The Informers - Bret Easton Ellis [58]
I’ve been talking to my stepmother about staying here. I won’t be living with my grandparents but at Randy’s place (it’s all cleaned up, so don’t worry) with Carlos. And I also get Randy’s Ferrari, so it’s not like I’m left empty-headed. But nothing is definite yet. Haven’t been thinking too much about it. Are you going to write?
Love,
Anne
Jan 29 1984
Dear Sean,
Doesn’t it seem like a long time since I’ve written you? I guess I’m not much into it anymore. Well, I’m still around and alive, so don’t worry. Can you believe I’m actually staying here? That I’ve already been here five months? Oh God. Well, I guess I won’t be going back to Camden in the fall. I’ve gotten so used to things out here. I’ve been driving around a lot and I go to the studio sometimes. Sometimes I go out to Palm Springs. It’s quiet at night.
I’m collaborating on a screenplay with this guy I met at the studio named Tad. I can’t really talk too much about it but it’s about these camp counselers and a big snake and it’s really scary. (Maybe I’ll send you a copy.) Tad’s really an artist (he paints these fantastic murals in Venice) but he wants to write screenplays. No one has seen Carlos for weeks. Last I heard, he was in Vegas, though someone else told me that they found both of his arms in a bag off La Brea. He was going to write the screenplay with me. I’ve shown part of it to my grandmother. She liked it. She said it was commercial.
Love,
Anne
9
ANOTHER GRAY AREA
I’m kind of looking at Christie dancing next to the wide-screen television set. Fun Boy 3’s on MTV, singing “Our Lips Are Sealed.” and Christie’s dancing rhvthmically, spaced out, hands running over her bikini, her eyes closed. I’m bored but won’t admit it and Randy is lying on the floor, immobile, looking up at Christie, and Christie almost steps on him, both wasted. I’m sitting in the beige chair next to the beige couch that Martin is lying on. Martin is wearing a pair of Dolphin shorts, Wayfarers, browsing through the new issue of GQ.
The video ends and Christie falls to the floor giggling, mumbling that she is very high. Randy lights another joint and inhales deeply and coughs and hands it to Christie. I look back at Martin. Martin keeps staring at a particular picture in the magazine. Now the police are on MTV in black and white and Sting’s huge blond head stares straight out at the four of us and starts singing. I look away from the screen and over at Christie. Randy hands me the joint and I take a toke and close my eyes but I’m so stoned right now that the hit doesn’t do anything, just moves me to the pseudorealization that I am located somewhere beyond communication. “God, Sting is gorgeous,” Christie moans or maybe it’s Randy. Christie takes another hit off the joint, rolls over onto her stomach and looks up at Martin. But Martin only nods, adjusts his sunglasses. Christie keeps looking up at him. Martin has not said a word during the past twelve videos. I have kept count. Christie is my girlfriend, a model who I think is from England.
I stand up, sit down, stand up again, pull on my shorts and walk out to the balcony and stand there with my hands on a railing, staring at Century City. The sun is setting and the sky is orange and purple and it seems to be getting hotter. Take a deep breath, trying to remember when Christie and Randy came over, when Martin let them in, when they turned on MTV, when they ate the first pineapple, when they lit the second joint, the third, the fourth. But now, inside, the video has changed and a boy gets sucked into a giant cloud shaped like a television, the colors of a rainbow. Christie is on top of Martin on the couch. Martin still has his sunglasses on. The issue of GQ he was holding is now on the beige floor. I walk past them, step over Randy and walk into the kitchen and pull a bottle of apricot-and-blueberry juice out of the refrigerator and walk back to the patio.