The night doorman sits at the front desk in the lushly lit lobby. I walk toward him, unsure of what to say. He looks up from a small TV.

"Did someone come by my place?" I ask. "Tonight? While I was out?"

The doorman checks the log. "No. Why?"

"I think there was someone in my place."

"What do you mean?" the doorman asks. "I don't understand."

"I think someone was in my condo while I was out."

"I've been here all night," the doorman says. "No one came by."

I just stand there. The sound of a helicopter roars over the building.

"Anyway, they couldn't get in the elevator without me opening it for them," the doorman says. "Plus Bobby's outside." He motions to the security guard slowly pacing the driveway. "Are you sure someone was in there?" He sounds amused. He notices I'm drunk. "Maybe it was no one," he says.

Pare it down, I warn myself. Put it away. Just pare everything down. Or else the bells will start chiming. "Things were rearranged," I murmur. "My computer was on ... "

"Is anything missing?" the doorman asks, now openly humoring me. "You want me to call the police?"

In a neutral voice: "No." And then I say it again. "No."

"It's been a quiet night."

"Well ... " I'm backing away. "That's good."

An actress I met at the casting sessions this morning is having lunch with me at Comme Ça. When she walked into the room at the casting director's complex in Culver City she instantly provided a steady hum of menace that left me dazed, which acted as a mask so I appeared as calm as a cipher. I haven't heard of her agent or the management company that reps her - she came in as someone's favor - and I'm thinking how different things would be if I had. Certain tensions melt away but they're always replaced with new ones. She's drinking a glass of champagne and I still have my sunglasses on and she keeps touching her hair and talking vaguely about her life. She lives in Elysian Park. She's a hostess at the Formosa Cafe. I twist in my chair while she answers a text. She notices this and then offers an apology. It's not coy, exactly, but it's premeditated. Like everything else she does it wants a reaction.

"So what are you doing for Christmas?" I ask her.

"Seeing my family."

"Will that be fun?"

"It depends." She looks at me quizzically. "Why?"

I shrug. "I'm just interested."

She touches her hair again: blond, blown out. A napkin becomes faintly stained after she wipes her lips with it. I mention the parties I went to last night. The actress is impressed, especially by the one I went to first. She says she had friends who were at that party. She says she wanted to go but she had to work. She wants me to confirm if a certain young actor was there. When I say he was, the expression on her face makes me realize something. She notices.

"I'm sorry," she says. "He's an idiot."

Some people at that party, she adds, are freaks, then mentions a drug I've never heard of, and tells me a story that involves ski masks, zombies, a van, chains, a secret community, and asks me about a Hispanic girl who disappeared in some desert. She drops the name of an actress I've never heard of. I'm trying to stay focused, trying to stay in the moment, not wanting to lose the romance of it all. Concealed, a movie I wrote, is brought up. And then I get the connection: she asked about the young actor with the gorgeous girl I was gazing at because he had a small role in Concealed.

"I don't really want to know." I'm staring at the traffic on Melrose. "I didn't stay long. I had another party to go to." And suddenly I remember the blond girl walking out of the shadows in Bel Air. I'm surprised she has stayed with me, and that her image has lingered for so long.

"How do you think it went?" she asks.

"I thought you were great," I say. "I told you that."

She laughs, pleased. She could be twenty. She could be thirty. You can't tell. And if you could, everything would be over. Destiny. "Destiny" is the word I'm thinking about. The actress murmurs a line from The Listeners. I made sure the director and producer had no interest in her for the role she auditioned for before asking her out. This is the only reason she's with me at lunch and I've been here so many times and I realize there's another premiere tonight and that I'm meeting the producer in Westwood at six. I check my watch. I've kept the afternoon open. The actress drains the glass of champagne. An attentive and handsome waiter fills it up again. I've had nothing to drink because something else in the lunch is working for me. She needs to take this to the next level if anything's ever going to pan out for her.

Tags: Bret Easton Ellis Thriller
Source: readsnovelonline.net