Stone Arabia

by Spiotta, Dana

  MAY 25, 26, 27

  Nik turned fifty. We met at Nik’s apartment to celebrate. Ada brought her cameraman. I brought a cake and an envelope with a thousand dollars in it (borrowed at 18 percent interest). Ada had wanted a record release party and a concert, but Nik finally refused. It was just Ada and her cameraman, Nik, and me. I took this as an encouraging sign—no dramatic farewells. Nik handed us each a copy of The Ontology of Worth: Volume 1.

  Ada held it up for the camera. I looked at the cardboard double CD case. I handed it back to Nik.

  “What?” he said.

  “Autograph, of course.”

  Nik smiled and took a marker to the inside of the gatefold. “That will be worth big money someday,” he said with a wink. “The worth of Worth.”

  “Sounds like your next album title,” I said. He put his finger to his nose to indicate right on the nose and smiled at me. Ada filmed us and we pretended she wasn’t.

  “Do you want to sing a couple of songs from the CD?” Ada said.

  Nik picked up his guitar. “No, that would be kind of difficult. But since it is my birthday, I will perform something for you. One song. An oldie.” He sat on the edge of his couch. He started a slow, acoustic rendition of his teenage “hit” “Versions of Me.” He closed his eyes, and he stretched the song, pulled it down low until his boy anthem of alienation turned into something else. It turned serious, slow, the declarations made wise and ironic; a reprise that made his age suit him for a moment.

  When he finished, he looked up at me and I sniffed. “It’s not a sad song,” he said.

  “But you made it sound—you changed it.”

  “Phrasing. It is all in the phrasing.” Nik winked at me. No meaningful stares, no dark hints at all. He was happy, almost cheerful, for the rest of the night. Still, deep down, I knew what was coming.

  After watching Nik drink many—closing on three—bottles of wine (with only a little help from me and Ada) and smoke many cigarettes, Ada and her cameraman cleared out to attend a friend’s party in Santa Monica. I cleaned up and did the dishes. Nik watched me. After I finished, I sat down on the couch.

  “Are you staying?” he said.

  “I might. Is that okay?” He shrugged. He looked a little drunk and haggard. However, he spoke with precise sobriety. I wonder what it felt like to be him. Did he never actually get drunk? Is that why he drank so much? He lay back on the other end of the couch and stared at the ceiling.

  “How does it feel to turn fifty?”

  “Oh for God’s sake.”

  “Sorry.”

  He got up and went into the bathroom. I could see a volume of his Chronicles sitting on his desk. I don’t know why I was sneaking, but I thought I should look at them while I had the chance. I opened the neat, thick binder. I opened it to the end, to the last page inserted. Then I read what was typed on white paper and pasted in:

  Nik Worth, Pop Star Turned Eccentric Innovator, Dies at 50

  It was unfinished, just a headline. I heard him washing his hands. I closed the book and I sat back down on the couch. I rubbed my finger back and forth across my lower lip. I was at a loss. Nik came out of the bathroom.

  “Hey, you gotta go. I’m beat,” he said.

  “Okay, but maybe you can make me some coffee? It is a long drive home.” There was a near-catch in my voice.

  “You should go now.”

  “Okay.” I got up, then I sat back down. He exhaled noisily. I was really pissing him off. “Here’s how it is,” I said. “I’m scared. I’m worried something really bad is happening.”

  Nik shook his head. “You don’t need to worry about me. It doesn’t do a body any good.”

  “You’re not going to do anything dramatic, right?”

  “Denise, I’m fine, okay? Just because I turned fifty doesn’t mean I’m going to off myself, you know?”

  I nodded, unconvinced.

  “You are making an error in your calculus of causality. You are misreading the signs. Seriously. Like the man said, the correlative is not the cause.”

  I started crying again. He went to the door and opened it. I continued to sit.

  “I’m too tired to reassure you or explain things to you tonight. You are just going to have to trust me. Now please get the fuck out so I can go to bed.”

  “Okay, okay.” I got up and left. And the next morning I called him.

  “Still here,” he answered the phone.

  I laughed. “You are such an ass,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  I stopped by his work on my way home (of course it wasn’t vaguely on my way home). He smiled and waved me over. He had a few customers drinking at the bar. I sat at the end by the service station. He pointed a beer bottle at me and I nodded.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Better,” I said.

  He looked over his shoulder at his customers and then looked at me. “Sorry I was such a dick last night.”

  I shook my head. “Let’s forget all about that.”

  Nik nodded, and then leaned in over the bar toward me. It felt so intimate, I laughed.

  “I mean, I feel the love, you know? I just want you to know that, all right?” he said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “You are the only one who ever really got me, you know? Of course you know.” Then he held up a hand and limped down the bar, replacing beers and making change. He was starting to get busy. I finished my beer and stood up to leave. I waved at him. He walked over to my end of the bar and leaned to kiss my cheek.

  “Goodbye,” he said.

  “Good night,” I said. And I left.

  There it was, the terrible decision I have to live with. I left him there, we said goodbye. I knew I might not see him again. But I had some very good reasons, reasons only a sister could understand. I knew that I could not stop him. But that wasn’t it. I could have decided not to leave. I could have begged him, told him I couldn’t live without him in my life. That wasn’t it.

  I didn’t stop him. I admit it; I did not. And it wasn’t just because I loved him so much I would give him up if I had to. If that was what he required for himself. I would support his decision, which I knew was not made lightly, but was planned in advance and gave him satisfaction. Although that is all true, that is not why I left him to his plan that night. I left him to it because I knew something, something true. Something maybe only I knew. He would go and I would stay. I would stay and watch as my life wound down. I would watch the decay and the quiet. I would endure the dregs and the hangover. I would stay till the end, to the slow slipping and gradual dropping away of my life. This was what I did: I endured. Nik would leave, and I would endure. It was always going to be this way. I knew it all along, didn’t I? When I left, I felt liberated and even happy. He was done, and on his own terms, which was the only thing important to him. I would stay, waiting for the terms to unfold around me. That’s the price you pay for staying around. That was okay for me, but it wouldn’t do for him.

  I’m not sure I really believe that, but at the time, for that moment when I left the bar, and for my drive home, this idea about him and about us was right. Maybe no one else would get it, but leaving him gave me a feeling of love and comfort. It felt generous, even if no one else would ever understand how.

  I arrived at my home. I didn’t watch the news or a movie. I called Ada. I emailed Jay. I took a lovely sky-blue pill, went to bed, and right away fell into a deep sleep.

  MAY 28

  I woke up at five a.m. in a panic. I got out of bed, and I knew something dreadful had happened. I called Nik and got no answer. I pulled on some clothes and rushed to my car. I considered calling the paramedics. But I didn’t. I knew it would be too late. It didn’t feel right or good anymore. I had made a mistake.

  I opened my window and let hot dusty air blow through the car. I went over the speed limit. There was no one else on the freeway, there was only a dusty hazy hint of dawn light behind the mountains, and I imagined finding my brother. I im
agined his body, cold and disturbed and pale, splayed across his bed. I had no doubt it would be pills. I knew he wouldn’t hang himself or shoot himself. He would go using all of his hard-earned pharmaceutical skills, and for this I should be grateful. He probably knew exactly how to manage it without vomiting, some precise combination of barbiturates, alcohol, and a prescription-grade anti-emetic.

  I would be able to handle seeing his body, wouldn’t I? I could handle seeing it if he looked asleep, but I couldn’t see it violated or messy. I just couldn’t.

  But my God, it wasn’t just that. He had always accompanied me, my entire life. I had no idea how to get on with it without him there, a constant steady presence. All I would have of him is memory, and that would never do me any good. That was no comfort. That was meager and not enough.

  What have I done?

  I looked up and I had pulled into his driveway. I forgot how to turn off my car, I stared dumbly at the ignition key in my hand after I finally pulled it out of the lock. I got out, I stumbled over something. I was still wearing my slippers. I felt a lack of breath that frightened me. I stopped and made myself breathe in and then out. I walked up the old wood steps, my hands trembling as I reached for the doorbell. My eyes flooded. I pushed the bell, heard the double cheerful chime, and waited. I peered through the window by the door, but the curtains were pulled closed and I couldn’t see inside. I tried the knob. The door was unlocked. I opened the door, and I thought I might faint. I would faint. Maybe, just maybe, I would find him asleep, and everything would be okay. He would yell at me for waking him up, and I would confess how stupid I was. I walked into the room.

  Nik was not in his bed.

  He wasn’t in the bathroom. Nik was not on his couch or down the trapdoor in his studio. I ran outside and looked for his car. I hadn’t noticed when I came in, but his car was gone. I went back inside, then back outside, calling his name into the morning air.

  The apartment was in perfect order. But now I did notice his guitars were missing except the one old one, the Orlando. Other things might be gone as well, I couldn’t piece it all together yet. And set out, displayed more or less, were the Chronicles, wide open on the desk. Waiting for me. On the open page was Nik’s obituary:

  Nik Worth, Rock Star Turned Eccentric Innovator, Dies at 50

  Nik Worth, the eccentric genius and reclusive oddity, died yesterday of an apparent suicide. He was found unconscious at his home by his sister, Denise Kranis. No note was found at the scene, although his sister said, “He killed himself.”

  Dr. Mark Farmer, the LA County coroner, said preliminary autopsy findings indicated a drug overdose. The sheriff’s department found bottles of the prescription drugs Nembutal and Anzemet by the bed, as well as a half-empty bottle of vodka.

  Mr. Worth was born in 1956 as Nikolas Kranis. His father died when he was 11, and his mother has been sick in recent years. The family was poor, but Worth always felt he was well taken care of. He attended Hollywood High, and then, after a still-sealed conflict with the authorities, was expelled. He eventually graduated from Fairfax High School. He never attended college. It was at Hollywood High that he met the bandmates who would become his multi-platinum band, the Demonics. The Demonics pioneered a hard-edged post-glam art-rock sound that changed the course of popular music.

  Mr. Worth’s other band, the Fakes, followed the Demonics. The Fakes had a more pure pop sound, and they dominated the charts for much of the early eighties: Meet the Fakes, Here Are Your Fakes, and later, Take Me Home and Make Me Fake It all made number one in the US and the UK.

  In 1980, Nik Worth was injured in a motorcycle accident.

  It was then he began his long anti-pop project, The Ontology of Worth, a twenty-volume music experiment. Some thought it was brilliant, others referred to it as “Worth’s Folly.” Even admirers viewed it as self-indulgent. In response to the many parodies created about his later work, Worth only said, “Every man’s life is an answer to the questions he asks,” apparently quoting, inaccurately, Emerson.

  In later years, Worth dropped from sight. Rumors abounded that his health, both mental and physical, was failing. He kept putting out the albums for his Ontology project, and he maintained a devoted but much smaller following. From time to time he put out a new Fakes record—recordings now made entirely by him in his home studio. The Fakes albums always sold well. But he stopped touring, and seldom left his “hermitage” near the Pacific Ocean, a large house on Skyline Drive in Topanga Canyon. According to friends, he never stopped working, recording, and writing. Many people speculate that there could be much more music still in the vaults at Skyline Drive.

  Worth is survived by his mother, Ella Kranis, his sister, Denise Kranis, and his niece, Ada Vogel. In lieu of flowers, Denise Kranis requests donations be made in Worth’s memory to the ASPCA, his favorite charity.

  His obituary felt oddly perfunctory to me, as though Nik found the execution wasn’t as fun as the idea of writing his own obituary, but I must confess some pleasure at guessing right about the drugs, even if I (thankfully) got life in the Chronicles confused with real life.

  I think it is funny, and no doubt not at all lost on Nik, that in the end, his life in the Chronicles wasn’t all that different from his real life. In some ways it was worse, and in other ways it was exactly the same. Not a fantasy perfect life at all, just a different life, perhaps a more artful life. But in the Chronicles he wasn’t the author of the Chronicles, which was arguably the thing he had grown to be proudest of as time went by.

  I was giddy with relief. I don’t know why I didn’t think he hadn’t just gone off somewhere to kill himself, but I didn’t. He was right. I hadn’t read the signs right. I didn’t guess he would just leave. And leaving seemed much, much better to me that morning. At first I was joyful.

  On the next page was the odd fake letter from me to Ada. Was I supposed to discern clues here? I got some of the jokes in the obit. (Skyline Drive was Neil Young’s address in Topanga, the opening lines were nearly verbatim from Elvis’s New York Times obituary. No doubt there were other little jokes embedded that I would figure out later.) But there wasn’t a note, an explanation, a letter to me of any kind. All I knew was that he left, and I knew he wasn’t coming back. He was gone, and I didn’t see it coming. It began to upset me. I had misread him, and that was hard to take. And so I sat down to figure it out, moment by moment, or at least remembered moment by remembered moment. I took his invitation, and, inadequate as I was to the task, I wrote it all out.

  Denise put down her pen. The sun was setting again. But it was finished, she had inched her way back to this exact moment. She desperately needed to sleep. But first, Ada. She finally called her and told her what had happened.

  “What makes you think he is really gone for good?” she said. Denise said nothing. “Did you phone the police yet?”

  “No. I should file a missing person report, right?”

  “Yes, as soon as possible.”

  “Can you please help me with that?” Denise said. “I’ve been up for two days. I don’t feel well.”

  “Of course. Poor Mama. I will come over. Just rest if you can. I will be there soon and I will take care of everything.”

  “Thanks, honey.”

  “He’ll turn up, I bet.”

  “No, I don’t believe he will.” There was a pause. Denise could hear Ada exhale smoke.

  “What will you do without Nik?”

  “I’m going to lie down.”

  Denise hung up the phone. She looked around the room. Nik’s bed was neatly made. Clean sheets just for her, no doubt. She pulled back the covers and crawled in. She held one of the pillows in her arms. She pushed her face into it. She lay on her side and pressed her face into Nik’s pillow until she fell asleep.

  When Denise woke up, it was dark out and Ada was in the room. She was hunched over the desk, looking at Nik’s Chronicles. Denise sat up and rubbed her puffy face. She had been sleeping deeply, and it took her a moment to rememb
er what had happened, where she was, and why Ada was there. Why Denise was there. Why. Ada came over to her and put her arms around her.

  “How are you doing?” Denise said. Ada looked weepy and leaned in to her mother.

  “How can you be so sure he isn’t coming back?” Ada said. “I know, you just know and it is, whatever, a thing between a brother and a sister, or at least between you and Nik. You then must have a clue where he went?”

  Denise shook her head. “I really don’t. He took some of his guitars, he took, from what I can tell, some clothes. He took his car. But other than that, he left everything behind. All his Chronicles? His records? I don’t get it. He doesn’t have money. Wait—he has some money. I gave him a little money. I don’t know—it is possible he went off to—” Denise looked around. “I don’t know.”

  Ada made the call to the police. They would have to go in to file a missing person report. Ada said she could tell the police were not much invested in this missing person—he was in the willful-disappearance category, what they called a Voluntary Missing Adult. Which happens all the time, wives and mothers and daughters (and sisters) left by men who just want to disappear. They said people often return within a week or two. They also said she should get Nik’s dentist to send over his dental records. Denise was nearly delirious. She got stuck, for some reason, on why your teeth were your body’s only distinguishing feature, then she figured it out, and then she felt worse.

  Denise didn’t want to leave Nik’s place, but Ada insisted they go back to Denise’s house. Denise took a bath and Ada made some dinner. Denise responded to emails and called her boss. Tomorrow she would have to go to work, go to the police, and see her mother. She made a plan for the day. Ada stayed over. She would extend her trip for a few weeks.

  “I’d like to finish my film,” she said. Denise sighed. “I don’t think I am being crass. I think more than ever Nik would want it finished.”