I lay on my bed, turning the tile over in my fingers. It was, without a doubt, the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I’d heard stories of people jumping the fence of Mansfield’s house to retrieve whatever they could from the wreckage of the demolition: tiles, concrete, even the pool hand-rails. But I didn’t know anyone who had a tile that Jayne had held in her hand, actually given to someone to express her love, gratitude and respect. Maybe I was romanticising Jayne’s relationship with the men who built her pool but it seemed such a symbolic gesture.
At least, that’s the way I felt when Hank handed it to me, bestowed it upon me. I felt like I’d been given a portal to another time, a key to history. Sure, Mansfield was a chick with big boobs and a bad peroxide job, but she grabbed this town by the balls, shook down Hollywood and took whatever she wanted, and went out like a true legend. I guess I should have been proud my parents departed the earth in so similar a manner to Jayne. Sometimes I almost felt jealous I had been denied my own glorious Hollywood Death Trip. Sometimes I wished I had died along with them.
I wrapped the tile in cottonwool from the bathroom, and placed it in a small, wooden heart-shaped jewellery box on my shelf with the rest of the collection. I went to sleep. That night I had a terrible dream: the earth in front of Mann’s Chinese Theatre had cracked open, an enormous canyon running the length of Hollywood Boulevard. The entire sky turned from blue to pink, and the sun was a flaming red ball hovering above the Hollywood sign. Tourists flung themselves into the gaping hole, disappearing into the centre of the earth, clutching their cheap souvenirs to their chests. Photographers lined the edges of the hole, taking pictures with archaic cameras that had enormous flash bulbs, yelling after the tourists to give them their best look. The people smiled and positioned themselves midair for the photographers, striking exaggerated poses during their descent, and I flung myself in after them, flashing a winning smile on the way down. When I looked up I saw Benji at the edge of the canyon, snapping photos of my descent with his camera, and I screamed for him to help but he didn’t hear me.
The next morning when I woke all I could think about was Hank and the tile. I leapt out of bed, pulled on some jeans and an old Ramones T-shirt, and called a cab. The morning sun was strong: I thought of babies left to bake in cars, dogs tied to chain-link fences with no water bowls. By the time I arrived at Hank’s I was in a daze, propelled by a sense that there was nowhere else I wanted to be, nowhere else I was meant to be. When I got to the top of the stairs, the door was already open and I could see Hank inside on his sofa in front of the television. I tapped on the door and he looked up.
‘You’re here early,’ he grunted, as if he’d been expecting me all along.
‘I know. I, uh, wanted to ask you about Jayne Mansfield.’
‘Why don’t you come in then?’
I stepped inside. I heard familiar dramatic music coming from the television, then the wail of an ambulance siren. I looked at the screen.
‘Rebel Without a Cause,’ I said as I sat down. It was the end of the film: James Dean was standing outside the planetarium, defeated, his best friend wheeled away in a body bag. ‘This is my favourite James Dean movie.’
‘Humph,’ Hank snorted. ‘Everyone goes on about James Dean being this big legend and all, but he was nothin’ but a little freak. Seriously, that kid was messed up in the head. I used to clean rooms at a crappy two-star hotel down Sunset Boulevard. I caught him crawling through one of the room windows one night, naked. He saw me and just laughed, basically swung his prick at me so I’d get a better look.’
‘Wow.’
‘Yeah, wow.’
On the television the ambulance drove off, siren blaring, and the words THE END appeared on the screen. Hank stood up, his back creaking, and shuffled into the kitchen where he put the kettle on.
‘Did you meet anyone else famous?’ I asked.
‘Sure. Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Lauren Bacall, Jerry Lewis—’
‘Holy shit. I’ve lived here all my life and the best I saw was Paris Hilton at a frozen yoghurt stand.’
Hank brought two cups of tea over and handed one to me. He was about to sit down when something stopped him. He glanced at the front door, hesitated, then wandered over and snapped the deadlock shut on the screen.
‘They weren’t anything to get excited about,’ he said, groaning as he finally settled back down. He was wearing boxers and an old T-shirt, and his hair was sticking up like he’d put his finger in a socket. ‘Just ’cause you’re famous doesn’t make you less of an asshole, or a bore.’
The apartment felt like the inside of an incinerator. ‘It’s so hot in here,’ I said. ‘How can you stand it?’
‘Heat don’t bother me one bit. Where I grew up, it was so cold your balls would crawl up your ass just to get warm.’
‘Where was that?’
Hank changed to a news channel, raised the volume. A police chase was taking place a few blocks from where we were, the news helicopter trailing a red station wagon as it swerved across town.
‘Idiot,’ Hank snarled. ‘I hope he crashes and kills himself before he gets a chance to kill anyone else.’
We watched the car chase for a bit until the driver was brought down by a strategically placed stop stick.
‘So, you wanna tell me more about this guy who knocked himself off in my bathroom?’ Hank said. ‘This Bernie guy?’
‘Bernie Bernall,’ I said, repeating what Benji had told me, and what I’d found on the internet. ‘He was a big movie star there for a while, but his voice was no good for the talkies. No one would even speak to him anymore. His face also got burnt in a fire, and he was diagnosed with cancer, so I guess he had plenty of reasons to be depressed.’
‘The guy was a pussy if you ask me. People have to live with much worse than what he went through. So your face gets a little singed, so what? No reason to carve yourself up like a Christmas turkey.’
‘People have killed themselves over less.’
‘Boo-hoo.’
‘Just because he was famous doesn’t mean his life was great. The studios were really evil in those days. They got Judy Garland hooked on drugs, and drove Marilyn Monroe to suicide. Well, them and the Kennedys.’
‘If I had all that money I wouldn’t have a goddamn care in the world.’
‘Was Jayne Mansfield happy?’
‘As far as I could see, she was having a ball. She enjoyed every minute of it.’
‘So do you think it was her time to go?’
Hank gave me a peculiar look. ‘You driving at something?’
‘You know how when people die we always say it was meant to be? No matter how terrible it was, or out of the blue, that it must have been their time to go, you know? That it was meant to happen.’
‘Weren’t nothin’ poetic about her death,’ he said. ‘There was no good damn reason in the world that a lovely lady like that gotta be taken in such a horrible way. Did you see what happened to that car she was in? I’m surprised anyone survived that. Those poor damn kids in the back.’
‘You got a wife Hank?’
‘Nah. Don’t need the aggravation.’
‘No wife? Kids?’
Hank cocked his eyebrow at me. ‘You think I’m father material?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know you well enough yet to make that judgment call.’
‘What you see is what you get.’
I doubted that. Hank thought I hadn’t noticed him change the subject when I asked where he was from.
‘What about you?’ he asked, turning the tables. ‘You got a family?’
‘Just my Aunt Lynette. She’s a pain in the ass.’
‘She’s probably fed up with you bringing that creepy kid home.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with Benji,’ I said, once again leaping to his defence. It seemed like I spent half of my life defending Benji.
‘Yeah, and I’m pitching for the Yankees at the next world series.’
‘You’re pretty creepy yourself if you ask me.’
At this Hank laughed, almost bellowed. ‘Did you say you wanted to watch a movie?’ he asked, wiping his eyes.
‘Okay.’
‘Pick one.’
I looked at the small collection of old VHS tapes. Some of them had been purchased from video stores and still had price stickers on them. I couldn’t bear to imagine what kind of state they were in.
‘You haven’t thought of upgrading to DVD?’ I asked as I crouched down to get a closer look at what was on offer.
‘Do I look like I got money for DVDs?’
‘Fair enough.’
We watched Double Indemnity, one of my favourites, and whatever tension was between us melted away. I was a firm believer in the unifying force of art in all its forms: the way a shared love for a movie, book or a song could transcend all other obstacles in a relationship.
I’ve always equated people and experiences with the cultural references we shared or conjured up. Hank himself reminded me of a song by Tom Waits, or a novel by John Fante. For all his cragginess there was an underlying soulfulness, his words floating on the air like the music of a raspy trombone, or a wailing saxophone. There was something poetic about his absolute disdain for the world, a view based not on ignorance but experience, the experience of living so many years in a world that was indecent and deceptive. I wanted to know what had happened to make him that way. I wondered if it was as bad as what had happened to me.
The movie ended.
‘Hey Hank,’ I said, turning way from the television, ‘tomorrow Benji and I are going to check out this house where this writer died. It’s just in West Hollywood. Maybe you wanna come with us?’
‘And why the hell would I wanna see a thing like that?’
‘I don’t know. I just thought, it isn’t that far from here, and you might find it interesting. The guy who was murdered used to write for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and Lassie.’
‘Lassie huh? How’d he die?’
‘Someone cut off his head.’
Hank grimaced. ‘I’ll pass.’