Less Than Zero
One of my sisters, who was lying next to her, shrugged and put on her sunglasses.
“Anyway, I’m having ON put on the cable,” she said, harassed, as I left the pool.
The businessman leaves. My father doesn’t say much. I try to make conversation. I tell him about the coyote that Blair ran over. He tells me that it’s too bad. He keeps looking out the window, eyeing the fire-hydrant-red Ferrari. My father asks me if I’m looking forward to going back to New Hampshire and I look at him and tell him yes.
I awoke to the sound of voices outside. The director whose party my parents had taken my grandmother to the night before was outside at the table, under the umbrella, eating brunch. The director’s wife was sitting by his side. My grandmother looked well under the shade of the umbrella. The director began to talk about the death of a stuntman on one of his films. He talked about how he missed a step. Of how he fell headfirst onto the pavement below.
“He was a wonderful boy. He was only eighteen.”
My father opened another beer.
My grandfather looked down, sadly. “What was his name?” he asked.
“What?” The director glanced up.
“What was his name? What was the kid’s name?”
There was a long silence and I could only feel the desert breeze and the sound of the jacuzzi heating and the pool draining and Frank Sinatra singing “Summer Wind” and I prayed that the director remembered the name. For some reason it seemed very important to me. I wanted very badly for the director to say the name. The director opened his mouth and said, “I forgot.”
“You should call before you come over,” Kim tells me, handing Dimitri the joint.
“I’ve tried, but no one answers,” I lie, realizing that probably no one would have answered the phone even if I had called.
Muriel screams and Kim looks over at her, distracted and says, “Well, maybe you’ve been calling the numbers that I’ve disconnected.”
“Maybe,” I tell her. “I’m sorry. I just came for my vest.”
“Well, I just … it’s okay this once, but I don’t like people coming over. Someone is telling people where I live. I don’t like it.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“I mean, I used to like people coming over, but now I just can’t stand it. I can’t take it.”
“When are you going back to school?” I ask her as we walk back to her room.
“I don’t know.” She gets defensive. “Has it even started yet?”
We walk into her room. There’s only a big mattress on the floor and a huge, expensive stereo that takes up an entire wall and a poster of Peter Gabriel and a pile of clothes in the corner. There are also the pictures that were taken at her New Year’s Eve party tacked up over the mattress. I see one of Muriel shooting up, wearing my vest, me watching. Another of me standing in the living room only wearing a T-shirt and my jeans, trying to open a bottle of champagne, looking totally out of it. Another of Blair lighting a cigarette. One of Spit, wasted, beneath the flag. From outside, Muriel screams and Dimitri keeps trying to play the guitar.