Less Than Zero

“She’s twelve.”



“And she is tight, man,” Spin laughs.



“Who is she?” I ask.



“Her name is Shandra and she goes to Corvalis” is all Rip says.



Ross is playing Centipede in the living room and the sound of the video game carries to where we’re standing. Spin puts a tape on and then takes off his shirt and then his jeans. He has a hardon and he pushes it at the girl’s lips and then looks over at us. “You can watch if you want.”



I leave the room.



Rip follows me.



“Why?” is all I ask Rip.



“What?”



“Why, Rip?”



Rip looks confused. “Why that? You mean in there?”



I try to nod.



“Why not? What the hell?”



“Oh God, Rip, come on, she’s eleven.”



“Twelve,” Rip corrects.



“Yeah, twelve,” I say, thinking about it for a moment.



“Hey, don’t look at me like I’m some sort of scumbag or something. I’m not.”



“It’s …” my voice trails off.



“It’s what?” Rip wants to know.



“It’s … I don’t think it’s right.”



“What’s right? If you want something, you have the right to take it. If you want to do something, you have the right to do it.”



I lean up against the wall. I can hear Spin moaning in the bedroom and then the sound of a hand slapping maybe a face.



“But you don’t need anything. You have everything,” I tell him.



Rip looks at me. “No. I don’t.”



“What?”



“No, I don’t.”



There’s a pause and then I ask, “Oh, shit, Rip, what don’t you have?”



“I don’t have anything to lose.”



Rip turns away and walks back into the bedroom. I look in and Trent’s already unbuttoning his shirt, staring at Spin, who’s straddling the girl’s head. “Come on, Trent,” I say. “Let’s get outta here.”



He looks over at me and then at Spin and the girl and says, “I think I’m gonna stay.”



I just stand there. Spin turns his head while he’s thrusting into the girl’s head and says, “Shut the door if you’re gonna stay. Okay?”



“You should stay,” Trent says.



I close the door and walk away and through the living room, where Ross is still playing Centipede.



“I got the high score,” he says. He notices that I’m leaving and asks, “Hey, where are you going?”



I don’t say anything.



“I bet you’re gonna check out that body again, right?”



I close the door behind me.



A few miles from Rancho Mirage, there was a house that belonged to a friend of one of my cousin’s. He was blond and good-looking and was going to go to Stanford in the fall and he came from a good family from San Francisco. He would come down to Palm Springs on weekends and have these parties in the house on the desert. Kids from L.A. and San Francisco and Sacramento would come down for the weekend and stay for the party. One night, near the end of summer, there was a party that somehow got out of hand. A young girl from San Diego who had been at the party had been found the next morning, her wrists and ankles tied together. She had been raped repeatedly. She also had been strangled and her throat had been slit and her br**sts had been cut off and someone had stuck candles where they used to be. Her body had been found at the Sun Air Drive-In hanging upside down from the swing set that lay near the corner of the parking lot. And the friend of my cousin’s disappeared. Some say he went to Mexico and some say he went to Canada or London. Most people say he went to Mexico, though. The mother was put in an institution and the house lay empty for two years. Then one night it burned down and a lot of people say that the guy came back from Mexico, or London, or Canada, and burned it down.



I drive up the canyon road where the house used to be, still wearing the same clothes I had on earlier that afternoon, in Finn’s office, in the hotel room of the Saint Marquis, behind Flip, in the alley, and I park the car and sit there, smoking, looking for a shadow or figure lurking behind the rocks. I c**k my head and listen for a murmur or a whisper. Some people say you can see the boy walking through the canyons at night, peering out over the desert, wandering through the ruins of the house. Some also say that the police caught him and put him away. In Camarillo, hundreds of miles from Palo Alto and Stanford.



I remember this story clearly as I drive away from the ruins of the house and I begin to drive even farther out into the desert. The night’s warm and the weather reminds me of nights in Palm Springs when my mother and father would have friends over and play bridge and I would take my father’s car and put the top down and drive through the desert listening to The Eagles or Fleetwood Mac, the hot wind blowing through my hair.