Hidden Bodies

by Caroline Kepnes

  “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.

  “Yeah.” He laughs. “I figured you for a New York wigger pussy.”

  Wigger. This is why they need cameras on police cars and he finishes writing me up and it’s a jaywalking ticket, just like Harvey warned me about. I have to pay three hundred seventy-five dollars for crossing the street while the crosswalk was blinking, while there was not a single car in sight. This is wrong and the motherfucker says he’s keeping the headphones.

  “Because you’re a fucking tool bag,” he says. “This city doesn’t belong to you. This city belongs to the cars
and you can’t walk around here with your goddamn head up your ass.”

  “That’s not fair,” I say but I can’t fight with him. Not after I just killed fucking Henderson.

  “Oh and you better go to the DMV and register,” he says. “Fuckers like you, showing up here, refusing to register with the state, you’re no better than the beaners who think they can just come on over here and take our jobs.”

  Officer Robin Fincher spits at me as he gets into his cruiser with my headphones and I picture me joining forces with all the mentally delayed Americans and all the undocumented Mexican workers. We storm the shithole apartment in the Valley where he undoubtedly eats egg whites and spinach—he had something green stuck in his teeth—and lifts weights—his arms were unnecessarily jacked—and watches COPS.

  After I get home, I hide my Pantry bag in the top right corner of my closet. I shower. I dress. I go to Harvey’s office and tell him about this fucking cop and this fucking jaywalking ticket.

  He chuckles. “I told you to watch out,” he says. “Am I right or am I right?”

  Nobody has ever been so ready to leave Franklin Village as I am right now, but as soon I get into my apartment, Delilah barges in wearing last night’s Band-Aid dress. She’s sobbing and she flops onto my futon, hysterical, and fuck, I forgot I blew her off. I go to her and kneel. Mascara paints her face. Tears flow. She shakes. She drops her purse. She yanks the front of my shirt. There is something phony about her sadness because it feels like a display, like she could have taken a deep breath before coming here, like she wanted me to see her in this state.

  “Delilah,” I say. “Breathe.”

  But she sobs. I close the door and her teeth chatter and she doesn’t use words. She slips out of her pointy shoes and settles into the nook under my shoulder.

  “Delilah,” I say. “I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s wrong.”

  She rubs her eyes. She reaches into her purse and unlocks her iPhone—1492—and hands it to me. The headline reads: HENDERSON HOUSE OF HORRORS. I clutch the phone. Details are scant, but so far it seems like a sex party gone wrong.

  She leans into me, crying again. “I loved him,” she says. “I can’t, I can’t.”

  I hold her. I stroke her hair. But there is no way I am going to fuck her out of her celebrity death depression. If she came to me because her mother died, maybe, but this is ridiculous. She blubbers: “Will you take me home?”

  Home is upstairs and I pick up Delilah and carry her into the hallway and into the elevator and over the threshold into her apartment. “Over there,” she says, pointing to her bed, which is directly above my futon. I try to let go of her but she kisses me. Bold. “Make me feel good,” she says. “Please.”

  And before you know it, I’m fucking Don’t Fuck Delilah. Why not make things as bad as they can possibly be? Why not bang the stalker upstairs?

  “Joe,” she says. “Open your eyes.”

  I am inside of her and on top of her and I look at her. “Hey.”

  She pulls me closer. “My mom is coming next week,” she whispers. “She wants to meet you.”

  I stop pumping my dick. “I’m pretty busy.”

  She grabs my ass. “That’s cool,” she says, smothering my neck in Franklin Village slobber. “I get it.”

  We get back into it and it’s better than it was with Tinder-Gwen and I needed this release after the last hellish twenty-four hours but Delilah isn’t coming and I’m ready.

  “Come,” I say, and I don’t want to meet her mother and she claws my back, nothing.

  “Come,” I say, and I tug her hair and I bite her neck and thrust my thumb against her clit.

  “Come,” I say, and I pull her hair and I try not to notice the High School Musical promotional plates on her kitchen counter. Then I get it. She’s not coming unless I agree to meet her mother. She needs the hope of Sunday dinner with me, with her mom, family, Fast & Furious. “I can do dinner,” I whisper.

  Delilah comes, garbled and clingy and I get off her and stare at her ceiling, as unfortunately retro and shoddy as mine. She curls up to me and my arm is in a painful sleep under the weight of her heart, her postcoital rundown of her family, her know-it-all married sister, her fun-drunk mother, the one who wishes Delilah would just get married, as if that’s going to make everything all better.

  “You know, you’re good,” she says. “I’ve been with some pretty famous guys and you’re really good.”

  I go into Delilah’s bathroom, a carbon copy of my bathroom, a windowless vestibule, hell within hell. I take a shit. I don’t flush. I leave. An hour later, she texts me: I love that my bathroom still smells like you.

  My television set turns into an international funeral for Henderson. I killed Henderson and nobody knows it but everybody knows it. America mourns; his brother is in the service so this means that all the people who would usually take umbrage with coverage of a useless celebrity are on board. Not one bitter assistant comes forward to call him a douchebag. Hours pass. Delilah wants to come over that night; I tell her I’m sick. It’s impossible not to search for Amy on TV when the intrusive helicopters hover over Henderson’s house, even though logically I know she’s not there.

  Delilah writes back: Gotta get better for my mom. She can’t wait to meet you. Sunday Funday. Xx

  I remember telling Amy about my mom, how maybe we would find her and go to dinner. I wanted that the way you crave samosas at four A.M. for no reason. I hate love. I hate LA. Delilah leaves a care package at my door: kale soup, a Los Angeles Times, and a pack of Emergen-C.

  I want pizza and a New York Times and coffee. I order a large pepperoni and it’s late and cold and dry and overpriced. All the pepperoni fell to one side and the delivery guy says he could bring another, but it would take hours, timing is everything, bruh.

  He’s wearing a goddamn RIP Henderson T-shirt and life moves too fast. I killed him a few hours ago. The delivery guy smiles. “I got this at this joint on Vermont,” he says. “Cool, right? I mean, the shirt, not, you know.”

  “Yeah,” I say, realizing the weight of what I have done. Nobody made shirts for CandaceBenjiPeachBeck. Those people don’t have fans. In trying to assassinate the invisible, elusive Amy, I have killed a celebrity. The others I killed faded away the way grandparents recede into the old photos or pets just disappear. A famous person never disintegrates from the collective consciousness. Henderson is on TV, on T-shirts.

  Dr. Nicky Angevine is constantly trying to get out of prison and his sister-in-law has a website trying to raise public awareness, proclaiming his innocence. The American public doesn’t root for a shrink who cheated on his wife with a patient.

  But they do root for the comedian who set them free, who told them it’s okay to be narcissistic, to be a permanent guest. Me, me, me. It would be nice to have something alive to hold on to right now, something to love me, something with a beating heart that I can feel, something to be with me as I sit here, in hell, trying to figure it out. “Am I right or am I right?” I say aloud.

  But there is nobody here to answer the fucking question and this is why people have small dogs, why they trap them in their efficient apartments, because sometimes you need another living thing, you need eyes on you, even if the eyes belong to a fucking Pomeranian.

  15

  THE people who make it in Hollywood throw their new money north, up in the hills where they settle in mansions, where they can look down on everyone. But no matter how big you get, how high your house is, you can’t escape from the rats. Rats climb; they’re mobile. They aren’t bunnies. They don’t have a biological drive to burrow.

  Amy is a rat, scrounging, the kind of girl who bats her eyelashes on her first day of work and wants to know where the Alice in Wonderland worth a million dollars is. So of course Amy met Henderson at Soho House. I was wasting my time on Craigslist, at Birds. She got here, she got the fuck out of here, closer to 90210, to Soho House and that wealthy Westside dick she wanted so bad. And no doubt she’s s
till out there looking for it; that Peter Stark shirt is all ratty by now, but I bet she’s still wearing it.

  The traffic is hell and my driver just moved here yesterday so he took Sunset.

  “You maybe want to take a left, get on Fountain?” I ask the driver, the kid.

  He winces. “I’m really not good with left-hand turns and we have to make one when we get there.”

  Even this kid who just fucking moved here has that me me me disease and I let it go. At least I have an in. While the club is private, they do have events that allow common po’ folk like me to stream in. Today, for example, there is an audition for an indie film. The casting call is ridiculous, second person cuntiness:

  You are beautiful but you are ugly. You are life but you are death. You are the center and the outskirts. You are a paradox. You are mother and child and you are the reunion. You are TARA.

  SAG/Non-SAG

  Blondes, bring headshots

  The driver turns on his blinker and I get a pit in my stomach. The idea of seeing Amy after all this time is mind-boggling, to think of her, midhunt for rich dick, or possibly here auditioning for this movie, trying to be mother and child. Bite me.

  I emerge from my Uber and I do not take off my sunglasses and I move past the security guy and he doesn’t flag me. I am in the elevator. I made it. Three slinky Scandinavian girls pile in with me and they are giggling and they are my ticket so I smile.

  “Good morning, ladies.”

  The tallest one doesn’t blink. “Are you an actor?”

  “No,” I say. “I’m an agent.”

  They giggle more. The doors are closing but we are bombarded by two guys who are agents, smug, loud Muppet men.

  “I told him to fuck off.”

  “You told him to fuck off.”