HUMILIATION of a SAMURAI

eight MARGARET part one

header image:  Map data ©2020 Google

THAT WAS THE NIGHT LIAM GALLAGHER PUNCHED VINCENT AND Kate Nash helped me find my prosthetic eye in the men's toilet at The Electric Ballroom in Camden.

Noel's the nicer one, right? Kate said he's a sweetheart so yeah. I'm certain it was Liam.

I should have eaten before Vincent and I appeared on Graham Norton. The Indian restaurant at BBC Television Center had Kerala chicken on special but I was superstitiously certain I'd dribble something curried over my wool trousers, or the great looping bow of my black silk blouse. I handed my menu back to the waiter and ordered another double gin and tonic.

At the studio I downed two glasses of wine in the green room and had a few more during taping. That girl from "Stranger Things" sat between Vincent and David Mitchell plugging her new movie. Once she started knocking them back I felt oddly compelled to keep up.

When did Eleven turn eighteen?

Fuck it. After two weeks in the hospital and a dozen days hiding out at Maxim's flat I deserved a reason to shine up and show off.

The house lights were up and the audience long gone but I was vibrating, volatile. Ravenous and full of stored energy.

I wanted more. And I wanted very much to form the needy nucleus of an excuse for Vincent to ditch the parasitic bitch he hired as his talent agent and come run wild with me for one night on the streets of London.

I closed the green room door and texted to request Vincent's exclusive participation in the pursuit of base behavior.

He declined. I did not hesitate to play the eye card.

I popped my new prosthetic loose and sent Vincent a ghastly selfie of me pouting, tracing an imaginary teardrop with a fresh French-tip fingernail under the raw red pocket in my head. Without the prosthetic in place the black mascara on my slack eyelids resembled the zipper teeth of a smoky blue tote with a crushed rosebud stuffed inside.

In reply Vincent sent an enlarged laughing-crying emoji with a black X slashed over one crinkled eye.

where & when ?

I took an Uber from White City to Granary Square and waited for Vincent in the downstairs bar at Dishoom.

Twelve hours later the tabloid press would confirm that Vincent and I finished dinner, generously tipped our waitstaff and then went after it like a couple of party Cossacks. Drew sabers, spurred our mounts bloody and charged without fear into the breach.

I was doubling up on my painkillers by then and I believe that set the stage for shit to get well out of hand.

The blast left me unconscious. Post-op I awoke beneath an enormous nurse with a paper poppy on her nametag and an upside-down timepiece tacked over one watermelon tit. She corralled my hands beneath the bedcovers to keep me from touching my face, shushed and soothed me as I struggled. Stroked my hair when I submitted and stood to fiddle with my drip.

Her image split and doubled, then spliced into a single fuzzy form as she leaned in close and assured me Vincent was hurt but not hospitalized.

Brady never mentioned casualties or fatalities when he visited me in the ICU. I didn't learn about the second bomb until my condition stabilized and they moved me to a room with a television.

I wore out the remote control, fought through crushing headaches and heavy sedation to focus my only eye on an endless parade of long-winded experts dissecting the short life of Blake Rex Lawrence-Grimes, the Earlham Park Bomber.