“Don’t open that door, dude,” Dirk says, his voice low, raspy, sunglasses still on. “Don’t go in there.”
I pull my hand away real quick, put it in my pocket, pretend I was never going to check it out, whistle a Billy Idol song that I can’t get out of my head. “I wasn’t gonna go in there, dude. Chill out.”
He nods slowly, takes off the sombrero, switching to another channel, then back to Bad Bovs. He sighs and flicks something off one of his cowboy boots. “He’s not dead yet.”
“No, no, I get it, dude,” I tell him. “Just mellow out.”
I go downstairs, bring up some more beer, and we smoke some more pot, tell some more jokes, one about a koala bear and one about black people, another about a plane crash, and then we watch the rest of the movie, basically not saying a lot, long pauses between sentences, even words, the credits are rolling and Dirk takes off his sunglasses, then puts them back on, and I’m stoned. He looks at me and says, “Ally Sheedy looks good beaten up,” and then outside, like ritual, a storm arrives.
I’m hanging out at Phases over in Studio City and it’s getting late and I’m with some young girl with long blond hair who could be maybe twenty who I first saw with some geek dancing to “Material Girl” and she’s bored and with me now and I’m bored and I want to get out of here and we finish our drinks and go to my car and get in and I’m sort of drunk and don’t turn on the radio and it’s silent in the car as she rolls down her window and Ventura is so deserted it’s still silent except for the air-conditioning and she doesn’t say a word about how nice my car is and so I finally ask this bitch, while uselessly opening the sunroof to impress her, getting closer to Encino, “How many Ethiopians can you fit in a Volkswagen?” and I take a Marlboro out of my jacket, push the lighter in, smiling to myself.
“All of them,” she says.
I pull the car over to the side of the road, tires screeching, and turn the engine off. I sit there, waiting. Somehow the radio got turned on and some song is playing but I don’t know which song it is and the lighter pops up. My hand is trembling and I’m staring at her, leaning away, cigarette still in my hand. I think she asks what’s going on but I don’t even hear her and I try to compose myself and I’m about to pull out onto Ventura but then I have to stop and stare at her some more and, bored, she asks what are we doing? and I keep staring and then, very slowly, still holding the cigarette, push the lighter in, wait until it heats up, pops out, light the cigarette, blow the smoke out, looking at her still, leaning away, and then I ask very quietly, suspiciously, maybe a little confused, “Okay”—taking a deep breath—“how many Ethiopians can you fit into a Volkswagen?” I don’t breathe until I hear her answer. I watch a tumbleweed come out of nowhere and hear it graze the bumper of the Porsche.
“I told you all of them,” she says. “Are we going to your place or, like, what is this?”
I lean back, smoke some of the cigarette, ask, “How old are you?”
“Twenty.”
“No. Really,” I say. “Come on. It’s just the two of us. We’re alone now. I’m not a cop. Tell the truth. You won’t get in trouble if you tell the truth.”