Less Than Zero Read online

  “Nothing.”

  It hadn’t rained in the city for too long and Blair would keep calling me up and tell me that the two of us should get together and go to the beach club. I’d be too tired or stoned or wasted to get up in the afternoon to even go out and sit beneath the umbrellas in the hot sun at the beach club with Blair. So the two of us decided to go to Pajaro Dunes in Monterey where it was cool and where the sea was shimmering and green and my parents had a house on the beach. We drove up in my car and we slept in the master bedroom, and we drove into town and bought food and cigarettes and candles. There was nothing much to do in town; an old movie theater in need of paint and seagulls and crumbling docks and Mexican fishermen who whistled at Blair and an old church Blair took pictures of but didn’t go in. We found a case of champagne in the garage and drank the whole case that week. We’d open a bottle usually in the late morning after we went walking along the beach. In the early morning we’d make love, either in the living room, or, if not in the living room, then on the floor in the master bedroom, and we’d close the blinds and light the candles we’d bought in town and we’d watch our shadows, illuminated against the white walls, move, shift.

  The house was old and faded and bad a courtyard and a tennis court, but we didn’t play tennis. Instead, I’d wander around the house at night and listen to old records I used to like and sit in the courtyard and drink what was left of the champagne. I didn’t like the house that much, and sometimes I’d have to go out onto the deck at night because I couldn’t stand the white walls and the thin Venetian blinds and the black tile in the kitchen. I’d walk along the beach at night and sometimes sit down in the damp sand and smoke a cigarette and stare up at the lighted house and see Blair’s silhouette in the living room, talking on the phone to someone who was in Palm Springs. When I came back in we’d both be drunk and she would suggest that we go swimming, but it was too cold and dark, and so we’d sit in the small jacuzzi in the middle of the courtyard and make love.

  During the day I’d sit in the living room and try to read the San Francisco Chronicle and she’d walk along the beach and collect seashells, and before too long we started going to bed sometime before dawn and then waking up in the midafternoon, and then we’d open another bottle. One day we took the convertible and drove to a secluded part of the beach. We ate caviar and Blair had chopped up some onions and eggs and cheese, and we brought fruit and these cinnamon cookies Blair was really into, and a six-pack of Tab, because that and the champagne were all Blair would drink, and we’d either jog on the empty shore or try to swim in the rough surf.

  But I soon became disoriented and I knew I’d drunk too much, and whenever Blair would say something, I found myself closing my eyes and sighing. The water turned colder, raging, and the sand became wet, and Blair would sit by herself on the deck overlooking the sea and spot boats in the afternoon fog. I’d watch her play Solitaire through the glass window in the living room, and I’d hear the boats moan and creak, and Blair would pour herself another glass of champagne and it would all unsettle me.

  Soon the champagne ran out and I opened the liquor cabinet. Blair got tan and so did I, and by the end of the week, all we did was watch television, even though the reception wasn’t too good, and drink bourbon, and Blair would arrange shells into circular patterns on the floor of the living room. When Blair muttered one night, while we sat on opposite sides of the living room, “We should have gone to Palm Springs,” I knew then that it was time to leave.

  After leaving Blair I drive down Wilshire and then onto Santa Monica and then I drive onto Sunset and take Beverly Glen to Mulholland, and then Mulholland to Sepulveda and then Sepulveda to Ventura and then I drive through Sherman Oaks to Encino and then into Tarzana and then Woodland Hills. I stop at a Sambo’s that’s open all night and sit alone in a large empty booth and the winds have started and they’re blowing so hard that the windows are shaking and the sounds of them trembling, about to break, fill the coffee shop. There are these two young guys in the booth next to mine, both wearing black suits and sunglasses and the one with a Billy Idol button pinned to his lapel keeps hitting his hand against the table, like he’s trying to keep beat. But his hand’s shaking and his rhythm’s off and every so often his hand falls off the table and hits nothing. The waitress comes over to their table and hands them the check m says thank you and the one with the Billy Idol pin grabs the check away from her and looks it over, fast.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, can’t you add?”

  “I think it’s right,” the waitress says, a little nervously.

  “Oh yeah, do you?” he sneers.

  I get the feeling something bad’s going to happen, but the other one says, “Forget it,” and then, “Jesus, I hate the fucking Valley,” and he digs into his pocket and throws a ten on the table.

  His friend gets up, belches, and mutters, “Fucking Valleyites,” loudly enough for her to hear. “Go spend the rest of it at the Galleria, or wherever the hell you go to,” and then they walk out of the restaurant and into the wind.

  When the waitress comes to my table to take my order she seems really shaken up. “Pill-popping bastards. I been to other places outside the Valley and they aren’t all that great,” she tells me.

  I stop at a newsstand on the way back home and buy some porno magazine with two girls holding riding crops in a laminated photo on the cover. I stand really still and the streets are empty and it’s quiet and I can only hear the sound of the papers and magazines rustling, the newsstand guy running around putting bricks on top of the stacks so they don’t blow away. I can also hear the sound of coyotes howling and dogs barking and palm trees shaking in the wind up in the hills. I get into my car and the wind rocks it for a minute and then I drive away, up toward my house, in the hills.

  From my bed, later that night, I can hear the windows throughout the house rattling, and I get really freaked out and keep thinking that they’re going to crack and shatter. It wakes me up and I sit up in bed and look over at the window and then glance over at the Elvis poster, and his eyes are looking out the window, beyond, into the night, and his face looks almost alarmed at what it might be seeing, the word “Trust” above the worried face. And I think about the billboard on Sunset and the way Julian looked past me at Cafe Casino, and when I finally fall asleep, it’s Christmas Eve.

  Daniel calls me on the day before Christmas and tells me that he’s feeling better and that last night, at his party, someone slipped him a bad Quaalude. Daniel also thinks that Vanden, a girl he saw at school in New Hampshire, is pregnant. He remembers that at some party before he left, she had mentioned something about it, half-jokingly. And Daniel got this letter from her a couple of days ago and he tells me that Vanden might not be coming back; that she might be starting a punk-rock group in New York called The Spider’s Web; that she might be living with this drummer from school in the Village; that they might get a gig to open for someone at the Peppermint Lounge or CBGB’s; that she might or might not be coming out to L.A.; that it might or might not be Daniel’s kid; that she might or might not get an abortion, get rid of it; that her parents have divorced and her mother moved back to Connecticut and that she might or might not go back there and stay with her for a month or so, and her father, some big shot at ABC, is worried about her. He says that the letter wasn’t too clear.

  I’m lying on my bed, watching MTV, the phone cradled in my neck, and I tell him not to worry and then ask him if his parents are coming back for Christmas and he says that they’ll be gone another two weeks and that he’s going to spend Christmas with some friends in Bel Air. He was going to spend it with a girl he knows in Malibu, but she has mono and he doesn’t think that it would be such a hot idea and I agree with him and Daniel asks if he should get in touch with Vanden and I’m surprised at how much strength it takes to care enough to urge him to do so and he says that he doesn’t see the point and says Merry Christmas dude and we hang up.

  I’m sitting in the main room at Chasen’s
with my parents and sisters and it’s late, nine-thirty or ten, on Christmas Eve. Instead of eating anything, I look down at my plate and move the fork across it, back and forth, and become totally fixated on the fork cutting a path between the peas. My father startles me by pouring some more champagne into my glass. My sisters look bored and tan and talk about anorexic friends and some Calvin Klein model and they look older than I remember them looking, even more so when they hold their glasses up by the stem and drink the champagne slowly; they tell me a couple of jokes that I don’t get and tell my father what they want for Christmas.

  We picked my father up earlier tonight at his penthouse in Century City. It seemed that he had already opened a bottle of champagne and had drunk most of it before we arrived. My father’s penthouse in Century City, the penthouse he moved into after my parents separated, is pretty big and nicely decorated and has a large jacuzzi outside the bedroom that’s always warm and steaming. He and my mother, who haven’t said that much to each other since the separation, which was, I think, about a year ago, seemed really nervous and irritated by the fact that the holidays have to bring them together, and they sat across from each other in the living room and said, I think, only four words to each other.

  “Your car?” my father asked.

  “Yes,” my mother said, looking over at the small Christmas tree that his maid decorated.

  “Fine.”

  Dad finishes his glass of champagne and pours himself another. Mother asks for the bread. My father wipes his mouth with his napkin, clears his throat and I tense up, knowing that he’s going to ask everybody what they want for Christmas, even though my sisters have already told him. My father opens his mouth. I shut my eyes and he asks if anyone would like dessert. Definite anticlimax. The waiter comes over. I tell him no. I don’t look at my parents too much, just keep running my hand through my hair, wishing I had some coke, anything, to get through this and I look around the restaurant, which is only half-full; people are murmuring to each other and their whispers carry somehow and I realize that all it comes down to is that I’m this eighteen-year-old boy with shaking hands and blond hair and with the beginnings of a tan and semistoned sitting in Chasen’s on Doheny and Beverly, waiting for my father to ask me what I want for Christmas.

  No one talks about anything much and no one seems to mind, at least I don’t. My father mentions that one of his business associates died of pancreatic cancer recently and my mother mentions that someone she knows, a tennis partner, had a mastectomy. My father orders another bottle—third? fourth?—and mentions another deal. The older of my two sisters yawns, picks at her salad. I think about Blair alone in her bed stroking that stupid black cat and the billboard that says, “Disappear Here” and Julian’s eyes and wonder if he’s for sale and people are afraid to merge and the way the pool at night looks, the lighted water, glowing in the backyard.

  Jared walks in, not with Blair’s father, but with a famous model who doesn’t take off her fur coat and Jared doesn’t take off his dark glasses. Another man my father knows, some guy from Warner Brothers, comes over to the table and wishes us a Merry Christmas. I don’t listen to the conversation. Instead I look over at my mother, who stares into her glass and one of my sisters tells her a joke and she doesn’t get it and orders a drink. I wonder if Blair’s father knows that Jared is at Chasen’s tonight with this famous model. I hope I’ll never have to do this again.

  We leave Chasen’s and the streets are empty and the air’s still dry and hot and the wind’s still blowing. On Little Santa Monica, a car lays overturned, its windows broken, and as we pass it, my sisters crane their necks to get a closer look and they ask my mother, who’s driving, to slow down and she doesn’t and my sisters complain. We drive to Jimmy’s and my mother brings the Mercedes to a stop and we get out and the valet takes it and we all sit on a couch next to a small table in the darkened bar area. Jimmy’s is pretty empty; except for a few scattered couples at the bar and another family that sits across from us, there’s nobody in the bar. A piano player’s singing “September Song” and he sings softly. My father complains that he should be playing Christmas carols. My sisters go to the restroom and when they come back they tell us that they saw a lizard in one of the stalls and my mother says she doesn’t get it.

  I start to flirt with the oldest girl from the family across from us and I wonder if our family looks like this one does. The girl looks a lot like a girl I was seeing for a little while in New Hampshire. She has short blond hair and blue eyes and a tan and when she notices me staring at her, she looks away, smiling. My father requests a phone, and a phone with a long extension cord is brought over to the couch and my father calls his father up in Palm Springs and we all wish him a Merry Christmas and I feel like a fool saying, “Merry Christmas, Grandpa,” in front of this girl.

  On the way home, after dropping my father off at his penthouse in Century City, I keep my face pressed against the window of the car and stare out at the lights of the Valley, drifting up toward the hills as we drive onto Mulholland. One of my sisters has put my mother’s fur coat on and has fallen asleep. The gate opens and the car enters the driveway. My mother presses a button that closes the gate and I try to wish her a Merry Christmas, but the words just don’t come out and I leave her sitting in the car.

  Christmas in Palm Springs. It was always hot. Even if it was raining, it was still hot. One Christmas, last Christmas, after it was all over, after the old house was left, it got hotter than a lot of people could remember. No one wanted to believe that it could get as hot as it had become; it was simply impossible. But the temperature readings at the Security National Bank in Rancho Mirage would read 111 and 112 and 113 and all I could do was stare at the numbers, refusing to believe that it could get that hot, that hellish. But then I’d look across the desert and a hot wind would whip into my face and the sun would glare down so hard that my sunglasses couldn’t keep the shine away and I’d have to squint to see that the metal grids in the crosswalk signs were twisting, writhing, actually melting in the heat, and I knew that I had to believe it.

  The nights during Christmas weren’t any better. It would still be light at seven and the sky would stay orange until eight and the hot winds would come through the canyons and filter out over the desert. When it got really dark the nights would be black and hot and on some nights these weird white clouds would drift slowly through the sky and disappear by dawn. It would also be quiet. It was strange to drive down no at one or two in the morning. There wouldn’t be any cars out, and if I stopped by the side of the road and turned the radio off and rolled down the windows, I couldn’t hear anything. Only my own breath, which was all raspy and dry and came in uneven gasps. But I wouldn’t do this for long, because I’d catch a glimpse of my eyes in the rearview mirror, sockets red, scared, and I’d get really frightened for some reason and drive home quickly.

  Early evenings were about the only time I’d go outside. I’d spend this time by the pool, eating banana popsicles and reading the Herald Examiner, when there was some shade in the backyard, and the pool would be totally still except for an occasional ripple caused by big yellow and black bees with huge wings and black dragonflies, crashing into the pool, driven mad by the insane heat.

  Last Christmas in Palm Springs, I’d be lying in bed, naked, and even with the air conditioner on, the cool air blowing over me and a bowl of ice, some of it wrapped in a towel, next to the bed, I couldn’t become cool. Visions of driving through town and feeling the hot winds on my shoulder and watching the heat rise up out of the desert would make me feel warm and I’d force myself up and walk downstairs out onto the deck by the lighted pool in the middle of the night and I’d try to smoke a joint but I could barely breathe. I’d smoke it anyway, just to get to sleep. I could only stay outside for so long. There’d be these strange sounds and lights next door, and I’d go back upstairs to my room and lock the door and finally fall asleep.

  When I woke up in the afternoon, I’d come downstairs and
my grandfather would tell me that he heard strange things at night and when I asked him what strange things, be said that he couldn’t put his finger on it and so he’d shrug and finally say that it must have been his imagination, probably nothing. The dog would bark all night and when I’d wake up to tell it to be quiet, it would look freaked out, its eyes wide, panting, shaking, but I’d never go outside to see why the dog was barking and I’d lock myself back in my room and put the towel, damp, cool, over my eyes. The next day, out by the pool, there was an empty package of cigarettes. Lucky Strikes. No one smokes cigarettes in the family. The next day my father had new locks put on all the doors and the gates in back, while my mother and sisters took the Christmas tree down, while I slept.

  A couple hours later, Blair calls. She tells me there’s a picture of her father and her at a premiere in the new People. She also says that she’s drunk and in the house alone and that her family is down the street at someone’s screening room, watching a rough cut of her father’s new film. She also tells me that she’s nude and in bed and that she misses me. I start to walk around the room, nervous, while I listen to her. Then I stare at myself in the mirror in my closet. I spot this small shoebox in the corner of the closet and look through it while I’m on the phone with Blair. There are all these photographs in the box: a picture of Blair and me at Prom; one of us at Disneyland on Grad Nite; a couple of us at the beach in Monterey; and couple of others from a party in Palm Springs; a picture of Blair in Westwood I had taken one day when the two of us had left school early, with Blair’s initials on the back of the photo. I also find this picture of myself, wearing jeans and no shirt and no shoes, lying on the floor, with sunglasses on, my hair wet, and I think about who took it and can’t remember. I smooth it out and try to look at myself. I think about it some more and then put it away. There are other photographs in the box but I can’t deal with looking at them, at old snapshots of Blair and me and so I put the shoebox back in the closet.