The Informers - Bret Easton Ellis [24]
“You shouldn’t smoke,” Rachel says.
“I told you, Tim,” I say.
He looks at her, then at me. “Why not?” he asks her.
“It’s bad for you,” she tells him earnestly.
“He knows that,” I say. “I told him last night.”
“No. You told me not to smoke because ‘we’re in Hawaii,’ not because it’s bad for me,” he says, glaring.
“Well, it’s bad for you too and I find it offensive,” I say with no effort.
“I’m not blowing it in your face,” he mutters. He looks over at Rachel to save him. “Am I bothering you? I mean, jeez, we’re outside. We’re outside.”
“You just shouldn’t smoke, Tim,” she says softly.
He gets up. “Well, I’m going somewhere else to finish this cigarette, okay? Since you two don’t like it.” Pause, then, to me, “Are the odds pretty good tonight, Dad?”
“Tim,” Rachel says. “You don’t have to. Sit down.”
“No,” I say, daring him. “Let him go.”
Tim begins to walk away.
Rachel turns in her chair. “Tim. Oh God.”
He walks past a couple of small potted palms, the piano player, one of the fags, an old couple dancing, then in, then out of the dining room.
“What’s wrong with him?” Rachel asks.
The two of us don’t say anything else to each other and listen to the piano player and the muffled conversations that float out of the dining room, the background sound of waves breaking along the shore. Rachel finishes a drink I don’t remember her ordering. I sign for the check.
“Good night,” she says. “Thanks for dinner.”
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“Please tell Tim I’m sorry.” She begins to walk away.
“Rachel,” I say.
“I’ll see him tomorrow.”
“Rachel.”
She walks out of the dining room.
I open the door to our suite. Tim is sitting on his bed, looking out over the balcony, curtains billowing around him. The room is completely dark except for moonlight and, even with the balcony doors open, permeated with marijuana.
“Tim?” I ask.
“What?” He turns around.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Nothing.” He stands up slowly and closes the doors leading out to the balcony.
“Do you want to talk?” I have been crying.
“What? Did you ask me if I wanted to talk?” He flips on a light, smiling at me with a tainted smile.
“Yes.”
“About what?”
“You tell me.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” he says. He paces beside the bed, slowly, deliberately, trudging.
“Please, Tim. Come on.”
“What?” He throws his arms up, smiling, eyes wide and bloodshot. He takes off his jacket and tosses it on the floor. “There is nothing to talk about.”
I can’t say anything except “Give me a chance. Don’t ruin my chances.”
“You don’t have any chances to ruin, dude.” He laughs, then says again, “Dude.”
“You don’t mean that,” I say.
“Nothing. There is nothing,” Tim says, less sternly than before. He stops pacing, then sits on the bed again, his back to me.
“Just forget about it,” he says again, yawning. “There’s … nothing.”
I just stand there.
“Nothing,” he says again. “Nada.”
I wander around the grounds of the hotel for a long time and I finally end up sitting on a small bench situated above the sea, next to a floodlight shining down into the water. Two manta rays, drawn by the intense light, are swimming in circles, their fins flapping slowly in the clear, lit waves. There is no one else watching the manta rays and I stare at them swimming tirelessly for what seems to be a long time. The moon is high and bright and pale. A parrot squawks from across the hotel. Tiki torches burn with gas flames. I’m about to go to the front desk and get another room, when I hear a voice behind me.
“Manta birostris, also called manta ray.” Rachel steps out of the darkness, wearing sweats and a revealing T-shirt with the words LOS ANGELES on it, the flower from earlier still in her hair. “They’re relatives of the shark and the skate. They inhabit warmer ocean waters. They spend most of their lives either partially buried in the bottom mud or send of the ocean or swimming just above the bottom.”
She steps over the bench and leans against the floodlight and watches the two large gray monsters.
“They move by undulating their large pectoral fins