Jake picked me up in the convertible which he’d cleaned especially for the day. A picnic basket sat in the back seat, a bottle of red wine next to it. He handed me a cheap satellite navigation box and I set a course for the Indian Dunes Park, an old dirt-bike trail in Valencia near the Six Flags Magic Mountain theme park. The sat nav told us it would take twenty-nine minutes to get there.
‘There are plenty of places to go for a picnic around here,’ Jake said as we drove past the local lake. ‘You sure with the price of gas you want to go all the way to Valencia?’
‘There’s something I want to show you,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll love it.’
We drove down the highway and the wind blew through my hair. The air was clear and as we drove past the mountains and valleys I was struck by how blue the sky was out here compared to in the city. Sitting in Jake’s convertible, driving up the San Diego Freeway, I felt cleaner than I had in years. I hung over the side of the car, letting my arms float on the breeze, and when I sat back I could feel Jake looking at me. I turned to smile at him, but he focused his attention on the sat nav, concentrating on the trail it was blazing for us.
‘You don’t have to look at it all the time,’ I laughed. ‘It tells you where you are. That’s the point.’
‘I know. I’m just worried because we’ve been driving for a while and I’ve seen nothing but desert and fields, and cows. A hell of a lot of cows.’
‘That’s where we’re going. A field. Well, a kind of park. I just hope we don’t have to climb any fences.’
‘Hilda, this isn’t one of your weirdo cultish places is it? Let me guess. There’s a hole in the ground out here where Charles Manson hid from the cops.’
‘It’s an old bike trail,’ I explained. ‘But it’s been used in heaps of movies. They filmed a lot of Vietnam sequences out here, because there’s a swamp and some palm trees. Ever see a movie called The Exterminator?’
‘Ages ago. It sucked.’
‘Well they shot all the Vietnam scenes from that movie here. They shot some of The Rocketeer here too.’
‘You’re not convincing me.’
‘Just wait until we get there.’
We drove on until the sat nav led us off the highway along a dusty dirt road towards the mountains. In the distance I could see a security fence but it didn’t worry me. It looked quite low and I’d manoeuvred myself through more difficult situations before.
‘So what do I do now?’ Jake asked as we pulled up to the fence, which I could see now was about twice my height. ‘I left my bolt cutters at home today.’
He stopped the car and shut off the engine. I pulled the picnic basket and bottle of wine from the back seat.
‘We jump the fence,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Come on Jake, live a little. I’ll go first. Hold this.’
I passed him the wine and before he had time to protest I was out of the car and in front of the fence. I threw the picnic basket over and it landed with a thud on the other side.
‘Thanks a lot,’ Jake moaned. ‘It took me all morning to make those sandwiches.’
‘You made sandwiches? Now I feel special.’
Just as I was about to haul myself up onto the fence, I remembered whose clothes I was wearing. I couldn’t afford to tear my mother’s dress and wouldn’t know how to explain it to Lynette. She knew I got up to some crazy things but I’m sure jumping fences wasn’t at the front of her mind. Without another thought I pulled the dress over my head and handed it to Jake. He took it and looked away.
‘What the hell? Are we going skinny dipping?’ he said, one hand over his eyes.
‘I don’t want to tear my dress.’
‘You’re crazy. You know that, don’t you?’
I grabbed onto the fence and pulled myself up, glad I had worn a matching bra and underpants. It only took one quick lunge and I was over on the other side, dropping to the ground next to our picnic basket. I stood up and dusted myself off. In the fall I had scraped my knee, and a small trickle of blood was making its way down my leg.
‘Are you okay?’ Jake asked, the wine in one hand, my dress in the other, eyes averted.
‘It’s just a graze. Throw my dress over.’
‘I don’t know if I want to,’ he grinned.
‘Jerk. Just throw it.’
‘How about I do this.’
There was a gap of about a foot beneath the fence through which Jake passed me both my dress and the wine.
‘What’s that?’ Jake asked, pointing at my side.
‘Just a scar.’
‘Pretty big scar. Were you a cage fighter?’
I pulled the dress back over my head. Jake paced behind the fence like a wild cat, running his hands through his hair.
‘Come on pussy,’ I yelled. ‘You wanna explore the jungles of Vietnam, or you want to eat tuna fish sandwiches in the car?’
Jake looked at the ground, took a step back, then charged at the fence with such ferocity I was sure it would fall over. I clapped my hands on my face.
‘That’s it!’ I yelled, impersonating a drill sergeant. ‘Come on soldier. How bad do you want it?’
‘I want it,’ he puffed as he reached the top.
‘I can’t hear you soldier.’
‘I WANT IT!’
Holding his hands triumphantly in the air, Jake took an almighty leap from the top of the fence and landed straight on his ass. As I helped him up I saw he had torn the back of his pants.
‘Looks like you’ve got a casualty there soldier,’ I said, putting my finger in the rip. He jumped back.
‘Shit. These are Dolce and Gabbana!’
‘Serves you right for wearing designer jeans to a picnic. This isn’t a fashion show.’
‘So we’re here. I still don’t see what the big deal is.’
‘Follow me.’
I took his hand and led him towards the thick of the jungle. He kept looking around as if we were going to be set upon by guards at any moment.
‘Are you sure this is safe? There might be security dogs, or worse. I’ve already ripped my pants, I don’t want my ass to get bitten off.’
‘It’s perfectly fine. There’s nothing of value here to protect, and who would be crazy enough to break into an old bike park?’
‘You would.’
We approached the edge of a steep ditch that sloped down towards a small swamp and more marshland. I put the picnic basket down and opened it. Jake had packed a blanket that I pulled out and lay across the dry earth.
‘Perfect position,’ I said as I looked out over the expanse of the Indian Park Dunes. I sat down and Jake followed, still brushing dirt off his pants and shoes.
‘I guess it does look a little like Vietnam,’ he said.
Birds flocked overhead and the wind rustled the trees. I screwed the lid off the wine and took a mouthful from the bottle.
‘Hey, I wasn’t sure if you’d be having any of that?’ Jake smiled.
‘Are you kidding me. After the week I’ve had.’ I passed it to Jake and he did the same. ‘It’s so peaceful out here,’ I said. ‘So isolated. I love it.’
‘You come out here often?’
‘Just once, with Benji. Did you ever see The Twilight Zone?’
‘The TV show?’
‘No, the movie. You know—Steven Spielberg produced it.’
Jake clicked his fingers. ‘I remember. John Lithgow played a guy who thought there was a gremlin attacking the plane he was on, and no one believed him. And Dan Aykroyd ripped his face off to show he was really a monster.’
‘And he says “You wanna see something really scary?”’
‘That’s right! That film scared the shit out of me when I was a kid.’
‘Do you remember the helicopter accident?’
‘Vaguely. Didn’t someone die while they were filming?’
‘They were shooting a helicopter scene at night that was set in the jungle in Vietnam. Vic Morrow, this old actor who thought the film was going to be his big comeback, was carrying two little kids across the river down there when a helicopter crashed right on top of them. Vic and one kid were decapitated. The other kid was crushed under the helicopter. The director was brought up on manslaughter charges but in the end everybody walked free. And it happened down there.’
‘Shit.’
‘Yeah. The poor special effects guys were the first to rush into the water to try and help the actors. They found Vic’s head and torso floating next to the kids.’
‘That’s messed up.’
‘Hey, Vic wanted a comeback. This way, he’ll be remembered forever.’
‘Great, as the man who was decapitated for starring in a shitty movie.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘He’ll still be remembered. You think people would have remembered him for being the guy who starred in The Twilight Zone movie? Hell no. But the guy who had his head cut off during filming? That’s a dude worth remembering.’
‘You really think that’s preferable?’
‘Of course.’
‘Sounds pretty warped to me.’
‘You wanna know why I’m so obsessed with dead celebrities?’
‘I would love to know,’ Jake said before taking a mouthful of wine.
‘It’s like, when I think about celebrities who have died, it makes me less scared of death, you know? If amazing people like John Lennon, and John Belushi, and Hitchcock have all died, then it can’t be that bad, right?’
‘It’s a little early to be thinking of death isn’t it?’
‘No, it isn’t. You can die at any time. Look at what happened to my parents.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Jake said.
‘Don’t be sorry. People die all the time.’
‘But that doesn’t make it any easier on you. It may happen all the time, but when it happens to you, it’s not a statistic. It’s your life. But your life doesn’t have to be all about what happened to your parents. It doesn’t all have to be about death.’
I stood and walked towards the edge of the cliff. I looked over at the palm trees, the sand dunes and the puddles of water left by the rain. It was strange to think that such a beautiful place had been the site of such calamity, chaos and pain. I thought of the movie crew dropping their cameras and running for the hills. I thought of the parents of the two little children who were killed. They were so excited their kids had a part in a movie.
‘I should have died that day too,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘The day my parents died. I should have died too. But I didn’t. Now death follows me every day. I feel it in my skin.’
‘You were in the car?’
I nodded. ‘We were driving home from my Aunt Lynette’s house. Dad had had a few drinks and Mom kept telling him to slow down. In hindsight I think he’d been smoking some of the whacky stuff too. He said he needed it to deal with my Aunt Lynette. He ran into the back of a truck that stopped too suddenly in front of us. The front of our car went straight under the truck. It stopped after the front seats. My parents were, well, decapitated is the best way to put it. Just like Vic Morrow. I didn’t have a scratch on me. I sat trapped in the backseat, looking at them for what seemed like an eternity. I couldn’t see their faces. All I could see was the back of their heads, crushed against the seats.’
‘Like Jayne Mansfield,’ Jake said.
‘Yeah. Just like Jayne Mansfield. So I figure, if Jayne died like that, then it must be okay, right? It’s not so bad.’
‘Hilda.’
Jake had turned pale. I sat down beside him. ‘I’m not telling you this to upset you,’ I said, ‘or to show off or try to shock you. I’m telling you this because I want you to understand who I am.’
‘I know who you are,’ he said, and slid his hand onto my neck. ‘You’re someone who looked after an old man when no one else gave a shit.’
‘I wish that were true. But Benji and me, we only went to Hank’s house to see where someone had died.’
‘But it’s more than that now. You know that.’
‘No. Hank just wanted to live the rest of his life in peace and I kept poking at him, and making him go out. And he got hurt, and now he’s miserable.’
‘Hank’s always going to be miserable. People find excuses to be victims. If it wasn’t the fact he was in a concentration camp it would have been something else.’
‘That’s not fair.’
‘Life’s not fair, but you have to deal with it. I could’ve used the fact that my parents were doped-up hippies as an excuse to drop out of everything, but I didn’t. That’s not me. I want to make my own way in the world. I want to write stories that inspire and move people, and make movies that matter. I want to be part of something. Think about it, Hilda. We can do anything we want. We’re alive aren’t we?’
I couldn’t disagree with that. We were alive, and we were still here. We had a responsibility to the dead to keep on living, no matter how painful. Jake squeezed my hand.
‘I think your parents would be proud of you.’
I looked away, over the horizon and the blue expanse of sky that led to the ocean and beyond. ‘Some days I wonder if my parents knew it was going to happen.’
‘How could they have possibly known that? It was an accident.’
‘I know, but you hear stories, about how people just get this feeling that it’s their time to go. Like there was this guy I read about in the newspaper who was totally healthy, worked out every day, went to his job at the office, then one day people started to notice this change in him. He started calling all the people he’d lost contact with, all his friends and family who hadn’t heard from him in ages, just to say hello and that he loved them. He started to smile more. He was nicer to his colleagues. He went out of his way to make people feel good, got them cups of coffee, all this stuff that was totally out of character. Two days later he died of a brain aneurism.’
‘That’s easy to explain,’ Jake said, putting his hands behind his head. ‘The dude clocked himself out.’
‘No, he didn’t. They couldn’t find any evidence of suicide.’
‘Well, then he probably knew he had the aneurism all along.’
‘But how do you explain the change in his behaviour two days before it happened?’
Jake smirked. ‘Maybe he was getting laid.’
‘No. Somehow he knew. I don’t know if it was, like, a change in his molecular structure, something on a biological level that made his cells get ready. Maybe it was something spiritual. Maybe the universe gets you ready.’ I chewed at my finger absent-mindedly.
‘Don’t chew your nails,’ Jake said. ‘There’s plenty of food here, why you gotta be eatin’ your hands all the time?’
‘Steven Spielberg chews his fingernails,’ I said.
‘And after you’ve won your first Oscar I’ll be a little more lenient on you; in the meantime those stubby little nubs are just grossin’ me out.’
I took my hand out of my mouth, wiped it on my leg and curled my fingers around Jake’s.
‘Ewww,’ he said, but didn’t try to take his hand away. Any thought of my parents disappeared as I tightened my grip on Jake. Together we looked in silence at the dunes, the curves in the dirt from its days as a bike park.
‘Say, isn’t this meant to be a picnic?’ I reminded him.
‘Of course,’ Jake said, letting go of my hand. He dived into the picnic basket and retrieved two sandwiches.
‘Tuna fish or egg salad?’ he offered.
‘Tuna fish. Egg gives me gas.’
‘Good to know.’
We ate our sandwiches, finished the bottle of wine and brushed the ants off as they marched up our legs. ‘This is actually a pretty place,’ Jake said. ‘I could think of worse places to die.’