Two people in front of us are talking about a drug bust in Encino last night, how the new year is approaching steadily. I watch as a young Hispanic girl crosses the street, moving toward the theater. As she crosses the street in long, purposeful strides, a black convertible Rolls-Royce almost hits her, braking suddenly, swerving. The people on the sidewalk watch silently. One girl, maybe, says “oh no.” The driver of the Corniche, a tan guy, shirtless and wearing a sailor’s cap, smoking a cigar, yells “Watch out, you dumb spic” and the girl, not shaken at all, walks calmly to the other side of the street. I wipe sweat off my forehead and watch as the girl, unfazed, walks over to a palm tree and leans against it, her white T-shirt with the word CALIFORNIA on it soaked with sweat, her br**sts outlined beneath the cotton, a gold cross hanging from her neck, small, a glimmer, and even when she notices me looking at her I keep staring at the smooth brown face and the vacant black eyes and the calm, bored expression, and now she’s moving away from the palm tree and making her way toward where I stand, still staring, transfixed, and she walks up to me slowly, the warm winds blowing, the crowd parting slightly, the sweat on her face drying as she gets closer to me and she says, eyes widening, in a low, hushed whisper, “Mi hermano.”
I don’t say anything, just stare back.
“Mi hermano,” she whispers again.
“What?” Christie’s saying. “What do you want? Do you know her, Graham?”
“Mi hermano,” she says once more, urgent this last time, and then she moves on. I lose sight of her in the crowd.
“Who was she?” Christie asks as the line begins to move toward the theater.
“I don’t know,” I tell her, looking back at where the girl, who looks worth following, went.
“Really—they’re overrunning the city,” Christie says. “She was probably stoned out of her mind.” She pulls out her ticket, handing me mine. The people who were talking about the drug bust and 1985 turn around, look at Christie like they recognize her.
“What did she say?” I ask.
“Me hermano? I think it’s a kind of chicken enchilada with a lot of salsa,” Christie says. “Maybe it’s a taco, who knows?” She shrugs uncomfortably. “These implants are killing me and it’s so hot.”
We walk into the theater and sit down and the movie starts and after the movie, driving down Wilshire, back to the apartment, we come to another red light and at the bus stop are five Mexican punk rockers standing around, wearing T-shirts with black crosses and skulls the color of sulfur painted on them and they glare at the two of us in Christie’s convertible BMW and I gaze back and back at the apartment we have sex and Martin watches part of the time.
Tonight Martin mentions something about a new club that opened on Melrose, way down Melrose, and so we drive down to Melrose in Martin’s convertible, which Nina Metro gave him as a Halloween present, and Martin knows the owner at the club and we get in free with no hassles. Animotion is blasting out, people are dancing, the shower scene from Psycho is playing nonstop on the video screens above the bar and we do some coke in a bathroom and I meet a girl named China who tells me I look like a taller Billy Idol and I bump into Spin.
“Hey, where have you been?” he asks, screaming over the music, staring at Janet Leigh getting stabbed over and over again.
“Las Vegas,” I tell him. “Brazil. Inside a tornado.”
“Yeah? How about a quarter ounce?” he asks.
“Sure. Anything,” I tell him.
“Yeah?” he says, leaving. “I must talk to China. I think Madonna’s here.”
“Madonna?” I ask him. “Where?”
He can’t hear me. “Great. Call you Friday. Let’s do Spago.”
“I’m not in a hurry,” I say.
I wave and he walks away and I end up dancing with Martin and two of these blond girls he knows who work at RCA and then we all go back to the apartment on Wilshire and get really stoned and take turns with these three high school kids we meet outside, waiting in a parking lot, across the street from the club on Melrose.
I drive to the Beverly Center and wander around, lingering in clothing stores, flipping through magazines in bookstores, and at around six I sit in an empty restaurant on the top floor of the mall and order a glass of milk and a pastry, which I don’t eat, unsure of why I even ordered it. At seven, after most of the shops have closed, I decide to go to one of the movies at one of the fourteen small theaters on the top floor of the mall, not too far from where I’m sitting. I pay my admission and buy some wafers and sit in one of the small rooms and watch a movie in a daze. After the movie ends I decide to sit through the first part again since I don’t remember what happened before I started to pay attention. After sitting through the first forty minutes again I move into a similar but smaller theater, not really caring if any of the ushers see me switch, and I sit there in the dark, breathing slowly. By midnight I’m pretty sure I have been in all of the theaters for some length of time, so I leave. I come to the entrance where I came in and find it closed and locked and I turn around and make my way to the other end of the mall and find that exit closed also. I move onto the second floor and find both exits closed and locked. I walk down the escalators, which have been shut off, to the first floor and come to one end of the mall and find it closed. But I find the other end open and walk out that exit and to where I parked my car and I get into the Porsche and drive past the closed ticket attendant booths, tossing my unvalidated ticket out the window, and turn the radio on.