John Belushi Is Dead (24 page)

“Why do you care so much what I think?”

“Because he lives right below you and we all have to see one another, so we might as well get along.”

I turned on the tap and started fiercely rubbing the plates with a cloth. I wasn't being totally honest with Hank. I wanted him to approve of Jake the same way I would have wanted my father to. I wanted his blessing. But if he was slowly going mad, what did it matter? But that was the problem. I didn't believe he was going mad. I didn't believe it for a second.

“Have I ever told you the story of Lenore Shoshan?” he asked.

“No, you haven't told me the story of Lenore Shoshan,” I replied, impatient. I scrubbed the dishes a little harder. “Was she some starlet you banged in the fifties?”

“She was a girl I knew when I was very young, when I was a boy. She was in the camp with me.”

I stopped scrubbing. “The camp?”

He nodded. I dropped the plate back in the water and wiped my hands on my jeans.

“She was a girl in the camp with you? The concentration camp?”

He nodded. “I didn't know her that well. She weren't too popular.”

I sat down. “Tell me.”

“She was scared. She would say aloud the things none of us wanted to give voice to, things none of us wanted to contemplate. At night she screamed for her mother. Sometimes we would punch her arm to make her stop. If the guards had heard her screaming they would have come in, and who knows what they would have done. Probably killed her, and a few others just for the hell of it. We hated that she showed fear when the rest of us tried so hard to stay strong. We hated that she would dance like a clown for extra food from the guards, then scoff it down while they laughed at her. We all wanted nothing more than to get out, get back to our families, but we never dared to say it. She would speak about it all the time, the fact that she wanted to get the hell out of there.”

“Poor Lenore.”

“Yeah, poor Lenore.” He chuckled. “And poor us for having to put up with that shit. As if we didn't have enough to deal with. One day, one of the other kids, a real little shit—his name was Saul, I think—he told Lenore that he overheard one of the guards saying they were going to turn off the electric fences that night. That they needed to turn them off to let them recharge, or some bullshit. Filled her head with a whole lotta crap about how he reckoned someone could get through the fence if only it wasn't electrified, that she could squeeze underneath the wire, make it out, get back to her parents.”

I held my breath. “What happened?”

“She fried. Or was shot. All we know is one minute she was there, the next she ain't. And you know what? None of us gave a damn. Hell, we were all relieved we didn't have to listen to her yapping anymore. So what I'm saying is that people come to you acting like they're gonna save you. And they're not. Sometimes they just wanna see you fry.”

Without thinking I reached out, took his hand, and held it tightly. His eyes were gray and sad, his rage spent. “Hank, I'm so sorry you had to live through that,” I said softly. “I am so sorry you had to experience those things. But that was a long time ago. Now you have people who care about you. Jake cares about you. I care about you. All the bad things that happened in the past, they are gone. Finished. You're safe now. You don't have to keep looking over your shoulder.”

Hank grinned, a thin, mean grin that sent chills through me. I thought of Lenore Shoshan, hanging from the fence like a piece of burnt meat, skin singed, and pushed the thought from my head.

“That Jake,” he said, “he asks too many questions. About the war. About what happened there. I don't trust him.”

“You think he's a spy?” I laughed. “He's just being friendly. It's called showing an interest. You're just not used to it.”

“You don't ask me questions. That's why I tell you. I'll tell you more, if you let me.”

“You can tell me anything, Hank.”

He took my hand, patted it. “All in good time, Hilda. When you need to know, I will tell you. Do you want to know?”

“Yes,” I said, my voice trembling. “I want to know.”

He grinned again. “You better be sure.”

T
HE NEXT MORNING, AS
I rifled through Lynette's closet looking for something to wear to my picnic with Jake, I suddenly felt a little nauseous. I opened shoe boxes and pushed aside coat hangers and still the feeling persisted, not entirely unpleasant, but uncomfortable enough for me to notice. I pulled a green floral housedress from its hanger, the sleeves short and billowy, and as I measured it against my body I heard footsteps behind me.

“That's vintage,” Lynette said from the doorway.

I turned around, the dress still against me. Lynette looked exhausted. She'd just arrived home from the office, the night's work hanging heavily beneath her eyes. She threw her keys on the table, lay out on the bed, and sighed loudly.

“Sorry,” I said, embarrassed I'd been caught in her bedroom.

“No no, it's fine,” she said, sitting up. “You're welcome to borrow anything you like. I got that dress at a market stall on Venice Beach when I was a teenager. It cost me five dollars. I've never had a tear in it.”

“It's beautiful.”

She touched the hem of the dress affectionately. “I used to imagine who had owned it before me. I liked to think it had belonged to some Hollywood starlet. More likely it belonged to some suburban housewife who wore it to church. I love vintage clothes. They already have a story to them, and you get to add to that story. It's funny you chose that one.”

“Why?”

“Because your mom really liked it. She used to borrow it without asking. Drove me mad.”

I threw the dress on over my head, surprised that my aunt Lynette ever owned anything my mom would want to wear. Already I felt closer to my mother, like I could feel her presence through the fabric. I looked in Lynette's full-length mirror, disappointed.

“The pink kind of ruins the effect,” I said, looking at the color in my hair, now starting to fade.

“I like your pink hair,” Lynette said.

I laughed. “You do not!”

“I do. It's very you. Strong, rebellious, distinct.”

I didn't say anything, embarrassed by the compliment, one of very few I had ever received from Lynette. I smoothed the dress down, slipped my feet into my sandals, and lay down on the bed next to my aunt.

“Where are you off to today?” Lynette asked, closing her eyes. “Surely you haven't gone to all this trouble for Benji.”

“I don't really see Benji anymore,” I said, and saying the words aloud immediately made me feel guilty. I could feel the desperation in Lynette to say something terrible, to leap in the air and whoop for joy that her niece was no longer friends with the strangest boy in the neighborhood, but she resisted.

“So where are you going, then?”

“On a picnic with a friend.”

“A male friend?”

Normally this kind of comment would have irritated me. Instead, I found myself wanting to tell Lynette all about it.

“His name is Jake,” I said.

“Jake, huh?” She tried to contain her excitement. “What's he like?”

“He's, uh, interesting, I guess. I feel like I've got a bit of a stomachache, though.”

“You're probably just excited. It's just nerves. Butterflies in your tummy.”

“Yeah, right,” I said sarcastically, but maybe it was true. I couldn't remember the last time I was truly excited about anything. I was excited before I went to gravesites and places where people had died, but this was different. I felt giddy, euphoric. Most of all I felt stronger than I had in a long time.

I looked at Lynette. Her eyes were closed, and I could tell she was already drifting off to sleep. I removed her shoes and socks, and rolled her over. She groaned.

“Have a good sleep,” I said, and she opened her eyes to slits.

“Hilda?” she mumbled.

“Yes?”

“I'm sorry I'm not around more. After this next case, I'll take some time off. After I have some sleep.”

“Okay. After you have some sleep.”

She closed her eyes and began to breath deeply. I turned off the light and tiptoed out, careful to close the door quietly. I took one last look in the bathroom mirror, ran a brush through my ratty pink hair, gave up, and made my way out the door.

J
AKE PICKED ME UP
in his convertible, which I was pleasantly surprised to see he'd cleaned especially for the day. A picnic basket sat in the backseat, a bottle of red wine next to it. He handed me a cheap satellite navigation box and I set a course for the Indian Dunes Park, an old dirt-bike trail in Valencia near the Six Flags Magic Mountain theme park. The sat nav told us it would take twenty-nine minutes to get there.

“There are plenty of places to go for a picnic around here,” Jake said as we drove past a local lake. “You sure with the price of gas you want to go all the way to Valencia?”

“There's something out there I want to show you,” I said. “Don't worry. You'll love it.”

We drove down the highway, top down, and I couldn't help putting my hands up as the wind blew through my hair. The air was clear and as we drove past the mountains and valleys I was struck by how blue the sky was out here compared to in the city.
Sitting in Jake's convertible, driving down the San Diego Freeway, I felt cleaner than I had in years. I hung over the side of the car, letting my arms float on the breeze, and when I sat back I could feel Jake looking at me, and for the first time I wasn't embarrassed. I turned to smile at him but he looked away, focusing his attention on the sat nav, concentrating on the trail it was blazing for us.

“You don't have to look at it all the time,” I said, laughing. “It tells you where you are. That's the point.”

“I know. I'm just worried because we've been driving for a while and all that's out here is fields and fast food joints.”

“That's where we're going. A field. Well, a kind of park. I just hope we don't have to climb any fences.”

“Hilda, this isn't one of your weirdo cultish places, is it?” he said. “Let me guess. There's a hole in the ground out here where Charles Manson hid from the cops.”

“Not quite. It's an old bike trail,” I explained. “But it's been used in heaps of movies. You'll love it. They filmed a lot of Vietnam sequences out here, because there's a swamp and some palm trees. Ever see a movie called
The Exterminator
?”

“Ages ago. It sucked.”

“Well, they shot all the Vietnam scenes from that movie here. They shot some of
The Rocketeer
here, too.”

“You're not convincing me.”

“Just wait until we get there.”

We drove on until the GPS led us off the freeway along a dusty road, toward the mountains. We went past the turnoff for Six Flags Magic Mountain, past the families in their four-wheel drives full of screaming, excited kids, and I wondered if they had any idea of the tragedy that had occurred less than a mile away. On the horizon
I could see the outline of the roller coasters, and for a moment I wanted to be one of them: just a normal kid on a normal date, but I knew in my heart I wasn't that person. For a moment it made me sad, but as we drove away from the theme park, I started to get excited about the excursion that lay ahead. We drove on down the highway, toward the mountains, the houses that dotted the road giving way to lush green pastures and rolling hills like in a picture book. In the distance I could see a security fence, but it didn't worry me. It looked quite low, and I'd gotten myself through more difficult situations before.

“Pull over here,” I said, and Jake maneuvered the car off the highway and into the gravel driveway.

“So what now?” Jake asked as we pulled to a stop in front of the fence, which I could see now was about twice my height.

“This is it,” I said.

“This? How the hell are we going to get in?” he asked, surveying the gate, next to which was a waist-high electric fence that ran the perimeter of the park. “I hate to break it to you, but I don't have any bolt cutters on me.”

I pulled the picnic basket and bottle of wine from the backseat.

“We jump the fence,” I said.

“What?”

“Come on, Jake, live a little. I'll go first. Hold this.”

I passed him the wine and before he had time to protest I was out of the car and making my way toward the fence. I threw the picnic basket over and it landed with a dull thud on the other side.

“Thanks a lot,” Jake moaned. “It took me all morning to make those sandwiches.”

“
You
made sandwiches? Now I do feel special.”

“Are we really doing this?” he whined.

Just as I was about to hoist myself up onto the fence I remembered whose clothes I was wearing. I didn't want to tear Lynette's dress, didn't know how I would explain it to her. She knew I got up to some crazy things, but I'm sure jumping fences wasn't at the front of her mind. Without a second thought I pulled the dress up over my head and handed it to Jake. He took it in his hands and looked away.

“What the hell? Are we going skinny-dipping?” he said, one hand over his eyes.

“I don't want to tear my dress.”

“You're crazy. You know that, don't you?”

I grabbed onto the fence and hoisted myself up, a little surprised at myself. Being around Jake had inspired some kind of confidence in me I never knew I had. I wanted to be more like him, fearless, not caring what anyone else thought. I figured jumping over a fence in just my bra and underpants was one small step in that direction. It took only one quick lunge and I was over on the other side, dropping to the ground next to our picnic basket. I stood up and dusted myself off. In the fall I had scraped my knee, and I brushed the dirt off to see a small trickle of blood making its way down my leg.