The Starchasers

The map to the stars was my trade. You’d see my greasy pamphlets pasted in airports when you’d rent your car or in the revolving stands when you checked into the seedy motels next to the highway. “Come tour with me and the Stars!” This was before we were forced to hide in the ground like worms, scurrying beneath underpasses and bridges, and the stars were special instead of the scourge they have become.

In my 10 years busing tourists around, I never saw an A-lister. Most days, it was B-listers, which was probably why my business was failing. However, this would all change the day I read about a real star chaser.

While waiting for tourists at a cheap hotel, I picked up a magazine with a smiling adolescent boy beaming on the cover, his thin arms wrapped around a strange beautiful rock which he held like a farmer holding his prized pig at a country fair. Quickly flipping through the pages, the boy’s twenty seconds of fame arrived for him and, like a predator who has turned to find they are actually the ones being hunted, undaunted, like this was all supposed to happen somehow, the boy held the gaze of fame with unwavering confidence under its glare.

Born in Marrakesh, Morocco, the boy worked with his father for a tour company that took tourists into the Saharan desert for the night. While tourists slept, the boy and his father would lie out on the cool desert sand, staring up at the stars like fishermen scanning the ocean skies for a twinkle, a flicker.

The boy spotted the star first: “Father, father!” he yipped, jotting down its approximate location in his small black notebook under flashlight and pen

At sunrise, while his father loaded the camels with the tourists’ luggage, the boy jumped onto an ATV. Already the air filled with the vroom vroom sound from other tourist camps, from other star chasers revving their engines. When you’re poor, the boy told the magazine, you are always working and most people had two-three jobs.

He was confused at first to find the other star chasers had gone in the opposite direction. Pulling out his notebook, he examined the coordinates once more. Trusting himself, he felt a presence with him, maybe it was God who wanted to bestow this gift onto him and his family, to share the gift of the heavens. Speeding over dunes and great plains, he spotted something sparkling under the sun’s glare.

It did not burn despite the sun’s heat, did not cut him despite the jutted edges. This was the first of the meteorites found. The biggest ever recorded of its type. Geologists, astronomers and NASA scientists salivated over it and started a bidding war. Eventually, the boy received $20,000 for it. Life changing.

“A star-chaser cannot become a star-chaser until he has found his first star,” the boy had said. I read that line over and over again, keeping this in my mind as I set out for the day with the tourists in the back. I didn’t follow the maps, but acted out of pure instincts.

We came upon him like a safari approaching a wild animal. Slowing down the van, I held my breath as the clicks of camera shutters filled the air behind me. A recluse, he ambled from behind his 12 foot walls and solid irons gates to let his dog use someone’s lawn as its washroom. He removed a newspaper from a plastic bag that probably wasn’t his and it felt like he was acting even then, playing a regular person, just walking his dog, reading the newspaper. “Captain Jack Sparrow!” one of the tourists from Canada barked or it could even have been me because I was star-struck: mouth agape, eyelids peeled back, I stuttered and pointed and waved and when I nodded at him, I swear he nodded back.

“I heard he beat up his ex-wife,” one tourist said as we drove away.

“Who cares? He’s a star!” another replied.

“We see him all the time,” I lied to the tourists who tipped me more than usual at the end of the tour.

That evening, I felt a humming glow as I stared out at the Hollywood sign in the distance, finally understanding its power. I had found my first star.

Over the next few weeks, more meteorites fell as stories popped up from Asia, Europe, South America and Australia. They were not as big as the one the boy found—some no bigger than your hand—and images flashed of children kicking them about in the street like they were soccer balls. The buy and sell internet websites lit up since everyone wanted one for themselves. News channels had scientists facing off against religious leaders, all offering differing opinions on the strange rocks and what they might mean. For the scientists, they were things that could be used to explain the birth of the universe. For the religious leaders, the rocks were warnings, the drip before the flow that would wash away all life if we were not careful. Cornelius. That is what the scientists named the ancient star. It seemed the meteorites were part of something much larger.

Despite this, my business was booming. Word had spread and I no longer peddled my brochures. Instead, tourists came to me. Like the young star chaser, dutifully, I recorded the route, the time of the day in my own small black notebook and, sure enough, there he would be, walking his dog, reading a newspaper. He would nod and I would nod back like we were old acquaintances.

Business continued to increase ten-fold, even as the meteorites began to increase to the size of small cars, dropping anywhere, anytime. They began knocking off satellites forcing telecommunication companies to ping signals off competitors to ensure customers still had service. Television stations started to go off the air. Things were getting serious, yet star-chasers still lined the Walk of Fame and tourists still squeezed into the back of my van.

“There he is, as promised,” I said, as we pulled up and the tourists oohed and awed and, on cue, Johnny waved politely and went back to reading his newspaper.

“Hey Johnny!” A Texan tourist yelled from the back.

Johnny turned to us, giving the peace sign and went back to reading the newspaper while his dog did his business.

“How cool is he?” Some tourist said.

“Yeah,” someone else agreed.

“Jesus, that’s a lot of shit,” a tourist from Nebraska remarked, and I noticed for the first time, that his neighbour’s entire lawn was completely littered with piles of feces in varying states of decay.

The whole mood in the van changed suddenly when a shifting breeze blew the offensive smell in our direction. The excitement and joy and even lust that was there just a few seconds before was replaced by murmurs of disgust and even outrage.

“I’m gonna say something,” one of the tourists grumbled.

“No, honey, don’t! He’s famous. You’ll embarrass us!”

“I have to. I mean, this is gross. Johnny, hey Johnny!” the tourist yelled, “why don’t you pick up your dog’s…shit?”

The corners of Johnny’s mouth turned up and he grinned like a little boy who has just been caught doing something he shouldn’t, knowing full well that he was cute enough to get away with it. He shrugged, chuckling as he turned to stroll to his palace hidden behind large steel plated gates.

“What’s that?” A tourist said and I looked up to see a brightly burning rock tearing through the late afternoon sky, piercing the gray smog that constantly hung over LA.

Time appeared to slow down as the great star came into full view. I did not hear the tourists screaming behind as I swear I could hear the sizzle of the rock burning through the air. I was in a trance gazing at this beautiful yellow-blue covered rock in an orange fiery shell. Cornelius the meteorite appeared before us and I was star struck.

I glanced over as Johnny picked up his French Bulldog and I noticed how he held his dog the same way the boy held his star on the magazine cover. We shared a knowing look as Johnny pumped his fist and gave the universal sign for “Rock On!” and I knew he had made peace with the life he had led as a chunk of Cornelius the size of a pick-up truck zipped over my van and landed right on him. A wave of heat caused the van to rock sideways, almost tipping over as debris and pebbles hailed down, pinging off the roof and windshield.

“Jesus Christ!” one tourist yelled.

“Get us out of here!”

I raced through the streets of Beverly Hills with the same verve as the boy speeding over dunes until I reached the famous TCL Chinese Theatre.

“OUT!” I screamed.

“Where are we gonna go?” The tourist from Nebraska asked.

“Never mind you, where am I gonna go?” I said and realized exactly where I was gonna go.

Driving right back to Johnny’s, I lingered for a moment to pay my respects to the great rock that now lay on the neighbour’s lawn and the star beneath it.

Climbing over the massive gates, I ran up the curving driveway until the biggest house I’d ever seen came into view. Gothic themed, the mansion was gray stone with iron laced walls and gargoyles stared down at me from their perches. I threw my shoulder into the wooden front door that resembled a drawbridge gate and fell right through. I had read an article in the same magazine with the story of the star chaser boy that celebrities were increasingly outfitting their homes with safe rooms, places to hide from terrorists or breaks-ins from overzealous fans. Considering his shy nature, surely Johnny would have one. I searched through each room of the massive house until I came into a library where a corner of a massive rug lay upturned. On a hunch, I rolled it back and found a small door.

“Yes, Johnny!” I yelled as another meteorite plied into the backyard.

Quickly, I opened the door and scampered inside.

Lights flickered on revealing a concrete bunker with a bed, a couch, television and washroom. There was also a wall of canned food, pet food and medical supplies and a small kitchenette. On another wall hung an acoustic guitar. In the centre of the room, there was a coffee table with a stack of Hunter S. Thompson books and essays. Next to them, a massive glass bowl of white powder sat covered in cellophane beside a massive mountain of rolled up hundred dollar bills. On the cellophane, a little sticky note said, “For the end, cause why not!” I looked around, hunkered myself down on the couch and noticed a pair of fluffy slippers. I put these on and pulled back the cellophane on the bowl.

Each day was like the next. I would turn on the television, witnessing the collapse of concrete towers picked apart by the meteorites like woodpeckers notching holes in the trunks of dying trees. Bridges fell, railroads and highways all destroyed. Eventually, when the television images flickered and died, I listened to the radio as scientists speculated that the rocks that had fallen to date were simply the debris before the arrival of country sized rocks from Cornelius.

At night, I would lie in bed, staring at my magazine with the Moroccan boy on the cover and think about star chasing and my connection to this boy. The money Johnny had left for snorting added up to $20,000. It meant nothing to him yet was life changing for the boy and I. I had chased the wrong star yet the approaching end precluded me from doing anything else. I waited now for the biggest star of all.