TWENTY-TWO

Gibby had just made it back to his apartment when the phone rang. AZURA, KENNY the Caller ID announced. He considered ignoring it and then, realizing the futility of such a gesture, picked up the phone.

“Hi Kenny.”

“Gibby. One second, okay?”

There was a click as Kenny hit the hold button. Gibby found himself stuck, listening to some hideous digital musak.

In his Beverly Hills home, Kenny looked over to the bed. A nineteen-year old Russian whore called Kristina was lolling around on there, fully dressed, tapping lethargically on her Blackberry. He bent over and snorted a huge rail of cocaine from the case of a Michael Bublé CD. He sprung upright again, red-faced and sniffling. He barked at the girl, “Hey sugar tits!” She looked up. “Yeah, you!”

“Yes Mister Azura – is… problem?” Kristina pouted.

“Too right there’s a fuckin’ problem. You’re on the goddamned clock here! I’m not payin’ you to check your fuckin Facebook status! Why don’t you make yourself fuckin’ useful and take your fuckin’ clothes off or somethin’? The bathroom’s over there – don’t you bitches usually like to go clean up first?”

Looking slightly shocked by Kenny’s outburst, Kristina quickly composed herself like the professional she was and simpered, “I just had shower, Mister Azura. Before coming.”

“Yeah? Well I’m taking a guess that you don’t live in this fuckin’ neighbourhood, right? I mean, I doubt you make that much sucking dick, right honey?”

Kristina looked confused.

“Lemmie guess? Santa Monica between Fairfax and La Brea, somewhere down there in fuckin’ borscht land, right? So that’s at least forty minutes you’ve been sitting in a cab getting all stale and funky. Why don’t you stop sitting there looking useless and go freshen up for me, okay? Despite what Al Pacino mighta led you to believe there ain’t nuthin’ enticing to me about the fuckin’ scent of a woman, okay? Chop chop!”

The girl just stared at him, as if not understanding a word of Kenny’s coke-garbled insults, so he simply resorted to pointing the bathroom and yelling “GO CLEAN YOUR SNATCH!” Kristina had a pretty ropey grasp of English, having just arrived in the US two months ago from a small town outside of Moscow, but she did understand his agitated tone of voice well enough. She’d had it drilled into her by her new bosses at Angel LA Escorts that Mr. Azura was a rich, valued customer who must be obeyed, so she trotted toward the bathroom as ordered with a submissive, simpering smile on her face.

“And hurry it up!” Kenny called after her, muttering darkly to himself as he clicked over to Gibby again.

“Gibby!” He cleared his throat. “So where’s the goddamned script?”

Gibby, momentarily caught unawares, stammered, “Wh-wh-what?”

“Fuck is wrong with you? You having a fuckin’ seizure over there? The SCRIPT Gibby, where the fuck is it?”

“You didn’t say that you… needed to see it!”

“Gibby. I am about to sign off on a contract that will make you and Jacques a hell of a lot of money. Or, I should say, that will put a hell of a lot of MY money – and Chainsaw’s money for that matter – in your hands so you can deliver Black Neon, yes? Now tell me, Gibby. Do I look like a pretty Korean cocktail waitress to you?”

“I’m sorry Kenny, I don’t follow.”

“A pretty. Korean. Cocktail waitress. Do I look like one to you? It’s a simple fucking question Gibby, so stop stuttering and start answering…”

“No Kenny,” Gibby answered evenly, “you do not look like a pretty Korean cocktail waitress.”

“Fuckin’ goddamn straight I don’t. So why are you trying to stick your fucking DICK in me? You expect me to sign off on this shit without even a script? I know that Jacques is a talented motherfucker, but as for you Gibby, I don’t know. If I can’t even count on you to get me a few scenes of this script he’s working on, then a part of me has to wonder exactly what fucking value you add to all of this? I know what I’m bringing to the table, Gibby. You do know what I’m bringing, right?”
“Yes,” Gibby croaked, mindful not to set Kenny off again, “you’re bringing the money.”

“Correct. Correct-a-fuckin-mundo. And lets be clear on this point – I’m bringing a lot of money. That’s not to mention my vast expertise in the movie game, plus my contacts. I am fucking untouchable in this town, Gibby, and you should be feeling pretty fucking lucky that you are getting the benefit of my experience and my extraordinary fucking brain if you ask me.” Kenny snorted loudly, dislodging a chunk of cocaine that proceeded to drip down the back of his throat throughout the rest of the conversation. “Now, I know what Jacques is bringing to the table. I’ve admired Jacques for a long fucking time, Gibby, you know that. Truth is, I don’t think that Fellini is worthy of rolling the used condoms off of Jacques’ dick. But you, Gibby? You are a fuckin’ enigma to me. What exactly do you do, except lurk down there with the rest of the trolls and the parasites leeching off a percentange of Jacques’ genius, and stuttering like a fuckin’ retard when I ask you when I can see a simple fucking script?”

Gibby gripped the phone so hard that the plastic casing started to groan and creak ominously. He took a deep breath and said, “When will you need it by?”

“Hold on.”

The line clicked again, and Gibby found himself listening to that awful musak one more time.

Kristina had emerged from the bathroom naked, one of Kenny’s monogrammed towels wrapped around her lithe body. Kenny gestured wildly at her to come over to him.

“Drop the towel,” he hissed.

Kristina did as she was told. Kenny cast an appraising eye over her pale, thin body. He twirled his finger, gesturing for her to turn around. “Slowly,” he warned. When her back was turned to him he said, “Bend over. Touch your toes.”

The girl did as instructed. Kenny squatted down so his face was level with her buttocks. He put his face between her ass cheeks and inhaled deeply, his nostrils nicely cleared out by the coke. He filled his lungs with the bouquet of her freshly soaped asshole. Standing, Kenny snapped his fingers and pointed her toward the bed. She went over there and lay down, waiting for him obediently. He clicked over to Gibby again.

“Gibby.”

“I’m here, Kenny.”

“Good. In the meeting you mentioned that he is working with James Stein on the script, yes?”

“That’s correct.”

“I’ve heard Stein is washed up. My assistant has informed me that he has written seven books since Point of No Return. Shitty reviews, dwindling sales, and I haven’t even heard of any of them. This worries me, Gibby. So I want to see some of what they’ve come up with. Just to put my mind at rest, yes?”

“Well…” Gibby lied, “I believe that they’re pretty much done, but Jacques is being quite secretive about it. It’s part of his… process, you know? You know how artists can be.”

“Gibby, I will accept the artist defense from Jacques, because he is undoubtedly a fucking artist. From you, however, that shit will not fly. I want to see something, and I don’t care if you have to sneak it from his fucking laptop while he is taking a nap. I want to see something, do you understand me?”

“Yes. I understand you completely, Kenny.”

“Good.”

Kenny’s eyes drifted over to Kristina, who was watching the small, agitated man who had paid for her time with wide, doe-like eyes. Kenny cleared his throat.

“Well then, I have some business I gotta take care of now. Let’s touch base at the end of the week, okay? You know where to find me in the meantime.”

Before Gibby could say another word the line went dead.

Dropping his pants and stepping out of them, Kenny advanced on Kristina. He clicked a remote control that caused music to swell from his $94,000 Avant-Garde Trio Classico speaker system. It was the German Symphony Orchestra and Sting performing If I Ever Lose My Faith In You from the Live In Berlin album (which Kenny considered to be one of the Police front man’s finest recorded efforts). With speakers this good, Kenny often told his guests, it was better than sitting in the front row of the concert itself. As he advanced on the young hooker, Kenny mimed conducting the music, and sang along with what was undoubtedly one of his favourite songs of all time. He climbed on the bed, straddled her chest and said “Lie flat, face up with your mouth open. Do you gag easily?”

Kristina shook her head. She got into position without question. “Hope you don’t,” Kenny muttered, “The last bitch puked all over my designer Egyptian cotton sheets...” Then he straddled her head and rammed his cock into her gullet without so much as a warning. He proceeded to roughly fuck her face with all of the detached aggression of a man using a plunger to fix a badly blocked toilet.

Back at his place, Gibby slumped on his couch, unbuttoned his shirt and sat there cradling his head in his hands for a while. He knew for a fact that there would be no script. He felt that they had dodged a bullet in the original meeting when Jacques had managed to steer the conversation away from scripts altogether, but now Gibby was faced with the unenviable task of producing material from a script that did not exist in an attempt to pacify a rampaging, coke-crazed dwarf with the power of life and death over his career.

He thought back to how he had left Jacques at that awful, fleabag hotel, fat, sweaty and drooling over himself in the aftermath of his accidental PCP freak-out. He wondered absently what kind of degenerate shit Jacques was currently up to, while he should be working on the script of Black Neon. He thought about a lifetime spent catering to no-talent, ill-tempered, self-aggrandizing assholes like Jacques so he could lap up his meagre cut, the fifteen per cent backwash from the sewage his clients foisted upon the great, consuming maw that was the general population. Jesus Christ. Gibby realized he truly was a man out of time. What the fuck did someone who actually cared about creating something vital, lasting and timely have to offer this air-conditioned cesspool?

Even Jacques – who had certainly at one point been possessed by the zeal to create something pure – had either grown out of such naïveté, or had the urge beaten out of him by a decade of drugs, relationships gone bad, and relentless media vilification. Sure, he had recently climbed back into the ring but more and more Gibby could see that Jacques was a mere shadow of the man who had once created Dead Flowers. Now he was staggering around Hollywood like a weakened bull with colourful banderillas sticking out of its back, making some final, instinctual charge toward a target it could barely comprehend anymore.

Hoping to find some kind of a distraction from his thoughts he turned on the news. The top story was about some freak called Rupert something-or-other who’d just paid nine thousand dollars for a pair of Queen Elizabeth II’s used panties. He flicked the TV off with a shudder, concluding that the world had gone quite mad. He went to pour himself a stiff drink.