Dead Stars (64 page)

EXPLICIT

[Jerzy]

Number Our Days

Mt

Olympus was a memory. Betty White's groomer got so horny for T
²
that she flew back from Prague for an unannounced 48-hour booty call. A chaotic eviction followed; the squatters were no more.

The whole deal went down the day after Reeyonna met her moneymaker. Jerzy was helping Rikki throw his ½sister's clothes and whatever into some Hefty bags when the chick Cherokee got there & went apeshit. Tom-Tom smacked her in the face and Bolt & Dr Phil got between em whilst sundry tweaking daydream believers didst scatter. General fucking bedlam ensued. Rikki said he was gonna cut and run because Ree didn't have anything of value in her room anyway, it wasn't like she had a wallet or ID & credit cards to steal (he left the bloody sheets on her bed as a fuck you to whomever). Jerzy got real calm and went to the poolhouse for his stash & his $$$. Jerzy came from a long line of . . . coke, so he did some, took his prints from the garage, carried them to the van. On the way out, he ran into a shirtless Bolt who was in a panic because the broad was threatening to call the police. Jerzy clocked how Bolt's stubbly back was overdue for a wax. Phil tried his lame-o diplomat thing on the front porch but Cherokee shoved him and he fell on the ground. Tom-Tom literally shouted to Cherokee she would fuck her and let her eat her pussy RIGHT NOW if she just promised to let everyone go without doing the 911 thing. The shit was too fuckin funny.

Jerzy sat in the van & smoked, a few houses up. You had to laugh: the premature arrival of Miss Hair & makeup-sex had the effect of poking a stick in an anthill of
loosers
. He let rip some longass farts but his raucous mood changed when he flashed on his dead sis in her postmortem duds. Even tho she rocked the frock.
The wacka flocka.
What the fuck . . .

. . .

At this moment, his Gagosianical
honeyshot!s
grace the walls (stacked against them anyway) of his crampy room at the Sunset Motel, an inn which can be found on the south side of its namesake blvd, between Normandie & Mariposa . . . a 7Eleven on the left, a Hollywood Dialysis on the right, (just shittycorner from) a Zankou Chicken; beside that an Auto Chek, beside that a StorQuest Self-Storage, beside that an Iglesia Evangelica Penteco, beside that a Lucky Liquorama, & assorted sordid strip mall anchors, anchorites&anchorettes.

But what is Jerzy doing there?

He no longer works, nor answers his android, nor leaves his funky domain except to purchase crack cocaine during the occasional paranoid ramble/walkabout under cover of darkness—but at civil hours i.e. not after midnight so as not to arouse suspicion amongst those who protect & serve.

Harry Middleton is concerned.

Jerzy came to the Sunset Motel for a reason.

As the 12-Steppers say:

 

He came.

He came to.

He came to believe.

That he couldn't stop cumming.

 

Sleasy does it . . .

Jerzy goes on extended head riffs. His latest fave is the torture of tyler the creator. In his latest, he & suge capture tyler the creator, who begins crying like a bitch. suge asks created tyler why he's always writing songs about killing & torturing & does he want to really know what that shits about instead of playing pretend like a mischievous little bitch. creator tyler just starts begging rite away please don't hurt me please please dont hurt me and suge's disgusted & turns to jerzy his trusted lieutenant & says deal with the nigger. and suge leaves & jerzy tapes created tyler's mouth & arms & legs to a chair & they bring in created tyler's mom & right away slice her tits off and stuff them in her pussy and jerzy cauterizes the wound so moms wont bleed to death and moms screamin & Jerzy pokes a syringe in created tyler that has Viagra + botox so he's paralyzed but gets a giant hardon. and they maneuver created tyler so hes fucking mutilated screamin moms in her not-so-famous-anus and onedirection & bruno mars are brought in to fuck created tyler too and they start pulling out created tylers teeth while bruno's brutalizing. ooh the screams be bone chillin thug/harmony. jerzy plays out variations on this dream riff, each one ending with creator tyler's rape, genitorture & death but right before tyler is uncreated jerzy makes sure the nigger understands that his betrayal has come at the hands of the puppetmathers & his cronies especially lil wayne just like when in the godfather tony rosato says before killing frankie pentangeli
michael corleone says hello.

. . .

Jerzy has cracked the code & decoded the crack.

His discovery is epic.

So simple—it was staring him in the face.

(He has now seen the face of G-d.)

The hour is nigh . . .

He's been trying to leave his room (paid in full for 2 wks upon check-in) for 5 days now. There can be a large degree of difficulty in vacating a rented room depending of course on the circumstances. Jerzy cannot go until the meth is gone, tethered to the bed, crack & porn, cum-rag laptop, tethered to the cloud of cracksmoke, cloud of unknowing. He knows he will soon believing. Soon be traveling crosstown to Harry round the Middle Earth's–––

There can be a large degree of difficulty in placing a call on one's cellphone depending of course on the circumstances. Jerzy overcame them & rang up Harried Middleclass. Hari Krishnleton seemed startled to hear from him. Kept asking Jerzy if he was OK. Not a single mention of the
honeyshot!s
(which was very unusual, to say the least). Jerzy lied, as it did not strike him as the opportune moment to say, “Harry, I have seen the face of G-d, I am bringing to your office the face of G-d.” No, that wouldn't do . . . so he lied & said he had the mother of all
honeyshot!s
& would it be all right to bring it by, & soon?

But when?

The when of it was tricky.

His penis stung & bled from marathon motel digital remasturbations, herpetic lesions had no time to heal. He no longer ejaculated, the dick a runny nose that cannot sneeze. All those strung-out strung-together years spent riveted by the front-/hindquarters of porn
s. All those years thinking but unknowing if he'd seen the face of G-d in the folds of their g-nitals . . . but in the last few days knowing with certitude he had not. It wasn't the cunt, the cunt was the red hairing, all this time he'd been wrong, & now, thankfully, he was more righteous than right.

So he wrapped the 2 faces—for in the end it was true, G-d/Janus had 2 faces because “3 is 2, 2 is 1, & 1 is none”—he wrapped them in blankets & headed out. (Again the difficulty in leaving, but external forces already working on his behalf, taking him by the hand.) He tucked them away in the van then climbed in & dro-blunted. KJ'd too, a booty bump, + Purple Lil Kim'd. Then carefully, mindfully, sacredly, he rolled across town to Harry's.

(1st to Harry's, then to the Gagosian—that was the plan.)

. . .

Harry wasn't sure who to call, the police or the paramedics.

Jerzy was grim, grimy, ½dressed. Hair matted. Breath like chlorine. He did not look remotely familiar with the concept or passive activity of sleep. For the moment, Harry believed doing nothing—just listening, paying attention—was the best approach.

“Do you know what these are?”

He held up the blankets he'd carried in under each arm.

“No,” said Harry. “Are you going to tell me?”

“Yes—& you might be the
only
one. I was bringing em over to Gagosian but now I think maybe you should just sit with them a while. Only you.”

“Okay, happy to. Are they photographs?”

“Yes.”

“Celebrities?”

“
Celebrity
, singular. Plural but singular. The ultimate celebrity.”

“And who's that?”

“G-d. Janus.”

“They're pictures of God?”

Harry remained calm, drawing on his vast experience of watching hostage-negotiators in movies & television shows.

“Of Janus, the 2-headed G-d. Man must invoke Him first, as He is the initiator of human life.”

Jerzy propped them against a wall then sat down. Suddenly he looked confounded & grey. Harry thought:
this is the part in the movie where I press the button under the desk to activate the silent alarm.

Harry stood & said, “Let's see what you brought.”

(Be proactive.)

Without glancing at his friend & employer, Jerzy nodded. When he looked like he was going to pass out, Harry transferred him to the floor. Harry's impulse to call 911 was coldly overruled by a quickly growing curiosity.

He began to undo the string around one of the blankets. Jerzy came to long enough to stop him, ordering which direction the pictures should face for maximum viewing impact.

“Be careful.”

“Careful of what?”

“Be humble. If you're humble—”

The blankets were off. Because he'd done what Jerzy told him to, only the back of the frames were visible; the images faced the wall.

“OK?” said Harry, seeking permission to continue.

“OK. You can turn them.”

The front of each panel was bare, except for a large boutonniere of thick photographic paper stuck to it, & folded in on itself, origami-like. Jerzy nodded out/mouthbreathed whilst Harry went to work unpacking the papery excrescence. Finally 2 enormous images blossomed from each canvas, lying flat—at least 10 × 10 apiece. There was only room to lean them against opposing walls.

Harry stood back.

Too abstract—he couldn't make anything out. Except for in the center of each photo was fused a smaller, unadulterated,
recognizable
photo. Harry took a closer look . . .

How strange! The images grafted onto the very solar plexus of both blowups seemed to be—no, they
were—
those of the telltale panty-sliver of a traditional (blue chip)
honeyshot!
beaver. The clarity & tautness, the drama of silk hose, the moment of automobiliac
egress
suspended in Time, the delicate, classical composition drawing one's eyes toward the single Great Eye of all creation—hallmarks of Jerzy's craft & best work.

But as for the abstractions that
surrounded
the 2
honeyshots!––––––

“I don't quite . . . understand. I can't see . . .”

“Can't you?” said Jerzy.

The unexpected voice, the
presence
of it, startled him. Jerzy held some glossy heaps (
more
folded paper) in his hand. He reached out, offering them to Harry. Jerzy's arm shook: it was scarlet, flecked, bruised by whole brown cities of needlemarks.

Harry took them from him, uncrumpling a printout from Wikipedia, plus two shiny pages torn from a magazine. Some of the wiki passages had been highlighted:

 

As a god of motion Janus looks after passages, causes the startings of actions, presides on all beginnings and since movement and change are bivalent, he has a double nature, symbolised in his two headed image.[23]
   He has under his tutelage the stepping in and out of the door
of homes,[24] Because of his initial nature he was frequently used to symbolize change and transitions such as the progression of past to future, of one condition to another, of one vision to another
, the growing up of young people,
and of one universe to another. He was also known as the figure representing time because he could see into the past with one face and into the future with the other. while Janus is Iunonius Juno is Ianualis as she favours delivery,
women's physiological cycle and opens doors.[11
3]

 

Now Harry
saw
, but still could not
apprehend
.

(Yet there was great skill&beauty in what Jerzy had done.)

But what could it all mean?

“I can't–––––––”

“Those pictures,” said Jerzy, helping out his friend, “are of G-d, taken as He stepped from his golden carriage. As you can see, there are
2
of Him: His name is Janus & He has 2 faces. We privileged few bore witness as He arrived for His merciful works.”

Jerzy closed his eyes in exhaustion.

Harry dialed 911.

& while the sirens grew louder, the maestro of THE HONEYSHOT! tried to fathom what kind of madness had led his star pupil to see the face of God in a mantis & a hummingbird.