Dana Spiotta - Stone Arabia

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 imagined 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.”