Less than zero

People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles. This is the first thing I hear when I come back to the city. Blair picks me up from LAX and mutters this under her breath as her car drives up the onramp. She says, "People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles." Though that sentence shouldn't bother me, it stays in my mind for an uncomfortably long time. Nothing else seems to matter. Not the fact that I'm eighteen and it's December and the ride on the plane had been rough and the couple from Santa Barbara, who were sitting across from me in first class, had gotten pretty drunk. Not the mud that had splattered the legs of my jeans, which felt kind of cold and loose, earlier that day at an airport in New Hampshire. Not the stain on the arm of the wrinkled, damp shirt I wear, a shirt which had looked fresh and clean this morning. Not the tear on the neck of my gray argyle vest, which seems vaguely more eastern than before, especially next to Blair's clean tight jeans and her pale-blue T-shirt. All of this seems irrelevant next to that one sentence. It seems easier to hear that people are afraid to merge rather than "I'm pretty sure Muriel is anorexic" or the singer on the radio crying out about magnetic waves. Nothing else seems to matter to me but those ten words. Not the warm winds, which seem to propel the car down the empty asphalt freeway, or the faded smell of marijuana which still faintly permeates Blair's car. All it comes down to is that I'm a boy coming home for a month and meeting someone whom I haven't seen for four months and people are afraid to merge.

Blair drives off the freeway and comes to a red light. A heavy gust of wind rocks the car for a moment and Blair smiles and says something about maybe putting the top up and turns to a different radio station. Coming to my house, Blair has to stop the car since there are these five workmen lifting the remains of palm trees that have fallen during the winds and placing the leaves and pieces of dead bark in a big red truck, and Blair smiles again. She stops at my house and the gate's open and I get out of the car, surprised to feel how dry and hot it is. I stand there for a pretty long time and Blair, after helping me lift the suitcases out of the trunk, grins at me and asks, "What's wrong?" and I say, "Nothing," and Blair says, "You look pale," and I shrug and we say goodbye and she gets into her car and drives away.

Nobody's home. The air conditioner is on and the house smells like pine. There's a note on the kitchen table that tells me that my mother and sisters are out, Christmas shopping. From where I'm standing I can see the dog lying by the pool, breathing heavily, asleep, its fur ruffled by the wind. I walk upstairs, past the new maid, who smiles at me and seems to understand who I am, and past my sisters' rooms, which still both look the same, only with different GQ cutouts pasted on the wall, and enter my room and see that it hasn't changed. The walls are still white; the records are still in place; the television hasn't been moved; the venetian blinds are still open, just as I had left them. It looks like my mother and the new maid, or maybe the old maid, cleaned out my closet while I was gone. There's a pile of comic books on my desk with a note on top of them that reads, "Do you still want these?"; also a message that Julian called and a card that says "Fuck Christmas" on it. I open it and it says "Let's Fuck Christmas Together" on the inside, an invitation to Blair's Christmas party. I put the card down and notice that it's beginning to get really cold in my room.

I take my shoes off and lie on the bed and feel my brow to see if I have a fever. I think I do. And with my hand on my forehead I look up with caution at the poster encased in glass that hangs on the wall above my bed, but it hasn't changed either. It's the promotional poster for an old Elvis Costello record. Elvis looks past me, with this wry, ironic smile on his lips, staring out the window. The word "Trust" hovering over his head, and his sunglasses, one lens red, the other blue, pushed down past the ridge of his nose so that you can see his eyes, which are slightly off center. The eyes don't look at me, though. They only look at whoever's standing by the window, but I'm too tired to get up and stand by the window.

I pick up the phone and call Julian, amazed that I actually can remember his number, but there's no answer. I sit up, and through the venetian blinds I can see the palm trees shaking wildly, actually bending, in the hot winds, and then I stare back at the poster and then turn away and then look back again at the smile and the mocking eyes, the red and blue glasses, and I can still hear people are afraid to merge and I try to get over the sentence, blank it out. I turn on MTV and tell myself I could get over it and go to sleep if I had some Valium and then I think about Muriel and feel a little sick as the videos begin to flash by.

I bring Daniel to Blair's party that night and Daniel is wearing sunglasses and a black wool jacket and black jeans. He's also wearing black suede gloves because he cut himself badly on a piece of glass a week earlier in New Hampshire. I had gone with him to the emergency room at the hospital and had watched as they cleaned the wound and washed the blood off and started to sew in the wire until I started feeling sick and then I went and sat in the waiting room at five o'clock in the morning and heard The Eagles sing "New Kid in Town" and I wanted to come back. We're standing at the door of Blair's house in Beverly Hills and Daniel complains that the gloves are sticking to the wires and are too tight, but he doesn't take them off because he doesn't want people to see the thin silver wires sticking out of the skin on his thumb and fingers. Blair answers the door.

"Hey, gorgeous," Blair exclaims. She's wearing a black leather jacket and matching pants and no shoes and she hugs me and then looks at Daniel.

"Well, who's this?" she asks, grinning.

"This is Daniel. Daniel, this is Blair," I say.

Blair offers her hand and Daniel smiles and shakes it softly.

"Well, come on in. Merry Christmas."

There are two Christmas trees, one in the living room and one in the den and both have twinkling dark-red lights coloring them. There are people at the party from high school, most of whom I haven't seen since graduation and they all stand next to the two huge trees. Trent, a male model I know, is there.

"Hey, Clay," Trent says, a red-and-green-plaid scarf wrapped around his neck.

"Trent," I say.

"How are you, babes?"

"Great. Trent, this is Daniel. Daniel, this is Trent."

Trent offers his hand and Daniel smiles and adjusts his sunglasses and lightly shakes it.

"Hey, Daniel," Trent says. "Where do you go to school?"

"With Clay," Daniel says. "Where do you go?"

"U.C.L.A. or as the Orientals like to call it, U.C.R.A." Trent imitates an old Japanese man, eyes slit, head bowed, front teeth stuck out in parody, and then laughs drunkenly.

"I go to the University of Spoiled Children," Blair says, still grinning, running her fingers through her long blond hair.

"Where?" asks Daniel.

"U.S.C.," she says.

"Oh, yeah," he says. "That's right."

Blair and Trent laugh and she grabs his arm to balance herself for a moment. "Or Jew.S.C.," she says, almost gasping.

"Or Jew.C.L.A.," Trent says, still laughing.

Finally Blair stops laughing and brushes past me to the door, telling me that I should try the punch.

"I'll get the punch," Daniel says. "You want some, Trent?"

"No thanks." Trent looks at me and says, "You look pale."

I notice that I do, compared to Trent's deep, dark tan and most of the other people's complexions around the room. "I've been in New Hampshire for four months."

Trent reaches into his pocket. "Here," he says, handing me a card. "This is the address of a tanning salon on Santa Monica. Now, it's not artificial lighting or anything like that, and you don't have to rub Vitamin E capsules all over your bod. This thing is called an Uva Bath and what they do is they dye your skin."

I stop listening to Trent after a while and look over at three boys, friends of Blair's I don't know, who go to U.S.C., all tan and blond and one is singing along with the music coming out of the speakers.

"It works," Trent says.

"What works?" I ask, distracted.

"An Uva Bath. Uva Bath. Look at the card, dude."

"Oh yeah." I look at the card. "They dye your skin, right?"

"Right."

"Okay."

Pause.

"What have you been doing?" Trent asks.

"Unpacking," I say. "What about you?"

"Well," he smiles proudly. "I got accepted by this modeling agency, a really good one," he assures me. "And guess who's going to be not only on the cover of International Male in two months, but who is also the month of June in U.C.L.A.'s college man calendar?"

"Who?" I ask.

"Me, dude," Trent says.

"International Male?"

"Yeah. I don't like the magazine. My agent told them no nude stuff, just like Speedos and stuff like that. I don't do any nude stuff."

I believe him but don't know why and look around the room to see if Rip, my dealer, is at the party. But I don't see him and I turn back to Trent and ask, "Yeah? What else have you been doing?"

"Oh, like the usual. Going to Nautilus, getting smashed, going to this Uva place... But, hey, don't tell anyone I've been there, okay?"

"What?"

"I said don't tell anyone about this Uva place, okay?" Trent looks worried, concerned almost, and I put my hand on his shoulder and give it a squeeze to reassure him. "Oh, yeah, don't worry."

"Hey," he says, looking around the room. "Gotta do a little business. Later. Lunch," he jokes, leaving.

Daniel comes back with the punch and it's very red and very strong and I cough a little as I take a swallow. From where I'm standing, I can see Blair's father, who's this movie producer and he's sitting in a corner of the den talking with this young actor I think I went to school with. Blair's father's boyfriend is also at the party. His name's Jared and he's really young and blond and tan and has blue eyes and incredibly straight white teeth and he's talking to the three boys from U.S.C. I can also see Blair's mother, who is sitting by the bar, drinking a vodka gimlet, her hands shaking as she brings the drink to her mouth. Blair's friend Alana comes into the den and hugs me and I introduce her to Daniel.

"You look just like David Bowie," Alana, who is obviously coked up out of her mind, tells Daniel. "Are you left-handed?"

"No, I'm afraid not," Daniel says.

"Alana likes guys who are left-handed," I tell Daniel.

"And who look like David Bowie," she reminds me.

"And who live in the Colony," I finish.

"Oh, Clay, you're such a beasty," she giggles. "Clay is a total beasty," she tells Daniel.

"Yes, I know," Daniel says. "A beasty. Totally."

"Have you had any punch? You should have some," I tell her.

"Darling," she says, slowly, dramatically. "I made the punch." She laughs and then spots Jared and stops suddenly. "Oh, God, I wish Blair's father wouldn't invite Jared to these things. It makes her mother so nervous. She gets totally bombed anyway, but having him around makes it worse." She turns to Daniel and says, "Blair's mother is an agoraphobic." She looks back at Jared. "I mean he's going to Death Valley next week on location, I don't see why he can't wait until then, can you?" Alana turns to Daniel, then me.

"No," Daniel says solemnly.

"Me neither," I say, shaking my head.

Alana looks down and then back at me and says, "You look kind of pale, Clay. You should go to the beach or something."

"Maybe I will." I finger the card Trent gave me and then ask her if Julian is going to show up. "He called me and left a message, but I can't get in touch with him," I say.

"Oh God, no," Alana says. "I hear he is like completely fucked up."

"What do you mean?" I ask.

Suddenly the three boys from U.S.C. and Jared laugh loudly, in unison.

Alana rolls her eyes up and looks pained. "Jared heard this stupid joke from his boyfriend who works at Morton's. 'What are the two biggest lies?' 'I'll pay you back and I won't come in your mouth.' I don't even get it. Oh God, I better go help Blair. Mummy's going behind the bar. Nice to meet you, Daniel."

"Yeah, you too," Daniel says.

Alana walks over to Blair and her mother by the bar.

"Maybe I should have hummed a few bars of 'Let's Dance,' " Daniel says.

"Maybe you should have."

Daniel smiles. "Oh Clay, you're such a total beasty."

We leave after Trent and one of the boys from U. S. C. fall into the Christmas tree in the living room. Later that night, when the two of us are sitting at the end of the darkened bar at the Polo Lounge, not a whole lot is said.

"I want to go back," Daniel says, quietly, with effort.

"Where?" I ask, unsure.

There's a long pause that kind of freaks me out and Daniel finishes his drink and fingers the sunglasses he's still wearing and says, "I don't know. Just back."

My mother and I are sitting in a restaurant on Melrose, and she's drinking white wine and still has her sunglasses on and she keeps touching her hair and I keep looking at my hands, pretty sure that they're shaking. She tries to smile when she asks me what I want for Christmas. I'm surprised at how much effort it takes to raise my head up and look at her.

"Nothing," I say.

There's a pause and then I ask her, "What do you want?"

She says nothing for a long time and I look back at my hands and she sips her wine. "I don't know. I just want to have a nice Christmas."

I don't say anything.

"You look unhappy," she says real suddenly.

"I'm not," I tell her.

"You look unhappy," she says, more quietly this time. She touches her hair, bleached, blondish, again.

"You do too," I say, hoping that she won't say anything else.

She doesn't say anything else, until she's finished her third glass of wine and poured her fourth.

"How was the party?"

"Okay."

"How many people were there?"

"Forty. Fifty." I shrug.

She takes a swallow of wine. "What time did you leave it?"

"I don't remember."

"One? Two?"

"Must of been one."

"Oh." She pauses again and takes another swallow.

"It wasn't very good," I say, looking at her.

"Why?" she asks, curious.

"It just wasn't," I say and look back at my hands.

I'm with Trent in a yellow train that sits on Sunset. Trent's smoking and drinking a Pepsi and I stare out the window and into the headlights of passing cars. We're waiting for Julian, who's supposed to be bringing Trent a gram. Julian is fifteen minutes late and Trent is nervous and impatient and when I tell him that he should deal with Rip, like I do, instead of Julian, he just shrugs. We finally leave and he says that we might be able to find Julian in the arcade in Westwood. But we don't find Julian at the arcade in Westwood, so Trent suggests that we go to Fatburger and eat something. He says he's hungry, that he hasn't eaten anything in a long time, mentions something about fasting. We order and take the food to one of the booths. But I'm not too hungry and Trent notices that there's no chili on my Fatburger.

"What is this? You can't eat a Fatburger without chili."

I roll my eyes up at him and light a cigarette.

"Jesus, you're weird. Been up in fucking New Hampshire too long," he mutters. "No fucking chili."

I don't say anything and notice that the walls have been painted a very bright, almost painful yellow and under the glare of the fluorescent lights, they seem to glow. Joan Jett and the Blackhearts are on the jukebox singing "Crimson and Clover." I stare at the walls and listen to the words. "Crimson and clover, over and over and over and over..." I suddenly get thirsty, but I don't want to go up to the counter and order anything because there's this fat, sad-faced Japanese girl taking orders and this security guard leaning against another yellow wall in back, eyeing everyone suspiciously, and Trent is still staring at my Fatburger with this amazed look on his face and there's this guy in a red shirt with long stringy hair, pretending to be playing the guitar and mouthing the words to the song in the booth next to ours and he starts to shake his head and his mouth opens. "Crimson and clover, over and over and over... Crimson and clo-oh-ver..."

It's two in the morning and hot and we're at the Edge in the back room and Trent is trying on my sunglasses and I tell him that I want to leave. Trent tells me that we'll leave soon, a couple of minutes maybe. The music from the dance floor seems too loud and I tense up every time the music stops and another song comes on. I lean back against the brick wall and notice that there are two boys embracing in a darkened corner. Trent senses I'm tense and says, "What do you want me to do? You wanna lude, is that it?" He pulls out a Pez dispenser and pulls Daffy Duck's head back. I don't say anything, just keep staring at the Pez dispenser and then he puts it away and cranes his neck. "Is that Muriel?"

"No, that girl's black."

"Oh... you're right."

Pause.

"It's not a girl."

I wonder how Trent can mistake a black teenage boy, not anorexic, for Muriel, but then I see that the black boy is wearing a dress. I look at Trent and tell him again that I have to leave.

"Yeah, we all have to leave," he says. "You said that already."

And so I stare at my shoes and Trent finds something to say. "You're too much." I keep staring at my shoes, tempted to ask him to let me see the Pez dispenser.

Trent says, "Oh shit, find Blair, let's go, let's leave."

I don't want to go back into the main room, but I realize you have to go through the main room to get back to the outside. I spot Daniel, who's talking to this really pretty tan girl who's wearing a Heaven cut-off T-shirt and a black-and-white miniskirt and I whisper to him that we're leaving and he gives me this look and says, "Don't give me any shit." I finally yank his arm and tell him he's really drunk and he says no kidding. He kisses the girl on the cheek and follows us toward the door, where Blair's standing, talking to some guy from U.S.C.

"Are we leaving?" she asks.

"Yeah," I say, wondering where she's been.

We walk out into the hot night and Blair asks, "Well, did we have a good time?" and nobody answers and she looks down.

Trent and Daniel are standing by Trent's BMW and Trent's pulling the Cliff Notes to As I Lay Dying out of his glove compartment and hands them to Blair. We say goodbye and make sure Daniel can get into his car. Trent says that maybe one of us should drive Daniel home but then agrees that it would be too much of a hassle to drive him home and then drive him back tomorrow. And I drive Blair back to her house in Beverly Hills and she fingers the Cliff Notes but doesn't say anything except when she tries to rub the stamp off her hand and she says, "Fuck it. I wish they didn't have to stamp my hand in black. It never comes off." And then she mentions that even though I was gone for four months, I never called her. I tell her I'm sorry and turn off Hollywood Boulevard because it's too brightly lit and take Sunset and then drive onto her street and then to her driveway. We kiss and she notices that I've been gripping the steering wheel too hard and she looks at my fists and says, "Your hands are red," then gets out of the car.

We have been in Beverly Hills shopping most of the late morning and early afternoon. My mother and my two sisters and me. My mother has spent most of this time probably at Neiman-Marcus, and my sisters have gone to Jerry Magnin and have used our father's charge account to buy him and me something and then to MGA and Camp Beverly Hills and Privilege to buy themselves something. I sit at the bar at La Scala Boutique for most of this time, bored out of my mind, smoking, drinking red wine. Finally, my mother drives up in her Mercedes and parks the car in front of La Scala and waits for me. I get up and leave some money on the counter and get in the car and lean my head up against the headrest.

"She's going out with the biggest babe," one of my sisters is saying.

"Where does he go to school?" the other one asks, interested.

"Harvard."

"What grade is he in?"

"Ninth. One year above her."

"I heard their house is for sale," my mother says.

"I wonder if he's for sale," the older of my two sisters, who I think is fifteen, mumbles, and both of them giggle from the backseat.

A truck with video games strapped in the back passes by and my sisters are driven into some sort of frenzy.

"Follow that video game!" one of them commands.

"Mom, do you think if I asked Dad he'd get me Galaga for Christmas?" the other one asks, brushing her short blond hair. I think she's thirteen, maybe.

"What is a Galaga?" my mother asks.

"A video game," one of them says.

"You have Atari though," my mother says.

"Atari's cheap," she says, handing the brush to my other sister, who also has blond hair.

"I don't know," my mother says, adjusting her sunglasses, opening the sunroof. "I'm having dinner with him tonight."

"That's encouraging," the older sister says sarcastically.

"Where would we put it though?" one of them asks.

"Put what?" my mother asks back.

"Galaga! Galaga!" my sisters scream.

"In Clay's room, I suppose," my mother says.

I shake my head.

"Bullshit! No way," one of them yells. "Clay can't have Galaga in his room. He always locks his door."

"Yeah, Clay, that really pisses me off," one of them says, a real edge in her voice.

"Why do you lock your door anyway, Clay?"

I don't say anything.

"Why do you lock your door, Clay?" one of them, I don't know which one, asks again.

I still don't say anything. I consider grabbing one of the bags from MGA or Camp Beverly Hills or a box of shoes from Privilege and flinging them out the window.

"Mom, tell him to answer me. Why do you lock your door, Clay?"

I turn around. "Because you both stole a quarter gram of cocaine from me the last time I left my door open. That's why."

My sisters don't say anything. "Teenage Enema Nurses in Bondage" by a group called Killer Pussy comes on the radio, and my mother asks if we have to listen to this and my sisters tell her to turn it up, and no one says anything else until the song's over. When we get home, my younger sister finally tells me, out by the pool, "That's bullshit. I can get my own cocaine."

The psychiatrist I see during the four weeks I'm back is young and has a beard and drives a 450 SL and has a house in Malibu. I'll sit in his office in Westwood with the shades drawn and my sunglasses on, smoking a cigarette, sometimes cloves, just to irritate him, sometimes crying. Sometimes I'll yell at him and he'll yell back. I tell him that I have these bizarre sexual fantasies and his interest will increase noticeably. I'll start to laugh for no reason and then feel sick. I lie to him sometimes. He'll tell me about his mistress and the repairs being done on the house in Tahoe and I'll shut my eyes and light another cigarette, gritting my teeth. Sometimes I just get up and leave.

I'm sitting in Du-par's in Studio City, waiting for Blair and Alana and Kim. They had called me and asked me to go to a movie with them, but I'd taken some Valium and had fallen asleep earlier that afternoon, and I couldn't get ready in time to meet them at the movie. So I told them I'd meet them at Du-par's. I'm sitting at a booth near a large window, and I ask the waitress for a cup of coffee, but she doesn't bring me anything, and she's already started to wipe the table next to mine and taken another table's order. But it's just as well that she doesn't bring me anything since my hands are shaking pretty badly. I light a cigarette and notice the big Christmas display above the main counter. A plastic, neon-lit Santa Claus is holding a three-foot-long Styrofoam candy cane and there are all these large green and red boxes leaning against it and I wonder if there's anything in the boxes. Eyes suddenly focus in on the eyes of a small, dark, intense-looking guy wearing a Universal Studios T-shirt sitting two booths across from me. He's staring at me and I look down and take a drag, a deep one, off the cigarette. The man keeps staring at me and all I can think is either he doesn't see me or I'm not here. I don't know why I think that. People are afraid to merge. Wonder if he's for sale.

Blair suddenly kisses me on the cheek and sits down along with Alana and Kim. Blair tells me that Muriel was hospitalized for anorexia today. "She passed out in film class. So they took her to Cedars-Sinai which is not exactly the closest hospital to U.S.C.," Blair says in a rush, lighting a cigarette. Kim is wearing pink sunglasses and she also lights one and then Alana asks for one.

"You are coming to Kim's party, Clay; Aren't you?" Alana asks.

"Oh yes, Clay. You've totally got to," Kim says.

"When is it?" I ask, knowing that Kim always throws these parties, once a week or something like that.

"Sometime near the end of next week," she tells me, though I realize that probably means tomorrow.

"I don't know who to go with," Alana says suddenly. "Oh, God, I don't know who the fuck to go with." She pauses. "I just realized that."

"What about Cliff? Weren't you going with Cliff?" asks Blair.

"I'm going with Cliff," Kim says, looking at Blair.

"Oh, that's right," Blair says.

"Well, if you're going with Cliff, I'll go with Warren," Alana says.

"But I thought you were going out with Warren," Kim says to Blair.

I glance over at Blair.

"I was, but I'm not 'going-out' with Warren," Blair says, missing a beat.

"You were not. You fucked. You didn't 'go-out,' " Alana says.

"Whatever, whatever," Blair says, flipping through her menu, glancing over at me, then away.

"Did you sleep with Warren?" Kim asks Alana.

Alana looks at Blair and then at Kim and then at me and says, "No. I didn't." She looks back at Blair and then at Kim again. "Did you?"

`'No, but I thought Cliff was sleeping with Warren," Kim says, confused for a moment.

"That might be true, but I thought Cliff was sleeping with that creepy Valley-turned-Punk, Didi Hellman," says Blair.

"Oh, that is not true. Who told you that?" Alana wants to know.

I realize for an instant that I might have slept with Didi Hellman. I also realize that I might have slept with Warren also. I don't say anything. They probably already know.

"Didi did," says Blair. "Didn't she tell you that?"

"No," Kim says. "She didn't."

"Me either," Alana says.

"Well, she told me," Blair says.

"Oh, what does she know? She lives in Calabasas for God's sakes," Alana moans.

Blair thinks about it for a moment and then says slowly, evenly, "If Cliff slept with Didi, then he must have slept with... Raoul."

"Who's Raoul?" Alana and Kim ask at the same time.

I open my menu and pretend to read it, wondering if I slept with Raoul. Name seems familiar.

"Didi's other boyfriend. She was always getting into these disgusting threesomes. They were ridiculous," Blair says, closing her menu.

"Didi is ridiculous," says Alana.

"Raoul is black, isn't he?" Kim asks after a while.

I haven't slept with Raoul.

"Yeah. Why?"

"Because I think I met him at a backstage party at The Roxy once."

"I thought he O.D.'d."

"No, no. He's really cute. He's like the best-looking black-guy I think I've ever seen," Blair says.

Alana and Kim nod in agreement. I close my menu.

"But isn't he gay though?" Kim asks, looking concerned.

"Who? Cliff?" Blair asks.

"No. Raoul."

"He's bi. Bi," Blair says, and then, not too sure, "I think."

"I don't think he ever slept with Didi," says Alana.

"Well, I really don't either," Blair says.

"Then why did she go out with him?"

"She thought it was chic to have a black boyfriend," Blair says, by now bored with the subject

"What a sleaze," Alana says, shivering in mock disgust.

The three of them stop talking and then Kim says, "I had no idea Cliff slept with Raoul."

"Cliff has slept with everyone," Alana says, and rolls her eyes up, and Kim and Blair laugh. Blair looks at me and I try to smile and then the waitress comes and takes our order.

As I predicted, Kim's party is tonight. I follow Trent to the party. Trent's wearing a tie when he comes to my house and he tells me to wear one and so I put a red one on. When we stop at Santo Pietro's to get something to eat before the party, Trent catches his reflection in one of the windows and grimaces and takes his tie off and tells me to take mine off, which is just as well since no one at the party is wearing one.

At the house in Holmby Hills I talk to a lot of people who tell me about shopping for suits at Fred Segal and buying tickets for concerts and I hear Trent telling everyone about how much fun he's having at the fraternity he joined at U.C.L.A. I also talk to Pierce, some friend from high school, and apologize for not calling him when I got in and he tells me that it doesn't matter and that I look pale and that someone stole the new BMW his father bought him as a graduation present. Julian is at the party and he doesn't look as fucked up as Alana said: still tan, hair still blond and short, maybe a little too thin, but otherwise looks good. Julian tells Trent that he's sorry he missed him at Carney's the other night and that he's been really busy and I'm standing next to Trent, who has just finished his third gin and tonic, and hear him say, "That's just really fucking irresponsible of you," and I turn away, wondering if I should ask Julian what he wanted when he called and left the message, but when our eyes meet and we're about to say hello, he looks away and walks into the living room. Blair dances over to me, singing the words to "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?" probably stoned out of her mind, and she says that I look happy and that I look good and she hands me a box from Jerry Magnin and whispers "Merry Christmas, you fox," in my ear, and kisses me.

1 open the box. It's a scarf. I thank her and tell her that it's really nice. She tells me to put it on and see if it fits and I tell her that scarves usually fit all people. But she insists and I put the scarf on and she smiles and murmurs "Perfect" and goes back to the bar to get a drink. I stand alone with the scarf wrapped around my neck in the corner of the living room and then spot Rip, my dealer, and am totally relieved.

Rip's wearing this thick, bulky white outfit he probably bought at Parachute, and an expensive black fedora, and Trent asks Rip, as he makes his way toward me, if he's been going parachuting. "Going Parachuting? Get it?" Trent says, giggling. Rip just stares at Trent until Trent stops giggling. Julian comes back into the room and I'm about to go over and say hello, but Rip grabs the scarf around my neck and pulls me into an empty room. I notice that there's no furniture in the room and begin to wonder why; then Rip hits me lightly on the shoulder and laughs.

"How the fuck have you been?"

"Great," I say. "Why is there no furniture in here?"

"Kim's moving," he says. "Thanks for returning my phone call, you dick."

I know that Rip hasn't tried to call me, but I say, "Sorry, I've only been back like four days and... I don't know... But I've been looking for you."

"Well, here I am. What can I do for you, dude?"

"What have you got?"

"What did you take up there?" Rip asks, not really interested in answering me. He takes two small folded envelopes out of his pocket.

"Well, an art course and a writing course and this music course-"

"Music course?" Rip interrupts, pretending to get excited. "Did you write any music?"

"Well, yeah, a little." I reach into my back pocket for my wallet.

"Hey, I got some lyrics. Write some music. We'll make millions."

"Millions of what?"

"Are you going back?" Rip asks, not missing a beat.

I don't say anything, just stare at the half gram he's poured onto a small hand mirror.

"Or are you gonna stay... and play... in L.A." Rip laughs and lights a cigarette. With a razor he cuts the pile into four big lines and then he hands me a rolled up twenty and I lean down and do a line.

"Where?" I ask, lifting my head up, sniffing loudly.

"Jesus," Rip says, leaning down. "To school, you jerk."

"I don't know. I suppose so."

"You suppose so." He does both his lines, huge, long lines, and then hands me the twenty.

"Yeah," I shrug, leaning back down.

"Cute scarf. Real cute. Guess Blair still likes you," Rip smiles.

"I guess," I say, doing the other long line.

"You guess, you guess," Rip laughs.

I smile and shrug again. "It's good. How about a gram?"

"Here you go, dude." He hands me one of the small envelopes.

I give him two fifties and a twenty and he hands me the twenty back and says, "Christmas present, okay?"

"Thanks a lot, Rip."

"Well, I think you should go back," he says, pocketing the money. "Don't fuck off. Don't be a bum."

"Like you?" I regret saying this. It comes out wrong.

"Like me, dude," Rip says, missing a beat.

"I don't know if I want to," I begin.

"What do you mean, you don't know if you want to?"

"I don't know. Things aren't that different there."

Rip is getting restless and I get the feeling that it doesn't matter a whole lot to Rip whether I stay or go.

"Listen, you've got a long vacation, don't you? A month, right?"

"Yeah. Four weeks."

"A month, right. Think about it."

"I'll do that."

Rip walks over to the window.

"Are you deejaying anymore?" I ask, lighting a cigarette.

"No way, man." He runs his finger over the mirror and rubs it over his teeth and gums, then slips the mirror back into his pocket. "The trust is keeping things steady for now. I might go back when I run out. Only problem is, I don't think it's ever gonna run out," he laughs. "I got this totally cool penthouse on Wilshire. It's fantastic. "

"Really?"

"Yeah. You gotta stop by."

"I will."

Rip sits on the windowsill and says, "I think Alana wants to fuck me. What do you think?"

I don't say anything. I can't understand why since Rip doesn't look anything like David Bowie, he's not lefthanded and doesn't live in the Colony.

"Well, should I fuck her or what?"

"I don't know," I say. "Sure, why not?"

Rip gets off the windowsill and says, "Listen, you've got to come over to the apartment. I got Temple of Doom bootleg. Cost me four hundred dollars. You should come over, dude."

"Yeah, sure, Rip." We walk to the door.

"You will?"

"Why not."

When the two of us enter the living room these two girls who I don't remember come up to me and tell me I should give them a call and one of them reminds me about the night at The Roxy and I tell her that there have been a lot of nights at The Roxy and she smiles and tells me to call her anyway. I'm not sure if I have this girl's number and just as I'm about to ask her for it, Alana walks up to me and tells me that Rip has been bothering her and is there anything I can do about it? I tell her I don't think so. And as Alana starts to talk about Rip, I watch Rip's roommate dance with Blair next to the Christmas tree. He whispers something into her ear and they both laugh and nod their heads.

There's also this old guy with longish gray hair and a Giorgio Armani sweater and moccasins on who wanders past Alana and me and he begins to talk to Rip. One of the boys from U.S.C. who was at Blair's party is also here and he looks at the old man, guy maybe forty, forty-five, and then turns to one of the girls who met me at The Roxy and makes a face. He notices me looking at him when he does this and he smiles and I smile back and Alana keeps going on and on and luckily someone turns the volume up and Prince starts to scream. Alana leaves once a song she wants to dance to comes on, and this guy from U.S.C., Griffin, comes up to me and asks if I want some champagne. I tell him sure and he goes to the bar and I look for a bathroom to do another line.

I have to go through Kim's room to get to it, since the lock on the one downstairs is broken, and as I get to her door, Trent comes out and closes it.

"Use the one downstairs," he says.

"Why?"

"Because Julian and Kim and Derf are fucking in there."

I just stand there. "Derf's here?" I ask.

"Come with me," Trent says.

I follow Trent downstairs and out of the house and over to his car.

"Get in," he says.

I open the door and get into the BMW.

"What do you want?" I ask him as he gets in on the driver's side.

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small vial.

"A little co-kaine," he says in a fake southern drawl.

I don't tell him I already have some and he takes out a gold spoon and presses the spoon into the powder and then holds it up to his nose and does this four times. He then pushes the same tape that is on at the party into the car's stereo and hands me the vial and the spoon. I do four hits also and my eyes water and I swallow. It's different coke than Rip's and I wonder if he got it from Julian. It's not as good.

"Why don't we go to Palm Springs for a week while you're back," he suggests.

"Yeah. Palm Springs. Sure," I tell him. "Listen, I'm going back in."

I leave Trent alone in the car and walk back to the party and over toward the bar, where Griffin is standing, holding two glasses of champagne. "I think it's a little flat," he says.

"What?"

"I said your champagne's flat."

"Oh." I pause, confused for a minute. "That's all right."

I drink it anyway and he pours me another glass.

"It's still pretty good," he says after finishing his glass and pouring himself another. "Want some more?"

"Sure." I finish my second glass and he pours me a third. "Thanks."

"The girl I came with just left with that Japanese guy in the English Beat T-shirt and tight white pants. You know who he is?"

"No."

"Kim's hairdresser."

"Wild," I say, finishing the glass of champagne and looking at Blair from across the room. Our eyes meet and she smiles and makes a face. I smile back, don't make a face. Griffin notices this and says loudly, over the din of the music, "You're the guy who's going out with Blair, right?"

"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.

My 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.

The 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.

My 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?"

During 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.

On 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.

Rip'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.

"Julian," I say. "How've you been?"

"Hey, Clay," he says. "What's going on? How long have you been back?"

"Just like five days," I say. Just five days.

"What are you doing?" he asks. "What's going on?"

"I'm waiting for Rip."

Julian looks really tired and kind of weak, but I tell him he looks great and he says that I do too, even though I need to get a tan.

"Hey, listen," he starts. "I'm sorry about not meeting you and Trent at Carney's that night and freaking out at the party. It's just like, I've been strung out for like the past four days, and I just, like, forgot... I haven't even been home...." He slaps his forehead. "Oh man, my mother must be freaking out." He pauses, doesn't smile. "I'm just so sick of dealing with people." He looks past me. "Oh shit, I don't know."

I look over at the black Porsche and try to see past the tinted windows and begin to wonder if there's anyone else in the car. Julian starts playing with his keys.

"Do you want something, man?" he asks. "I mean, I like you and if you need anything, just come see me, okay?"

"Thanks. I don't need anything, not really." I stop and feel kind of sad. "Jesus, Julian, how have you been? We've got to get together or something. I haven't seen you in a long time." I stop. "I've missed you."

Julian stops playing with his keys and looks away from me. "I've been all right. How was... oh shit, where were you, Vermont?"

"No, New Hampshire."

"Oh yeah. How was it?"

"Okay. Heard you dropped out of U.S.C."

"Oh yeah. Couldn't deal with it. It's so totally bogus. Maybe next year, you know?"

"Yeah..." I say. "Have you talked to Trent?"

"Oh man, if I want to see him, I'll see him."

There's another pause, this time longer.

"What have you been doing?" I finally ask.

"What?"

"Where have you been? What've you been doing?"

"Oh, I don't know. I've been around. Went to that Tom Petty concert at the... Forum. He sang that song, oh, you know, that song we always used to listen to...." Julian closes his eyes and tries to remember the song. "Oh, shit, you know...." He begins to hum and then sing the words. "Straight into darkness, we went straight into darkness, out over that line, yeah straight into darkness, straight into night...."

The two girls look over at us. I look at the Perrier bottle, a little embarrassed, and say, "Yeah, I remember."

"Love that song," he says.

"Yeah, so did I," I say. "What else you been up to?"

"No good," he laughs. "Oh, I don't know. Just been hanging out."

"You called me and left a message, didn't you?"

"Oh, yeah."

"What did you want?"

"Oh forget it, nothing too important."

"Come on, what is it?"

"I said forget it, Clay."

He takes off his sunglasses and squints and his eyes look blank, and the only thing I can think of to say is, "How was the concert?"

"What?" He starts to bite his nails.

"The concert. How was it?"

He's staring off somewhere else. The two girls get up and leave.

"It was a bummer, man. A real fuckin' bummer," he finally says, and then walks away. "Later."

"Yeah, later," I say, and look back at the Porsche and get the feeling that there's someone else in it.

Rip never shows up at Cafe Casino and he calls me up, later, around three and tells me to come over to the apartment on Wilshire. Spin, his roommate, is sunbathing nude on the balcony and Devo's on the stereo. I walk into Rip's bedroom and he's still in bed, nude, and there's a mirror on the nightstand, next to the bed, and he's cutting a line of coke. And he tells me to come in, sit down, check the view out. I walk over to the window and he gestures at the mirror and asks if I want any coke and I tell him I don't think so, not now.

A very young guy, probably sixteen, maybe fifteen, really tan, comes out of the bathroom and he's zipping up his jeans and buckling his belt. He sits on the side of the bed and puts on his boots, which seem too big for him. This kid has really short, spiked blond hair and a Fear T-shirt on and a black leather bracelet strapped to one of his wrists. Rip doesn't say anything to him and I pretend that the kid isn't there. He stands up and stares at Rip and then leaves.

From where I'm sitting, I watch as Spin gets up and walks into the kitchen, still nude, and starts to squeeze grapefruits into a large glass container. He calls to Rip, from the kitchen, "Did you make reservations with Cliff at Morton's?"

"Yeah, babes," Rip calls back, before doing the coke.

I'm beginning to wonder why Rip has called me over, why he couldn't meet me someplace else. There's an old, expensively framed poster of The Beach Boys hanging over Rip's bed and I stare at it trying to remember which one died, while Rip does three more lines. Rip throws his head back and shakes it and sniffs loudly. He then looks at me and wants to know what I was doing at the Cafe Casino in Westwood when he clearly remembers telling me to meet him at the Cafe Casino in Beverly Hills. I tell him that I'm pretty sure he said to meet at the Cafe Casino in Westwood.

Rip says, "No, not quite," and then, "Anyway it doesn't matter."

"Yeah, I guess."

"What do you need?"

I pull my wallet out and get the feeling that Rip never showed up at the Cafe Casino in Beverly Hills either.

Trent's on the phone in his room, trying to score some coke from a dealer who lives in Malibu since he hasn't been able to get in touch with Julian. After talking to the guy for like twenty minutes he hangs the phone up and looks at me. I shrug and light a cigarette. The telephone keeps ringing and Trent keeps telling me that he'll go see a movie, any movie, with me in Westwood since something like nine new films opened Friday. Trent sighs and then answers the phone. It's the new dealer. The phone call is not good. Trent hangs up and I mention that maybe we should leave, see a four o'clock show. Trent tells me that maybe I should go with Daniel or Rip or one of my "faggot friends."

"Daniel's not a faggot," I say, bored, turning the channel on the television.

"Everyone thinks he is."

"Like who?"

"Like Blair."

"Well, he isn't."

"Try telling that to Blair."

"I'm not going out with Blair anymore. That is over, Trent," I tell him, trying to sound steady.

"I don't think she thinks so," Trent says, lying back on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

Finally, I ask, "Why do you even care?"

"Maybe I don't," he sighs.

Trent changes the subject and tells me I should go with him to a party someone's having for some new group at The Roxy. I ask who's giving it and he tells me he's not too sure.

"What group is it for?" I ask.

"Some new group."

"Which new group?"

"I don't know, Clay."

The dog begins to bark loudly from downstairs.

"Maybe," I tell him. "Daniel's having a party tonight."

"Oh great," he says sarcastically. "A fag party."

The phone rings again. "Screw you," I say.

"Jesus!" Trent yells, sitting up, grabbing the telephone and screaming into it, "I don't even want your lousy, fucking coke!" He pauses for a moment and then says, "Yeah, I'll be right down." He hangs the phone up and looks at me.

"Who was it?"

"My mother. She's calling from downstairs."

We walk downstairs. The maid's sitting in the living room, with this dazed look on her face, watching MTV. Trent tells me that she doesn't like to clean the house when anybody's home. "She's always stoned anyway. Mom feels guilty since her family was killed in El Salvador, but I think she'll fire her sooner or later." Trent walks over to the maid and she looks up nervously and smiles. Trent tries some of his Spanish but can't communicate with her. She just looks at him blankly and tries to nod and smile. Trent turns around and says, "Yep, stoned again."

In the kitchen, Trent's mother is smoking a cigarette and finishing a Tab before she goes off to some fashion show in Century City. Trent takes a pitcher of orange juice out of the refrigerator and pours himself a glass, asks if I want one. I tell him no. He looks at his mother and takes a swallow. No one says anything for something like two minutes, not until Trent's mother says, "Goodbye." Trent doesn't say anything except, "Do you want to go to The Roxy tonight or what, Clay?"

"I don't think so," I tell him, wondering what his mother wanted.

"Yeah? You don't."

"I think I'm going to Daniel's party."

"Great," he says.

I'm about to ask him if he wants to go to a movie, but the phone rings from upstairs and Trent runs out of the kitchen to answer it. I walk back to the living room and stare out the window and watch as Trent's mother gets into her car and drives off. The maid from El Salvador stands up and slowly walks to the bathroom and I can hear her laughing, then retching and then laughing again. Trent comes into the living room looking pissed off and sits in front of the TV; phone call probably wasn't too good.

"I think your maid is sick or something," I mention.

Trent looks over at the bathroom and says, "Is she freaking out again?"

I sit on another couch. "I guess."

"Mom's going to fire her soon enough." He takes a swallow of the orange juice he's still holding and stares at MTV.

I stare out the window.

"I don't want to do anything," he finally says.

I decide that I don't want to go to the movies either and I wonder who I should go with to Daniel's party. Maybe Blair.

"Wanna watch Alien?" Trent asks, eyes closed, feet on the glass coffee table. "Now that would freak her out completely."

I decide to bring Blair to Daniel's party. I drive to her house in Beverly Hills and she's wearing a pink hat and a blue miniskirt and yellow gloves and sunglasses and she tells me that at Fred Segal today someone told her that she should be in a band. And she mentions something about starting one, maybe something a little New Wave. I smile and say that sounds like a good idea, not sure if she's being sarcastic, and I grip the steering wheel a little tighter.

I hardly know anyone at the party and I finally find Daniel sitting, drunk and alone, by the pool, wearing black jeans and a white Specials T-shirt and sunglasses. I sit down next to him while Blair gets us drinks. I'm not sure if Daniel's staring into the water or if he's just passed out, but he finally speaks up and says, "Hello, Clay."

"Hi, Daniel."

"Having a good time?" he asks real slowly, turning to face me.

"I just got here."

"Oh." He pauses for a minute. "Who'd you come with?"

"Blair. She's getting a drink." I take off my sunglasses and look at his bandaged hand. "I think she thinks that we're lovers."

Daniel leaves his sunglasses on and nods and doesn't smile.

I put my sunglasses back on.

Daniel turns back to the pool.

"Where are your parents?" I ask.

"My parents?"

"Yeah."

"In Japan, I think."

"What are they doing there?"

"Shopping."

I nod.

"They might be in Aspen," he says. "Does it make any difference?"

Blair comes over with a gin and tonic in one hand and a beer in the other and she hands me the beer and lights a cigarette and says, "Don't talk to that guy in the blue and red Polo shirt. He's a total narc," and then, "Are my sunglasses crooked?"

"No," I tell her, and she smiles and then puts her hand on my leg and whispers into my ear, "I don't know anyone here. Let's leave. Now." She glances over at Daniel. "Is he alive?"

"I don't know."

"What?" Daniel turns to look at us. "Hi, Blair."

"Hi, Daniel," Blair says.

"We're leaving," I tell him, kind of excited by Blair's whisper and the gloved hand on my thigh.

"Why?"

"Why? Well, because..." My voice trails off.

"But you just got here."

"But we really have to go." I don't want to stay that much either and maybe going over to Blair's house seems like a good idea.

"Stick around." Daniel tries to lift himself from the chaise longue but can't.

"Why?" I ask.

This confuses him, I guess, because he doesn't say anything.

Blair looks over at me.

"Just to be here," he says.

"Blair isn't feeling well," I tell him.

"But I wanted you to meet Carleton and Cecil. They were supposed to be here but their limo broke down in the Palisades and... " Daniel sighs and looks back into the pool.

"Sorry, dude," I say, getting up. "We'll have lunch."

"Carleton goes to AFI."

"Well, Blair really doesn't... She wants to go. Now."

Blair nods her head and coughs.

"Maybe I'll drop by later," I tell him, feeling guilty about leaving so soon; feeling guilty about going to Blair's house.

"No, you won't." Daniel sits back down and sighs again.

Blair's getting really anxious and says to me, "Listen, I'm really not too crazy about arguing over this all fucking night. Let's go, Clay." She finishes the rest of the gin and tonic.

"See, Daniel, we're leaving, okay?" I say. "Bye."

Daniel tells me that he'll call me tomorrow. "Let's have lunch or something."

"Great," I say, without a whole lot of enthusiasm. "Lunch."

Once in the car, Blair says, "Let's go somewhere. Hurry."

I'm thinking to myself, Why don't you just say it. "Where?" I ask.

She stalls, names a club.

"I left my wallet at home," I lie.

"I have a pass there," she says, knowing I lied.

"I really don't want to."

She turns the volume on the radio up and hums along with the song for a minute and I'm thinking that I should just drive to her house. I keep driving, not sure where to go. We stop at a coffee shop in Beverly Hills and afterwards, when we get back in the car, I ask, "Where do you want to go, Blair?"

"I want to go..." she stops. "To my house."

I'm lying in Blair's bed. There are all these stuffed animals on the floor and at the foot of the bed and when I roll over onto my back, I feel something hard and covered with fur and I reach under myself and it's this stuffed black cat. I drop it on the floor and then get up and take a shower. After I've toweled my hair dry, I wrap the towel around my waist and walk back into her room, start to dress. Blair's smoking a cigarette and watching MTV, the sound turned down low.

"Will you call me before Christmas?" she asks.

"Maybe." I pull on my vest, wondering why I even came here in the first place.

"You've still got my number, don't you?" She reaches for a pad and begins to write it down.

"Yeah, Blair. I've got your number. I'll get in touch." I button up my jeans and turn to leave.

"Clay?"

"Yeah, Blair."

"If I don't see you before Christmas," she stops. "Have a good one."

I look at her a moment. "Hey, you too."

She picks up the stuffed black cat and strokes its head. I step out the door and start to close it.

"Clay?" she whispers loudly.

I stop but don't turn around. "Yeah?"

"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 had 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 sic-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 and 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 115 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 110 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 l 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, he 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.

Light a cigarette and turn on MTV and turn off the sound. An hour passes, Blair keeps talking, tells me that she still likes me and that we should get together again and that just because we haven't seen each other for four months is no reason to break up. I tell her we have been together, I mention last night. She says you know what I mean and I start to dread sitting in the room, listening to her talk. I look over at the clock. It's almost three. I tell her I can't remember what our relationship was like and I try to steer the conversation away to other topics, about movies or concerts or what she's been doing all day, or what I've been doing tonight. When I get off the phone with her, it's almost dawn, Christmas Day.

It's Christmas morning and I'm high on coke, and one of my sisters has given me this pretty expensive leatherbound datebook, the pages are big and white and the dates elegantly printed on top of them, in gold and silver lettering. I thank her and kiss her and all that and she smiles and pours herself another glass of champagne. I tried to keep a datebook one summer, but it didn't work out. I'd get confused and write down things just to write them down and I came to this realization that I didn't do enough things to keep a datebook. I know that I won't use this one and I'll probably take it back to New Hampshire with me and it'll just lie on my desk for three or four months, unused, blank. My mother watches us, sitting on the edge of the couch in the living room, sipping champagne. My sisters open their gifts casually, indifferent. My father looks neat and hard and is writing out checks for my sisters and me and I wonder why he couldn't have written them out before, but I forget about it and look out the window; at the hot wind blowing through the yard. The water in the pool ripples.

It's a really sunny, warm Friday after Christmas and I decide I need to work on my tan so I go with a bunch of people, Blair and Alana and Kim and Rip and Griffin, to the beach club. I get to the club before anyone else does and while the attendant parks my car, I sit on a bench and wait for them, staring out at the expanse of sand that meets the water, where the land ends. Disappear here. I stare out at the ocean until Griffin drives up in his Porsche. Griffin knows the parking attendant and they talk for a couple of minutes. Rip drives up soon after in his new Mercedes and also seems to know the attendant and when I introduce Rip to Griffin they laugh and tell me that they know each other and I wonder if they've slept together and I get really dizzy and have to sit down on the bench. Alana and Kim and Blair drive up in someone's convertible Cadillac.

"We just had lunch at the country club," Blair says, turning the radio down. "Kim got lost."

"I did not," Kim says.

"So she didn't believe I remembered where it was and we had to stop at this gas station to ask for directions and Kim asks this guy who works there for his phone number."

"He was gorgeous," Kim exclaims.

"So what? He pumps gas," Blair shrieks, getting out of the car, looking great in a one-piece. "Are you ready for this? His name is Moose."

"I don't care what his name is. He is totally gorgeous," Kim says again.

On the beach, Griffin has smuggled rum and Coke in and we're drinking what's left of it. Rip practically takes his bathing suit off so his tan line'll be exposed. I don't put enough tanning oil on my legs or chest. Alana has brought a portable tape-deck and keeps playing the same INXS song, over and over; talk of the new Psychedelic Furs album goes around; Blair tells everyone that Muriel just got out of Cedars-Sinai; Alana mentions that she called Julian up to ask him if he wanted to come but there wasn't anyone home. Everyone eventually stops talking and concentrates on what sun is left. Some Blondie song comes on and Blair and Kim ask Alana to turn it up. Griffin and I get up to go to the locker room. Deborah Harry is asking, "Where is my wave?"

"What's wrong?" Griffin asks, staring at himself in the mirror once we're in the men's room.

"I'm just tense," I tell him, splashing water on my face.

"Things'll be okay," Griffin says.

And there, back on the beach, in the sun, staring out into the Pacific, it seems really possible to believe Griffin. But I get sunburned and when I stop at Gelson's for some cigarettes and a bottle of Perrier, I find a lizard in the front seat. The checkout clerk is talking about murder statistics and he looks at me for some reason and asks if I'm feeling okay. I don't say anything, just walk quickly out of the market. When I get home, I take a shower, turn on the stereo and that night I can't get to sleep; the sunburn's uncomfortable, and MTV's giving me a headache and I take some Nembutal Griffin slipped me in the parking lot at the beach club.

I get up late the next morning to the blare of Duran Duran coming from my mother's room. The door's open and my sisters are lying on the large bed, wearing bathing suits, leafing through old issues of GQ, watching some porno film on the Betamax with the sound turned off. I sit down on the bed, also in my bathing suit, and they tell me that Mom went out to lunch and that the maid went shopping and I watch about ten minutes of the movie, wondering whose it is — my mom's? sisters'? Christmas present from a friend? the person with the Ferrari? mine? One of my sisters says that she hates it when they show the guy coming and I walk downstairs, out to the pool, do my laps.

When I was fifteen and first learned how to drive, in Palm Springs, I'd take my father's car while my parents were asleep and my sisters and I would drive around the desert, in the middle of the night, Fleetwood Mac or Eagles on, loud, top down, hot winds blowing, making the palm trees bend, silent. And one night my sisters and I took the car out and it was a night where there wasn't any moon and the wind was strong, and someone had just dropped me off from a party that hadn't been too fun. The McDonald's we were going to stop at was closed due to some power outage caused by the winds and I was tired and my sisters were fighting and I was on the way back home when I saw what I thought was a bonfire from about a mile down the highway, but as I drove closer I saw that it wasn't a bonfire but a Toyota parked at this strange, crooked angle, its hood open, flames pouring out of the engine. The front windshield was smashed open and a Mexican woman was sitting on the curb, on the side of the highway, crying. There were two or three kids, Mexican also, standing behind her, staring at the fire, gaping at the rising flames, and I was wondering why there were no other cars out to stop or help. My sisters stopped fighting and told me to stop the car so that they could watch. I had an urge to stop, but I didn't. I slowed down, and then drove quickly away and pushed back in the tape my sisters had taken out when they first saw the flames, and turned it up, loud, and drove through every red light until I got back to our house.

I don't know why the fire bothered me, but it did, and I had these visions of a child, not yet dead, lying across the flames, burning. Maybe some kid, thrown through the windshield and who'd fallen onto the engine, and I asked my sisters if they thought they saw a kid burning, melting, on the engine and they said no, did you?, neato, and I checked the papers the next day to make sure there hadn't been one. And later that same night I sat out by the pool, thinking about it until I finally fell asleep, but not before the power went out due to the wind and the pool went black.

And I remember that at that time I started collecting all these newspaper clippings; one about some twelve-year-old kid who accidentally shot his brother in Chino; another about a guy in Indio who nailed his kid to a wall, or a door, I can't remember, and then shot him, point-blank in the face, and one about a fire at a home for the elderly that killed twenty and one about a housewife who while driving her children home from school flew off this eighty-foot embankment near San Diego, instantly killing herself and the three kids and one about a man who calmly and purposefully ran over his ex-wife somewhere near Reno, paralyzing her below the neck. I collected a lot of clippings during that time because, I guess, there were a lot to be collected.

It's a Saturday night and on some Saturday nights when there's not a party to go to and no concerts around town and everyone's seen all the movies, most people stay at home and invite friends over and talk on the phone. Sometimes someone will drop by and talk and have a drink and then get back into his car and drive over to somebody else's house. On some Saturday nights there'll be three or four people who drive from one house to another. Who drive from about ten on Saturday night until just before dawn the next morning. Trent stops by and tells me about how "a couple of hysterical J.A.P.'s" in Bel Air have seen what they called some kind of monster, talk of a werewolf. One of their friends has supposedly disappeared. There's a search party in Bel Air tonight and they've found nothing except — and now Trent grins — the body of a mutilated dog. The "J.A.P.'s," who Trent says are "really out of their heads," went to spend the night at a friend's house in Encino. Trent says that the J.A.P.'s probably drank too much Tab, had some kind of allergic reaction. Maybe, I say, but the story makes me uneasy. After Trent leaves I try to call Julian, but there's no answer and I wonder where he could be and after I hang the phone up, I'm pretty sure I can hear someone screaming in the house next to us, down the canyon, and I close my window. I can also hear the dog barking out in back and KROQ is playing old Doors songs and War of the Worlds is on channel thirteen and I switch it to some religious program where this preacher is yelling "Let God use you. God wants to use you. Lie back and let him use you, use you." "Lie back," he keeps chanting. "Use you, use you." I'm drinking gin and melted ice in bed and imagine that I can hear someone breaking in. But Daniel says, over the phone, that it's probably my sisters getting something to drink. It's hard to believe Daniel tonight; on the news I hear there were four people beaten to death in the hills last night and I stay up most of the night, looking out the window, staring into the backyard, looking for werewolves.

At Kim's new house, in the hills overlooking Sunset, the gates are open but there don't seem to be too many cars around. After Blair and I walk up to the door and ring the doorbell, it takes a long time for anybody to open it. Kim finally does, wearing tight faded jeans, high black leather boots, white T-shirt, smoking a joint. She takes a hit off it before hugging both of us and saying "Happy New Year," then leads us into a high-ceilinged entrance room and tells us she just moved in three days ago and that "Mom's in England with Milo" and that they haven't had time to furnish it yet. But the floors are carpeted, she tells us, and says that it's a good thing and I don't ask her why she thinks it's a good thing. She tells us that the house is pretty old, that the guy who owned it before was a Nazi. On the patios, there are these huge pots holding small trees with swastikas painted on them. "They're called Nazi pots," Kim says.

We follow her downstairs to where there are only about twelve or thirteen people. Kim tells us that Fear's supposed to play tonight. She introduces Blair and me to Spit, who's a friend of the drummer's, and Spit has really pale skin, paler than Muriel's, and short greasy hair and a skull earring and dark circles under his eyes, but Spit's mad and after saying hi, tells Kim that she has to do something about Muriel.

"Why?" Kim asks, inhaling on the joint.

"Because the bitch said I looked dead," Spit says, eyes wide.

"Oh, Spit," Kim says.

"She says that I smell like a dead animal."

"Come on, Spit, forget it," Kim says.

"You know I don't keep dead animals in my room anymore." He looks over at Muriel, who's at the end of the long bar, laughing, holding a glass of punch.

"Oh, she's wonderful, Spit," Kim says. "She's just been taking sixty milligrams of lithium a day. She's just tired." Kim turns to Blair and me. "Her mother just bought her a fifty-five-thousand-dollar Porsche." Then she looks back at Spit. "Can you believe it?"

Spit says he can't and that he's going to try to forget about it and decide what albums to play and Kim tells him, "Go ahead," and then before he goes over to the stereo, "Listen, Spit, don't get Muriel down. Just keep quiet. She just left Cedar-Sinai and once she gets drunk, she's fine. She's just a little strung out."

Spit ignores this and holds up an old Oingo Boingo record.

"Can I play this or not?"

"Why don't you save that for later?"

"Listen, Kim-ber-ly, I'm getting bored," he says, teeth gritted.

Kim pulls a joint out of her back pocket and hands it to him.

"Just cool it, Spit."

Spit says thanks and then sits down on the couch next to the fireplace, with the huge replica of the American flag draped over it, and stares at the joint a long time before he lights it.

"Well, you two look fabulous," Kim says.

"So do you," Blair tells her. I nod. I'm tired and a little stoned and didn't really want to come, but Blair actually came over to my house earlier and we went swimming and then to bed and Kim called up.

"Is Alana coming?" Blair asks.

"No, can't make it." Kim shakes her head, taking another hit off the joint. "Going to the Springs."

"What about Julian?" Blair asks.

"Nope. Too busy fucking Beverly Hills lawyers for money," Kim sighs, then laughs.

I'm about to ask her what she meant by that when suddenly someone calls out her name and Kim says, "Oh, shit, the liquor guy just arrived" and walks off and I look out past the big lighted pool, out over Hollywood; blanket of lights under a neon purple sky and Blair asks me if I'm okay and I say sure.

Some young guy, eighteen or nineteen, brings in a large cardboard box and sets it on the bar and Kim signs something and tips him and he says, "Happy New Year, dudes" and leaves. Kim takes a bottle of champagne out of the box, opens it expertly and calls out, "Everybody take a bottle. It's Perrier-Jouet. It's chilled."

"You convinced me, you rat." Muriel runs over and hugs Kim and Kim gives her a bottle.

"Is Spit pissed at me or something? All I said was that he looked dead," Muriel says, opening her bottle. "Hiya, Blair, hi, Clay."

"He's just on edge," Kim says. "Wind's weird or something."

"He's such a moron. He tells me that, 'Well, I used to do well in school before they kicked me out.' Huh? What in the fuck does that mean?" Muriel asks. "Besides, the idiot uses a blowtorch to freebase."

Kim shrugs and takes another swallow.

"Muriel, you look wonderful," Blair says.

"Oh, Blair, you look gorgeous, as usual," Muriel says, taking a swallow. "And oh my God, Clay, you must give me that vest."

I look down while opening my bottle. The vest is just a gray-and-white argyle, one of the triangles dark red.

"It looks as if you got stabbed or something. Please let me wear it," Muriel pleads, touching the vest.

I smile and look at her and then realize that she's totally serious and I'm too tired to say no so I pull it off and hand it to her and she puts it on, laughing. "I'll give it back, I'll give it back, don't worry."

There's this really irritating photographer in the room and he keeps taking pictures of everybody. He'll walk up to someone and point the camera in their face and then take two or three pictures and he comes up to me and the flash blinds me for a second and I take another swallow from the champagne bottle. Kim starts to light candles all over the room and Spit puts on an X album and someone starts to pin balloons up to one of the bare walls and the balloons, only half blown up, just hang there, limply. The door that leads out to the pool and veranda is open and also has a couple of balloons pinned on it and we walk outside, over to the pool.

"What's your mom doing?" Blair asks. "Is she going out with Tom anymore?"

"Where did you hear that? The Inquirer?" Kim laughs.

"No. I saw a picture of them in the Hollywood Reporter."

"She's in England with Milo, I told you," Kim says as we get closer to the lighted water. "At least that's what I read in Variety."

"How about you?" Blair asks, starting to smile. "Who are you seeing?"

"Moi?" Kim laughs and then mentions some famous young actor I think we went to school with; can't remember.

"Yeah, I heard about that. Just wanted you to verify."

"It's true."

"He wasn't at your Christmas party," Blair says.

"He wasn't?" Kim looks worried. "Are you sure?"

"He wasn't," Blair says. "Did you see him, Clay?"

"No, I didn't see him," I tell her, not remembering.

"That's weird," Kim says. "Must have been on location."

"How is he?"

"He's nice, he's really nice."

"What about Dimitri?"

"Oh, so what," Kim says.

"Does he know?" Blair asks.

"Probably. I'm not sure."

"Do you think he's upset?"

"Listen, Jeff is a fling. I like Dimitri."

Dimitri's sitting on a chair by the pool playing a guitar and is really tan and has short blond hair and he just sits in the chaise longue playing these strange, eerie chords and then starts to play this one riff over and over again and Kim just looks at him and doesn't say anything. The phone rings from inside and Muriel calls out, waving her hands, "It's for you, Kim."

Kim walks back inside and I'm about to ask Blair if she wants to go but Spit, still smoking the joint, comes over with some surfer to Dimitri and says, "Heston has some great acid," and the surfer with Spit looks at Blair and winks and then she pats my ass and lights a cigarette. "Where's Kim?" Spit asks when he doesn't get an answer from Dimitri, who just stares into the pool, strumming the guitar. He then looks over at the four of us standing around him and for a minute it looks like he's going to say something. But he doesn't, just sighs and looks back at the water.

This young actress comes in with some well-known producer, who I met once at one of Blair's father's parties, and they check out the scene and walk over to Kim, who's just gotten off the phone, and she tells them that her mother's in England with Milo and the producer says that last he heard she was in Hawaii and then they mention that maybe Thomas Noguchi might be stopping by and then the actress and the producer leave and Kim walks over to where Blair and I've stood and she tells us that it was Jeff on the phone.

"What did he say?" Blair asks.

"He's an asshole. He's down in Malibu with some surfer, some guy, and they're holed up in his house."

"What did he want?"

"To wish me a Happy New Year." Kim looks upset.

"Well, that's nice," Blair says hopefully.

"He said, 'Have a Happy New Year, cunt,' " she says, and lights a cigarette, the champagne bottle she holds by her side almost empty. She's about to cry or say something else when Spit comes over and says that Muriel locked herself in Kim's room and so Kim and Spit and Blair and I walk inside, upstairs, down a hallway and over to Kim's door and Kim tries to open it but it's locked.

"Muriel," she calls out, knocking. No one answers.

Spit pounds on the door, then kicks it.

"Don't fuck the door up, Spit," Kim says, and then yells out, "Muriel, come out."

I look over at Blair and she looks worried. "Do you think she's all right?"

"I don't know," Kim says.

"What's she on?" Spit wants to know.

"Muriel?" Kim calls out again.

Spit lights another joint, leans against the wall. The photographer comes by and takes pictures of us. The door opens slowly and Muriel stands there and looks like she's been crying. She lets Spit, Kim, Blair and the photographer and me into the room and then she closes the door and locks it.

"Are you all right?" Kim asks.

"I'm fine," she says, wiping her face.

The room's dark except for a couple of candles in the corner and Muriel sits down in the corner next to one of the candles, next to a spoon and a syringe and a little folded piece of paper with brownish powder on it and a piece of cotton. There's already some stuff in the spoon and Muriel wads the piece of cotton up as small as possible and puts it in the spoon and sticks the needle into the cotton and then draws it into the syringe. Then she pulls up her sleeve, reaches for a belt in the darkness, finds it and wraps it around her upper arm. I spot the needle tracks, look over at Blair, who's just staring at the arm.

"What's going on here?" Kim asks. "Muriel, what are you doing?"

Muriel doesn't say anything, just slaps her arm to find a vein and I look at my vest and it freaks me out to see that it does look like someone got stabbed, or something. Muriel holds the syringe and Kim whispers, "Don't do it," but her lips are trembling and she looks excited and I can make out the beginnings of a smile and I get the feeling that she doesn't mean it and as the needle sticks into Muriel's arm, Blair gets up and says, "I'm leaving," and walks out of the room. Muriel closes her eyes and the syringe slowly fills with blood.

Spit says, "Oh, man, this is wild."

The photographer takes a picture.

My hands shake as I light a cigarette.

Muriel begins to cry and Kim strokes her head, but Muriel keeps crying and drooling all over, looking like she's laughing really and her lipstick's smeared all over her lips and nose and her mascara's running down her cheeks.

At midnight Spit tries to light some firecrackers but only a couple go off. Kim hugs Dimitri, who doesn't seem to notice or care, and he drops his guitar by his side and stares off into the pool and eleven or twelve of us stand out by the pool and someone turns the music down so that we can hear the sounds of the city celebrating, but there's not a whole lot to hear and I keep looking into the living room, where Muriel's lying on a couch, smoking a cigarette, sunglasses on, watching MTV. All we can hear are windows breaking up in the hills and dogs beginning to howl and a balloon bursts and Spit drops a champagne bottle and the American flag that's hanging like a curtain over the fireplace moves in the hot breeze and Kim gets up and lights another joint. Blair whispers "Happy New Year" to me and then takes her shoes off and sticks her feet into the warm, lighted water. Fear never shows up and the party ends early.

And at home that night, sometime early that morning, I'm sitting in my room watching religious programs on cable TV because I'm tired of watching videos and there are these two guys, priests, preachers maybe, on the screen, forty, maybe forty-five, wearing business suits and ties, pink-tinted sunglasses, talking about Led Zeppelin records, saying that, if they're played backwards, they "possess alarming passages about the devil." One of the guys stands up and breaks the record, snaps it in half, and says, "And believe me, as God-fearing Christians, we will not allow this!" The man then begins to talk about how he's worried that it'll harm the young people. "And the young are the future of this country," he screams, and then breaks another record.

"Julian wants to see you," Rip says over the phone.

"Me?"

"Yeah."

"Did he say what for?" I ask.

"No. He didn't have your number and he wanted it and so I gave it to him."

"He didn't have my number?"

"That's what he said."

"I don't think he's called me."

"Said he needed to talk to you. Listen, I don't like to relay phone messages, dude, so be grateful."

"Thanks."

"He said he'll be at the Chinese Theater today at three-thirty You could meet him there, I guess."

"What's he doing there?" I ask.

"What do you think?"

I decide to meet Julian. I drive over to the Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard and stare at the footprints for a little while. Except for a young couple, not from L.A., taking pictures of the footprints and this suspicious-looking Oriental guy standing by the ticket booth, there's no one around. The tan blond usher standing by the door says to me, "Hey, I know you. Two Decembers ago at a party in Santa Monica, right?"

"I don't think so," I tell him.

"Yeah. Kicker's party. Remember?"

I tell him I don't remember and then ask him if the concession stand's open. The usher says yeah and lets me in and I buy a Coke.

"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.

Julian'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.

On 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.

We'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.

That 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.

At 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.

We 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.

Trent 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."

There's another long pause. "Yeah? Bummed out?" I ask.

"Let's go to a movie," Trent says.

It takes me a little while to say anything because there's a video on cable of buildings being blown up in slow motion and in black and white.

On the way to the Beverly Center, Trent smokes a joint and mentions that this girl lives around the Beverly Center and that I look a little like her.

"Great," I say.

"Girls are fucked. Especially this girl. She is so fucked up. On cocaine. On this drug called Preludin, on speed. Jesus." Trent takes another drag, hands it to me, and then unrolls the window and stares at the sky.

We park and then walk through the empty, bright Beverly Center. All the stores are closed and as we walk up to the top floor, where the movies are playing, the whiteness of the floors and the ceilings and the walls is overpowering and we walk quickly through the empty mall and don't see one other person until we get to the theaters. There are a couple of people milling around the ticket booth. We buy our tickets and walk down the hall to theater thirteen and Trent and I are the only persons in it and we share another joint inside the small, hollow room.

As we walk out of the theater, ninety minutes, maybe two hours later, some girl with pink hair and roller skates slung over her shoulders comes up to Trent.

"Trent, like, oh my God. Isn't this place a scream?" the girl squeals.

"Hey, Ronnette, what are you doing here?" Trent is completely stoned; fell asleep during the second half of the movie.

"Like hanging around."

"Hey, Ronnette, this is Clay. Clay, this is Ronnette."

"Hi, Clay," she says, flirting. "Hey, you two, what flick did you see?" She opens a piece of Bazooka and pops it into her mouth.

"Um... number thirteen," Trent says, groggy, eyes red and half closed.

"What was it called?" Ronnette asks.

"I forget," Trent says, and looks over at me. I forgot too and so I just shrug.

"Hey, Trenty, I need a ride. Did you drive here?" she asks.

"No, well yeah. No, Clay did."

"Oh, Clay, could you please give me a ride?"

"Sure."

"Fab. Let me put these on and we'll go."

On the way through the mall, a security guard, sitting alone on a white bench, smoking a cigarette, tells Ronnette that there's no roller skating in the Beverly Center.

"Too much," Ronnette says, and rolls away.

The security guard just sits there and takes another drag and watches us leave.

Once in my car Ronnette tells us that she just finished singing vocals, actually background vocals, on Bandarasta's new album.

"But I don't like Bandarasta. He's always calling me 'Halloween' for some reason. I don't like to be called 'Halloween.' I don't like it at all."

I don't ask who Bandarasta is; instead I ask her if she's a singer.

"Oh, you could say. I'm a hairdresser, really. See, I got mono and dropped out of Uni and just hung around. I paint, too... oh gosh, that reminds me. I left my art over at Devo's house. I think they want to use it in a video. Anyway..." She laughs and then stops and blows a bubble and snaps her gum. "What did you ask me, I forgot."

I notice that Trent's asleep and I jab him in the stomach.

"I'm up, dude, I'm up." He sits up and unrolls his window.

"Cla-ay," Ronnette says. "What did you ask me. I forgot."

"What do you do?" I ask, irritated, trying to stay awake.

"Oh, I cut everybody's hair at Flip. Oh, turn this song up. I love this song. They're gonna be at The Palace on Friday. "

"Trent, wake up, asshole," I say loudly over the music.

"I'm up, dude, I'm up. Eyes are just tired."

"Open them," I tell him.

He opens them and looks around the car. "Hair looks good," he tells Ronnette.

"Did it myself. I had this dream, see, where I saw the whole world melt. I was standing on La Cienega and from there I could see the whole world and it was melting and it was just so strong and realistic like. And so I thought, Well, if this dream comes true, how can I stop it, you know?"

I'm nodding my head.

"How can I change things, you know? So I thought if I, like pierced my ear or something, like alter my physical image, dye my hair, the world wouldn't melt. So I dyed my hair and this pink lasts. I like it. It lasts. I don't think the world is gonna melt anymore."

I'm not too reassured by her tone and I can't believe I'm actually nodding my head, but I pull up to Danny's Okie Dog on Santa Monica and she trips as she climbs out of the small back seat of the Mercedes and lies on the sidewalk and laughs as I drive away. I ask Trent where he met her. We pass the billboard on Sunset. Disappear Here. Wonder if he's for sale.

"Just around," he says. "Wanna joint?"

Next day I stop by Julian's house in Bel Air with the money in a green envelope. He's lying on his bed in a wet bathing suit watching MTV. It's dark in the room, the only light coming from the black and white images on the television.

"I brought the money," I tell him.

"Great," he says.

I move over to his bed and put down the money.

"You don't have to count it. It's all there."

"Thanks, Clay."

"What is it really for, Julian?"

Julian watches the video until it's over and then turns away and says, "Why?"

"Because that's a lot of money."

"Then why did you give it to me?" he asks, running his hand over his smooth, tan chest.

"Because you're a friend?" It comes out sounding like a question. I look down.

"Right," Julian says, his eyes going back to the television. Another video flashes on. Julian falls asleep.

I leave.

Rip calls me up and tells me that we should meet at La Scala Boutique, have a little lunch, a little chopped salad, discuss a little business. I drive to La Scala and find a parking space in back and sit there and listen to the rest of a song on the radio. A couple behind me in a dark-blue Jaguar think that I'm leaving, but I don't wave them on. I sit there a little longer and the couple in the Jaguar finally honk their horn and drive off. I get out of the car and walk into the restaurant and sit at the bar and order a glass of red wine. After I finish it, I order a second and by the time Rip arrives, I've had three glasses.

"Hey, babe, how's it going?"

I stare at the glass. "Did you bring it?"

"Hey, babe." The tone changes. "I asked you how it's going. Are you gonna answer me, or, like, what's the story?"

"I'm great, Rip. Just great."

"That's terrific. That's all I wanted to hear. Finish the wine and we'll get a booth, okay?"

"Okay."

"You look good."

"Thanks," I say, and finish the wine and leave a ten on the bar.

"Great tan," he tells me as we sit down.