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
CLEAN [Jacquie]
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.
. .
She put the house up for sale.
. .
She cooked Pieter dinner and got drunk.
He stayed over.
The sex was dirty and bruising. She couldn’t remember having so much fun in the sack.
During breakfast, Pieter announced he happened to be “au courant” on her postmortem work. The only person who could have talked to him was Albie; in that same instant, she was certain that Albie had told him about her portrait of Jerilynn as well. Pieter played dumb and she could see the bind he was in. Asking to see the Cedars picture would egregiously violate Albie’s confidence — it was one thing for Albie to have spoken in general terms, quite another to have shared about that. Such a sensitive revelation might threaten their friendship, and Albie would have known that. While Pieter didn’t want to detonate his own relationship with Jacquie, she knew he was willing to carefully navigate any kind of minefield whose end result was being shown the memento mori of her baby.
Jacquie already forgave Albie in her head. None of it really mattered anymore. She was getting out of Dodge, bound for Marin. One of her portraiture clients had offered her a guesthouse for as long as she liked. Jacquie thought she might use it as base camp for traveling the world. Hell, the guesthouse was three times bigger than the house she was trying to unload.
“So — do you want to see it?”
He played dumb again.
“It’s hanging in the garage.”
. .
A week later, Beth Rader called. Jacquie knew that she would.
Pieter probably told her to wait a respectable few weeks before checking in. Jacquie cut her off at the pass by saying she appreciated her interest but was in the middle of a major move. Beth said Pieter mentioned she was relocating to Mill Valley and that it was one of her favorite favorite places, she grew up in Petaluma/Cazadero, bla.
Then she made her play.
“OK, Jacquie, I don’t want to take much more of your time. I’m going to be straight up because that’s the only way I’m going to feel better, that I was at least upfront & tried my best. And I hope you’ll be OK with it because I assume if you’re anything like me you prefer just hearing the truth instead of someone just rambling. Pieter told me about the picture of your daughter. And her baby. & let me just say I feel privileged just — that he shared it with me. And that you, of course, shared it with him. & you need to know he told me about the photograph in the most respectful way. The hair on my neck stood up; it’s standing up now. It so moved me, Jacquie. I just had a nephew pass — of lymphoma — he was just 14, & I wish there’d been some way to memorialize that. Not for me but for the mom.
“What I really want to say isyou’re a great artist. You have a body of work that should not be ignored. That you’re not better known, more collected, is criminal. I don’t think you’ve ever had representation up to the task — that is my opinion—I don’t believe you’ve ever had anyone in your corner who really understood the world of Jacquie Crelle-Vomes. The aesthetic, the palette, the precision, the narrative. This new work you’ve embarked on—& make no mistake, it is your new work, whether you choose to show it or not, & I don’t care what you decide, it’s your choice, I think it would be a shame for people not to see it but that of course is 1000 % up to you. Goya had his ‘black paintings,’ he did them on the walls of his house, never wanted anyone to see them, and they didn’t until he was dead and gone. So you can leave them to the wind but whatever you do, it’s still art. Because art is something you can’t help but make. That’s what you do, Jacquie. You make art.