“How’s my favorite author?”
“Oh, I bet you say that to all your authors. In fact, I know you do.”
“Actually, I do, but please don’t tell any of them.”
“I promise. But it means something to hear you say it nevertheless.”
“In fact, one of my favorite authors called me today.”
“And who might that have been?”
“It was Jay.” Binky paused. “He said you had quite the blowout last night.”
“A kick-ass party indeed.” I also paused, realizing something. “And don’t believe anything Jay tells you.”
“Indeed,” she said ominously. “By the way, did you get that big royalty check for American Psycho from the Brits? I had it transferred to your New York account.”
“Yes, I got the statement. Excellent.” I did my Monty Burns.
“How’s Jayne? How are the kids?” She paused, then said blankly, “I can’t believe I just asked you that. I’ve known you for over fifteen years and never thought I would ask you a question like that.”
“I am now a committed father and husband,” I said proudly.
“Yes,” Binky murmured hesitantly. “Yes.”
I snapped her out of disbelief. “And I’m teaching.”
“Unbelievable.”
“It’s just one day a week at the college but the kids love me. Legend has it that more students tried to enroll in my writing class than for any other visiting writer who ever taught there. Or so I’m told.”
“How many students do you have?”
“Well, I only wanted three, but the administration said that wasn’t an acceptable number.” I breathed in. “So I have fifteen of the little bastards.”
“And how’s the book going?” Binky asked.
“Oh—so much for pleasantries?”
“Those were pleasantries?”
“I’m almost done with the outline and the book is moving along right on schedule.” I needed a cigarette and started looking through my drawers to find a pack. “I am no longer sweating the small stuff, Binky.”
“Well, would you have time for a detour?”
“But this is Knopf’s lead title for next fall, which means I need to finish it by January, no?”
“Well, Bret, you were the one who said you could write this thing in six months,” she said. “No one believed it but that due date is in your contract and the Germans running your publishing house are displeased by extensions.”
“You’re sounding coy, Binky,” I said, giving up on the cigarette. “You’re sounding very coy. And I like it.”
“And you sound like your allergies are acting up,” Binky said flatly. “I have a feeling we didn’t take our Claritin today. And I don’t like it.”
“My allergies are acting up like mad,” I protested, and then thought it through. “And don’t believe anything Jay tells you.”
“Seriously, Bret—allergies?”
“Do not mock my allergies. My nose is stuffed up and I am exceedingly wheezy. Because of . . . them.” I paused, knowing this wasn’t very convincing. “Hey—I actually do yoga and have a Pilates trainer. How’s that for rehabilitation?”
She let it go with a sigh. “Have you ever heard of Harrison Ford?”
“The very famous and once popular actor?”
“He liked the polish you did on Much to My Chagrin and wants to talk to you about writing something. You’d have to go out there and meet with him and his people in the next couple of weeks. Just for a day or two.” She sighed again. “I’m not sure if it’s such a great idea at this point. I’m just relaying the information.”
“And you did it so well.” I paused. “But why can’t they come here? I live in a perfectly nice town.” A longer pause. “Hello? Hello?”
“You’d have to go out just for a day or two.”
“What’s this thing about?”
“Something about Cambodia or Cuba. It’s all very vague.”
“And I suppose they want me—the writer—to figure it out, huh?” I asked indignantly. “Jesus.”
“I’m just relaying the info, Bret.”
“As long as Keanu Reeves is not costarring I would be more than delighted to take a meeting with Harrison.” Then I remembered certain stories I’d heard. “But isn’t he supposed to be this giant blowhard?”
“That’s why I think it would be a perfect match.”
“Um, Binky, what does that mean?”
“Listen, I’ve gotta run. It’s the day from hell.” In the background I heard an assistant calling out. “I’ll tell them you’re interested, and you can start figuring out the dates you can be in L.A.”
“Well, thank you very much for the call. I love our mock formality.”
“Oh, by the way . . .”
“Yeah?”
“Happy Halloween.”
And as we hung up I suddenly realized what had been bothering me about the e-mails that were coming from the Bank of America in Sherman Oaks. October 3. That was my father’s birthday. And that segued into another realization. 2:40 a.m. That was when, according to the coroner, he had died. I pondered this for about a minute—it was a disturbing connection. But I was hungover and exhausted and I needed to be on campus in thirty minutes so maybe it was just a coincidence and maybe I was giving it more significance than it deserved. When I got up to leave the office, I noted one more thing: the furniture had been rearranged. My desk was now facing the wall instead of the window, where the couch had been repositioned instead. A lamp had been moved to a different corner. Again, at that moment, I blamed it on the party, as I did everything else that day.
5. the college
Part of the town we lived in seemed dreamed up and fractured and modern: tilted buildings spaced widely apart, with facades that resembled cascading ribbons, and concrete slabs fluttering over one another, and electronic signs wrapped around the buildings, and there were gigantic liquid-crystal display screens, and zip strips quoting stock prices and delivering the day’s headlines, and neon decorated the courthouse, and a Jumbotron TV was perched above the Bloomingdale’s that took up four blocks of downtown. But beyond this district the town also boasted a 2000-acre nature preserve and horse farms and two golf courses, and there were more children’s bookstores than there were Barnes & Nobles. My route to the college ran past numerous playgrounds and a baseball field, and on Main Street (where I stopped to buy a Starbucks latte) there were a variety of gourmet food stores, a first-class cheese shop, a row of patisseries, a friendly pharmacist who filled my Klonopin and Xanax prescriptions, an understated cineplex and a family-run hardware store, and all the surrounding streets were lined with magnolia and dogwood and cherry trees. At a stoplight festooned with fresh flowers I watched a chipmunk climb a telephone pole while I sipped my nonfat latte. The latte revived me to the point where my hangover seemed like something that had happened last week. And I was suddenly, inexplicably content as I drove through the town’s shady streets. I passed a potato field. I passed horses grazing outside a barn. At the campus gates, the security guard tipped his hat to me as I raised my latte, acknowledging him.
The first time I spotted the cream-colored 450 SL was on that warm, clear Halloween afternoon. It sat at the curb just outside the faculty parking lot and I smiled as I passed it in recognition of the fact that it was the same make and color of the car my father had driven in the late seventies, a car I’d inherited when I turned sixteen. This one was a convertible as well, and the intriguing coincidence brought a brief rush of memories—a freeway, sun glinting off the hood, staring out the windshield at the twisting roads of Mulholland while the Go-Gos blared from the stereo, the top down and palm trees swaying above me. I made nothing of it at the time: there were plenty of rich kids at the college, and a car like that wasn’t necessarily out of place. So the memories vanished once I parked in my designated space, lifted the stack of paperbacks of my short story collection, The Informers, off the passenger seat and headed toward my office, which
was in a small and charming red barn that overlooked the campus—the building was, in fact, called the Barn. Still smiling to myself, I realized that my sole reason for being here today was that my office was the only place Aimee Light would meet me now—under the auspices of a student-teacher counseling session, even though she wasn’t my student, I wasn’t her teacher and no counseling was planned. (We had attempted a single tryst at her off-campus apartment, but there was an obnoxious cat inhabiting it that I was deeply allergic to.)
On the steps of a library sheathed in metal and glass, hungover students were catching rays. Walking across the quad I stopped to help tap a keg (and sneak a beer) in front of a new art installation. Soccer players in DKNY sportswear loped across the quad’s green field, and except for a few Goths sitting beneath the overhang of Commons (where I dropped off the stack of The Informers, placing it on the “Free with Student ID” table) everyone looked as if they’d stepped out of an Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue. It all resembled something extremely enticing, and again I was taken back into the past, to my years at Camden. In fact the whole campus—the vibe, the placement of the dorms, the design of the main buildings—reminded me of Camden, even though this was just another small and expensive liberal arts college in the middle of nowhere.
“Yo, Mr. Ellis, great party last night—what’s going down?” someone called out. It was a jock from my writing class who had a modicum of talent.
“Yo, I’m down, I’m very down, Jesse,” I called back good-naturedly and then added, as an afterthought, “Rock on.”
Students kept calling out as I walked up to the Barn, thanking me for the party none of them had been invited to but that they all had apparently attended nonetheless. And so my professorial smile was followed by their gratified laughter. There was also the nervous-looking Jewish student (David Abromowitz) I nodded to as I passed and who, I must confess, I was a little into. The compliments about the rad party kept rolling in, and I returned friendly waves to students I’d never even seen before.
On the door of my office was a note from a student I never heard of canceling an appointment I didn’t recall having made, apologizing for her “outburst” in last Wednesday’s class. I tried hard to remember the student and what the outburst had been about but couldn’t come up with anything, because the class was a sleepwalk—so laid-back and comfortable and informal that even the suggestion of an outburst was worrisome. In class I always tried to sound lighthearted and encouraging, but since I was so famous and probably closer to their age than any other teacher (though I was completely autonomous from the rest of the faculty and really didn’t know for sure) my students looked at me in awe. While critiquing their stories I tried to ignore their expressions of fear and alarm.
I sat down at my desk and immediately flipped open my laptop and started making up a dream to feed Dr. Kim, the diminutive Korean shrink my wife found through our couples counselor, Dr. Faheida. Dr. Kim, a strict Freudian and a big believer in how the unconscious expressed itself in dream imagery, wanted me to bring in a new dream every week so we could interpret it, but because her accent was so thick that half the time I had no idea what she was saying, and the added fact that I was no longer having dreams, these sessions were almost unbearable. But Jayne insisted on (and was paying for) them, so it was easier to endure these hours than face the hassles of not showing up. (Besides, this charade was my only means of keeping the Klonopin and Xanax prescriptions up to date—and without them I was a goner.) Meanwhile Dr. Kim was catching on—becoming more suspicious with each new made-up dream—but my assignment was to bring in one today, so while waiting for Aimee Light to arrive (and hopefully undress) I dutifully concentrated on what kind of dream would be burbling in my unconscious at this point. Glancing at my watch I saw this had to be quick. I had to make up the dream, type it up, and print it out, and then—after somehow having sex with Aimee Light—dash over to Dr. Kim’s office by three. Today: water, plane crash, being chased by . . . a lively badger (remember: animals were not my friends); I was naked on the plane, the lively badger was . . . also on the plane, and maybe its name was . . . Jayne.
When I looked up a student had appeared in the doorway and was staring at me sheepishly. There was nothing unusual about him at first glance: tall, handsome in a generic way, a lean face, slightly chiseled, thick reddish brown hair very tightly cropped, a backpack slung over his shoulders. He was wearing jeans and an antique olive green Armani sweater with the designer’s emblem—an eagle—on it (antique because it was a sweater I had once owned when I was a college student). He was holding a Starbucks cup and seemed more alert than the squinty-eyed slackers that populated the campus. And though I couldn’t place him I knew I’d seen him before, and so I was intrigued. Plus he was holding a copy of my first novel, Less Than Zero, which made me stand up and say, “Hello.”
The boy seemed almost shocked that I’d acknowledged him and was suddenly incapable of saying anything until I quickly spoke again.
“That’s a wonderful novel you’re hold—”
“Oh, yeah, hi, hope I’m not bothering you.”
“No, not at all. Come in, come in.”
He looked away and blushed deeply, then shuffled into the office and carefully sat down in the chair across the desk from me.
“Well, I’m a big fan, Mr. Ellis.”
“Isn’t there a law against formality at this place?” I said with an expression of mock distaste, hoping to relax him since he was sitting so rigidly in the chair. “Call me Bret.” I paused. “And have we met before?”
“Um, I’m Clayton and I’m a freshman here and I don’t think so,” the boy said. “I just wanted to know if you could sign this for me.” His hands trembled slightly as he held up the book.
“Of course. I’d be happy to.” I studied him as he handed me the book, which was in pristine condition. I opened it to the copyright page and saw it was a first edition, which made the book I was holding an extremely rare and valuable copy.
“I have class in a couple of minutes, so . . .” He gestured at himself.
“Oh, of course. I won’t keep you long.” I set the book down and searched my desk for a pen. “So, Clayton . . . I assume all your friends call you Clay.”
He stared at me and then—understanding what I was getting at—grinned and said, “Yeah.” He waved a hand at the book. “Like Clay in the novel.”
“That’s the connection I made,” I said, opening a drawer. “Is there another?” I found a pen and then looked up. He was staring at me questioningly. “That’s the right one. You were correct,” I assured him, but then I couldn’t help it: “You look very familiar.”
He just shrugged.
“Well, what are you majoring in?” I asked.
“I want to be a writer.” It seemed hard for him to admit this.
“Did you apply to my writing course?”
“I’m a freshman. It’s only open to juniors and seniors.”
“Well, I could have pulled a few strings,” I said delicately.
“Based on what?” he asked, a snap in his voice.
I realized that I was flirting with him and suddenly looked back at the book and the pen in my hand, embarrassed for myself.
“I’m not really any good,” he offered, sitting up, noting the sudden, subtle shift in the room’s vibe.
“Well, neither are any of my other students so you’d fit right in.” I laughed dryly. He did not.
“My parents . . .” Again, he hesitated. “Well, my dad, actually . . . he wanted me to go to business school and so . . .”
“Ah yes, the age-old dilemma.”
Clayton purposefully checked his watch—another gesture that indicated he needed to go. “You can just sign my name—I mean, your name.” He stood up.
“Are you working on anything?” I asked gently as I signed my name with an uncharacteristic flourish on the title page.
“Well, I have part of a novel done.”
I handed him back the book. “Well,
if you’re interested in showing me anything . . .” I left the offer hanging there, waiting for him to accept.
At that point I realized where I’d seen Clayton before.
He was at the Halloween party last night.
He was dressed as Patrick Bateman.
I had seen him when I was looking out Sarah’s window as he disappeared into the darkness of Elsinore Lane.
I breathed in, something caught in me and I shivered.
He was putting the book in his backpack when I asked, “So, you weren’t at the party my wife and I threw last night?”
He stiffened and said, “No. No, I wasn’t.”
This was answered so genuinely that I couldn’t register if he was lying or not. Plus, if he’d crashed the party, why admit to it now?
“Really? I thought I saw you there.” I couldn’t help but keep pressing.
“Um, no, wasn’t me.” He just stood in front of my desk, waiting.
I realized I needed to say something that would get him moving.
“Well, it was nice meeting you, Clayton.”
“Yes, you too.”
I held out a hand. He abruptly shook it and looked away, mumbling his thanks as I heard footsteps coming down the hall.
Clayton heard the footsteps too and, without saying anything else, turned to leave my office.
But Aimee Light bumped into him in the doorway and they glanced at each other briefly before Clayton rushed away.
“Who was that?” Aimee asked casually, swaying in.
I walked over to the door, still slightly dazed from the encounter, and watched as Clayton disappeared down an empty corridor. I stood there trying to figure out why he had lied about being at the party last night. Well, he was shy. Well, he hadn’t been invited. Well, he wanted to come. Whatever.
Aimee spoke again. “Was that a student of yours?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, closing the door. “A very interesting young man whose allotted seven minutes had just expired.”
Aimee was leaning against my desk, facing me, and wearing an alluring summer dress, and she knew exactly what the response to an alluring summer dress at the end of October would be—a carnal promise. I immediately walked up to her and she pushed herself up until she was sitting on the desk and then spread her legs and I walked between them as she wrapped them around my waist, straddling me as I stood looking down at her. This was all extremely encouraging.