Dead Stars (14 page)

He'd spent a lot of time in galleries, afterall MoMA made her splashy little sensations when he was just turning 18, right around the time she was ab-/using his baby ½sis who he loved, Jerilynn, whom he always had protected from harm but had failed to against the MoMA machinations. These days mother and son were estranged, but big brother and little sister IM'd, little sis told big bro MoMA was getting desperate, which gave him a kind of wicked pleasure, and while big bro did not tell little sis his Master Plan, little sis
did
know that big bro was a creeperazzo but big bro
distinctly
told little sis
not
to tell MoMA that's what he did for a living, he didn't want that bitch anywhere
near
knowing how he was paying the rent (MoMA did know—just how, he forgot—that her son wasn't on the East Coast, & was living somewhere in LA), he wanted her to know as little about him as
pah-see-blay
. What he
prayed
for was for MoMA to wake up one LA chelsea morning to see that her son's
creepshots!
had been declared A R T—she could come to Gagosian's with everybody else &
kiss the ring, the ring of my hem'rrhoided shithole
.

. . .

Three tweaking tweeters said Michael Douglas was at Sur.
With who?
he twittered back from his twat.
Did not rec
was the teetering reply. Did not recognize. Meaning it was probably an agent, manager, lawyer, whoever, though J's twitshit troops
should
be able to recog even
them
.

Re selling Douglas pics to the e-/print tabloids, the demand had leveled off. They still paid okay, nothing like what they did in the six months after the Big C, but the $$$ was still okay, tho the prices had begun to drop the further the actor got in recovery. Still, they paid. The tabloids wanted a stockpile of the actor
lookin good
because the more shots they had of him
lookin good
, the bigger would be the fall (for their readers). They knew the fall would come—one way or another. They knew their readers (& non-readers too) were just
waiting
for a recurrence. How long had it been? A few years already? The actor was already overdue, it was
time
, he'd been cancerfree long enough, & their readership—
public drama demanded
a recurrence, only one that wouldn't be so easy to be licked, Patrick Swayze-style, & one where he wouldn't be able to keep his hair . . . public drama demanded a recurrence that maybe ended in a Roger Ebert-style mutilation.
Jesus . . .
if Douglas lost the whole lower jaw, whoever got that 1st photo of Catherine OBE holding a stained scarf over the missing bottom of his face—Jesus, that was probably worth $5 mill.

. . . . . . . . . Jerzy got another tweet from one of his twats saying Mary Murphy was there, at a different table. Jerzy never saw
So You Think You Can Dance
but knew that her thyroid cancer had supposedly been successfully ZAPPED . . . . . . . . . . Jerzy still held to his personal axiom that whenever a celeb declared themselves cancer-free, the devil woke from his nap————

Sur, on Robertson . . .

Big Sur,
yessur
.

Creeperazzi crowding & papsmearing the sidewalk.

“Paparazzi”—dumb word from another era,
La Dolce Vita
word
,
era of Cinemascopic glamour and arclights strafing Hollywood premiere nights, era of MGM oldschool grandeur/oldschool restraint (era before the internet), era before they sawed off Zsa Zsa's feet, era before Liz became a rouged-up, roughed-up canteloupehead, era before a stoned nurse tamped his cock into Mickey Rooney's cracklipped hundred-year-old mouth for webcam kicks. Reagan was still chopping wood for chrissake . . . but time & TMZ wait for no man . . . & they're
very
young, these jeepers-creepersazzi Jerzy uses—they're, like, lone wolves with ADD, tense & smelly & fuckin crazy, with their SUPREME t-shirts, $500 hightops & threadbare vintage American Apparel————now, one of em who's standing in front of Sur
sees
something—someone deliberately stepping out of a car
down the street,
seemingly to avoid the———
RachelBilson RachelWeisz RachelMcAdams? LisaEdelstein LisaRinna LisaD'Amato? RyanGosling RyanReynolds RyanSheckler? AshleeSimpson (AshleeWentz) AshleyGreene AshleyTisdale Ashley———?—
& one of the lone wolf creepers
tears
across the street, sweaty relay runner
solitaire
, infernal Olympiad. . . .

Jerzy stands outside the restaurant . . . in the world of creepers but not of it. Oxycodone-dreaming of being interviewed in
Interview
by Richard Prince:
RICHARD PRINCE Talks To Art World's Latest Bad Boy Genius, Papsmearanarchist SQUEEGEE/JERZY SHORES.
But until then, to make the rent, he needs something tweet & potatoes, needs to start building up his photo archive for reasons of Gagosianocity. And if along the way he so happens to score some of that happy accident poon for Harry Middleton's Private Stock Vineyard, well that would just be icing on Elle's or whomever's cupcakes, a big payday no doubt, Harry said he'd pay a premium, Jesus, might be high as fifteen-thou for a Hailee or a Chloë or a Kendall, but it's very hit and miss, that kind of work. Jerzy knew enough to know you could never chase that kind of
honeyshot!—
you had to let them
happen.

He didn't talk about it with Harry, or really much with anyone, but he considered his specialization, that
true calling
, to be the
sick celeb
(that's why Mr. Douglas
à table
@ Sur got his attention). He loved the moment that came weeks—or, if he was fortunate enough, days, or even hours
—
before death, when, with sniper's telephoto viewfinder, he caught their eye.
The moment they looked back.
When Harry spoke of his
own
epiphany—that private moment shared with Emma Watson—tho the
content
was dissimilar, that was when Jerzy knew him to be a kindred spirit. Maybe the two Moments weren't so different; maybe they were really just the same. In the wee, wee hours, when he was very stoned, Jerzy would google
recent celebrity deaths
[
“About 90,100,000 results (0.06 seconds)”
]
, clicking from site to site, scanning the ebituaries of the month & those from years gone by. He read with nostalgia, for some he'd captured & been paid a bounty for; most were lost for all Eternity, residing in
honeyshot!
Heaven. He usually checked
www.deathlist.net/
; last night, Kirk Douglas was #5 on the Top 50 of those most likely to expire.

 

The list comprises celebrities thought most likely to pass away during 2012. Candidates must be famous in their own right such that their death is expected to be reported by the media, however candidates cannot be famous purely for the fact they are likely to expire shortly. DeathList 2011 was a big disappointment, chalking up its lowest score for over a decade, but, with the performance in the latter half of the year, surely there are signs that the dry season is behind us.

That strange & special
moment . . .

The beauty of his Moment with Farrah still haunted him.

For weeks, the vulturazzi camped outside her pre-cadaverous home. She was returning to St John's in the morning, & (somehow) slipped out without being noticed. The night before checking into the hospital she would spend at her hairdresser's, an old & dear friend. But Jerzy got a tip. (It wound up costing him $10,000, but was worth it.) He stayed up all night in the SUV, smoking crack & waiting. At 9AM, beyond the modest hedge of the modest house, there was a commotion at the front door: Farrah & 3 others. He readied himself to leave his truck. The others were already climbing into the station wagon that was in the drive . . . suddenly, without warning,
Farrah walked into the street
. What was she doing? Jerzy was thrown off-guard. One of the group paused beside the car & called out to Farrah; from the tone of it, he wasn't very happy. It wasn't Ryan O'Neal . . .
but what was she doing?
She looked—well—
lovely
—or—well—there were
aspects
of loveliness, easily reminding of the youth & great beauty that once was. She wore jogging pants—the hair of course was perfectly done up by her friend—and was leaning down at the curb . . . to pick up a blue-wrappered
New York Times
from the gutter.

She looked all around her, as if seeing the world for the first time & knowing it would be the last, that she wouldn't be returning from her morning trip to St John's. Jerzy had tried a thousand times to remember those seconds during & after he sprung from the car with his camera. From the seconds he'd been watching her pick up the paper to the
instant
he found himself in front of her, only 5 or 6 feet between them. But he couldn't—it was like a black-out. It was as if he had been teleported before her just so that he could look in her eyes. She startled for a moment, her instincts not knowing if he was an assailant—friend or foe—but when she saw his camera, she unmistakably Farrah-smiled, there was relief, not foe but friend, he was part of her tribe. He began to shoot her, & she was gracious enough to
give
him the shot—like a kiss—he recalled that after 30 seconds or so she said, “Is that enough? Do you have enough?” Then she said, “I'm tired,” but he kept shooting. And that was when it happened: every showbiz cell in her body bade her smile, graciously and valiantly, even during a rape such as this, & at the very end the swimsuitfamous smile collapsed into the tender rictus belonging to one already launched into oncoming oblivion. She fought it from happening, but sheer weakness of flesh, not of mind or of spirit or of heart, betrayed—that axiom of teeth & lips, timeless equation of Americana/girl-next-door majesty which had rallied (not just by decades-old celebrity reflex, but by impulse of simple humanity, & pretty girl/neighborhood sweetness) to hold in place (for him, for Jerzy) the curbside illusion of an icon still vibrant (which Jerzy in these seconds had
believed
, it had worked on him until now, until this very Moment) crashed into the grimace in a rotten death's head.

The man came from nowhere, pushing Jerzy to the ground, foaming & messy & hitting & lurching for the camera, but Jerzy hung on for life (the strap around his neck) plus who knew, maybe he could get a ¼ of a mill for the hairdresserhouse curb pics (well, not quite that, & he spent it all on drugs), Farrah was shouting at her friend to stop, can you believe it? Shouting at her friend to let Jerzy be, & by then the others were erupting from the car shouting “Shame on you!”/“You are an
asshole!
”—Jerzy was only worried about his camera being seized, the man had homicidal fury in his eyes, but must have been worried if he kept it up his friend Farrah might be so stressed out she would die right there in the street . . . . . . . . . .
he understood him when Harry said he would carry that Moment with him forever—the Emma communion Moment—the looking at her nakedness—how they could never take that Moment away from him.

He was a master of the dead man walking shot: a recklessly unguarded Chris Reeves or Patrick Swayze, using walkers to drag themselves to the terraces of their hosp rooms. They would turn unbidden & look into the ether—Jerzy would be in a tree with his sniperscope—they couldn't see him. They had
sensed
something out there. You could see it in their features, gaunt hopeless animal look, wounded gazelles who knew they would soon be culled from the herd by jackals. His only regret was not getting Steve Jobs, in any way, shape or form, not even close. Not getting to stare into those Da Vinci eyes. Jobs had been
his
grail,
his
Hermione: a good pic of the dying animal would have been historic. Apple might even have bought it directly, just so it wouldn't be out there. Jesus, he hadn't thought of that until now, they'd probably pay tens of mill——————he was coming on to another speed biscuit, & it was as if it had been laced with regret. He said to himself,
Jobs would have been the show-stopper, the centerpiece of my Gagosian
.
Jobs'd have been the draw. If I'da got Jobs, my name'd have been made. I'da done a mash-up/mixtape of the sorrowsfull Job poisoned app Gaze & my coven of barely legal papsnatch, called the show The Naked & the Dead . . . . . .

. . . . . . standing on the sidewalk in front of Sur with the rest of the loserazzi, contemplating a retreat to his car to snort some lines, when he saw her. She was petite & wore her hair in one of those piled up ponytails. She was an odd one; if you blinked, you could think maybe she
wasn't
a little girl, maybe really a tiny freak like Kristin Chenoweth, ultra-petite, unwizened, middle-age chick. But a second blink brought you back to the objective truth—she was probably 11 or 12.

Something about her jammed the frequencies, & could throw a person off.

“Is anyone from
Glee
inside?”

“I don't know.”

“I read that Heather Morris & Ashley Madekwe like this restaurant.”

“Ashley
who
?”

“Madekwe.”

He thought she said
“my dickweed.”

“Well, that could be.”

“I'm probably going to be on the show next year.”

“Oh yeah? On the
Project
?”

“No, the
real
show.”

“What's your name?”

“Telma. What's
yours
?”

“Jerzy.”

“Is that Russian or Polish?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah what?”

“Russian & Polish. It's both.”

“Did you see
Never Say Never
?”

“The Bieber movie? Yeah.”