John Belushi Is Dead (9 page)

“There's nothing wrong with Benji,” I said defensively.

“Sure there's not. Comes in and tells an old man someone died in his bathroom.”

“Look, I'm really sorry about that,” I said, taking a mouthful of tea and swallowing hard even though it was scalding hot. I was eager to get through the cup as fast as possible. “We shouldn't have done it. We were just curious.”

“Yeah, well, people do things, and once it's done you can't take it back,” he said philosophically. “Now here you are. Ain't nothin' but consequences in this life.”

“Consequences, huh?” I tried to sound like I didn't care, like what he was saying wasn't creeping under my skin and taking root in my veins. I didn't like the sound of “consequences,” the way his eyes glazed over when he said it, like a murderer reminiscing about his last really satisfying kill. I wondered whether I could smash the teacup right there on the table if I needed to, pick up a sliver of ceramic and drive it into his throat just as he lunged for me, or whether I should just throw the whole cup at his head, praying to God I hit a temple or some other magic spot that would make him black out. A hundred different scenarios raced through my mind from movies and TV shows: Dan Aykroyd getting a TV smashed over his head in
Grosse Pointe Blank
, the scene from
Single White Female
where a guy gets dispensed of with a high heel to the forehead. I stood.

“I gotta go. My brother's gonna be outside. I told him to pick me up. He'll be looking for me.”

Hank laughed. “You ain't got no brother pickin' you up. What the hell is wrong with you? You think I'm gonna attack you?”

“I don't know,” I said. “When you sit there talking like Hannibal Lecter about “consequences,” you can really start to freak a girl out.”

“What the hell do ya think I'm gonna do? My cock's been useless for years. I'm lucky to get any piss out of it, let alone make it stand to attention long enough to get my rocks off.”

“Gee, uh, thanks for the comforting thought,” I said, feeling a little nauseous.

“Just sit down, will ya? Believe it or not, you're makin'
me
nervous. I don't get many people around here, you know.”

I stayed standing, not knowing what to do. “Listen, I know we did kind of a shitty thing,” I said, trying to explain myself. “It was not a cool thing to do. But if you think you're going to hold me hostage because I feel bad about it, and make me do some kind of forced community service by coming here to visit you to make up for it, you're mistaken.”

“I ain't holdin' no one hostage. You came here of your own volition. And it's because I have somethin' for you. I wasn't lyin' about that. Just wait.”

“You know what? It's cool. I don't want anything.”

“No. Wait.”

He pushed himself up off the sofa and struggled to his feet. I watched him slink into the kitchen and take something off the
counter, and when he came back I saw that it was an old brown paper bag, crinkled and stained. He handed it to me.

“What's this?” I asked.

“Open it.”

I hesitated. “It's not some dude's severed ear, is it?”

Hank cocked an eyebrow, then scratched his ass. “You're a weird kid, anyone ever tell you that?”

I couldn't help laughing. “Only every day,” I said, thinking about Lynette and the way she just rolled with my eccentricities now, not even batting an eye when I walked into the kitchen with bright pink hair. I opened the bag an inch and started to peer inside, then closed it again, convinced that something was going to jump out at me. I handed it back to Hank.

“You open it,” I said. “I don't feel like getting my finger ripped off by some bizarre booby trap.”

“Oh, for Christ's sake,” he said, snatching the bag away. “Give it here.”

He turned the bag upside down and tipped the contents out. In the middle of his liver-spotted hand sat a piece of blue ceramic tile. It was a perfect square, the edges sharp and exact except for one corner that was chipped, the whiteness exposed beneath. I carefully picked it out of his hand.

“What is it?” I asked, turning it over in my fingers.

“A pool tile.”

“So why do I want this?”

“It's from Jayne Mansfield's swimming pool.”

My heart skipped. I held the tile up to the light.

“Are you serious?” I almost squealed. Hank smiled. It was too good to be true. Jayne Mansfield's heart-shaped pool was a Hollywood icon, torn down by some unfeeling developer who didn't
much care for history. A couple of looters had managed to retrieve a few tiles from the demolition site, but mainly they were the stuff of legend. And now I had one, right in my hand, and it was blue and beautiful and filled with mystery. “Is this for me?” I squeaked.

“Sure is. You can have it. I ain't got no use for it.”

I turned the tile over. It was so special, unique, perfect. “How did you get it?”

“I helped build Jayne Mansfield's pool in the fifties. She was a real sweet girl. Terrible what happened to her. When we were done building it, she gave each of us a tile from the pool. And that pool, shaped like a heart, what a sight. Such a shame.”

“Did you know her dog was decapitated in the car accident, too?” I asked. “A little Chihuahua sitting in the front seat on her lap.”

Hank made a face. “Christ girl, how old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

“Seventeen and talkin' like that. What is it with all this death crap? Do your parents know you're into all this shit?”

“Sure,” I lied. “They don't care what I do.”

“Well, I don't see no reason why a young, pretty lass like you gotta be fillin' your head with all this morbid stuff.”

I shrugged like it was no big deal. “It's just a hobby.”

“Strange hobby. Sure ain't stamp collecting.”

“No, I guess not,” I said quietly.

“Aw shit,” Hank said, sounding a little embarassed. “I feel like I got this all ass-backward. How about we start again? I'm Hank. Hank Anderson.”

“Hilda Swann,” I said, and held out my hand to shake his. “You really don't know how much this means to me.”

There was no way he could know. I already had something
in common with Jayne Mansfield. To own an item that once belonged to her just brought us closer together, made our fates even more entwined. Hank reached forward and took my fingers, shook my hand with a soft but firm grip, and it was then that I noticed the black smear on his arm that had once been a tattoo, and looked as though it had been scrubbed down until it was nothing but an indistinguishable blob on the inside of his wrist.

“You know what, Hilda Swann? You look like a young Louise Brooks. At least you would without that pink shit in your hair.”

“I'll try and take that as a compliment.”

I let go of his hand and acted like I hadn't seen the mark on his arm. I noticed some old VHS tapes with no covers on top of the television set. “You like movies?” I asked, picking one up.

Hank groaned as he sat down in an old armchair, splayed his legs, and scratched at the rim of his shorts. “Sure, I like movies. If they're good.”

I read the tape labels.
Gilda
.
Gone With the Wind
.
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

“Classics, huh?”

Hank heaved himself up. “The trouble with Hollywood these days is the women have no grace. No style. All those sluts down on Sunset with their cooches hanging out. Goddamn tramps.”

“What about Julia Roberts? Reese Witherspoon?”

“Bah—it's not the same. Back in my day, actresses were elegant.
Refined
. They were more than women; they were apparitions on the screen. We feared them, adored them.”

“So you haven't seen Lindsay Lohan in
Herbie Fully Loaded
?”

Hank frowned. “Today, everyone finds it so easy to laugh at things. Everything is a big joke.”

“Oh no, Lindsay Lohan is no joke. She's a terrifying reality.”

He tilted his head at me. “There is something about you that is too familiar. You make jokes, but they don't come from a place of joy. A joke from the heart lights up an entire room. When you joke, there is no light. Your face goes dark.”

I put the tape down on the television set and crossed my arms. “You wanna talk darkness? How's it feel living in a place where a guy killed himself?”

“I've lived in worse.”

I looked toward the bathroom. The door was open and inside I could see small shafts of light from the tiny window illuminating the tiles. “So you're quite happy to brush your teeth at that sink every day?”

“Brush, floss, hell, I'd probably beat off if I still could.”

I looked again at the mark on his arm. “Do you believe in ghosts?”

“Sure I do.”

“But you're not scared to go in there?”

“Shit no,” he said defiantly. “If there's a ghost in there, at least I'll have someone to talk to.”

I walked over to the bathroom and pushed the door open. There were a couple of dirty towels on the floor, moldy and smelly. The mirror above the sink was so rusty you could barely see a reflection. I opened the little brown bag and peeked inside to make sure the tile was still there, that I hadn't imagined it. I walked back to the living room and collected my bag from the sofa.

“Well, I should be going,” I said.

“Fine. Go,” Hank said, suddenly sounding cold. “People always have somewhere else they have to be. Never here. Never now.”

“Thanks for the tile,” I mumbled.

“Don't mention it.”

I made my way to the front door. Hank didn't get up. “You gonna open this for me?” I asked, and for a minute I got scared, but I needn't have because Hank got to his feet and undid the dead bolt, then stood behind the door as I walked outside. I hesitated, seized by a genuine desire to spend more time with this strange old man who had given me such a special gift. Maybe it was because as I took a last look around his apartment, with the matted carpet and brown curtains, I was overcome with immense sadness. All I knew was that as I prepared to step off his front doorstep, I became seized with incredible panic. Everything felt unfinished. More than that: it felt like we'd only just begun.

“Well,” I said, holding up the paper bag with the tile in it. “Thanks again for this. You were right. It's pretty amazing.”

“I got no use for it.” Hank scowled, his expression suddenly cold. “It's just a piece of tile. Silly to think a piece of tile is so special. Ain't nothin' in that bag but dust.”

“Well, I think it's beautiful.”

“That's good for you,” he said, stepping forward. “Now, if you've gotta go, you go.”

And he slammed the door in my face.

M
OM AND DAD HAD
loved movies. My earliest memory was of the soothing flicker of a television screen, the interplay of light and dark bathing me in warmth as I lay on the carpet of our living room. Over time the shadows took shape. People, streets, a puppy running toward the screen, then sprinting off again—all the things I had seen outside now contained in one magical window just for me. Slowly the images joined and became stories: an alien stranded in a giant forest, a talking yellow robot and his little robot friend on wheels, a witch with an apple in her hand. I saw visions I would never see outside, and could never hope to, images so fantastic they transfixed me for hours. And always in the background was the comforting sound of my mom's and dad's voices, the clink of dishes as Mom cleared away the breakfast table, the romantic chattering of Dad's old-fashioned typewriter.

I remembered growing up in Topanga Canyon, a place for “alternative lifestyle” seekers who thought the hippie haven of Laurel Canyon had been destroyed by coke and rich music execs. Mom
wore beads and sarongs and dyed her hair with henna. Dad was once a teacher but now worked at a factory, but only to support his “art.” He wrote poems and articles about astrology for magazines. He smoked rolled cigarettes, and the house was covered in ash. You couldn't open a book without having tobacco spill out from between the pages. Dad had terrible problems at the factory where he worked. He said the Manson Family had ruined everything for the hippies, even though the murders had happened decades ago. He said that everyone thought he was crazy.

I remembered our watching movies together. Every night after Dad had finished an article (or the article had finished him, Mom would joke), we sat down on the couch to watch a VHS tape from our vast collection. Sometimes whole weekends were gobbled up by movie marathons, and summer vacations flew by without my getting so much as a tan. Aunt Lynette didn't like it. One day I was sitting on the couch, Dad on the sofa behind me, and I could hear her arguing with my mother.

“Aren't you worried she'll be socially inept?” I overheard her say as they drank tea in the kitchen, although she wasn't making much of an effort not to be heard. I was watching
Animal House
for what must have been the tenth time. I didn't fully understand the jokes, but I knew that John Belushi was loud and funny-looking and made me laugh. Lynette looked tight and uncomfortable in her office suit and high heels, surrounded by coffee mugs made of clay and glowing incense sticks.

“Nonsense,” Mom said. “You should let children do what interests them. One day she'll be the first great female film director.”

“Or illiterate,” Lynette continued. “Martha, it's not healthy for her to watch so much television. And the stuff you let her watch.”

“Like what?”

Lynette pointed at the TV. “Like that! Have you even seen that movie yourself? It's full of sex. There's drug use in it, and naked women.”

“So? Hilda can decide what she wants to watch for herself. Sex never hurt anyone—it's the most natural thing in the world.”