"I think Dr. Nova made some kind of ... mistake," I say slowly, lamely, glancing at the bottle again.
"Well." The pharmacist sighs. "There's nothing I can do."
I look at my fingernails again and try to think of something to say, which, finally, is "But I . . . need it refilled."
"I'm sorry," the pharmacist says, clearly uncomfortable, shifting from one foot to the other nervously. He hands me the bottle and when I try to hand it back to him he shrugs.
"There are reasons why your doctor did not want the prescription refilled," he offers kindly, as if speaking to a child.
I try to laugh, wipe my face and gaily say, "Oh, he's always playing jokes on me."
I think about the way the pharmacist looked at me after I said this as I drive home, and I walk past the maid, the smell of marijuana drifting past me for an instant, and up in the bedroom I lock the door and close the shades and take off my clothes and put a movie in the Betamax and get into washed, cool sheets and cry for an hour and try to watch the movie and I take some more Valium and then I ransack the bathroom looking for an old prescription of Nembutal and then I rearrange my shoes in the closet and then I put another movie in the Betamax and then I open the windows and the smell of bougainvillea drifts through the partially closed shades and I smoke a cigarette and wash my face.
I call Martin.
"Hello?" another boy answers.
"Martin?" I ask anyway.
"Uh, no."
I pause. "Is Martin there?"
"Uh, let me check."
I can hear the phone being set down and I want to laugh at the idea of someone, some boy, probably tan, young, blond, like Martin, standing in Martin's apartment, putting the phone down and going to look for him, for anyone, in the small three-room studio but it does not seem that funny after a while. The boy comes back on the line.
"I think he's at the, um, beach." The boy doesn't seem too sure.
I say nothing.
"Would you like to leave a message?" he asks, slyly for some reason, and then, after a pause, "Wait a minute, is this Julie? The girl Mike and I met at 385 North? With the Rabbit?"
I don't say anything.
"You guys had about three grams on you and a white VW Rabbit."
I do not say anything.
"Like, hello?"
"No."
"You don't have a VW Rabbit?"
"I'll call back."
"Whatever."
I hang up, wondering who the boy is and if he knows about me and Martin, and I wonder if Martin is lying on the sand, drinking a beer, smoking a clove cigarette beneath a striped umbrella at the beach club, wearing Wayfarer sunglasses, his hair slicked back, staring out into where the land ends and merges with water, or if he instead is actually on his bed in his room, lying beneath a poster of the Go-Go's, studying for a chemistry exam and at the same time looking through the car advertisements for a new BMW. I'm sleeping until the tape in the Betamax ends and there's static.
I am sitting with my son and daughter at a table in a restaurant on Sunset. Susan is wearing a miniskirt that she bought at a store called Flip on Melrose, a store situated not too far from where I burned my finger at lunch with Eve and Faith and Anne. Susan is also wearing a white T-shirt with the words LOS ANGELES written on it in red handwriting that looks like blood that hasn't quite dried, dripping. Susan is also wearing an old Levi's jacket with a Stray Cats button pinned to one of the faded lapels and Wayfarer sunglasses. She takes the slice of lemon from her glass of water and chews on it, biting at the rind. I cannot even remember if we have ordered or not. I wonder what a Stray Cat is.
Graham is sitting next to Susan and I am fairly sure that he is stoned. He gazes out past the windows and into the headlights of passing cars. William is making a phone call to the studio. He is in the process of tying up a deal, which is not a bad thing. William has not been specific about the movie or the people in it or who is financing it. Through the trades I have heard rumors that it is a sequel to a very successful in movie that came out during the summer of 1982, about a wisecracking Martian who looks like a big, sad grape. William has been to the phone in the back of the restaurant four times since we arrived and I have the feeling that William leaves the table and just stands in the back of the restaurant, because at the table next to ours is an actress who is sitting with a very young surfer and the actress keeps glaring at William whenever William is at the table and I know that the actress has slept with William and the actress knows I know and when our eyes meet for a moment, an accident, we both turn away abruptly.
Susan begins to hum some song to herself, as she drums her fingers on the table. Graham lights a cigarette, not caring if we say anything about it, and his eyes, red and half closed, water for a moment.
"There's this, like, funny sound in my car," Susan says. "I think I better take it in." She fingers the rim of her sunglasses.
"If it's making a funny noise, you should," I say.
"Well, like, I need it. I'm seeing the Psychedelic Furs at the Civic on Friday and I totally have to take my car." Susan looks at Graham. "That's if Graham got my tickets."
"Yeah, I got your tickets," Graham says with what sounds like great effort. "And stop saying 'totally.' "
"Who did you get them from?" Susan asks, fingers drumming.
"Julian."
"Not Julian."
"Yeah. Why?" Graham tries to sound annoyed but seems tired.
"He's such a stoner. Probably got crappy seats. He's such a stoner," Susan says again. She stops drumming, looks at Graham straight on. "Just like you."
Graham nods his head slowly and does not say anything. Before I can ask him to dispute his sister, he says, "Yeah, just like me."
"He sells heroin," Susan says casually.
I glance over at the actress, whose hand is gripping the surfer's thigh while the surfer eats pizza.
"He's also a male prostitute," Susan adds.
A long pause. "Was that . . . statement directed at me?" I ask softly.
"That is, like, such a total lie," Graham manages to say. "Who told you that? That Valley bitch Sharon Wheeler?"
"Not quite. I know that the owner of the Seven Seas slept with him and now Julian has a free pass and all the coke he wants." Susan sighs mock-wearily. "Besides, it's just too ironic that they both have herpes."
This makes Graham laugh for some reason and he takes a drag off his cigarette and says, "Julian does not have herpes and he did not get them from the owner of the Seven Seas." Pause, exhale, then, "He got VD from Dominique Dentrel."
William sits down. "Christ, my own kids are talking about quaaludes and faggots—Jesus. Oh, take your goddamned sunglasses off, Susan. We're at Spago, not the goddamned beach club." William gulps down half of a white-wine spritzer, which I watched go flat twenty minutes ago. He glances over at the actress and then at me and says, "We're going to the Schrawtzes' party Friday night."
I am fingering my napkin, then I'm lighting a cigarette. "I don't want to go to the Schrawtzes' party Friday night," I say softly, exhaling.
William looks at me and lights a cigarette and says, just as softly, looking directly at me, "What do you want to do instead? Sleep? Lay out by the pool? Count your shoes?"
Graham looks down, giggling.
Susan sips her water, glances at the surfer.
After a while I ask Susan and Graham how school is.
Graham doesn't answer.
Susan says, "Okay. Belinda Laurel has herpes."
I'm wondering if Belinda Laurel got them from Julian or the owner of the Seven Seas. I am also having a hard time restraining myself from asking Susan what a Stray Cat is.
Graham speaks up, barely, says, "She got them from Vince Parker, whose parents bought him a 928 even though they know he is completely into animal tranquilizers."
"That is really . . ." Susan pauses, searches for the right word.
I close my eyes and think about the boy who answered the phone at Martin's apartment.
"Grody . . . " Susan finishes.
Graham says, "Yeah, totally grody."
William looks over at the actress groping the surfer and, grimacing, says, "Jesus, you kids are sick. I've gotta make another call."
Graham, looking wary and hungover, stares out the windows and over at Tower Records across the street with a longing that surprises me and then I'm closing my eyes and thinking about the color of water, a lemon tree, a scar.
On Thursday morning my mother calls. The maid comes into my room at eleven and wakes me by saying, "Telephone, su madre, su madre, señora," and I sav, "No estoy aquí, Rosa, no estoy aquí . . ." and drift back to sleep. After I wake up at one and wander out by the pool, smoking a cigarette and drinking a Perrier, the phone rings in the poorhouse and I realize that I will have to talk to my mother in order to get it over with. Rosa answers the phone so the phone stops ringing, which is my cue to move back up to the main house.
"Yes, it's me." My mother sounds lonely, irritated. "Were you out? I called earlier."
"Yes." I sigh. "Shopping."
"Oh." Pause. "For what?"
"Well, for . . . dogs," I say, then, "Shopping," and then, "for dogs," and then, "How do you feel?"
"How do you think?"
I sigh, lie back on the bed. "I don't know. The same?" and then, after a minute, "Don't cry," I'm saying. "Please. Please don't cry."
"It's all so useless. I still see Dr. Scott every day and there's the therapy and he keeps saying, 'It's coming along, it's coming along,' and I keep asking, 'What's coming along, what is coming along?' and then . . . " My mother stops, out of breath.
"Does he still have you on the Demerol?"
"Yes." She sighs. "I'm still on the Demerol.”
"Well, this is . . . good."
My mother's voice breaks again. "I don't know if I can take this anymore. My skin, it's all . . . my skin . . .”
"Please."
". . . is yellow. It's all yellow."
I light a cigarette.
"Please." I close my eyes. "Everything is all right."
"Where are Graham and Susan?"
"They're at . . . school," I say, trying not to sound too doubtful.
"I would have liked to talk to them," she says. "I miss them sometimes, you know."
I put the cigarette out. "Yes. Well. They . . . miss you too, you know. Yes . . ."
"I know."
Trying to make a conversation, I ask, "So, what have you been doing with yourself?"
"I just got back from the clinic and I'm in the process of cleaning out the attic and I found those photographs we took that Christmas in New York. The ones I've been looking for. When you were twelve. When we stayed at the Carlyle."
For the past two weeks now my mother always seems to be cleaning out the attic and finding the same photographs from that Christmas in New York. I remember the Christmas vaguely. The hours that passed as she chose a dress for me on the day before Christmas, then brushing my hair in long, light strokes. A Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall and the candy cane I ate during the show, which resembled a thin, scared-looking Santa Claus. There was the night my father got drunk at the Plaza and the fight between my parents in the taxi on the way back to the Carlyle and later that night I could hear them arguing, the predictable sound of glass breaking in the room next to mine. A Christmas dinner at La Grenouille, where my father tried to kiss my mother and she turned away. But the thing I remember most, the thing I remember with a clarity that makes me cringe, is that there were no photographs taken on that trip.
"How's William?" my mother asks when she gets no reply from me about the pictures.
"What?" I ask, startled, slipping back into the conversation.
"William. Your husband," and then, with an edge, "My son-in-law. William."
"He's fine. Fine. He's fine." The actress at the table next to ours last night in Spago kissed the surfer on the mouth as he scraped caviar off a pizza, and when I got up to leave she smiled at me. My mother, her skin yellow, her body thin and frail from lack of food, is dying in a large, empty house that overlooks a bay in San Francisco. The poolboy has set traps smudged with peanut butter around the edges of the pool. Randomness, surrender.
"That's good."
Nothing is said for close to two minutes. I keep count and I can hear a clock ticking and the maid humming to herself while cleaning the windows in Susan's room down the hall, and I light another cigarette and hope that my mother will hang up soon. My mother finally clears her throat and says something.
"My hair is falling out."
I have to hang up.
The psychiatrist I see, Dr. Nova, is young and tan and drives a Peugeot and wears Giorgio Armani suits and has a house in Malibu and often complains about the service at Trumps. His practice lies off Wilshire and it's in a large white stucco complex across from Neiman Marcus and on the days I see him I usually park my car at Neiman Marcus and wander around the store until I buy something and then walk across the street. Today, high in his office on the tenth floor, Dr. Nova is telling me that at a party out in the Colony last night someone "tried to drown." I ask him if it was one of his patients. Dr. Nova says it was the wife of a rock star whose single has been number two on the Billboard charts for the past three weeks. He begins to tell me who else was at the party, when I have to interrupt him.
"I need the Librium refilled."
He lights a thin Italian cigarette and asks, "Why?"
"Don't ask me why." I yawn. "Just do it."
Dr. Nova exhales, then asks, "Why shouldn't I ask you?"
I'm looking out the window. "Because I asked you not to?" I say softly. "Because I pay you one hundred and thirty-five dollars an hour?"
Dr. Nova takes a drag from his cigarette, then looks out the window. After a while he asks, tiredly, "What are you thinking?"
I keep staring out the window, stupefied, transfixed by palm trees swaying in a hot wind highlighted against an orange sky and, below that, a billboard for Forest Lawn.
Dr. Nova is clearing his throat.
Slightly irritated, I say, "Just refill the prescription and . . .” I sigh. "All right?"
"I'm only looking out for your best interests.”
I smile gratefully, incredulous. He looks at the smile weirdly, uncertain, not understanding where it comes from.
I spot Graham's small old Porsche on Wilshire Boulevard and follow him, surprised at how careful a driver he seems to be, at how he flashes his lights when he wants to change lanes, at how he slows and begins to brake at yellow lights and then comes to a complete stop at red lights, at how cautiously he seems to move the car across the road. I assume that Graham is driving home but when he passes Robertson I follow him.
Graham drives along Wilshire until he makes a right onto a side street after crossing Santa Monica. I pull into a Mobil station and watch as he pulls into the driveway of a large white apartment complex. He parks the Porsche behind a red Ferrari and gets out, looks around. I put on my sunglasses, roll up my window. Graham knocks on the door of one of the apartments facing the street and the boy who was over earlier in the week, in the kitchen, staring out into the pool, opens the door and Graham walks in and the door closes. Graham walks out of the house twenty minutes later with the boy, who is wearing only shorts, and they shake hands. Graham stumbles back to his car, dropping his keys. He stoops down to pick them up and after three tries finally grabs them. He gets into the Porsche, closes the door and looks down at his lap. Then he brings his finger to his mouth and tastes it, lightly. Satisfied, he looks back down at his lap, puts something in the glove compartment and pulls out from behind the red Ferrari and drives back onto Wilshire.
There is a sudden rapping on the passenger window and I look up, startled. A handsome gas station attendant asks me to move my car, and as I start the car up an image that I'm uneasy about the validity of comes into my line of vision: Graham at his sixth-birthday party, wearing gray shorts, an expensive tie-dyed shirt, penny loafers, blowing
out all the candles on a Flintstones birthday cake and William brings a Big Wheel tricycle out of the trunk of a silver Cadillac and a photographer takes pictures of Graham riding the Big Wheel around the driveway, on the lawn and eventually into the pool. Driving onto Wilshire, I lose track of the memory, and when I get back home Graham's car is not there.
I am lying in bed in Martin's apartment in Westwood. Martin has turned on MTV and he is lip-synching to Prince and he has his sunglasses on and is nude and pretends to be playing the guitar. The air conditioner is on and I can almost hear its hum which I try to focus on instead of Martin who begins to dance in front of the bed, an unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth. I turn over on my side. Martin turns off the television sound and puts on an old Beach Boys album. He lights the cigarette. I pull the covers up over my body. Martin jumps on the bed, lies next to me, doing leg lifts. I can feel him raising his legs slowly up, then bringing them down again, even more slowly. He stops doing this and then looks at me. He reaches down below the covers and grins.
"Your legs are really smooth."
"I had them waxed."
"Awesome."
"I had to drink a small bottle of Absolut to endure the process."
Martin jumps up suddenly, straddling me, growling, imitating a tiger or a lion or actually just a very large cat. The Beach Boys are singing "Wouldn't It Be Nice." I take a drag off his cigarette and look up at Martin, who is very tan and strong and young, with blue eyes that are so vague and blank they are impossible not to fall into. On the television screen there is a piece of popcorn in black and white and beneath the popcorn are the words "Very Important.”
"Were you at the beach yesterday?" I ask.
"No." He grins. "Why? Thought you saw me there?"
"No. just wondered."
"I'm the tannest one in my family."
He has half an erection and he takes my hand and places it around the shaft, winking at me sarcastically. I take my hand from it and run my fingers up his stomach and chest and then touch his lips and he flinches.
"I wonder what your parents would think if they knew a friend of theirs was sleeping with their son," I murmur.