Less Than Zero

I don’t like driving down Wilshire during lunch hour. There always seem to be too many cars and old people and maids waiting for buses and I end up looking away and smoking too much and turning the radio up to full volume. Right now, nothing is moving even though the lights are green. As I wait in the car, I look at the people in the cars next to mine. Whenever I’m on Wilshire or Sunset during lunch hour I try to make eye contact with the driver of the car next to mine, stuck in traffic. When this doesn’t happen, and it usually doesn’t, I put my sunglasses back on and slowly move the car forward. As I pull onto Sunset I pass the billboard I saw this morning that read “Disappear Here” and I look away and kind of try to get it out of my mind.



My father’s offices are in Century City. I wait around for him in the large, expensively furnished reception room and hang out with the secretaries, flirting with this really pretty blond one. It doesn’t bother me that my father leaves me waiting there for thirty minutes while he’s in some meeting and then asks me why I’m late. I don’t really want to go out to lunch today, would rather be at the beach or sleeping or out by the pool, but I’m pretty nice and I smile and nod a lot and pretend to listen to all his questions about college and I answer them pretty sincerely. And it doesn’t embarrass me a whole lot that while on the way to Ma Maison he puts the top of the 450 down and plays a Bob Seger tape, as if this was some sort of weird gesture of communication. It also doesn’t really make me angry that at lunch my father talks to a lot of businessmen, people he deals with in the film industry, who stop by our table and that I’m introduced only as “my son” and the businessmen all begin to look the same and I begin to wish that I had brought the rest of the coke.



My father looks pretty healthy if you don’t look at him for too long. He’s completely tan and has had a hair transplant in Palm Springs, two weeks ago, and he has pretty much a full head of blondish hair. He also has had his face lifted. I’d gone to see him at Cedars-Sinai when he had it done and I remember seeing his face covered with bandages and how he would keep touching them lightly.



“Why aren’t you having the usual?” I ask, actually interested, after we order.



He smiles, showing off the caps. “Nutritionist won’t allow it.”



“Oh.”



“How is your mother?” he asks calmly.



“She’s fine.”



“Is she really feeling fine?”



“Yes, she’s really feeling fine.” I’m tempted, for a moment, to tell him about the Ferrari parked in the driveway.



“Are you sure?”



“There’s nothing to worry about.”



“That’s good.” He pauses. “Is she still seeing that Dr. Crain?”



“Uh-huh.”



“That’s good.”



There’s a pause. Another businessman stops by, then leaves.



“Well, Clay, what do you want for Christmas?”



“Nothing,” I say after a while.



“Do you want your subscription to Variety renewed?”



“It already is.”



Another pause.



“Do you need money?”



“No,” I tell him, knowing that he’ll slip me some later on, outside Ma Maison maybe, or on the way back to his office.



“You look thin,” he says.



“Hmmm.”



“And pale.”



“It’s the drugs,” I mumble.



“I didn’t quite hear that.”



I look at him and say, “I’ve gained five pounds since I’ve been back home.”



“Oh,” he says, and pours himself a glass of white wine.



Some other business guy drops by. After he leaves, my father turns to me and asks. “Do you want to go to Palm Springs for Christmas?”



During the end of my senior year one day, I didn’t go to school. Instead I drove out to Palm Springs alone and listened to a lot of old tapes I used to like but didn’t much anymore, and I stopped at a McDonald’s in Sunland for a Coke and then drove out to the desert and parked in front of the old house. I didn’t like the new one that the family had bought; well, it was okay, but it wasn’t like the old house. The old house was empty and the outside looked really scummy and unkempt and there were weeds and a television aerial that had fallen off the roof and empty trash cans were lying on what used to be the front lawn. The pool was drained and all these memories rushed back to me and I had to sit down in my school uniform on the steps of the empty pool and cry. I remembered all the Friday nights driving in and the Sunday nights leaving and afternoons spent playing cards on the chaise longues out by the pool with my grandmother. But those memories seemed faded compared to empty beer cans that were scattered all over the dead lawn and the windows that were all smashed and broken. My aunt had tried to sell the house, but I guess she got sentimental and no longer wanted to. My father had wanted to sell it and was really bitter that no one had done so. But they stopped talking about it and the house lay between them and was never brought up anymore. I didn’t go out to Palm Springs that day to look around or see the house and I didn’t go because I wanted to miss school or anything. I guess I went out there because I wanted to remember the way things were. I don’t know.