John Belushi Is Dead (4 page)

I shook my head. “No. Well, yeah, we go to school, but it's summer vacation.”

“So why ain't you at the beach, or the pool?”

“That's not really our kind of scene.”

“Oh,” he grunted. “And this is?”

I shrugged and offered him a small smile. We stood for a moment in awkward silence.

“So what's with your friend?” he asked. “Is he in the military or something?”

“No, he just dresses like he is.”

“What for?”

“I think he just likes it,” I offered. “Maybe it makes him feel more masculine.”

“Well, he looks goddamn ridiculous if you ask me.”

“Hilda, come look at this,” Benji called out. I walked into the bathroom, grateful to be away from Hank and his questions. The bathroom was as old as the rest of the apartment. There was a large bathtub with an enormous, old-fashioned showerhead above it, and the shower curtain, which had once been white, was almost black with dirt. Benji was staring at the sink. “It's the original one,” he whispered. “It hasn't been replaced.”

I leaned forward. It was definitely the original. There were even dark splatter stains along the rim. I looked at the linoleum floor, the cracked edges curling up where it met the sink. There were spots there, too.

“I want this,” Benji said, bending down to tear at the linoleum.

“Benji! You can't tear his floor up!” I whispered, but he continued to pull unsuccessfully on the flooring, ignoring me.

“Whatcha lookin' at?” Hank asked, suddenly appearing at the door. Benji leaped up.

“Oh, nothing,” I said nonchalantly. “Just looking around. Benji, you got what you need?”

“Uh, yeah, just a second,” he answered, snapping off a few more shots as if that was what he had been doing all along. Hank
wandered back out to the kitchen, looking bored. I followed and watched him fill a kettle and place it on the rusty stove.

“You like tea?” he asked.

“Tea? Uh, sure.”

He took three mugs from the cupboard and placed a tea bag in each. I was amazed he had any clean dishes left. The plates in the sink looked like they had been there for a week, and a few flies were buzzing around excitedly, feeding off the scraps. I was just starting to consider the possibility of mice when Benji walked out of the bathroom. When he saw the cups on the counter, tea bags hanging expectantly over the sides, he practically recoiled.

“Oh, no thanks, man. We gotta get going.”

Hank held a small spoon in midair, ready to scoop sugar from a jar.

“You sure? Ain't no trouble. You ain't from the government or the newspapers, I ain't got no beef with you.”

“Maybe we could stay for one cup?” I asked Benji.

“No, we can't,” he replied quickly. “We have that thing we have to get to, remember?”

“Oh, of course,” I said, playing along, although I felt a pinch of guilt for skipping out on Hank so fast. We had barged into his home and taken photos and now we were going to leave without having so much as a cup of tea. He was obviously lonely, and staying would have been the nice thing to do. But nice wasn't in Benji's repertoire, and he was my only ride home.

“So, Hank,” Benji said, holding out a business card, “if you ever decide to get a new bathroom sink or sell the one you got, give me a call. I'll take it off your hands, and for a reasonable price.”

“Now, why the hell would I get a new bathroom sink?”

Benji shrugged. “Any number of reasons. Just, if it happens, give me a call, okay?”

Hank took the card. I watched him study it, as if he could extract some greater meaning from what was printed on it, an answer to why we were there.

“All right,” he said, and slid the card into his boxers. “All right.”

Benji walked out the front door and I followed close behind. Just as I was about to step out onto the balcony Hank caught my hand, making me jump. He leaned in close, spoke quietly into my ear.

“That movie star,” he said. “How did he die?”

I hesitated. “He killed himself.”

Hank nodded slowly, as if digesting the information, and I gave him a small shrug. He let go of my hand, mumbled something that I couldn't hear, then went back inside, slamming the door and turning the locks once again. Benji was already down the stairs and out on the dead lawn, photographing the front of the building. I ran down to be with him in the sunlight, where it was warm and you could see the blue of the sky.

“D
AMN
.” B
ENJI LAUGHED AS
we drove back toward Hollywood. “And I thought Bukowski was dead.”

“You didn't have to be an asshole,” I said, annoyed by Benji's cavalier attitude. “He was an old man. You didn't have to make fun of him.”

“The guy was a freak, Hilda. ‘Do you know me? Do you know who I am?' He was like something out of a James Ellroy novel.”

“
He
was a freak? You told the guy someone died in his apartment!”

“And that's probably the most exciting thing that's ever happened to him. Did you see all those empty bottles? By the rate he's putting it away, he'll have forgotten we were even there by tomorrow.”

I picked up Benji's camera and started scanning the pictures. The bathroom in Hank's apartment was small and cramped, tomblike. In one photo I could see Benji's reflection in the mirror, imposing and out of place in his army gear. In another photo Benji's detached, floating arm pointed out an original light fixture while Hank lingered at the edge of the frame. In the next photo, taken just seconds later, Hank had raised an arm to cover his face. I turned the camera off and put it in the glove compartment in the spot where the pepper spray had been.

“Such an angry way to die,” I said, returning to the story of Bernie Bernall in an effort to try and shake Hank from my mind, the sadness of his situation. “You know, stabbing yourself with a pair of scissors. It's not like pills, or even shooting yourself. It's like Bernie was still trying to say to the world, ‘Hey, I'm different, I'm special,' even as he was dying.”

“All suicide is angry,” Benji said in a dismissive tone. “Suicide by its very nature is a hostile act, an affront to the natural order. It's an offense against God.”

I looked out the window at the tourists walking down Hollywood Boulevard, disposable cameras in hand, taking photos of the shiny metallic stars on the sidewalk and the footprints in the cement.

“I read an interesting theory the other day,” Benji continued. “Some religions believe that when we die we are reincarnated, and some souls just aren't ready to come back. They haven't dealt with
all the things in their past life and they aren't at peace, and when they come back into the world they can't handle it. People who are crazy or killers are souls that weren't ready to come back and just can't adjust to the world again. It's the same with suicides.”

“So suicides are lost souls?” I asked. Benji didn't look at me.

“I don't know. That's just what I read.”

B
ENJI LIVED IN A
large house a few blocks from mine; it was all glass and steel surfaces and reminded me of Cameron's house in
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
, where everything was cold and beautiful and he wasn't allowed to touch anything. Benji's dad was some kind of banker who worked long hours and was never home. His mom's job was to make sure the house always looked perfect. Benji's dad wouldn't let them hire a maid, and Benji ordered his mom around the house as if she were a servant, but she didn't seem to mind. I guess it made her feel useful.

We lay on Benji's bed listening to Nirvana, hands in our pockets, heads barely touching. Next to us was a tray of freshly baked cookies Mrs. Connor had just served us, the chocolate soft and warm. Benji's cat, Freddie, was curled at our feet. The CD was a bootleg of Kurt Cobain laying down tracks in the studio, strumming an acoustic guitar and trying to work out what chords to use. We preferred to listen to bootleg recordings. They were raw and real, the distilled essence of the musician before the mixing
desk came in and smoothed everything over. In the half light from Benji's lamp it was easy to imagine Kurt sitting in the corner of the room, head down, chipped fingernails picking at the strings of an old Martin guitar; but if you turned to look at him, he would disappear, dissolving into the air, and all that would be left were the last picked notes, floating into the night.

Benji sighed. I knew what was coming.

“I can't believe she got away with it,” he moaned.

I groaned. “For the last time, the evidence pointing to Courtney is entirely circumstantial.”

“How can you still believe her? Even after that documentary where they interviewed the bounty hunter? He swore Courtney hired him to kill Kurt.”

“Benji, the dude had no teeth.”

“Even so—how do you explain the amount of heroin that was in Cobain's system? He was so doped up that even medical experts say there is no way he could have lifted that gun and pulled the trigger.”

“Ever heard of functioning junkies?”

“There's functioning and then there's superhuman. The woman's as guilty as OJ.”

“Okay, hold up,” I said, getting agitated. “You're just persecuting her because she's a strong woman who acts the way she wants to and doesn't give a shit what anyone thinks of her. You and the rest of society have cast her as the murdering wife because you don't know how else to handle her. She scares the crap out of you so you cut her down. She's not a murderer—she's a survivor.”

Benji stretched back and pouted. “Yeah? Well her solo album sucked.”

I sat up and looked around. Benji's walls were decorated with
restraint, a poster here or there of one of his favorite bands, carefully framed. Green Day. Fall Out Boy. A large portion of the space was taken up by a glass cabinet filled with memorabilia and illuminated by spotlights. It was here that he kept his most prized possessions. A stone from Sharon Tate's fireplace. Phil Hartman's welcome mat, still dirty with his footprints. Pride of place was a script for the movie
Animal House
signed by John Belushi. The scrawl was barely recognizable, but Benji explained it away by saying Belushi must have been high at the time he signed it, which made the script worth even more to him. For Benji, Belushi under the influence and living on the edge was more valuable than the healthy, sober version.

I had my own collection at Aunt Lynette's, but it was much smaller and not as well organized. Lynette had not been expecting another occupant in her house, at least not one who would require an entire bedroom, so my living space was cramped compared to Benji's spacious quarters.

“What's your favorite Nirvana song?” Benji asked.

Another Benji trait. Always cataloging, passing a critical eye over everything. It was the disease of our generation. We were constantly distilling the world into lists, classifying our lives according to what was hot and what was not. Music. Movies. TV shows. Countries you most want to visit. A hundred and one things to do before you die. Ironically, the more obscure the list item, the greater the chance it had of being considered hot, which in turn would inevitably make it mainstream. It was a vicious cycle.

“‘Smells Like Teen Spirit,'” I answered after some consideration.

“Amateur hour. Only people who have no understanding of Nirvana's work would make such an obvious choice.”

“And what's yours, Lester Bangs?”

“‘Radio Friendly Unit Shifter,'” he replied, citing one of their most obscure singles. He put his hands behind his head with smug satisfaction.

“You're a dick, Benji.”

He leaped up and went to sit at his desk. Annoyed by Benji's sudden movement, Freddie the cat jumped off the bed and sauntered off. In front of his PC and its enormous twin monitors, Benji squinted with concentration and clicked the mouse furiously. Moving rapidly from one screen to the next were album covers that he'd cut and pasted and dumped into folders.

I turned on the TV and watched America's Next Top Models strut across the screen. I glanced down at my own body, not exactly chubby but definitely a little dumpy. I'd been wearing the same plain black T-shirt for days, and my jeans were tatty. Grooming had never been a priority with me. I usually threw on whatever was comfortable. With hippies for parents, I guess it couldn't have turned out any other way.

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked as Benji cursed under his breath.

“Looking for cover art,” he said, not taking his eyes off the screen. “For my iPod. If the artwork is missing it ruins the effect, you know that.”

“How many more covers do you have to download?”

“About five hundred.”

“Five hundred! How long is it going to take you?”

“Not sure. I've been working on it for a few days. I reckon in a few more hours I'll have them all.”

“Is it really that important?”

Benji swiveled in his chair. “Well, it's not cover
flow
if all the covers aren't there, is it?”

For a supposed punk, Benji was the most pedantic person I knew. He made sure his mom ironed his band T-shirts perfectly and that his cargo pants had creases. I stared at the ceiling. Sometimes when Benji and I were talking like this, a splinter of despair would work its way into my heart. I could feel the wasted moments ticking away, and wondered whether large portions of my life would be lost to inane conversations about cover art and whether Nirvana's mainstream hits were better than their B sides. Sometimes I felt like my head was so full of trivia, there was no room for anything of substance. I didn't care too much about it. The noise kept out things I would rather not think about, the dark thoughts that crept in all too often since my parents' accident.

“You wanna stay the night?” Benji asked, scratching at his arm as he spoke, like it was no big deal. Benji was always asking me to stay over, but I didn't anymore because I didn't want him to get the wrong idea. I used to stay over all the time. Mrs. Connor would make up the spare bedroom for me and fill my private bathroom with little unopened toiletries. It felt like staying in a hotel, and I'm sure if I'd picked up the phone in the middle of the night and asked for a sandwich I'd have probably gotten one. But I didn't stay over anymore.