Nico Read Online Free Page B

everywhere, heaps of unopened bills in the In tray. On the wall above his desk hung a photo of Carl Gustav Jung and another of Will Hay, the comedian, in his phony headmaster rig.
    Dr Demetrius spoke with a pronounced Manchester accent which he tried to submerge beneath a curious telephone voice when feeling formal or trying to impress, which was most of the time. Sometimes, if there was a lull in the conversation, he would take the opportunity to recite some of his poetry in the telephone voice. People would quickly find something to say.
    â€˜I often feel that the motorway is the modern river – “On tides of tarmac/we travel our trends.”’ (He self-quoted.)
    Toby cut into the versifying, ‘’Ow does it look, Doc? Yer can tell us straight, like.’
    â€˜Now, what we have here,’ Demetrius began, ‘is essentially a conflict of interests, compounded by a multiplicity of needs … Nico needs to work in order to buy heroin, and heroin in order to work; Echo needs Nico to buy heroin in order not to work; we, on the other hand, have but one simple need: Adventure.’
    He pulled a Vick inhaler from his waistcoat pocket and took a deep sniff.
    â€˜Aaaah … Yes, gentlemen, Adventure. After all, is that not why we are gathered here now? There are other rewards in life, to be sure, but they are brittle and transient. Adventure sustains the Spirit, feeds the Will, makes us rise above our miserable subjectivity … unlike our friend Echo, who prefers to wallow in his. A victim of unquestioning dogma, Echo crucifies himself for imagined sins.’ He poked a Trust House Forte biro at Toby. ‘Are we to stand motionless at the foot of the cross, in some bizarre Pietà of indecision?’
    â€˜Don’t ask me, squire, I jus’ want me cab fare back ter Wythenshawe.’
    â€˜May I suggest, Toby, that you set your sights a little higher than the windswept council estates of south Manchester? A golden egg of opportunity has been placed in our fragile nest. Let us endeavour to incubate it with our support, so that it may hatch into full plumage.’
    â€˜I’m not sure I catch yer drift,’ said Toby.
    Demetrius sighed, scratched his beard, and shook a couple of Valium from a small brown bottle (his father owned a chain of chemists). ‘Quite simply. Keep Echo off the stuff, and keep Nico on her feet … I’m relying on you both. I’ve already redirected the career aspirations of that degenerate little freeloader with the septic leg who lived on her floor. “Artistic Adviser” indeed. An unfortunate attachment – though I suppose abscess makes the heart grow fonder.’ He chuckled to himself and necked the valium. ‘It’s up to us now to take care of her. Remember, this is “Nico”, “Chanteuse of the Velvet Underground”. Buy yourselves some dark sunglasses and a couple of black polonecks … we’ll need the art crowd behind us if we intend to make a go of this.’
    He handed us three £10 notes each. Toby immediately went out and bought half a gram of heroin.
    The days zigzagged into an endlessly frustrating stop/start come/go nowhere affair. Cabs from Demetrius’s office over to Echo’s and back again. Mysterious journeys down dark country lanes in the Saddleworth Moors, looking for Nico’s heroin connection; or through the windtunnels and concrete labyrinths of the Hulme and Moss Side estates where the ice-cream men sold amphetamine before smack became more profitable. Suffer little children.
    Nico-Watching: scanning her features for vestiges of that flawless beauty that I’d only ever glimpsed in a dim bedroom hopelessness, tuning into a voice that had only ever accompanied the late-night confessional elegy for a lost virginity.
    In photographs the light seemed to carve and recreate her, like living sculpture, slicing into those granite cheekbones, chiselling the profile. Close