The Bones (44 page)

Chapter 17

The car lies upside down, some distance from the road. Inside a veil of twisted metal and broken glass, Frank's feet are above
his head, but even from his compromised position, he can see Creed is already dead, his skull crushed, presumably from its
impact with the dashboard; never would have been much of a stuntman. He is slightly disappointed at finding himself alive,
but being no stranger to surviving horrific car crashes (and pretty much everything else), he is not entirely surprised. A
sense of invincibility briefly suffuses him and just as quickly recedes as a dull pain appears in his shoulders and neck,
informing him that his body does not absorb a beating the way it once did. He disengages himself from his seat belt, roils
on his sore shoulder, then sits upright. His morbid expectation makes the proximity of a dead man no big deal, and he reaches
into Creed's pocket, removes the keys to the handcuffs, then releases his wrist from their malign grip. Rotating on his side
he uses his elbow to punch out the remaining shards of glass from the window and crawls out of the car. Frank has no idea
where he is. He notices there is not a lot of traffic on the road, although it appears to be a highway. The headlights of
a car drift past but the driver doesn't stop.

Frank walks away from the wrecked Toyota as if in a trance, then turns, half expecting to see it parked on the side of the
road with Lloyd standing alongside, waving for him to get in. For less than a second, it occurs to Frank he may actually be
dead, but he quickly realizes the metaphysical absurdity of that notion. He runs a quick checklist of his systems and finds
everything to be functioning. But the death of this other man, this member of the audience, is undeniable. Does he say a prayer
for the soul of the petty dreamer who had come to effect his return to Babylon? Frank doesn't believe in that kind of religion.
Yet he feels remarkably small, standing by the ruined car near the spectral highway beneath the infinite night sky.

He knows there are bandits on these Mexican roads, a lawlessness that could swallow him whole. Drivers are advised to avoid
traveling at night. People set off and disappear, vanish in the hills, no traces left behind. He is stranded, alone. The night
is chilly, but clear. Looking up, he sees stars. Some time passes, he's not sure how much. No cars stop. He's thirsty but
there is nothing to drink.

The idea comes to him as if he were in a fugue state, open to messages temporal and celestial. He knows if he listens, something
will lead him where he must go if he is to survive. Picking up a rock, he walks back toward the car and climbs in the driver's-side
window. Seeing Creed's still-warm body pitched over itself, he sticks his hand in the man's pocket and fishes out his wallet.
The driver's license will come in handy. Frank is starting to feel queasy, but he knows what must be done, and less than ten
sharp strokes with the rock breaks every tooth in the dead man's mouth, which bleeds profusely since the body was pulsing
with life not long before. Then he crawls back out of the car and collects some dry brush from the side of the road. Unscrewing
the cap of the gas tank, he stuffs the brush in, making a wick. He takes a lighter out of his pocket and ignites the brush,
then steps back to watch it smolder. There having been no rain for weeks, the brush, baked in the unforgiving Mexican sun,
quickly burns down and Frank has to quicken his pace to avoid being hit by flying debris when the car explodes. An angry fireball
of hellish oranges and reds plumes upward, creating a sound alternately whooshing and crackling. A moment later there is a
secondary explosion, probably the engine, Frank realizes, the flaming fuel having moved back to front and the car burning
hotter, more intensely. The flames seem to lick the stars now as if daring them to come closer and watch what a man will do
to survive once he realizes nullity is not his answer and the void can wait. Only when Frank ascertains that the luckless
man's body is burned beyond recognition does he climb onto the road and flag down a truck heading east, ride into Durango,
phone the local police from a gas station, and report his own death. When the police ask his name, he says, "Mi llamo Creed
Baru." Then Frank hangs up, calls Otis, and tells him everything that happened.

Otis was on a plane the next morning flying from Tulsa to Houston, where he caught a flight to Mazatlan. There he rented a
car and drove to Durango. He made contact with the police and after some judicious greasing of palms was in possession of
Creed's charred remains. Although the forensic examiner who looked at the body did note that all its teeth were missing, no
one was particularly motivated to find out why, and Otis arranged for the corpse to be cremated by nightfall, which was only
two hours after the news of Frank's death hit the Internet. By the time the story was making the rounds in Los Angeles, the
body thought to be Frank's had turned to DNA-less dust, and officially, Frank Bones was no more. No one could definitively
prove the festively decorated urn Otis possessed contained Frank's ashes; but no one could prove it didn't.

A week after Frank's presumed death there was a memorial service at the Comedy Shop on Sunset Boulevard. The four hundred
seats in the main room were filled before it started, and arrangements were made to pump the show through loudspeakers set
up for the overflow crowd in the parking lot. Robert spoke eloquently about his friend and colleague, telling the assembled
crowd the most talented among them might never achieve the success they deserved because they were blazing the path everyone
else would follow. It was exactly the kind of pabulum people say at memorial services, since Frank hadn't really been doing
anything anyone hadn't done before. It was only because things had become so tame in the early years of the new century that
he looked like a revolutionary. But the show business audience, all of whom were either working for or aspiring to work for
the multinational conglomerates that controlled the game, needed iconoclastic heroes they could hold to and tell themselves
they would emulate, and they ate it up. Frank, it was agreed all around, was a great talent, and if he was unappreciated in
life, he would be venerated in death. With this in mind, Jolly De Meo, not one to miss a bandwagon, announced he was endowing
a chair in Frank's name in the field of comedy studies at USC. Candi Wyatt sobbed through the service because she knew in
her heart that even though she was not yet twenty-three years old, she had already had the peak experience of her life. Honey
Call wanted to be there, but she and Bart Pimento were leading a PETA demonstration that day because Honey believed life was
about the living, and publicly mourning Frank was not going to be any help to the laboratory animals she and Bart were trying
to liberate by chaining themselves to a research facility in San Luis Obispo. She did, however, send a large, horseshoe-shaped
carnation wreath to be displayed onstage at the club.

As for Lloyd, he stayed away, not wanting to have to answer any more questions about Frank. And he'd had just about all he
could take of him anyway. To Lloyd, Frank had forever been a distant yet brilliantly shining light, a fascinating planetary
object representing a vastly more exciting way of life, a man whose sparkling, crackling effervescence allowed him to exist
on a rarefied plane. That he had ultimately failed to live up to Lloyd's image of him, crashing and burning (literally!),
his early promise unfilled, allowed Lloyd to feel better about the results of his own exertions. Bones flew too close to the
flame, his thinking went;
let him be the legend; at least I'm alive.

The day after the memorial service Robert Hyler is seated at the desk in his office talking on the phone. He has interrupted
his meeting to take the call, and he lets an imperiousness creep into his voice so his guest will get a sense of how he deals
with people. "We control the estate," he says. "The whole thing, okay? You cannot use his likeness in the advertising unless
we approve it. Now think about it and make me an offer this afternoon." Hanging up, he returns his attention to his guest,
who had been in the office less than five minutes before Robert took the call. "If only he'd been this hot when he was alive,"
he says. "So, the famous Otis Cain. What can I do for you?"

"You can start by calling those people back and telling them you no longer represent Frank Bones," Otis says neutrally, no
point provoking anyone.

"What are you talking about?"

Otis takes a piece of paper out of the briefcase on his lap and slides it across the desk, saying, "I have power of attorney
over Frank's estate. I also hold a brief for every other individual in this story not currently under indictment, Mr. Hyler.
Mercy Madrid and Vida Suarez are both my clients. So the deal is . . . no deals get made without Otis Cain."

Robert examines the document, takes a close look at the signature. "I've represented Frank for over twenty years . . . " More
sorrow than anger. "Why would he . . ."

"It's all legal," the lawyer says, his way of comforting. But when Otis gets the sense that it was more than business to Robert,
that there was something in Frank he responded to and it had nothing to do with dollars, Otis drops the hard cool for a minute
and tells Robert, "Hey, Frank was about Frank."

Unless one is talking about Jesus or Marilyn Monroe, brands that can be milked well into eternity, in the exploitation of
celebrity death there is a short window during which commercial opportunities can be maximized. Otis was indefatigable in
his pursuit of Frank's interests, and in short order deals were struck for a new CD, T-shirts, shot glasses, two books (one
an authorized biography, the other a coffee table book of photographs), and a video game, which consisted of Frank in a car
being chased by the police. Then there was the feature film, which had some of Hollywood's biggest stars fighting for the
role of Frank Bones, a man who couldn't get his pilot picked up when he was alive.

Belize is a paradise for most of the year but never more than in the spring. The jungles, bursting with vines and flowers,
edge down to the white sand beaches peopled by locals and the occasional European and Canadian tourists, Americans for some
reason preferring other Central American countries. On a Sunday morning in early May a slender man, well into middle age but
looking fit, lies on a double bed in a modest bungalow. Otis managed to sell the house in Playa Perdida and buy this place
with the money he got for it. It's not fancy, three rooms and a kitchen, but Frank's not planning on doing much entertaining.
He's grown his beard out and is surprised at the gray streaks, but when it occurs to him his fiftieth birthday has come and
gone while he was down here, the face looking back at him in the mirror doesn't seem so incongruous. Taking stock, Frank realizes
that for a man who's lived the life he has, he's feeling pretty good. He's been swimming, gotten some sun; never felt more
serene. The beast that once rampaged through his head with such malevolent energy appears, if not exactly a spent force, to
have quieted down to a degree he never would have anticipated.

He had thought about going up north, back to America, because all charges had posthumously been dropped. That cleared the
way for a return-from-the-dead comeback (he was calling it The Frank Bones Easter Tour—He Has Risen!) and all the ensuing
publicity, should he choose to work that angle. But after thinking it over, he has decided to remain on the beach at the edge
of the jungle. What was it he wanted up there now anyway? He'd had the bright lights and some money, too, although it was
never really about money for Frank. Rather, it was simply about being his deepest, purest self and having that self validated
by the largest possible number of people. Now he had finally come to understand the futility of trying to wring something
truly human from the connection between a performer and an audience. They had been amused by him, but it was when he was in
serious trouble that they loved him, and his perceived death will solidify that love, at least for a time. If he were to return
he knows what would happen when the collective memory of his travails began to fade, as it surely would, and he was once again
a man who couldn't get his own television series. Would he go back on the road and tell the story of his life again and again?
Hardly. What, then?

Rising from the bed, Frank walks into the kitchen and opens a drawer. He pulls out a gravity knife, onyx handle with a pearl
inlay, flips it open. It's not meant for kitchen use, but he likes the association, the memory it brings back. Runs his finger
along the blade, still sharp. Taking a fat orange from a ceramic bowl on the wooden counter, he deftly slices it in quarters.
Puts one in his mouth, sucking the juice out. A little of it runs down his chin and he wipes it away with the back of his
hand; looks at the phone for a moment, feeling as if he's about to go onstage. Then he remembers it's changed, he's not performing
anymore, and he's been thinking about this moment almost since he got here, Frank never one to dwell before, to live in anything
but the eternal present. But this time it's been different. He's recalling a link, a bond, and he's been speculating about
it, two molecules colliding, the heat, the evanescence, the flickering firefly light, then darkness again. And in the distant
night, a glimmer?

It's been said that when a man reaches fifty, he has the face he deserves, and from that it can be extrapolated that he gets
the life he deserves as well; perhaps not the recognition he is worthy of, or the riches, but certainly the quality of existence.
So it often follows that once someone reaches a certain age, it isn't difficult to discern what fate has in store for the
remainder of his days. But occasionally, in those rare moments when we are able to truly see our behavior and at last recognize
the patterns that have ineluctably shadowed us through the years, leaving sorrow and pain in their wake, we can derive strength
from the resultant knowledge, allowing us to burst their seemingly immutable shackles and begin life anew. On the dazzling
day when that occurs, we are free at last.