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.”
“I was the girl—one of the girls — Justin brought onstage to sing ‘One Less Lonely Girl.’ But they had to cut it. They told my mom there was a scratch in the negative.”
“Bummer when that happens.”
“Telma!”
The voice came from across the street. Jerzy looked up. “Telma, come on!”
He attached a middle-aged face to it.
“What’s your last name?” she asked.
“Kosinski.”
“Are you on FaceBook?”
“Nope.”
“How can you not be on Facebook? Do you tweet?”
“Yup.”
“What are you?”
“Telma!!!!”—the woman from across the street.
“@jerzythelenzer12.”
“@Telma.i.m_iWillSurvive.”
She handed him a card with the info, then strode to the crosswalk, appeasing her mother.
“I’ll tweet u!”
“Right on,” he said, under his breath.
Tweet me. Tumblr me. I’ll tumble for yuh. Twick or tweet. Tweet or twat. I’m tweaking, I’m twikileaking. I’m twiki-licky take a leak-ing. .
Seconds later, his confederates went apeshit — Michael Douglas was leaving Sur.
He looked great. His hair was a perfect, tousled celebrity in itself, as recognizable as the Biebercut, a snowy, stylish pompadour that shouted, “Cancer-free!” One day the man will die, thought Jerzy, but his hair will live on.
Lunchtime.
Time to go home & smokeswallow some biscuits.
EXPLICIT [Tom-Tom & Jerzy]
Sit.com
“Why
can’t you get newly buff.”
Tom-Tom, Jerzy’s roommate, was on the couch smoking crack & watching a new show about realtors competing to see who could off-load houses with colorful histories first: like the one with the pool William Shatner’s wife drowned in, or the place Phil Hartman got shot or the condo Eric Douglas had in escrow when he OD’d, supposedly now haunted because someone forgot to give his ghost the memo about escrow being cancelled.
“Jerzy, I’m asking you a very simple question. Why, in God’s name, do you refuse to be newly buff?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
Tom-Tom was 30. (Created in ’82.)