When
he first saw reality-pop superstar, Kirsten Gushwa IRL, she was in a voluptuous
white dress, waving her arms atop an obviously burning building. The dress did
cover her recently silicone-implanted body, but it was tattered and burnt at
its edges, and jeez, this little girl still just looked as radiant as white
gold. You could take her age, multiply it by 5 million, know about how many
followers she has, and then multiply by about $3 for her total personal net
worth; you could say “she has no talents” rather objectively. The Gushwa’s
reality network was giving itself awards five stories down, just minutes
before, consummating a political-media alliance brilliantly engineered by Tuck
Gushwa and humanely executed by his four daughters, Kirsten being the youngest
of such. Our hero, by the way, Guy Thompson, National Guardsman, Navy Seal, and
Chief Crewman for Billy’s Zorn’s Helicopter Removal Executive-Private Evac
Services (in that order) was a violently normal individual, morally unsure of
America’s near-legitimate meritocracy wherein online likes and view count
largely determined financial status, indifferent to media politics in the post-Trump
(Ivanka I) Administration era, and endlessly infatuated with perfect images of
Gushwa Daughters, especially Kirsten the youngest, which swept into his daily
media feed deluge-like. He was too neutrally tempered to be on reality TV, got
by on his hideously masculine physique, by day airlifted billionaires and
mid-birth Real Housewives out of penthouses, by night occasionally masturbated
to the Gushwa’s network of celebrity sex tapes, hardly well read.
But
now he glimpsed, through powdered boulders of black smoke, another day at work,
another momentarily-powerless powerful person to be saved. Gushwa Family press
conferences to come never quite explained why dear Kirsten ended up alone along
the downtown skyline. She fled that way, upwards, maybe out of instinct, as
commotion of a kitchen fire enlivened and dispersed the guests of the 23rd
Annual Television Media Incentivizations awards ceremony. TMI was among the
more stable children of Tuck Gushwa’s brain and his four daughters attended
such galas like it was what it was, their job. Within the national media,
speculation as to why Kirsten ditched a room full of the nation’s
socio-economic 1% reduced itself to some variation of the childish logic that
flames rise, so one must always rise above. Of course, there were jokes about
anything being preferable to “incentivizing” 108-year-old politicians while
your father emcees. Years later, in a trite and rather choppy tri-memoir by
Kristine, Kwisten, & Khristin Gushwa, the latter let slip that the romantic
thought of being heroically saved by some hunk with a throw ladder on the top
of a burning building was just the type of fixation that Kirsten often peppered
her poolside daydreams with, like “a scene she’d want in her bio-pic,” the
apolitical one. (Tuck promised his girls each two major motion pictures in his
living will.) Possibly true enough, this Die Hard-esque romantic death wish was, but Guy did not spot anything remotely
romantic and dreamy on her tear-streaked face.
The
chopper swung uneasily about the rooftop.
Yet it circled Miss Kirsten Gushwa steadily. Typically, Guy would be only
one of a four-man team that could repel into danger and lift whatever panicked
client into safety. Tonight, as it happened, most the seats were occupied by a
film crew, following the pilot of Billy Zorn’s HREPES for a new reality show
that followed helicopter pilots of variously dangerous persuasions all across
America. Guy unpurposefully remained indifferent to the producers’ hype,
refused to sign a consent form, idiotically ruined any chance of appearing in a
spin-off, and all around lost much respect from his co-workers and superiors.
Nonetheless, all supervisors’ supervisors agreed that since you could only fit
one pilot and one operative along with the film crew, Guy would have to be
running the show, so to say, for tonight’s evac. Guy’d call the shots. Despite
such obvious social career opportunity mishaps, he was at least sensible and
safe and damn trustworthy on the job.
So
Guy ordered the chopper pilot to get closer, and, as it happened, they say,
great gusts of black smoke plumed into the chopper. The camera guys coughed and
said fuck it and lens capped their own equipment, then radioed down to ground
crew for cover shots. Guy said fuck it likewise to them, and ran over a routine
evac procedure with the pilot, then clipped his carabiners and repelled
heroically downward into the opaque smog.
The
girl looked wild, frightened, speechless, but never into his eyes. Guy glided
down the rope, nearing her foot by foot, arm outstretched automatically. She
was live. She was shaking. She was completely unmediated, Guy realized, which
was uncanny. But he recognized the look of her type, the type who was never
grateful when she saw someone like him coming to help her, to save her, to free
her, no, she instead was the type who bore looks of solipsism, wherein their
rescue was flatly expected. He’d seen her type before and more and more often,
it seemed, these days.
And
it occurred to him then, at that moment, the next day, for years after, how
they at least should have had one romantic moment of eye contact, for maybe
then it would have registered to the other just how completely opposite of what
they were was what they were actually feeling.
Now,
believe you me, Guy, in his heartest of hearts, he never once considered the
personal gain one could inherit out of that nation’s monumental pop-tragic
mourning nor could he ever speak eloquently on the Gushwa Daughters’ symbolic
marriages with elite Asian government leaders. What he did, ultimately, was
mistake infatuation for love. What did happen, according to the legal evidence,
was that he rapelled downward, and, watching her, was very, very still.