Less Than Zero
Light a cigarette and turn on MTV and turn off the sound. An hour passes, Blair keeps talking, tells me that she still likes me and that we should get together again and that just because we haven’t seen each other for four months is no reason to break up. I tell her we have been together, I mention last night. She says you know what I mean and I start to dread sitting in the room, listening to her talk. I look over at the clock. It’s almost three. I tell her I can’t remember what our relationship was like and I try to steer the conversation away to other topics, about movies or concerts or what she’s been doing all day, or what I’ve been doing tonight. When I get off the phone with her, it’s almost dawn, Christmas Day.
It’s Christmas morning and I’m high on coke, and one of my sisters has given me this pretty expensive leather-bound datebook, the pages are big and white and the dates elegantly printed on top of them, in gold and silver lettering. I thank her and kiss her and all that and she smiles and pours herself another glass of champagne. I tried to keep a datebook one summer, but it didn’t work out. I’d get confused and write down things just to write them down and I came to this realization that I didn’t do enough things to keep a datebook. I know that I won’t use this one and I’ll probably take it back to New Hampshire with me and it’ll just lie on my desk for three or four months, unused, blank. My mother watches us, sitting on the edge of the couch in the living room, sipping champagne. My sisters open their gifts casually, indifferent. My father looks neat and hard and is writing out checks for my sisters and me and I wonder why he couldn’t have written them out before, but I forget about it and look out the window; at the hot wind blowing through the yard. The water in the pool ripples.
It’s a really sunny, warm Friday after Christmas and I decide I need to work on my tan so I go with a bunch of people, Blair and Alana and Kim and Rip and Griffin, to the beach club. I get to the club before anyone else does and while the attendant parks my car, I sit on a bench and wait for them, staring out at the expanse of sand that meets the water, where the land ends. Disappear here. I stare out at the ocean until Griffin drives up in his Porsche. Griffin knows the parking attendant and they talk for a couple of minutes. Rip drives up soon after in his new Mercedes and also seems to know the attendant and when I introduce Rip to Griffin they laugh and tell me that they know each other and I wonder if they’ve slept together and I get really dizzy and have to sit down on the bench. Alana and Kim and Blair drive up in someone’s convertible Cadillac.
“We just had lunch at the country club,” Blair says, turning the radio down. “Kim got lost.”
“I did not,” Kim says.
“So she didn’t believe I remembered where it was and we had to stop at this gas station to ask for directions and Kim asks this guy who works there for his phone number.”
“He was gorgeous,” Kim exclaims.
“So what? He pumps gas,” Blair shrieks, getting out of the car, looking great in a one-piece. “Are you ready for this? His name is Moose.”
“I don’t care what his name is. He is totally gorgeous,” Kim says again.
On the beach, Griffin has smuggled rum and Coke in and we’re drinking what’s left of it. Rip practically takes his bathing suit off so his tan line’ll be exposed. I don’t put enough tanning oil on my legs or chest. Alana has brought a portable tape-deck and keeps playing the same INXS song, over and over; talk of the new Psychedelic Furs album goes around; Blair tells everyone that Muriel just got out of Cedars-Sinai; Alana mentions that she called Julian up to ask him if he wanted to come but there wasn’t anyone home. Everyone eventually stops talking and concentrates on what sun is left. Some Blondie song comes on and Blair and Kim ask Alana to turn it up. Griffin and I get up to go to the locker room. Deborah Harry is asking, “Where is my wave?”
“What’s wrong?” Griffin asks, staring at himself in the mirror once we’re in the men’s room.
“I’m just tense,” I tell him, splashing water on my face.
“Things’ll be okay,” Griffin says.
And there, back on the beach, in the sun, staring out into the Pacific, it seems really possible to believe Griffin. But I get sunburned and when I stop at Gelson’s for some cigarettes and a bottle of Perrier, I find a lizard in the front seat. The checkout clerk is talking about murder statistics and he looks at me for some reason and asks if I’m feeling okay. I don’t say anything, just walk quickly out of the market. When I get home, I take a shower, turn on the stereo and that night I can’t get to sleep; the sunburn’s uncomfortable, and MTV’s giving me a headache and I take some Nembutal Griffin slipped me in the parking lot at the beach club.