Less Than Zero

Soon the champagne ran out and I opened the liquor cabinet. Blair got tan and so did I, and by the end of the week, all we did was watch television, even though the reception wasn’t too good, and drink bourbon, and Blair would arrange shells into circular patterns on the floor of the living room. When Blair muttered one night, while we sat on opposite sides of the living room, “We should have gone to Palm Springs,” I knew then that it was time to leave.



After leaving Blair I drive down Wilshire and then onto Santa Monica and then I drive onto Sunset and take Beverly Glen to Mulholland, and then Mulholland to Sepulveda and then Sepulveda to Ventura and then I drive through Sherman Oaks to Encino and then into Tarzana and then Woodland Hills. I stop at a Sambo’s that’s open all night and sit alone in a large empty booth and the winds have started and they’re blowing so hard that the windows are shaking and the sounds of them trembling, about to break, fill the coffee shop. There are these two young guys in the booth next to mine, both wearing black suits and sunglasses and the one with a Billy Idol button pinned to his lapel keeps hitting his hand against the table, like he’s trying to keep beat. But his hand’s shaking and his rhythm’s off and every so often his hand falls off the table and hits nothing. The waitress comes over to their table and hands them the check m says thank you and the one with the Billy Idol pin grabs the check away from her and looks it over, fast.



“Oh, for Christ’s sake, can’t you add?”



“I think it’s right,” the waitress says, a little nervously.



“Oh yeah, do you?” he sneers.



I get the feeling something bad’s going to happen, but the other one says, “Forget it,” and then, “Jesus, I hate the f**king Valley,” and he digs into his pocket and throws a ten on the table.



His friend gets up, belches, and mutters, “Fucking Valleyites,” loudly enough for her to hear. “Go spend the rest of it at the Galleria, or wherever the hell you go to,” and then they walk out of the restaurant and into the wind.



When the waitress comes to my table to take my order she seems really shaken up. “Pill-popping bastards. I been to other places outside the Valley and they aren’t all that great,” she tells me.



I stop at a newsstand on the way back home and buy some  p**n o magazine with two girls holding riding crops in a laminated photo on the cover. I stand really still and the streets are empty and it’s quiet and I can only hear the sound of the papers and magazines rustling, the newsstand guy running around putting bricks on top of the stacks so they don’t blow away. I can also hear the sound of coyotes howling and dogs barking and palm trees shaking in the wind up in the hills. I get into my car and the wind rocks it for a minute and then I drive away, up toward my house, in the hills.



From my bed, later that night, I can hear the windows throughout the house rattling, and I get really freaked out and keep thinking that they’re going to crack and shatter. It wakes me up and I sit up in bed and look over at the window and then glance over at the Elvis poster, and his eyes are looking out the window, beyond, into the night, and his face looks almost alarmed at what it might be seeing, the word “Trust” above the worried face. And I think about the billboard on Sunset and the way Julian looked past me at Cafe Casino, and when I finally fall asleep, it’s Christmas Eve.



Daniel calls me on the day before Christmas and tells me that he’s feeling better and that last night, at his party, someone slipped him a bad Quaalude. Daniel also thinks that Vanden, a girl he saw at school in New Hampshire, is pregnant. He remembers that at some party before he left, she had mentioned something about it, half-jokingly. And Daniel got this letter from her a couple of days ago and he tells me that Vanden might not be coming back; that she might be starting a punk-rock group in New York called The Spider’s Web; that she might be living with this drummer from school in the Village; that they might get a gig to open for someone at the Peppermint Lounge or CBGB’s; that she might or might not be coming out to L.A.; that it might or might not be Daniel’s kid; that she might or might not get an abortion, get rid of it; that her parents have divorced and her mother moved back to Connecticut and that she might or might not go back there and stay with her for a month or so, and her father, some big shot at ABC, is worried about her. He says that the letter wasn’t too clear.



I’m lying on my bed, watching MTV, the phone cradled in my neck, and I tell him not to worry and then ask him if his parents are coming back for Christmas and he says that they’ll be gone another two weeks and that he’s going to spend Christmas with some friends in Bel Air. He was going to spend it with a girl he knows in Malibu, but she has mono and he doesn’t think that it would be such a hot idea and I agree with him and Daniel asks if he should get in touch with Vanden and I’m surprised at how much strength it takes to care enough to urge him to do so and he says that he doesn’t see the point and says Merry Christmas dude and we hang up.