Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
The thing about death is that it’s an everyday occurrence. Somewhere, generally somewhere far away, it’s happening. It’s normal. Except, of course, when it’s you or someone you care about, then it’s not normal. After Finn died, after I calmed down, things felt kind of normal. He was a stranger, after all. But then, he was also in a room nearby. Less than a fifty feet away. That definitely was not normal.
I put the syringe into one of the Trader Joe bags we’d brought with us and went out to the stage area. Louis and Eldridge had already set everything up for the omelets, and he was ready to start cooking. Which was very Louis — and so, very normal.
Donald, Ed and Ricky stood near the camera equipment. Marc and the girls hovered near the risers. Louis said loudly, “If anyone wants an omelet, come and get it.” The suggestion was so normal it seemed abnormal. No one moved.
“What did you find out?” Louis asked, under his breath.
“Amber gave him the drugs.”
“Oh my God,” Eldridge said. “That’s just like Cathy Smith.”
“Who’s Cathy Smith?” Louis asked.
“The woman who killed John Belushi.”
“Aren’t you a little young…”
“He was a very precocious eight-year-old,” I explained.
“So you found drugs in her bag?”
“Just a syringe,” I explained. “She came back, and I had to hide in the bathroom.”
“She didn’t find you?”
“No. She was too busy talking to Finn’s corpse.”
“Okay, that’s creepy,” Louis said. “Did she admit what she did?”
“Not exactly. Mostly she was just excited about how great dying is going to be for Finn’s career.”
“She already made that clear.”
“To us,” I pointed out. “Then she made it clear to Finn’s corpse.”
Louis shivered, then said to Eldridge. “I’m a little thirsty. Would you grab me a 7-Up from the back? And maybe bring out a selection of sodas in case anyone else wants one. And evian.”
Eldridge nodded, then winked at me as he walked away. As soon as he was out of earshot, Louis said, “Thank you.”
“What for?”
“Eldridge is amazing. He does everything I ask him to. So much better than Leon would have been. That was a misguided idea.”
“He asked me out.”
“Leon?” Louis couldn’t help smirking even as he said it.
“Shut up.”
“So… tell me your plans. First dates are very important. Make it memorable. My first date with Marc… Well, after we met at The Gauntlet and tricked… Our first real date was an afternoon at LACMA staring at beautiful paintings and then dinner at El Coyote. Followed by two blissful days of fucking.”
I really wished Marc was nearer to us so he could say, “Louis!” But he wasn’t so I went with, “Okay—TMI!”
He stared at me a moment, and then said, “Oh God, you told him no.”
“There are so many reasons not to go out with him.”
“There are always reasons not to do things. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do them.”
“Things don’t go well for me.”
“Things don’t go well for anyone… until they do.”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“Noah, bad luck is not a personality trait. It’s entirely possible—in fact, I would say likely—that nothing bad will ever happen to you again.”
“Really?”
“Okay, you’re right. Something bad will happen to you and me and Marc and everyone, but that doesn’t mean you won’t also have good things happen to you. Eldridge is a good thing.”
I couldn’t agree with that or disagree, so I kept quiet for a moment before I said, “No one’s eating. How long do we have to stand here?”
“Relax. If I cook it they will come,” he said.
Out of the corner of my eye, I’d been watching Donald encouraging Ed to come over and get an omelet. He walked over.
“I’m supposed to ask for an omelet, but it feels weird,” Ed said. “I mean, someone died.”
“Yeah, and when someone dies people eat,” Louis said. “A lot. Wakes. Shivas. Casseroles. Hell, people used to eat each other’s sins.”
“I guess you’re right. I hadn’t thought about it like that.”
“What would you like in your omelet?”
Ed looked back at Donald. He really had to order it whether he was going to eat it or not. “Um, I guess some cheese and maybe bacon.”
“Feta or cheddar?”
“Cheddar.”
Louis got to work putting butter in the pan, cracking the eggs, beating them in a metal bowl. Eldridge came back with sodas and water in a tub of ice. I wondered if I should be serving more coffee. But then Eldridge smiled at me, and I forgot what I was thinking about. Behind me, Louis flirted with Ed.
“So, how did you end up here?” Louis asked. I swear he was about to bat his eyes.
“I started working at the Juicy Juice in North Hollywood.”
“Recently? So, you don’t know the Barclays well?”
“No, I don’t. I mean, they seem nice.”
That wasn’t exactly the word I’d use. But then Donald was only thirty feet away, so it wouldn’t be wise to use the word I would use.
“I’m surprised they don’t have you making the juice drinks,” Louis said.
“Somebody’s gotta carry stuff.”
“Ah… One of life’s basic rules: Somebody’s gotta carry stuff. What did you do before Juicy Juice?”
He shrugged. “I was learning to be a carpenter, but I haven’t been able to get on anywhere since the quake. Foundations are where it’s at. But I don’t know anything about concrete.”
I’d never thought of concrete as a difficult subject.
In a very showy move, Louis flipped the omelet. Eldridge handed him a paper plate and he slid the omelet onto it. I picked up some plastic cutlery wrapped in a paper napkin with a blue ribbon on it and handed it to Ed.
When he took it, I noticed that there was a blurry tattoo at the base of his thumb: five dots, like the number five from a pair of dice. I wondered what that meant.
“Take a soda if you’d like,” Louis said. “Or I can make you a Juicy Juice?”
“A Juicy Juice isn’t really a treat for me. I’ll just grab a soda.”
After picking out a soda, Ed walked back over to the camera and sat down on the case it came in. He seemed to deflate the minute he sat.
I said to Louis, “You’re a terrible flirt.”
“You are,” Eldridge agreed.
“I’m not a terrible flirt, I’m an excellent flirt. And maybe I wasn’t flirting. Maybe I was gathering information. You might be wrong. What if Amber didn’t give Finn the drugs? What if Ed did?”
“Why do you think I’m wrong? I found a syringe in her bag for God’s sake.”
Then Louis said, “I didn’t say I think you’re wrong. I said what if . That’s different.”
“I think it’s very unlikely Ed showed up here with drugs and gave them to someone he didn’t know.”
“Except we all knew Finn had a drug problem before we showed up. Maybe he came prepared. Maybe he wanted to get to know Finn? Did you see the prison tattoo?”
“Prison?” Well, that would explain why the tattoo was so blurry. Didn’t they make them with razor blades and ballpoint pens? “Just because he was in prison, doesn’t mean… Did you see Ed and Finn near each other?”
“No. Did you? Did either of you?”
I rolled my eyes, and then Ricky was standing there.
“Three eggs, lots of bacon, lots of cheese, spinach…” He looked over the other options Louis had put out, and then asked, “You have bagels?”
“We have scones.”
“Yeah… What’s that?”
“Like a biscuit.”
“Couple of those. Dead people make me hungry.”
“You’re gonna have a lot of protein on your plate,” Louis said, as he beat the eggs.
Like, duh, he was a body builder. I thought we were probably lucky he didn’t ask to drink his omelet raw à la Rocky.
“I’m gonna slip in a workout when we break out of this place and then crash for most of the day.”
Unexpectedly, Eldridge asked, “What does it feel like, knowing everyone everywhere has seen your dick?”
“Eldridge!”
“Sorry. I promised Ryan I’d ask.”
“It’s not that weird,” Ricky said. “What is weird is that I had to pay so much tax on the money I made. I got taxed for showing my dick. There’s something really wrong with that. I mean, it’s not work.”
“Yes, but… It’s called income tax, not work tax,” I pointed out. That earned me a dirty look.
Louis flipped Ricky’s omelet onto a plate. Not as elegantly as the first one, since this one was much bigger. I handed Ricky cutlery, Eldridge gave him an evian, and then he walked away.
Then Grace was there asking, “Can you make an egg white omelet?”
“Of course. What would you like in it?”
“Nothing with fat. I struggle with my weight. Do you have any nondairy cheese?”
“No, I don’t. Avocado?”
“It doesn’t matter where the fat comes from. Fat is fat. And could you use something other than butter in the pan?”
“Absolutely,” he said. Then he glanced at me in a way that told me I was going to have to distract her while he put butter in the pan.
“Not to be crass, but I think we all just hit a gold mine,” Grace said.
“Why do you think that?” I asked, adjusting my position so she had to look away from the frying pan.
“I’m here to promote my real estate business. It was good publicity before, but now it’s going to be great publicity.” Squinting her eyes at me, she said, “Did someone say you have a video store? You need to make sure people know you were here. When people find out Finn overdosed while shooting this, they’ll fall over themselves to watch his last appearance. There’s an angle for you to work…”
“But Amber doesn’t want people to know?—”
“That idea is not going to work,” she said.
“Because you’re going to tell the truth?”
“Are you going to lie to the police?”
I was tempted to say I’d never lie to the police, but in all honesty, I had lied to the police. A lot. Which didn’t mean I liked it. I answered her as best I could: “I don’t know.”
“Well, I’m certainly not going to lie to the police,” she said. “Mainly because I can’t trust the rest of you to lie. Amber can pay us, get us to sign legal agreements, threaten us, and someone will still tell the truth. That’s how people work. I’m not getting caught in a lie. So I’m not going to lie… Well, I’m going to lie to Amber. That’s just good business sense.”
Louis was plating her omelet, which he’d somehow made look appetizing, when Wendy came back saying, “If everyone would gather around. Kathleen would like us to join her in a prayer circle.”
I glanced at Louis and Eldridge, while Marc asked from the first row of the risers, “Do we have to?”
“Marc, is that your idea of a joke?” Wendy asked.
“I was going to ask you the same thing.”
“I’m only asking for a few minutes of your time. It’s not going to hurt anyone, and it will help Kathleen. She’s distraught. As I’m sure you all are.”
“I’m not distraught,” Keely said. “I haven’t seen Finn in fifteen years. He was basically a stranger.”
And then Kathleen and Heston walked onto the stage. She was walking slowly, deliberately, and was very pale. Or rather, more pale. She looked like a saintly zombie.
Everyone fell silent.
Now, here’s the thing about religion. If a friend was getting married in a church, I’d go. I’d sit and stand when asked, and I’d bow my head and pretend to pray. But praying with an adulterous televangelist, Kathleen True no less, who said terrible things and was likely to say something awful. Even in the space of just a few minutes. It was enough to make me sick to my stomach.
But not enough to make me actually say no.
When this was over, tomorrow morning—or rather this morning—I was going to have to call my mother. And after I gave her a moment-by-moment account of Finn’s death, I would ask her what it is she did to me as a child that made me be polite to horrible people. She was always polite to horrible people, maybe that’s where I learned it? But someday I wanted to unlearn it.
“If you’d all form a circle and hold hands.”
Grace said, “I’m sorry, I’m going to eat my breakfast. In my dressing room.” She walked off.
Ed and Ricky were basically finished with their breakfasts, so they had no excuse. We moved into the open space in front of the Guessmate? set.
Eldridge took my hand. There was no spark or chill up and down my spine. My heart didn’t start to race. His hand wasn’t overly hot or cold, it was just a normal hand attached to a cute young guy—and it felt completely right. So right that I almost pulled away.
The circle came together: Wendy and Donald flanking Kathleen; Ed, Keely and Meg came over; Ricky was eying everyone before he pushed his way between Keely and Meg, making sure there was a girl on each side of him. Marc took Meg’s and Louis’ hands. Louis took my other hand, while Eldridge had to hold hands with Wendy.
Notably, Heston didn’t join us. Defiantly, he leaned against the stand that held the television and VCR. It was taller than he was. Kathleen stared at him a moment, obviously deciding whether to cause a scene or not. She decided not.
“Let us pray,” she began. We all lowered our heads. “Dear Jesus, dear Lord above, merciful God, we call up on you to accept our dear, darling Finn into your bosom. Bring Finn home and give him a place in Heaven’s village. Forgive him, Jesus. He was a sinner, like all of us. He fell victim to the evils of Hollywood. The drink, the drugs, the fornication, the depravity . We have been led astray by those claiming they’re entitled to rights : women, Jews, homosexuals!”
Nearby, I heard Louis say under his breath, “Oh Jesus.”
“Yes, yes, oh Jesus, forgive our friend. Temptation lay everywhere and he could not resist.”
Honestly, it sounded canned. Like it was part of a sermon she’d done on her show. I noticed that she didn’t mention his dealer. Or the people who made money importing heroin, or whatever it was that Finn overdosed on. Or a government that was more interested in putting people in prison than helping them with their addictions.
I couldn’t resist raising my head slightly and looking around the circle. Everyone else dutifully had their head down. Even Louis. Then I noticed a tiny bit of movement outside the circle. Heston. I moved slightly to get a better view. He took the VCR remote out of his pocket and carefully, quietly, laid it on top of the machine.
Heston was the one responsible for the video of his mom and Finn. He must have been the one who shot it. Well, it made sense. If it happened at their house, he’d have been there.
Kathleen was still praying—or whatever. She was expanding on her theme: the evils of Hollywood, the Devil’s playground. Asking God to ignore Finn’s freewill and lay the entire blame at the feet of the entertainment industry—a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah. The sinful lure of fame and easy money that led Finn into the arms of Satan.
“Satan seduces with the promise of pleasure, but all he has to give is pain. The pain of being separate from God, the pain of living without God’s true love?—
“You know—” Meg said, stopping Kathleen cold. Kathleen gave her a death stare. Nervously, Meg continued, “I think it would be really nice if we went around the circle and said something about Finn, something we remember, something nice, something not about Satan.”
“Satan is real. Satan is always there trying?—”
“I’ll go first,” Keely said. “I was cast last. You’d all been rehearsing for a week. Finn was the first one to welcome me to the show. I never forgot that.”
“I welcomed you to the show,” Kathleen said.
“After everyone else did, and only because Wendy forced you.”
“I wouldn’t say forced ,” Wendy said. “That’s a little extreme. Suggested, maybe.”
“I remember… I always had trouble with the dance routines,” Meg said. “Finn used to help me rehearse them during breaks. He didn’t have to do that.”
Suddenly, Finn was seeming like a much better person than I’d thought. Kathleen took a deep breath, as though she might start to pray again, so I said, “I didn’t know Finn, but I really enjoyed Sleeping With Bees , and that romantic comedy he did, Heartfelt .”
“Oh yes, that was good,” Keely said.
Then Kathleen seemed to burst open, “Forgive him, Jesus! Forgive our Finn! Take him to your bosom. Take us all onto your bosom! We long to be with you. We hunger for your love, Jesus.” Her face wide open, she looked up into the lights above us, and said, “There! There it is! The golden light of Jesus.”
Okay, I couldn’t help but look. You know, just in case. And what I saw was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Just lights. Well, not just lights. There was a bit of movement, and I caught a glimpse of Amber on the catwalk. What was she doing up there?
“Jesus! Jesus, I see you! Our savior! Come to me. Come to me, Jesus!”
I looked back to Kathleen; her face was enrapt. She said in a trembling voice, “We are blessed! We are the chosen!”
And then she threw up.