Less Than Zero

At the sushi bar in Studio City, Alana doesn’t say much. She keeps looking down at her Diet Coke and lighting cigarettes and after a few drags, putting them out. When I ask her about Blair, she looks at me and says, “Do you really want to know?” and then smiles grimly and says, “You sound like you really care.” I turn away from her, kind of freaked out and talk to this Benjamin guy, who goes to Oakwood. It seems that his BMW was stolen and he goes on about how he finds it really lucky that he found a new BMW 320i in the same off-green his father originally bought him and he tells me, “I mean, I can’t believe I found it. Can you?”



“No. I can’t,” I tell him, glancing over at Alana.



Kim feeds Benjamin a piece of sushi and then he takes a sip of sake he got with his fake I.D. and starts to talk about music. “New Wave. Power Pop. Primitive Muzak. It’s all bullshit. Rockabilly is where it’s at. And I don’t mean those limp-wristed Stray Cats, I mean real rockabilly. I’m going to New York in April to check the rockabilly scene out. I’m not too sure if it’s happening there. It might be happening in Baltimore.”



“Yeah. Baltimore,” I say.



“Yeah, I like rockabilly too,” Kim says, wiping her hands. “But I’m still into the Psychedelic Furs and I like that new Human League song.”



Benjamin says, “The Human League are out. Over. Finished. You don’t know what’s going on, Kim.”



Kim shrugs. I wonder where Dimitri is; if Jeff is still holed up with some surfer out in Malibu.



“No, I mean, you really don’t,” he goes on. “I bet you don’t even read The Face. You’ve got to.” He lights a clove cigarette. “You’ve got to.”



“Why do you have to?” I ask.



Benjamin looks at me, runs his fingers over his pompadour and says, “Otherwise you’ll get bored.”



I say I guess so, then make plans with Kim to meet her later tonight at her house with Blair and then I go home and out to dinner with my mother. When I get home from that I take a long cold shower and sit on the floor of the stall and let the water hit me full on.



I drive over to Kim’s house and find Blair sitting in Kim’s room and she has this shopping bag from Jurgenson’s over her head and when I come in, her body gets all tense and she turns around, startled, and she reaches over and turns down the stereo. “Who is it?”



“It’s me,” I tell her. “Clay.”



She takes the bag off her head and smiles and tells me that she had the hiccups. There’s a large dog at Blair’s feet and I lean down and stroke the dog’s head. Kim comes out of the bathroom, takes a drag off the cigarette Blair was smoking and then throws it on the floor. She turns the stereo back up, some Prince song.



“Jesus, Clay, you look like you’re on acid or something,” Blair says, lighting another cigarette.



“I just had dinner with my mother,” I tell her.



The dog puts the cigarette out with its paw and then eats it.



Kim mentions something about an old boyfriend who had a really bad trip once. “He took acid and didn’t come down for six weeks. His parents sent him to Switzerland.” Kim turns to Blair, who’s looking at the dog. The dog swallows the rest of the cigarette.



“Have I dressed down enough?” Kim asks us.



Blair nods and tells her to take the hat off.



“Should I?” Kim asks me, unsure.



“Sure, why not?” I sigh and sit on Kim’s bed.



“Listen, it’s early. Why don’t we go to the movies,” Kim says, looking in the mirror, taking the hat off.



Blair gets up and says, “That’s a good idea. What’s playing?”



The dog coughs and swallows again.



We drive to Westwood. The movie Kim and Blair want to see starts at ten and is about this group of young pretty sorority girls who get their throats slit and are thrown into a pool. I don’t watch a lot of the movie, just the gory parts. My eyes keep wandering off the screen and over to the two green Exit signs that hang above the two doors in the back of the theater. The movie ends really suddenly and Kim and Blair stay for the credits and recognize a lot of the names. On the way out, Blair and Kim spot Lene, and Blair grabs my arm and says, “Oh, no.”



“Turn around, turn around. Lene is here,” Kim says with this urgent voice. “Don’t tell her we saw her on MV3 today.”



“It’s too late.” Blair smiles. “Hello, Lene.”



Lene is too tan and only wearing faded jeans and this totally revealing Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt and she’s with this really young blond boy who’s also too tan and he’s wearing sunglasses and shorts and Lene shouts, “Oh my God. Blair. Kimmy.”