Bruce Wagner - Dead Stars

At this point they’d usually invite them in, it being impolite to keep them afoot on the porch like that. Once settled and properly provided with food & drink, the Double T show-and-tell’d photoshop pics of Rikki with Nelson Mandela; with Jimmy Carter; with Barack & Hillbillary. She even had huge War Child International decals on her attaché, o shit she was tight . They took turns raiding the house, at 1st excusing themselves to use the bathroom but over time one of em would simply disappear while the other kept the mourning whore engaged. Before the bust, they fenced about 225K in jewels/gold. Tom-Tom couldn’t prove it but was fairly certain it was Cherokee who dropped the dime. She was looking at 7 years; reduced to 3 for ratting out Rikki.

. .

His father was a jailbird who left when he was a baby, and now Rikki had done the same to his own. The irony wasn’t lost on him. His parents visited and it pained him to see the look of anguish on Dawn’s face. He thought long&hard about it and told Jim he would understand if they wanted to sever parental rights. “No,” said Jim. “I appreciate your sensitivity in the matter, but there’s not a child on Earth who deserves that to happen to him once, let alone twice.”

They brought Nikki to see him. It was just like some of the A&E docs where the family brings babies or toddlers to visit the incarcerated dad. He felt something in him shift. Maybe he’d go to school & become a drug counselor when he got out. (That was what Reeyonna wanted to be, if she couldn’t make it as a medical examiner.) He’d talk to Dr Phil about that when he got out. The bottomline was, he wanted to step up to the plate, like the judge said. Handle himself like a man, not a punk. He remembered everything that judge told him. Being arrested like that made an amazing day into one of the worst in his life. Second to ReeRee dying of course.

He was determined. He would change.

Fake it til you make it.

. .

Rikki had a cellphone in his cell. A cell in the cell hahahaha. They were easy to get from trustees or guards if you had the money. His parents always kept his account topped off at $200. For snacks & cigs & shampoo and shit.

The reception was shitty but sometimes you could actually go online. He got a Lana Del Rey youtube & jacked but didn’t want to come. He’d jack a while then try to get a pornsite then fail and go back to his Lana jack. After 5 or 6 tries, he got on & pulled down his pants & put his hand on the gluegun. He was in the lower bunk but his cellie was out exercising or whatever.

One of his faves, http://behindthecastingcouch.com… it was hard to hear the dialogue but they were pretty much all the same. He never saw one with a pregnant girl before, & he jacked a few minutes before realizing with a shock that it was Reeyonna.

He hit PAUSE.

Reeyonna was so freaked about money, much more than him, probably he thought because of the grudge deal she had going with her mom for cheating her out of her shit. Ree was more practical than him too, & ahead in the nesting dept. Rikki knew how much she wanted to be independent, & the motherfucking casting motherfucker played on that. It was irrational, but he suddenly got angry with himself for never having told her about the shammy site; if he had, she’d never have fallen for it. But why would he? He never even thought about it. She probably went down there around the time Tom-Tom the cuntsnitch was pressuring them to pay rent. He remembered her coming home one day looking fucked up, & how she stayed in bed a bunch of days & wouldn’t tell him what was wrong. He thought he remembered her being worried she was bleeding a little from her pussy too, not a heavy flow, not too worried, but still. But then it stopped. That would have been right around then.

He hit PAUSE again and watched Reeyonna blow the piece of shit motherfucker. Man, this shit was sad. Rikki closed his eyes and shook his head. If a year ago someone told him he’d be in jail looking at porn on a contraband cellphone & the porn would be his dead pregnant fiancée giving some sorry-lookin motherfucker head, he’d have fucking laughed. Now he was cryin.

When he opened his eyes, ReeRee was on the desk on her back, being hardfucked. The cam was right in front of her face & she winced as she got pounded. The phone crashed/he lost the signal. Too much of a hassle to get online again. He didn’t have it in him to even try. Besides, she wasn’t going anywhere. She’d be getting fucked by that lying scumbag forever, until the end of the world, until the end of time.

He lay back on the cot, & couldn’t stop his brain from playing the fucked-up images over and over in his head. Prisoners were shouting. Some had conversations, cell to cell. Some were selling wolf tickets, some for real. Others sang, or talkshouted but to themselves. Rikki replayed the ambulance ride in his head. He tried to remember the last words she said to him, but couldn’t. He flashed on that scene in the hospital room when he 1st saw her dead. And that dress, she was in that dress, which now that he thought about it was fuckin weird. Fuckin ReeRee’s mom, what a sick bitch. Criminal motherfucker. Basically, she turned her daughter out. Took her $$$ & made her waddle into that fucking “casting office” —— then oh fuck

suddenly started beating faster, seeing her in mind’s eye splayed across that desk

& he takes himself

in hand

Dead Stardust

In

the months following her daughter’s death, Jacquie was hired for a ½dozen portraitures. Two were in private homes. One of them was an 8-year-old girl with cystic fibrosis.

Jacquie thought of moving away. She talked about it with Dawn, who gave her blessing. It was understood that Dawn & Jim were going to raise the girl, & Jacquie felt guilty about that. She had no desire to be a parent again and questioned whether she ever did. Dawn comforted her, tho one can only be comforted so much. Jacquie knew she was depressed but resisted Dawn’s suggestion to medicate. She went on the Internet & learned the possible side effects of antidepressants were “new, worse” depressions &/or suicidal thoughts and attempts . Jacquie never heard anything so insane in her life — a pill you took for depression that walked you to the gallows!

. .

Pieter came to town.

This time, they didn’t sleep together. Albie joined them for dinner — the boys got along like a house on fire.

Pieter said he’d be spending more time in LA, working at Gagosian. He didn’t bring up Beth Rader nor did he ask Jacquie about her “avocation,” for which she was grateful.

He brought her a gift, a beautiful book of full-face black & white portraits. The text was in German. Pieter explained that the artist, a man in his 70s named Walter Schels, had permission from his dying subjects to document moments before and after death. On the left side of the book, the subject stared straight into the camera; on the right, he was dead. Pieter said the pictures were often taken mere hours apart. One was of a young boy who looked so prosaic in life, so beautiful in death. Another reminded her of the photograph she took of Jerilynn & her granddaughter, only in perverse negative: a mother sat on a couch cradling her dead baby in one arm, with her remaining child, a living toddler, riding her hip. The nasal cannula that supplied oxygen to the baby still hadn’t been removed. The lovely thing about the portrait was the duality — parity — of the living & the dead. The mom’s serene indifference reminded that the opposing states coexisted, were in fact interchangeable. She looked like she was in a trance. The handsome woman gazed off-camera, like she might have been listening to someone, perhaps someone posing the question, Which one is alive, you or the baby? Jacquie thought the woman might have got it wrong.