The Last Days of Jack Sparks

by Jason Arnopp

  Hopefully, the worst of all the attempted seduction stuff is behind us, in that Year of Drugs, starting last June. The guy was a mess, coming back to the flat at all hours, waking me up. Sometimes, of course, I’d get wasted with him too (just drinking and smoking tiny bits of personal weed, in the unlikely event that the police end up reading this).

  I saw desperation in Jack. So much desperation. He really wanted, needed, to lose himself. I never figured out what happened last year to leave such a big, gaping black hole, but his tower of confidence crumbled right in on itself. I never asked why and even in his darkest hours he never told me.

  Whatever made him want to spend his days mashed out of his head stayed buried deep. So deep that he probably couldn’t access it himself. I wondered if it sometimes came out at night. I’d pass his door and hear him saying, ‘Sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry,’ in his sleep. Which was strange, coming from a guy allergic to apologies.

  Sometimes I even thought he wanted to die. When I had to call him an ambulance, I wondered whether he’d deliberately OD’d.

  I’m still amazed he believes I don’t read his books. Of course I bloody read them – they’ve got me in them! Ha, no, that isn’t the only reason, but it does make me laugh the way he pretends to be in love with me in print. He’s really dined out on that one. And of course, the most hilarious thing is how he presents me. He gets my basic personality right, I suppose, but the book version is a bit ‘manic pixie dream-girl’. When his fans meet me, they actually expect me to be (a) a redhead and (b) a fitness instructor! What’s wrong with (a) good old brown hair and (b) running the south-coast wing of a car-hire company?

  Exactly when did ginger hair go, in guys’ minds, from being the subject of playground taunts to this big fantasy thing?

  And did I once stick some orange dye on, because I felt like an extra bit of fan attention at one of Jack’s book signings?

  No, Diary: you did that, shut up.

  Best of all, in every single Sparks book I’m seen walking around the flat in my underwear, pouting at nothing. Some dirty-mac weirdo shuffled over to ask me about that at a signing. The guy looked gutted when I told him how the reality was a great big fluffy dressing gown covered in coffee stains. He didn’t want to hear how our flat’s central heating hardly ever works.

  Jack’s a good writer and I do feel proud to live with him. Sure, he lost his way creatively with the drugs book. It already seems to be his most popular, but that’s mainly because rubberneckers are queuing up to watch him implode. I just hope this supernatural book will set him back on the rails, even though I don’t understand why he’s doing it. You don’t see Richard Dawkins or Prof. Brian Cox travelling the world in search of ghosts, do you? It makes no sense, just like that whole thing with the medium, which I believe I’ve yet to document in these pages . . .

  After he came back from Italy and we went on the pier, I was all excited to tell Jack about this American medium woman who was performing in town the very next night. I thought she’d be a no-brainer for his book – talk about low-hanging fruit! Her show was a ten-minute walk from our flat and he could’ve ripped her to shreds. Maybe tried to interview her afterwards. So I was amazed when he didn’t go for it. And not only that, when I asked why, he kept changing the subject and even got a bit snappy. Weeeiiirrrd.

  So here’s this unstable, vulnerable, inexplicable guy who fancies me, even though the real me apparently isn’t fit for his readers’ consumption. I’m going to LA to spend a couple of weeks with him. We’re sharing a hotel room. You can’t tell me he doesn’t hope something’s going to happen.

  As you know, Diary, I fancied Jack when I first moved in. But then you get to know someone. I don’t mean his personality’s bad, even if he is basically an arrogant prick. I just mean . . . you see socks on the radiator. You come to see this person as a mate. And in a coldly self-preserving way, you know that if you did hook up and it all went wrong, you’d need to find somewhere else to live.

  So I don’t see Jack in that way any more.

  Hmmm. Do I?

  No, I don’t.

  I definitely don’t.

  I probably would go for a rebound something, but it shouldn’t be with Jack. It mustn’t be.

  I just wonder what kind of state he’s in. Did he suggest I come and see him for my sake or his?

  Oh Diary, you great big bundle of paper and ink. You’re therapeutic, but no substitute for a friend. You give no advice whatsoever. Wish I hadn’t alienated all my mates while loved up with Lawrence the Unfaithful.

  In two nights I’ll be there.

  Two. Nights.

  So, Los Angeles. What have you got in store for me?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  My hand is a rocket, shooting high as it can go.

  ‘I want to name the ghost.’

  All heads jerk my way.

  I can’t decide who’s the most affronted. Astral’s cheeks are red, but that’s nothing new. So it could be the blustery half-Mexican guy – the one I call Dragon Lord (2,080 followers) because I can’t be bothered to memorise his name. Seven Hollywood Paranormals is just too many.

  Perhaps Obligatory Goth (3,452 followers) takes the most offence. All hoity-toity intellect in a black Betsey Johnson dress lined with safety pins, she mimics me by raising a skinny arm sleeved with screaming ghost tattoos. ‘This isn’t a classroom,’ she says.

  Actually, I think the Waster (78 followers, hasn’t posted in four months) steals the pissed-off crown. That balding, beer-bellied, middle-aged mess. Spittle flies from his mouth as he clumsily demands to know why I should choose the ghost’s name. His stupid voice echoes Barney, that guy glued to Moe’s bar in The Simpsons.

  The whole experiment will take place in this small and barely air-conditioned meeting room, with its bracing view of a smog-choked freeway. In this building, you hire spaces by the hour. Whenever I want to smoke, which is often at the moment, I have to ride the lift seven floors down. Still, Astral insists, ‘A professional experiment requires a professional environment. When we post pictures and selfies, it’s vital that the background has the correct look.’

  We sit within a circle of technology. Besides the expected camcorder on its tripod (‘We put no footage online until the experiment’s done,’ Astral dictates, ‘but posts and updates are fine’), various blipping, flashing, humming, ticking machines feed off plug extension boards. Remember shoving spare electrical parts together as a kid and make-believing they were proper, working sci-fi equipment? That about sums up this tech. Pascal (735 followers) and Dragon Lord have summarised what each device does, but I was too busy blanching at the prospect of spending a total of nine days here. I suppose this contractual obligation is worth the lead on the video, but it’s only thinking about spending every night with Bex – starting tomorrow evening when I meet her at LAX – that keeps my pecker up.

  The room smells of takeaway. On our round table, beside the phones, the tablets and the netbooks, sit subs and soda and crisps and even a burger/fries combo. Guess who brought the fast food? Astral, the human washing machine. It’s like he gets off on people watching him masticate.

  Just ten minutes after our lunch meeting yesterday, the big galoot had divulged certain details of the conversation to his 8,341 followers. Social media means never having to write your own minutes. As agreed, I’ve given the Paranormals their precious public credit for the video revelation. Every hundred cycles of Astral’s busy lower jaw, regular as clockwork, these people consult their phones to check how my influence has boosted their popularity. As if they’ll ever be in my league.

  The Waster bleats on about how I should have more respect for group decisions, until Astral wisely cuts across him with more diplomacy: ‘I do think it would be best if we stick to making decisions as a group.’

  Dragon Lord arches a smug eyebrow my way. ‘There is no “I” in “team”.’

  ‘No,’ I reply. ‘But there is a “u” in “cunt”.’

  This very nearly derails the
whole experiment before it begins. For a start, there’s a Gatling gun salvo of tuts from Professor Stanley H. Spence (no online presence). The seventy-nine-year-old flew in from Toronto yesterday, and you sense that Hollywood is not the best fit for him on any level. Brilliantly, he’s the very image of an old-school American professor. He has the spectacles, the smartly trimmed white beard. Even the leather patches on the elbows of his tweed jacket. No bow tie, though. If he stops tutting, I may buy him one.

  Pascal cracks up, his laughter behind one cupped hand drowned out by uproar from Dragon Lord and Obligatory Goth. There is aggressive finger-pointing from the Waster and insistence from ministers’ boy Astral that such profanity has no place here. None of which stems my territorial pissing.

  ‘Listen,’ I say. ‘I’m going to name this ghost. We can collaborate on the rest.’

  There’s a great deal of what Sherilyn Chastain would call negative energy in the room. Dragon Lord breathes more fire over me. Most of the others study Astral, waiting for his response. Willing him to stand up to me.

  With one paw buried in a bag of Cheetos, Astral blows out a long, cheesy breath.

  ‘What would you like to call our ghost?’ he says, triggering more irritation. I catch Pascal still amused. He doesn’t give a shit. I like Pascal.

  Thinking fast, I pull something from the ether.

  ‘Mimi,’ I say. ‘We’ll call it Mimi.’

  You’d swear all air has been sucked out of the room.

  In space, no one can hear you ask Jack Sparks why he picked such a stupid name.

  ‘Mimi,’ Dragon Lord says, with the face of a fox being forced to lick shit off a wire brush. Which makes me all the more determined to stand by the name. Astral knows to pick his battles carefully. Without Sparks, the experiment’s visibility would be zero. With Sparks, there’s a ready-made crowd, downloading Conjuring Harold, learning what the seventies experiment was all about and anticipating this reboot.

  So I win my battle and Astral outlines the remainder of today’s task: creating Mimi’s character. She can’t be based on any real person. The whole point is that she’s fictional, ‘a product of our gestalt consciousness’.

  The first few times, whenever Astral and others say ‘Mimi’, they draw the word out, with resigned expressions. After that, the name becomes part of the furniture. Thanks to the weak air con, no one has the energy for sustained sarcasm.

  Having named the spook, I take little interest in the rest. And the process hardly grips everyone else. If the prospect of a ghostly manifestation in this room is the Hollywood Paranormals’ idea of heaven, then manufacturing the ghost’s details is the long, hot car journey required to get there.

  Harold, the imaginary ghost dreamed up by those crazy Canadians in the 1970s, was a married English aristocrat and all-round big girl’s Cromwellian blouse. When his gypsy mistress was burned as a witch, Harold killed himself in a fit of guilt over having allowed it to happen. Thankfully, room consensus deems historical figures pretty dull. Our Mimi turns out to have been born in the 1970s, only to die, we quickly decide, in the early 2000s.

  ‘Maybe she was in 9/11,’ offers the Waster. A faded The Truth Is Out There T-shirt suggests he holds dumb conspiracy theories about the tragedy. ‘She was bringing her husband some lunch when it all went down.’

  Obligatory Goth rolls her eyes all the way up to her drawn-on eyebrows. ‘Or maybe she, you know, worked there.’

  When we reject the Waster’s World Trade Center suggestion, he folds his arms tight and stares at his trainers. The man could only look more idiotic if his red baseball cap had a little twirly spinner on the top. He regularly fidgets with the insulin pump hooked to his waist. Lately, this device has been malfunctioning, feeding too much insulin into his bloodstream. Because of some alarmist article the Waster read online, he believes his noisy neighbour is hacking into his pump via Bluetooth and interfering with it, trying to put him into a coma.

  The Waster’s neighbour simply must be trying to kill the Waster, because the whole world revolves around the Waster.

  ‘Mimi was a drug addict,’ states Obligatory Goth. ‘The bassist in a big rock band, who fucked the frontman and got into all kinds of—’

  ‘But then we have to decide who the big rock band was,’ Astral warns, ‘and suddenly it’s not so fictional any more. Let’s stay vague.’

  Flashing those killer eyes of hers, Hot Mama (5,051 followers) says Mimi was a gifted singer and psychic who visited Kenya and got beaten to death for being a witch. She adds that this might connect our Mimi ‘rather nicely’ to Harold, as a tip of the hat. Fun trivia: Hot Mama was once a contestant on American Idol. You’d never know this, because she only mentions it twice-hourly.

  Dragon Lord says Mimi was a cinema usher who caught a bullet to the brain during a random shooting spree.

  When the Waster emerges from his sulk, he says Mimi played her music too loud. Her neighbour complained repeatedly until finally he shot her dead on her front driveway.

  Astral thinks Mimi was a competitive eater who appeared at big events across America, only to one day choke to death when two hot dog buns filled her windpipe.

  The seventh and quietest Paranormal, Soldier Boy (2,672 followers), is the kind of crew-cut jock who would have beaten the stuffing out of the other members at school. Having returned from Laghman Province three weeks ago, he looks dazed and hunkered back inside himself, as though real life is a bit much. Running a hand over his buzz cut, his biceps stretching the sleeves of his old American Eagle T-shirt, he says Mimi was blinded by an IED in Afghanistan, then committed suicide after a few months of PTSD back home.

  I tell everyone how Mimi was a journalist who set out to write a book in which she travelled across America on a pogo stick, only to get flattened by a ten-ton truck.

  None of the ideas are well received. People debate, then argue. Professor Spence notes that ‘In the original Harold Experiment, Harold was actually created by one nominated outsider,’ but his words are lost in the mayhem.

  Of course, our phones slow the whole process down, but that’s just the way it is. When Astral sees an online report that a disturbed man has climbed the Hollywood sign, we all scan social media for reports, then watch live feeds of police negotiators trying to talk the guy down. The air hums with invention as we try to think of the funniest online comments to make. Needless to say, mine is by far the best, even if some spectators find it distasteful given that the guy jumps and dies.

  Professor Spence clears his throat loudly. He notes that focus is ‘absolutely key’ to this experiment and that there were no websites or smartphones in the seventies. The only answers to his points are more screen taps and swipes, along with the unabated hiss of more live-streaming footage. This, in case Spence hasn’t noticed, is not the seventies. Not some restaged period piece. As the old man struggles to comprehend the strange new era in which he finds himself, I wonder when this lone time traveller will tire of us.

  Like most things generated by committee, the character we finally sketch out for Mimi is beige. Something about how she’s an office worker trapped in a loveless marriage who somehow ends up dead. Then we head off to celebrate in a bar. The professor declines to join us, his consternation palpable.

  The menu flaps in my hands, literally a newspaper without the news. It lists hundreds of food items across so many big pages. Hinge this monster open and you can’t see anyone or anything else. Which proves handy when you want to hide Dragon Lord’s permanently disgruntled and punchable face.

  ‘Didn’t see that sucker punch coming with your YouTube video, huh, man?’ he crows, from behind the page I’m examining dedicated to tacos. ‘Made in Hollywood, baby. Made in Hollywood.’

  The life and colour of Barney’s Beanery swirls around our table. It’s a bar with a restaurant or a restaurant with a bar, depending on your needs. A really fun place, with retro arcade machines at the back. I vow to beat the living shit out of Dragon Lord later. On Donkey Kong.

&n
bsp; Pascal asks if I’m happy now that I know where the video was shot. He wants everyone happy, all the time, but I don’t have an easy answer. At first, I doubted the little guy’s conclusion, but then I took a closer look at his PowerPoint presentation, right there in the booth at Mel’s Drive-In. I checked out the companies’ websites for myself and it all tallied.

  Now I’ve had a day to think about it, the video’s origin isn’t such a big coincidence after all. I mean, if I’d gone to Helsinki or Guam and the video turned out to have been shot there, my brain would’ve fallen out the back of my head. But Hollywood, land of fiction? Not so surprising.

  ‘Hollywood makes it so much more likely that the video’s fake,’ I tell Pascal, as the others earwig in. ‘It’s probably a fucking viral, for Paranormal Activity 17 or something. And I’m the mug who’s been conned into promoting it.’

  Bullets of opinion whizz past my ears. Like Astral, both Hot Mama and Soldier Boy believe the video genuine. Dragon Lord, the Waster and Obligatory Goth, cynics after my own heart, laugh and tell me it’s ‘totally’ man-made. It’s not even as advanced as viral clips they’ve seen in which a golden eagle snatches a kid in a park or an ape takes an AK-47 off a bunch of African soldiers and promptly goes apeshit. CGI, they say, is now so sophisticated that anything can be achieved. My video, in comparison, would be ‘a cakewalk’, whatever the hell a cakewalk might be.

  Pascal perches on the fence, saying he’s reluctant to make a definitive call, but something about it undeniably ‘spooks’ him. Sherilyn Chastain’s love child, ladies and gentlemen.

  The Paranormals love to talk. At any given point, at least two of them are jawing off at the same time, in the same conversation. Words collide, chopped into useless salad. Throw a huge character like me into the mix and you have cacophony. I tend to trip the conversation up anyway, because these people do that American thing. That thing where I start talking in an English accent and they do a double-take. They pay extra attention, as if I’m actually speaking Russian.