Dead Stars (38 page)

The conversation wound down. She rote-asked after Dawn. Jim said his wife was just back from the hospital and something in Jacquie remembered, barely, but enough to cause her to stifle the impulse to ask why, why was Dawn there, she had that scintilla-recollection, an inpatient stay would be of the nervous/mental variety, briefly awkward, then Jacquie's rote awkward wishing of Dawn well, Jacquie's rote kneejerk invite for the two of them to come for lunch or tea or supper or drinks or
something
, Jacquie's end-of-call attempt at humor re the whole fucked up situation being possibly/absolutely brightened by a grandchild at the end of the rainbow, & right when she hung up again came the remorse, guilt over her narcissistic ways, it was always about her, and there was Jim, so stoic & kind, the weight of manifold worlds upon him.

. . .

She surfed the web without leaving bed for two more days.

The Internet said Kirstie Alley got fat after her
mc
, mc being Internet for miscarriage. The Internet said Tori Amos wrote an album after her mc. The Internet said Pamela Anderson mc'd with Tommy Lee & with Kid Rock. The Internet said the
Enquirer
said Brad & Jen mc'd. The Internet said Valerie Bertinelli mc'd. The Internet said Amy Brenneman mc'd when she was 39. The Internet said Christie Brinkley had 3. The Internet said Nell Carter had 4. The Internet said Amanda Holden had 2
fetal deaths
, the most recent in the 7th month. The Internet said Joan Chen had 6. The Internet said Jane Seymour had 2 before having twins/preeclampsia. The Internet said Linda Hamilton mc'd. The Internet said Nancy Kerrigan had 6 in 8 yrs but refused to talk about it. The Internet said Nicole Kidman had one in 2001. The Internet said Lucy Lawless mc'd right after filming the last episode of
Xena
. The Internet said Demi Moore mc'd in '97. The Internet said Jane Pratt mc'd twins. The Internet said Brooke had at least 5 & that her cervix was scarred. The Internet said Sharon Stone had a string of mcs. The Internet said Emma Thompson needed IVF because of PCOS (polycystic ovar. Syndrome) and mc'd in 1997. The Internet said Vanna White mc'd in 1992. The internet said that Oprah mc'd when she was 14. The Internet said Sporty Spice had 5/PCOS.

That's what the internet said.

. . .

Ginger sent her a beautiful email, thanking her. She also wanted to know when she could see the proof sheets. Jacquie told her she was sick & would it be all right if they met next week.

Ginger said of course and attached an article from
The New York Times
written by a
mohel
. A Jewish couple had scheduled their baby to be circumcised but it died 3 days after being born. They always do the
bris
on the 8th day of life. The parents called the
mohel
and told him what happened but said they wanted him to do the circumcision anyway. The essay was about what a wreck he was but the parents were calm and from them he drew strength.
isn't that interesting how he said they were so calm?
she wrote.
thats the way it was with Daniel & me when you were taking our picture. maybe you felt that too

Jacquie googled
bris
, then wondered if the
mohel
had skipped the prayer that welcomed the baby into the world.

CLEAN

[Jacquie&Jerzy]

Sicker Than the Remix

“Thank

you for meeting me. I appreciate that.”

They were having lunch at El Pollo Loco in the crappy strip mall at the corner of Sunset & Crescent Heights. A depressing convenience zone at the bottom of the Mt called Olympus.

Her son was dead pale. Jerzy never quite met her gaze, which had the effect of rendering a boyish grin insidious. From the waist up, the body was calm; the legs thundered beneath the table, as if working the pedals that animated him.

“Have you seen her?”

“Just about every day. We live in the same house.”

“Can you tell me what's going on?”

She just couldn't bring herself to say
Jerzy
.

“What's going on?” he said, genuinely puzzled.

“With Jerilynn. Reeyonna.”

“Nuthin. I mean she's good, she's really good. I think she's been looking for work.”

“Looking for work
how
,” said Jacquie, with a bite. “She's five months
pregnant
.”

“You can be pregnant & work. Porn stars do it all the time.”

Deep breath. He is my son. He is damaged. He smells like chemicals. He despises me, & he is playing, a cat with a mouse. God, give me the strength to be grateful he agreed to see me. Help me not to blow it, God, at least not this far into the lunch.

“Jerzy”—it came out unbidden. “Do you think we can put our heads together?”

“Don't call me that.”

“Don't call you Jerzy?”

“It's Jerry.”

“I thought it was Jerzy.”

“Not to you.”

“OK. I didn't mean to call you the wrong thing.”

“Don't worry about it.”

“I just think we need to be kind of a team here. Because I think Jerilynn” (she only reverted because of what he just said. She was completely prepared to say
Reeyonna
) “is a little out of control. If it weren't for the baby, it'd be different. We probably wouldn't be sitting here. Though I'm very glad that we are.”

“Sure, Jacquie.”

His gaze was askew. He seemed to be grinning at something over her shoulder, as if an assassin just walked in—the one he'd hired to come from behind & slit her throat. He had already excused himself from the table three times, twice to the bathroom, & once to get the phone he supposedly left in the car even though it was visible in his pocket as he excused himself. She had no clue who this man was or where he'd come from, something aberrant in the Professor's seed. She fantasized about being that timid, withdrawn Ocalan girl climbing into a time machine, brought forward to
this
time, this
now
, her time machine guide pointing to the tweaky stinkweed deadskinned bum & saying

That. That. That is what your baby will grow up to be.

“Rikki's parents said she could stay with them.”

“Uh, I don't really think she wants to do that.”

“But why? Why doesn't she?”

“You'd have to ask her.”

“She won't speak to me. She hangs up when I call.”

“What can I say.”

Neither of them made even a pretense of eating their food. Jacquie tap-tapped the tabletop. His thighs momentarily slowed, as if to acknowledge whatever message was being imparted by her table-tapping
tom tom
. He threw that smug, knowing sado-smile at her tippy-tapping fingers, which made her stop.

“Do you know what all this is about,
Jerzy?
Jerry? Has Reeyonna talked to you about it? Has
Jerilynn
talked to you?”

She was starting to lose it with the double names & the double bullshit.

“A little.”

“What did she say?”

“You spent a bunch of money that was supposed to be hers?”

“Which isn't true. Not that a little thing like that matters! There never
was
any money, Jerry,
and none promised
. Whatever money I made from my work—&
believe me
, it wasn't a
lot—
whatever money I made was for the
household
. It was for
rent
and
clothes
and
necessities
. For you
and
your sister. Because Ronny wasn't exactly, your stepfather was
frugal
, he never went above & beyond what the court told him to pay, which was an
absurd
amount. $550, something like that.” She stared down at the table at her own fingers, which weren't tapping anymore, they were just laying there. “O what's the use? What's the use, there's just no point. Your sister has this
conviction
in her head—and she's
stubborn—
and there's just no way to make her see anything different.”

Some fake eating and pushing around of food (Jerzy) and some rattatattapping/tomtom
macoute
(Jacquie).

Jacquie shrugged, & threw in the towel.

“At this point, your sister can think what she wants to think. I don't have any control over that. If she wants to make me into the wicked witch, there's nothing I can do. But I
am
concerned about her taking
care
of herself. Because if she's not taking care of herself, she's not taking care of the baby. Is she going to the doctor? Do you know if she's been to see a doctor?”

“I think Rikki takes her to the free clinic. In Venice.”

“Well that's nice to hear, that's
very
good to hear, thank you. Because she's got to be doing
some
kind of neonatal care. Because that's important. I just want my daughter to have a happy healthy baby & be healthy in the process.”

“Right.”

The waitress came along & refilled Jerzy's tea.

“So how are things going?”

Jacquie was surprised he asked.

“As well as can be. With diminished income and a fugitive daughter. And a son I never see.”

“You're seeing me now.”

“Yes. I'm seeing you now.”

“So. Nuthin goin on with the career?” (That creepshow grin again.) “Any gallery shows coming up?”

She knew he knew that she didn't.
Please help me God to be gracious.
“No, but there's something I've just started to work on that I'm excited about. There's definitely something there, I'm just not sure what it is yet.”

“Cool.”

She felt like an ass for oversharing.

“And how are things with you?”

“Same old same old. Workin hard, hardly workin.”

“Do you talk to your dad?”

“We kinda had a blow-out when I was in New York.”

She heard about that from her ex & had zero desire to hear junior's side of the story.

“Still doing paparazzi work?”

“Yup,” he said. “Still a proud
papa
.”

“I saw a
60 Minutes
. Is it true about some of these people making small fortunes off a single picture?”

These people.
Like saying:
So what do they exorbitantly pay these days for scraping dogshit off the sidewalk?

“Yup. The folks you work for take most of it, but you can do all right. Depends on getting that
honeyshot
.”

“What's a honeyshot?”

“A paparazzi term,” he said, goofing on her a little. “For a shot you know you can get at least 5,000 for.”

“Have you ever gotten one?”

“My specialty,” he said,
trés insouciant
.

MoMA paid the bill & they walked to the lot. She asked which one was his ride. He pointed to the gnarly van (
Honeyshot Central USA
).

She took a sealed envelope from her wallet.

“I'd be very grateful if you'd give it to Jerilynn.”

Obvious from the heft that it was bread.

“Should I say it's from you?”

“No. Well—you
can
. I guess. Yeah, well why don't you. It doesn't really matter. She took some things from me, some very valuable things, but I still want her to know . . .”

Jacquie broke it off, her eyes tearing.

“That's really nice. Of you.”

He put his hand on her arm for a moment; she smiled at the small tenderness. She got into her car & he stood there until she rolled down her window. His voice grew low & different; intimate, strangely focused, out of alignment, compelling.

“You know Ashton Kutcher? From
2½ Men
?”

“Uh huh.”

“Who's supposedly no longer with his
old
lady?”

He lost her there.

“Have you heard him talk about the apocalypse?”

“No. I haven't.”

“He talks about it on the Internet. Tho it's hard to find now; someone did a lot of scrubbing. & you know what kind of resources
that
takes . . . I think the original interview's in some kind of outdoor mag. You should google it. He talks all about how he's stockpiling food & water, building up his body.”

“O my god, are you serious?”

She was glad he was engaging her conversationally, no matter how off the wall. Listening instead of talking relaxed her.

“For real. And that he's totally prepared to move his family—he and
Moore-Willis
are still
totally
together—to higher ground whenever it goes down.”

“Really?”

“Don't believe everything you hear. They'll be together forever, you can't break your vows, not when you've been married by the Puppetmather. So Ashton gave that interview—
one interview—
about the coming Wars, & that was
it.
Not a single word
after
. I mean, Ashton
Kutcher
was saying this shit, not Gary Busey or Michael Lohan! Not even Mel Gibson . . . my point
being
it should have been
huge
. The guy's
still
in the Twitter Top 10, probably hanging on by his teeth, Taylor Swift, the mudsharkardashians
they can really hold their mud!
—Obama, Rihanna (all Puppetmather loyalists I might add), fucking
Shakira
pardon my language is higher on twitter than Ashton, still that's 8 million people or whatever, right? But
nope
: nuthin. Silencio! Ask yourself why. Next thing you know, Ashton & Demi are all about sex trafficking, the new spokescouple for saving little girls from pimps. They're all
over
it. Suddenly they have this
passion
, which is funny cause he inseminated those girls, Rumer 1st then Tallulah & Scout, to protect them from the black hooligans who will dominate the 1st segment of the Wars. To protect with the elixir of his blood—the 3rd horse of the Apocalypse. Suddenly they're all about child trafficking, a topic with that
rare quality
of being able to
captivate
and
bore the shit out of a person
at the same time. You can't even be cynical because you're just not going to pay attention long enough. Which is how it was engineered. You hear
child sex trafficking
and part of you checks out, you say
Huh? O—yeah yeah, right, yadda yadda, uh huh, good activism on ya Ashton & Demi . . .
like out of
nowhere
this became their pet cause, and here's the question to posit: Do you really think that was
their
decision? To suddenly be the impassioned spokespersons for child sex trafficking? Well
I
don't. Because
none
of these people—from Katy Perry to Suri Cruise to Gotye on down—
none
of these people do
anything
without being told, they don't even shit in their Totos pardon my language unless the
Puppetmathers
gives em a heads up
.
The whole trafficking thing was
brilliant
(who do you think came up with it? EeYo-Veen & M
²
, um, duh), its goal being to deflect attention from Ashton's prematurely delivered
eschatology
because everything he said was
true
but wasn't meant to be heard
just
yet.
Ashton marches to his own drum which M
²
actually likes, but this time he got in just a
bit
of hot water because he shot his mouth off before getting the heads-up
,
jus kinda went ahead & did his own thing & said what he said, the
text
of which Puppet-M approved but not the
timing
. So the Puppetmather reigned him in. But it all blew over, don't believe everything you hear, Ashton remains a beloved mascot, loyal court jester & perennial of the Plantation. Tho be assured the time
will
come when EeYo-Veen
will
say,
Do it, Ash. You go girl, do it
NOW! TALK
about it, good on ya.
There was a happy ending after all because they were relieved: I'm talking
Zuckerberg
,
Dorsey
,
Bezos
, Jada
Pinkett
, the Olsen/Russiangoogle twins, I'm talking
Sean John
,
Jay-Z
,
Gwyneth
,
Anne Hathaway
, the Widow Jobs, everyone at youngmoneycashmoney
 . . .
the attention span of the public ain even short anymore, it
don't
exist
. People can't be bothered, the Puppetmather counts on that, plus he wisely planted the seed that Ashton was colossally
punk
'ing himself.”

“What are you saying.”

(What could she say.)

“OK, the Four Horsemen. The 1st is
white—
victory. The Whites will be victorious, OK?
Duh.
The 2nd is
black—
famine
.
The Blacks will starve, OK?
Duh.
The 3rd is
red
, that's just blood, OK? Red is Black Blood being spilled. But the one you need to pay attention to, is the
4th
. The 4th horse is
pale
, like your grandchild's going to be.
That's
why the baby's going to be in danger. They will hunt down the remixes.”