Less Than Zero

The man walks over to the bathroom and tells us both that he’ll be out in a minute. He closes the bathroom door. I get up from the chair and walk over to the bar to look for something to drink. I notice the man’s wallet which he left on the bar and I look through it. I’m so nervous I don’t care, don’t even know why I’m doing it. There are a lot of business cards in it but I don’t look at any, not wanting to see my father’s. There are some credit cards and the usual amount of cash someone from out of town might carry when coming into the city. There are also pictures of a very tired, pretty woman, the man’s wife probably, and two pictures of his children, all boys, straight-limbed, and with short blond hair and striped shirts, looking full of confidence. The pictures depress me and I put the wallet back down on the bar and wonder if the man took the pictures. I look over at Julian, who’s sitting on the edge of the bed, head down. I sit down and then lean over and turn the stereo on.



The man comes out of the bathroom and tells me, “No. No music. I want you to hear it all. Everything.” He switches the stereo off. I ask the man if I can use the bathroom. Julian takes off his underwear. The man smiles for some reason and says yes and I walk into the bathroom and lock the door and turn on both faucets in the sink and flush the toilet repeatedly as I try to throw up, but I don’t. I wipe my mouth and then come back into the room. The sun’s shifting, shadows stretching across the walls, and Julian’s trying to smile. The man’s smiling back, the shadows stretching across his face.



I light a cigarette.



The man rolls Julian over.



Wonder if he’s for sale.



I don’t close my eyes.



You can disappear here without knowing it.



Julian and I walk out into the parking lot. We’ve been in the hotel room since four o’clock and it’s now nine. I have been sitting in the chair for five hours. As we get into Julian’s car, I ask him where we’re going.



“To The Land’s End to get your money. You want your money, don’t you?” he asks. “Don’t you, Clay?”



I look at Julian’s face and remember mornings sitting in his Porsche, double-parked, smoking thinly rolled joints, listening to the new Squeeze album before classes started at nine, and even though the image comes back to me, it doesn’t disturb me anymore. Julian’s face looks older to me now.



It’s around ten and The Land’s End is crowded. The club lies on Hollywood Boulevard and Julian parks in back, in an alley, and I walk with him up to the entrance and Julian pushes his way through the line and kids jeer, but Julian ignores them. From the back door you walk into the club like you’re walking into a cellar and it’s dark and like a cave with all these partitions separating the club into small areas where groups huddle in the darkness. As we walk in, the manager, who looks like a fifty-year-old surfer, is hassling with a group of teenagers who are trying to get in and who are obviously underage. And as the manager winks at Julian and lets us both through, one of the girls in line stares at me and smiles, her wet lips, covered with this pink garish lipstick, part and she bares her upper teeth like she was some sort of dog or wolf, growling, about to attack, and she knows Julian and she says something rude that I can’t hear and Julian gives her the finger.



Before I can make out any faces, my eyes have to wait a minute to get used to the darkness. The club’s crowded tonight and some of the kids waiting out in back won’t be able to get in. “Tainted Love” is playing, loudly, over the stereo system and the dance floor is packed with people, most of them young, most of them bored, trying to look turned on. There are some guys sitting at tables who all look at this one gorgeous girl, longingly, hoping for at least one dance or a blow job in Daddy’s car and there are all these girls, looking indifferent or bored, smoking clove cigarettes, all of them or at least most of them staring at one blond-haired boy standing in the back with sunglasses on. Julian recognizes the guy and tells me that he works for Finn also.



We pass through the crowd and walk into the back, leaving the thumping music and the smoke-filled room behind us. In the back and up the stairs is where Lee, the newly appointed part time DJ, hangs out. Finn’s sitting on a couch talking to him and it seems that it’s Lee’s first night and Lee, blond and tan, seems nervous. Finn introduces Julian and me to Lee and then asks Julian how everything went and Julian mutters fine and tells Finn that he wants the money. Finn tells him that he’ll give it to him, to both of us, at Eddie’s party; that he wants Julian to do a little favor for him; after the little favor, Finn says that he’ll be more than happy to give us our money.