Friday, March 21, 2008

Wrecked. Fucked. Staring up at the giant’s underwear.

This is the Hyatt: a bedlam of bad taste, fake marble and faker brass and those Saudis with the receding chins. You know the ones who drag themselves around the lobby, looking for the breakfast buffet at three in the afternoon with the dragon chaser bags under their eyes? Nike sweatshirts and a couple of wives, or husbands—who the fuck wants to take responsibility for the doe eyed mischief that lurks beneath the garbage bags they pulled over their heads this morning?—in tow.

This is big time journalism: chasing the shot. Hanging about in the lobby. Twenty-two and a half hours now, waiting for Britney or Colin or whoever the fuck it is that Frank wants now.

And this is us: nothing but half a pack of Rennie’s and a flare gun between us and perdition. Snatch holding down the fort with a fifth of Knob Creek and a bazooka lens strapped to the front of his 1D. Waiting for the shot.

When Amr Moussa walks through the door.

“Jack,” yells Snatch. Blows off forty frames or so. “Mr. Nicholson. Over here.” But it’s just whatshisname, the door guy from Rythmo. The one who looks like Amr Moussa.

Later Snatch makes me stand between the pillars by the breakfast buffet while she takes my picture.

“Hold up the flare gun.” She keeps saying. “Hold it like one of those Jihadi guys.”

I cover my face with a napkin I took from dinner a night or three ago.

“stamped on these lifeless things,” waving finger here at the ceiling about a mile up. Rythmo man’s over by the desk, staring. Motherfucker’s forgotten us. Scratch my head. “Nothing beside remains—round the decay of that colossal wreck. Fuck you.” That was for Rythmo-man and his little buddies at the reception desk. “Boundless and bare.”

Should have fired the flare gun then. Might have scared off the gorillas. Set their polyester suits on fire. Fuckers. Saved us the ignominy of being thrown out. But what the fuck.