The Informers - Bret Easton Ellis [28]
“Headache?” the Venezuelan boy inquires.
“Yes. A headache.” I smile shyly, nodding.
The black girl glances once more at me and then gets up and is replaced by this totally fat couple who are wearing lots of turquoise. The Venezuelan boy actually looks at a centerfold and then at me and grins and my father was probably right when he told me on the phone two weeks ago, “You should just take MGM, baby,” but I’m amazed at how every now and then the ground seems to drop out below the train as it passes over rivers the color of chocolate or a ravine.
I call Graham, my brother, from an Amtrak station in Phoenix. He is in a hot tub in Venice.
“He’s going through with it,” I say, after a while.
“What a scandal,” Graham says.
“He’s going through with it,” I say again.
“Who cares?”
“You sound stoned.”
“I’m not.”
“You sound sad when you get stoned. You sound stoned.”
“I’m not stoned yet.”
“I’m looking at a huge slot machine, the size of a double bed,” I tell Graham. “You should talk to him.” I light a cigarette. It tastes bad.
“What?” Graham asks. “Why are you calling me?” and then, “Talk to … him?”
“Aren’t you going to talk to him?” I asks. “Aren’t you going to do something about this?”
“Oh man.” I can hear Graham inhale, then blow something out, slowly. His voice drops three octaves. “Like what?”
“Just … talk to him.”
“I don’t even like him,” Graham says.
“You just shouldn’t sit back and watch him do this.”
“Who said I’m watching the fool do anything?”
“You said, Graham, you said …” I’m on the verge of tears. I swallow, try to control myself. “You said she has seen Flashdance nine times.” I start sobbing quietly, biting my fist. “You said it was her”—pause—“favorite movie.”
“She’s seen it probably …” He stops. “Yeah, nine times is probably right.”
“Graham, please, just for once …”
“She’s not that bad,” Graham finally says. “In fact she’s sort of hot.”
Valium, peering past the curtains, Spanish-style train stations, signs that announce NEEDLES or BARSTOW, cars driving through the desert at night toward Las Vegas, raining again and harder, lightning illuminating billboards on a road heading to Reno, huge drops of rain hitting the window, splattering apart. My reaction to being startled: a blink. Someone calls out over the intercom: “Anyone who speaks French please come to the lounge area” and the request seems tempting, seems so beside the point that it moves me to brush my hair, pick up a magazine and head for the lounge area even though I don’t speak French. When I get to the lounge area I don’t see anyone French or anyone who looks in need of assistance from anyone French. I sit down, stare out a window, flip through the magazine, but there’s a drunk woman across from me who seems to be talking to herself but in fact is talking to the fat couple in turquoise, who are trying not to pay attention to her. The woman keeps talking about the movies on HBO she has seen while staying at her son’s house in Carson City.
“Did you ever see Mr. Mom?” the drunk asks, her head lolling forward.
“No,” the fat woman says, her arms folded around a turquoise purse that sits on, in, her lap.
“Darling little movie—just darling,” the drunk says, pausing, hoping for some sort of response.
A poor-looking couple with three small children walk into the lounge and the mother starts to play a game involving rubber bands with one of the children. I’m watching the smallest kid eat a packet of butter I was hoping he wouldn’t.
“You didn’t see Mr. Mom?” the drunk asks again.
The woman in turquoise says “No.” Her husband fingers his string tie that has a small piece of turquoise at the end of it and recrosses bulky legs.
The noise from the children, the meanderings of the drunk woman, two giggling college girls talking about Las Vegas irritate me but I stay in the lounge area because I dread going back to the small compartment,