“Let’s get you hydrated,” I say.
He stops screaming. He nods. “Dude,” he says. “Believe me, brother, I know this city makes you crazy, okay? I get it. We can work this out. You might even be onto something here. You know, and if that’s what this is, if this is a pitch, we can talk about that. Fuck it. We’re almost there, right?”
He says this like it’s a good thing and I’m glad the water is strong and deadly. This man is no good for this world. He brings out the worst in women and his fifteen minutes have gone on too long. I pick up his metallic water bottle and pour the Percocet water into his mouth. He coughs and sputters. But he drinks. A lot. His pupils shrink and his breath grows shallow and his eyes roll around. I tie a plastic bag around his head. I go to the bathroom and write down the names of all of his skin care products. Everyone will remember him for his stupid fucking talk show but I will remember him as the man who made me realize that I need to take better care of my skin. I also remember that I have to cut his cable ties.
By the time I’ve catalogued the products in my notebook app, he’s dead. I say a mourner’s kaddish. I’m not sad. Henderson got a fuck of a lot done here on earth. Better he die now than unknowingly pass on an STD to some hopeful girl with low self-esteem or become fat and irrelevant and begin the inevitable landslide toward the cancellation of his stupid fucking show, his deterioration into that guy who had that show. It’s just basic physics. He was too high. He came down.
Downstairs, the house smells like guac and beer. Somebody threw a pizza at the print of John Belushi’s face. I don’t know if it was intentional or accidental but I do know that nobody bothered to clean up the mess. Assholes. All of them. But at the same time, I’m grateful that people are pigs. I glove up and gather leave-behinds—lipstick-stained cups, sweaters, a bra from the office, and bowls of M&M’s—and I take them upstairs to make a DNA sex party in the bed. We all know how many fingerprints there must be in a fucking bowl of candy, on a bottle of wine, and this will look like some classic, deviant Hollywood orgy gone awry. I seize the headphones (they are mine now) and I leave his Jersey Boys soundtrack on. Let the world know that the man didn’t bring his new and cool work home with him. Let them know he had an old heart. I take two of his brand-new T-shirts, tags on, then I send an empty bubble from his Twitter account. His last word is silence.
His final Tweet blows up, with people retweeting and favoriting it even though it means nothing. I get it. His silence is an invitation for others to project their voices onto him. Overthinking cultural critics will elaborate on this tweet in Salon, in Slate. The man who never stopped tweeting sent an empty bubble minutes before he died. The symbolism! His tragic sex-death will move the masses and people will learn from him, and in this way he’s a lucky guy. If there’s a heaven, he’s probably going in spite of what he said about me.
On my way out, I buy the Jersey Boys soundtrack on my iPhone; it’s a long walk down the hills and I needed this. We are built to walk. Not to SoulCycle and jog and hike. Walking is mental. You sharpen your thoughts and process your emotions.
I didn’t kill Amy, but I found her. Soho House. Of all the places. I should have known that she’d go west. She’ll never stop going west, looking for someone richer, someone better. She has a disease, like an animal that can’t stop roaming. But I’ll stop her soon, after I shower, after I rest.
I turn up Bronson and it’s so early that nobody else is up except for a couple of joggers. I debate going into the Pantry, but I go there too much. It’s time to mix things up. I cross the street and Hollywood Lawns is in sight. A police cruiser veers around the corner, the red and blue lights flashing. It pulls up onto the sidewalk and suddenly the cop is out of the car, pointing a gun at me. I set my reusable Pantry bag on the pavement and I hoist my hands into the air. And I don’t fucking know how, but I’m caught.
14
A bitter piece of shit named Officer Robin Fincher grabs the headphones off my head. He has shitty Bakersfield blond hair, the sort better off concealed beneath a dirt bike helmet. His eyes are too close together. At some point, someone in his bloodline fucked someone he wasn’t supposed to fuck and the genes were compromised. His skin is rough and he’s bad at shaving and the world is not fair. Even with all Henderson’s products, this Fincher would still be a cretin.
“Shut it and turn around,” he grunts.
I don’t know what he wants with the headphones and I don’t know how he found me and I don’t know what he knows. But I do know that Henderson’s shirts are in my bag. I’m aware of them, as if they were flashing lights.
“Turn around,” he commands.
I obey. I stand here, fucked. It’s that time of day when the sun is a zombie from a ’50s horror movie, slowly intensifying, creeping up on me, my exposed cheeks, my nose. My stomach clenches and my palms sweat but I did my job up there. I left no prints. I left no mug of piss.
“Officer,” I say, projecting innocence, fake it till you make it. “Can you tell me what this is about?”
Fincher walks toward his car, his footsteps heavy on the pavement. “This is about you being a fucking prick, so shut it and wait like I said,” he calls.
He didn’t say this was about a murdered millionaire in Los Feliz, but he walks back over and grabs my arm and I’m pretty sure you’re not allowed to do that.
“Gimme your license.”
I give him my license. He huffs. “New York,” he says. “Fucking figures.”
I will not let relief appear on my face. But I am relieved. This is not about that dead man in the hills. If this were about that dead man up there, this cop would be cuffing me, not bashing Manhattan. I get my bearings as my reactionary adrenaline subsides.
“Walking around like you own the place,” he sniffs. “Fucking typical.”
I wish he could meet the nice cop in Rhode Island and see how it’s done. People think cops are bad and this fucker should be fired because of all the good cops out there who follow the rules and risk their lives to serve and protect people.
He sneers. “You live here?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You live in this hood?”
“Yes, sir,” I say. “I live in Hollywood Lawns.”
“Then why the fuck do you have a New York State license?”
Are you fucking kidding me? “Well,” I say. “I’m just here for a little while.”
“You a hobo?”
Hobo? “No, sir,” I say. “I’m a writer.”
He swallows and I know; this man is an actor. Calvin gets the same look when someone, anyone with the potential to hire him, enters the shop. “On a show or some shit?”
“No,” I say. “I’m just trying it out.”
He spins away and I step toward him. “Officer, can I ask what this is about?”
“Did I tell you to move?”
“No,” I say.
“And are you deaf?”
“No,” I say.
“And are you a fucking ’tard?”
Who the hell says that? “No,” I say. “I’m not a fucking ’tard.”
He storms up to me and gets in my face. “You think it’s okay to verbally assault a police officer?”
“No,” I say through clenched teeth.
“You think you’re some tough-ass New York scum bag transient hobo motherfucker and you can cross state lines and flap your ugly gums at a California State policeman?”
“No,” I manage.