The Informers - Bret Easton Ellis [18]
I don’t know what to say so I ask him if he wants a drink.
“No, that’s all right,” he says.
“Aw come on, have a drink.” I’m pouring myself another vodka on the rocks.
“It’s okay.” he says, this time less steadily.
“I’ll pour you one anyway.”
Without asking him what he wants I pour him a Stoli on the rocks. “Thanks,” he says, taking the glass, sipping from it cautiously as if it were poisoned.
I turn the stereo up and sit back and put my feet on the seat across from me.
“Sooo, what are you up to?” I ask.
“Not too much.”
“Yeah?”
“Um, when does the plane leave?”
“Twelve sharp,” I say casually.
“Oh,” he says.
“How’s the Porsche running?” I ask after a while.
“Um, good. It’s running good,” he offers, shrugging.
“That’s good.”
“How’s … the Ferrari?”
“Good, though you know, jeez, Tim, it seems like kind of a waste having it in the city,” I say, shaking my glass, rattling the ice. “I can’t drive it that fast.”
“Yeah.” He considers this, nodding.
The limousine pulls onto the freeway and begins to pick up speed. The Sondheim tape ends.
“Do you wanna hear something?” I ask.
“What is it?” he asks nervously.
“No. Do you want to play some music?”
“Oh.” He thinks about this, flustered. “Um, no. Whatever you want to, um, hear is fine.”
I know he wants to hear something so I turn on the radio and find a hard-rock station.
“Wanna hear this?” I ask, smiling, turning the volume up.
“Whatever,” he says, looking out the window. “Sure.”
I do not like this music at all and it takes a lot of effort and another glass of vodka not to put in the Sondheim tape. The vodka is not working as I hoped.
“Who is this?” I ask, gesturing toward the radio.
“Um, I think it’s Devo,” Tim says.
“Who?” I heard him.
“A group called Devo.”
“Devo?”
“Yeah.”
“Devo.”
“Right,” he says, looking at me like I’m some kind of idiot.
“Okay.” I sit back. “I just wanna get that straight.”
Devo ends. A new song comes on that’s even more annoying.
“Who is this?” I ask.
He looks at me, puts his sunglasses on and says, “Missing Persons.”
“Missing Persons?” I ask.
“Yeah.” He laughs a little.
I nod and roll down a tinted window.
Tim sips his drink and then brings it back to his lap.
“Were you in Century City yesterday?” I ask him.
“No. I wasn’t,” he says evely, without emotion.
“Oh,” I say, finishing my drink.
Finally, the song by Missing Persons ends. The DJ comes on, makes a joke, droning about free tickets to a New Year’s Eve concert that will be held in Anaheim.
“Did you bring your racket?” I ask, knowing that he did, having seen Chuck place it in the trunk.
“Yeah. I brought my racket,” Tim says, bringing the glass to his mouth, pretending to drink.
Once on the plane, in first class, me on the aisle, Tim by the window, I’m a little less tense. I drink some champagne, Tim has a glass of orange juice. He puts his Walkman on, reads a GQ he bought at the airport. I begin to read the copy of James Michener’s Hawaii that I bring to the Mauna Kea whenever I go and I set my headset to “Hawaiian Medley” and listen to Don Ho sing “Tiny Bubbles” again and again and again as we fly toward the islands.
After lunch I ask the stewardess for a deck of cards and Tim and I play a few hands of gin and I win all four games. He stares out the window until the movie starts. He watches the movie and I read Hawaii and drink rum and Coke and after the movie Tim flips through the GQ, looks out the window at the expanse of sea below us. I get up and walk a little drunkenly upstairs and wander around the lounge and take a Valium and walk back downstairs for the descent into Hilo and as we land Tim clutches the GQ tightly until it’s permanently curled and the plane pulls up to the gate.
• • •
When we get off the plane, a pretty, sweet-faced Hawaiian girl puts purple leis around our necks and we meet the chauffeur at the gate and he gets our luggage and we sit in the limousine, not saying a lot, barely even looking at each other, and as we drive through the humid midafternoon along the coast, Tim fiddles with the radio and can only get a local station