Bruce Wagner - Dead Stars

Bolt had the biggest dick she’d ever seen.

“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.