I walk over next to him mainly because I like the song on the Walkman. It's so cold in the lobby our breath steams.
"I think there's a SWAT team up in the building trying to talk him down," the doorman says. "I don't think you should open the door."
"I won't," I say.
Another shot. Another police car arrives. Then an ambulance. My stepmother for about ten months, who I ended up sleeping with twice, gets out of a van and is lit, positioned in front of a camera. I yawn, shivering.
"Did the shots wake you up?" the doorman asks.
"Yeah." I nod.
"You're the guy who lives on the eleventh floor, right? The guy who directs videos, Jason or something, visits you a lot?"
"Martin?" I say.
"Yeah, hi. I'm Jack," the doorman says.
"I'm Graham." We shake hands.
"I've talked to Martin a couple of times," Jack says.
"About . . . what?"
"Just that he knows someone in a band I was almost in." Jack takes out a pack of clove cigarettes, offers me one. Three more shots, then a helicopter starts circling. "What do you do?" he asks.
"Go to school."
Jack lights my cigarette. "Yeah? Where do you go to school?"
"I go to school at. . ." I stop. "Um, I go to school at U . . . at, um, USC."
"Yeah? What are you? Freshman?"
"I'll be a sophomore in the fall," I tell him. "I think."
"Yeah? Cool." Jack thinks about this for a minute. "Do you know Tim Price? Blond guy? Really good-looking but, like, the worst person in the world? I think he's in a fraternity?"
"I don't think so," I tell him. There's a horrible scream from across Wilshire, then smoke.
"How about Dirk Erickson?" he asks.
Pretending to think about it for a minute, I answer, "No, I don't think so." Pause. "But I know a guy named Wave." Pause. "He's very fit and his family basically owns Lake Tahoe."
Another police car arrives.
"Do you go to school?" I ask, after a while.
"No, I'm an actor, really."
"Yeah?" I ask. "What have you been in?"
"A commercial for gum. Boyfriend in a Clearasil spot." Jack shrugs. "Unless you're willing to do some pretty awful things it's hard getting a job in this town—and I'm willing."
"Yeah, I guess."
"I really want to get into video," Jack says.
"Yeah," I say. "Video, dude."
"Yeah, that's why Mark's a really good contact." There's a huge crashing sound, then more smoke, then another ambulance.
"You mean Martin," I say. "It would probably help out a lot, dude, if you get the names straight."
"Yeah, Martin," he says. "He's a good contact."
"Yeah, he's a good contact," I say slowly. I finish the cigarette and stand by the door, waiting for the sound of more gunfire. When it looks like nothing much is going to happen, Jack offers me a joint and I shake my head and say that I've got to drink some juice then get some more sleep. "There are two calico cats and a guinea pig I have never seen before upstairs in my bed." Pause. "Plus I need to drink some more juice."
"Yeah, sure, dude, I understand," the doorman says, sparking up. "Juice, man. It's good."
The pot smells sweet and I kind of want to stay. Another shot, more screams. I head toward the elevator.
"Hey. I think maybe something's gonna happen," the doorman says as I step into the elevator.
"What?" I ask, holding the doors open.
"Maybe something will happen," the doorman says.
"Yeah?" I say, unsure of what to do. I stare at the doorman, standing in the lobby, smoking a joint, then at the Slurpee, and we both wait.
I get a conference call from my mother, my father's lawyer and someone from the studio he works at, at eleven the next morning. I listen, then tell them I'll fly to Las Vegas today, and I hang up to make flight reservations. Martin wakes up, looks over at me, yawning. I wonder where Christie is.
"Oh man," Martin groans, stretching. "What time is it? What's going on?"
"It's eleven. My father died."
A long pause.
"You ... had a dad?" Martin asks.
"Yeah."
"What happened?" Martin sits up, then lies back down, confused. "How, man?"
"Plane crash," I say.
I take the pipe off the nightstand, look for a lighter.
"Are you serious?" he asks.
"Yeah."
"Are you okay about it?" he asks. "Can you deal?"
"Yeah, I guess," I say, inhaling.
"Wow," he says. "I guess I'm sorry." There's a pause. "Should I be?"
"Don't," I say, dialing information for LAX.
I walk up to the crash site with a Cessna 172 engine specialist who has to take photos of the condition of the engine for his company's files and a ranger who acts as our guide up the mountain and was the first person to appear at the wreckage on Friday. I meet the two guys at my suite at the MGM Grand and we take a jeep up to about the midway point on the mountain. From there we walk a narrow path that is steep and covered with dead leaves. On the way up to the crash site I talk to the ranger, actually a young guy, maybe nineteen, about my age, good-looking. I ask the ranger what the body looked like when he found it.
"You really want to know?" the ranger asks, a smile appearing on his calm, square face.
"Yeah." I nod.
Well, this'll sound awful funny but when I first saw it, I don't know, it kind of looked to me like a . . . like a miniature hundred-and-ten-pound Darth Vader," he tells me, scratching his head.
"A what?" I ask.
"Yeah, like a Darth Vader. Like a little Darth Vader. You know. Darth Vader from Star Wars, right?" the ranger is saying with a faint accent I can't place.
The ranger, who I guess I'm starting to flirt with, sort of, continues. The torso and head were completely skinless and they were sitting upright. What was left of the arm bones was resting on where the steering column should have been. None of the cabin was left. "The torso was just sitting there, right on the ground. It was like completely charred black, down to the bone in a lot of places." The ranger stops walking and looks up at the mountain. "Yeah, it looked pretty bad but I've seen a lot worse."
"Like what?"
"I once saw a large group of black ants carry part of someone's intestine to their queen."
"That's . . . impressive."
"I'd say so."
"What else?" I ask. "Darth Vader? Wow, man."
The ranger looks at me and then at the engine specialist ahead of us and continues up the path. "You really interested?"
"I guess," I say.
"That was about it," the ranger says. "There were a lot of flies. Some smell. But that's about it."
After walking for another forty minutes we reach the site of the crash. I look around at what's left of the plane. The cabin was almost totally destroyed and so there's nothing much left except the tips of the wings and the tail, which is intact. But there's no nose and the engine is completely smashed. No one has found the propeller even though there has been an extensive search for it. There is no dashboard either, not even melted parts. It seems that the plane's aluminum frame crunched on impact and then melted.
Since small Cessnas are such lightweight planes, I'm able to lift the entire tail and flip it over. The specialist tells me that the fire that melted the plane was probably caused by impact rips in the fuel tanks. On a Cessna the fuel tanks are in the wings on both sides of the cabin. I also find bits of bone in the ashes and pieces of my father's camera. I stand against a rock next to the ranger as the Cessna specialist hesitantly takes some photographs of us that I want.
I also talk to the pathologist later that day, after a nap, and he tells me that the body was shaken up on its trip down the mountain in the plastic bag, since what he received in the pathology lab is quite different from what the primary sighting reports indicate. The pathologist tells me that he found most of the organs unrecognizable "as organs" du
e to the devastating impact and severe burning damage suffered by my father. Since the body is unrecognizable as my father, identification is done on his fake teeth. My father's original teeth were lost in an automobile accident on PCH when he was twenty, I find out.
On the flight back to L.A. I sit next to, an old man who keeps drinking Bloody Marys and mumbling to himself. As the plane makes its descent he asks me if this is my first time in L.A. and I say "Yeah" and the man nods and I put the headset back on and listen to Joan Jett and the Blackhearts sing "Do You Wanna Touch Me?" and tense up as the plane breaks through smog to land. As f get up, taking out my overnight bag from the overhead compartment, I drop my lighter in the old man's lap and he hands it to me, smiling, and, sticking his tongue out a little, offers me a role in a porn film starring some good-looking black guys. The only things in my overnight bag are a couple of T-shirts, a pair of jeans, one suit, a copy of GQ, an unopened letter from my father that was never sent, my bong, and a handful of ashes in a small black film container, the rest having been gambled away at a blackjack table in the casino of Caesars Palace. I close the overhead compartment. The old man, wrinkled and drunk, winks at me and says "Welcome to L.A." and I say "Thanks, dude."
I open the door of the apartment and walk in and turn on the television and put the overnight bag down in the sink. Martin's not here. I pull a bottle of apricot-apple juice out of the refrigerator and sit on the balcony waiting for Martin or Christie. I get up, open the overnight bag and find the GQ and read it out on the balcony and then I finish the juice. The sky gets dark. I wonder if Spin called. I don't hear Martin open the door. The ice machine in the refrigerator clanks out cubes of ice.
"Man, it was hot today," Martin says, holding a beach towel and a volleyball.
"Was it?" I ask him. "I heard it snowed."
"Do any gambling?"
"I lost about twenty thousand dollars. It was okay."
After a while Martin says, "Spin called."
I don't say anything.
"He's a little pissed, Graham," Martin says. "You should have called him."
"Oops big-time," I say. "I'll give him a call."
"We have reservations at Chinois at nine."
I look up. "Great."
The music from the television carries out to the balcony. Martin turns away and walks back into the apartment. "I'm gonna peel a pomegranate, then take a shower, okay?"
"Yeah. Okay." I move off the balcony too and try to find Spin's number but then I'm following Martin into the bathroom and later I find Christie's Guess jeans by the side of Martin's bed and underneath that is a bayonet.
Next day we're sitting at Carny's and Martin's eating a cheeseburger and he can't believe that an ex-girlfriend of mine is on the cover of this week's People. I tell him I can't believe it either. I finish my french fries, take a swallow of Coke and tell Martin I want to get stoned. Martin also slept with the girl on the cover of this week's People. I watch as a red Mercedes passes by slowly in the heat, a shirtless guy at the wheel, who Martin also slept with, and in an instant my and Martin's reflection flashes by in the side of the car. Martin starts complaining that he hasn't finished the English Prices video yet, that Leon's causing hassles, that the smoke machine still doesn't work, will probably never work, that Christie is a drag, that yellow is his favorite color, that he recently made friends with a tumbleweed named Roy.
"Why do you shoot those things?" I ask.
"Videos? Why?"
"Yeah."
"I don't know." He looks at me and then at the cars passing by on Sunset. "Not everyone has a rich mommy and daddy. I mean, mommy. And"—he takes a swallow of my Coke—"not everyone deals drugs."
"But your parents are loaded," I protest.
"Loaded can be interpreted in a lot of ways, dude," Martin says.
I sigh, pick at a napkin. "You're a real . . . enigma."
"Listen, Graham. I feel bad enough crashing out at your place. You footing the bill for Nautilus, Maxfield's. All that."
Another red Mercedes passes by.
"Listen," Martin's saying. "After these next two videos I'll be hot."
"Hot?" I ask.
"Yeah, hot," he says.
"Like, how hot? Medium hot? How hot?" I ask.
"Maybe really hot. Maybe spicy," he says. "The English Prices are big. Heavy rotation on MTV. Opening for Bryan Metro. Big."
"Yeah?" I ask. "Hot and big?"
"Sure. Easy. Leon is a star."
"Did you sleep with Christie while I was gone?" I ask.
He looks at me, groaning. "Oh man, of course I did."
Christie and I are standing in line for a movie in Westwood. It's almost midnight and hot and Westwood is packed. The sidewalks are so crowded in fact that the movie line merges with the people walking along the street and the people on the other side of the movie line coming out of shoe stores and places that sell frozen yogurt and posters. Christie is eating Italian ice cream and telling me that Tommy is actually hanging out in Delaware and that it was Monty and not Tommy who was found hacked to death in San Diego, not Mexico, his blood drained, not Tommy's, like she heard, because she got a postcard with Richard Gere on it from Tommy but Corey was found sealed in a metal drum buried in the desert. She asks me if Delaware is a state and I tell her that I'm not too sure but that I'm really certain I saw Jim Morrison at a car wash on Pico this morning. He was drinking soda and minding his own business. Christie finishes the ice cream and wipes her lips with a napkin, complains about her implants.
Two people in front of us are talking about a drug bust in Encino last night, how the new year is approaching steadily. I watch as a young Hispanic girl crosses the street, moving toward the theater. As she crosses the street in long, purposeful strides, a black convertible Rolls-Royce almost hits her, braking suddenly, swerving. The people on the sidewalk watch silently. One girl, maybe, says "oh no." The driver of the Corniche, a tan guy, shirtless and wearing a sailor's cap, smoking a cigar, yells "Watch out, you dumb spic" and the girl, not shaken at all, walks calmly to the other side of the street. I wipe sweat off my forehead and watch as the girl, unfazed, walks over to a palm tree and leans against it, her white T-shirt with the word CALIFORNIA on it soaked with sweat, her breasts outlined beneath the cotton, a gold cross hanging from her neck, small, a glimmer, and even when she notices me looking at her I keep staring at the smooth brown face and the vacant black eyes and the calm, bored expression, and now she's moving away from the palm tree and making her way toward where I stand, still staring, transfixed, and she walks up to me slowly, the warm winds blowing, the crowd parting slightly, the sweat on her face drying as she gets closer to me and she says, eyes widening, in a low, hushed whisper, "Mi hermano."
I don't say anything, just stare back.
"Mi hermano," she whispers again.
"What?" Christie's saying. "What do you want? Do you know her, Graham?"
"Mi hermano," she says once more, urgent this last time, and then she moves on. I lose sight of her in the crowd.
"Who was she?" Christie asks as the line begins to move toward the theater.
"I don't know," I tell her, looking back at where the girl, who looks worth following, went.
"Really—they're overrunning the city," Christie says. "She was probably stoned out of her mind." She pulls out her ticket, handing me mine. The people who were talking about the drug bust and 1985 turn around, look at Christie like they recognize her.
"What did she say?" I ask.
"Me hermano? I think it's a kind of chicken enchilada with a lot of salsa," Christie says. "Maybe it's a taco, who knows?" She shrugs uncomfortably. "These implants are killing me and it's so hot."
We walk into the theater and sit down and the movie starts and after the movie, driving down Wilshire, back to the apartment, we come to another red light and at the bus stop are five Mexican punk rockers standing around, wearing T-shirts with black crosses and skulls the color of sulfur painted on them and they glare at the two of us in C
hristie's convertible BMW and I gaze back and back at the apartment we have sex and Martin watches part of the time.
Tonight Martin mentions something about a new club that opened on Melrose, way down Melrose, and so we drive down to Melrose in Martin's convertible, which Nina Metro gave him as a Halloween present, and Martin knows the owner at the club and we get in free with no hassles. Animotion is blasting out, people are dancing, the shower scene from Psycho is playing nonstop on the video screens above the bar and we do some coke in a bathroom and I meet a girl named China who tells me I look like a taller Billy Idol and I bump into Spin.
"Hey, where have you been?" he asks, screaming over the music, staring at Janet Leigh getting stabbed over and over again.
"Las Vegas," I tell him. "Brazil. Inside a tornado."
"Yeah? How about a quarter ounce?" he asks.
"Sure. Anything," I tell him.
"Yeah?" he says, leaving. "I must talk to China. I think Madonna's here."
"Madonna?" I ask him. "Where?"
He can't hear me. "Great. Call you Friday. Let's do Spago."
"I'm not in a hurry," I say.
I wave and he walks away and I end up dancing with Martin and two of these blond girls he knows who work at RCA and then we all go back to the apartment on Wilshire and get really stoned and take turns with these three high school kids we meet outside, waiting in a parking lot, across the street from the club on Melrose.
I drive to the Beverly Center and wander around, lingering in clothing stores, flipping through magazines in bookstores, and at around six I sit in an empty restaurant on the top floor of the mall and order a glass of milk and a pastry, which I don't eat, unsure of why I even ordered it. At seven, after most of the shops have closed, I decide to go to one of the movies at one of the fourteen small theaters on the top floor of the mall, not too far from where I'm sitting. I pay my admission and buy some wafers and sit in one of the small rooms and watch a movie in a daze. After the movie ends I decide to sit through the first part again since I don't remember what happened before I started to pay attention. After sitting through the first forty minutes again I move into a similar but smaller theater, not really caring if any of the ushers see me switch, and I sit there in the dark, breathing slowly. By midnight I'm pretty sure I have been in all of the theaters for some length of time, so I leave. I come to the entrance where I came in and find it closed and locked and I turn around and make my way to the other end of the mall and find that exit closed also. I move onto the second floor and find both exits closed and locked. I walk down the escalators, which have been shut off, to the first floor and come to one end of the mall and find it closed. But I find the other end open and walk out that exit and to where I parked my car and I get into the Porsche and drive past the closed ticket attendant booths, tossing my unvalidated ticket out the window, and turn the radio on.