“Oh, God—”
“Is everything all right?” says the attendant.
“It’s horrible,” I tell her.
I file toward the rear of the plane, searching for my seat, Twiggy’s death reverberating in my mind and hovering in my eyes. Christ, I’m near tears. Twiggy’s crime scene pics illuminate my sight, headless, her arms severed at the forearms—red hair, that Albion-red shade of hair dyed for the party—I’m nauseous, remembering her. This dead woman, pictures from England, her modeling stint. She was a poet, they’re reporting, e-zine servers crashing from gawkers interested in her work, they post she was a genius fucking poet and she’s already a front-runner on Crime Scene Superstar, with the highest instant-fuckability score the show’s ever seen. Every passenger on this plane’s streaming tabloids, mouths gaping in titillated shock at Twiggy’s body, at performance vids of Twiggy masturbating while reciting “I reached for you this morning but you were gone,” staring out the windows over the wings and the runway at Twiggy’s face, every passenger consuming this young woman, this beautiful young woman, oh God, oh God. Primary school graduation pictures. Pictures of Vivian with friends in Paris. CNN streams fuck-vids sold by ex-boyfriends, Twiggy the top story, millions worldwide watching her fucked and be fucked, watching footage of her body pulled from the dumpster, laid out in the alley, streaming autopsy photographs, gray-skinned, flaccid breasts, nipples the color of stone, veins visible, the stump of neck and stumps of arms, death shots and money shots, shots of her smiling face, streams of American Apparel ads, giving head, lesbian fucks with other models, behind-the-scenes photo footage, set for superstardom, they report, what a waste, what a waste, oh God, I collapse into my seat and close my eyes, I close my eyes to it all, to block it out, and I can no longer see but I still see her in my mind, the image of her face burned into my mind’s eye, her body beautiful, her beautiful hair like light, but in my mind I see her hair dyed that Albion color of blood, all that blood-red hair, and see her body cut apart, another missing woman, see her lips and eyes, oh God, I dig my nails into my scalp, Oh God, and want to rip it out, rip it all out, rip this world from me.
• PART II •
SAN FRANCISCO
2, 25—
Five hours in flight, nine hundred passengers staring into cells or screens embedded in the seats in front of them, in-flight streams prohibited: an entire season of Whipped and Creamed, a showing of Jules and Peasley Blarf in Cairo. Rank circulated air—mucosal breath, dirty diapers and thawed airplane meals, stale socks and the pungency of feet from people who’d kicked off their shoes. Garbage in the aisles, the crew too short-staffed to care—pushing drink carts through, serving splashes of liquor in cups of ice. Dawn, my face pressed to the window as the San Francisco sprawl cuts beige and concrete black against the blue ocean. The fractal coast becomes mundane the lower we descend. The sprawl comes into focus—strip malls, traffic-glutted highways, housing developments. The runway appears beneath us. The wing flaps adjust and rattle the cabin. Seat belts on, electronic devices off. Screaming kids, a cloud of body funk. The plane thumps as wheels hit concrete. A smattering of applause when the Adware blinks on and most of us reboot, autoconnecting with SF.net. We taxi, nearly everyone standing, anxious to leave, heads bent awkwardly beneath the overhead bins. People pulling jackets and luggage from beneath their seats, elbows forcing position in the aisle, a chemical waft from the bathrooms—urinal cake and diarrhea and disinfectant. It’s been a while since I’ve flown. The stewardesses tell me to enjoy my stay.
Hannah.
Twiggy.
Albion.
Shuttle buses to the terminal, Delta security performing a first ID scan on the way in, sponsored hotels showering us with cheap rates. BayCrawler recommends an economy room in the Bayview–Hunters Point Holiday Inn, a Daily Deal. I go ahead and book, the terms and conditions scrolling in half-light. Accept, Accept—Accept all. Hours in lines twisting through cordons, everyone sitting on their suitcases, eyes glazed watching streams. Adware kicks in a flickering jangle, competing currency exchange rates for foreign travelers, taxicabs, yellow cabs, that old woman Paris in gold leggings begging me to switch my booking to Hilton, Days Inn with cheaper rooms and HBO blinking in the overlays, Holiday Inn blasting reminders that my reservation is nonrefundable, women in towels offer spa services and city tours. You’ll find a happy ending in San Francisco!
Gavril’s contact is an agent at Nirvana Modeling named C.Q. I ping him but he doesn’t respond. I ping again with a friend request and Gavril’s attachments, but still no response. I text: Dominic, a friend of Gavril’s. Looking for a model you might work with. Did Gavril get in touch with you?
Armored National Guardsmen with submachine guns slung over their shoulders stalk the security line. German shepherds tethered on leashes sniff each of us, sniff our bags—I leave my backpack on the floor and the dogs surround it, running their noses along the seams. Praying they don’t sniff out residue, but sober enough to have left my brown sugar back in DC. Another ID checkpoint—soldiers with handheld bar code readers scan my passport and retinas. Robotic voices chime: “Never leave your bag unattended. Remain with your luggage at all times. Never leave your bag unattended. Remain with your luggage at all times—”
A young woman ahead in line answers questions. She struggles with English, but a TSA supervisor, white-haired, pockmarked, finally stamps her passport and waves her through to the scanner. Strict policies arriving or departing for flights—we’ve been through this before, all of us, when we boarded the plane, but TSA makes us go through these security points again and again. I watch her hike up her shirt a few inches and slide her belt from her blue jeans. She unbuckles and removes each boot and places everything in a plastic bin. She speaks French, I can hear her now, but she doesn’t understand anything the customs agents are telling her—translation apps struggling to keep up in the anemic Wi-Fi. The screener, a slight man in blue vest and gray slacks, holds his arms out to his side, each hand capped by a blue latex glove. The French woman understands now and imitates him—holds her arms outstretched. The man frisks her, running his hands along the back of her thighs and up over her like a bored lover, patting the interior of her thighs, cupping her genitals. The woman’s embarrassed, but complies—she stands still while the man fondles the undersides of her breasts and runs his fingers along the underwire of her bra, what else can she do?—and when the customs agents instruct her to step through the body scan, I look with the other men to the crowdsourcing security screens placed where we all can see. We’re curious—and there she is, like an etching in green, layers of her, her skin and underwear, demure, the fabric of her clothes. The buttons of her jeans and the underwire of her bra display pale green, almost white, her Adware displays like a lace doily sitting on her brain. The screeners have poker faces, playing their part of professionalism, but as I watch the screening, Adware girls overlay my sight, offering to bounce me to pay sites full of leaked airport scans—porn stars, celebrities, amateurs, perfect tens all scanned for national security, all leaked to the streams.