The Informers - Bret Easton Ellis [40]
“Get these two kids out of here, okay?” I mumble into the receiver.
I get out of bed, knocking and empty vodka bottle over onto a bourbon bottle which spills onto potato chip bags and an issue of Hustler Orient that this girl on the bed is in this month and I kneel down, open it up, feeling weird while studying how different her pussy looks in the layout compared to how it looked three hours ago and when I turn around and look at the bed, the Oriental boy’s eyes are open, staring at me. I just stand there, unembarrassed, nude, hungover, and stare back into the boy’s black eyes.
“You feel sorry for yourself?” I ask, relieved when two bearded guys open the door and move toward the bed, and I walk into a bathroom and lock the door.
Turning on the bathwater full blast, willing the sound of rushing water hitting the mammoth porcelain tub to drown out the noise of two roadies dragging the girl and boy out of the bed, out of the room, taking their turn, I lean toward the tub, making sure only cold water pours out of the faucet. I move toward the door, press my ear against it to hear if anybody’s still in the room, and pretty sure no one is, I open it, peer out, and nobody’s in the room. From a small refrigerator I take out a plastic ice bucket and then move toward the ice machine that was placed at my request in the middle of the suite and get some ice. Then, on my way back to the bathroom, I kneel by the bed and open a drawer and take out a bag of Librium and then I’m back in the bathroom and locking the door and pouring the bucket of ice into the tub, making sure there’s enough water at the bottom of the bucket so that I can wash the Librium down my throat, and I step into the tub, lie down, only my head above water, unsettled by the fact that maybe the freezing water and the Librium aren’t really such a great combo.
In the dream I’m sitting in the restaurant on top of the hotel near a wall of windows and staring out over the blanket of neon lights that pass for a city. I’m drinking a Kamikaze and sitting across from me is the young Oriental girl from Hustler but her smooth brown face is covered with geisha makeup and the geisha makeup and the tight, fluorescent-pink dress and the expression creasing her flat, soft features and the gaze in the blank dark eyes are predatory, making me uneasy, and suddenly the entire blanket of lights flickers, fades, sirens are wailing and people I never noticed are running out of the restaurant, screams, shouts from the black city below, and huge arcs of flame, orange and yellow highlighted against a black sky, shoot up from points on the ground and I’m still staring at the geisha girl, the arcs of flame reflected in her black eyes, and she’s mumbling something to me and there’s no fear in those large and slanted wet eyes because she’s smiling warmly now, saying the same word again and again and again but the sirens and screams and various explosions drown the word out and when I’m shouting, panicked, asking her what she’s saying, she just smiles, blinking, and takes out a paper fan and her mouth keeps moving, forming the same word, and I’m leaning toward her to hear the word but a huge claw bursts through the window, showering us with glass, and it grabs me and the claw is warm, pulsing with anger and covered with a slime that drenches the suit I’m wearing and the claw pulls me out the window and I twist toward the girl, who says the word again, this time clearly.
“Godzilla … Godzilla, you idiot … I said Godzilla …”
Screaming silently, I’m lifted toward its mouth, eighty, ninety stories up, looking through what’s left of the smashed wall of glass, a cold black wind whipping furiously around me, and the Oriental girl with the pink dress on is now standing on the table, smiling and waving her fan at me, crying out “Sayonara” but it doesn’t mean goodbye.