Reggo
Blue Crack Addict
- Joined
- Mar 30, 2007
- Messages
- 26,992
Chapter 16, as promised.
If chapter 15 made you uncomfortable in any way, you should probably turn away now. The roller coaster IS speeding up and Lucy's car is coming dangerously close to crashing headlong into the ground.
Not true, never happened, Adam's not this much of an arsehole.
-----
It's been ages since I've seen Lucy, at least six months, maybe more. But Larry hasn't seen her since she left the flat that night either. I'm worried. She's never completely disappeared before and never has she been gone this long. Taking care of Stacie on my own and getting ready for another tour kind of puts blinders on me. Until one day when Paul McGuinness calls me with a bee in his bonnet.
"Have you seen what your Lucy is up to? It's everywhere! Drinking, drugs, partying with Pete Doherty"--my stomach drops when I hear that name--"She's getting worse than that Amy Winehouse bird was a few years ago," McGuinness tells me. "Pick up a newspaper or turn on any chat show. She's talked about on there, making us look like idiots. There's internet videos of her snorting cocaine off Doherty's chest."
"Oh, God. No. Not Lucy," I babble. I can't think of what to say.
"I thought you were back with her."
"Paul, I haven't seen her or heard from her in months. I really had no idea she was like this. Where was she last seen?" I ask, wanting to track her down.
"Some club in London. If the news is correct, she was screwing Doherty so he would give her a tablet of ecstasy. Which she took and then fucked him again."
This is really what you're doing to yourself, Luce? "What needs to be done?"
"I need to do some damage control. And you and Larry need to decide which one of you is going to take responsibility for her," Paul hangs up. I find an old address book and call my former marijuana dealer. After staunchly refusing to buy a dimebag, he puts me in touch with another dealer who's dropping off drugs to Pete Doherty in London tonight. I call Larry and tell him what's going on and where Lucy will be tonight and he agrees to fly down to London with me. I line up a sitter who can stay overnight if need be for Stacie, and then Larry and I leave.
The club is packed when Larry and I arrive and because the train wreck du jour, my Lucy and Pete Doherty, are going to be there, so are the paparazzi. Larry hides in his coat, but I'm not so lucky and get blinded by a zillion flashes until we get inside the club. I don't see Lucy straight off, so I ask the bartender, "Is Lucinda Clayton here?"
"Who?"
"Lucinda Clayton," I repeat, louder.
"Don't know who the fuck that is, mate."
"Lucy Mac," Larry pipes up, remembering her old party girl name.
"Lucy Mac! She's here. VIP Room 3," the bartender points it out to us and Larry and I head upstairs to the door. I knock and some young kid answers.
"Did somebody call for two old fucks?" he asks the crowd.
"Does your mother know where you are?" I ask. The kid shrugs. "Is Lucy here? I want to speak with her."
"Lucy! The old fucks say they know you," the kid lets us in and at first, I don't recognize Lucy. Her hair's dyed black, but her copper roots have grown out. She's skinny and her eyes are dark and heavy. Her skin is sallow, yellow, like Stacie's was when she had jaundice after she was born. She has a cigarette hanging from her lips and she looks like she could barely hold her head up.
"Lucy?" I ask.
She opens her eyes a slit and tries to pull her head up to look at me, but recognising my voice is enough, I guess, and she says, "Fuck off."
"Máire!" Larry shouts.
"Fuck you, too," then she starts to laugh. A pun on the band's name. "Guys, meet Adam Clayton, my ex-almost-husband" she points at Larry, "and Larry Mullen, my best fuck for the past fourteen years," she points at me. "They're the rhythm section of..." she trails off.
"Of what?" the kid asks.
"What?" Lucy asks. She's obviously already forgotten what she was talking about.
"You were saying something about these two old fucks, love," another, more sober fellow chimes in.
"Well, how the fuck should I know? I haven't slept since Pete's four nights ago," she laughs as if it's normal to not sleep for half a week. "I have a baby with one of them."
"Which one?" the more sober fellow asks.
"The old one," and she and her friends burst into laughter again. "Don't ever have kids. They get in the way and fuck everything up. Neither of them would be here if it weren't for that little brat."
"How dare you speak of Anastacia like that!" I yell, but her friends just laugh and mock me. "Lucinda, why are you doing this?"
"I am my mother after all," she spits at me, repeating what I screamed at her months ago at Hanover. She drains a full martini in record time. "Here to rescue likkle old Lucy from big, bad London?"
"Lucy, please come home and stop this," Larry says calmly.
"After you hit me?" Lucy snorts. "Not fucking likely."
"I didn't hit you on purpose, Lucy! I accidentally knocked my elbow into her eye when I was trying to stop her from leaving one of the times she ran away," Larry explains, more to prevent me murdering him than anything else. Lucy and her mates are laughing when Doherty shows up, lit up and raring to go. He slides in next to Lucy and drops a parcel of drugs on the table to the delight of everyone sitting around it, but Larry and I. Lucy kisses Doherty and he puts his arm around her. I didn't like him before, and I fucking hate him now. There's cocaine, methamphetamines, marijuana, and a couple of loaded needles.
"Don't you have any ecstasy?" Lucy asks.
"Sorry, love, fresh out," Doherty replies.
"Damn. I wanted to get hot and fuck you," Lucy is disappointed. She picks up one of the needles.
"Is that heroin? Lucy, no, put that down. You're better than that," Larry insists, but I take a different approach.
"No, Lars," I slide in the booth next to Doherty. "I want to see it. If she's gonna be Miss Drug Addict, I want to see her do it."
"Shut the fuck up, Sparky," Larry warns as I watch Lucy search for a vein.
"No. Do it, Lucy. Show me how bad you are," I egg her on.
"I swear to God, Clayton," Larry warns again. She's found her vein.
"Come on, Lucy. Show Adam what a big junkie you are."
I watch in horror as Lucy slides the needle against her arm and it pierces the skin. I expected blood, but there wasn't any. Then she pushes the drugs into her system, throwing her head back as they take hold. She pulls the needle out and then there's a drop of blood, darkly oozing out of the hole. She doesn't notice or doesn't care that it runs down her arm and takes a drag of her cigarette, which she didn't put down once while shooting up. I run out of the club. I'm going to be sick. Larry follows, calling the police on his cell phone. I vomit in a potted plant while Larry talks to the police. He checks on me, still hunched over the plant, when he's done.
"You okay?" He puts his hand on my back. I nod and I turn to my left. "Good." He punches me in the stomach with his right fist, knocking the wind out of me. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" He yells as I stagger back a bit. My stomach hurts, but while he's caught off-guard, I punch him in the jaw. Larry recovers and punches me in the left eye socket. I swing blindly and make contact with some part of him. Then he punches me in the stomach again. He swings for my jaw, but I dart out of his way and punch him in the nose.
"Ow, fuck, Adam," he holds his nose and hunches over. "I think you broke it."
My fist hurts like hell, but I'm still pissed off and I punch him in the side of the head with my left hand. I notice my left eye stings and it's because Larry's claddagh cut my brow open and blood's dripping into my eye. He takes advantage of my pause and punches me in the jaw, hard enough to knock one of my teeth loose.
I rush him and knock him down on the asphalt of the car park and start punching wildly with both fists as the cops arrive. And that's when I remember the paparazzi. Larry and I get arrested and handcuffed and put in the back of the same squad car while more police go inside the club to break up Lucy and Pete's party. Larry sniffles next to me, then says, "Aw, fuck," as blood drips onto his jeans from his nose and split lip. I say nothing and watch out the window was Doherty and everyone in the VIP room are put in police cars and taken off to jail. But Lucy's not arrested.
"That's everybody," one of the cops says as he and his partner get in the squad car to take Larry and me to jail. I start to worry even more about Lucy now while Larry calls Bono and McGuinness to come bail us out. We were arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct, a charge that got lessened to just disorderly conduct after our blood alcohol levels were tested. It's going to be a while before Bono gets here, so he decides to yell at me.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" He repeats. "Why in hell did you tell her to do that?" Larry's sitting in the opposite corner, arms folded, glaring at me. We were put in the same cell.
"Reverse psychology. I thought if I told her to, she's realise something was wrong and she wouldn't do it," I shrug. "That's not how an addict's brain works. If you tell us to use, we will. End of story. I should've known better."
Larry nods. "That was just about the scariest damn thing I've ever seen."
"Me, too," I chuckle. We both stare at the drain in the middle of the floor.
"What are we gonna do?" Larry asks.
"What do you mean, 'we'? She's your girlfriend now," I say.
"Sparky, she walked out on me the day you dumped her. That's what started her whole downward spiral. She still has--or had, at least--feelings for you. If she didn't, she wouldn't have left," Larry looks away.
"How long have you been together, like, really together?"
"Just like she said. Fourteen years," Larry nods, watching for my reaction, which is a bit of shock. "Yeah, do the math, she's 29. She lied about how old she was when I met her. And yes, Aaron is 13. I met Lucy right around the same time Ann got pregnant the first time. During that crazy time of my back surgery and recording and everything else."
"You love her madly, don't you, Lardence?"
"What do you mean?"
"Your face lights up when you talk about her. I doubt I do the same. She's always been so difficult with me, I guess I don't get to see that side of her."
"Adam, if you want her back, all you have to do is give her another chance. I think if you relax a bit and try not to control every little thing she does, you'll be able to hang onto her."
"Assuming she still wants me to. Assuming I still want to. After what she said about Stacie--."
"Drugs, Sparky. God only knows what's running through her system. They were talking. Not her. Did that sound like Lucy to you?" Larry points in a random direction.
"I reckon not," I shrug. "She shouldn't see Stacie."
"No, Stacie shouldn't see her mother like that. What are you thinking?"
"Getting a restraining order against her. For Stacie at least. Until she gets clean again," I shrug and notice my shoulder is sore from trying to rearrange Larry's face.
"Sorry I tried to kick your arse."
"If I were in your place, I'd kick my arse, too. It was a fucking stupid thing to say."
Larry looks at the floor and chuckles. "I wonder where Bono is."
"Letting us sit here and think about what we've done. We went to a drug party full of twenty-year-olds at the hippest club in London then went into the carpark and beat the shit out of each other. I believe this classifies us as idiots."
"If not idiots, boobs, definitely," Larry laughs.
I look at the dried blood on his face. "We look a sight, don't we?" I start to laugh.
"Like two kids fighting over a girl." Both Larry and I are laughing at full volume and I hear from the next cell:
"Could you old fucks please keep it down over there, for Christ's sake?" Doherty has a hangover.
"Fuck off," Bono snaps at him. We hadn't noticed he'd arrived. "You both owe me."
"We love you, your demigodness," Larry and I say in unison then start to laugh again.
"Shut the fuck up!" Doherty screams.
"You shut the fuck up!" Bono yells as our cell is unlocked and we're set loose again. Larry and I follow Bono and McGuinness to the limo to take them to the airport and me to my London house.
"Did you have to go make things worse? U2 are supposed to be an upstanding, clean-cut band. And then all this. If you're trying to kill me, it's working," McGuinness gripes.
"Yay!" Larry says, in a silly mood. It's been a while since he's been arrested.
"Smart arse. Adam, you have to do something about that girl," McGuinness makes it sound like an order.
"Oh, I already know," I smile as we pull into my drive.
If chapter 15 made you uncomfortable in any way, you should probably turn away now. The roller coaster IS speeding up and Lucy's car is coming dangerously close to crashing headlong into the ground.
Not true, never happened, Adam's not this much of an arsehole.
-----
It's been ages since I've seen Lucy, at least six months, maybe more. But Larry hasn't seen her since she left the flat that night either. I'm worried. She's never completely disappeared before and never has she been gone this long. Taking care of Stacie on my own and getting ready for another tour kind of puts blinders on me. Until one day when Paul McGuinness calls me with a bee in his bonnet.
"Have you seen what your Lucy is up to? It's everywhere! Drinking, drugs, partying with Pete Doherty"--my stomach drops when I hear that name--"She's getting worse than that Amy Winehouse bird was a few years ago," McGuinness tells me. "Pick up a newspaper or turn on any chat show. She's talked about on there, making us look like idiots. There's internet videos of her snorting cocaine off Doherty's chest."
"Oh, God. No. Not Lucy," I babble. I can't think of what to say.
"I thought you were back with her."
"Paul, I haven't seen her or heard from her in months. I really had no idea she was like this. Where was she last seen?" I ask, wanting to track her down.
"Some club in London. If the news is correct, she was screwing Doherty so he would give her a tablet of ecstasy. Which she took and then fucked him again."
This is really what you're doing to yourself, Luce? "What needs to be done?"
"I need to do some damage control. And you and Larry need to decide which one of you is going to take responsibility for her," Paul hangs up. I find an old address book and call my former marijuana dealer. After staunchly refusing to buy a dimebag, he puts me in touch with another dealer who's dropping off drugs to Pete Doherty in London tonight. I call Larry and tell him what's going on and where Lucy will be tonight and he agrees to fly down to London with me. I line up a sitter who can stay overnight if need be for Stacie, and then Larry and I leave.
The club is packed when Larry and I arrive and because the train wreck du jour, my Lucy and Pete Doherty, are going to be there, so are the paparazzi. Larry hides in his coat, but I'm not so lucky and get blinded by a zillion flashes until we get inside the club. I don't see Lucy straight off, so I ask the bartender, "Is Lucinda Clayton here?"
"Who?"
"Lucinda Clayton," I repeat, louder.
"Don't know who the fuck that is, mate."
"Lucy Mac," Larry pipes up, remembering her old party girl name.
"Lucy Mac! She's here. VIP Room 3," the bartender points it out to us and Larry and I head upstairs to the door. I knock and some young kid answers.
"Did somebody call for two old fucks?" he asks the crowd.
"Does your mother know where you are?" I ask. The kid shrugs. "Is Lucy here? I want to speak with her."
"Lucy! The old fucks say they know you," the kid lets us in and at first, I don't recognize Lucy. Her hair's dyed black, but her copper roots have grown out. She's skinny and her eyes are dark and heavy. Her skin is sallow, yellow, like Stacie's was when she had jaundice after she was born. She has a cigarette hanging from her lips and she looks like she could barely hold her head up.
"Lucy?" I ask.
She opens her eyes a slit and tries to pull her head up to look at me, but recognising my voice is enough, I guess, and she says, "Fuck off."
"Máire!" Larry shouts.
"Fuck you, too," then she starts to laugh. A pun on the band's name. "Guys, meet Adam Clayton, my ex-almost-husband" she points at Larry, "and Larry Mullen, my best fuck for the past fourteen years," she points at me. "They're the rhythm section of..." she trails off.
"Of what?" the kid asks.
"What?" Lucy asks. She's obviously already forgotten what she was talking about.
"You were saying something about these two old fucks, love," another, more sober fellow chimes in.
"Well, how the fuck should I know? I haven't slept since Pete's four nights ago," she laughs as if it's normal to not sleep for half a week. "I have a baby with one of them."
"Which one?" the more sober fellow asks.
"The old one," and she and her friends burst into laughter again. "Don't ever have kids. They get in the way and fuck everything up. Neither of them would be here if it weren't for that little brat."
"How dare you speak of Anastacia like that!" I yell, but her friends just laugh and mock me. "Lucinda, why are you doing this?"
"I am my mother after all," she spits at me, repeating what I screamed at her months ago at Hanover. She drains a full martini in record time. "Here to rescue likkle old Lucy from big, bad London?"
"Lucy, please come home and stop this," Larry says calmly.
"After you hit me?" Lucy snorts. "Not fucking likely."
"I didn't hit you on purpose, Lucy! I accidentally knocked my elbow into her eye when I was trying to stop her from leaving one of the times she ran away," Larry explains, more to prevent me murdering him than anything else. Lucy and her mates are laughing when Doherty shows up, lit up and raring to go. He slides in next to Lucy and drops a parcel of drugs on the table to the delight of everyone sitting around it, but Larry and I. Lucy kisses Doherty and he puts his arm around her. I didn't like him before, and I fucking hate him now. There's cocaine, methamphetamines, marijuana, and a couple of loaded needles.
"Don't you have any ecstasy?" Lucy asks.
"Sorry, love, fresh out," Doherty replies.
"Damn. I wanted to get hot and fuck you," Lucy is disappointed. She picks up one of the needles.
"Is that heroin? Lucy, no, put that down. You're better than that," Larry insists, but I take a different approach.
"No, Lars," I slide in the booth next to Doherty. "I want to see it. If she's gonna be Miss Drug Addict, I want to see her do it."
"Shut the fuck up, Sparky," Larry warns as I watch Lucy search for a vein.
"No. Do it, Lucy. Show me how bad you are," I egg her on.
"I swear to God, Clayton," Larry warns again. She's found her vein.
"Come on, Lucy. Show Adam what a big junkie you are."
I watch in horror as Lucy slides the needle against her arm and it pierces the skin. I expected blood, but there wasn't any. Then she pushes the drugs into her system, throwing her head back as they take hold. She pulls the needle out and then there's a drop of blood, darkly oozing out of the hole. She doesn't notice or doesn't care that it runs down her arm and takes a drag of her cigarette, which she didn't put down once while shooting up. I run out of the club. I'm going to be sick. Larry follows, calling the police on his cell phone. I vomit in a potted plant while Larry talks to the police. He checks on me, still hunched over the plant, when he's done.
"You okay?" He puts his hand on my back. I nod and I turn to my left. "Good." He punches me in the stomach with his right fist, knocking the wind out of me. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" He yells as I stagger back a bit. My stomach hurts, but while he's caught off-guard, I punch him in the jaw. Larry recovers and punches me in the left eye socket. I swing blindly and make contact with some part of him. Then he punches me in the stomach again. He swings for my jaw, but I dart out of his way and punch him in the nose.
"Ow, fuck, Adam," he holds his nose and hunches over. "I think you broke it."
My fist hurts like hell, but I'm still pissed off and I punch him in the side of the head with my left hand. I notice my left eye stings and it's because Larry's claddagh cut my brow open and blood's dripping into my eye. He takes advantage of my pause and punches me in the jaw, hard enough to knock one of my teeth loose.
I rush him and knock him down on the asphalt of the car park and start punching wildly with both fists as the cops arrive. And that's when I remember the paparazzi. Larry and I get arrested and handcuffed and put in the back of the same squad car while more police go inside the club to break up Lucy and Pete's party. Larry sniffles next to me, then says, "Aw, fuck," as blood drips onto his jeans from his nose and split lip. I say nothing and watch out the window was Doherty and everyone in the VIP room are put in police cars and taken off to jail. But Lucy's not arrested.
"That's everybody," one of the cops says as he and his partner get in the squad car to take Larry and me to jail. I start to worry even more about Lucy now while Larry calls Bono and McGuinness to come bail us out. We were arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct, a charge that got lessened to just disorderly conduct after our blood alcohol levels were tested. It's going to be a while before Bono gets here, so he decides to yell at me.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" He repeats. "Why in hell did you tell her to do that?" Larry's sitting in the opposite corner, arms folded, glaring at me. We were put in the same cell.
"Reverse psychology. I thought if I told her to, she's realise something was wrong and she wouldn't do it," I shrug. "That's not how an addict's brain works. If you tell us to use, we will. End of story. I should've known better."
Larry nods. "That was just about the scariest damn thing I've ever seen."
"Me, too," I chuckle. We both stare at the drain in the middle of the floor.
"What are we gonna do?" Larry asks.
"What do you mean, 'we'? She's your girlfriend now," I say.
"Sparky, she walked out on me the day you dumped her. That's what started her whole downward spiral. She still has--or had, at least--feelings for you. If she didn't, she wouldn't have left," Larry looks away.
"How long have you been together, like, really together?"
"Just like she said. Fourteen years," Larry nods, watching for my reaction, which is a bit of shock. "Yeah, do the math, she's 29. She lied about how old she was when I met her. And yes, Aaron is 13. I met Lucy right around the same time Ann got pregnant the first time. During that crazy time of my back surgery and recording and everything else."
"You love her madly, don't you, Lardence?"
"What do you mean?"
"Your face lights up when you talk about her. I doubt I do the same. She's always been so difficult with me, I guess I don't get to see that side of her."
"Adam, if you want her back, all you have to do is give her another chance. I think if you relax a bit and try not to control every little thing she does, you'll be able to hang onto her."
"Assuming she still wants me to. Assuming I still want to. After what she said about Stacie--."
"Drugs, Sparky. God only knows what's running through her system. They were talking. Not her. Did that sound like Lucy to you?" Larry points in a random direction.
"I reckon not," I shrug. "She shouldn't see Stacie."
"No, Stacie shouldn't see her mother like that. What are you thinking?"
"Getting a restraining order against her. For Stacie at least. Until she gets clean again," I shrug and notice my shoulder is sore from trying to rearrange Larry's face.
"Sorry I tried to kick your arse."
"If I were in your place, I'd kick my arse, too. It was a fucking stupid thing to say."
Larry looks at the floor and chuckles. "I wonder where Bono is."
"Letting us sit here and think about what we've done. We went to a drug party full of twenty-year-olds at the hippest club in London then went into the carpark and beat the shit out of each other. I believe this classifies us as idiots."
"If not idiots, boobs, definitely," Larry laughs.
I look at the dried blood on his face. "We look a sight, don't we?" I start to laugh.
"Like two kids fighting over a girl." Both Larry and I are laughing at full volume and I hear from the next cell:
"Could you old fucks please keep it down over there, for Christ's sake?" Doherty has a hangover.
"Fuck off," Bono snaps at him. We hadn't noticed he'd arrived. "You both owe me."
"We love you, your demigodness," Larry and I say in unison then start to laugh again.
"Shut the fuck up!" Doherty screams.
"You shut the fuck up!" Bono yells as our cell is unlocked and we're set loose again. Larry and I follow Bono and McGuinness to the limo to take them to the airport and me to my London house.
"Did you have to go make things worse? U2 are supposed to be an upstanding, clean-cut band. And then all this. If you're trying to kill me, it's working," McGuinness gripes.
"Yay!" Larry says, in a silly mood. It's been a while since he's been arrested.
"Smart arse. Adam, you have to do something about that girl," McGuinness makes it sound like an order.
"Oh, I already know," I smile as we pull into my drive.
that was really full on .
and half 
....
