They got whirled into the river …
Bodies consumed by the river, by the fire in the river, each man a new mausoleum lamp …
What I’m dead set on in the Green Zone and what we’re gonna have, hell, high water, is success, I told Clay McManaway and Donny as Jay led us through the palace.
My sister should be here, she should be shooting the palace, the Chinatown soundstage is what the mess in here reminds me of, I told Clay McManaway and Donny as Jay led us through the palace.
We were a pair on the soundstage, same as Monaco or Trieste …
Last assignment she ever accepted, last photos she ever took, shoot the publicity stills for Chinatown …
Guy the studio’d lined up, he was dead, he’d killed himself …
Photographers incapable of clean suicides, each death a showstopper, and good luck getting those stains out …
Condi a photographer, Life, People, a party photographer, the studio called her up …
Faye thought of my sister because of the Life photo, and Faye called my sister …
Let me tell you about Chinatown, that’s where I met Jack, I told Clay McManaway and Donny as Jay led us through the palace.
Jack, he’d just come from Vegas, or was it Ren TTQ6D530=X0NFW YUVCOV
I thought, Nicholson, yes, the drive to the desert, to the Middle East …
I thought Nicholson, the drive to death, the living death …
I had just seen The Passenger, and I loved Jack as I’d never loved any other, and so when my sister got the Chinatown gig I was her passenger, her tagalong …
Jack loved the desert, just loved it …
We made it to the soundstage, me and Condi …
A deep feeling for the desert, is what Jack said he had, a real deep feel for the people of the desert …
I was trying to get in close but lackeys were filling the soundstage with umbrellas, reflectors, tents, domes, shooting tables, with each step toward Jack a union lackey would roll a bin of apparatus right over my toes, and they just kept coming
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each piece of apparatus set on its own trajectory by a union lackey, vectors complexly cut through by other lackeys in white pants and T-shirts, all these lackeys moving with a complex and intercutting grace, never slowing, never hesitating, when I moved left they blocked me left, when I feinted right they blocked right, Jack kept talking, this swarm of men and apparatus cutting through and past itself burst into laughter yet again, me I had no idea what Jack was saying and I couldn’t even see him anymore …
I made a dash for it, parked myself in the mathematical center of the room, Jack up front and straight ahead, an explosion of laughter and Jack turned, I got caught in that stare, you know the stare, I mean have you ever seen Jack just stare at something …
He stared me down, laughter built, he was saying something, saying it to me, at me, over and over, a 1929 Rolls-Royce roared right through the soundstage and shrieked to a halt between us …
I went to find Condi …
Poor Condi …
Here’s where Condi’s skill set was and here’s where this job was, way up above it, is what I was thinking …
Apparatus, lackeys, Jack and Faye, oh boy this’d be good, my little Condi, the accidental photographer, the tagalong …
Pop me some corn, brother, because any second now she’d be found out for sure …
They’d find her out, my Condi …
She wasn’t up to it, uh-uh, and she’d be found out …
Any minute now she’d be found out …
No, wrong …
Wrong …
I saw how wrong I’d be D6Y6BSL2WC RF
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Fact, total pro, cool as the pillow’s other side, my Condi …
Fact, stars, lackeys, apparatus, props, two shakes and it was all in order …
She moved all that apparatus and personnel, or orchestrated its movement, the pro, the master, two shakes …
And soon they were shutting down the soundstage, the apparatus was dispersing, hugs from Jack and Faye, hugs for Condi, a hug for me would have been nice, but hey …
I’d doubted her, my foundling, my Condi, and I’d been wrong to doubt her …
What was wrong with me, that I’d never dreamed that for my sister …
To never dream like that for her, when we’d been foundlings together, when we’d fought side by side, fought and clawed against the whole world …
Driving home, Condi at the wheel, I asked her, So how’d it feel, hugging Jack like that …
The highway, the cliff side, the moon in the sky and a second moon busting itself in black water, she didn’t speak …
The guardrail still busted up there, still unrepaired since the accident, we sped right by it …
I’d been driving them, Mom and Dad and Condi, the night before, and I’d swerved into the rail …
The night before the shoot, after the call from Faye, we’d been driving as a family to Five Easy Pieces …
Five Easy Pieces, we said we’d see it as a family to celebrate Condi’s job, catch one with Jack in it, give her a taste of Jack, give the whole family a taste …
We’d been driving to see that one, and I’d hit the railing …
But I hadn’t broken through …
I was drunk, but I wasn’t blackout stinking drunk, and so I pulled the wheel at the last moment …
One day I’d break through, but then, no …
Maybe that’s what Condi was thinking about on the ride back from the shoot …
How I hadn’t broken through that night, but one day I would …
Back home, the vineyards, she parked beneath the porte cochere, tires crunching on the macadamized driveway, she killed the engine and we just sat there …
Her hands folded in her lap, I took one of those hands in my own … How’d that feel, taking those photos, I said …
It felt good, Jerry, Condi said …
I bet it did, sure looked like it did …
Well, it did …
Inside I poured us drinks, no, she didn’t want a drink, she said I’m going down, second basement, don’t disturb me …
She said, Don’t touch me! Don’t you touch me …
She locked herself in the second basement, the dark room, came out a week later, hair wild, eyes and teeth wild, wreathed in the solder-like stink of developer, of her own sweat and filth, she handed me a sheaf of photos …
Look what I’ve done, Jerry …
They were all new, I told Donny as he unpacked my things.
They were classics, I told Donny as he unpacked my things.
These were the new classics, I told Donny, and how often does it happen, a classic no one’s seen before gets put in your hand …
Art History with a Special Photographic Emphasis, that’s one of my Harvard degrees, or I mean Yale, I’ve curated exhibitions in São Paolo, Stuttgart, Beijing, and Sydney, written monographs and articles, I’m a foremost world expert on the photographic arts, no exaggeration, and these were great photos, they were the very greatest …
I’d foreseen failure, humiliation …
What we had on our hands was some world-historical art …