Less Than Zero

  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.