Jowita Bydlowska - Guy

I picture her mother sitting angrily in the shade, smoking cigarettes and watching the new-and-improved $isi swimming laps, her bald head bobbing above the water like a pool toy.

Near the end of the awards, there’s a dull segment honouring Fatima, the recently deceased musician who often took breaks from her career due to exhaustion. Then the awards are over.

Coming out of the theatre, there’s a riot of camera lights. Flash. Flash. Flash. Demands to pose this way or that.

I have no “bad side.” I’m okay with the cameras showing up wherever they happen to be, but Gloria, the former model, keeps manoeuvring me around, trying to expose her right half-profile to all the flashes.

There are people screaming everywhere. Mostly they just scream the names of all the stars that come out of the building, but there are a few screams shouting my name as well. I don’t know how kids find out these things, but they do.

Despite all this chaos, I isolate an especially frantic movement to my right, out of the corner of my eye. Somebody is running in my direction.

I hear my name – Guy , Guy , Guy – and I let go of Gloria. Next, a body is throwing herself at me, face covered with hair. I can’t get a good look. I stand there as she lands on me heavily, like a mattress. I sway but don’t fall.

I see a massive guy in black running toward us, shouting into his headset. The crowds are screaming behind the red line. A couple more people seem to be breaking through, running. More guys in black start showing up, running after them.

The woman has wrapped her arms around me. I can smell her – her smell is familiar. And then her body, her body, too, feels familiar, although it seems bigger now, more dangerous.

I can hear Gloria shouting something, to me or to the security guy who starts peeling Dolores off me. Dolores is holding onto my neck. It’s very unpleasant, all this tugging and moving. Now, I’m pushing her off, too. She only clings harder. Her strength seems to have doubled from the resistance. Another guy in black runs up and tries to help peel her off. Finally, she falls through their hands to the ground, where she crashes, a sack filled with hefty bones.

At this point Gloria is pulling me away, back to the exit where they’re ushering all of the people who are still on the red carpet.

I look at where Dolores was lying on the ground, except she’s not on the ground anymore. She’s running toward one of the scaffolding towers holding the enormous spotlights that shine onto the carpet. She starts scaling the scaffolding fast, like an enormous ape.

People are shouting even more, now. There are more men in black with headsets. The entire red carpet seems to be filled with them. Someone is urging us to keep moving, keep moving, but I want to see. I stand in one spot, not moving, no one paying attention to me at all, except Gloria, who is pulling on my arm.

She stops pulling on my arm. We stand still. We are watching Dolores climb higher, at last stopping about twelve feet above the ground.

The crowd is taking pictures, shouting at her, shouting at the guys in black, just shouting anything they can think to shout: Get down, come down, get down, get her… blah blah blah.

I should maybe talk to Patrick about this, see if Kolektiv could stage something like this with our tumour campaign. Some kind of an event where one of the bald models could do a drastic public stunt. I don’t know what exactly – a similar scaffold climb?

I watch Dolores, with her wild hair and a blouse that seems to have ripped slightly on the side, revealing a stack of two soft, fleshy folds – she’s gotten a little larger since the summer – and I feel excited, even turned on.

Gloria’s talking but it’s all just noise; I’m too distracted to listen. An absurd thought, perhaps from shock: My girl. That’s my girl.

“Oh my god, I think she’s trying to jump,” Gloria’s faint voice suddenly forms itself into a coherent whole in my head. Once she says that, I know she’s right. And I also know that I have to do something about that. It’s in my best interest, as there might be some kind of a consequence, maybe already is, something like a blog post somewhere, some kind of lunatic tragic-romantic rant posted on Facebook.

The guys in black are talking to Dolores, telling her to get down. The lights at the top of the scaffold get turned off so the tower is dark, but the other lights illuminate her still. An ambulance arrives along with a fire truck amidst a blast of sirens. A police car, then another one, lights flashing everywhere. The street becomes a techno show.

Please.

She’s not climbing any higher, but she’s not climbing down either. I could ask her to come down. She would listen to me. Please come down, Princess.

I think of all the future talks I may have to have with Gloria and possibly the police and maybe even the press – how bothersome it will all be – but I know it’s going to be better than Dolores climbing to the top, jumping off and possibly leaving incriminating proof of our connection with each other.

“Dolores, please come down,” I say as loudly as I can. I can’t see her face well, can’t see her eyes at all, but I know she is watching me.The noise around us seems to quiet down, or I tune it out. All I hear is some soft whimpers from above.

“Come on, sweetie,” I shout, and don’t even choke over the sweetie , which is not a word I use. I can’t say princess out loud, not in front of Gloria.

Dolores looks down. We lock eyes. Come on, Princess , I mouth. She nods once. Then she’s moving. She takes the first hesitant step, her foot landing on the nearest metal rod below her.

Gloria squeezes my arm. She asks me something about Dolores: Is she a friend? How do I know her?

I watch Dolores. A few feet above the ground, she loses her footing and tumbles down, heavily, ungracefully; there is a funny noise as she lands. I am close enough now to hear it, and I notice her face, those round eyes full of surprise.

The paramedics and the firefighters rush to her side, there’s more shouting, the men in black are running, someone pushes me away.

Three hours later, we’re at the hospital in the waiting room. It was Gloria’s idea to come here, and I don’t know why I agreed, but I did. We could’ve just gone home. But Gloria insisted that it was our obligation to at least show up at the hospital until someone from Dolores’ family could come. The family is miles and hours away and the earliest anyone can come is tomorrow afternoon. I don’t plan on sitting here until tomorrow afternoon, and I certainly don’t plan to talk to Dolores when she wakes up, but I sit here because Gloria has asked me to.

There’s a social worker coming to see Dolores when she wakes up, and there are two police officers sitting in the waiting room with us. They leave us alone, though I have to give them a call later, I am told, which is fine with me.

I fall in and out of nervous bleeps of sleep lasting a second or two; eventually, I give up and force myself to watch a short segment on home renovations on the TV.

I don’t know how long Gloria wants to sit here and wait. The update is that Dolores knocked herself unconscious when she fell, and they’re monitoring her for signs of concussion. She has also broken an ankle. She’s not unconscious right now, but is sleeping thanks to a sedative they’ve given her. I wish they’d give me a sedative.

“Isn’t it funny?” Gloria says when she sees me awake.

“What’s funny?”

“Well, I just think how this is funny, how it feels like we’re sitting here like we’re her parents or something.”