Dead Stars (49 page)

. . .

Tom-Tom & Dr Phil were upstairs trying to find Room 506. A crazy-looking couple started pointing at them. “O my God, I can't believe it!” The gal had magenta hair, a pierced nose & some kind of Wild West brassiere. The guy looked girlish and both wore skull bandannas. Tom-Tom girded herself for the pleasant rush of being
Idol
outed.

“It's Phil! From the second season of
Intervention!
”

“We
loved
you!”

“Your interventions were the only ones that didn't end in relapse!”

“Why did you
disappear
?”

They introduced themselves as Kent & Vyxsin from
The Amazing Race, Season 12.
They said they were going to be at Hooters on Sunday in Burbank offering live TV commentary when the show came on. They gave them little hot pink vouchers that said WATCH THE RACE WITH THE RACERS!!! ***ADMISSION IS FREE***

. . .

R&R walked down one of the long, roped lanes. At this moment, they were literally the only visitors to the tent that held the vast Hall of Autographs.

When they reached the table, a jowly man with a big smile & big white teeth shook hands without getting up & gave them a glossy cardboard 5 × 7 of himself. They looked at the card—he was someone on ABC's Eyewitness News. He'd written, in festive silver marker, “ABC 7 CHEERS!
George Pennacchio
.”

As they left the Hall of Autographs, Rikki grabbed a few postcards from another empty table.

 

 

On the way to Audrina, they passed some people standing on a red carpet getting their picture taken by pretend paparazzi. Big posters on the wall behind them said OnTheRedCarpet.com.

A trio of skeevy
slores
walked by. (Kim K's word for slutty whores.) They had stickers slapped on their grimy bosoms, “Follow us @PlayboyTV.”

. . .

They found 506, an enormous, empty room filled with hundreds of set up chairs. A staffer told them the event moved to 501. 501 was ten times smaller. It was SRO.

Omarosa was on a panel with reality stars from
True Beauty
and
Chef Academy
. She was frickin fierce. She said she beat out half a million people to get on
Celebrity Apprentice
& that her goal from the beginning was to get the most camera time, she was going to do whatever it took, & as it turned out becoming the 1st African-American reality show villainess was the deal that worked. Omarosa said she'd been on thirty-frickin-seven reality shows & Tom-Tom didn't even know if she was kidding. (She was even on a show about floral arrangements, on the Logo Channel, whatever the frick that was.) Omarosa was a mutherfuckin
trip.
She said that apart from whatever she was up to in RealityWorld, she was a full-time professor at her alma mater Howard U & taught an MBA program.
Say what?
She was also pursuing a freakin frickin doctorate in the frickin freakin ministry (Tom-Tom knew she wouldn't be kidding about any of that), confessing that her true purpose on Earth was to spread the word of Jesus. She started going on about how fortunate she was to have partnered “with my friend, Mr. Trump,” & how she was always on the look-out for reality shows to develop.
Hey I should probably try & talk to her after, maybe ol Sasha Fierce would be interested in
Bad News Bears,
and Trump too.
Tom-Tom'd had way stranger bedfellows in her time.
She looks like she'd be a
nasty
fuck too be my villainess black
BIATCH.
Pound that nappy ponderosa for
days––––––––––––

The other reality mavens on the panel (she hadn't heard of any of their shows) possessed a cheerleading, bulletproof, nearly robotic self-confidence that Tom-Tom hoped would rub off. Most of the time she held it together pretty well but like a lot of artists, she had her bleak moments—something the thrilled-with-themselves panelists apparently knew nothing about. Tho maybe they were just hiding that shit cause it didn't play in public; maybe they'd share their darkness with her after the event, one on one. All she knew was that if she were to succeed, there'd be zero room for fear/self-doubt. She probably did a little more speed than she should have; her heart was hammered. Her focus went south and she flashed on joining Omarosa's seminary, licking the salty, Ubangi lip-sized clit of merciless Mother Africa while Ivanka & Donald did their father/tall drinka daughter Rump Tower thing. All those thighscrapers . . .

When Omarosa was done, they went down the line, & every single panelist said how lucky they were to have triumphed in doing whatever the fuck they were doing, how they “were flown all over the world” to cook, to DJ, to fuck, to suck, to bla. Tom-Tom was getting pissy.

A panelist said, “I'm an attentionwhore.”
No shit.
Another said, “The lower you feel the higher you heal.”
Huh?
Another said, “Life is short, eat the red velvet cupcake.”
Gimme some.
Another said, “There will always be h8trs. They
love
to drink the H8torade.”

. . .

Audrina's body was so tight it was scary. Reeyonna got self-conscious; her stomach was getting giant, her back was killing her, & she couldn't imagine looking or feeling glamorous ever again. She wasn't even sure she ever did.

The interviewer said, “What's
your
favorite reality show?”

Audrina said,
“Cake Boss.”

“O!
Cake Boss
was cancelled!”

“It
was?
”

“Yes! Audrina I'm so sorry!”

When the Q&A ended, Rikki thought Reeyonna wanted to meet her so he started drifting with the mob toward the stage. But when he looked back, ReeRee just shook her head and trudged to the EXIT.

. . .

www.mischabartonhandbags.com

. . .

There was a lot of casting going on but it was hard to tell for what. People were even signing up to be videotaped by casting agents. There were booths with different websites for actors—ones that told them what was being cast, ones that sent them audition sites, ones for uploading videos.

. . .

Tom-Tom had butterflies at the
American Idol
panel.

Blake Lewis was there, & Mikalah Gordon from Season 4. The rest were Season 9s except for Kimberley Locke. Kimberley was in
Tom-Tom's
season, Season 3. They were talking about how they bonded with fans. One
Idol
said she even became friends with her webmaster.

Tom-Tom wrote down random shit she heard in her trapper keeper:
suddenly the show BLEW UP . . .
take it to the next level
 
. . . follow my dream, follow my passion . . .
Don't be underwhelming!
 . . . I'm a girlie-girl . . . Karina Smirnoff/DWTS: dance studio, beauty line— ‘girlactik'

At the end, about twenty people went to the stage to have their picture taken with the
Idols
. Tom-Tom was going to say hello to Kimberley but decided to catch her after she performed, later in the day.

. . .

Reeyonna really wanted to see Kris & Bruce Jenner but they didn't show. Eric Roberts didn't show either, and neither did Mischa. Rikki said Tom-Tom said Bruce Jenner had a hundred-million dollars. ReeRee wanted to see what people looked like who had a hundred-million dollars, if they looked different.

They passed an
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition
booth. ReeRee said they should get those people to do Betty White's house. That really cracked Rikki up, which made ReeRee happy.

. . .

Tom-Tom was finally recognized by a handsome fortysomething actor who struck up a conversation. He said he almost made the cut of the
Gigolos
pilot
,
Showtime's reality series about male escorts servicing female clients in Las Vegas. He tried again for the second season, but it was a no-go. She was
very
anxious to hear his story.

. . .

Reeyonna dug into her beef enchiladas while Rikki was in the head. She felt like a fat pig.
Ew gross.
A youngish, wholesome-looking man with barbershop quartet muttonchops came over. He said he was a casting agent, looking for pregnant girls.

“You're not from MTV, are you?” she said with a smile.

“No but sometimes I wish I
was
.” He said it in an appealing, jokey way. Friendly, sweet, not pervy or pushy. “Say what you will, it's pretty darn hard to argue with their success.
And
longevity.”

He gave her his card and left.

She felt like a
fatter
pig.
Gross.

She saw Rikki throw something into the trash on his way over. She asked him what it was, and he wouldn't say. He had that look he gets when he huffs.

“Did you whip it?” He just smiled. He was blazed. “Where'd you get the can? Did you
bring
it?”

He just smiled.

. . .

That night Tom-Tom met him for a drink on Melrose at a restaurant owned supposedly by Lauren Conrad. He said he was “a working actor” & Mark Wahlberg's 2nd cousin and sometime camera double. He said his real passion was making furniture. Mark had a lot of his pieces. So did Robbie Robertson, Alanis Morissette, Moby, Eddie Vedder, Dave Grohl, & Rufus Wainwright's manager. She told him about her vision. He said he'd love to see the house so they went up.

Bolt had the biggest dick she'd ever seen.

EXPLICIT

[Jerzy&Rikki]

“Larry

Fishburne didn't do you any favors you know.”

He'd been spending time with Jerzy since he lost the part. He was bored & Jerzy let him ride along during work. (Plus J had more time to hang because he was spending less of it with Tom-Tom since the
Gigolos
reject moved in; tho Tom-Tom already gave Bolt his own room, he was staying with her in the master 96% of the time.) Rikki said to Reeyonna,
Your brother's crazy for real but he's cool. We're down.

They sped from one location to another as Jerzy got tweeted various
whereabouts. Rikki asked who was tweeting him & Jerzy said “my tweethearts.” Rikki stayed in the car smoking Romulan Queen whenever Jerzy got out to do his pap thing.

“I think Larry Fishburne's a fuckin MANTIS. He saw you in that room sitting very still at the
feeder
& clocked you as a little black hummingbird.”

Rikki was blazed; J's rap wasn't helping the zituation.

“Hummingbird. Dude what do you mean.”

“What do
you
mean, ‘what do you mean?'? What do
I
mean? What do YOU mean.”

Jerzy never took his eyes off the road. His smile was cheap & voracious, like a 3rd cousin of the Joker.

They rocketed toward an odd threesome supposedly lunching at Ago: Heather Morris, Michael Douglas, & Natalie Portman's husband the dancer.

. . .

He thought Tom-Tom was kidding.

She said she read online that the role had been cast. He said
To who?
She said,
Nobody I know. Like, an unknown.
Rikki said,
But I was an unknown.
She said,
You still are, pumpkin.
Rikki kept echo chambering
What?
all puzzled-looking & kooky.
What? What? What?
Then he stopped saying
What?
& started saying
Fuck.
He moped/paced from room to room then out he'd go, walking the circumference of the pool like a schmuckfaced, loserkook
,
crowing, canting, barking, bitching, sighing, shrieking, ululating/murmuring
fuk
FUKfuk
FUK
fuk like an actor trying on attitudes, searching for the inflection that best suited his role, now highvoiced, now low as Tyler duh Creator. He offered the guttural wordstring to the Void, dipped his stubbed toe in nothingness.

The boy who cried
fuk
.

. . .

Jerzy felt bad for him. Anyone could see the kid had hi apple pie in the sky hopes. Probably thought it was a lock. Gunna be the new black whom-evuh, nubian screen god, BET supersizeme superstar. Bangin Rihanna for real, not
Reeyonna
, I mean Jerzy loved his little sissy but that
Reeyonna
shit was fuckin retarded whitegirl shit. & not
even,
'cause sissy wasn't even white trash, which would at least have given her ½ an excuse.
My little sissy calls herself Reeyonna
was not some shit he'd be hurrying to share with Suge.

Poor kid . . . probably thought he'd soon qualify to get served up some of that perfumed, perfectly-preserved Halle Berry cherry parfait on a platter. Jerzy partially blamed Tom-Tom for not prepping him, not schooling the callow young buck in Hollywood's scary sickly ways, hence encouraging—
enabling—
his painful naiveté to run riot on Sunset Strip. Tom-Tom was also upset but not for long cause she had lots of eggs in her basket. Like, this poor kid only has
two
, & one of em just broke on the sidewalk. The
remaining
egg (organic, fertilized) being dammed up and near drowning in ReeRee's beaver, closer each hour to crowning itself king (or maybe queen), tiny, efficient predator camouflaged under bawling cloak of helpless infancy, its instinct being to suck the life out of its mother and father, then mature to hate them,
hate
them for reasons justified, unjustified & imagined, to vilify and
overthrow
them, all the while concocting contradictory campaigns & stratagems to get their
love
and
attention
, all children grow into fools who want
unconditional love
from the demonparents they've come to
unconditionally hate
, and so it goes, a dumb ceaseless schizoid dance of arrested adult-child development, always ending with the shrink-guided offspring smugly, compassionately
forgiving
errant momsters & dadbeats in the latters' final deathbed days, decades-long drama of guilt & fingerpointing at last wrapped in a perfect, perfectly convenient psychotherapeutic giftbag the kids reward themselves with at croaktime, allowing them—the once wounded now healed adult child—to
move on . . . . . . . . .

Jerzy asked,
Do you want to smoke?

Rikki knew he meant crystal not kush.

“Naw, the shit is wack. Pretty soon I'm be talkin like you.”

“Well at least you'd be gramatically correct.”

. . .

He liked the old man Phil.

Jerzy usually detox'd a couple times a year, something he did in the privacy of his home with a major assist from benzos. Whenever J got clean, he literally slept for 2 weeks. For the hell of it, he told Dr Phil to organize his (off-camera) intervention—when the time was right. Just now, it wasn't.

“It rarely is, my friend,” said Phil.

“True.”

“I'll let you in on something. I know how smart you are. Yes, I do. But that wonderful gift, all that wonderful
brainpower
hasn't served you so well. It's even been a hindrance. In certain areas. You're too smart not to know where this is going to end.”

“Where's that, Dr Phil?” he deadpanned.

“Right where the big book says it does—‘jail, institutions or death.'”

“Promise me you'll never work a suicide hotline, Dr Phil.”

. . .

He couldn't ask his fosterparents for any more money. They'd give it to him, but he couldn't ask.

School became impossible. He told his fosters he was going to stay with Reeyonna, & they said, “That's where you
should
be.” Killing him softly with their unending kindness. He lived at the Mt Olympus house now.

Tom-Tom was bugging them for rent. Rikki didn't understand why she would, when she was staying for free. When he asked to barter with his body she just laughed, then looked at him funny like she was gunna steal his face. The memory of that hopeful time when they made the audition tape, when both of them were certain he was going to become a
had completely faded. Without the motorcycle, they were trapped up there. Ree didn't want to go anywhere anyway. After she lost her wallet she got depressed & stayed in her room. She didn't even want to replace her stolen ID. If Rikki needed anything down the hill he had to rely on Jerzy or wait & get a ride with Dr Phil or whomever. The one person he refused to ask was Bolt.

Reeyonna&Rikki watched
The Town
on DirecTV. The dude got away with all the $$$ just like in
Shawshank
but in
The Town
he got the bitch too. ReeRee liked it but mostly watched peekaboo-style, hand over eyes, because she said it was “too real.” It
did
make Rikki think about robbery & shit.
One big score, then I'm out.
That's what the heist movie crews always said, like in that bitchen movie
Heat.
Rikki talked about it, talked some shit, putting out feelers. Ree said
You better not. You better be there for your baby.
Rikki said
Our
baby. ReeRee said
Your
baby like
right, your baby
, to further make a point. Rikki said he wasn't serious about the heist shit, just fucking around.

He might float it by Tom-Tom, tho. She probably knew somebody with a crew. Maybe she'd even done it before, not a bank or anything, just a small business or somebody's house, not a home invasion, just a robbery when no one was there. He knew she used to rob dealers. He knew from Jerzy that she used googlearth to scope out celebrity mansions. Jerzy said she started doing that during
Million Dollar Listing
speedball marathons
,
then they started doing it together, virtual bling-ringing, they'd check out a celeb house or rental using an address one of his personal twats shittered to him & they could like totally case the back entrances & shit, places where the
might sneak out in an attempt to dodge the frontyardarazzi, Jerzy would then be waiting in the back or wherever they'd scoped, Tom-Tom was so good at it she could like land them right in Courteney Cox's swimming pool & they'd just hang there a while scoping the house from every conceivable angle just like they were hangin for the weekend on a little raft, the googlearth let you look toward this or that neighbor then you could fly over to the house Colin Farrell was renting & just hang & then fly back to Courteney's or out to the beach to James Cameron's or The Edge's. Jerzy had T
²
do the same shit with restaurants too but now everyone was doing it, all the celebrigoogleartherazzi. Jerzy said Tom-Tom could zillow what a house cost, she could zillow when it was sold & to what bullshit shell company belonging to J Aniston, Lindsay, Olivia Wilde or whomever.

Then Rikki got prudent & thought,
If I'm gunna do a stickup it's gunna need to wait til after the baby & my adoption hearing. Cause I don't want to fuck either of those up
.

Ree was due right around the time his adoption court date was set.

. . .

Jerzy played the NatGeo doc for Rikki on his laptop. They were parked on Mulholland outside the gates of The Summit, waiting with 11 other britney
spearshooters
for her to leave the house. Everyone'd been there at least 6 hours; the papp-posse was starting to thin out. Britney wasn't Jerzy's thing but it'd been a slow day, all he got was Paz de la Huerta, Toni Collette & Mamie Gummer, anyway, he thought he'd show the scene to the kid.

He told Rikki that hummingbirds could only store enough energy to get them through the night so they were always just a few hours away from total starvation.
Just like dope fiends yuckyuck.
Jerzy asked how long he thought a hummingbird could live. Rikki said I don't know a week maybe a month? A year? Jerzy said they could go
10-years-PLUS
(the internet said) but that 1st yr was
oooh
it was TOUGH.
Hey tell me about it. Jesus H a 10 yr-old hummingbird has got to be having his share of senior moments.
Probably get alzheimer's, water on the birdbrain, need to start leaving post-its on nests & feeders ahahahahaha.
Hey Dr Phil told me a good one. Guy with alzheimer's goes to a singles bar. He sees this chick & he's gunna hit on her. So he goes up & says “Do I come here often?”
teeheehee you don't get it do you. Well I ain't gunna splain. I ain't gunna explainate. Ain gunna explainify. Ain gunna explainobrag the explainentials. Ain gunna explain the giraffe————
holy
SHIT
10 fucking
YEARS
of flutterin n fibrillatin n fuckin
hustling
to meet your insane daily food nut, plus whatever's required to fuel your
insaner
metabolism like some adrenal torment devised by the GODS
10 FUCKING YEARS!
the very thought of it had Jerzy continuously tweak-freaking, half-worried that the pondering of it alone might bring on another hopefully nonfatal tachycardiac episode of his own.