by Alan Emmins
“Two hours max,” said Neal, taking on a more serious tone. “He was good enough to stay in the bathroom, so this will be fast and easy.”
“Just the way you like it,” I said flippantly to the manager. A laugh slipped out as I spoke. I really was referring to the availability of the room. But for some inappropriate reason I was struck by the sexual innuendo. It was the kind of put-down two friends in a bar might banter with. I knew it was wrong—both to say what I had said and to then laugh about it, but there was no keeping it in. The fact that neither Neal nor the manager batted an eyelid sent me into a fit of schoolboy guffaws that I had to smother with my hand as I turned and walked back into the main room.
“Okay,” the manager said after a few seconds. “Well, just as soon as you can.”I was relieved as I sensed that the manager was about to leave. But then I heard Neal speak again.
“Did you see the porn?” he asked the manager.
“Yes, I saw the porn,” the manager said with an air of impatience as he stood wondering where this conversation was going. Even I was intrigued enough to edge back toward the bathroom so as not to miss anything. After a short but pregnant pause, Neal looked the manager straight in the eye.
“Do you want to take any of it?” he asked.
“Just put everything in the garbage!” The manager, unamused, turned and slammed the door behind him.
“Jeeeeeez, Alan!” Neal said as I tried to control my laughter. “You can’t insult my clients like that.”
“Neal, I really never meant to.” I told him. “I really didn’t mean it like that. It just came out wrong.”
“I know, I know. I’m not sweating it, dude. Did you see his face? He didn’t think that was funny, dude. But then he didn’t think the porn was funny either. Christ! Lighten up, Mr. Manager Dude!”
Neal was on his knees in the bathroom. He was wearing a blue all-in-one protective suit and yellow rubber gloves. In his right hand he had a bottle of chemical enzyme that he kept pumping up with pressure before spraying it over the floor. He squirted small areas and then with tissue began to mop up the blood. Like a window cleaner, Neal sang to while away the time as he worked.
Whether it’s a scabby knee or a hanging head
We don’t care just as long as you’re dead
We’ll clean on our knees happily
Just as long as your check clears the bank
Good God! I thought as a shockwave pulsed through my body. What a nasty bastard. The magazine editors will love you.
Neal worked fast, scrubbing at some of the tougher patches of blood with his brush, humming his joyful ditties as he went. He was sweating a lot, but didn’t take a second to wipe his brow.
“You see, Alan,” he began without looking up, “I couldn’t give a fuck about scumbags like this. If you take your own life you’re a weak, selfish scumbag. You know what I’m saying? You’re not thinking about ma and pa who have to then go around and deal with all your freaky shit that you left behind. You saw the porn out there. This guy was a freak. Fuck him. If he wanted to die, good. I’m glad he made a mess.”
“But don’t you feel any sympathy, Neal?” I asked, shocked that he was talking like this to a journalist with a minidisk recorder in his hand.
“I feel sorry for the parents, you know, who have to deal with this. The maid, too—she didn’t wake up this morning and ask for this freak to be dead in one of her rooms. She didn’t ask for this freaky fuck to bleed to death on the toilet. But do I really care?” There was a pause here. You could almost hear strings snapping as Neal tried to work out if he cared. “No! I mean how could I? I don’t know this person from Adam, you know, and from what I have seen I wouldn’t want to, either. But this is how I make my living. If I cared about death, if I started to think about that shit, I couldn’t do my job, and I like my job. I work hard. I earn a shitload of money for it and I don’t want anybody else doing it. It’s as simple as that, dude!”
We didn’t talk much after that. Neal concentrated on what he was doing. He scrubbed and wiped for the next hour and for the most part I watched. All the tissue was eventually put in a waste bag. Neal went back into the bathroom for one last inspection, where he got down on his hands and knees and peered into every nook and cranny.
“You really have to check your work in this job,” Neal said as he carried out his search. “You’d be amazed how blood just gets itself into places you would never expect.The last thing you want to do in this game is to leave blood behind.”
Satisfied, Neal burst out of the room carrying his own equipment and the waste bag full off bloody tissue. He breezed into the lobby, had them sign a piece of paper, and wished the staff a nice day as he dashed for the door.
A month later, I was back in my apartment in Copenhagen, reading e-mails. There was one from Rolling Stone magazine, telling me that they wanted the Crime Scene Cleaner story and that they would make me an offer within the next few days. There was another e-mail from Penthouse. They wanted to know if this story had been published before and, if not, where should they send the contract. They wanted worldwide rights and their offer was by far the largest amount I had ever been offered for an article. But, in the end, I didn’t sell the story to Penthouse or Rolling Stone. An editor friend in Denmark suggested that instead of selling worldwide rights, I sell the story country by country. This is what I did, and as more and more sales were confirmed I gave myself a mental pat on the back. With sales in more than fifteen countries, it was confirmed that I really had learned how to deliver death-as-entertainment. So that was that. For my part, it had been a job well done and I would not have to give Neal Smither another thought ever again.
When the payments for the story started to arrive I remember thinking that it had been worth it. Neal may have been an unbearable bugger, but I’d had the last laugh. I’d work with assholes more often, I thought, if I could earn that much every time.
I did manage to forget about Neal for a while, but he continued to niggle at me from time to time. I’d pass a four-car pile up on the highway and I’d imagine Neal peering through the shattered window of a wrecked car: “Ooooh! Nice!” he’d say. There’d be a movie on TV with a gruesome murder scene and I’d think: Neal could have that cleaned up in no time. I’d see an episode of CSI and I’d chuckle, “They need to cast Neal in this program. He could act. He is an act.”
Seeing Neal as an act struck me like a thunderbolt. Neal had shown me several articles that the American press had written about him and his methods. At the time, I thought he was being used and was too dumb to see it. But maybe the media wasn’t using Neal as I had previously thought. Maybe Neal was using the media. Maybe he had used the media’s appetite for death to promote his company. All that “praying for death” business—he knew exactly what the media would do with that. He knew exactly what I would do with that. I started to wonder if I had done Neal an injustice.
An image of Neal with the transgender porn popped back into my head. It wasn’t the image of him laughing or offering the porn to the motel manager. It was an image of him putting the porn in with some other rubbish.
“His family will be pretty upset as it is. They don’t need to deal with this stuff.”
Had I got him completely wrong? In among all the blood and gore, had I completely missed the real story? Maybe there was something more relevant. A story about how modern society deals with death? Or about how we seem to use death,be entertained by death, and have even managed to turn it into a commodity?
These questions began to circulate in my head with more frequency. But no matter how often I asked them, I never could find reasonable answers. I did begin to realize, though, that as a writer I’d messed up. I’d cashed in and had remained totally blind to any idea that there might have been another, much more interesting story connected to Neal Smither.
Once again I was on the phone booking a plane ticket. I had decided to go back and do this story properly.
Which leads me to the here and now: L.A. a
irport, where I am trying to fend off a nineteen-year-old Buddhist who is offering to autograph his hardback book, not for a fee, but a donation of fifteen dollars. He follows me with his incessant chatter while I look for a sign for where I should catch the shuttle bus that will take me to my rental car. But I don’t mind. I have an enormous grin on my face. I am very happy to be back. I am even looking forward to seeing Neal.
FEAR AND LOATHING IN SANTA CRUZ
As I sit in my hired, white Chevy Cavalier, poorly refreshed from a bad night’s sleep in a dirty motel, I realize that I can’t remember whether it’s Route 1 or Route 101 that follows the ocean from L.A. all the way to San Francisco. I stop in three different gas stations as I head out of town, but they have only local maps, and not the state map I am looking for. Eventually I ask a pair of mechanic’s legs that poke out from beneath a yellow truck, and a muffled voice assures me it’s Route 101 that I’m looking for. I hear snippets about a bunch of rights and lefts that I need to take, and once again I slip the car into Drive.
The drive from L.A. to San Francisco is breathtaking from the very beginning. Even before you get out of Malibu you have the ocean on your left, dotted with million-dollar beach houses, and imposing orange cliffs that tower over you on the right. Pretty soon you are climbing up into the mountains where you are confronted by an unmeddled-with landscape. Even after the long flight and no sleep, as I look at these grand views, I realize I can’t remember when I last felt so awake, so alive.
It’s exactly what I need before I slip into four death-coated weeks.
Still, the vast open landscape can be a little intimidating to city eyes that are used to signs for Starbucks and McDonald’s blocking their vision. As my eyes flick and dart around in a bid to take in all the unfamiliar contours, I become aware of the adrenaline rush. I am experiencing the kind of excitement that comes when there is a hint of danger. I am, after all, driving an unfamiliar car on what is for me the wrong side of an unfamiliar road. To my left there’s a precipice that could send me free-falling into a beautiful abyss, but, sadly, one that ends eventually with a rather tragic and life-ending crunch.
I watch the locals as they whiz by in the other direction, or drive up close behind me, frustrated by my slow and cautious pace. They no longer see what I see. The beautiful landscapes have become run-of-the-mill to those who live with them.
I call Neal to remind him that I am driving up and will be with him the following day. I get his answering service; they tell me that he, too, is driving back from L.A. Instantly I am on the lookout for his big black truck. I imagine him passing me on the inside at a hundred miles per hour. I see myself chasing after him, just for sport, honking my horn and waving as I pull up alongside him. The image I have of Neal is this: He would look at me down there in my little white rental car and mutter something along the lines of “What does this motherfucker want?” before dragging his steering wheel sharply to the right and banging my car off the 101, down a gorge, and into an eventual fireball that would burn me to a crisp and render Neal’s services, frustratingly for him, unnecessary.
I exit the 101 for gas and another attempt at buying a map, aware that while the views are still very impressive, I left the ocean some sixty miles back and am still suspicious about Route 101 being the right choice. With my purchase in hand, I stroll over to a tanker driver who is delivering fuel and ask him for some navigational assistance. He is a big bald-headed man with a drooping mustache and tattoos up his arms. He has the look of a guy who, in a movie, would be playing the part of a convicted killer.
“Oh, cool, you want to go through the Big Sur and up that way, huh? You should keep your camera handy. Well, look, we’re here….”
I’m not far off course. Route 1 and Route 101 cross each other regularly on the journey to San Francisco. All I need to do, in fact, is continue for another ten miles or so and I will run into signs for Route 1, the correct route. I swing the car around and head for the exit of the gas station. But, as I do, the truck driver walks in front of me and gestures for me to stop.
“Can you do me a favor?” he asks.
Favor? What can it be, this favor? I only asked him for some simple directions and now I find myself indebted to the bugger.
“Of course,” I smile.
“Drive real safe when you’re out there,” he says in earnest.“It’s a real winding, treacherous road with some real steep drops. Just … you know, enjoy the view, but be careful.”
Well, I’ll be damned, I think to myself as I drive off. Oh, what a cynical asshole am I. Why, in my mind, did he have to want something? All he wanted was for me to be safe, to not kill myself through stupid driving.
I decided to make this drive because I wanted to go through some kind of mental purification. I know what lies ahead in San Francisco: blood, ghastliness, death, pity, and a rather loud Neal Smither. I need this drive as preparation, to cleanse me, to bring me to the project as open and refreshed as I can possibly be. I feel that if I haven’t emptied my head of the things that clutter a daily life, there will not be room for what I am soon to deal with. As I cruise around the valleys, I know that this drive along the ocean was the right move.
California must have some of the most stunning landscapes in the world, and the views from Route 1, with the ocean constantly moving and coming at you from all angles, must be the most stunning of the state. One minute I am at eye level with the water; the next, the ocean languishes at the bottom of a thousand-foot cliff. For so long I have been driving through the mist, unable to see more than twenty feet in front of me on the winding cliff edges, but now the sun is breaking through again. Instead of mist, as I coast around a 180-degree edge, I am greeted once again with the bright blue sky of California.
When the next opportunity presents itself, I pull over into a lookout point. I notice a guy sitting on a boulder; he has a big unkempt dog with him and a cardboard sign. The sign looks out of place up on the cliffs. For the last thirty minutes I have not seen another car going in my direction. Maybe five max going the other way. That figure reduced to the amount of people who stop at this viewpoint and then reduced again to actual people willing to give money to a homeless guy reduces all the way down to pretty much nobody.
“How long have you been up here?” I ask him, digging into my pockets.
“ ’Bout four months. Van broke down. Just trying to get back home to Pismo Beach.”
He is in camouflage from head to foot, clearly hungry, and glad of his dog’s company. His big black beard is matted. His sunken eyes are framed by gritty creases. Sweat streaks have made tracks on his skin. His eyes have an acrid glint, reflecting all the new and expensive sports cars that have stopped at this viewpoint over the last four months. They reflect the couples who jumped out of their cars giggling while holding a camera at arm’s length to snap a self-portrait, as one such couple is doing now. The couple jumps back in the convertible and wheel-spins away, looking at me as they go as if to say, “Schmuck!”
“Probably die up here,” the guy with the sign says as the dust from the wheel spin drifts around us. He reaches out and takes the five-dollar bill from my hand. I can’t imagine where he might spend these five dollars up here on a mountainside. So, unless his van is alive and well, waiting for him at the next viewpoint—meaning he has just scammed me of five bucks—there’s a good chance he will die up here. There’s an awkward pause as these thoughts pass through my head and I find myself hoping that he has just scammed me. I don’t know if I have ever met a valid candidate for suicide before, but as I stand next to this man, both of us looking out over the vast ocean, I feel I have now. But what makes him, in my eyes, a candidate for suicide? Is it just his sadness that pushes me to connect him with death? Do people commit suicide because of something as simple, real, and necessary as sadness?
I have always felt that suicide was connected to communication. Not due to a lack of opportunity, but to an impossibility to communicate and be understood. It can be frustrating to try to
share something with somebody, something important and real to you, and see in the face of another person that he either doesn’t care or, worse still, simply doesn’t understand you. Of course, it is inevitable that this will happen from time to time, but imagine if it were always that way. Imagine if every time you tried to communicate and connect with another human being you fell short. If you never make any sense to anybody, if you never connect, you hold no value: you are truly alone. There are those who can survive as genuine outsiders, and then there are those who can’t.
The man here on the boulder is alone in regard to human company. He has these landscapes, sure, but going by the expression on his face, the absurdity of it, it’s not enough. He is an outsider himself, but he seems not to be a surviving outsider. I find myself wondering how long he has left.
There’s no escaping death in life. I had, however, truly expected to at least forget death on my little road trip from L. A. to S. F., but it seems that even here, on a journey that for the most part is unpopulated, there is no getting away from it. I find myself angry for stopping here. I am angry at having met this man, because now I feel like I can’t leave him. I should drive him to Pismo Beach.
Would that save him or just delay something inevitable?
Who knows? Maybe he doesn’t need saving; maybe this is me getting ahead of myself, putting myself into somebody else’s mind. But still, when I look at him I can’t escape the vision of him scooping up his dog and sprinting off the edge of the cliff.
The silence we share as he sits looking at the sea, and I sit wondering about his chances of survival, is strangely calm. It doesn’t feel awkward. It’s just two strangers sharing a beautiful view, one wondering if the other will die soon.