We drove to Barney’s Beanery in West Hollywood where we sat at Janis Joplin’s booth and ordered poached eggs with hollandaise. The food at Barney’s wasn’t the greatest but the ambience more than made up for it. In the old days Barney’s was a hangout for Hollywood’s rock elite, like Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison. Now it was full of tourists and frat boys with their girlfriends, playing pool. No one cared about the significance of the place anymore, no one except a few educated tourists, and us. Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison were now members of the Forever 27 Club, along with Kurt Cobain and Janis Joplin. It was kind of creepy how many awesome musicians had died at at the same exact age of twenty-seven, but at least they were in good company.
Benji drank coffee and loaded photos onto his laptop from his camera. I looked at the ceiling where one of Barney’s old tables had been hammered up so that everyone could see it. Someone had scratched their name into the table larger than the others. The lettering was messy and jagged but the name was unmistakeable. Janis. It was rumoured she’d had her last screwdriver at Barney’s, one final drink before departing this world in a pool of her own vomit. I imagined her in all her junked-up glory, plying her face with pastrami on rye and hacking at the table with a bread knife. I felt honoured to be sitting in her booth.
Although it was only ten in the morning the frat boys were drinking Coronas and the stereo was cranked to the hilt with an Elvis Presley song. A few tourists wearing Hollywood T-shirts and cameras slung around their necks waddled through the doors.
‘Oh, Harold,’ a woman said to her husband as she hooked her arm through his. ‘They say Jack Nicholson used to drink here with Dennis Hopper when they made Easy Rider.’
Her old hippy husband looked around in awe. ‘Far out.’
These people should have annoyed us just as much as the frat boys, but the truth was they were just like us. They were scavengers feeding off others, obsessed with lives that were not their own. They were our people.
Benji pierced his eggs with a fork, looked at me and took a bite.
‘You look stupid with that pink hair,’ he said through a mouthful of food. In a fit of boredom I’d dyed my hair the night before. It seemed like a fun idea at the time but the pink hadn’t really taken and my head looked like Hello Kitty threw up on it. I tossed my napkin at Benji.
‘You said you liked it this morning.’
‘I’ve changed my mind. It looks cheap.’
‘Well, you look disgusting. Finish your food before you open your mouth.’
He stuck out his tongue, revealing the saliva-coated remnants of his meal. ‘Have some respect at Janis’s table,’ I said.
‘Janis wouldn’t care,’ he snickered, chewing loudly. ‘She would fully appreciate someone enjoying such a hearty, lard-laden meal.’
He reached over and grabbed my orange juice.
‘Your Aunt Lynette’s gonna be pissed when she sees your hair,’ he added, swallowing a mouthful.
‘No, she won’t. She won’t even care.’
The waitress refilled our coffees and I ordered another OJ. I looked out the window. There was surprisingly little traffic on Santa Monica Boulevard. When the road was clear you could imagine it was the 1960s, and Barney’s was filled with beatniks and poets rather than drunken sorority girls. I finished my juice and watched Benji eyeing off the girls at the bar. One of them bent over, exposing pink frilly panties beneath a tight leather skirt.
‘Seeing as how you’re distracted, do you mind if I check something?’ I asked, pointing to his computer.
Benji unplugged his camera and spun
the laptop around to face me. Another great thing about Barney’s
was that it had free wifi. I logged onto my favourite website, The
Celebrity Autopsy Room, and checked my profile:
Name: Hilda Swann.
Age: 17.
Lives: Encino, CA.
Mood: Apathetic.
I opened my personal preferences, changed my mood to excited. Summer vacation had finally arrived, and Benji and I were going to spend it doing what we loved best.
Summer vacation means different things
to different people. To the popular girls at school it meant three
months of hanging around the mall, playing beach volleyball in
string-bikinis and being screwed by jocks under the boardwalk. To
the neglected kids it meant being packed off to summer camp to
battle the bugs and basket weaving. For Benji and me it meant days
and days of glorious death.
Favourite movie: Harold and Maude.
Favourite music: Nirvana, The Ramones, The Carpenters.
Favourite book: Hollywood Babylon by Kenneth Anger.
Interests: Dead celebrities, living in LA, books about serial killers.
My Favourite Dead People (in no particular order):
Sharon Tate
John Belushi
Chris Farley
James Dean
Marilyn Monroe
Phil Hartman
Kurt Cobain
Elizabeth Short (The Black Dahlia, for those not in the know)
Jayne Mansfield
My parents
‘Can I check something?’ Benji took the laptop back. ‘I’m waiting for this dude to contact me.’
‘Don’t mind me.’ I called the waitress over. ‘Can we get the check?’
‘There it is,’ Benji said, smiling. ‘Bingo.’
He took a napkin and scribbled on it, then stuffed it in his pocket.
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘You’ll see. Come on. Let’s head up the hill.’
It was a beautiful day so we decided to walk all the way from Barney’s to Janis’s place. Janis OD’d at The Landmark Hotel on Franklin Avenue—now The Highland Gardens—on heroin that was cut too pure. The batch killed a whole lot of people in LA, but Janis was the only famous one. Benji had stayed in the room once before but every time I tried to make a reservation it was already booked. Sometimes it was booked solid for weeks in advance. People wanted to be close to Janis, even if all that meant was sleeping in the same bed she’d puked in before dying on the floor.
When we got to the hotel we tried to see in through the windows of her ground-floor room, but the curtains were closed. We walked back to the car, disappointed. Benji checked the back seat to make sure his bricks were still there.
‘What next?’ I asked.
‘You up for a little adventure?’
‘What did you have in mind?’
Benji leant over. ‘You ever heard of Bernie Bernall?’
Bernie Bernall? ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘Was he in Plan 9 from Outer Space?’
Benji rolled his eyes. ‘God, you’re such a lightweight, Hilda. Bernie Bernall was a silent movie star whose career was ruined when they introduced the talkies. Apparently his voice was so bad he became the laughing-stock of the industry. They tried dubbing another voice over his but it didn’t work. He became a junkie and an alcoholic, then killed himself in his apartment.’
‘How?’
Benji leant in close. ‘He stabbed himself.’
‘What do you mean, stabbed himself? Like with a knife?’
Benji shook his head. ‘Scissors.’
Scissors. What a way to go. I whistled. ‘That’s awesome.’
‘Not only that, they were small sewing scissors, so blunt you could barely cut your toenails with ’em. He just gouged that shit straight into his heart and moved it around ’til the hole was big enough to kill him.’
‘Wow. How could I have not heard about this?’
‘It gets worse. His wife was in New York when it happened, and apparently she didn’t give a shit. She didn’t even come back to town for the funeral.’
‘Damn.’
‘She didn’t even send flowers. She sent a telegram saying how “regretful” she was that it had happened or some crap like that.’
I frowned. ‘He must’ve been some kind of asshole.’
‘I don’t think it was that. I just think when he stopped being famous no one gave a shit about him anymore, you know? Everyone forgot about him, even his wife. Suicide was his last stab at being famous.’
‘Literally.’
Benji held up the napkin he had scribbled on at Barney’s. ‘I just found out where his apartment was.’
My eyes lit up. ‘Where?’
‘Echo Park.’
Echo Park. One of the oldest neighbourhoods in LA, home to junkies, freaks and bohos. Jackson Pollock and Ayn Rand once lived there, as well as Tom Waits and Frank Zappa. Gentrification had turned Echo Park into a trendy suburb but there was still a good amount of squalor in its rambling Spanish homes and overgrown gardens. I took the piece of paper from Benji, held it in my hands.
‘I want to get inside,’ he said.
‘Oh yeah?’ I laughed. ‘How are we going to do that? Break and enter?’
He put the car in gear and pulled out from the curb. ‘Simple,’ he said. ‘We’ll just ask.’
I looked at Benji, with his military clothes, dark sunglasses and black army cap. ‘You think some little old lady is gonna let you into her apartment?’
‘Hilda, you have seen my methods of persuasion. I can charm myself into anyone’s good graces.’
We drove down Hollywood Boulevard, past Mann’s Chinese Theatre and away from the busloads of tourists and faded stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. We headed east towards downtown LA, where the road became cracked and pitted with potholes and the most colourful sights were the prostitutes outside the Rite-Aid.
‘Can’t remember last time I was this far downtown,’ I said.
‘Did you know Echo Park was actually the centre of the movie business during the silent era?’
‘You know what? I did not know that either. Gee Benji, you’re a wealth of information today.’
‘I just read a book about it. All the major studios were in Echo Park before they moved out to the Valley. Mack Sennett’s studio was there. Can you imagine how cool it must have been? Charlie Chaplin and Fatty Arbuckle and all those guys making all those fantastic films, pioneering the medium. It would have been magic. Fatty Arbuckle raped a girl with a Coke bottle, you know.’
‘Don’t you mean a champagne bottle? Fatty was a classy guy.’
It was one of the most famous stories from that era: the fat movie star in the bowler hat who allegedly held the studio bit-player down on the bed and rammed the bottle inside her, causing massive internal injuries. The actress had died, and even though Fatty was acquitted by a jury, his career was ruined by the scandal. Ten years later the studio he had worked for all his life finally took pity on Fatty and cast him in a movie. Fatty proudly proclaimed it was the happiest day of his life. That same night he died of heart failure.
‘Hang on,’ I said, ‘didn’t Elliott Smith die in Echo Park too? In a similar way?’ I remembered a newspaper article about the Oscar-winning folk singer who took his own life.
‘That’s right!’ Benji said, excited. ‘He had an argument with his girlfriend, and she says she went to take a shower, and after the shower she opened the bathroom door and found him standing in the middle of the kitchen with a knife in his chest.’
‘Maybe he was possessed by the ghost of Bernie Bernall?’
‘Maybe his girlfriend was lying to the cops and stabbed him herself.’
‘Who knows. Have you ever heard his music? He seemed pretty miserable to me.’
‘Knife through the heart miserable?’
‘More like emo self-harming miserable. So, what’s the game plan today?’
‘No game plan. We’ll just knock on the door, ask if we can go in and take a few photos.’
‘What if some crack-head opens the door and wigs out on us?’
Benji gestured to the glove compartment. I opened it and took out a small aerosol can.
‘Pepper spray?’
‘You can never be too careful, Hilda. This town’s full of psychos.’
I put the spray back. We’d done some crazy shit before but knocking on people’s doors and asking if we could take a look inside was a new one. There was the time we trekked through the Hollywood Hills trying to find the mythical ruins of a movie star’s pool, said to be wedged between two properties on vacant land. What made the pool so special was the mosaic tile work on an adjoining wall which depicted a large spider sitting in a web, a creepy remnant of old-time Hollywood we were desperate to see. We climbed down a cliff face and pushed our way through the undergrowth, but when Benji saw a snake we screamed and ran out of there as fast as we could, our mission thwarted.
One night we climbed the fence at the Hollywood sign and slept under the stars, the enormous ‘D’ towering above us, Los Angeles teeming below. We hid under the letter so we couldn’t be seen, curled into its side with pillows and blankets, and talked about all the people who’d OD’d up there, and the actress who’d leapt to her death from the ‘H’. In the middle of the night I felt a tugging on my sleeping bag and woke to find a coyote tearing at the fabric. I stared into its black eyes for a few seconds before it took off, running silently into the scrub.
I watched Benji as we drove. He was stealing proud glances at the bricks on the backseat, his precious artefacts to add to his vast collection of strange objects. He liked to think of himself as the Indiana Jones of the macabre.
‘Stabbing yourself in the heart with scissors,’ Benji said with admiration, ‘that takes balls.’
‘I remember now. Elliott Smith’s girlfriend told the cops she found him with the kitchen knife already in his heart and pulled it out. Her prints were all over it.’
Benji shook his head. ‘That’s messed up. People should know better than to pull out the knife if someone’s been stabbed. It’s the dumbest thing you can do.’
‘I don’t think that’s something they teach you in school, Benji.’
‘They should. It’s useful shit to know.’
We drove down a dead-end street full of crummy apartment blocks and bungalows with faded pink paint. There weren’t many sprinklers on this side of town, and the lawns were dead and covered in weeds. Benji pulled up in front of a white stucco apartment block, the name DISTANT MEMORIES emblazoned on its side.
‘That’s a pretty depressing sign,’ I said.
It was hardly the place for a movie star to live, and I figured Bernie Bernall must have been really down on his luck when he moved here. The building was two storeys with a flat roof, and a sign advertising vacancies was hammered into the ground outside. There were thick bars over the windows: the apartment block looked like a prison. Mail-order catalogues were scattered along the front lawn, the edges eaten by snails. Benji shut off the engine.
‘If you were gonna kill yourself,’ he asked, ‘how would you do it? I’d jump off a building, so I could sail through the air and watch the pavement rushing up towards me.’
‘Pills,’ I said quietly. ‘I’d use pills.’
‘Bor–ing.’ He opened the glove compartment and took out the pepper spray. ‘We’ll be needing this.’
We walked up the sun-bleached path to the apartment block, Benji with the spray concealed in his jacket. He stood in front of the mailbox looking for the right apartment number, and when he found it he took a photo.
‘The death certificate says the apartment was on the ground level,’ he said, nodding towards an apartment with its blinds open, rock music blasting from inside. ‘But this guy online told me the death certificate is wrong and it’s actually that apartment right there.’
He pointed at the second-storey apartment at the front of the building, facing the road. The heavy brown curtains were drawn.
‘Are you sure?’ I said. ‘Shouldn’t you go by the death certificate?’
‘Nah. This guy said he actually lived here when it happened, and that Bernie’s apartment was definitely up there.’
‘Did he tell you he knew Elvis too?’
We walked past the ground-floor apartment with its blaring Rolling Stones and I noticed someone inside sitting hunched over a computer. We made our way up the concrete steps, avoiding the rusty railing. The upstairs apartment had a big wooden door and a flywire screen that was falling off its hinges. A wicker mat said WELCOME in big black letters.
‘See?’ Benji said. ‘Welcome. There’s probably some real nice folks living here.’
I looked along the row of apartments. A couch with torn upholstery sat on the balcony, and an ashtray on the ground was overflowing with butts. A strange odour hung in the air, like home cooking gone horribly wrong. It smelt like somebody was boiling up a dog. I gagged.
‘Can you smell that?’ I whispered. ‘That’s rancid.’
Benji lifted his fingers into claws. ‘Perhaps it is the votting vemains of the late, great Bernie Bernall,’ he said, giving his best Bela Lugosi impersonation.
‘Can we just get on with this, please? Let’s get your shit and get out of here.’
Benji banged on the door with a heavy fist. ‘Anyone home?’ he yelled.
‘Jesus, Benji,’ I whispered, pulling on his arm. ‘They’ll think it’s the cops.’
‘You don’t get what you want in this world if you don’t show strength, Hilda.’
‘Why thank you, Anthony Robbins.’
He banged again. Inside the apartment nothing stirred. A dog barked in the distance. I could feel someone’s eyes on my neck and turned around to catch an old woman peering at me through her curtains. I gave her a small wave and she ducked back inside.
‘No one here,’ I said, throwing up my hands. ‘Let’s go.’
It was then we heard the sound of a dozen locks turning inside the apartment. We waited as bolts and chains were slid and unhooked. I grabbed Benji’s arm. The door opened a crack before one final chain caught it, and a bearded face gazed out, a wrinkled eye looking us up and down.
‘WHAT?’ the old man thundered. ‘WHATTA YOU WANT?’
‘Good afternoon sir,’ Benji said, holding out his hand and trying to slip it through the slit in the door. When the man didn’t take it Benji withdrew his hand, dismayed. ‘We were wondering if we could talk to you for a moment?’
‘WHAT ABOUT? WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT?’
Benji looked at me. I looked at the old man, our eyes meeting.
‘Well,’ Benji said, ‘you sir live in a very unique property—’
‘I AIN’T SELLIN’! I AIN’T GONNA SELL, GODDAMNIT!’
‘No sir, you misunderstand me. Something very interesting happened in your apartment once. We were just hoping you would let us inside so we could have a look around and take some pictures.’
Benji held up his camera.
‘You gonna give me that camera?’ the old man asked, a hint of a smirk on his face.
‘Ah, no, but I can give you something for your trouble.’
Benji pulled out his wallet and removed a ten dollar bill. The guy was obviously poor, and lonely. He’d be a pushover.
The old man stood for a moment, considering the proposition. I could feel the vilest heat radiating from inside and figured he didn’t have an air conditioner. I would have been just as happy had he turned us away on the spot.
‘Do you know me?’ he finally growled. Benji looked at me and we both shook our heads.
‘No sir, we don’t.’
‘You don’t know me?’
‘No. Should we? Are you famous or something?’
Another pause. ‘You wanna come in and take some photos. That’s it?’
‘That’s all we want to do, just take some photos of your bathroom.’
‘You ain’t from the estate agents?’
‘No.’
‘The government?’
‘No. We are—private operators.’
The old man extended a spotted hand through the crack in the door. Benji handed him the bill and he snatched it.
‘Any chance of some bath tiles?’ Benji asked.
I was sure the door would be slammed in our faces, but instead the man smiled and extended his hand again. Without hesitation Benji pulled out another ten dollar bill and stuck it in his scrawny fingers. The old man shut the door and we heard the sound of the last chain unlocking. The door opened. He stood in front of us in boxers and a stained white T-shirt, his ragged blond hair flecked with grey and a gnarled cigar in his hand. He stepped aside to let us enter.
‘Thank you very much, sir,’ Benji said, wiping his feet, the very model of good manners. The man put his hand roughly on Benji’s shoulder.
‘The name’s Hank, son,’ he said. ‘You call me sir again, I’ll knock your teeth through your goddamn head.’
‘Okay dude, it’s all cool,’ Benji said, holding up his hands. He looked back at me and grinned. I waited outside, frozen to the WELCOME mat. The man named Hank looked at me as Benji made his way around the apartment, picking up items and snapping pictures of light fittings and doorknobs.
‘You coming in?’ he barked.
I scurried inside, racing over to be close to Benji. The apartment was a mess. An old black-and-white television was propped in the corner, a coat-hanger for an antenna. There were empty bottles of wine on the floor. Next to a small desk by the window were stacks of newspapers. The ashtrays were full, and in some the embers were still smouldering. From the living room you could see the kitchen, the dishes piled high, the cupboards open and bare. Hank scratched his head and stuck the cigar between his teeth. He watched with curiosity as Benji took photographs, touched the surface of the walls and looked at the view from the window.
‘Are you reporters?’ Hank asked me.
‘Not reporters exactly,’ Benji butted in. ‘More like enthusiasts. Is the bathroom through here?’ Benji gestured to a closed door.
Hank nodded and smiled, amused. ‘You wanna photograph my shitter too?’
‘Would that cost me extra?’
The smile disappeared from Hank’s face and was replaced with an icy stare. ‘Are you some kind of wise-ass?’
‘He’s just playing around,’ I said. ‘The truth is, a famous movie star once lived in this apartment.’
‘No shit?’
‘His name was Bernie Bernall,’ Benji interjected once again. ‘He was one of the biggest stars of the silent era. Valentino had nothing on him.’
‘I ain’t never heard of him.’
‘Maybe he was before your time.’
‘So he lived here?’ Hank looked around his apartment, disbelieving.
‘Sure did. And he died here too. In there.’
Benji opened the bathroom door and went in. I stood waiting in the living room, while Hank went into the bathroom and looked over his shoulder. This was taking too long. I wanted to be out of that dirty apartment and back in the sunshine. Hank came back and stood beside me. I looked at the floor.
‘Gee, that guy’s music is pretty loud,’ I said, motioning to the apartment below.
‘The walls here are paper-thin,’ he grunted, stomping his foot. ‘Shut the hell up!’ he yelled, and abruptly the music switched off. ‘Damn kid, always plays his music too loud. So, you’re not in school?’
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?’
At this I laughed. ‘I think he just likes it. 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. Benji was staring at the sink. ‘It’s the original one,’ he whispered. ‘It hasn’t been replaced.’
I leant forward. It was definitely the original. There were even dark splatter stains along the rim. I looked at the floor. There were spots there too.
‘Whatcha lookin’ at?’ Hank asked, peering around the door.
‘Oh, nothing,’ I said. ‘Benji, you got what you need?’
‘Just a second,’ he answered, and snapped a few more shots. Hank wandered back out to the kitchen, clearly bored. I followed and watched him fill a kettle and place it on the stove.
‘You like tea?’ he asked.
‘Tea? Uh, sure.’
He took three mugs from the cupboard and placed a teabag in each. When Benji walked out of the bathroom and saw the cups he 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 said.
‘No, we can’t,’ said Benji quickly. ‘We have that thing we have to get to, remember?’
‘Oh, of course,’ I said, although I felt a pinch of guilt for skipping out on Hank so fast. He was obviously lonely and staying would have been the nice thing to do. But nice wasn’t in Benji’s repertoire.
‘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?’
‘Any number of reasons. Just, if it happens, give me a call.’
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. Hank caught my hand as we left, leant in close and spoke quietly into my ear.
‘That movie star,’ he said. ‘How did he die?’
I hesitated. ‘He killed himself.’
Hank let go of my hand, nodded, and went back inside. He slammed the door and I heard the locks turn once again. Benji was already down the stairs, photographing the front of the apartment block. I ran down to be with him, in the sunlight where it was warm and you could see the blue of the sky.
‘Damn,’ Benji laughed, as we drove back towards Hollywood. ‘And I thought Bukowski was dead.’
‘You didn’t have to be an asshole,’ I said. ‘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 wine 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 through the pictures. The bathroom in Hank’s apartment was small and cramped, tomb-like. 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 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, trying to shake Hank from my mind. ‘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 offence against God.’
I looked out the window at the tourists walking down Hollywood Boulevard, disposable cameras in hand, taking photos of the 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.’