Lunar Park - Bret Easton Ellis [106]
Once I closed the door, I noticed the manila envelope next to the footprints stamped in ash, resting on the floor, an object I hadn’t noticed before.
(Because it hadn’t been there before, right?)
My mind shrugged: anything was possible now.
I stared at it for a long time, breathing hard.
I approached it not with the casual wariness I usually felt when a student was handing me a story, but with a specific trepidation that spasmed throughout my body.
I had to force myself to swallow before picking it up.
I opened the envelope.
It was a manuscript.
It was called “Minus Numbers.”
The name “Clayton” was scratched in the corner of the title page.
I don’t know how long I stood there, but suddenly I needed to talk to Kimball.
When I rushed to the window I saw the taillights of Kimball’s sedan rolling down College Drive and in the distance, farther into the valley, the searchlights of an army helicopter sweeping over the deserted forest.
By now it was completely dark out.
But what was I going to tell Kimball? The paralysis returned when I realized I wanted to ask him something.
You will drive to Aimee Light’s studio, which is located a half mile from the college in a series of perfunctory brick bungalows that house off-campus students and brackets a parking lot surrounded by pines. Her car will not be there. You will cruise through the parking lot, searching for it, but you will never find it (because it was driven from the Orsic Motel and dumped somewhere) and your palms will actually be sweating, which will cause your grip to slide off the steering wheel. The moon will be a mirror reflecting everything it looms over, and the smell of burning leaves will permeate the night air as you briefly reflect on a day that has passed too quickly. You will park in her empty space and get out of the Porsche and you will notice her lights are off, and the only noise will be the hooting of owls and the cries of coyotes lost in the hills of Sherman Oaks, emerging from their caves and answering one another as they lunge toward lit pools of water, and always with you everywhere will be the constant scent of the Pacific. You will walk to the door and then stop because you don’t really want to open it, but after pushing uselessly against it you will give up and move to a side window and you will peer through it
(because you need to be so much bolder than you feel)
and the computer on her desk will be the only light in the room, illuminating a stack of papers, the Marlboros she smokes, the hurricane lamp next to the mattress on the floor, the Indian rug and the worn leather chair and the CDs scattered next to an ancient boom box and the framed Diane Arbus print and the Chippendale table (the only concession to her upbringing) and piles of books stacked so high they act as a kind of wallpaper, and as you scan the empty room suddenly something will jump up on the windowsill and scowl at you and you will scream and leap back until you realize it’s only her cat, pawing hungrily at the pane of glass separating you from it, and you will rush back to your car when you notice the dried blood staining its jaws, and as the cat keeps clawing at the window you will pull out of the parking lot, wanting to drive to the Orsic Motel in Stoneboat, but that’s forty minutes from here and will make you late to meet Jayne for couples counseling, though, of course, by this point, that isn’t the real reason. You are afraid again because it isn’t time to wake up from the nightmare yet. And even if you could, you know that there are so many new ones about to begin.
What I wanted to ask Kimball was: Did you find a navel ring on the torso in that shower stall in the Orsic Motel?
17. couples counseling
When I arrived back