Dead Stars (45 page)

“Unless it's a
girl
.”

“Then
girl'll
be a soccer superstar.”

Quiet. Just wind, light. Warm. Lovely. His arm around her.

“I had this
total vision
of our life. A few weeks ago. I mean, of the life we could have,
will
have. I didn't tell you about it because I thought you'd laugh.”

“I wouldn't laugh, Ree.”

He kissed her cheek & caressed her hair. Daubed an already flat tear on her cheekbone with one of his knuckles she liked that.

“We were in all the magazines—————!”

“Is that right?” he said, happy to go along. Happy she was out of bitch mode, happy to be having kind of a chummy little bullshit romantic moment even if he wasn't attracted to her, even if he thought he never would be again, even if just the thought of fucking her made him want to puke. But happy and glad tho, just now, to be talkin about when they'd be ballin . . .

“I was pushing one of these really expensive strollers, with our toddler. & you were holding Baby #2 in your arms. & there were already all these articles about how fast I shed my baby weight.”

“So we're gunna have two?”

“Maybe
more
,” she smiled.

“Was I ripped? I mean, am I gunna be ripped? You can at least give me a six-pack.”

“You already
have
one. But yeah, in my vision you're
totally
ripped, like Cameron Diaz!”

“Hey that ain't right.”

“OK Jennifer Garner then. No seriously. In my
vision,
there was a toddler and a newborn. I can't explain it but it was like way
more
than a daydream. I saw in my head this magazine, right? And I wasn't even stoned. Well maybe a little. & in the magazine there was this shot of Tom, Katie &
Suri
next to a shot of Ben & Jennifer and Violet & Seraphina. And next to
them
was
you & me
, our
family
.”

“What did we name our kids?”

“It didn't say. In the vision. But
you
were the famous one, it was really clear about that.”

“Famous for what?”

“Like, movies & television.”

“Aw-
ite
. Tha's tight. I can live with that, without the Cameron Diaz part, I don't wanna be lookin like no Cammy D!”

“In the vision, Laurence Fishburne took you under his wing but you became more famous. And he was a gentleman about it, he didn't become envious or bare a grudge. In my vision, you're like as famous as Will Smith, who by the way we are going to be
very
close with, their kids are much older but like, Jada's gunna be our kids' godmom.”

“Jada's one of their kids?”

“
No,
Jada
Pinkett
, Will's
wife———
”

“O yeah! The swingers & shit? The swinger shit's dope.”

“———
and I've already finished forensics school. I
could
have worked for the city like the city of Los Angeles, for the LAPD, the city really
wanted
me to but I decided to just, like, be a consultant on
CSI
. That way I can spend more time home with the kids. And even though he's not on the show anymore, because Laurence is our
friend
, he helped get me the
job
. On
CSI
. Right?”

“That's right, he's family. I mean the mutherfucker
made
me. Always did me a solid, just like Denzel to Antwone. Hey, are we gunna have a sextape?”

“
No.
Well——we
might
have. No,
I
know! Someone hacked nude pics that I took on my cell & sent you in middleschool, I was totally underage but they're these amazing
——
”

“I know the one's you're talking about.”

“No you
don't
, not
these
ones, because I'm totally making it
up!
Anyway, I'm
amazing
looking & they're
totally tastefully done
, like Scarlett's, I totally look bitchen & our publicist—our publicist is going to say ‘Reeyonna's not ashamed of those pictures' & I'll give interviews like Heather Morris and Kreayshawn did about theirs, saying very cool & calm that I knew they would eventually come to light. But in my vision, I probably have to change my
name
, there can't be
two
famous Reeyonnas!”

“
Say ma name same ma name———
how about using Jerilynn?”

(
playful
) “Fuck you!”

“Hey, in your vision, do you like have us goin into rehab and shit?”

“NO. Well . . . . . . .
maybe
. It's not in my
vision
but maybe there's some kinda
drama
everybody's going to want to write about on the internet, you know, something that makes people feel closer to us, lets em see we're human beings too, you know, like ‘stars are just like them'———&
o!
And we have like
6 million followers
on Twitter!”

“Right on.”

“Maybe
you
go to rehab . . . . .”

“Hey now c'mon be fair.”

“And our publicist like says ‘Rikki realized he had a problem with the painkillers he was taking after recent surgery on his knee—————'”

“Hey that's in
your
vision, not
mine
.
I
ain't goin to no rehab.”

“—————all like ‘Rikki
knew
he had to do something about it.' You'll like go to Promises right near our Malibu beach house but it's like a one-time thing. You get day passes anyway because you'll have one of those sober companions. If
I
went to rehab, it'd have to be like for something that wasn't drugs, like for bipolar or maybe outing myself for bulimia. And when I got out I'd go on all the talkshows, like Ellen & Anderson Cooper & maybe even become a spokesperson for raising awareness in teens.”

“Where did you say we were living again?”

“Well, we have a beach house in Malibu, like next to all our celebrity friends. But we'd have a house up
here
too
,
on Mulholland. And on weekends we'd go to the beach & barbecue with friends, like Scarlett & Naya & Minka & all the Kardashians, whoever's in town. And Katniss Everdeen! We'd be tight with Matthew McConaughey and his wife, our kids are gunna play with their kids. (Their kids are
Levi
&
Vida
, I
so
love those names.) Matthew would teach our son to surf. And Laird Hamilton, he lives in Malibu with Gabrielle. We'll probably have a house in Hawaii & also a big apt in NY, maybe in the same building as Carrie Bradshaw.”

“I want to be friends with some
rappers
, girl. Are we tight with the youngmoney crew? I want to be all partying with Drizzy and shit.”

Reeyonna froze, putting her palm flat on her pant pocket. Rikki said,

“Cause we need to be down with Weezy & Ye.” He saw the blood run out of her face. “What's the matter girl?”

“My wallet————————————”

“Your purse—in the pouch?”

“No, I don't
think
,” she said, trancelike. “I've been carrying it with me. It has all the money . . . . . . . . . .”

“Hold on. Hold on. We'll find it. You had it at the restaurant cause that's how we paid, right? With the money.”

Reeyonna didn't answer.

She got up and ran to the pouch—nothing. Shocky, she walked to where they 1st stood, where the hill begins to slope down. “Where's your phone?” she said.

They crouched down as he shined the phone here & there.

“We need to go back——————
OMG.
O M G!”

“Don't lose your wig, Ree. We'll find it. We're
gunna
find it
. Cmon, let's go back. To the restaurant.”

As they climbed on the bike he asked her why she was carrying all cashmoney anyway. She said because she thought Tom-Tom might go thru her shit & steal it.

“Rikki, if I lost that money I'm going to fucking kill myself.”

“No you're not.”

“I am. I'm serious.”

This time it's lively at Sur.

6 or 7 paparrazzi out front . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Rikki waits for the hostess while ReeRee goes to look in the bathroom. There is zero chance the wallet would be in there but in her dreamlike moment of desperation, she wouldn't be surprised to find herself checking her socks to see if the money found its way to the bottom of her foot or on the way home maybe searching the high branches of tall dark faraway trees.

The hostess is kind, but there's only a sad solitary set of keys in the makeshift lost & found drawer.
Have you asked the valet?
Rikki says, we didn't valet park. Oh, uhm, OK.
Well give me your name & your number & we'll call if it turns up. Sometimes things just turn up.

Reeyonna tells him she's going back to where they 1st parked for dinner. She walks then runs. Two
s pounding, hers & the little one's . . . she actually starts getting hopeful because she's already visualizing the wallet in the gutter, she can
see
it fortuitously hidden in shadow from potential thieves. She has these strong
visions . . .
sees herself grabbing it with joyful expulsion of breath & preg-sprinting back to Sur screaming
I found it! Rikki, I found it!
Can
hear
herself saying that—both laughing at the averted horror then going to celebrate at Millions of Milkshakes which for some reason they'd fatefully forgotten to before . . .

Rikki decided he might as well take a piss. The hostess kind of eyed him as he came in again and walked past, that trespassy look subtly informing that a courtesy was being bestowed because his right to pee had expired.

He stood at the urinal. Someone flushed then opened the stall door, no stench. The man went to the sink to wash. Rikki stole a glance—Laurence Fishburne.

And the actor was gone.

CLEAN

[Jacquie]

Toiling, Spinning

The

family loved the hospital portraits
.
The experience of going to their Northridge home with proofsheets—watching Ginger bend like a scholar to look through the loupe—was something Jacquie would never forget. The husband was at work, & Jacquie was glad. For a man, the death of his infant was a cold, finite event; for two moms, a chance to commune with a firefly soul that seemed just then to be as present as it was incorporeal. Yet for all Jacquie's supernal rationalizations—the baby's quicksilver, inextinguishable life force must be grieved over yet not mourned, a specious riddle reinforced by the mom's truly spiritual equanimity, born, reasoned Jacquie, by the knowledge of the Great Mother that we are wont to finally seek that plot of infinite lilies of the field—for all Jacquie's tiny, supernatural theories, each calculated to minimize and repress, to expunge & make
palatable
the horror of what happened, on the way to her car she felt the unbearable, queasy sorrow of living-mother/dead-child aloneness like a gust of hot propeller wind at her back & feared with each step she might turn to stone.

. . .

She was still searching for a way to reclaim her own firefly soul; that of the artist she'd begun to fear was no more. Her life had capsized, trapping her beneath.

Then she read something that yanked her back with some hilarity to HelmutWorld & the boomboom years of his mentorship, her artful schooling in the theory & practice of all things photoshock. According to DailyMailOnline, there'd been a great to-do down under. A peer of Jacquie's who'd shown at the Guggenheim and the Venice Biennale was in hot water. A major show in Sydney had been cancelled due to complaints over pics of a nude 13-year-old girl; a clear case (for Jacquie) of
déjà nu.
Child protection advocates were incensed; the exhibit was shut down; images seized by police under the Crimes Act. Naturally, the Newtonian Laws of Negative Press prevailed and held true—a censorship hurlyburly ensued on a national level and the revolted Prime Minister leapt dutifully into the fray. But the artist needn't fear, as celebrity help was on its way (Newton's 2nd Law) in nothing less than the form of Cate Blanchett captaining her team in pursuit of Australia's prestigious A Cup. Newton's
Third
wrapped things up nicely in the end with a press release:
The New South Wales Dept of Public Prosecutions announced that no charges would be filed.

Jacquie had a wild, mad laugh about it, the kind of huge, careless, orgiastic, toxin-busting guffaws that borderline personalities are known to indulge in the privacy of their homes. She sorely missed the man, his dry wit and wry level-headedness, his kinks & lighthearted gravitas, the charm and wisdom of his cynically uncynical counsel too. Now that she was having another
non-career
crisis, where the fuck was Helmut when you really needed him? She had the great good fortune of supping with him the night before he died. Jacquie had been oeuvre-hustling in LA, she was a bit rusty and out of her league but Helmut graciously insisted she join them for dinner at Il Sole: he & his wife June, Uma Thurman & Andre Balazs, Benedikt/Angelika Taschen, plus Jacquie & her date Pieter Wogg, a specialist at Christie's who was a fan of way more than Jacquie's pictures. (She used to say, “You only love me for my body of work.”) Helmut told everyone at the table how excited he was because “tomorrow, Cadillac is
giving
me an Escalade!” The next day, pulling out of the Chateau garage presumably to take the car for a trial spin, he dropped dead behind the wheel and crashed into a retaining wall.

She tried to hear his voice in her head, telling her what to do next, propping her up like he used to with trilingual pep talks, propounding that she still had it, if only she could step out of her own way, promising her that inspiration would come as long as she cultivated that certain je ne sais quoi
shtick-
to-it-iveness. But it was an old CD. Jacquie had never really been able to escape Phase One of Newton's Master Plan. She'd never even made it from hairless to bush leagues . . . something happened, she'd lost her faith & self-confidence, & began to spend her days trying to figure out how not to die instead of how she might live. Whatever artistry left in her was stunted, remedial, irrelevant. She failed miserably at the 2.0 thing, failed to transform herself from Mann manqué cartographer of flat tit mysteries/pretween genito-urinary landscapes into a swan that knew exactly what it was—a mature artist, take her or leave her.

Lately, she'd come
close
to feeling the breath & hand of her wily mentor, in that she alit on a few things she thought he'd have heartily approved. Jacquie saw something on the CNN site about a 76-year-old Tokyo man, a former travel agent with a wife & children now making his living as an actor in the booming genre they called “elder porn.” She seriously considered flying to Japan to take his portrait—& tracking down other
salami men
—but it took lots of money to travel around like that. Unless she had a really strong feeling about it, which she didn't, there wasn't much point. She couldn't afford to be lukewarm quixotic.

Another thing that got her attention was an article in
People
that came out in the weeks after Gabrielle Giffords got shot called I SURVIVED A BULLET TO THE HEAD. Among the gallery of unfortunates was a 21-year-old cheerleader turned dental assistant whose injury necessitated the removal of a bizarrely visible chunk of skull and brain; her head looked like a clock missing that slice of 9-to-midnight pie—nothing but airspace. She was fully functional, arriving at her own homecoming queen ceremony in wheelchair & helmet. Another fine specimen was a young man who miraculously recovered from a bullet fired into his cerebellum when he was 5 years-old—the shooter was his dad, who killed his brother, strangled his mom then shot himself to death.
Far be it from me to suggest psychotherapy.
Jacquie thought maybe she could hit the road with the goal of taking 25 portraits of Americans who survived those kind of head wounds. She clipped something the cheerleader had said, “This is my new normal,” which Jacquie thought would make a helluva title for a book:
The New Normal.

Um, well, I have a new normal too: career death & poverty, and severely damaged children who hate & rob me.

Ain't that a kick in the head?

. . .

She couldn't believe it:
Pieter
was friend requesting. They'd been out of touch for a few years. He was living in London now, coming to L.A. next week.
Hey let's just pick up where we left off,
he wrote, in a light & funny way, so he wouldn't feel so rejected if Jacquie was in a relationship or whatever.

He took her to a wonderful Moroccan restaurant called Tagine that he'd been “obsessing about.” (A typically gay Pieter phrase.) He told her that James Franco recommended it to him—the actor recently collaborated with Gus Van Sant & Michael Stipe on a mixed media installation at the gallery Pieter worked for in the UK—as a place where the odds were good for running into cast members of
Glee
, the show he said he was unfortunately “
still
fucking obsessed with &
it's so over
.”
O boy
, he'd gotten
so much gayer
than she remembered. “James said the glee club gather at
three distinct
watering holes: Tagine, Sur or The Little Door. So before I blow this town, I'm going to take you to each one.”

They jogged/ambled down a rather short & narrow Memory Lane—they'd only had a six-month thing. Oddly, the cork in the affair had been the dinner party at Il Sole; they spent the night together, & that was that. They'd only seen each other a handful of times since Helmut died, in '04.

Pieter did most of the talking. He left Christie's a while ago & for the last three years worked at Gagosian. He said he had “important, ongoing relationships” with major collectors, but the
real
perks were impulsive road trips with Damien Hirst, pubcrawl/clubbing with Tracey Emin, and late night suppers with “the Richards,” Serra & Prince.

“I have never been so fulfilled
professionally
.” He raised a ridiculous eyebrow &
ahem'd
. “On the
personal
, um
hem
,
romantic
front . . . well, it's been a bit of a bloody trainwreck. Tho the phrase
living hell
also comes to mind. Yes, I think living hell is a bit closer to the mark. Not
closer
to, really, but perhaps the mark
itself
.” She loved it when he lapsed into his Steve Coogan doing Hugh Grant/Hugh Laurie routine. “Wait a moment, wait a moment—somehow
living hell
doesn't quite capture the full . . .
catta-strofe.
So let's just call it a
natural disaster
. Let's then
—
no! an
unnatural
disaster. That's
much
better. A calamity, a major
calamity
, a major
colostomy . . .
a fucking
eschatological colostomy
of fucking
Biblical
proportions
i.e.
I believe that I can
safely say
that
on a personal level
the last few years have been what historians of this sort of thing will call the
tsunamification
of hope, of
any
hopes or dreams that Pieter Wogg might have had that he would find love, and the marriage & requisite children that often follow. Yes. This is that volume—I am
living
that volume—Volume 4, of the massive biography—this is that volume entitled
Dreams Deferred
. I continue to prowl the night, of course. Hope springs nocturnal. As do many other . . . things.”

He was more adorable than handsome, which went a long way, with a capacious bag of immensely personable tricks. Pieter always made her laugh; Jacquie & Albie agreed the cliché was true—“funny” got laid first. It felt good being out in the world with an old lover. To feel like a woman again.

She'd almost forgotten.

He reminded her more than once when they got back to his suite at the Chateau. Memory Lane grew, hope sprang, all that.

She brought with her a 5 by 7 of the portrait she took of Ginger, Daniel & their baby. When she showed him Pieter got very quiet, & Jacquie wondered if a stillbirth or child death figured somewhere in his calamity of natural and unnatural disasters. She stepped out on the balcony, to let him be.

Good lord. How beautiful the city was! If she were a god, she'd have reached out and grabbed it to wear around her neck. Her cellphone rang & her heart leapt—it was 1:30AM & no one but Jerilynn would be calling (she'd been keeping the phone in her pocket not her purse for that very reason). She looked in at Pieter, to see if it was him being funny, but he was still completely engrossed.

“Hello?”

“May I speak with Jacquie Vomes?”

“This is she.”

A hesitation, then:

“Did I wake you?”

“No. Who is this?”

“I'm so sorry to be calling this late. Ginger MacMannis gave me your number. Well actually she gave it to my son-in-law. She said you were enormously helpful.”

“What's this about?”

“The doctors said they don't expect my grandchild to make it till the morning.” Her voice broke. “We're all preparing for a loss.”

“Where are you calling from?”

“Scottsdale. We're at the Mayo Clinic.”