Less Than Zero (9 page)

“The movie already began though,” the usher tells me.

“That’s okay. I don’t want to see the movie,” I tell him.

The suspicious-looking Oriental guy keeps looking at
his watch, finally leaves. I finish the Coke and wait until around four. Julian doesn’t show up.

I
drive to Trent’s house, but Trent isn’t there and so I sit in his room and put a movie in the Betamax and call Blair and ask her if she wants to do something tonight, go to a club or see a movie and she says she would and I start to draw on a piece of paper that’s next to the phone, recopying phone numbers on it.

“Julian wants to see you,” Blair tells me.

“Yeah. I heard. Did he say what for?”

“I don’t know what he wants to see you about. He just said he has to talk to you.”

“Do you have his number?” I ask.

“No. They changed all the numbers at the house in Bel Air. I think he’s probably at the house in Malibu. I’m not too sure, though .… Does it matter? He probably doesn’t want to see you that badly.”

“Well,” I begin, “maybe I’ll stop by the house in Bel Air.”

“Okay.”

“If you want to do anything tonight, call me, okay?” I tell her.

“Okay.”

There’s a long silence and she says okay once more and hangs up.

J
ulian’s not at the house in Bel Air, but there’s a note on the door saying that he might be at some house on King’s Road. Julian’s not at the house on King’s Road either, but some guy with braces and short platinum-blond hair and a bathing suit on lifting weights is in the backyard. He puts one of the weights down and lights a cigarette and asks me if I want a Quaalude. I ask him where Julian is. There’s a girl lying by the pool in a chaise longue, blond, drunk, and she says in a really tired voice, “Oh, Julian could be anywhere. Does he owe you money?” The girl has brought a television outside and is watching some movie about cavemen.

“No,” I tell her.

“Well, that’s good. He promised to pay for a gram of coke I got him.” She shakes her head. “Nope. He never did.” She shakes her head again, slowly, her voice thick, a bottle of gin, half-empty, by her side.

The weightlifter with the braces on asks me if I want to buy a Temple of Doom bootleg cassette. I tell him no and then ask him to tell Julian that I stopped by. The weightlifter nods his head like he doesn’t understand and the girl asks him if he got the backstage passes to the Missing Persons concert. He says, “Yeah, baby,” and she jumps in the pool. Some caveman gets thrown off a cliff and I split.

O
n the way to my car I bump into Julian. He’s pale beneath the tan and doesn’t look too great and I get the feeling he’s going to faint, standing there, looking almost dead, but his mouth opens and he says, “Hi, Clay.”

“Hey, Julian.”

“Wanna get stoned.”

“Not now.”

“I’m glad you came by.”

“Heard you wanted to see me.”

“Yeah.”

“What did you want? What’s going on?”

Julian looks down and then up at me, squinting at the setting sun and says, “Money.”

“What for?” I ask after a little while.

He looks at the ground, touches the back of his neck and says, “Hey, let’s go to the Galleria, okay? Come on.”

I don’t want to go to the Galleria and I don’t want to give Julian any money either, but it’s a sunny afternoon and I don’t have too much else to do and so I follow Julian into Sherman Oaks.

W
e’re sitting at a table at the Galleria. Julian’s picking at a cheeseburger, not really eating it. He takes a napkin and wipes the ketchup off with it. I’m drinking
a Coke. Julian says he needs some money, some cash.

“What for?” I ask.

“Do you want some fries?”

“Could you kind of get to the point?”

“An abortion for someone.” He takes a bite out of the cheeseburger and I take the napkin covered with ketchup and put it on the table behind ours.

“An abortion?”

“Yeah.”

“For who?”

There’s a long pause and Julian says, “Some girl.”

“I would think so. But who?”

“She’s living with some friends in Westwood. Look, can you let me borrow the money or not?”

I look down at the people walking around the first floor of the Galleria and wonder what would happen if I spill the Coke over the side. “Yeah,” I finally answer. “I guess.”

“Wow. That’s great,” Julian says, relieved.

“Don’t you have any money?” I ask.

Julian looks at me quickly and says, “Um, not: now. But I will and, oh, by then it’ll be, like, too late, you know? And I don’t want to have to sell the Porsche. I mean that would be a bummer.” He takes a long pause, fingers the cheeseburger. “Just for some abortion?” He tries to laugh.

I tell Julian that I really doubt he’d have to sell his Porsche to pay for an abortion.

“What is it really for?” I ask him.

“What do you mean?” he says, getting really defensive. “It’s for an abortion.”

“Julian, that’s a lot of money for an abortion.”

“Well, the doctor’s expensive,” he says slowly, lamely. “She doesn’t want to go to one of those clinics or anything. I don’t know why. She just doesn’t.”

I sigh and sit back in my seat.

“I swear to God, Clay, it’s for an abortion.”

“Julian, come on.”

“I have credit cards and a checking account, but I think my parents put a freeze on it. All I need is some cash. Will you give me the money or not?”

“Yeah, Julian, I will, but I just want you to tell me what it’s for.”

“I told you.”

We get up and begin to walk around. Two girls pass us and smile. Julian smiles back. We stop at some punk clothing store and Julian picks up a pair of police boots and looks at them closely.

“These are weird looking,” he says. “I like them.”

He puts them down and then starts to bite his fingernails. He picks up a belt, a black leather one, and looks at it closely. And then I remember Julian in fifth grade playing soccer with me after school and then him and Trent and me going to Magic Mountain the next day on Julian’s eleventh birthday.

“Do you remember when we were in fifth grade?” I ask him. “In Sports Club, after school?”

“I can’t remember,” Julian says.

He picks up another leather belt, puts it down and then the two of us leave the Galleria.

T
hat afternoon, after Julian asked me for the money and told me to give it to him two days later at his house, I come home and the phone rings and it’s Rip and he asks me if I’ve gotten in touch with Julian. I tell him no and Rip asks me if I need anything. I tell him I need a quarter ounce. He’s silent for a long time and then says, “Six hundred.” I look over at the Elvis Costello poster and then out the window and then I count to sixty. Rip hasn’t said anything by the time I’ve finished counting.

“Okay?” I ask.

Rip says, “Okay. Tomorrow. Maybe.”

I get up and drive to a record store and walk down the aisles, look through the record bins, but I don’t find anything I want that I don’t already have. I pick up some of the new records and stare at the covers and before I realize it, an hour’s passed and it’s almost dark outside.

Spit walks into the record store and I almost walk over to him, say hi, ask about Kim, but I spot the track marks on his arm and I walk out of the store, wondering if Spit would remember me anyway. As I walk to my car, I see Alana and Kim and this blond rockabilly guy named Benjamin coming toward me. It’s too late for me to turn around, so I smile and walk up to them and the four of us end up at some sushi bar in Studio City.

A
t the sushi bar in Studio City, Alana doesn’t say much. She keeps looking down at her Diet Coke and lighting cigarettes and after a few drags, putting them out. When I ask her about Blair, she looks at me and says, “Do you really want to know?” and then smiles grimly and says, “You sound like you really care.” I turn away from her, kind of freaked out and talk to this Benjamin guy, who goes to Oakwood. It seems that his BMW was stolen and he goes on about how he finds it really lucky that he found a new BMW 320i in the same off-green his father originally bought him and he tells me, “I mean, I can’t believe I found it. Can you?”

“No. I can’t,” I tell him, glancing over at Alana.

Kim feeds Benjamin a piece of sushi and then he takes a sip of sake he got with his fake I.D. and starts to talk about music. “New Wave. Power Pop. Primitive Muzak. It’s all bullshit. Rockabilly is where it’s at. And I don’t mean those limp-wristed Stray Cats, I mean real rockabilly. I’m going to New York in April to check the rockabilly scene out. I’m not too sure if it’s happening there. It might be happening in Baltimore.”

“Yeah. Baltimore,” I say.

“Yeah, I like rockabilly too,” Kim says, wiping her hands. “But I’m still into the Psychedelic Furs and I like that new Human League song.”

Benjamin says, “The Human League are out. Over. Finished. You don’t know what’s going on, Kim.”

Kim shrugs. I wonder where Dimitri is; if Jeff is still holed up with some surfer out in Malibu.

“No, I mean, you really don’t,” he goes on. “I bet you don’t even read The Face. You’ve got to.” He lights a clove cigarette. “You’ve got to.”

“Why do you have to?” I ask.

Benjamin looks at me, runs his fingers over his pompadour and says, “Otherwise you’ll get bored.”

I say I guess so, then make plans with Kim to meet her later tonight at her house with Blair and then I go home and out to dinner with my mother. When I get home from that I take a long cold shower and sit on the floor of the stall and let the water hit me full on.

I
drive over to Kim’s house and find Blair sitting in Kim’s room and she has this shopping bag from Jurgenson’s over her head and when I come in, her body gets all tense and she turns around, startled, and she reaches over and turns down the stereo. “Who is it?”

“It’s me,” I tell her. “Clay.”

She takes the bag off her head and smiles and tells me that she had the hiccups. There’s a large dog at Blair’s feet and I lean down and stroke the dog’s head. Kim comes out of the bathroom, takes a drag off the cigarette Blair was smoking and then throws it on the floor. She turns the stereo back up, some Prince song.

“Jesus, Clay, you look like you’re on acid or something,” Blair says, lighting another cigarette.

“I just had dinner with my mother,” I tell her.

The dog puts the cigarette out with its paw and then eats it.

Kim mentions something about an old boyfriend who had a really bad trip once. “He took acid and didn’t come down for six weeks. His parents sent him to Switzerland.” Kim turns to Blair, who’s looking at the dog. The dog swallows the rest of the cigarette.

“Have I dressed down enough?” Kim asks us.

Blair nods and tells her to take the hat off.

“Should I?” Kim asks me, unsure.

“Sure, why not?” I sigh and sit on Kim’s bed.

“Listen, it’s early. Why don’t we go to the movies,” Kim says, looking in the mirror, taking the hat off.

Blair gets up and says, “That’s a good idea. What’s playing?”

The dog coughs and swallows again.

W
e drive to Westwood. The movie Kim and Blair want to see starts at ten and is about this group of young pretty sorority girls who get their throats slit and are thrown into a pool. I don’t watch a lot of the movie, just the gory parts. My eyes keep wandering off the screen and over to the two green Exit signs that hang above the two doors in the back of the theater. The movie ends really suddenly and Kim and Blair stay for the credits and recognize a lot of the names. On the way out, Blair
and Kim spot Lene, and Blair grabs my arm and says, “Oh, no.”

“Turn around, turn around. Lene is here,” Kim says with this urgent voice. “Don’t tell her we saw her on MV3 today.”

“It’s too late.” Blair smiles. “Hello, Lene.”

Lene is too tan and only wearing faded jeans and this totally revealing Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt and she’s with this really young blond boy who’s also too tan and he’s wearing sunglasses and shorts and Lene shouts, “Oh my God. Blair. Kimmy.”

Lene and Blair hug each other and then Lene and Kim hug and pretend to kiss each other’s cheek.

“This is Troy,” Lene says, introducing the young guy.

“This is Clay,” Blair says, putting her arm on my shoulder.

“Hi, Troy,” I say.

“Hi, Clay,” he says.

We shake hands, both grips kind of limp and shaky, and the girls seem pleased.

“Oh my God, Blair, Troy and I were on MV3 today! Did you watch it?” Lene asks.

“No,” says Blair, sounding disappointed, glancing at Kim for a moment.

“Did you?” Lene asks Kim. Kim shakes her head.

“Well, I couldn’t see myself. Actually, I thought I saw myself once, but I wasn’t too sure. Did you see me, Troy?”

Troy shakes his head, checks his nails.

“Troy was on it, but they missed me and I was dancing with Troy. Instead of getting me, they got some Valley
bitch dancing next to Troy.” She pulls out a cigarette, looks for a lighter.

“Maybe they’ll repeat it and you can look more closely,” Blair says, almost grinning.

“Oh yeah, for sure they’ll repeat it,” Kim agrees, grinning, looking Troy over.

“Really?” Lene asks hopefully. I light her cigarette.

“They rerun everything,” Blair says. “Everything.”

We never get to Nowhere Club. Kim gets lost and forgets the address and so we go, instead, to Barney’s Beanery and sit there in silence and Kim talks about her party and I shoot some pool and when Blair orders a drink, the waitress asks for I.D. and Blair shows her a fake one and the waitress brings her a drink and Blair gives it to Kim, who drinks it down fast and tells Blair to order another one. And the two of them talk about how bad Lene looked on MV3 today.

T
rent calls me the next night and tells me that he’s feeling depressed; doesn’t have any more coke, can’t find Julian; having problems with some girl.

“We went to this party in the hills last night …” Trent starts and then stops.

“Yeah?” I ask, lying on my bed, staring at the TV.

“Well, I don’t know, I think she’s seeing someone else .…” He stops again. “We just don’t have it together. I’m bummed out.”