Less Than Zero (Page 30)

“I’m great, Rip. Just great.”

“That’s terrific. That’s all I wanted to hear. Finish the wine and we’ll get a booth, okay?”

“Okay.”

“You look good.”

“Thanks,” I say, and finish the wine and leave a ten on the bar.

“Great tan,” he tells me as we sit down.

“Did you bring it?” I ask.

“Cool down …” Rip says, looking at the menu. “It’s getting hot. Real hot. Like last summer.”

“Yeah.”

An old woman, holding an umbrella, falls to her knees on the other side of the street.

“Remember last summer?” he’s asking me.

“Not really.”

There are people standing over the old woman and an ambulance comes, but most of the people in La Scala don’t seem to notice.

“Yeah, sure you do.”

Last summer. Things I remember about last summer. Hanging out at clubs: The Wire, Nowhere Club, Land’s End, the Edge. An Albino in Canter’s around three in the morning. Huge green skull leering at drivers from a billboard on Sunset, hooded, holding a pyx, bony fingers beckoning. Saw a transvestite wearing a halter top in line at some movie. Saw a lot of transvestites that summer. Dinner at Morton’s with Blair when she told me not to go to New Hampshire. I saw a midget get into a Corvette. Went to a Go-Go’s concert with Julian. Party at Kim’s on a hot Sunday afternoon. B-525 on the stereo. Gazpacho, chili from Chasen’s, hamburgers, banana daiquiri’s, Double Rainbow ice cream. Two English boys lounging by the pool who tell me about how much they like working at Fred Segal. All the English boys I met that summer worked at Fred Segal. Thin French boy, who Blair slept with, smoking a joint, feet in the jacuzzi. Big black Rotweiller bites at the water and swims laps. Rip carries a plastic eyeball in his mouth. I keep staring past the palm trees, watching the skies.

Someone is supposed to be playing at The Palace tonight, but Blair’s drunk and Kim spots Lene hanging out in front and the two of them groan and Blair turns the car around. Someone named Angel was supposed to go with us tonight, but earlier today she got caught in the drain of her jacuzzi and almost drowned. Kim says that The Garage reopened somewhere on La Brea and Blair drives to La Brea and then down La Brea and then up and then down once more and she can’t find it. Blair laughs and says, “This is ridiculous,” and pushes in some Spandau Ballet tape and turns the volume up.

“Let’s just go to the f**king Edge,” Kim yells.

Blair begins to laugh and then says, “Oh, all right.”

“What do you think, Clay? Should we go to the Edge?” Kim asks.

I’m sitting in the back seat drunk and I shrug, and when we get to the Edge, I drink two more drinks.

The DJ at the Edge tonight isn’t wearing a shirt and his ni**les are pierced and he wears a leather cowboy hat and between songs he keeps mumbling “Hip-Hip-Hooray.” Kim tells me that the DJ obviously cannot decide whether he’s butch or New Wave. Blair introduces me to one of her friends, Christie, who’s on this new TV show on ABC. Christie is with Lindsay, who’s tall and looks a lot like Matt Dillon. Lindsay and I walk upstairs to the restroom and do some coke in one of the stalls. Above the sink, on the mirror, someone’s written in big black letters “Gloom Rules.”

After we leave the restroom, Lindsay and I sit at the bar upstairs and he tells me that there’s not too much going on anywhere in the city. I nod, watch the large strobe light blink off and on, flashing across the big dance floor. Lindsay lights my cigarette and begins to talk, but the music’s loud and I can’t hear a lot of what he’s saying. Some surfer bumps into me and then smiles and asks for a light. Lindsay gives the boy a light and smiles back. Lindsay then begins to talk about how he hasn’t met anyone for the past four months who’s over nineteen. “Blows your mind away, huh?” he screams, over the sound of the music.

Lindsay gets up and says that he spots his dealer and has to go talk to her. I sit at the bar alone and light another cigarette, order another drink. There’s a fat girl also sitting alone at the near empty bar, trying to talk to the bartender, who, like the DJ, is also shirtless and dancing by himself, behind the bar, to the music that’s pouring out of the club’s sound system. The fat girl has a lot of makeup on and she’s sipping a Tab with a straw and wearing purple Calvin Klein jeans and matching cowboy boots. The bartender isn’t listening to her and I have this image of her, sitting alone in a room somewhere in the city, waiting for a phone to ring. The fat girl orders another Tab. From downstairs the music stops and the DJ announces that there’ll be a miniskirt beach party at The Florentine Gardens in two weeks.