Less Than Zero

I’m sitting in the main room at Chasen’s with my parents and sisters and it’s late, nine-thirty or ten, on Christmas Eve. Instead of eating anything, I look down at my plate and move the fork across it, back and forth, and become totally fixated on the fork cutting a path between the peas. My father startles me by pouring some more champagne into my glass. My sisters look bored and tan and talk about anorexic friends and some Calvin Klein model and they look older than I remember them looking, even more so when they hold their glasses up by the stem and drink the champagne slowly; they tell me a couple of jokes that I don’t get and tell my father what they want for Christmas.



We picked my father up earlier tonight at his penthouse in Century City. It seemed that he had already opened a bottle of champagne and had drunk most of it before we arrived. My father’s penthouse in Century City, the penthouse he moved into after my parents separated, is pretty big and nicely decorated and has a large jacuzzi outside the bedroom that’s always warm and steaming. He and my mother, who haven’t said that much to each other since the separation, which was, I think, about a year ago, seemed really nervous and irritated by the fact that the holidays have to bring them together, and they sat across from each other in the living room and said, I think, only four words to each other.



“Your car?” my father asked.



“Yes,” my mother said, looking over at the small Christmas tree that his maid decorated.



“Fine.”



Dad finishes his glass of champagne and pours himself another. Mother asks for the bread. My father wipes his mouth with his napkin, clears his throat and I tense up, knowing that he’s going to ask everybody what they want for Christmas, even though my sisters have already told him. My father opens his mouth. I shut my eyes and he asks if anyone would like dessert. Definite anticlimax. The waiter comes over. I tell him no. I don’t look at my parents too much, just keep running my hand through my hair, wishing I had some coke, anything, to get through this and I look around the restaurant, which is only half-full; people are murmuring to each other and their whispers carry somehow and I realize that all it comes down to is that I’m this eighteen-year-old boy with shaking hands and blond hair and with the beginnings of a tan and semistoned sitting in Chasen’s on Doheny and Beverly, waiting for my father to ask me what I want for Christmas.



No one talks about anything much and no one seems to mind, at least I don’t. My father mentions that one of his business associates died of pancreatic cancer recently and my mother mentions that someone she knows, a tennis partner, had a mastectomy. My father orders another bottle—third? fourth?—and mentions another deal. The older of my two sisters yawns, picks at her salad. I think about Blair alone in her bed stroking that stupid black cat and the billboard that says, “Disappear Here” and Julian’s eyes and wonder if he’s for sale and people are afraid to merge and the way the pool at night looks, the lighted water, glowing in the backyard.



Jared walks in, not with Blair’s father, but with a famous model who doesn’t take off her fur coat and Jared doesn’t take off his dark glasses. Another man my father knows, some guy from Warner Brothers, comes over to the table and wishes us a Merry Christmas. I don’t listen to the conversation. Instead I look over at my mother, who stares into her glass and one of my sisters tells her a joke and she doesn’t get it and orders a drink. I wonder if Blair’s father knows that Jared is at Chasen’s tonight with this famous model. I hope I’ll never have to do this again.



We leave Chasen’s and the streets are empty and the air’s still dry and hot and the wind’s still blowing. On Little Santa Monica, a car lays overturned, its windows broken, and as we pass it, my sisters crane their necks to get a closer look and they ask my mother, who’s driving, to slow down and she doesn’t and my sisters complain. We drive to Jimmy’s and my mother brings the Mercedes to a stop and we get out and the valet takes it and we all sit on a couch next to a small table in the darkened bar area. Jimmy’s is pretty empty; except for a few scattered couples at the bar and another family that sits across from us, there’s nobody in the bar. A piano player’s singing “September Song” and he sings softly. My father complains that he should be playing Christmas carols. My sisters go to the restroom and when they come back they tell us that they saw a lizard in one of the stalls and my mother says she doesn’t get it.



I start to flirt with the oldest girl from the family across from us and I wonder if our family looks like this one does. The girl looks a lot like a girl I was seeing for a little while in New Hampshire. She has short blond hair and blue eyes and a tan and when she notices me staring at her, she looks away, smiling. My father requests a phone, and a phone with a long extension cord is brought over to the couch and my father calls his father up in Palm Springs and we all wish him a Merry Christmas and I feel like a fool saying, “Merry Christmas, Grandpa,” in front of this girl.