Less Than Zero (4 page)

“Well, used to go out with her.”

“I thought you still were.”

“Maybe we are,” I say, pouring another glass of champagne. “I don’t know.”

“She talks about you a lot.”

“Really? Well …” My voice trails off.

We don’t say anything for a long time.

“Like your scarf,” Griffin says.

“Thanks.” I drain the glass and pour myself another, and wonder what time it is and how long I’ve been here. The coke is wearing off and I’m starting to get a little drunk.

Griffin takes a deep breath and says, “Hey, you wanna go to my house? Parents are in Rome for Christmas.” Someone changes a tape and I sigh and look at the glass of champagne he’s holding, then finish my glass fast and say sure, why not.

    Griffin stands by his bedroom window, looking out into the backyard, at the pool, only wearing a pair of jockey shorts and I’m sitting on the floor, my back leaning against his bed, bored, sober, smoking a cigarette. Griffin looks at me and slowly, clumsily, pulls off his underwear and I notice that he doesn’t have a tan line and I begin to wonder why and almost laugh.

I
wake up sometime before dawn. My mouth is really dry and it hurts to unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth. I close my eyes tightly and try to go back to sleep, but the digital clock on the nightstand says that it’s four-thirty and I only now fully realize where I am. I look over at Griffin, lying on the other side of the big
double bed. I don’t want to wake Griffin up, so I get out of the bed as carefully as possible and walk into the bathroom and close the door. I take a piss and then stare at myself, nude, in the mirror for a moment, and then lean against the sink and turn on the faucet and splash cold water on my face. Then I look at myself in the mirror again, this time longer. I go back into the bedroom and put my underwear on, making sure they’re not Griffin’s, then I look around the room and panic, because I can’t find my clothes. Then I remember that it started in the living room last night, and I quietly walk down the stairs of the huge, empty mansion and into the living room. I find my clothes and dress quickly. As I’m pulling my pants up, this black maid, wearing a blue robe, hair in curlers, passes by the door and glances at me for a moment, casually, as if finding some young guy, eighteen or whatever, pulling up his pants in the middle of the living room at five in the morning was not weird. She leaves and I have trouble finding the front door. After I do find it and leave the house, I tell myself that it really wasn’t that bad last night. And I get into the car and open the glove compartment and cut a line, just to make it home. Then I drive past the gates of the house and onto Sunset.

I turn the radio up, loud. The streets are totally empty and I drive fast. I come to a red light, tempted to go through it, then stop once I see a billboard that I don’t remember seeing and I look up at it. All it says is “Disappear Here” and even though it’s probably an ad for some resort, it still freaks me out a little and I step on the gas really hard and the car screeches as I leave the
light. I put my sunglasses on even though it’s still pretty dark outside and I keep looking into the rearview mirror, getting this strange feeling that someone’s following me. I come to another red light and that’s when I realize that I forgot the scarf Blair gave me; left it at Griffin’s.

M
y house lies on Mulholland and as I press the gate opener, I look out over the Valley and watch the beginning of another day, my fifth day back, and then I pull into the circular driveway and park my car next to my mother’s, which is parked next to a Ferrari that I don’t recognize. I sit there and listen to the last lines of some song and then get out of the car and walk to the front door and find my key and open it. I walk upstairs to my bedroom and lock the door and light a cigarette and turn the television on and turn the sound off and then I walk into the closet and find the bottle of Valium that I hid beneath some cashmere sweaters. After looking at the small yellow pill with the hole in the middle of it, I decide that I really don’t need it and I put it away. I take off my clothes and look at the digital clock, the same kind of digital clock that Griffin has, and notice that I only have a few hours to sleep before I have to meet my father for lunch, so I make sure the alarm is set and I lay back, staring at the television hard, because I once heard that if you stare at the television screen for a long enough time, you can fall asleep.

T
he alarm goes off at eleven. A song called “Artificial Insemination” is playing on the radio and I wait until it’s over to open my eyes and get up. Sun is flooding the room through the Venetian blinds and when I look in the mirror it gives the impression that I have this wild, cracked grin. I walk into the closet and look at my face and body in the mirror; flex my muscles a couple of times, wonder if I should get a haircut, decide I do need a tan. Turn away and open the envelope, also hid beneath the sweaters. I cut myself two lines of the coke I bought from Rip last night and do them and feel better. I’m still wearing my jockey shorts as I walk downstairs. Even though it’s eleven, I don’t think anyone is up yet and I notice that my mother’s door is closed, probably locked. I walk outside and dive into the pool and do twenty quick laps and then get out, towel myself dry as I walk into the kitchen. Take an orange from the refrigerator and peel it as I walk upstairs. I eat the orange before I get into the shower and realize that I don’t have time for the weights. Then I go into my room and turn on MTV really loud and cut myself another line and then drive to meet my father for lunch.

I
don’t like driving down Wilshire during lunch hour. There always seem to be too many cars and old people and maids waiting for buses and I end up looking away and smoking too much and turning the radio up to full volume. Right now, nothing is moving even though the lights are green. As I wait in the car, I look at the people in the cars next to mine. Whenever I’m on Wilshire or Sunset during lunch hour I try to make eye contact with the driver of the car next to mine, stuck in traffic. When this doesn’t happen, and it usually doesn’t, I put my sunglasses back on and slowly move the car forward. As I pull onto Sunset I pass the billboard I saw this morning that read “Disappear Here” and I look away and kind of try to get it out of my mind.

M
y father’s offices are in Century City. I wait around for him in the large, expensively furnished reception room and hang out with the secretaries, flirting with this really pretty blond one. It doesn’t bother me that my father leaves me waiting there for thirty minutes while he’s in some meeting and then asks me why I’m late. I don’t really want to go out to lunch today, would rather be at the beach or sleeping or out by the pool, but I’m pretty nice and I smile and nod a lot and pretend to listen to
all his questions about college and I answer them pretty sincerely. And it doesn’t embarrass me a whole lot that while on the way to Ma Maison he puts the top of the 450 down and plays a Bob Seger tape, as if this was some sort of weird gesture of communication. It also doesn’t really make me angry that at lunch my father talks to a lot of businessmen, people he deals with in the film industry, who stop by our table and that I’m introduced only as “my son” and the businessmen all begin to look the same and I begin to wish that I had brought the rest of the coke.

My father looks pretty healthy if you don’t look at him for too long. He’s completely tan and has had a hair transplant in Palm Springs, two weeks ago, and he has pretty much a full head of blondish hair. He also has had his face lifted. I’d gone to see him at Cedars-Sinai when he had it done and I remember seeing his face covered with bandages and how he would keep touching them lightly.

“Why aren’t you having the usual?” I ask, actually interested, after we order.

He smiles, showing off the caps. “Nutritionist won’t allow it.”

“Oh.”

“How is your mother?” he asks calmly.

“She’s fine.”

“Is she really feeling fine?”

“Yes, she’s really feeling fine.” I’m tempted, for a moment, to tell him about the Ferrari parked in the driveway.

“Are you sure?”

“There’s nothing to worry about.”

“That’s good.” He pauses. “Is she still seeing that Dr. Crain?”

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s good.”

There’s a pause. Another businessman stops by, then leaves.

“Well, Clay, what do you want for Christmas?”

“Nothing,” I say after a while.

“Do you want your subscription to
Variety
renewed?”

“It already is.”

Another pause.

“Do you need money?”

“No,” I tell him, knowing that he’ll slip me some later on, outside Ma Maison maybe, or on the way back to his office.

“You look thin,” he says.

“Hmmm.”

“And pale.”

“It’s the drugs,” I mumble.

“I didn’t quite hear that.”

I look at him and say, “I’ve gained five pounds since I’ve been back home.”

“Oh,” he says, and pours himself a glass of white wine.

Some other business guy drops by. After he leaves, my father turns to me and asks. “Do you want to go to Palm Springs for Christmas?”

D
uring the end of my senior year one day, I didn’t go to school. Instead I drove out to Palm Springs alone and listened to a lot of old tapes I used to like but didn’t much anymore, and I stopped at a McDonald’s in Sunland for a Coke and then drove out to the desert and parked in front of the old house. I didn’t like the new one that the family had bought; well, it was okay, but it wasn’t like the old house. The old house was empty and the outside looked really scummy and unkempt and there were weeds and a television aerial that had fallen off the roof and empty trash cans were lying on what used to be the front lawn. The pool was drained and all these memories rushed back to me and I had to sit down in my school uniform on the steps of the empty pool and cry. I remembered all the Friday nights driving in and the Sunday nights leaving and afternoons spent playing cards on the chaise longues out by the pool with my grandmother. But those memories seemed faded compared to empty beer cans that were scattered all over the dead lawn and the windows that were all smashed and broken. My aunt had tried to sell the house, but I guess she got sentimental and no longer wanted to. My father had wanted to sell it and was really bitter that no one had done so. But they stopped talking about it and the house lay between them and was never brought up anymore. I didn’t go out to Palm Springs that day to look around or see the house and I didn’t go because I wanted to miss school or anything. I guess I went out there because I wanted to remember the way things were. I don’t know.

O
n the way home from lunch, I stop by Cedars-Sinai to visit Muriel, since Blair told me that she really wanted to see me. She’s really pale and so totally thin that I can make out the veins in her neck too clearly. She also has dark circles under her eyes and the pink lipstick she’s put on clashes badly with the pale white skin on her face. She’s watching some exercise show on TV and all these issues of
Glamour
and
Vogue
and
Interview
lie by her bed. The curtains are closed and she asks me to open them. After I do, she puts her sunglasses on and tells me that she’s having a nicotine fit and that she’s “absolutely dying” for a cigarette. I tell her I don’t have any. She shrugs and turns the volume up on the television and laughs at the people doing the exercises. She doesn’t say that much, which is just as well since I don’t say much either.

I leave the parking lot of Cedars-Sinai and make a couple of wrong turns and end up on Santa Monica. I sigh, turn up the radio, some little girls are singing about an earthquake in L.A. “
My surfboard’s ready for the tidal wave.
” A car pulls up next to mine at the next light and I turn my head to see who’s in it. Two young guys in a Fiat and both have short hair and bushy mustaches and are wearing plaid short-sleeve shirts and ski vests and one looks at me, with this total look of surprise and disbelief and he tells his friend something and now both of them are looking at me. “
Smack, smack, I fell in a crack.
”
The driver rolls down his window and I tense up and he asks me something, but my window’s rolled up and the top isn’t down and so I don’t answer his question. But the driver asks me again, positive that I’m this certain actor. “
Now I’m part of the debris
,” the girls are squealing. The light turns green and I drive away, but I’m in the left-hand lane and it’s a Friday afternoon nearing five and the traffic’s bad, and when I come to another red light, the Fiat’s next to me again, and these two insane fags are laughing and pointing and asking me the same fucking question over and over. I finally make an illegal left turn and come to a side street, where I park for a minute and turn the radio off, light a cigarette.

R
ip’s supposed to meet me at Cafe Casino in Westwood, and he hasn’t shown up yet. There’s nothing to do in Westwood. It’s too hot to walk around and I’ve seen all the movies, some even twice, and so I sit under the umbrellas at Cafe Casino and drink Perrier and grapefruit juice and watch the cars roll by in the heat. Light a cigarette and stare at the Perrier bottle. Two girls, sixteen, seventeen, both with short hair, sit at the table next to mine and I keep looking over at both of them and they both flirt back; one’s peeling an orange and the other’s sipping an espresso. The one who’s peeling an orange asks the other if she should put a maroon streak through her hair. The girl with the espresso takes a sip and tells her no. The other girl asks about other colors,
about anthracite. The girl with the espresso takes another sip and thinks about this for a minute and then tells her no, that it should be red, and if not red, then violet, but definitely not maroon or anthracite. I look over at her and she looks at me and then I look at the Perrier bottle. The girl with the espresso pauses a couple of seconds and then asks, “What’s anthracite?”

A black Porsche with tinted windows pulls up in front of Cafe Casino and Julian gets out. He sees me and, though it looks like he doesn’t want to, comes over. His hand falls on my shoulder and I shake his other hand.