In the twenty-first century? Everyone thought the old guy was gay. I mean, that’s why Issy’s mother and me injected the viagra and the e into the champagne in the first place. Her mum didn’t want her virgin princess to be disappointed on her wedding night.
Three needles got broken off in three champagne corks (we had to drink them so as not to give the game away) before we finally got the stuff into a bottle of Cristal. It would have to be Cris. White gold and diamonds on her finger, and when I woke up there’s her and Tris drinking the fucking stuff and playing backgammon in the first class seats.
That’s when she says to me, Issy I mean, she giggles, “Brannie, I just joined the mile high club.”
I thought she was joking. I mean I’d only been asleep for half an hour. Wrong Brangwin, two and a half hours, and that goody-goody Britney clone had been pumping Tris’s iron for a good part of that. I’m not saying he wasn’t fit, but how the hell was she going to explain this away? Like she’d suddenly taken up show-jumping or something?
I nipped into the loo for a quick ciggy and a think.
Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit and double shit.
Issy and me had been mates since school. Ireland’s answer to TaTV only we were like good Irish Catholics, not sleazy Russian lesbo nymphomaniacs. Issy on vocals and me on harp, only it wasn’t a real harp, it was this it was this really cool synth that held samples and stuff, but it looked good on stage. So Issy marries New York’s biggest producer and the bridesmaid (that’s me guys) gets a solo album. That was my plan. Why the fuck did Marcus send Tris over to pick her up? It was asking for trouble. Like I said, it really wasn’t my fault.
The thing about flying first class is the stewardesses really don’t stress too much about things like smoking. Not if you’re discreet. I crushed my Lucky and wrapped it in a tissue and put it in the bin. Waited for the smoke to clear, flushed and went back to my seat.
Everyone was strapped in and ready to land. They were holding hands. I hissed at Issy, but she just smiled an ecstatic smile, if you know what I mean, and squeezed his manicured hand. “Cut it out.”
“I think it was so considerate of Marcus to send his hunky nephew to look after me,” she whispered. “I’m terrified of flying.”

We got whisked through immigration by one of Marcus’ men and out to the most ridiculous stretch limo I have ever seen. Tinted windows, cocktail cabinet, DVD, the works.
The press were there of course so Tris and me wait while she shows off her bleached smile and Wonderbra cleavage.
So now we’re in the pimp-mobile, trying to spot the Empire State building, and this guy who’s met us at the airport takes out a wrap of coke and starts chopping it on the table. Tris is rolling up a 50 euro note and hovering the powder through his nose, and then Issy has to try some and she sneezes fifty dollars worth all over the floor. Well that broke the ice, and everyone gets the giggles and the guy just gets out another wrap and starts again. Tris offers me the banknote, and I’m like, “I don’t do drugs.”
“You lying little cow.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“You smoke weed like a bonfire,” says Issy, which is true, but it’s herbal and it’s not addictive and it helps with the music, and then this guy produces the tiniest little spliff you ever saw and gives it to me. I needed something to mellow me out, but this was like some prison roll-up, still I took it gratefully, lit up, and took a deep pull. They all looked at me very oddly. It was all I could do to keep the smoke in. I mean it was pure grass. I must have turned bright red at the effort of trying not to cough, but I wasn’t going to let the side down by doing an Issy. One more drag on that tiny spliff and I was away. I spent the rest of the ride just watching the traffic lights change colour., and feeling the waves of traffic slow up and down Manhattan. Like, spacey, man!

The hotel was some big skyscraper, but inside was like an old movie. All marble and real bellhops in uniform to take your bags. They gave us adjoining rooms on the top floor, and the view was amazing. Issy wouldn’t go near the window. Scared of heights. I really wanted to talk to her about what had happened on the plane, but she wanted to take a bath, which I thought was understandable under the circs so I took a shower and just crashed out on the biggest bed I’d ever seen.
I woke up and opened the door to Issy’s room and stopped dead. There was her and Tris sitting on the bed playing bloody backgammon. (No, I’m not using ‘playing backgammon’ as some code for shagging. This was one of Tris’s obsessions, along with Tai Chi, motorbikes and south Indian food.)
“Hi, Branners,” says Tris. “We’ve got a proposition for you.”



Chapter II
The Avowal

Well, I heard them out, and after I’d hit the roof and they’d scraped me off the ceiling, Tris left and I finally got some time with Issy. She didn’t spare me any details and I was itching with jealousy, I mean I’m four months older than her and she’s done it first. I was curious to meet Marcus, which was all arranged for that night at the Cornwall Club on 42nd Street, the place to be and be seen, so some serious clothes shopping was in order. We sneaked out and took a yellow cab to Macy’s, which is a crap shop, but you have to go, and we ended up wandering around the streets with me nagging her serious about her crazy wedding plans, and her acting all cock-struck and moaning about how painful it was to walk after her high-altitude shag.
“Bloody hell, slow down, Brannie, I’ve pulled muscles I didn’t even know I’d got.”
If she was looking for sympathy she’d have to catch me first. Try finding a coffee shop you can smoke in New York, it’s a nightmare. We ended up going back to the hotel and up to my room. One coffee and three Camels later (my theory is if you keep switching brands then you won’t get addicted) we’re trying on each other’s gear and doing our hair and phoning our mums and things seem quite normal except there’s still that proposition floating around, waiting to be taken up, or even taken seriously, and I’m really in need of some draw, but of course we don’t have any, so by the time we’ve had a burger from room service and got in the limo, (with, yes, you’ve guessed it) I’m as nervous as a kitten.

Some people think me and Issy are just a couple of brats. Winning Pop Goddess and getting a record deal when you’re sixteen means VIP rooms at every club and no ID for you ladies, but after a year I still loved the whole getting taken to the front of the line thing, and the way all these huge, bow-tied black dudes just smile and wave you through, it’s a fairy story for a girl who’s father pulls pints at Hanlon’s Bar.
Well, we get led straight to the VIP room, which has a big one-way mirror so you can watch the action, and I’m amazed at the décor, it’s all zebra-skin sofas and a big curvy bar at the end and there’s a guy at the bar juggling cocktail shakers, it’s so nineties it’s unreal, I mean I wish I’d been more than a kid then, and there’s just this really funky bass-line playing in the background but not so loud you can’t have a conversation and Tris just walks us over to the bar and says to the barman, “Hi, Uncle Marcus”, and that’s when I realise that the barman is Marcus King, and he’s not like I’d imagined him from the magazine pictures and Issy pecks him on the cheek and he pours out four Margaritas and we go over to sit on one of the dead zebras.
Well Issy hadn’t seen him for weeks and she’s full of plans for the wedding, telling him about her idea for a masked ball, but not the real reason, of course, while I look around and start to compare him and Tris.
Tris was tall and skinny with his Adams apple sticking out of his long neck, all sort of relaxed looking but you could see his body was hard and lean; Marcus was kind of short and stocky, not fat, but he held himself tall, like so many short guys do, and even when his mouth smiled his eyes stayed serious, grey and clear like they could see straight through you. He’s just agreeing to everything Issy says and looking at her like some doting daddy who’s just agreed to buy his little girl her first pony. Tris and me went down to the dance floor to check out the action, and I really knew I’d arrived, I mean I never saw such a collection of freaks in my life, oh, freaks and movie stars. It was only then thirty, but there was already one famous actress dirty dancing with a Red Indian on the dance floor, and over in the booth the DJ was helping some blonde piece back up to her feet with one hand, while spinning the turntable with the other. It didn’t look like ice cream she was licking off her fingers.
It was making me feel as horny as hell and I was glad when Tris decided we get back to Issy and Marcus. The VIP room was empty, but behind it was Marcus’s private office, again with a little bar and, thankfully, a ladies that did not have a monstrous queue of the east coast’s pretty things desperate for a pee. I nipped in and out, and wasn’t really that surprised to see one of those chaise-longues in there, you know, made for anything except sleeping or sitting, and a mirrored table next to it.
“Now I see why you call it the powder room,” I said, which wasn’t original, but hey, people like even a lame joke if you smile.
“Issy says you’re looking for a solo deal,” says Marcus, which was straight to the point, but as he’d bought us out of our contract with Sony and we were up to do another four albums with his company, was sweet all the same. I licked my lips and lit another Camel.
“I’d like to work with Tris, actually,” I said, blowing a perfect smoke ring, and looking lover-boy in the eye, Tris I mean, not Marcus. Let them work that one out. Tris was the open-mike star of the East coast and if I was going anywhere it was up.
Tris knew he couldn’t say no or our deal was off, so he just smiles and hands me a joint, a proper one this time, with tobacco in it, and gets up to mix some more drinks.
“Oh, and I’d like to do a demo this week.” I smiled at Issy, and she smiled back through gritted teeth. Suck on that, Sugar, I thought, if it’s meaty enough for ya.

Well by the time the wedding came round we’d cut three tracks and I had a contract in the bag. Marcus had the penthouse suite in the hotel, and Issy kept him busy with wedding stuff while he was there, and kept herself busy with Tris while he wasn’t.
Now there was one reason, and one reason only, for the whole masked ball idea, and that was Tristan’s proposition. Marcus was no fool, and he was marrying a virgin. Now the guy was batting for both teams, if you know what I mean, and he knew the score.
I remember in Psychology at school they taught us about baby ducks, they’re like programmed to bond with the first animal they see after they hatch. If they see a chicken, then mummy is a chicken, if they see a dog, then mummy’s a dog; well guys, reckon virgins are like ducklings. If you do it right, Marcus reckoned, the bride is yours for life. Tris explained all this to me, “So Issy was supposed to be like the duckling.”
“Yeah.”
“A fuckling”, I say, and we both fall around laughing (well, we were smoking some outrageously good skunk).
That’s when I told him about the whole champagne mix-up thing. I wish I hadn’t, but we were getting on so well. I blame the weed. So I was going to take Issy’s place and give it up to Marcus. She’d had two identical wedding dresses made and two identical masks, and at some point in the evening I was going to take her place and shag Marcus (or get shagged by Marcus) then we’d switch back again. We both had English accents (London Irish, innit?) and the only problem she could see was I wasn’t blonde and she was. That was what the two of them had cooked up over the backgammon game, and I had my record contract as a reward.
“But what if I fall ion love with Marcus?” I said to Tris.
“Marcus won’t do it right” he laughed and passed the joint back. “Now you’ve told me about the love potion though, I’ll be sure to mix up another bottle.”

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to dye your pubes, but take it from me, you don’t want to try. I get nervous even giving it a trim down there, but painting your bits with peroxide is just gross. Still, mission accomplished, we’re in the church, and it’s packed out with civilians, though Marcus’s men have got the press under control and Rolling Stone are doing an exclusive (no money but excellent publicity). I’ve got this pale-blue silk dress that fits me like a second skin, and we’re at the music biz wedding of the year. I’m majorly getting cold feet, well butterflies would be more accurate, but maybe too graphic, and the spliff I had in the hotel is just making me paranoid.
Some of the stories I’m hearing about Marcus are giving me the horrors about what will happen if it all goes wrong, like there’s a lot of Italian money invested in Marcus’s business, and accidents happen to people who try to fuck him around. Every time I look into those eyes I just see my own reflection, floating in the East River maybe.
So Marcus kisses the bride and we’re all back to the club for the party. Mine and Tris’s demo gets played and everyone loves it and I’m knocking back the Margaritas like they’re going out of fashion when Tris comes up to me and whispers for me to get changed into the Issy outfit (I’m wearing this little owl mask like in that movie, Eyes Wide Shut?) so I go along to Marcus’s office and Issy’s there, and she’s like hurry up Brannie and I give her a big hug and go into the ladies and there’s a big fat one to calm my nerves and the dress and mask laid out on the chaise longue and a bin-bag for me to stash my clothes.
I’ve got my hair cut short, and Issy helped me put the blonde wig on and the black velvet mask and I’m into the dress and she’s out of the door.
“Wait” I say but she says she’ll be back in ten minutes and Marcus will be given the word by Tris where to come and find her, or me actually. I light the reefer and it’s really nice to feel that relaxing smoke loosen me up and I decide to take my knickers off, well, they’ll only get in the way, and I’ve just flushed the roach down the loo when there’s three knocks on the door and Issy’s back.
She takes my stuff and she sees the knickers on the pile of clothes and she’s like you slut, but I’m more concerned about what she does next. She puts the loo seat down, sticks the bag on it like a cushion and sits on it with the door closed to.
“You can’t watch”.
“I can hardly miss losing my own virginity, can I? How will I be able to remember everything if I’m not here, duh?” she whispered. I looked in the mirror and I was red as a beet. I was so wet I thought to myself this is not going to need a lot of acting on your part, Brangwin, or at least not on the part of your parts, if you know what I mean, and I giggled to myself when in walked Marcus.

Actually, it was in walked Marcus’s prick, followed by Marcus. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. He was completely naked, except for this Zorro mask he had on, and that wasn’t all he had in common with Errol Flynn. I used to love those old movies and all the stories about him wearing women’s underwear because he couldn’t fit his thing into a pair of briefs. This thing just swung in front of him as he walked, comical it was, and he closed the door and locked it.
“This mask idea is the one perversion I haven’t tried” he said and pulled me to him and kissed me hard on the mouth. I had Niagara Falls going on down there now so I just pulled him down over me and pulled up my dress.
I felt him push it in and the pain was indescribable, it felt right, and good, but at the same time absolute agony.
“I won’t put it in until you’re ready” he said.
God I thought it was in, but he kept on pushing and I felt him nestling inside of me, that’s it I thought, but no, further, and further until I thought he was going to split me in two.
He started to pull it out and I felt like a baby whose mother has pulled the teat out of his mouth, but he slowly slid it back and started to move against me muttering in my ear.
“Am I hurting you?” he asked.
“Yes, but don’t stop”, I think I managed to say and I could feel his prick pulsing inside me as he stopped the pushing and smiled. I looked down over the crushed cream silk and could see a red stain spreading over the fabric. That’s my maidenhead gone, I think, and it’s all I can think before he’s changed the rhythm again and he’s pulling and pushing with long slow strokes and the pain and the pleasure are mixed up into one long getting fucked feeling.
“It gets better with practice” he said and slowly pulled out of me. I let out a little cry of disappointment, but thanked God all the same. The cramp had just hit me and I really needed to move. I couldn’t of course, so he moved my legs together and kissed my breasts. I looked at his cock, covered in my blood.
“Did you come?” I asked him in a little girl voice.
He laughed.
“Not this time. I want to save it till later.” He walked over to the sink and started to wash the blood off.
“I should do that for you” I said. He turned. It looked funny, him holding it in his hand.
“Have you got anything to change into?” he asked.
“I got a spare dress made” I said, reason creeping back into my prick-clouded brain. “You go back to the party, I’ll see you later”. He kissed me with such force I wanted him again, but he unlocked the door and was gone.

Issy didn’t waste much time. She almost threw my clothes at me and stormed into the office. It was a good five minutes before I’d stuffed the bloody dress into the bag and made myself presentable. I had to sit on the loo smoking a Benson and waiting for the blood to stop flowing before I pulled my knickers on and stood up. It looked like there had been a massacre. I was beginning to understand why that shopping trip had been such a trial for Issy. I was sorry he hadn’t come though. I wanted to feel what it was like. Could you actually feel it pumping into your womb? But then Tris was right. I really would have been Marcus’s fuckling if he’d done it properly.
I didn’t stay long at the party and Issy avoided me, though she was all over Marcus like a rash. Tris took me back to the hotel in a yellow cab and I got in the bath and just cried and cried. The things you do for your mates, I thought, and they can’t even say thank you.

All I dreamed of that night was cocks. Black cocks, white cocks, yellow cocks, blue cocks; but all Marcus’s long, smooth, throbbing prick, variations on a theme, as my music teacher would have said. They all came, in glorious Technicolor; fountains of spunk all over me.
I got up at dawn and went for a walk in Central Park, watching the joggers each in their private world with their walkman playing a different tune while the birds sang in the trees. I got a coffee and waited for a phone call from Issy, but none came. Her and Marcus were honeymooning in Hawaii, which is pretty corny, and at least I had the chance to lay down some more tracks with Tris.
I thought wrong. Tris was lovesick; crazy with jealousy, and just counting the days till Issy came back. He was texting her all the time, and every night he’d go to the hotel bar and just drink until dawn. That’s when I realised the story wasn’t going to have a happy ending.


Chapter III
Brangwin

It was a long two weeks with Issy away, and by the end of it I was just dying to get back to London. I had this idea to shoot a promo video for the track I wanted to release as a single, Monkey Girls, at the zoo; maybe in Dublin, or even Regent’s Park. I wanted that grey light you only get in the old country, and some real people, not Have-a-nice-day phonies.
I had to hang on for Marcus to set it all up, and so Issy is going to have a major input. I should have guessed.
The tabloids were full of paparazzi snaps of her hanging with the surfing boys, and when she came back to New York she still hadn’t landed on planet Earth. That girl was so tanned, so full of self-confidence, so up herself.
Of course, she’s up in the penthouse with Marcus now, and they only have to arrive by helicopter, in brilliant sunshine, looking tanned and gorgeous and so the perfect man and wife. Pass the sick-bag please. Marcus was always a businessman first, so it was next day when we’re talking about my ideas for the video and Issy butts in with what a good idea it would be for me to go to Hawaii for some bikini shots.
“God Brannie, you’ll love it. Maybe get one of those surfer boys. I tell you, by the end of it I was starting to wish I wasn’t married.”
She smiled at Marcus when she said this, but Tris’s eyes were just burning her up. I was wondering how they were going to manage to keep it going, but I really did need a break, so I agreed.

I’d made good use of the hotel sun-beds so I wasn’t going to look like the typical Irish girl with fish-belly skin, at least. Maybe this was her way of apologising for being such a jealous bitch.
Maybe.
Then again, maybe she’d arranged for a couple of gangsters to kill me in a staged surfing accident to stop me blabbing about her and Tris. What do you think?

She and Tris were at it that night, in Issy’s old room, which was still empty, and I could hear them when I came in. Well, I did have my ear up against the door. She was out of control, and that mouth of hers, when it wasn’t around his cock was like spunk on my tits, fuck me harder, deeper, yes, yes, all the usual porn-star stuff, but this was for real.
Marcus had given her a bodyguard, a real surfing babe, only about nineteen, and not good enough to be a pro-surfer but with those far-away eyes from staring out to sea and coal-black hair curling over them. Perry, he was called, which made me laugh at first, but I liked him. Issy insisted he go over on the plane with me. I knew the real reason, or I thought I did. She just wanted his eyes off her so she could get a good boning. I had no idea he was supposed to make sure it was a one-way trip. I actually had quite the hots for him, and we get talking on the flight it turns out he’s from the real Cornwall, in England, and when Marcus meets him and finds this out he offers him a job like that. Weird guy, Marcus. I’m thinking there must be more to it than that, like he was one of Marcus’s boyfriends, but it’s not really polite to ask this on a plane full of Yankee tourists so we just talk about music and surfing, and this guy we’re meeting who can get us onto the beaches only the locals use.

I don’t know what I expected; unspoilt island paradise or something, but this was tackier than Torremelinos, not that I’ve ever been to Spain, except Ibiza and that was business.
We don’t stay in a hotel, thank God, but in this lovely big house that Marcus has, with a swimming pool and a Jacuzzi, except they call it a hot-tub, and really crazy flowers and plants everywhere. Jackie, the photographer, tells me he’s part Hawaiian and part Chinese. Whatever. I went to school in Harlesden with half the United Nations and I’m an Irish Cockney, but I smile and pretend to be interested. He’s short, but taller than me, and a bit tubby, but he’s got a good sense of humour and I feel pretty good.
He wants to do some poolside shots, but I’m wasted after the flying, I never knew it was so far, so I just grab some Cheerios and say cheerio and I’m off to bed.
Jack gets his snaps the next day, and Perry introduces me to Hawaiian blonde and Radiohead’s pumping out poolside and I decide to swim a few lengths just to cool down. I can hear some sort of row going on between the guys, but I pay it no mind, and pretty soon Perry joins me in the pool and says Jack’s gone off to sort out the location for tomorrow. I thought we were shooting the day after, but there’s a storm coming, Jack reckons, and he wants to shoot the stills with the local kids before it hits.
I ask him if that’s what the row was about, but he just ignores me and practices dives till the splashing starts to annoy me and I go in and roll a joint with a Silk Cut and check out all the masks and shit on the walls.
We’re eating seafood salad later, and I ask Jack about the masks, like are they some Hawaiian cultural thing, but he says no, they’re all Marcus’s voodoo shit, and Perry looks at him daggers, like he shouldn’t have said that, and says,
“You don’t want to scare the girl, Jack.”
It seems all this stuff is from Africa or somewhere, and Marcus is part African, but you wouldn’t know, and Jack says it all dates back to slavery days, and I’m thinking tell it to the hand, but I just put my chin on my hand and rest my elbow on the table and say, in my best charm school voice,
“Oh really, how fascinating.”
And then I get an RE lesson and Perry rolls another J and says we should get into the hot-tub, so we do, and it’s all very sweet and we just talk about music and surfing and I try on a grass skirt and Jack tries to teach me to hula and it’s such a scream we go out to a beach party at some hotel.

The beach party was full of fat Americans on honeymoon, and it really wasn’t my scene, if you know what I mean, so I took a cab back to the house to get some sleep.
Low tide was at noon, and there was some good surfing with an offshore wind, whatever that is, I think the wind blows out to sea so the waves are bigger but it might be the other way around. Anyway, there’s all Jack’s surfing mates from school, and Perry has borrowed a short-board, and there’s a good tube on this beach with a full moon, he says. Well that should ring alarm bells with me, cos the full moon makes me werewolf girl and I always get the blob on at the new moon so I’m feeling pretty rampant, though me and Issy went on the pill back in London so we could get it on the National Health.
I’m wearing this forties style swim suit, very supportive, and Jack says I look like Jayne Mansfield, and I’m like who? So Jack says, oh, she’s just some movie star who lost her head. So anyway, the kids are surfing, and the surf is easy, and Perry finally gets me to stand up on this long-board that one of the kids has borrowed off his dad, and I keep falling off, but Jack is clicking away and it’s a wrap.
The surf is breaking now, and Perry is out with two of the boys, and Jack’s collecting driftwood to make a fire. We’ve got some beers and I light up a Rothmans and lie back on the beach to soak up some rays. Perry is amazing, but so are the boys, and they come in and have a beer and then they’re gone and the sun is setting over the sea and we’re smoking and talking and Perry is looking so fit and then he turns to Jack and says,
“Ask her Jack.”
“Why does Issy want you dead?” says Jack, striking a match to set the kindling on fire, and I look out to sea and I see the clouds rolling like lava, and I think, like I thought on the plane,
“Shit.”
Only this time its not sympathy for Issy but sheer fear.

“I lent her a wedding dress,” I said and opened another beer.
“Only we are supposed to kill you, you understand,” said Jack “Nothing personal.”
“What do you mean, you lent her a wedding dress?” says Perry, taking the beer out of my hand.
So I tell them the whole story.
“And you could check the DNA on the dress, cos I have it in a safe place” I lied, because I knew it was in the bin-bag in the wardrobe in Issy’s old room.

Perry wandered off with his phone and I could see him walk along the surf-line. The boys were long gone, and even if I’d screamed, the surf would drown out my cries. I waited and looked at Jack.
“Shame to waste those pictures.”
The longer Perry talked, the longer I would live, so when Perry starts walking back, I start to panic, but it’s OK he’s been on the phone to Tris and the whole jobs off. He didn’t know, he says, and Issy’s in rehab after being coked out of her face for a month, and Tris’s old karate teacher is in New York, and They really like me, and I’m starting to shake.
Perry holds me close, and I let him, which was made considering he was going to kill me if he hadn’t made the call, and the fire is crackling and the sun goes down and I just cry.
We finish the beers and walk back to the car, Perry carrying his board on his head and trying to make me laugh, but I’m recalling the story they’ve just told me round the campfire and deciding to get to Dublin to see my da.

When we get back to the house Jack orders pizzas and Perry produces some pink Mitzis and I’m like, what the hell, so we each neck one and get in the hot-tub and I get out and put on a pair of bikini bottoms and belly top and we start playing the Rizla game. That’s the one where you have to guess who you are and you have a Rizla on your head with the name, only you can’t see it? So we’re on the sofa, me and Jack, and Perry is in the armchair, rolling another joint. Jack guesses he’s Donald Duck, and Perry’s like, is that rhyming slang, so we play another game. They won’t tell me who I am and I tear off the paper and it’s Tracy Tregenza and I’m like who?
“She was a girl I was at school with,” says Perry.
“Not two-timing Tracy?” says Jack with a grin, and I’m so tell me you bastard, is she some old girlfriend or something?
It wasn’t the way to play the game, and it was so schoolboy.
“Me and my mate Steve spit-roasted her on Sennen beach” says Perry.
I don’t know where it came from, but a voice said,
“That sounds like fun” and I knew that no-one else’s lips had moved, so it had to be my voice.
And I’m like, maybe I just thought it, and there’s a brief pause, and Jack says,
And I say I saw her suck his dick when I was peeking through the hotel door that time, and then he asks me about Marcus and was he any good, so I go to my room and I get a lipstick, bright red, and I go back and give it to Jack.
I get him to draw a line round my belly, right through my little dolphin stud, and I say,
“Write Issy on the top half” and he does, but his hand is shaking, so I take the lipstick and I make a big capital T on Perry’s chest.
“Now fuck off and get us some food”, I say, and Jack goes off. “Now you can be Tristan and I’ll be Issy” I said to Perry, “but only from the waist up.”
I didn’t hear Jack come in with the steak sandwiches, but I felt his hand on my crotch, just rubbing while I feasted on Perry. I felt something on my back, and I twig that it’s the lipstick, and I take Perry’s cock out of my mouth, and it’s sort of half hard, and thick, but not so long, and I ask Jack what the fuck he’s writing. Perry bursts out laughing and I see he’s written ‘Marcus’ on his T-shirt, only the R is the wrong way, and Brangwin on my back. He’s still rubbing my cunt and I go back to work on Perry and I’m so wet down there that Jack is beginning to push the material inside me. I wonder if my whole sex life is going to be one piece of whoring after another, but I know I want Perry to boff me, so I tell them they have to swap. Perry can be Marcus, and Jack, Tris.
Perry just turns me over on the couch and pulls my knickers aside. He puts his dick in my hand and I just guide it in, easy, like it belonged there, like the missing piece of a jigsaw.
Jack has a sandwich in one hand, and he’s struggling out of his shorts with the other, and I see the cutest little hard-on, it’s small and brown and circumcised and very hard. I have to giggle, but I’m feeling really slutty now just being watched again while I get fucked, so I get him to stand by the sofa and just lick the tip. Well he pretty much explodes in my face, and then Perry jolts a shot of spunk deep into me, and I feel my muscles grasp his prick before he pulls it out.
“Let me lick it clean, please” I say to Perry, and he’s really bashful and his cock is all wrinkling up, like a tiny elephant’s trunk. An elephant with a snotty nose, I think, and I sit up and pull him to me. It’s a strange, salty taste, and I think, I could get used to this, like the taste of gin or beer, when I catch sight of Jack still eating the sandwich and realise I have the munchies real bad.

Ten minutes later we’re in the hot-tub again, like just mates, but I’ve already decided that Dublin can wait a while, and I’m going back to New York with surfer boy, for a week at least. Perry brought me breakfast in bed, which was cool, I couldn’t have faced Jack at the breakfast bar, and he did it again, only slow and sweet and just for me this time, just for me.
Next day Jack drives us to the airport, hands me the portfolio, pecks me on the cheek, and Perry and I are soon up on cloud nine. Cloud 69 is where I want to be, but no mile-high club for Brannie I tell myself. At least not till we change planes.

Chapter IV
Plot and Counterplot

When we get back to New York things have totally changed. Tris is like totally clean, not just doing his Tai Chi stuff, but working out and hanging with his guru who he calls ‘Guv’nor’ like some guy selling the Standard outside a tube station, but without the cockney accent, obviously. This is the guy who brought Tris up after his parents died, and he’s so the opposite of what you’d expect a Kung-Fu fighter to be, just really normal but so old he can remember the Beatles and Elvis and all that.
I think he’s really sweet and I call him Guvvie but Tris thinks it’s disrespectful so I ask Guvvie and he likes it so I carry on.

Tris is really concerned about Issy, and he’s blaming himself for the whole coke thing, but I’m like not too keen to talk about things and I’m feeling pretty insecure so I make sure the dress really is in a safe place by posting it to my mum back in London. I get an apartment in Alphabet City and I’m seeing a lot of Perry, and it’s lovely just to have a normal relationship, even if it did start as a Cornish barbecue. Perry’s on at me to go and see Issy so I finally give in and we decide to go on the train to Long Island where she’s in this place like the Priory only it’s, like, double the price, but that’s OK cos Marcus has insurance for his whole stable.
Americans don’t really do trains, so Tris has got a new experience, he’s how old? Twenty-three and he’s never been on a train, the freak, and Perry’s really into it all like some train-spotter, like all he needs is a beanie and an anorak and a thermos and he’s there, but they don’t have train-spotters, they have hobos, apparently, and then we get talking about the movie and I’m like Ewan MacGregor is so awesome and the journey’s over and we’re on the lawn only this time it’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Anyway it’s really nice, like a health-spa or something you’d see in a magazine, only with nurses. Issy’s really tearful and we go outside into the garden and Tris and Perry go off for a walk and she starts to say how sorry she is, so I tell her about the dress and she’s, well, I don’t blame you, Brannie and I just go mental.
“Well I fucking well blame you you evil bitch” and I rant on and she just starts to cry and that gets me madder and then I look at how pathetic she is and I calm down and she tells me all about Marcus and the honeymoon and how she loves Tris and how much she needs me because I’m the only one she can trust.
“It took you long enough to figure that one out” I say, and she’s off again with what a perv Marcus is, so I tell her about the spit-roast and she’s really shocked and pretty soon we’re deep into girl-talk and by the time the boys get back we’re mates again.
She’s coming out next week and she wants us to go straight into recording and she’s showing me some stuff she’s written with Tris, and it’s good, but she needs the backing. She wants to ditch the harp, and I say, suits me, and I promise to book some rehearsal space and Tris says he’ll help so we all have a big group hug and back to the train.

Marcus has a little party for her in the Cornwall, invited guests only, and he introduces me to his main guys, Nelson, Will and Denny. They all managed different parts of the operation and they hated Tris like poison. The trouble those guys caused for poor old Issy and Tris would make your heart bleed, but they were nothing to this little cross-dressing French dwarf he had on the payroll, Cedric.
Cedric was the voodoo guy, from New Orleans, and Marcus never looked intimidated by anyone except that little shit. He reckoned the dwarf could look into the future or some such, and all the time he was around Marcus would be looking to him for approval.
Funny really, him being the only bloke smaller than Marcus in the whole place, but then short guys are pretty weird I reckon.
There was an A&R girl called Susie who I met that night who worked for Marcus out in the mid-West, based in Chicago, and she asked me to come down and check out the indie scene over there, which sounds like a fun trip.
Even though it was supposed to be a party for Issy, Marcus was moving around, pressing the flesh and talking business, and he’d got a karaoke machine on a little stage and all these trashed stars are singing corny old songs, and Issy does ‘I Will Survive’ which is like so predictable, but she’s just taking the piss, and it’s a hoot. I go to the bar and light up a Chesterfield while the barman mixes me a ‘sex on the beach’, well if you can’t laugh at yourself everyone else will, and I’m looking for Issy but she’s disappeared and so’s Tris.
I go up to the VIP room and Perry’s over by the door so I give him a little kiss and ask him to come downstairs, but he can’t so I’m like why not, and he tells me he’s Issy’s bodyguard, right, and her and Tris are in Marcus’s office and he’s making sure they aren’t interrupted. So I whisper a few suggestions as to what sort of reasons he might have for deserting his post when there’s a little knock and me and Perry walk in to find them playing backgammon.
“We’ve started playing for forfeits” says Issy, “and if you get backgammoned it means a back-scuttling.”
I’ve no idea what being backgammoned means but I grab her and head out to the VIP bar when who walks in but Nelson, Marcus’s head of security, and he looks at us dead suspicious, so I march Issy downstairs and into the ladies.
“Girl, you are too in your face” I told her, “Marcus has a rep for being a hard man, and he’s so into you, it scares me thinking what he’ll do if he finds out.”
Issy looked in the mirror and I lit another ciggy.
“Branny, he won’t. I’ll be careful, honest.”
Just then the dwarf came in, wearing a gold lamé dress and walked past us into the loo. I suppose he never used the gents because he couldn’t reach up to pee in the urinals, so there was no way we could carry on talking. I found Perry chatting to the girl from Chicago and I told him I wanted to go home. He wasn’t too keen, but I asked Marcus, and Marcus said he’d take care of Issy, which was rich, so we got in a yellow taxi and zoomed off into the summer night.

My sister had been organising a party for my eighteenth, and I was desperate to see my mum, so I flew back to Heathrow a couple of days later, which was a big relief. Grainne, my sister, had fixed up a pub-crawl for me and a couple of old mates from school which ended up with us watching some male stripper called Fireman Frank in a club in Southend. It was more like a hen-night than an eighteenth, and it was weird to hear everyone talking about normal stuff, like Leonie was going to uni and my sis had a job in Japan teaching English, and I was jealous of them for a bit, but then I thought of Perry and the stuff me and Issy were working on, and I thought how crazy it was to keep my life in these different boxes and how scary it would be if my two lives joined up. Everyone was asking about Issy, and why wasn’t she back, and I saw her mum later, and went over to see my dad in Dublin, and danced upstairs at Hanlons with the Northsiders and just felt good.
Perry picked me up from the airport and we went back to Marcus’s penthouse for dinner, just the four of us. Marcus had to go to the club, so Perry drove him and me and Issy had a good natter. So she’s asking about the party, and what presents did I get (she got me a really cool stud, like a crab in white gold with rubies for eyes) and I can tell she’s got something to say, so I’m, fess up bitch so she tells me about how careful she’s been, not.
It took ages to worm it out of her, but the story was she and Tris got carried away and they got seen. By Nelson, of all people the guy who ran the whole drug angle for Marcus, which is what security is, really.
So her and Tris are getting their screwing in in Marcus’s office each day, after Marcus checks out for lunch, and they’re playing backgammon (don’t ask) and she loses and she has to do a forfeit only she has to take a leak, so Tris is like, oh pee in the gents, I’ll bet you can’t without getting it all over your shoes, so they go in giggling, and he’s right, she can’t, but he gets so turned off he just shags her up against the wall, and then she has to suck his dick, like you do, so there’s Issy, spunk dripping out of her, Tris’s dick in her mouth when they hear the door to the office open, just as Tris comes again, in her hair. Well, there is nowhere to hide, so when Nelson walks into the gents there’s Issy washing her hair while Tris takes a leak, and a rather slippery floor. Nelson just stands next to Tris and has a pee and goes out again.
“How big was it?”
“Brannie, it’s no time for joking. I didn’t turn to look. I was too busy washing spunk out of my hair.”
“Like ‘South Pacific’. Oh, never mind, Go on.”
“Well Nelson has told Will, and Will told Denny and they decide how to tell Marcus that they think Tris is getting a bit close now so now he’s banned from the club and Marcus is just really suspicious, and I haven’t had a good fuck for a week” she says, pouting.
“What about Marcus,” I ask, “has he stopped perving too?”
“That doesn’t count.”
“So you haven’t seen Tris for a week?”
“Oh no babe, I meet him on the basement steps in front of the club , but sucking cock can’t satisfy a girl, even as part of a calorie controlled diet.”
I tell her she needs to take a break, maybe go back to see her mum, get a reality check and stop this, but I don’t really mean it. Marcus is an old perv and she loves Tris. It’s just a shame she can’t get a divorce, but she says Marcus is such a psycho he’d kill her, and then there’s the music, so I tell her be careful and Perry calls me up and I’m down to the lobby and back with my boy for some civilised indoor sex.

Well after Perry’s given me a good seeing to I’m sitting on the loo (with the door closed, because some things are just not meant to be shared, Iss), and Perry’s snoring like a pig and I’m thinking about a way out for Issy, so I roll a nice fat skunky one and I’m sitting in the kitchen smoking when I get the idea. So I wake Perry, and fight him off, and make him sit up and we drink some coffee and I tell him my cunning plan.

Next day I have to meet Denny who’s Marcus’s publicity guy and we’re talking about the new CD and tour dates and the vid, and I make out I’m really worried about Issy and Tris and is something going on and why doesn’t he talk to Nelson about doing some real security, not just selling coke to the rich and famous, and Denny’s really defensive, and says what do I mean, so I say, “Well, CCTV would be a start, but maybe that’s too sophisticated for you Yanks” and I’m thinking maybe I’m too obvious but never mind and I can hear the cogs whirring and he’s about to say something and he makes an excuse and goes into the gents and I can hear him on the phone. He comes back and he’s talking tour dates and he says that he doesn’t think there’s anything going on and what sort of mate am I and I think what a lame liar, so far so good.

Meanwhile, Perry’s told the bold and cunning plan to Tris, who’s spending his days with Guvvie in a gym over in Brooklyn. He phones me later and all he can talk about is their bikes. I mean, what is it with men? They all want some big throbbing thing between their legs? It’s just so gay. I’m starting to stress now, because Issy doesn’t know so I arrange to meet up with her for coffee and I’m standing outside the diner puffing on a Consulate, cos I’m on a health kick, when I see Cedric the dwarf.
He looks at me dead suspicious, but I just smile and say hi, so he scuttles past in his American Tan tights and twin-set and I go in. Issy’s half an hour late, which isn’t unusual, and she’s nervous as hell, cutting up her cheesecake into tiny pieces and not really listening.
“It’s simple. You meet Tris in Marcus’s office and just act. You know how to act. You’re a girl, we’re like born to perform.”

Well it worked out exactly as I’d planned it. Marcus gets word there’s a meeting between Issy and Tris, on tape. He’s down to the club for a private screening. Suddenly, it’s all change. He’s as happy as a dog with two dicks, as my da says. He’s bought flowers for Issy and Tris is back in favour.
I’m desperate to see this tape, so Perry gets a copy and brings it back to my apartment and we sit on the sofa and cue the action.
After about five minutes I’m rolling on the floor howling with laughter, and I’ve not touched any pot, and I look up and tears are rolling down Perry’s face, he loves it.

The tape.
Issy’s sitting at Marcus’s desk, doing her fan mail (nice touch, Iss), when there’s a knock at the door.
ISSY: Come in.
TRIS: We have to talk.
ISSY: Tristan, what are you doing here? If Marcus finds out he’ll kill us both. He thinks I’m having an affair with you. I swear to God I love only the man I saved myself for, I can’t stand to think of another man’s hands touching me. I like you, Tristan, but only because you are Marcus’s nephew, he trusted you to look after me, and you have. But that mincing freak, Cedric, and that lying bastard Nelson and his pals, they’re jealous of us.
TRIS: The Three Stooges. They too have fallen for that dwarf’s lies. I’m sure that bastard is the one behind these nasty rumours but I want to tell you I’m going away. I can’t stay here to bring suspicion and dishonour on your good name.
(At this point I looked around to see Perry biting his knuckles and wheezing like an old man with the effort not to choke.)
ISSY: But Tristan, if you go, then they will say it proves you’re guilty, and me too. I’m afraid Marcus, much as I love him, has a terrible anger in him. I shudder to think what he’d do.
TRIS: You must go and tell him it isn’t true. Otherwise I have no choice but to quit my life here and go with the Guvnor to Japan and live out my days as a Zen monk.

There was more, but I stopped the tape and just looked at Perry.
“And Marcus fell for this?”
“Hook, line and sinker, baby.”
We gave each other high fives and Perry opened a bottle of Moet.
“Here’s to the stars of the Irish-American Marionette Theatre.”
“You think they were that real?” I say, and we clink glasses.

Chapter V
The Assignation at the Brook

In the morning Marcus summons me to his office, and there’s Tris and Issy and the Three Stooges, and he goes off on one about what a bitch I am spreading rumours, and how Denny has told him about my suspicions and I should know better. Issy’s behind him and she’s just grinning and I’m hoping the tape’s not on, then he rips out the camera and thrusts it into Nelson’s hand and he tells us all what I already know, how Tris is like a son to him, and he trusts his wife and has no time for this shit, and he gives Tris a big hug and he says,
“I’ve told you guys this already, but I’m saying it again for these mother-fuckers” (auntie-fuckers would fit better I think to myself), “Tris is free to come and go as he likes. And if anyone says anything about my wife I personally will waste the bastard.”
I’m still trying not to laugh about Tris being free to come as he likes, but I see everyone’s making their apologies, though Nelson looks like he’s swallowed a crab, and then Marcus turns to Nelson and says he wants to see Cedric.
Well that little drag-artist managed to weasel his way out of it by spinning some yarn about the planets, and Marcus let him off with a brief bouncing off the walls and stopped his dress allowance for a few months, but he still believed in that voodoo crap, and he didn’t want to get hexed I suppose, so the little bastard was still under our feet, like, literally.

The next few weeks were crazy. Guvvie and Tris and me and Issy spent all our time biking around New England, checking out the autumn leaves and the bridges of Madison County, and, in Issy and Tris’s case, coming as they liked in different motel rooms, while Guvvie taught me how to ride on his chopper (I mean his Triumph thingy).
Perry was at a bit of a loose end, so Marcus gave him some time off, and said Tris could take care of Issy, and I was getting a bit tired of having him around all the time, so I say, why not take a break and get back to some surfing, dude? So he goes off to the west coast and while he’s away it’s that time of the month again, and I’m like, well you’ve had sex with two guys in your life, Brangwin, one’s your best mate’s husband and the other was going to kill you, so I head off to a singles bar and pick up this sweet Jewish guy, and take him back to mine, and it kind of breaks the spell. I didn’t give him my phone number and I never saw him again, but I felt a bit more in control, so when Perry comes back I’m pleased to see him, but not in that needy way, and he’s got me a theramin, which is this really cool instrument you can just dance around, so I put it in my bedroom and just groove. He’s brought a load of surf-boy music, some old stuff with the Beach Boys doing ‘Good Vibrations’ and me and Issy decide to do some covers after the tour which is set up for the winter.

Me and Issy are nothing in the States so we have to do all these colleges and stuff, but we have this tour bus which is great, it’s like just me and her and Perry and Tris and Guvvie does the driving and it’s got beds and a bar and we spend our time smoking weed and drinking beer and playing games and after the show we get drunk with the roadies and just pile into the bus to sleep it off. We finish the tour back in London, and Issy hasn’t seen her mum for a year so we go out with our mates up in Harlesden and everything’s cool and the Monkey Girl single is at number three so it’s free drinks and we get treated like royalty, which my ma says is a bit hard to handle if you’re an Irish Republican.
We never did get to make that video at the zoo. Denny got it done by some computer animation firm, one of Marcus’s Italian associates had an interest in, and it’s pretty cutting edge, so I don’t get to go to Dublin to film, but my da comes over, and him and mum don’t argue, which is a first.

Issy hasn’t seen her mum since the wedding, so they head off to Paris together with Perry, and me and Tris fly back to New York. Marcus seems to have found himself some relief while Issy’s away because there’s a new doorman at the club who so couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag, and he’s pretty in that choirboy way that just makes you want to puke.
So Marcus seems to be happy with the situation when Issy gets back and he does the good husband thing, but the mad jealousy’s on the back burner and it’s not even simmering.

Issy and Tris are getting bolder, like he gets a room at the hotel and he’s in the up elevator when Marcus is coming down and in the bed while the sheets are still warm, and Issy’s so full of his spunk you can see it bubbling up behind her eyes.
They reckon lightning never strikes twice, but one shag a day is not enough for Issy and she starts meeting with Tris in the Cornwall Club after lunch, just like before. It’s just after her birthday party, which was pretty wild even by New York standards, with Tris headlining while six strippers performed behind him, and they didn’t stop performing after the set finished. The whole thing just turned into an orgy and I saw Issy in the VIP room sitting astride Tris, with more than a stiff drink inside her. I had the painters in so I was not going to take part, I’d shed enough blood in that club already, but Will, the third wise man, head of A&R, and Susie’s boss, was not amused.

Anyway, a couple of days later, Marcus has gone to lunch and Issy and Tris are in the VIP loos, only it’s the ladies this time, and apparently Issy’s got a meeting with Susie’s boss, Will, so he knocks on the door and lets himself in and he can hear every word, and Issy’s not quiet, like she kept us awake on that tour bus most nights, but it’s all
“Tris, fuck me harder you bastard” and “God, I wish you had two dicks so I could have one up my arse and one up my cunt” and “Sit down I’m going to piss on your balls” which is not easy to explain away.
It’s not like she’s just groaning when she comes and she can say she’s got a bad case of constipation, though with that girl’s tastes colonic irrigation would have been a complete waste of money. So when she comes out and sees Will in the office, she’s like, have you been waiting long, and he’s, uhu, and Tris is still in there, so she knows she has to brazen it out and she opens the loo door and shouts
“Tristan, have you fixed that ball-cock yet, only Will is here” and Tris comes out and looks Will in the eye and says,
“Be a pal, Will, and fetch me a screwdriver. One with a thick shank and a big fat end” and Will just gets up and goes out.

Well I’m in the recording studio with a couple of session guys, laying down the backing tracks for Issy’s vocals, and this is the first time I’ve produced, and I’m only eighteen, when my mobile starts vibrating and it’s Issy in fits of laughter telling me the story. I’m like, girl what are you on? I know it’s cock not coke this time and there’s no way she’s going to listen to me, but I have a mega uneasy feeling and I stop work and call Perry.
Marcus has a meet that night with Nelson, Will, Denny and Cedric in the penthouse and I’m told to take Issy out to mine so I do. It’s springtime now, so we go for a walk in the park and Issy’s just really happy and I don’t want to bring her down, and she says I’m exaggerating and she goes back to Marcus, and he’s all apologetic and tells her we’re going to California to shoot the vid for the surf CD.
Tris and Guvvie decide to do the whole coast to coast thing on their bikes, and I’m just sorry I can’t tag along, but we’re all flying out in a jet Marcus has chartered and meeting the film crew out there.
We get to stay in this amazing house that Marcus is renting off some actor he knows who’s off filming in Hong Kong and we go to Beverley Hills and that Chinese restaurant with all the stars’ prints in the sidewalk outside and do some serious retail therapy before we get to do any work, which is cool.
The filming is on this private beach and it’s so far away we camp out , which is cool with the owners because Marcus pays them, as usual, and it’s a big family thing with Marcus and all his main men and Tris and Guvvie arrive, and we’ve got loads of camera equipment and the crew are really professional so by the end of the second day the director reckons he’s got everything he needs for an edit, so then Marcus says we’ll have a party on the beach, and Issy’s whispering to me how maybe I’d like another roasting, but I’m just too chilled out to bother replying.
I’ve given up the cigarettes now, and I’m just smoking grass like the Yanks do, with this little silver roach clip Perry got me in a shop in Malibu, and Perry’s surfing with a couple of the guys, and there’s a truck with a generator hooked up to an amazing sound system, and Tris is mixing some sounds and everyone’s in party mood.
Issy and Tris have had the sense to keep their hands off each other though Issy’s wriggling like an eel whenever Tris is around, and me and her are sitting talking when Tris comes over and says Marcus wants him to go to San Francisco in the morning to see Marcus’s cousin, Art, who’s a well cool producer that Issy is desperate to get to produce our next CD. So there’s a real tension in the air, because there’s no way they’ll find a way of getting laid until we’re back in New York now, and that’ll be at least a week, and I can see they’re both gagging for it. Just then Marcus comes across with Cedric, and he wants Issy to go with them to get her Tarot read, and they’re away a while, then Issy crashes out on this bedroll and Cedric starts raking the sand all around.
I’m like, what the fuck? So Perry says it’s so obvious and Tris is like furious and they explain it to me and I’m like devious mother-fuckers, but that’s Cedric for you.
Marcus is back at the DJ desk, which is just off the road, and Tristan’s like fuming, so I roll another joint and he says “I knew those fuckers were planning to trap us, and if they think I’m dumb enough just to walk across that sand and leave my footprints all over it so they’ve got proof we’re screwing …..”
And Perry’s like,
“Yeah, Tris, you can cool it for tonight, mate.”
“Will I hell cool it” says Tris, “I’m gonna jump.”
Well it’s dark by now, and Tris takes this amazing leap over the raked sand and lands right next to Issy, only he cuts his foot on an old coke tin while he’s doing it. Ten minutes later he jumps back, with that pleased look on his face guys always have, and I’m thinking he must have gagged her to keep her quiet, Issy being such a screamer like I said. Well I see his foot. It’s a nasty cut so I clean it off with some vodka and bandage it with a piece of beach towel and then we see torches coming over from the truck and it’s Marcus and Cedric and the three wise men, as Perry calls them. They walk past us and over to where Issy’s pretending to be asleep and look around and then there’s this screaming and shouting and Marcus is dragging Issy over by her hair and Nelson has a gun and the torches are shining in my eyes and Marcus says,
“On your feet, nephew.”
So Tris stands up and Marcus makes this speech about how he’d trusted them and they’d betrayed him, and Issy’s on her knees and he’s still holding her by the hair, and Tris is just standing up with his hands on his head, and Nelson has him lie down on the floor and Cedric starts to kick sand his face.
It seems there’s blood all over the bedroll, and Marcus is shining the torch on Tris’s leg and pulling off the bandage and then he knocks Tris on the back of his head with the torch and he just stands up and looks at us. I start to gabble on about how there must be some explanation, and Cedric sneers at me and says do we want to do DNA tests to prove it, and Marcus butts in and says this whole plan was supposed to prove Issy’s innocence, and he only went along with it because Nelson and Will said they wouldn’t work for a man who let himself get treated with such disrespect and he starts to cry.

Just then this really evil-looking biker guy runs over and Perry whispers that its Ivan who runs the local Hells Angels Chapter and his guys are being paid to keep an eye on the road by Nelson, and he’s the guy Perry got the grass from. So then Marcus pulls himself together and tells Nelson he wants a swimming accident so they start to drag Tris across the sand towards the surf, and he’s still out cold from that whack Marcus gave him with the torch.
Ivan’s stroking this filthy beard he’s got and I see him lean down to talk to Cedric who’s wearing this ridiculous one-piece swimming costume, and he stands up and says,
“Marcus King, sir, I got maximum respect for you, sir, but don’t you think you’re being too easy on the bitch?”
And Marcus asks what the hell he means and then Ivan says he’d like to take special care of Issy and his boys would love to help, and Marcus pulls her up by the hair and she’s screaming “Tristan!” and when Ivan sees her he just shines his torch on her, and she’s like, naked, and he says in this horrible voice,
“Real special care, Marcus. I got an idea for a party.” And he just laughs like some pantomime villain, and I’m thinking this can’t be real, we’re just two Irish girls from Harlesden having a good time, so then I see Marcus just nod and he lets go of Issy and Nelson and Ivan grab an arm each and they just drag her off towards the road.
Marcus looks at me and Perry and makes it clear what’s going to happen if we don’t keep our mouths shut, and he phones his driver to come and get him and drive him and Cedric back to the house.

Chapter VI
The Ordeal

Perry has his hand over my mouth to stop me screaming, and I can hear the Angels’ bikes revving up, and there’s this beautiful moon shining on the waters but it’s so ugly I’m just sobbing. The bikes are gone, and Perry gets up and he’s running after where Will and Denny are dragging Tris and I run after him shouting and sobbing at the same time to stop or they’ll kill him too.
When we get to the water I can hardly see through the dark and my tears, but they’ve dragged the body into the surf, and the tide is going out and they’re walking back towards us then straight past us, and I can just see this shape floating in the water getting carried out to sea, and it’s Tris, beautiful Tris, with his face down, just floating. Will and Denny stand and watch a while, then they just turn, and Perry’s already in the water, and he’s swimming out, but the tide’s really strong and he can’t catch up.
He comes out and he’s doubled up and breathless and I’m still looking out to sea and I see this movement and I’m shouting at Perry and it’s like Tris is waving, and he starts to swim out along the shoreline, southwards to the next beach.
We watched him, and I’m like, what the hell? and Perry says it must be something to do with all that martial arts training and I start to run back to get my phone to call Guvvie, but Perry’s like slow down we don’t want to bump into Denny and Will, so I turn back to look at the sea and I’m wondering if I’ll ever see Issy again.
Guvvie was back at the house, because he so didn’t do parties, especially our sort of parties, and he’s on his Triumph whatever (he had this thing about British bikes and him and Tris would have the most boring conversations you can imagine) and he’s really calm and Perry tells him what’s happened and I’m like, how’s he going to find him, and make sure he takes the back roads, and just stamping my feet with frustration. Perry hangs up and we walk over to the truck with the generator on it and no-one’s around so we get in the cab and try to sleep.
I’m having this nightmare where I’m being chased by guys on horses and my feet start dancing out this rhythm as I run, and I wake up and it’s my ring-tone, only Perry grabs the phone first and it’s Tris, and he tells Perry he’s OK and him and Guvvie are camped out in some pinewood somewhere and where the hell are the Angels? Well Perry knows the area pretty well, like he was down surfing at Pools Verdi or somewhere, so that’s how he met Ivan in the first place, and he tells Tris how to get to their Chapter house, and I’m like, be careful Tris, and Tris tells me not to worry and tells us just to get back to New York tonight.
Perry decides to drive the truck to the airport, so he just takes all the electric leads off and starts up and we sort of lurch onto the road, and we’re really close to people all along. There’s houses and bars around, and I stop feeling so scared but I have this nagging thought in my head, like, how well does Perry know Ivan? Pretty soon I’m nagging Perry, and I say
“So how many of Ivan’s little parties did you go to, huh?”
And Perry’s being quite patient, but then he snaps and says if I must know he went to one but what’s really freaking him out is Ivan has AIDS and even if Tris gets to save her life then it’s just a death sentence anyway, and I’m like no, wait what about all those drugs you can get, and I grab the phone and say we have to call Tris, but Perry knocks it out of my hand and starts shouting about how Tris will just go mad and get himself killed if he knows and the Angels have got guns.

Well I’m just sitting with my knees up in this bikini giving Perry the silent treatment, just running a movie in my head about what horrors Issy is going through, and Perry starts getting all practical, like how all our stuff is back at the house, and his wallet’s soaking from the sea, and have I got my ID, so I just put my bag on the dash and carry on the sulk while the sun comes up and we get to the airport.
We get some odd looks, shopping for clothes but this is California after all, so they’re used to freaks, and Perry gets the tickets and a bottle of bourbon and a carton of Peter Stuyvesant for me, which is sweet because I never smoked that brand before. The drink and fags calm me down, and Perry says,
“Listen babe, no-one’s dead. We’ll head back to your apartment and get your passport and I’ll take you over to my mum’s place in St Ives.”
I sleep against his shoulder all the way, and we get a cab to my apartment, and then I can’t find my passport, and I realise I’ve left it at the movie star’s house, so I start to panic. Perry says not to worry, and we go to the club two days later with some mates, and there’s plenty of people around, and Marcus sends for Perry to come to his office. Well I’m pretty scared, but Perry comes back in one piece and takes me outside and tells me everything’s cool, and then my mobile rings and it’s an unknown number so I switch it off and we go back into the club for another drink and I’m still thinking about California and how we’ve heard nothing when I twig what the answer-phone message might be and head to the ladies to listen.
Issy’s voice from a callbox and she’s safe and don’t try and call her on the mobile because Marcus might trace them and she’s calling from a phone box and everything’s OK but am I? And how’s Perry and then they run out of coins or something and the call stops with a brrrr.
I try to light a cigarette and my hands are trembling and someone is knocking on the door, and it’s Susie with some guy so I open the door and she apologises but I decide to go out and tell Perry the good news.

I just stay at home waiting for another call, and finally Issy calls on the landline from some gas station she won’t say where and she tells me the story.

Tris wanted to go straight after Issy but Guvvie wouldn’t let him. Said he’s lost too much blood and wasn’t thinking straight, but Tris insists, so they ride out to the Angels’ place which is some old diner on a road no-one uses anymore, and they see there’s guys with guns on lookout so they hang back and watch. Guvvie manages to get up to a place where he can see through the windows and he tells Tris it’s just guys drinking and smoking and playing pool and Issy seems to be asleep in a booth with a blanket over her.
Issy’s drugged of course. Ivan’s made this speech to her when they get her back about how none of the guys are going to fuck her until she’s begging for it, and they hold her down and stick a needle in her. Well she’s off into vivid dreamland, and all her panic and pain and problems have gone away, and when she comes round they give her a coffee and wipe off the puke and give her another shot of smack. It doesn’t take Guvvie long to figure out what Ivan’s doing, he wants her addicted and then he’s going to dry her out so much she’ll be so desperate for a hit she’ll do anything. So he’s telling Tris this, and Tris is wound up he wants to go straight in, but Guvvie says they have a few days, and the goons with the guns will be gone soon, and anyway Tris’s foot is going septic.

Guvvie gets a camp going and he’s off on the bike to get some supplies, food and something for Tris’s foot, and petrol for the getaway.
He’s right about Ivan, and after a night the Angels are gone from out the front, and there’s just five or six inside the diner, though one guys always on guard, and they start to leave it a while before Issy gets a shot, and they’re feeding her, and giving her drinks, but no heroin unless she does something for them. Guvvie knows that they’ll have to go in, and soon, if they want to save her, but what he doesn’t see is the stuff she actually does. I’m amazed that she can get addicted so fast, like the whole time frame’s only three days, but I’ve been in fear of murder, so I can see how she would anyway.
So Issy’s performing for them on the pool table, and one of the guys shouts out,
“Show us what caused all the trouble, bitch” so she has to and he tries to stick a beer bottle up her, but Ivan knocks it out of his hand and says that’s enough and she gets another hit, which makes the nightmare go away again, she says, and still no-one’s touched her, but her body’s starting to feel like it isn’t hers, and she’s just a corpse dancing.

Guvvie has the sense to let the tyres down on the Angels’ bikes, and Tris is finding it hard to walk with his bad foot, but Guvvie says it’s now or never, so they go up to the front door and knock. Ivan tells some filthy grease-bag to open it and Issy’s out cold again lying on the pool table with the blanket over her, and Ivan looks at Tris like he’s a dead man walking and Guvvie pulls out a sawn-off shotgun and just fires it in the ceiling. I’m amazed when she tells me this, thinking that Tris and Guvvie are going to be pulling some fancy karate moves like a Bruce Lee movie, but there’s just wood and plaster and dust all over, and Tris has grabbed the gun from the greaser by the door, and everyone’s ears are just ringing.
Ivan’s just standing there as the dust settles, and Guvvie tells the other guys to get out, so they go over to the bikes, and discover the tyres are flat, and Guvvie tells them they’ll have to walk, and it’ll do the fat bastards good, and he makes them strip off down to their pants and takes their mobiles and the fat ugly fuckers are just walking on this dirt road barefoot with Guvvie holding his shotgun to see them safely off.
By the time Issy’s had some of the coffee Guvvie’s brewed up Tris has Ivan’s head down the toilet and he’s pulled him up for the third time and Ivan’s screaming he never laid a finger on her, he swears it on his mother’s grave, and Tris kicks his ass back into the diner and there’s rain coming down through the hole in the roof, so Issy’s wrapped up in a blanket and Guvvie’s fetched in the clothes he’s bought her, and she’s holding on to a coffee and shaking, and she says it’s true, he never did. Tris asks her what he should do and how he deserves to die, but Guvvie says if they just hurt him there’s no federal case and they can be in Arizona by morning and maybe they should ask Issy.
Issy decides on some Irish justice so Tris takes the pistol and shoots him in the knees and the elbows and they just leave him there screaming on the floor. Issy picks up a bag of smack and drops it on the floor just in front of him so he’ll have to crawl for it if he wants some pain relief, and they walk out up the track into the woods while Ivan cries for his mummy.

They’ve got no passports, so they can’t cross into Mexico, and Tris reckons Marcus will have his Mafia buds keeping a lookout, so they’re camping out in the country, like cowboys, and heading back to New York the slow way, like there’s no rush and it could be months.

I get another call about a week later, and they’re up in the mountains somewhere and they’re camping out and living off the land, and it’s really romantic, and Tris is such a wonderful guy, but she’s already beginning to miss hot water and sheets and she’s dying to see me, so I tell her that’s about the size of it, and Marcus is brooding like some old hen, and word got out about the escape but there’s no police involved, the shooting got blamed on another gang, but the press are onto this mysterious disappearance and Denny’s just really busy trying to cool down the gossip and make out it’s just pressure of work. Variety reckon it’s all a publicity stunt for the new album, and pretty soon the hacks have given up and there’s no more press door-stepping everyone at the club.




Chapter VII
Asses Ears

We all know that Cedric was like Marcus’s witch-doctor or something, but there was more to their relationship than that. Cedric knew Marcus’s secret, and a pretty dreadful secret it was for a man who made his living from music. Marcus was tone deaf, and Cedric whose taste in clothes was appalling, was pretty clued in when it came to music. Maybe it was the New Orleans thing, maybe he just hung with so many weird people, but he had his finger on the pulse and he could sniff out a new trend like a Japanese businessman with a pair of schoolgirl’s knickers. Anyway, he’s out drinking with Will one day, and Will starts taking the piss, and Cedric’s like some kid, saying “I know something you don’t know” and Will asks him, so Cedric says he’s sworn not to tell, so he writes it on a matchbook, and Will stashes it away, but the words are,
“Marcus has a tin ear.”

A few days later Marcus and Will are going through some demos that various random wannabes have sent in, and Marcus is a bit disconnected so Will asks if he wants Cedric’s advice.
“What the hell would I want that transvestite here for?” asks Marcus, and Will says to him doesn’t he help you out?
And Marcus is acting dumb as well as (tone) deaf so Will tells him about the conversation in the bar and Marcus calls Denny and Cedric and Nelson and he gets so riled that by the time they arrive he’s snorted a gram of coke and the only cool thing about him is his haircut, and the guy’s going bald.
Cedric’s jive-assing about with the boys and Marcus sits down and motions to Will and he gets out the book of matches and asks Cedric to explain.
Cedric must’ve been crazy, I mean he could have backed off, passed it off as a joke, but he’s just completely brazen and he tells the guys all about the talent he’s spotted and that includes me and Issy, and Will’s OK on dance music, but Marcus hasn’t got a clue, and Marcus just loses it and picks him up and swings him round and knocks his brains out against the wall.

Perry was round at mine, and we’d just dropped a couple of e’s and we’re in the bath with some surf music on the CD player and I’m just watching the way his cock floats like I’ve never noticed before. We’d had loads of time together, and Marcus didn’t really want to see either of us, what with us reminding him of Issy and Tris, so when Perry’s mobile rings (and he always answers, even when we’re in mid-shag) I’m amazed it’s Marcus, but he has to go over to the club like now.
I’m so randy I insist on getting some man juice before he goes, and he’s quite annoyed and really rough so it’s pretty good, and I don’t want him to leave but he insists.

Perry doesn’t get back till dawn, and he just climbs into bed next to me and I sort of half wake up in that sleepy dormouse mood and just spoon him and fall asleep again.
We go out for breakfast, and as we’re walking he tells me all about Cedric and how Marcus has made him get rid of the body. We sit in the square and eat donuts and drink coffee and I can tell he wants to spare me the gory details and he has big black rings under those faraway eyes, and I say,
“Fuck it Perry. Let’s go back and see your ma in Cornwall.”
But he says he’s implicated now and Marcus has his balls like this and he squeezes his cup and the hot coffee hits him where it hurts and he’s dancing around pulling at his crotch while these two Puerto Rican girls just laugh at him.
We have to go back to mine, and he’s got a blister on his dick and I tell him that must be what foreskins were designed for, but he just sits there with an ice pack while I put his trousers in the washing machine.

We’re both knackered from the effects of the e, so I roll a joint and we go to bed. I’m thinking there’s going to be no sex for a while, but Perry lets his tongue do the talking, and afterwards he tells me about driving down to some pier and meeting a couple of Italian guys who help him throw Cedric’s body in the East River. I’m surprised he needed any help, what with Cedric weighing all of six stone, but Perry says again that this way Marcus has witnesses to tie him in and he’s lucky to be back in favour.

I can’t feel sorry for Cedric, with him being the cause of all the problems for Issy and Tris, and I’m thinking that maybe with him out of the way I can find a way of convincing Marcus that the whole thing’s a mistake and Issy’s faithful to him, and Tris is just protecting her. I look over at Perry and he’s fast asleep and I lie back and think of England, and how much fun everything was before we met Marcus King.

I started going back to the club again to meet Perry, who was working as Marcus’s gopher now, and Marcus has put the album on hold and Denny’s put out the story that this trip with Tris and Issy has been planned, and killing Cedric seems to chilled Marcus out a bit, when the body gets found.
While all this shit is hitting the fan, Issy and lover boy are shacked up in some commune Guvvie knows about up in Montana or Wyoming run by a guy called O’Green, which is the fakest Irish name I ever came across, but it’s all to do with Buddhism or something so maybe it means something in Tibetan.
This guy really starts to work on Tris, and he spends all his time meditating, and the whole sex thing starts to cool off, and Tris is like, maybe it’s just wrong and she should get back with Marcus, when Guvvie gets word there’s some city types hanging around the nearest town asking questions, so they say their sayonaras and we head off east.
I’ve managed to get word to Issy about what’s happened to Cedric, and maybe this gets them too relaxed about the situation, but the next thing I hear is they’re on the way to Vegas, Issy says they’re nearly broke and she’s feeling lucky, and the rooms are really cheap, or free if you start to win.

Back in New York, Marcus has started coking it up real bad, and he’s taken to having little parties up in the penthouse where him and his boys just go snow-boarding with their noses, and then send Perry out to get a hooker or two.
Pretty soon Perry’s getting pressured into joining in Marcus’s little orgies, and I tell him I don’t want to sleep with him anymore, and I start hanging down at the Cornwall, which is going to hell in a big way. The beautiful people have all left, but the freaks are still there, and there’s all these performance artists like the girl who fires ice-cubes out of her cunt at the audience and Denny’s just dealing anything, even horse.
The police were really cool about Cedric, partly cos Marcus pays them all so well, but mainly it looked like an accident, but the drug thing is totally out of hand.
Marcus calls us all over to the club for a big meet in his office and he looks like shit, with his hair all standing on end like a bog-brush. We all file in and sit on the sofas and he tells us he’s closing the place down for four weeks for refurbishment, and he’s taking some time off. I catch him after the meeting, and he mixes me up a margarita like the first time I met him and I ask him has he spoken to Issy’s mum? He’s a bit sheepish for a gangster, but they reckon all that family values shit even more than the Irish, and he takes me back into the office and phones her.

He’s so wasted he’s forgotten the time difference and Issy’s mum is in bed so he says he’ll phone back and I say a quick hello and put the phone down.
“Marcus,” I say “is that the first time you’ve called her since you tried to kill her daughter?”
I light up an Embassy and offer him one but he just starts to rack out another line on his frosted desk-top.
“Will you not stop doing that shit and take a hold of yourself?” I say, sounding just like my ma used to when my dad would come in drunk, and the weird thing is he does. Guys can be such total pussy cats, even guys like Marcus.
“What can I say?” he says. “I’ve started to think maybe Cedric staged the whole thing, I just don’t know anymore.”
Well, I don’t want to queer my pitch, as my da would say, so I just give his hand a squeeze and say I’ll be seeing Issy’s mum when I go to London, and Marcus says how he trusts me totally and do I know where Issy is.
I’m not so dumb as to tell him, so I say last I heard they were up in Montana, and he says he only wants to find out the truth and he loves her so I leave quietly and go home to pack my stuff.


Chapter VIII
Discovery

You might think August in London is unbearable, but take it from me, New York is ten times worse. I was glad to see that green quilt of fields as we came down through the clouds, and when landed my sis was at the airport to meet me. She’s telling me all about her time in Japan, teaching English in a primary school, and trying to teach me Japanese and telling me about this cute Japanese drummer she’s shagging.
We get back to Harlesden and mum’ cooked us champ, which is my all-time favourite food, and I’m back in my old room and I unpack my case and take out the theramin and set it up and groove for a bit. Grainne comes in to check out what the sound is and she’s well impressed and reckons Ron, that’s her boy, would love it.
“You’re going out with a Japanese guy called Ron?” I laugh, and she gets the giggles and says it worse because his surname is Park, and I’m like, Ron Park, sounds like the school-keeper at St Xavier’s, but it turns out his family’s Korean, which is like being Irish in Japan, only worse.
It turns out to be one of those unforgettable English summers, and we spend loads of time at the Lido in Hampstead and shopping in Oxford Street and just having a good old London time. I finally get round to seeing Issy’s mum, and tell her about Tris and Issy, not the gruesome stuff but how she loves him and they’ve run off together, and she cries a lot but she’s quite relieved I think, and maybe things start making sense to her.
It’s a couple of weeks before I hear from America, and it isn’t Issy that calls, but Perry, and I’m still pretty hacked off with his sleazy ass, but he’s got a top story to tell, so I listen.

Marcus disappears from the club, and no-one knows where he’s gone, until he comes back with a bizarre story. Issy and Tris did go to Vegas, and they stay at a Casino called the Morrois and they have amazing luck at blackjack and win a pot of money and they’re upgraded to this huge room with two enormous double beds. Guvvie has a real downer on gambling, and he’s staying out in the desert on his own, so Issy manages to get Tris back into doing the bad thing and they’re really happy.
The floor manager checks them out, like they do with all the high rollers, and someone on the staff recognises Issy and they tell the boss, who’s some well dodgy front man for the mob. Marcus gets a call and he flies straight down and puts up at another place he’s got a share in.
Well Issy’s had a good night playing roulette, and they’re up about ten grand by now, and they go off to bed for a Commodore night, once, twice, three times, and Issy’s very sore and so’s Tris and they put their pyjamas on, because the air-con is a killer, and the money’s in a big pile between the two beds, and for some drunken shagged out reason they each get into separate beds before they go to sleep.
Lady luck is on their side that night because Marcus pays them a visit with the pass-key and a gun in his hand. He sees what he wants to see, of course, two innocents in stripy jim-jams, and one of them the woman he loves, and the other his innocent and devoted nephew, heir to his fortune, reduced to card counting in some sleazy casino to get enough moolah to survive.
Marcus looks down at Issy’s hand, and she’s still wearing her wedding ring, but she’s lost so much weight it’s really loose on her finger. He puts the gun in his pocket and takes off her ring and puts his ring in its place then he kisses her on the head and lets himself out.

Now Marcus is back in New York, seeing to the re-opening night, and telling anyone who’ll listen about how he done her wrong, and everyone had damn well better listen to Marcus King.

Well it took Issy a while to work out what felt strange when she woke up, and she was in the shower dowsing her hangover when the ring fell off and she picked it out of the drain and recognised it was the one she had given to Marcus.
Tris was convinced Marcus was just playing with them, like cat and mouse, and there’d be a whole load of guys downstairs waiting, or maybe even out in the corridor, so they had to climb out of the fire escape, which is like some steel ladder with hoops.
Issy’s got no head for heights, so it’s ages before they’re down on the ground and Tris won’t go to the garage to get the bike, but calls up Guvvie to come and get them while they wait in a strip club with a bag of money and a serious case of nerves. Pretty soon they’re riding three up out of town into the desert, which is not too comfortable for Issy, whose ass had been completely tenderised the night before, and who’s sandwiched between Guvvie and Tris, which sounded pretty cool to me.
Tris bought a car at the first lot they came to and they decide to split up and meet back up at O’Green’s place, with Guvvie going ahead to check out if it was safe.
Well Guvvie has phoned Perry with this information before Marcus gets back to New York, and he’s got no way of getting back to them and telling them about how Marcus is convinced that everything is kosher or halal or whatever.

I hear Perry out and I say there doesn’t seem to be any need to panic, and I’ve decided to go over to Ireland for my birthday and I’ll see him in the Cornwall Club for the opening. Perry starts to tell me about the re-decoration and how the club’s getting a totally new look, but I’m not really listening now I know it’s cool for Tris and Issy.

Chapter IX
The Cave of the Lovers

I don’t get the story until much later, but that road trip really freaked Tris and Issy out. They slept all the time in the car, and Issy dyed her hair black and got some dungarees, like some lipstick lesbian, and Tris got a crew-cut and a leather jacket. The weird thing is, what with Marcus deciding to release the new CD when he re-opened the club, and all the radio stations in New York and Chicago and LA playing it non-stop, they knew nothing. All they could pick up was rock and country, and they’re travelling the back-roads up into the mountains.
Tris is getting serious cold feet about their relationship, and it’s been three months since he performed, and he wants to get his career back, and doesn’t Issy feel the same?
She’s getting seriously bored with all this whingeing, and by the time they get to the commune she’s glad to see Guvvie and even O’Green, and she even starts to do the meditation stuff, which is so not like her, it being all about self-awareness and not self-obsession.
O’Green is so anti-technology he won’t even have a radio, never mind a TV, in his place, so they miss the MTV promo that got shot on the beach before the party, the one where I actually do manage to stand up on the board, but they have to computer-enhance Issy so it looks like she does too.
This is the worst place in America they can possibly be to find out what’s going on, but they both miss the old life like crazy, and O’Green is sympathetic when they both lay their guilt trips on him and Issy says she wants to go back to Marcus and she’s finished with Tris for good.
O’Green persuades Tris to write a letter to Marcus, saying how it’s all just platonic and he’s been protecting Issy, and Guvvie takes it fifty miles to post it so they won’t get traced.

The letter doesn’t get to Marcus until the day of the big party, which is typical of the US mail, and Marcus has got other things on his mind than opening the post, so it just lies on his desk. Marcus has brought a sort of surfer-skater boy sound into the club, which means the coke’s out and the strongest stuff around is the skunk I’m smoking, and I’m being pretty discreet about that because of the stink it makes.
Perry’s quite friendly, and so’s Denny, who’s arranged all these interviews for me, which I do totally off my face, like a real rock chick but with added jet lag.
The whole club’s totally changed, and the VIP room has just disappeared, and now there’s a proper stage, and a dressing room and all these sort of plum-coloured leatherette booths where you can get food and drinks, and a big screen with surfing action, and Perry says it’s proper Cornish and have I ever been to a meadery? I don’t really have a lot of time for the guy now, and I go to the dressing room to see the band, and they’re all so young I’m like some big sister, which is fun in a way. After a few reefers we start having a giggle but I’m feeling quite old, and I wish Issy was here, her only being eighteen still and maybe she could give me immoral support.

After we close, which is about five in the morning, I go to see Marcus in his office to say goodbye, and I nip into the ladies and see even the old couch isn’t there anymore, which makes me feel sad, in a way. Marcus is opening his mail and cracking jokes with Will, and drinking champagne, and the coke is like not to be seen.
Suddenly he stops talking and he says to excuse him and he gets up and puts on his jacket and goes out.

Well the party breaks up soon after and I head back to the Chelsea Hotel with the band in the pimp-mobile, which is just the same and have some more spliff and then breakfast before I head off. There’s one boy in the band I quite fancy, but he’s only seventeen and frankly I’d feel like a cradle-snatcher, but doing ollies in the hotel corridor was fucking cool all the same. When I get home there’s a message from Marcus saying he has to talk, but I’m so tired I fall asleep in the bath, and don’t surface till about noon when I’m beginning to die of hypothermia and my skin’s so wrinkled I look like a rather skinny hippopotamus.

I grab a glass of water and crawl back into bed and I get rudely awakened by the telephone, one of those stylish ones with a dial that actually takes an age to use and has a bell loud enough to wake the dead, which is what I feel like.
I look at the clock and it’s one o’clock, which is weird because it’s dark outside, and I hear a familiar voice say
“Hey Brannie, what’s the news?” and I’m
“Who the fuck is this?” but I know it’s Tris and I start to tell him everything’s cool with Marcus but he says he knows and do I want to talk to him?
“I am talking to you, you dumb-ass Yankee mother-fucker” I say, working out finally that it’s now one o’clock in the morning, and there’s this pause and then this serious gravelly voice says
“You calling Marcus King’s momma a ho?” and my stomach starts doing cartwheels.
I search around for a cigarette to help to clear my brain, and Tris is back on the phone and I ask him if this is his idea of a joke, but no, him and Uncle Marcus are at the airport in Chicago playing happy families.
I think to myself, the guy has balls of steel, Tris I mean, and it turns out Marcus got straight on the phone to him and Tris just bombed out to the nearest airport and there’s only the two of them in Chicago, drinking bolly and arranging how to get Issy back home. Issy knows nothing about this yet, but the plan is to get her over to Susie’s place, and will me and Perry fly over toute suite, and can I bring Tris’s backgammon board? The last request is so like boys and their toys I can’t believe
“Tris, why don’t you just buy another bloody board?” I say, but it’s got sentimental value, and he hasn’t had a game in weeks.
“So how have you and Issy been passing the time then?” I ask, but he ignores this and says we’re breaking up and he’s got to go. I try to call Issy, but of course her phone’s probably still in that movie star’s house, I’m not thinking straight, so I call Guvvie and tell him to get her to make the arrangements, and will she call me later, please.

The flight to Chicago would have been bearable if Perry and me had been able to play backgammon, or even if either of us had brought a deck of cards, but small talk and smoking are both out of the question so it’s a pretty tense flight and there’s not even a meal to provide some distraction.
Marcus has sent someone to fetch us and we get to Susie’s place which is just a block back from the lake on the smart side of town, and Tris is there on his own, so I’m like, where’s Marcus?
“He’s got some romantic notion about seeing Issy for the first time in New York” says Susie, and he wants to straighten out Denny and Nelson and Will.”
I couldn’t believe how much Tristan had changed. Maybe it was all the lentils and meditation, or maybe it was just giving up on the cocaine lifestyle, but he looked older and taller and more manly. I wasn’t creaming my knickers over him (well, maybe some light spotting) but he was definite eye-candy, and I wondered how Issy would be able to give him up. Susie was running her own label now, signing up the new Chicago sound, and playing us some of the singles she was putting out in the clubs. She said we could stay over, and she’s made the spare room up for me and Perry, and I say how we’re not that close anymore and she does that o thing with her mouth, and I say I’ll crash on the couch and Tris and Perry can take the room.
We headed out for a drink to this little bar Susie knew and she and Perry seemed to be getting on OK. She’s a bit of a looker, Susie, and she’s all Agnes B and cock-sucker lipstick and fuck-me heels, but sassy with it. I’m not really paying them much mind, cos Tris is filling in the bits of the story I don’t know, and I’m desperate to see Issy when he comes out with a bombshell
“Don’t be surprised if Issy’s a bit distant, Brannie, she’s started to blame you again for all the champagne supernova stuff”.
I want to tell him that it was her mum’s idea in the first place, but Susie decides maybe it’s time to go back to hers, what with Issy and Guvvie arriving tomorrow, so we finish off our drinks and walk back to her place.

Well we all crash around midnight, which is well early for us, and I get woken up by Tris with a coffee which is nice.
Issy looks like a stick-insect, and she gives Perry a big hug, but just pecks me on the cheek the same as she does Susie, and I realise the capacity to hurt that girl’s got, but I know she’s got a movie running in her head, and she’s most definitely the star.
I’m wondering what part I have to play, maybe the wicked witch with the poisoned apple, when Guvvie comes over and gives me a big hug. I’m disappointed that he’s not going to come back with us, but he wants to go over to New York on a connecting flight and get his apartment sorted out. The plan is Tris is going to move in with him, and Perry will be taking Issy back next day, but today we’re free. Susie says the fall in Illinois isn’t quite up to New England standards, but how about a drive along the shore and a picnic so we dump Issy’s bags at her place and go.

It’s a sunny day, like it always seems to be in America, and we drive north along the lake and cut out up into the woods, and find a little stream and get out all the stuff we bought at the deli and Susie skins up, and I begin to enjoy myself. Tris has smuggled the backgammon board out, and Issy’s well pleased and they play while Perry and Susie and me just eat and drink and smoke. Later we head back into town and go to a restaurant owned by some basketball player I’ve never heard of, but he’s world famous (like the World Series, meaning he’s famous in America says Perry, coming to my rescue, like I need it) and we get a cab to a club and it’s VIP room what with us being the stars, and it’s just like when we first came over, but not so scary.

I sleep on the couch that night again, and the guys are in the spare room while Issy doubles up with Susie. I sit and watch TV on my own for a bit, and say goodnight to everyone as they go in and out of the bathroom, then when the coast’s clear I run a hot bath and have a good soak with an increasingly soggy spliff. I’m first up and decide for once in my life to make breakfast and I take a tray of waffles and coffee and juice into the boys room and of course I walk in on Tris and Issy in mid shag. I back out and go back to the kitchen, and I’m eating the breakfast myself because I really don’t want to see Perry boning Susie before I get something inside me too.
I’m on my second coffee and my first Gauloise, and I’m enjoying that scent only French tobacco has, when Issy comes out in a bathrobe and sits down on the couch next to me.
“I backgammoned him you see” she says, like that explains everything, so I just take the dishes into the kitchen and start to wash up.
“I’m sure Susie has a dishwasher” she says, grabbing the remote and switching on the TV. “Any chance of a coffee?”
Well I can feel the anger boiling up, but I pour out a coffee and make a point of walking straight past her and going in to see Tris. He’s pulling his jeans on and I hand him the coffee and just sit on the bed and watch him. I’m thinking what a shame it wasn’t me he drank that champagne with, and then I’d be the star of the romance, and what a bummer it is being cast as the best friend and he sits down next to me and pulls his socks on and just puts his hand on my knee and says
“It’s the last time, Brannie. It’s killing me.”

When we get back to New York Marcus has a little soiree, as he calls it, in the penthouse, and makes a speech about how he’s misjudged everyone, and Tris has been caning it and he stands up and offers to fight anyone who says there’s been any shenanigans between him and his uncle’s wife. I swear that’s the word he used, shenanigans. The three stooges are looking at one another, like they don’t believe a word, and Marcus carries on
“I love this boy like a son. If any of you mothers wants to call my wife a whore, you better stand up and say it to Tris.”


Chapter X
Banishment

Tris is still standing, though he’s swaying a bit, and he looks well moody in his Brooks Brothers’ suit. It’s obvious no-one’s going to take him on so he tells Marcus that to kill the rumours he wants to be released from his contract and him and Guvvie want to head back up to O’Green’s. Issy’s looking pretty petulant. She’s dressed all innocent in her faded dungarees, and she’s cut her hair back to the roots like Joan of Arc about to go to the stake. She’s giving Marcus strokes and filling his glass up and such, but I can see she’s got an itch only Tris can scratch.
Marcus pretends to be surprised by what Tris says, but it’s obvious they agreed this, maybe in Chicago, and he tells Will to deal with the details and takes Tris and Guvvie down in the lift.

I don’t stay much longer. I have to be up for a modelling assignment with Funky Dolphin, the surf-wear brand, in the morning (my new agent’s told me to cash in while the CD’s doing OK) so Nelson calls me a cab and I split.

I go to the airport to see Guvvie and Tris off a couple of days later, and I’m booked up to go to Japan, which is work and pleasure, cos I’ll be doing some promo work and seeing my sis. I’m too busy to go to the club, and Issy and me still haven’t had the talk, but I’m packing my bag and thinking will I take the theramin or not when the doorbell rings and it’s Issy.
I buzz her up and I’m looking in the entry-phone screen and I can see she’s with a guy, probably Perry, who’s like the last man alive I want in my apartment, but it’s Tris.
He’s doubled back and he’s crashing out in Perry’s place, in the basement of some brownstone in Brooklyn, and can they stay the night?
I let them in and offer them a drink but they can’t keep their hands off each other, so I go to bed with Cosmopolitan and smoke some grass to calm my nerves. It’s the sort of speedy weed that won’t let you go to sleep, so I spend most of the night with a pillow over my head but the walls are made of Kleenex and spit and all I can hear is Tris ordering her around like a whore and her panting and screaming like the trollop she is. It’s only when the alarm goes and I realise I haven’t had any sleep, and I’ve read that article on ‘I slept with my best friend’s husband’ for the sixth time and my bladder is about to burst, that I get up. Tris is stark bollock naked in the kitchen making tea, and he makes no move to cover himself up, so I throw the apartment keys down on the table and say
“Feel free to make yourselves at home” and I grab my suitcase and head down to get a cab. Issy phones me as I’m on my way to the airport with a sort of pretence at an apology and I grunt and tell her to be careful and just fall asleep in the back of the taxi.

I can’t get the sight of Tris’s cock out of my head, all veiny and red and purple and I realise it’s half a year since I got laid, and I’ve half a mind to ask the taxi driver to do me but I glance in the rear view mirror and see he’s a total minger. It’s a hell of a way to Japan, and my agent wanted to go along with me but I reckon it’s all coming out of the money I’m earning so I say I want to go alone. I just sleep and eat and watch the movie for the best part of a day, and I’m really past caring about Issy now. It’s about time I went solo like Marcus promised.

It’s weird being in a place where you can’t read the street signs. I don’t mean like France or Italy, where you just don’t understand, I mean a whole alien alphabet that’s just squiggles and lines.
Grainne stayed with me for the whole trip, thank God, and there was a really amazing Japanese girl who just ran the whole show for me, trains, planes and automobiles, not to mention security. I never realised what it was like to be treated like a star until I went to Tokyo, and the weird thing was how un-flash it all was. Another weird thing was that the PR girl was called Issey, which caused a bit of confusion at first, but she always called my Issy ‘Mrs King’, and at first I just didn’t get who she was talking about, like I’d never met Marcus’s mother.
I spent six days just being taken places and signing autographs and having my photo taken and giving interviews to people who knew more about my stuff than I did.
I was glad to get away with Grainne, who was loving every minute, and we went to the village where she was teaching and I met Ron. Ron was a bit of a light relief after all the smiles and politeness. I hadn’t had a smoke for a week and I was well dried out, thankfully Ron was a stoner and I got to mellow out. I’d left my precious theramin back in New York, so we just messed about with these drums he’d brought over, and he told me how much he liked the stuff I’d done with Tris. I was amazed he’d heard it, but of course Grainne must have played it to him, but he said no, Tris was well respected and when was he coming over to do a gig?

I wanted to stay a bit longer, but I had a schedule, so it was back to America, and a long, long sleep to recover. Issy met me at the airport with the keys, and Perry drove me and her back into town. The apartment was a tip, but at least they’d changed the sheets, and I just climbed into bed for some zees.

No-one knew about Tris except for me and Perry, and everything got back to what passed for order in our little world. The new-look Cornwall Club was more normal than the old one, and Marcus wanted to turn it into a sort of Apollo meets the Comedy Club, with a cabaret feel. He said it was a shame Tris wasn’t around, he’d have made a great MC, and he’d decided that he was going to give it a year and get him back.
Tris and Issy were still meeting up at my place for the occasional afternoon shagathon, but I made damn sure I was out, and I was concentrating on my career and watching the dollars roll into my bank account.
I managed to end my celibate phase when skater-boy came back to town, but it was just a mate thing really, like we’d go bowling, we’d shag; we’d go clubbing, we’d shag; we’d go drinking, we’d shag. I was really enjoying myself, and the guy was a hoot, but when the boys went back west it just died a natural death.
I got into that US dating scene where you just see a few guys at the same time, and the gossip columns linked me with a couple, but it was all just good dirty meaningless sex.

Things trundled along for a few months like this, and Marcus threw a little party for Issy’s birthday (I got her this really cool backgammon board with scenes from the Kama Sutra painted on the lid, which actually made her blush) and I got falling over drunk and fell asleep in their bed at the hotel.
A couple of days later Issy came to see me about something private. I could tell it was private because she had a headscarf and wrap-around shades on, like she was dressing up to tell me some nuclear secret or something. It was worse.
Jack was blackmailing her.
Things had gone pear-shaped for him in Hawaii, and he’s spent all his money on coke and more coke and he’s turned into such a yeti (like abominable snowman) that no-one would put up with his tantrums anymore and he’d just lost all his business. Issy had already paid $10,000 to shut him up, but he was asking for more, otherwise he was going to tell Nelson the whole story about the dress. I’m thinking this is like karma or kismet or something, like whatever goes around comes around, but I call Tris and Perry for a council of war and send the doorman out for some booze and dial a pizza or three.

I had some really nice sensi, but no-one else wanted a smoke, they were trying to keep their heads clear, apparently, but nothing frees up my imagination more than weed, so while they went round in circles I was throwing out wacky ideas, and getting on everyone’s tits. It was about midnight, and Issy’s panicking that she has to get back to Marcus when I came up with a real brainwave. I bit my lip and made some coffee and told them.
“Issy, you have to take a lie detector test.”
I immediately got shat on from a great height by Issy and Perry, but Tris was clearly taking me seriously, and he said there were ways of beating the tests, and he’d try and find out a bit more. Perry took Issy off in a cab, and Tris stayed over, and we stayed up working out angles and crashed in my spare room.

I was in the club a few nights later with my agent and a few of her friends, just schmoozing, and my agent says we really ought to be negotiating a new contract with Marcus, now Issy seems to have given up on her career. I’d had a few drinks, so I said I’d just go and see Marcus, like then and there and make an appointment, what with him being such a pussy-cat and I could wrap him round my little finger.


Chapter XI
The Parting

Well I weave my way through the crowd watching this stand-up guy, and make my way to the door of Marcus’s office, which is guarded by Perry, looking ridiculous in a moleskin tuxedo and loafers, and he shushes me and I teeter to a halt on my stilettos, and I can hear a major row going on behind the door. I slip my shoes off and tiptoe closer, and Perry whispers that Marcus is in conference with the three amigos, and I can just about make out Denny’s voice, cos he’s like in mid-rant,
“If you don’t start taking me seriously Marcus, I’m gonna quit.”
“If my nephew was here you’d never dare talk to me like this,” says Marcus, “I’m gonna call him back to kick the living shit out of you mother-fuckers. You had your chance when Issy came back to me, but you’re all of you too damn yellow.”
I could hear him kicking the furniture around, and someone else, it might have been Will, starts saying something, but Marcus cuts him off and he’s raging like some angry bull or something,
“You know what happened to Cedric, and you know what happened to Ivan. You’ll be lucky to wind up in a golf-cart when Tris has finished with you, you bunch of no-good shit-eatin’ weasels.”

Perry makes these sort of waving moves with his hands and I realise he’s like telling me to go, so I scurry down the stairs with my shoes still off and sit on the bottom step trying to put them back on again without falling over. I can hear the door fly open and Denny barges past followed by Nelson and Will, and none of them says “Excuse me, Brannie”, so I’m like where’s your manners, mother-fuckers, and I can hear Marcus tell Perry to take over security and he’s slammed the door to go back into the office and brood.

I go back to the booth, and tell the schmoozers I have to go, and we’ll have to do it again sometime, and I’m walking back up the stairs when Perry stops me and says Marcus is so definitely not to be disturbed and he’s sitting at his desk with his tarot pack and some bag of bones he got from a shaman in Dakota.
“He wasn’t called Ebenezer, by any chance?” I say, and Perry says it’s no time for joking, and don’t I think I ought to get a hold of Issy and let her know the cat’s out of the bag.

This sobers me up a bit and I’m wondering if Jack’s actually carried out his threat or if maybe Tris and Issy have been seen somewhere together, so I head off to the bar for a Bacardi and lime and light up a Dunhill.
I call Issy, and I haven’t seen her for a while, which is not surprising because she’s out in San Francisco at this gay club called the Excalibur that’s just been opened up by Marcus’s cousin Art. I tell her she’s turning into a fag-hag and she says no she’s a gay icon darling, and do I have any idea how tasty these guys are? I can’t really talk turkey but she’s coming back in a couple of days, and I say what about tomorrow, but she’s obviously enjoying herself so I ring off and go home.

I actually get to see Marcus the next day, this time I decide it’s best to make an appointment, and he’s really nice, but so not there, which is amazing with him having such a business head. He doesn’t say anything about the row, and I don’t like to either, but Perry phones me later and says Denny and Will have both tried to see him, but Marcus isn’t even returning their calls.
I meet Issy in the hotel bar, and we go out for lunch, and I’m half-way through my burger and she’s picking at a green salad, when Tris walks in. I’m just totally freaked out by this, it’s just too public, but she gives him a big hug and says
“What’s life without a little risk, Brannie?” and I say
“Safer” and she just laughs and gets out this paper from her bag. It’s like a classic blackmail note, all letters from newspapers glued together, saying she has to pay $100,000 now or Denny will get the full story.
“Where is the dress, sweetie?” she asks me, arching her eyebrows like some 1940’s film-star so I tell her it’s at my mums, and no I haven’t told her, but her mum and me had a chat last time and I was in London, and she’s blaming herself for the champagne thing.
“Well she hasn’t said anything to me about that” says Issy, and I say that’s because she never calls, and Tris tells us both to quiet down and how he’s worked out a solution, and he explains everything over the puddings, or in Issy’s case the black coffee.

Issy takes the bull by the horn, and Marcus is like putty in her hands, or at least his dick is after a week of trying to keep up with her. She tells him all about her idea, how they should renew their wedding vows, but before that she wants to take a lie-detector test because people are still gossiping about her and Tris, and she doesn’t want Marcus’s business to suffer, and how Denny could shop him to the Feds, and Will and Nelson to the IRS if Marcus doesn’t bring them back into the fold.
Marcus takes some convincing, and she pretends to go cold on the idea and says there’s no-one she can trust, except maybe cousin Artie, and Marcus calls Art and gets him to make the arrangements and come over with a couple of his boys to be his guests, all expenses paid.
Art King makes all the arrangements for the test, nothing but the best facilities, and we’ve all got to go up to MIT on Christmas Eve, which is going to play havoc with my shopping, but at least there won’t be anyone around except this prof who’s being paid to keep his mouth shut.
Tris comes round to see me and he’s having second thoughts, and wouldn’t it be easier for him to go to Hawaii and just waste Jack, and I say is he going to waste Perry and Issy’s ma, and my ma, and all the people in the fucking restaurant?
I roll him up a nice doobie, and he chills out a little, but he’s still not too sure of the test because Issy really can’t get her head round how to beat it, then he stops and smiles and says
“I’ve got another cunning plan.”
“I hope this one’s going to mean I can at least walk the day after” I reply, and he explains it to me and it’s so brilliant I’m creased up laughing so much I actually puke.

I went back to London with Issy to do some Christmas shopping, and Grainne was over from Japan with Ron, and he’s still on at me to get Tris to come over, so I say why don’t you e-mail him, but he’s done that about ten times and Tris never replied, so I tell him to write a letter and give him O’Green’s address, and Ron’s really interested in the commune thing, and Tris goes up in his estimation, and he’s like,
“Maximum respect” which sounds funny when he says it, but I guess you’d have to be there really.
Mum cooks a sort of pre-Christmas dinner, and my dad comes over, and I get to hand over loads of cool presents, but no-one’s allowed to open them till Christmas morning, which they moan at, but it’s a tradition. I have to go to Mass, for the first time in nearly two years which makes my ma happy and we go back to America and I’m so stuffed I can’t eat the airline meal, and I really will have to go on a diet. Issy’s still really skinny, but she’s got no tits to speak of, and I’m rather proud of mine, and I’m wondering if they’ll disappear if I lose too much weight when
“I’m sorry, Brannie” and I look at Issy and she’s actually crying.
“I talked to my mum and she’s fessed up and she says fixing that champagne was her idea and it’s all her fault.”
I’d had enough talk of fault to last a fucking lifetime.
“Listen, Iss. You remember when we were kids and we used to talk about true love and we both decided to save ourselves for Mr Right?” and she nods and snuffles so I carry on.
“You did. You found him. Your knight in shining armour. While I’ve been shagging half of New York, you’ve been true to Tris.” That really sets the waterworks off, and she’s sobbing on about Marcus, and what do I think it’s like, and I bite my tongue because I know, and it’s pretty impressive, but I can see people looking over, so I calm her down a bit and we have a drink and watch the movie.

The snow’s thick on the ground when we fly into Boston, and Art and Issy and me share a limo out to the uni. It’s like a Christmas card, and there’s guys dressed up as Father Christmas in all the malls rattling buckets and collecting for charity. I’ve bought all my prezzies in London and I only have to wrap them, but Art says he always gets his wrapped in the store, and I say he’s missing out on the fun, and we bicker and sing along to the Christmas CD I’ve put on the car stereo.

Tris has got himself dressed up in a Santa outfit, and he’s outside this building we’re going to, with wellies on his feet and a sticker on his bucket saying ‘Give generously to the children of St Xavier’s’ which is like a private joke. Perry’s the first to arrive, and he drops a whole bundle of twenties into the bucket. Marcus doesn’t want to be upstaged, but he hasn’t got any cash on him, so he takes off this gold ring, a sovereign or krugerrand or whatever Americans have, and drops that in instead.
All Marcus’s goons and their ho’s, all dripping with bling, follow the leader, and pretty soon Santa’s collection is full of white gold, platinum and enough pretty green to paper a wall. Most people are dressed for the weather, but Denny and Will and Nelson won’t make any compromises with fashion and after they’ve paid their tax to the orphans they ask Santa if there’s a way where the snow’s not too deep so they don’t wreck their shoes. Tris directs them through a big slush pile that’s covered in fresh snow, and they’re cursing him and everyone’s laughing and Tris is ringing this bell he’s got and saying “Happy Holidays” when we pull up.
Art’s not in on the gag, so I drop this silver necklace in the bucket and he holds the door open for Issy and tells his main man Wayne to give some money to the orphans. Me and Art start to follow everyone’s footsteps across the beaten snow, and Issy’s wearing the most ridiculous shoes and demanding that Father Christmas gives her a piggy-back to the door. Wayne catches us up, and the whole crowd looks back to see Issy hoist her dress up and Santa bend down and carry her across. There’s a panicky moment when his beard starts to slip, but she sticks it back and he lets her down by the door.
Marcus asks if she isn’t going to make a donation, and Issy sneers and looks at Tris and says she bets he’s not going to hand all the loot over to the school, and why should she help some deadbeat line his own pockets.
There’s quite a festive atmosphere, and everyone seems to have a hipflask and people are being quite raucous as we go inside out of the cold, Issy’s heels clacking on the wooden floor, and the three bad guys making pools of water wherever they step. Marcus calms everyone down, and introduces this professor guy, and Art, and says how he’s sorry his nephew Tris couldn’t be there, and starts to go off on one, so Art puts his hand on Marcus’s shoulder and Marcus sits down, and so does everyone else. It’s like a lecture theatre, and Issy’s at the front on a couch, with wires taped on her head and her wrists, and there’s a big screen with a trace on it like you get in hospitals that we can all see.

Art goes to the front and makes a speech about how he loves Marcus and Issy and they’re going to put an end to these rumours, and I’ve like heard it all a million times, and I look around the room, and I’m thinking how Wayne’s pretty buff, and Art’s droning on in this really camp way he has, which is so out of keeping from a six-foot black man who looks like an American footballer, and he says he’s going to hand over to the Prof in a minute, but first of all blah blah. I’m gasping for a ciggie, and I’m on the end of the row, at the back, so I get up and walk onto the fire escape for a quick burn. I see this bike pull up, and Tris gets on the back with his bucket and bell, and I realise it must be Guvvie, so I wave frantically, but they don’t see me and I watch as Father Christmas rides pillion out of the car-park and onto the main road out of campus.

The Prof is this really old guy with wire-rimmed glasses, and the whole white coat and pens in the top pocket thing, and I’m sure I’ve seen him on the Discovery Channel. I grind out my half-smoked fag with my boot and quietly let myself back in.
First off the Prof starts asking all these questions like where she went to school, and what her favourite colour is, and each time she answers there’s like this blip on the screen. Then they get her to tell a few lies, and the Prof explains how the blip’s a different shape and I can’t see it myself, but he carries on and says he’s got to ask some personal questions, and I’m thinking how it would be just easier to wire up her knickers, and just say Tris’s name and measure the cream factor.
The killer question arrives, has she had sexual relations with anyone except her husband, and Issy says in a clear voice,
“The only men I’ve ever had between my legs are Marcus King and Santa Claus.”
The place just erupts with laughter and cries of “You tell him, girl” and the Prof says how the test really works best with yes and no answers, but Marcus is just slapping his thighs and Art gets everyone to calm down, and says he’ll ask a question.
“Have you had any man between your legs except Santa Claus and your husband?” and Issy says no, and the Prof is looking at this big paper that’s got all the blips on it, and shaking his head. Issy starts to take the wires off and people are just whistling and calling out, and Marcus goes over and gives her a hug, and then Art calls the Prof up and the Prof says how it isn’t really scientific to deviate from the agreed questions, but Marcus tells him to shut up and is she telling the truth or what, and the Prof says yes, so that’s it. The Prof’s still mumbling something but no-one’s paying any attention, and Marcus says there’s a big party for New Year’s at the Club, and him and Issy are gonna re-commit themselves to one another.
All the girls are slapping Issy’s hand and Marcus is hugging everyone and saying how he knew all along she was true, and the hipflasks come out and someone starts spraying champagne.
Marcus makes his way over to Nelson and Denny and Will and sort of opens his arms up like some godfather, and some people start to shout out ‘Shame’ but they all hug him and he says they’re forgiven, and can they just concentrate on making him money and not making up stories, and they each go over to Issy and mutter an apology in a kind of grudging way.
I look over at the Prof, and he’s having a hissy fit because someone’s sprayed champagne all over his machine, so I have a word with Perry and he sorts things out. We all head out into the cold and Marcus says he ain’t gonna make his wife a liar, and carries her to the car on his back, and everyone cheers them as the limo pulls out of the parking space.

Tris phones me later to check on how things have gone, and says him and Guvvie are heading back to O’Green’s place, and to tell Issy he loves her, but he’s going away for a while.

Christmas away from the family is not good. Last year I’d been high as a kite, but this year was so totally fake. I had Christmas dinner in the hotel with Marcus and Issy and Art, just the four of us, and it made me squirm to see how besotted Marcus was, and how Issy was playing him for a fool.
There’s no way you can compete with Marcus in the Christmas present stakes, so I’d got everyone a musical instrument. Issy got an Irish penny whistle, and Art got a banjo and I can see Marcus sweating, cos there’s no way he could play anything, but I’d got him one of those triangles like we used to have in primary school, which got a laugh and a wry smile from him. I spent the night with Wayne, and we talked about our families and soothed each others’ loneliness in the best way I know.

Chapter XII
Isolde of the White Hands

Tris called a couple of days later and told me he’d got a letter from Ron asking him to come over from Japan. He’d split the booty from the Santa Claus stunt with Guvvie and O’Green, and Guvvie was coming with him. I asked him what he was doing for New Year and he said he just couldn’t face it and he was going like now. This put me in a bit of an awkward situation, because I really wanted to go with him, and at the same time I felt like I ought to go to this thing Marcus and Issy were having. I said I’d call him back, and a couple of joints later I’d made my mind up. Marcus and Issy were like barf factor eight, and Tris was a mate, and if I went to Japan I’d at least get to see my sis over the festive season. I phoned my agent and she sorted flights out, so the three of us would spend New Year crossing the dateline, which meant either we’d have two New Years or none, I wasn’t sure, but it sounded like a gas.

We met up in L.A. airport, just the three of us, and Guvvie told me Tris was finding it hard being away from Issy, and he’d taken a lot of persuading from him and O’Green not to go back to New York and start the whole thing up again. Tris mooched about the airport while Guvvie and me sat drinking coffee, but he sort of brightened up a bit on the plane, and me and him had a few drinks and re-lived the good times, which I suppose is what we both needed. Grainne was still in London, so we stayed at a hotel, and carried on drinking in the bar until it really was New Year, and we both crashed in the room in this brother and sister, top to tail way.

The hotel had this amazing swimming pool with a waterfall made of rock, and a really neat bar in this sort of cave at the back. I just chilled out there, and Tris and Guvvie did all the sight-seeing stuff for a couple of days. After I’d got over the jet-lag I called Japanese Issey to come over, and she took me and Tris out on a mad bar-crawl which ended up in this Irish themed pub that actually served a decent pint of Guinness, and I wished my dad had been there to see it.
Tris was pissed as a fart, and making a bit of a dick of himself. He kept holding Issey’s hands, which were beautifully manicured with long white nails, and trying to kiss them and calling her “Issey with the White Hands” and trying to get her to dance. It got so embarrassing I had to take him back to the hotel, but she was really nice about it, which was a relief.

Grainne and Ron had come back, but I don’t see much of her because she has to get back to school, and the holidays are all different to ours, but Ron decides to stay in Tokyo with his brother for a bit, and this time I have brought my theramin and we jam with Tris and he’s written some new stuff, and I get to thinking, why not cut the record in Japan?
Guvvie’s abandoned his prejudices, he says, and bought a Japanese bike and he’s off visiting all these monasteries and gardens. Tris and Issey with the white hands are seeing a lot of each other and I’m thinking maybe he’s getting over my Issy, but I’m more concerned about how much money I’m spending at the hotel. I phone my agent to talk about the CD idea, and she says I should buy a flat, and it would save me on tax, or I should put my money into stocks, but I’m only nineteen, and I’m just not ready for that so Ron helps me find a place to rent, and him and Tris move in and start to live this sort of student life together.

Marcus says yes to my ideas for the music, and my agent gets this massive advance off him, and he’s over the moon about Tris, cos he’s still feeling guilty about everything and I guess he wants to make it up to him.
We get everything done in a month, and Issey with the white hands is handling the publicity in Japan, Tris insists, and him and me are sitting up talking one night and out of the blue he says
“I want to get married, Brannie,” and I just laugh and say I’m not his type, but he says no, I don’t understand, he wants to marry Issey.
“She’s not going to leave Marcus for you, Tris, just face it.”
But no, it’s Issey with the white hands he wants, and I’m like, how freaky is this, if she had some other name would he want to marry her? He drivels on about making a fresh start, and how his career’s really important to him, and she’s so supportive.
“Do you love her, Tris?” I ask him. He looks at me and bursts out laughing, and we sing ‘What’s love got to do with it’ and dance around and go to bed, separately, of course.
He proposes to her, and she says yes, and he has to see her parents, and there’s all this family stuff which is hard enough in your own culture, but Tris wins them over with his bad-boy charm, and everything’s on.

I can’t believe he’s over things with Issy One, but she keeps turning up in the gossip columns in the over-priced English papers, and the gossip generally links her to some toy-boy on Marcus’s label, so maybe he thinks it’s died a death.
I have to go back to New York on business, but Tris and Issey take me to the park for some spring festival, which is amazing with blossom everywhere on all the trees, and kids floating little boats, and I meet her mum and dad and her kid brother, but I really can’t believe it’s going to end this painlessly.

The newspapers are exaggerating, of course. Issy really did try to mend things with Marcus, but he really doesn’t know what love is, she says.
“I’m a trophy to him, Brannie. He dotes on me like you would a puppy, but he doesn’t feel anything for me unless he thinks someone’s going to take me away. That’s the only way I can get his attention.”
I tell her what’s going on in Japan and she says she wants to see Tris for one last time and can I arrange for him to come over before the wedding. I say I don’t think it’s such a good idea, and I really don’t want to get involved, but it starts to tear me up and I wish she just had the guts to walk out on Marcus and run away with Tris. I don’t say this, though maybe I should, after all there’s no way Marcus would pull a stunt like that one on the beach again, but I reckon I’ve done enough damage and we spend a couple of days together, and I play her a couple of mixes from the new single and go back to Tokyo.

Chapter XIII
The Wedding

Issey’s family are Catholic, which is funny really, so Tris doesn’t get his Buddhist wedding after all, and I get to throw confetti and catch the bouquet and it’s really western except everything’s in Japanese. Guvvie’s best man, and he’s decided to take his bike over to India and bike up to see the Dalai Lama, which is his life’s ambition, so while Tris is off on honeymoon Ron goes up to Grainne’s for a similar experience and I’m left on my tod sloane.
About a week after Issey with the white hands appears at my place with tears streaming down her face. Tris has gone off and left her and she can’t tell me why. She can’t tell her mum either. It’s all too shameful. All she does is cry. I can’t get hold of Grainne, but I do have booze and fags handy, which are a girl’s real best friends, and we do have a girly bonding session until dawn.
I lie in bed thinking about how I always seem to be caught up in someone else’s story, and what the hell Tris is playing at, and where the hell he is. I try calling him on his mobile, but it’s switched off, so I leave a concerned message, telling him I want to see him, and doze off.

When I wake up I’m all alone in the flat. There’s a note from Issey saying she’s sorry to have troubled me, and she’s going back to work, and a message from Tris saying he’ll be back and not to worry. I get on with tidying the place, and I e-mail my mum and dad and my mates, and Tris rolls in that evening all unshaven and stinky. He runs himself a bath and my curiosity gets the better of me, so I walk into the bathroom and sit down on the bidet and ask him what the hell’s the matter.
He lies back with his head in the water, and then slowly re-surfaces, and the water runs off his hair, and there’s water-drops like diamonds sticking to the stubble on his face.
“I just can’t do it, Brannie. I can’t screw. Every time I try, it just doesn’t work, it’s like my dick just won’t let me. I keep getting flashbacks to all the times I made it with my Issy, and all I can see is her face. It’s horrible, I can’t understand it, I mean I’ve been seeing her for months, and everything’s worked fine, but now we’re married …….” his voice just tails off and he ducks his head under the water, and I get a good look at the cause of the problem.
He gets out of the bath and wraps a towel round himself and starts to lather his face. So this is what Issey with the white hands couldn’t tell me last night, this is what’s so shameful, she’s married her lover and he hasn’t made her his wife, yet.
“Come on Tris, just get yourself some little blue pills. It’s just a block you’ve got, you can get over it. I’ll make us some coffee” and I put the machine on and leave him to his shave.
I reckon it must be because of that night me and Ron got wasted and tried to access free porn, but I get loads of junk e-mails asking if I want to increase my penis size, and offering impotence cures, so I get my credit card out and send off for some pills. I wish I could just go to the chemists and buy some but it’s hard enough just shopping for groceries.
The pills arrive by airmail from the States two days later, and while I’m waiting I get Tris and Issey with the white hands to come out for dinner with me. I can’t stand sushi, but they love it, so I make the effort and we go to this really old place where Tris has blowfish, which is like deadly if you don’t fix it right, and I’m thinking what’s he trying to prove? It’s not the most laid-back evening I’ve ever had, but we talk about business, and Issey wants the band to do a few gigs at Japanese colleges, and I’m thinking back to the tour we did in the US all that time ago, and I’m sure Tris is too.

They’re still living apart, and Tris needs some persuading to take the V, and I’m wishing Guvvie was around, with him being like Tris’s mate and his dad rolled into one, and such a cool old dude, but he’s probably trekking up a mountain by now, and he’s got no mobile anymore, and even if he had there wouldn’t be any reception, probably. Still, Tris does the business, because I get a call from Issey to meet her for lunch, and this time I insist we go out for a proper meal, like a hot-dog or something.
Guys think girls tell each other everything about sex, and it’s true, mostly. Like when I’m with Susie or Issy One we don’t spare any details once we’ve got a few cocktails down our necks. I don’t know whether it was the second language thing, though her English was better than mine really, but Issey with the white hands took a while to come across with the dirt.
It’s not like I could just say, did the Viagra do the trick then, babe? I mean Tris probably hadn’t told her, and Issey’s talking about tour dates, but I know she didn’t call me to talk about that, and the bills arrived and so I decide to ask her
“Is everything OK with you and Tris, then?” and she blushes.
“We’re living together in my apartment now, Brannie.”
Well I knew that much, so I try a different approach.
“Your honeymoon problem. Is it fixed?” and she spends a lot of time looking in her bag for something, to hide her face I guess.
“Everything is like it should be between a man and his wife.”
Well I think, that’s what I wanted to hear, though it doesn’t sound like she’s hanging off the chandeliers, but then her place is so tiny there wouldn’t be room, and we kiss and go our separate ways.

I decided I didn’t want to go touring until the summer, and maybe my agent was right about the money, I’d got more than a million dollars swilling around my bank account, and so many freebies I was giving them away. I was homesick too, I wanted to be in a place where people spoke English, and I was feeling a bit stuck, like I hadn’t even learned to drive and I’d be twenty soon. Ron was back in Tokyo, giving drumming classes, and nagging me about release dates, so I went up to say good-bye to Grainne and headed back to Europe, the quick way.
I spent a week back in London and then went on one of those residential driving courses, which was a breeze cos the instructor was a fan. The guy doing the test wasn’t though, and I failed. They wouldn’t let me re-take it for a month so I went to see my da, who was still working at Hanlon’s, with an idea. We spent two weeks looking around for a decent place and we settled on this run-down bar in Inchicore, which is rough as guts, but it had major potential. I actually wanted to give it to my da as a present, but he wouldn’t have it, he said he’d rather manage a bar than have the responsibility of owning it, so we worked out a deal and he gave in his notice at Hanlons, and I put him on the payroll, which was bizarre. How many teenagers get to employ their own fathers?
We’d got a really good price because the place was closed down after a guy got stabbed there, and I wasn’t going to waste any money on refitting it, I wanted to get a decent architect and make sure the security was well tight.
I did get to buy dad a car, and he took me driving all round County Meath, so by the time I got back to London I managed to scrape a pass.

I was half a million lighter, but I felt a hell of a lot better. I was taking control. I’d have my own club, with my own people, doing something I loved and surrounded by people who weren’t phonies, and what’s even better, loved a drink. I headed back to New York on the cheapest ticket I could get, meaning to get this tour sorted and finish my contract with Marcus and go back to Dublin as soon as I could.
I got back to the apartment and called Issy. She came straight over and I told her all about my plans, and she’s got news for me. She’s decided to re-invent herself as a torch singer and Art’s asked her over to do a month at his club doing Irish ballads and blues, and she’s been having voice coaching off this guy Will knows who runs a gospel choir up in Detroit.
She also tells me that Jack is back on the scene, he’s in town, trying to get money off her again, and I’m like
“Issy, you’re not going to pay him? What was that whole lie test thing for? I mean no-one’s going to take him seriously.”
She makes out she hasn’t given him a nickel, but I’m not so sure she’s telling the truth, and I’m thinking maybe Tris was right when he wanted to waste the guy after all, like who’d miss him?

I’ve brought a couple of cartons of Sweet Afton cigarettes over from Ireland, but they don’t have filters so you have to smoke them with a holder, which is so Marlene Dietrich I love it. I’m sitting at home with a Bloody Mary and trying to blow smoke rings, when my phone rings and it’s my agent. She says I’m a week late, and Marcus wants to see me, and what have I been up to, so I tell her, and she goes on about tax and accountants, and I’m, whatever, you fix it, it’s what I pay you for. I put the phone down, and I think, fuck it Brannie, get yourself down to the club and show your pretty face.
I’m pretty full of myself when I get to the club, and even though it’s mid-week it’s kicking. I waltz up to the bar and order a drink and a few people come up and say hello, and I’m chatting to the barman, when Perry comes over and says Marcus wants to see me. I’m so cocky I just say to tell Marcus to come down and I’ll buy him a drink, and the barman like turns away and starts polishing glasses, and Perry’s insistent so I follow him up to Marcus’s office.

Marcus is there with Will, and Perry pulls my chair out for me, all very formal and I sit down, and Marcus nods and Perry goes out. I can see Marcus is well pissed off, but he’s polite on the surface, and I start to chat about Dublin and I show him my new driving licence, then Will butts in.
“Marcus didn’t call you up here to talk about your driver’s licence” and I think, oh shit, he’s found out about me taking Issy’s place at the wedding, and a shiver goes up my spine.
I take out a ciggy and fit it in the holder to give myself some time, but Marcus starts on about the new CD, and when are we going to shoot the promo video, and how I have to get Tris and Ron over to New York, and he’s bankrolling me to make him money, not to subsidise a bunch of Irish drunks.
This I can cope with, so I promise to have my agent call him in the morning, and tell him how sorry I am and how my idea is to do what he’s done, and what an inspiration he is, and pretty soon he’s calmed down, and I manage to get out and get another drink.

I’m well on the way to getting wankered, and I’ve called up my agent, who’s brought her man along, when I see skater-boy at the bar. Well, to cut a long story short I manage to drag him back home, after molesting him in the back of the cab, and break my shag fast on the kitchen table.
I’m feeling really dirty, and totally in control, and I persuade him to do the really bad thing, which he’s not too keen on at first,. Whether it’s because I’m so drunk, or he’s so gentle, I don’t know, but it turns me on so much I just climb on top and ravish him, and it turns out to be the best fuck I ever had. We have a lazy week together, and I sort all the business out with my agent and the accountant, and I still haven’t found an architect, and my dad’s called a couple of times.
Marcus is insisting I get back to Japan, but I fly to San Francisco with Issy first, and watch her debut at the Excalibur, which goes down a treat with the gay boys.

When I get back to Tokyo I can see everything’s going to hell in a handcart, as my da says. Issey’s kid brother has moved into the flat, and him and his mates have turned it into a dope den. There’s ashtrays full of roaches everywhere, and the fridge is just full of furry foodstuffs.
Ron’s so disgusted he’s moved up to live with Grainne, and he’s out of work. Tris seems to spend an awful lot of time round at my place, and it turns out some of Issey’s brother’s mates are bad boy Japanese bikers and he’s become their mascot. After a few days I tell Tris I’ve had enough of this, and I hire a car and drive up to the village where Grainne teaches. I was a bit worried about driving in America, but at least in Japan they drive on the left, and one of Ron’s friends comes along to navigate.

It’s horrible driving out of Tokyo, but the countryside is beautiful, the rice is just this weird shade of green like I’ve never seen before, and when we get to the village I’m feeling a bit more on top of things. Grainne’s turned into this proper Japanese housewife, and she cooks us rice and fish, and clears all the stuff away herself. Ron and his mate go out for a walk and me and my sis talk about plans. She knows all about what I’m doing in Dublin, and her teaching contract’s over, and she says she’s thinking of going to work in that Irish bar in Tokyo, only she needs a place to live. I’m full of rice-wine by now, so I say I’ll kick the stoners out of my place and her and Ron can have it for free. Ron’s mate crashes early, and the three of us sit up smoking and talking and playing video games in Japanese, which is even more fun if you’re mashed.
I stay a couple more days, and Ron comes back with me to sort out the flat, and see Issey with the white hands and Tris. On the way down he says how he’s a bit concerned about them, but I really don’t listen, it doesn’t fit in with what I want to hear.

Cleaning up just reveals the cigarette burns on the carpet, and I’m pretty angry about how much this is going to cost me, so maybe I’m a little frosty with Tris and his wife.
Issey has an idea for shooting the vid that means we can get it done in a week by shooting a live show and doing an edit, and she’s sorted out dates, and got all the crew together, but Tris is picking fault with everything she does, and she’s almost wincing when he talks to her, as if she keeps expecting him to hit her.
Me and Ron out-vote him, and he storms off in a huff leaving us totally gob-smacked. Ron decides he’d better go after him, so I’m left with Issey who pretty soon starts crying.
“What is it with you two?” I ask her, being really matey, but deep down just feeling hacked off with the pair of them.
She won’t tell me, of course, because it’s too shameful, so I say,
“Look, if he’s beating you up, tell me. I know Tris is a mate but no way am I going to take his side if it’s something like that.”
She says no, it’s not that, and she finishes off her drink and asks if she can use my bathroom to do her make-up. I tell her she’s got panda eyes, and she laughs because she hasn’t heard that before, and while she’s in the loo I hear the key turn in the lock and the boys are back.

Chapter XIV
Tristan Returns Again

We shot the vid and Marcus insisted we go to New York to do some promo work, and Tris is in the clear because he’s served his year’s banishment, and anyway, he’s married.
Alarm bells should have rung when I found out Issey with the white hands wasn’t coming, but I was busy with the plans for the pub and negotiating to sell my New York apartment and getting ready to ship my stuff back to Dublin.

Uncle Marcus meets us personally off the plane, and tells us he’s got a surprise planned. We’ve got a mystery support act for the gig at the Cornwall Club, and I’m thinking maybe it’s the skater-boys, but hoping it isn’t because it would be too embarrassing if he’s told all his mates what a slag I was that night.
We all stay at mine, and we’re busy with interviews for the next few days, and we’re rehearsing for the gig, and just having a break in the dressing room while they do a sound check, when Marcus walks in with Issy.
Tris is looking pretty wasted, and he’s almost living on coke and bourbon, but the light flashes from his eyes when she walks in and she just stands there and glows.
“I thought you were in San Francisco” I say, giving her a squeeze and I introduce her to Ron, and she finds a place to put her stuff, and looks over at Tris. Tris had only just been holding things together, but this blew him apart. The gig was shit. Issy was amazing, and the punters loved her, but when we came on Tris fucked up his cues and even forgot the words to one of his numbers. The crowd were polite, it was that sort of place now, but I sure as hell wasn’t.
“You’re a fucking arse-hole” I think was the nicest thing I said, and I put my street clothes on and just stormed out to get a taxi home.
Half an hour later he arrived with Issy, but I wouldn’t let them in. They rang my bell for what seemed like eternity until I saw the entry-phone screen empty and looked out of the window at them walking hand in hand up the street.

I don’t know what sleazy hotel they ended up in, or whether he just fucked her up against a wall, but there must have been some conversation attached because the next day Perry called and said Jack was in hospital and Tris had made death threats Denny and Nelson and Will.
Marcus called me shortly afterwards and his voice was like ice.
“Tell that nephew of mine to get his ass back to the land of the rising sun, or he won’t see no more sunrise. And if he fucks up one show out there my Yakuza buddies will tattoo his sorry ass with bullets.”

Perry came round, and said it wasn’t anything to do with the shagging, but Marcus had been to school with Denny, and Nelson was his cousin, and if Tris couldn’t even stand up on stage anymore Marcus wasn’t going to stand up for him, period.
Ron was in the torch on the Statue of Liberty when I called him, and having the time of his life, and I just thought what a selfish bastard Tris was for just not even thinking. You’re getting old, Brannie, I thought. You’re starting to sound like your mum. It’s love, maybe not like the fairy stories, but like nothing that’s ever happened to you, baby. Spliff-time.

Ron and me waited up until two in the morning before the buzzer sounded and we let Casanova in. He’d just come back from the club, he said.
“What club?”
“The fucking Cornwall Club, or what’s left of it. I put that rat Denny through the office window, and kicked Nelson down the stairs, but I couldn’t find Will. Bit I got the camera. Any chance of a beer, baby?”
“Tristan, we’ve got to get you out of town” I said, panicking because this was my place, and I did not want any bloodstains on the rug.
“Don’t you want to see the pictures?” and I shuddered to think what might be on the camera screen, but looked anyway.
It was Tris and Issy walking hand in hand across the square.
“I’m keeping this as a souvenir. Come on guys, I’ve got a cab outside, I’ll tell you the story on the way to the airport.”
I was half expecting some car full of hoods to trail us through the mean streets with guys leaning out of the window taking pot-shots but I should have known Marcus better than that.
He wanted the tour to shift the merchandise, and Tris had to make it to Japan, whatever he’d done, and with Tris having got Jack’s camera Issy was in the clear.
“It’s a good thing you had that thing with Perry” said Tris after we’d explained everything to Ron, “or I’d have had to shut his mouth too.”
The cab driver turned out to be Korean, and he didn’t understand a word we said, but Ron spoke a few words of Korean and he didn’t sting us for too much. I wasn’t feeling secure until we got back to Tokyo, even the three hour stopover at LA freaked me out so much I threw up in the ladies.

The Japan tour was fun. We stayed in these college dorms, because the term had ended, and most of the kids who came to see us where younger, sort of sixth formers, or whatever. What really surprised me was how friendly Tris was with the fans, signing autographs, giving interviews, and most nights him and Issey with the white hands would invite a few fans back to their room for a party.
Me and Ron just hung with the road crew mostly, and I didn’t really like Tris’s fan-base, all stoner boys with shitty little bikes and attitude, but it was good to see him and Issey Two getting on so well.

When the tour finished Grainne moved down into my place and we had a little party. End of an era, really. She was working as a hostess, making a fortune just talking to drunken salary-men, and we weren’t number one on sales, but we were on file-share which is a damn sight more real.
Ron was turning down session work, he was so popular, and Tris and Issey Two seemed happy enough, though he hadn’t moved all his stuff out of the flat.

I flew back to Heathrow the day before my birthday, my last day of being a teenager, and I was amazed to see the press waiting for me. I had some idea that we might do OK in the clubs, but the BBC wanted to do a follow-up to the whole Pop Princess saga, and even the Irish Times had someone there, which if you’ve ever tried to read it is amazing. I hadn’t arranged any PR, so I had to handle it all myself, and I could see my mum waving from behind the barriers, so I smiled a lot, and told them to call my agent in New York and rushed off as soon as I could to give my mum a big hug.
She’d had a birthday cake made with a still from the new video on it, which was just so sweet of her, and I felt a bit mean not staying in London too long, but I was desperate to get to Dublin and see how things were going with my Southside boozer.

It was total chaos downstairs, but my da had got his mates to convert the top two floors into flats, one for me and one for him, and over the next couple of months we managed to get it all sorted. Dubliners love novelty, and I’d figured that if an Irish theme pub would work in Tokyo, then a Japanese themed pub would work in Dublin. I had this couple over from London to fit it out who’d done some place called Quasimodo’s in the West End, and never got paid by the owner, so they gave me a good price.
It was all pine and cedar and paper screens, with diffused lighting and a state of the art karaoke machine. The bar snacks were all seaweed and raw fish that I got sent in from a Japanese restaurant, and we even had Japanese beers, though the Guinness was on draught. I milked the press for publicity, and we sold out of booze on the opening night. I was happy, my da was over the moon. My flat was a little palace, and I’d got enough cash coming in from selling my place in New York to cover costs for six months. Then I got a call from Ron.

Chapter XV
The Poisoned Spear

Tris still hadn’t moved his gear out, and Ron said he’d decided to sort through it all and he’d found a video.
“I’m amazed” I said “Surely everyone’s got DVD by now?”
“It’s not pre-recorded, Brannie, it’s home-made. I can’t tell you any more, Grainne’s just walked in. I’ll post it to you, recorded delivery.”
It was one of those little tapes you have to put in a kind of big tape thingy to play, and I had to ask my dad to find me the kit, because I just didn’t have anything that stone-age in my flat. He set it all up for me, and I could tell he was as curious as me but I told him he was getting paid to keep bar, not watch dodgy videos with his daughter. Big joke.

I rolled myself a couple of joints and lit a joss stick, because I didn’t want any skunky smell wafting into my dad’s place, mixed myself a Tequila Sunrise, and pressed play.
I couldn’t work out what it was, or where to begin with. There were a whole bunch of Japanese kids in leather jackets drinking beer and smoking weed, and the room’s pretty tiny, then the thing cuts out and Tris is clinking bottles with one of these kids, and there’s a whole lot of shouting and laughing, and Issey with the white hands is sitting down. I can’t see her face, but her nail varnish gives her away. I freeze the frame and try to work out where it is and there’s a date on the screen. It’s halfway through the Japan tour, and this is a student dorm in Osaka, maybe, and it’s obviously one of Tris’s post-gig parties. I’m curious now, and getting quite high, so I mix another drink and re-start the vid. The camera stays on Issey, and she starts to take her top off, and I can hear Tris tell her to stand up, which she does, and someone puts some music on, and the guys are saying stuff I can’t understand in Japanese. Then the camera cuts to a bunch of guys sitting on the bed, and they each say something, and they all laugh, and then there’s a pan back to Issey who’s standing in the middle of the room, just stepping out of her knickers. She is absolutely beautiful, but I’ve no idea why she’s doing this, maybe this is what she’s so ashamed of she can’t tell me.
Tris must have the camera now because it zooms into her face and I can hear him ask her
“Do you love me?”
She looks straight at the camera and bites her lip and she says
“Yes, Tris, I love you.”
“Get on the bed” he says, and there’s a shot of the ceiling, and some Japanese boy taking his shirt off, and a couple of guys standing by the window, and then it’s just straight porno, with Tris fucking her in this cold, detached mechanical way. There’s a bit more confusion, then he must have got the camera back, because it zooms into her face again, and I’m fascinated in spite of myself. I know what’s coming next, it’s like that porn site me and Ron found on the web.

I remember him asking me if I knew the names of any Japanese marital arts, and I said didn’t he mean martial arts, and he said type in ‘bukkake’, and I said, what’s that, naked karate, but it wasn’t. It was this.
I’m looking at her face, and she’s crying out, like she’s going to come, and the camera pans back and the room is just full of these Japanese boys all wanking. It’s comical in a way, and the first one just spunks all over her face. I stop the tape and light another joint.
I can remember fantasising about stuff like this, but this isn’t fantasy, it’s real, and it’s cruel and degrading and monstrous. I sit down and press play again. It’s obvious Tris is not going to let her reach orgasm, he just wants to humiliate her. After five minutes she’s covered, and he makes her turn over so they can come all over her back. Someone else grabs the camera now, and it gets just too gynaecological for me, so I fast forward until he’s obviously finished, and he tells her to go and stand in the middle of the room. She goes to wipe her face, but he tells her not to, and she’s just standing there, dripping, and he says, again,
“Do you love me?” and the poor fucked-up cow says yes.

I stop the tape, and wind it on about half way, and it’s the same. Different room, different date, same routine. I don’t want to watch anymore, I have to get some fresh air. I take the tape out and hide it in my wardrobe, put my coat on and head out. My da shouts across did I enjoy the video, and I say I’ll see him later and walk into the clean Dublin rain.

I walk down to the Temple Bar, which I hate usually, it’s so anonymous and full of drunken tourists, and I go into the first bar I see and order a double gin and tonic. Then another. After six I decide I’ve had enough, and I can hardly stand up. I weave my way to the river and stand on Halfpenny Bridge in the rain, trying to light a Regal.
I walk across to the Northside and find a bench to sit on, and the rain eases off a bit, so I light up another and watch the lovers walking by the Liffey, and hear the Irish laughter echo on the water.
I’m thinking back to that time in my place in Alphabet City and how right he was, Tris.
It has killed him now, as sure as Will and Denny tried to on the beach, and I realise it would have been better if they had.
I sit there for an hour or so, and wander back to my bar, which has a big sign outside with my name on, BRANGWIN’S, and I go into the back office, my office, and make myself a nice strong cup of tea.

I sleep well that night, and I’ve made a decision. No more Japanese culture, with it’s sickness hidden behind a paper screen. I am going to follow Marcus and rip it all out and start again. I know it’s not Japan, it could be anywhere, you can smell the lies in any culture, the hypocrisy and the rottenness of it all just covered up with a lick of paint, but I have to wipe it all out and start again. After watching that video the very word karaoke makes me want to smash the machine into fragments.
I’m watching the clock until I know Ron will be awake, then I call him. He’s got another tape the first half of the tour, the same sick shit, and he’s pretty angry. He knows he couldn’t stand up to Tris, he’s just get the shit kicked out of him, but that isn’t what he wants me to tell him. He wants me to take responsibility, he wants me to deal with Tris, and I tell him no.
I say I’ll talk to Issey with the white hands, but he says if I do she might do something stupid. It’s one of those no-win situations and we’re powerless. All we can do is just watch.
I invite my da out for lunch, and we go up to Hanlons, where everyone makes a big fuss, and then we go for a walk and I’m explaining, or trying to explain how I feel, without telling him what’s really going on, and he’s listening patiently. He says
“If it ain’t bust, Brangwin, don’t try and fix it. I was a little doubtful to begin with, but you’re making a killing. Now you want to close down and you’re going to lose out. You’re not exactly throwing good money after bad, more like throwing good money after good, but you’ll still be throwing your money away. Why not leave the place run for six months and sell up?”
I don’t think I’ve ever heard my da say so much in my life, and he’s never been one for idle talk so I bite my tongue and let his words sink in to my thick head.
“I don’t want to be here anymore,” I say, and he says leave it to him, and why don’t I take myself off for a holiday, go somewhere off away abroad, like India, maybe.

We ended up near the zoo, which is where he always used to take me and Grainne when we’d come over to stay at my nana’s, and I got to thinking how I’d caged myself in, all this work and stressing about business, while Leonie was getting her degree, and au pairing in Norway, and travelling round Europe sight-seeing. I hadn’t had a proper holiday since mum had taken us to Butlin’s when Grainne passed her A-levels, and I managed to get into the bar and got drunk for the first time.
We walked round the lake and watched the penguins get fed, and as the rain started to fall and I hunched my shoulders up I could feel all the tension of the last three years holding me like a fist. A week later I was in Goa.

Chapter XVI
The Death of Tristan and Isolde

At the last minute I decide to leave my mobile behind, after all it was only a fortnight’s winter break, and all I wanted to do was lie around the pool all day reading trashy books, and maybe go to a club, and try some of that South Indian food Tris used to cook back in Tokyo.
It was better than I’d thought, not just the food but the whole scene, and I got into hiring a scooter and like just taking off on these back roads through these little villages where no-one knew who I was. I even found myself dancing to one of my own tracks that had been re-mixed, and no-one even looked at me twice. I hung out on the beach one night with some boys, smoking and watching the sun set and we made sand castles and drank Kingfisher beer.
I sent loads of postcards, but I didn’t let anyone know where I was, like what hotel, so when I got back to Dublin there were loads of messages just bleeping through when I turned my phone on.

I decided to leave off listening for a while. The one person I really wanted to talk to was Issy. My mate Issy, with the long blonde hair. I’d read the latest gossip in the News of the Screws poolside in the hotel, and she was back in the limelight again, pictures of her leaving some LA club with a well-known film star, and accidentally flashing her knickers as she got out of a cab. I called her up straightaway, and a dopey voice answered
“Hello, is that Brannie? God, girl, do you know what time it is?”
I could hear a man’s voice in the background, and it didn’t sound like Marcus.
“So it’s true, you trollop. What’s he like? Spill the beans.”
“Hang on.” I could hear her stumble out of bed, and a door close.
“He’s in my bed, right now” she stage whispers, “and he’s very lovely indeed. A bit old maybe, but fit as.”
“Fit ass?” She told me to shut up and filled me in on the latest goss.
She’s found out she can get a quickie divorce in Mexico, or New Mexico, she’s not sure which, and the whole thing will be sorted out before Marcus even knows about it, and anyway he’s given up on her and he’s after some other teenage tart he’s just signed up to his label, and maybe he only likes virgins because he’s queer?
I tell her all about my hols and this boy on the beach and no I didn’t but he’s from Cork and I’ve got his e-mail so yes I might and is she thinking of getting married again?
“Only to Tris, if I’m honest. And I think it’s over, really. What’s she like, this new wife of his?”
I can’t really tell her about the vids, but I’m thinking if she’s free, then maybe he could just do the same, and they can finally stop acting like victims and get the fairytale ending.
We talk about music, and friends and will I come over and see her, maybe for a ‘Free Issy’ party, and I say is that like ‘Free Willy’ and she says she wishes, but isn’t it such a silly word for such a lovely thing, and doesn’t ‘cock’ sound much nicer.
“And taste much better, too” I say, and we whitter on and she says she has to go because her man is in the can, so we blow kisses and I ring off, happy.

I’m thinking there’s probably loads of business calls on my answer-phone, and I want to un pack and see my dad, so it’s not until I’m in bed that I get round to listening.
“Brannie, this is Grainne, give me a call.”
“Brannie, it’s Grainne again, it’s really important. Call me.”
“Brannie, I really have to speak to you. Please call.”
I called my sister.

The phone rang for a long time. I was wishing for good news, let it be she’s having a baby holy Mary mother of God let it be she’s having a baby.
She wasn’t having a baby, she had news about Tris. I couldn’t believe it. I was knackered from my flight and I’m not back for a day before all this shit flies over from Japan and lands in my lap.
“Brannie, Tris has been shot. He’s in hospital. You have to come right over, I can’t handle this without you and Ron says, well Ron just doesn’t want to know, and his wife won’t let him have visitors. He’s in a bad way, Brannie.”
I was fuming. I’d have to fly all the way back over bloody India where I’d just come from, probably to find Tris sitting up in bed eating fucking noodles. Grainne always did exaggerate, it made her seem more important.
“Have you seen him, Grainne?”
“I told you, he’s not allowed any visitors. Issey says she wants to keep the press out, and the doctors say family only.”

I made some coffee and woke my dad to take me to the airport. I didn’t bother to pack, and I decided not to spoil Issy’s fun until I’d seen things for myself. Dad stayed with me until I left for London, and I had to pay through the nose for first class seats. I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired in my life. I’d been flying for two days and I felt sick as a dog. I took a cab to the flat and arrived about five in the morning. Ron answered the door and made me a cup of tea and showed me to my bed. I’d get the story in the morning. He promised.

I was starved. Two fried eggs and a whole pot of coffee later I’d heard all that Ron knew, and that was more than the press did.
Tris had found another way of getting at his wife. He was, in Ron’s words, corrupting her little brother. He recruited him into his little biker gang and took him out boozing and vandalising and whoring and generally raising hell.
One night they’d met some woman in a club, middle-aged, bored, looking for a bit of rough. Tris let his little brother-in-law use the flat he shared with Issey, while she was out at work, and boy wonder was boffing her there most afternoons.
It turns out, according to Ron, that the lady’s old man is some gangster, and he’s well suspicious and has his wife followed. Once the bad guys have found out where she’s heading for her afternoon crumpet they wait until she’s been there an hour and follow her in with a sledgehammer.
Issey’s brother’s out the back window, but Tris is asleep in bed next door, off his face more than likely, so they put two and two together and the lady’s denials just make them more convinced they have the right man, so they shoot him in the belly and take the lady away.

There’s a little niggle in the back of my head while I’m hearing this, and I’m remembering Marcus bragging about his Yakuza pals, but it sounds like it could be this way, and the important thing is to see Tris. Ron says he doesn’t really care whether he lives or dies, and he’s got what he deserves, but I work him round to phoning the hospital, and the surgeon says he’ll see us today.

The doc’s a friendly little fat guy and his daughter has our posters on her wall, so he says he’ll see what he can do, but Issey with the white hands is his next of kin and a bad infection has set in after the operation that’s immune to antibiotics.
Issey has been sitting with him for a whole week, he says, and Tris must love her very much because he keeps saying her name over and over again.

He leaves us for a few minutes and comes back with Issey, and like the perfect gent he is, he says he’s going for a coffee and closes the door leaving us alone.
“I said no visitors and I mean it” she says.
“I’m going to tell her” I say to Ron, “We’ve found the party videos Issey and we know all about it. You can’t pretend. Now let us see him.”
I was tired and I wanted to get it over. I wasn’t threatening her, but maybe it sounded like that, because she and Ron started arguing in Japanese and she got up in tears and went out. I saw her bump into the doc and spill his coffee and he spoke a few words and came back in.
His look was very disapproving. We could see Tris for five minutes but we had to wear gowns and masks and we couldn’t excite him.

I had to tell her. She’d never have forgiven me. It really wasn’t my fault. I called her from the car park outside the hospital. I told her how Tris was asking for her. I told her how he was having another operation. I told her how the doctors were saying it was a fifty-fifty chance. She cancelled the gig and flew straight over.

I met her at the airport and drove her to the hospital. We waited outside the operating theatre, his wife was allowed in. He never came out of the anaesthetic. The infection was too far gone, they said. His body was too weak. They did all they could.
Issy just stood there looking at her namesake, standing outside those double doors with the little round windows in. I saw the look on her face as she burst through and flung herself on his body. It took four men to drag her off, and she screamed his name as they man-handled her down the corridor.
I followed them out to the roof garden, where they were trying to give her a shot, and she calms down and smiles at me and I tell them to let her go.
I said I’d take care of her.
We were fourteen floors up and it took a lifetime before she hit the ground. She lay there with her blonde hair and her leather jacket and I just willed her to stand up, to stand up and sing.