Hollywood Ending (12 page)

One late afternoon, even hotter than usual, I suggested we sit on the balcony to catch some of the breeze that had started up as the sun was setting. To my surprise Hank agreed. I considered it a small victory: Hank had barely set foot outside his front door since the moment I met him.

We sat on an old sofa with the stuffing coming out. There was an overflowing ashtray, the concrete black from where the butts had burnt the ground. We watched the sun go down over the apartment block and listened to the sound of the washer and dryer churning in the laundry downstairs. Hank sucked on a cigar, the end all slick and glistening. The silence was broken only when a police chopper made its way low across the sky, probably chasing a car or looking for someone on the run. The sound roared through the apartment block and was gone in an instant. I thought I saw Hank wince as the blades cut across the sky. He put the cigar back in his mouth and sighed.

‘Another man running for his life,' he muttered. ‘This place is a goddamn war zone. Just as many casualties here as there were in Germany, or Vietnam, or Iraq. And refugees.'

‘Sometimes I feel like I'm one of them,' I said.

‘A refugee?'

I shook my head. ‘Casualty.'

‘Ahhh, the casualties of the heart,' he said, and I noted his sarcasm. ‘Young love.'

‘Nothing like that.'

‘No? What about that goddamn kid you brought over?'

‘Benji? We're just friends.'

Hank took a drink from his beer. ‘The boy is sick.'

‘What do you mean sick?'

He took another drink as if steeling himself. ‘There's a hell of a lotta darkness inside him. It's swirling around, going in circles, with no way out.'

‘No way out, huh? That's very profound.'

He took another drink. ‘No way out. Yet.'

I picked up my tea but my hand was shaking. I knew exactly what Hank was talking about. He had seen something in Benji that most people missed, or wrote off as arrogance or boyish bravado. Benji was a bending branch, ready to snap at any moment. I could see it as we drove around, when we stood outside a house where someone had died. There was an intensity about him that scared me. I put my tea down.

‘I need to go to the bathroom,' I said, although it was more that I didn't want to talk about Benji.

Hank put his bottle down. ‘Get me the wine from under the sink.'

I went inside and peed quickly, not wanting to be in that bathroom any longer than necessary, not with the possibility that Bernie Bernall's ghost could make an unscheduled appearance. Then I went to the kitchen, found the bottle, and brought it out to Hank.

‘Cheers,' he said, taking it and unscrewing the cap. He took a mouthful and let the bottle rest on his leg. The sky was beginning to darken, the cool breeze settling in for a long stay.

‘So tell me about war zones, Hank,' I said. ‘You were in Norway during the war. What was it like?'

His face crumpled. ‘Aw hell, I was so young. I don't remember a goddamn thing.'

‘But there were concentration camps in Norway, right?'

‘Yeah, sure. I mean, there were concentration camps everywhere.'

I looked at the mark on his arm. It was hard to keep my eyes off it. ‘Is your family Jewish?'

‘No.'

‘Then what?'

‘Then nothing. Just not Jewish.'

‘So you were a Nazi?'

‘No!'

‘Hey, I don't care,' I said, though I wasn't sure how I would've responded if he had said, yeah, sure I was a Nazi, I threw babies in ditches and put my bayonet through men's hearts, and here we are just having tea and beer on my balcony while the sun goes down. As right as Hank was about Benji, he didn't know that Benji also had
him
pegged. Hank was hiding something.

‘What were the concentration camps in Norway called again? Falstad, wasn't that one?'

‘How do you know so much about it?'

I didn't tell him that as soon as he mentioned he had grown up in Norway I'd done a little research on the internet.

‘Learnt it at school,' I said. ‘The History Channel. There's this big fight going on at the moment about whether to restore Auschwitz so people can keep visiting it, or to let it fall down.'

‘Fall down,' Hank said without hesitation.

‘Really? You don't think that maybe it's important to keep it standing, so people can go and see it? There's already kids who don't believe the Holocaust happened. There's even some at my school. If it's still standing, people can't deny what took place there.'

‘People will find ways to deny anything,' Hank scowled, staring at the concrete. ‘Won't make a lick of difference if that building's still there or not. I say let it fall to the ground.'

The sun disappeared into the horizon and the sky went dark. The wind grew colder and the street lamps switched on in unison. Hank stretched and pushed himself up from his chair.

‘Tell me,' he said, ‘what do your parents think of you spending so much time around here?'

I took a deep breath. ‘My parents died a while ago.'

‘They did?'

‘Car accident.'

‘Oh.' Hank thought for a moment. ‘I'm sorry to hear that.'

‘It's okay. I don't really like to talk about it.'

‘Then you don't have to say any more. It's time to go in anyhow.'

‘Hey, are you sure I can't take you anywhere?' I said. ‘You spend all day cooped up in that stuffy apartment in the heat.'

‘Suits me fine.'

‘It's not healthy.'

‘I tell you what,' he said, ‘you give me something worth going out for, and we'll go out.'

‘Ah! A challenge.'

He opened the door and stepped inside. I waited a moment, enjoying the quiet of the night, then heard the sound of an old movie floating out on the breeze. Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire were singing ‘Just One of Those Things'. I peeked inside and saw Hank at his spot in front of the television, basking in the glow of its warmth as a tiny fan blew across his face.

FIFTEEN

‘Hey Hilda. Come look at this.'

I was sitting in Benji's room on the floor flicking through magazines and drinking lemonade his mom made for us. It was 100 degrees outside and too hot to be driving around, so we had decided to hang at his house for the day. You wouldn't know we were in the middle of a heatwave sitting in Benji's room. His house had air conditioning and was chilled like an icebox. Goose bumps were forming on my flesh.

I worried about Hank in his stuffy old apartment, with those thick, insulating curtains and only a crappy fan to keep him cool. Old people died in weather like this and their bodies weren't found for days. Not until the smell coming from their apartment became too strong to ignore. I decided I would make sure to visit Hank the next day to see if he was all right. Benji and his parents were heading up to Yosemite for a weekend of rafting and hiking. They'd invited me along but I had made up a story about Lynette having time off work (like that would ever happen) and we were going to have a ‘girls' weekend together. In truth I had some expeditions of my own planned.

Benji opened his wardrobe and rustled around inside. A moment later he emerged from the darkness holding a small fishbowl. The bottom of the bowl was covered in sparkling pebbles and in the centre was a plastic castle with a hole through the drawbridge large enough for a fish to swim through. For a moment I couldn't see anything else, then a small flicker of movement caught my eye.

‘Is there a fish in there?' I asked. ‘I can't see it.'

‘Yeah. Right there. His name's Sid Vicious, but I call him Sid Fish-ious.'

Benji tapped the side of the bowl and again something moved. I looked closer and saw a goldfish. It was white.

‘Mom put him in the cupboard when she was cleaning my room and we forgot about him. I found him yesterday when I was looking for my Buzzcocks T-shirt.'

‘I thought goldfish were, you know, gold,' I said.

‘He was. Without light they lose pigmentation. Cool, huh?'

‘How long has he been in the cupboard for?'

‘Dunno. Probably a couple of weeks.' Benji tapped the glass again, examined the fish closely. I watched as he placed the bowl back in the closet, in the darkest part, and threw a dirty T-shirt over the top of it.

‘What the hell are you doing?'

Benji took a small notepad from his cupboard, wrote something down with a chewed pencil, then threw the notepad beside the bowl. ‘I'm going to watch him die. Every day I chart the changes in his mood: whether he's listless, moving around a lot, or has changed colour. Soon he'll be floating.'

‘You can't do that Benji! That's horrible!'

‘Too late. He's half dead already.'

‘He's just lost pigmentation. If you bring him out now he might get better.'

‘He might, but this is much more interesting.'

I looked into Benji's eyes, searched for a hint of madness, the tiniest glint of insanity. But there was nothing lurking in those pin-prick pupils, just a chilling indifference. I remembered the cat in the dumpster, the way Benji had thrown it over the rim like a sack of old spuds.

‘The first step to becoming a serial killer is torturing animals,' I said. ‘You don't want to turn out like Jeffrey Dahmer do you?'

‘I'm not torturing anything,' Benji argued. ‘It's an experiment. A science experiment. It's perfectly valid to use animals as test subjects.'

‘Maybe if you're finding a cure for cancer. But not this.'

He swivelled in his seat like an evil genius from a bad spy movie. ‘Let me ask you a question,' he said slowly, as if addressing a child. ‘Do you use antibiotics?'

I groaned, which he ignored.

‘Did you know,' he continued, ‘that Nazi Germany was responsible for some of the greatest scientific breakthroughs mankind has ever known?'

‘Like what? The sound a baby makes when it's thrown against a wall?'

‘Mock me you may Hilda, but the Holocaust was a period of great scientific discovery. The lack of medical regulations meant doctors could finally test on humans, real people, not rats or pigs or animals that have totally different biological make-ups. The Nazis were the first to discover that smoking caused cancer.'

‘They also injected ink into people's eyeballs to see if they would change colour.'

‘Hilda, are you telling me you wouldn't be interested in whether that could actually happen?'

‘So what are you saying? That Sid the Goldfish is being killed for the good of goldfish everywhere? How is torturing your goldfish benefiting mankind?'

‘I'm just saying don't dismiss things outright because you don't understand them. Some of mankind's greatest discoveries were made by thinking outside the square.'

Benji turned back to his computer, satisfied, and my eyes returned to the cupboard. Looking back I could see a pattern, but at the time it was invisible to me. A dead cat had brought me and Benji together, and a dying goldfish would mark the beginning of the end. The scariest part was that Benji's fish experiment was the first sign of a deeper problem. It was the point where I decided Benji was starting to lose it.

‘I've gotta go,' I said, standing up.

‘You just got here.
Faces of Death
just arrived from Amazon. Mom's making popcorn.'

‘I've got to help Lynette with a case. Do some research for her. You know how it is.'

Benji wasn't convinced. ‘Sure I do,' he sulked. ‘I know how it is.'

‘So, have fun in Yosemite okay?'

‘Whatever.'

I slunk out, leaving him to his computer and his magazines, Sid the fish still in the cupboard. Mrs Connor stopped me in the hallway.

‘Hello dear,' she said, smiling broadly. ‘Benji tells me you aren't coming to Yosemite with us.'

‘Sorry Mrs Connor. Lynette wants me to help her with some work.'

‘But surely she can make an exception in this case. We would so love to have you. Benji would be very happy if you came.'

Yeah, well Benji's too busy in his bedroom playing Mengele
, I wanted to say, but instead I frowned as if I was disappointed.

‘I know, but Lynette says she really needs my help.'

‘Oh, then…' Mrs Connor sighed, giving up. Her blonde ponytail was pulled back so tight I thought her scalp might come off. ‘But if she changes her mind, you will let me know won't you?'

‘Of course. Thanks Mrs Connor,' I said, and started off down the hall.

‘Goodbye Hilda,' I heard her say, and I couldn't help but catch a hint of sadness in her voice.

SIXTEEN

The ad in the newspaper gave me an idea. For days I had been trying to figure out how to coax Hank from the apartment. I had suggested going to the local pool, where we could dip our feet in the shallow end of the water and drink beer.

‘I can drink beer here,' Hank had grunted, sweat trailing down his face.

‘How about a walk down to the lake?' I offered further. ‘We could sit in the shade and feed the ducks.'

‘I got enough trouble feeding myself!' he bellowed. ‘I ain't giving my bread to the goddamn ducks. Screw them.'

I became obsessed with getting him outside. The heat was intolerable and I didn't know how much longer I could stand it. I was also worried about Hank. When I arrived at his apartment I was always relieved to find him hot, sweaty and cranky, sprawled in his chair in a bad mood rather than lying dead on the floor.

I began to think that maybe Benji was right, that Hank was hiding something in his past so terrible that to go outside would expose him. I scolded myself for buying into Benji's wild fantasies. I told myself Hank was just a lonely old man, cast aside by an uncaring and indifferent world. He had lost interest in life, was content with his wine and cigars and old movies from Blockbuster. There was no one to push him out of his complacency, no one to tell him there were better ways to spend your twilight years. I hoped that if I ever got to that stage someone would help me, reach down into the dark pit and pull me out with both hands. God knows I had come close to being there before.