I've been talking to my stepmother about staying here. I won't be living with my grandparents but at Randy's place (it's all cleaned up, so don't worry) with Carlos. And I also get Randy's Ferrari, so it's not like I'm left empty-headed. But nothing is definite yet. Haven't been thinking too much about it. Are you going to write?
Love,
Anne
Jan 29 1984
Dear Sean,
Doesn't it seem like a long time since I've written you? I guess I'm not much into it anymore. Well, I'm still around and alive, so don't worry. Can you believe I'm actually staying here? That I've already been here five months? Oh God. Well, I guess I won't be going back to Camden in the fall. I've gotten so used to things out here. I've been driving around a lot and I go to the studio sometimes. Sometimes I go out to Palm Springs. It's quiet at night.
I'm collaborating on a screenplay with this guy I met at the studio named Tad. I can't really talk too much about it but it's about these camp counselers and a big snake and it's really scary. (Maybe I'll send you a copy.) Tad's really an artist (he paints these fantastic murals in Venice) but he wants to write screenplays. No one has seen Carlos for weeks. Last I heard, he was in Vegas, though someone else told me that they found both of his arms in a bag off La Brea. He was going to write the screenplay with me. I've shown part of it to my grandmother. She liked it. She said it was commercial.
Love,
Anne
9
ANOTHER GRAY AREA
I'm kind of looking at Christie dancing next to the widescreen television set. Fun Boy 3's on MTV, singing "Our Lips Are Sealed," and Christie's dancing rhythmically, spaced out, hands running over her bikini, her eyes closed. I'm bored but won't admit it and Randy is lying on the floor, immobile, looking up at Christie, and Christie almost steps on him, both wasted. I'm sitting in the beige chair next to the beige couch that Martin is lying on. Martin is wearing a pair of Dolphin shorts, Wayfarers, browsing through the new issue of GQ. The video ends and Christie falls to the floor giggling, mumbling that she is very high. Randy lights another joint and inhales deeply and coughs and hands it to Christie. I look back at Martin. Martin keeps staring at a particular picture in the magazine. Now the Police are on MTV in black and white and Sting's huge blond head stares straight out at the four of us and starts singing. I look away from the screen and over at Christie. Randy hands me the Joint and I take a toke and close my eyes but I'm so stoned right now that the hit doesn't do anything, just moves me to the pseudorealization that I am located somewhere beyond communication. "God, Sting is gorgeous," Christie moans or maybe it's Randy. Christie takes another hit off the joint, rolls over onto her stomach and looks up at Martin. But Martin only nods, adjusts his sunglasses. Christie keeps looking up at him. Martin has not said a word during the past twelve videos. I have kept count. Christie is my girlfriend, a model who I think is from England.
I stand up, sit down, stand up again, pull on my shorts and walk out to the balcony and stand there with my hands on a railing, staring at Century City. The sun is setting and the sky is orange and purple and it seems to be getting hotter. Take a deep breath, trying to remember when Christie and Randy came over, when Martin let them in, when they turned on MTV, when they ate the first pineapple, when they lit the second joint, the third, the fourth. But now, inside, the video has changed and a boy gets sucked into a giant cloud shaped like a television, the colors of a rainbow. Christie is on top of Martin on the couch. Martin still has his sunglasses on. The issue of GQ he was holding is now on the beige floor. I walk past them, step over Randy and walk into the kitchen and pull a bottle of apricot-and-blueberry juice out of the refrigerator and walk back to the patio. I finish the juice and watch the sky get dark some more and when I turn back, I see that Martin and Christie are probably in Martin's room, probably nude on beige sheets with the stereo on, Jackson Browne singing, softly. I walk over to Randy and look down on him.
"Want to go and get something to eat?" I ask.
Randy doesn't say anything.
"Want to go and get something to eat?"
Randy starts to laugh, eyes still closed.
"Want to go and get something to eat?" I ask again.
He grabs the GQ and, still laughing, puts it over his face.
"Want to go and get something to eat?" I ask.
On the cover is John Travolta and it almost looks like John Travolta is lying on the floor, giggling, wasted, wearing only a pair of cutoff jeans. I turn away and look at the TV screen: a toy airplane with a rock star inside it trying to control the panels in mock desperation and he's singing to a girl not looking at him, doing her nails. I walk out of the apartment and drive onto Wilshire and then to some café in Beverly Hills called Café Beverly Hills where I order a salad and an iced tea.
I wake up out of some kind of stupor at eleven-twenty and when I walk into the kitchen looking for an orange or some matches for my bong I find a note written on Beverly Hills Hotel stationery that tells me to meet someone for lunch at a house up in the hills above Sunset where someone is directing a video for a band called the English Prices. Someone has left an address and directions and after about an hour of lying on the balcony, dreaming beneath the sun in my jockey shorts, listening to the sound of videos flashing by in a soothing, endless hum, I decide to meet someone for lunch. Before I leave, Spin calls and tells me that ever since Lance left for Venezuela he's had a hard time finding good coke and that there are lots of frightened people in town and that he might drop out of USC if he can't find the right Mercedes in the fall and that the service at Spago is getting worse.
"But what do you want?" I ask, turning the TV off.
"Need some coke. Anything. Four, five ounces."
"I can get you that by, uh. . ." I stop. "Um, Saturday."
"Dude," Spin says. "Like I need it before Saturday."
"Not Saturday? Like when?"
"Like tonight."
"Like Friday?"
"Like tomorrow."
"Like Friday," I sigh. "I could get it for you tonight but I don't really want to."
"Dude," he sighs. "Bogus but okay."
"Okay? Just come over sometime Friday," I say.
"Friday, right? I appreciate this. There are a lot of frightened people in this town, dude."
"Yeah, I know," I tell him. "I sort of understand what you're talking about.
"Friday, right?" he asks.
"Uh-huh."
I park the car outside the house and walk up the steps leading to a front door. Two girls, young and tan and blond, wearing ripped sweatshirts and headbands, are sitting on the steps staring off into space, not saying anything to each other, ignoring me as I walk past them into the house. I can hear music coming from above and then it stops. I walk slowly upstairs, into a large room that seems to take up the entire second floor of the house. I stand in the doorway and watch as Martin talks to a cameraman and points at Leon, who is the lead singer of the English Prices, and he's smoking a cigarette and holding a gun, a toy, in one hand and in the other a small hand mirror that he keeps checking his hair in. Behind Leon is a long table with nothing on it and behind that the rest of the band and someone has painted the backdrop behind the band a pale pink with green stripes and Martin is walking over to Leon who puts the hand mirror away after Martin slaps his wrist and Leon hands Martin the toy gun. I move into the room and lean against a wall, being careful not to step on any wires or cables. There's a girl sitting on a pile of pillows next to where I'm standing and she's young and tan and blond and wearing a ripped sweatshirt and a pink headband holding up a lot of hair and when I ask her what she's doing here she tells me that she kind of knows Leon and she doesn't look at me when she says this and I turn away from her and look at Martin who is now on the table and he rolls off it and onto the floor and looks up into the camera, pointing the toy gun at the lens, and then Leon rolls off the table and onto the floor and looks up into the camera, pointing the toy gun at the lens, and then Martin rolls off the
table and onto the floor and looks up into the camera, pointing the toy gun at the lens, and then Leon rolls off the table and onto the floor and looks up into the camera, pointing the toy gun at the lens. Leon is now standing, his hands on his hips, shaking his head, and Martin lies on the floor looking up into the camera and he can see me and he gets up and walks over, leaving the gun on the floor, and Leon picks it up and smells it and there is basically nobody here.
"What's going on?" Martin asks.
"You left me a note," I say. "Something about having lunch."
"I did?"
"Yeah," I say. "You left me a note."
"I don't think I did."
"I saw a note," I say, unsure.
"Well, maybe someone did." Martin doesn't look too sure either. "If you say so, dude. But if you think it was me you're freaking me out, dude."
"I'm pretty sure there was a note," I say. "I could have been hallucinating, but not today."
Martin looks over at Leon tiredly. "Well, um, okay, uh, yeah, I'll be able to get out of here in around twenty minutes and, uh." He calls out to the cameraman, "Smoke machine still busted?"
The cameraman is now on the floor and he calls back, flatly, "Smoke machine busted."
"Okay, well." Martin looks at his Swatch and says, "Weiust have to get this shot right and"—Martin's voice rises but only a little—"Leon's being a real jerk about it. Isn't that right, Leon?" Martin is rubbing his hand across his face slowly.
Across the room Leon looks up from the gun and makes his way very slowly toward Martin.
"Martin, I'm not gonna jump off that fucking table onto the fucking floor and look into the fucking camera and wink. No fucking way. That's fucking lame."
"You said fucking five times, you piece of trash," Martin says.
"Oh boy," Leon says.
"You're gonna do it, man," Martin says, sort of sounding like he means it.
"No, Martin, I'm not. It sucks and I'm not going to do it."
"But you were in a video with singing frogs," Martin protests. "You were in a video where you turned into a bewildered tree, a plate full of water and a large, talkative banana, respectively."
One of the band members says, "He's got a point."
"So what?" Leon shrugs. "You've got viral herpes, Rocko."
"Has anybody forgotten that I'm directing this?" Martin asks air.
"Hey, I wrote the fucking song, stooge." Leon looks over at the girl who kind of knows him, sitting on the pile of pillows. The girl smiles at Leon. Leon looks at her, confused, then away, then back again at the girl and then away again, then back again, then away.
"Leon," Martin's saying. "Listen, the video doesn't make sense without this shot."
"But you're missing the point, which is I don't want it to make sense. It doesn't need to make sense," Leon's saying. "What are you talking about? Sense? Jesus." Leon looks at me. "Do you know what sense is?"
"No," I say.
"See?" Leon says accusingly to Martin.
"You want all those retards in whatchamacallit, Nebraska, staring at your video on MTV openmouthed, not realizing that it's all a joke, thinking that after you shot your girlfriend in the head and the guy she was partying with that you meant it? Hub? You didn't mean it, Leon. You liked the girl you shot in the head. The girl you shot in the head was a flower to you, Leon. Your image, Leon. I'm just helping you shape your image, okay? Which is of a nice friendly guy from Anaheim who is so fucking lost the mind reels, okay? Let's just do it that way. It took someone four months to write this script—that works out to a month a minute, which is pretty impressive if you think about it—and it's your image," Martin persists. "Image, image, image, image."
I put my hands to my head and look at Leon, who doesn't seem that different than when I saw him with Tim at Madame Wong's last Tuesday but maybe a little different, in a way I'm not sure about.
Leon is looking at the floor and sighing and then at the girl and then at me and then back at Martin and I have the feeling I'm not going to be able to have lunch with Martin, which is a loss of some kind.
"Leon," Martin says, "this is Graham, Graham this is Leon."
"Hi," I say softly.
"Yeah?" Leon mutters.
There's a longer pause, this one more distinct. The cameraman stands up, then sits back down on the floor and lights a cigarette. The band just stand there, no evidence of motion, staring at Leon. The cameraman says "Smoke machine busted" again and one of the girls from outside walks in and asks if anyone has seen her KAJAGOOGOO T-shirt lying around anywhere and then if Martin needs to use her anymore.
"No, baby, I've used you all up," Martin says. "That's not to say you weren't great but someday I'll give you a buzz."
She nods, smiles, leaves.
"She's pretty hot," Leon says, watching her walk away. "Did you do her, Rocko?"
"Don't know" is Rocko's answer.
"Yeah, she's pretty hot, she stays in shape, she's fucked everyone I know, she's an angel, she has a hard time remembering her phone number, her mother's name, to breathe," Martin sighs.
"But the point is I could fuck her quite easily," Leon says.
The girl sitting on the pillows who kind of knows Leon looks down.
"You would be fucking an abyss," Martin says, yawning, stretching. "A clean, vaguely talented abyss. But an abyss nonetheless."
I put my hands to my head again, then in my jeans.
"Well," Martin starts. "This was all refreshing. What are we doing here, Leon? Hub? What are we doing here?"
"I don't know." Leon shrugs. "What are we doing here?"
"I'm asking you—what are we doing here?"
"I don't know," Leon says, still shrugging. "I don't know. Ask him."
Martin looks at me.
"I don't know what we're doing here either," I say, startled.
"You don't know what we're doing here?" Martin looks back at Leon.
"Shit," Leon says. "We'll talk about it later. Let's take a break. I'm vaguely hungry. Does anyone know anyone who has beer? Hal, do you have any beer?" he asks the cameraman.
"The smoke machine is busted," the cameraman says.
Martin sighs. "Listen, Leon."
Leon is now staring into the hand mirror, checking his hair, a huge, stiff, white-blond pompadour.
"Leon, are you listening to me?" Martin whispers.
"Yes," Leon whispers back.
"Are you listening to me?" Martin whispers.
I start to walk away, move out the door, past the girl on the pile of pillows, who is pouring a bottle of water over her head, in a sad way or not I can't tell. I walk down the stairs, past the girls, one who says "Nice Porsche," the other, "Nice ass," and then I'm in my car, driving away.
After finishing part of a salad made up of ten different kinds of lettuce, the only thing she ordered, Christie mentions that Tommy from Liverpool was found somewhere in Mexico last weekend and that maybe there was a hint of foul play since his body was completely drained of blood and his neck was hacked open and his vital organs were missing even though the Mexican authorities are telling people that Tommy "drowned," and if he didn't drown exactly then maybe it was just a "suicide," but Christie is sure that he definitely did not drown and we're in some restaurant on Melrose and I don't have any cigarettes left and she doesn't take off her sunglasses when she tells me that Martin's a nice guy so I can't see where her eyes are focused which would probably tell me nothing anyway. She says something about immense guilt and the check comes.
"Forget it," I say. "I'm not really sorry you brought it up in the first place."
"He is a nice guy," she says.
"Yeah," I say. "He's a nice guy."
"I don't know," she says.
"You slept with him?"
She breathes in, then looks at me. "He's supposedly 'staying' at Nina's."
"But he told me Nina is, um, insane," I tell her. "Martin told me that Nina is insane and that she makes her child work out at a gym and that the child is four." Pause
. "Martin told me that he had to spot him."
"Just because he's a child doesn't mean he should be in lousy shape," Christie says.
"I see."
"Graham," Christie starts. "Martin is nothing. You were just on edge last week. I couldn't deal with you just sitting in a chair saying nothing and holding that giant avocado."
"But aren't we, like, seeing each other or something?" I ask.
"I guess." She sighs. "We're together now. I'm eating a salad with you now." She stops, lowers Martin's Wayfarers, but I'm not looking at her anyway. "Forget Martin. Besides, who cares if we see other people? Don't tell me one of us."
"See or fuck?" I ask.
"Fuck." She sighs. "I think." Pause. "I guess."
"Okay," I say. "Who knows, right?"
Later she asks, grinning, rubbing suntan oil over my abs, "Did you care that I slept with him?" and then, "Nice definition."
"No," I finally say.
The sound of gunshots wakes me up. I look over at Martin, who is lying on his stomach, nude, breathing deeply, Christie between us along with two fluffy calico cats and a guinea pig I have never seen before wearing a small diamond necklace, and another couple of shots are fired and they both flinch in their sleep. I get out of bed and put on a pair of Bermuda shorts and a FLIP T-shirt and take the elevator down to the lobby, put on my sunglasses since my eyes are puffy. As the elevator doors open, two more shots are fired. I walk slowly through the dark lobby. The night doorman, young guy, tan, blond, maybe twenty, a Walkman around his neck, stands by the door, looking outside. On Wilshire there are seven or eight police cars parked outside the building across the street. Another shot is fired from the apartment building. The doorman stares, dazed, mouth open, Dire Straits coming from the Walkman. A big blue Slurpee glows from where it's sitting on the front desk.
"What's going on?" I ask.
"I don't know. I think some guy has his wife up there and is, like, threatening to shoot her or something. Something like that," the doorman says. "Maybe he's already shot her. Maybe he's already killed a whole bunch of people."