The Informers - Bret Easton Ellis [59]
“Want to go and get something to eat?” I ask.
Randy doesn’t say anything.
“Want to go and get something to eat?”
Randy starts to laugh, eyes still closed.
“Want to go and get something to eat?” I ask again.
He grabs the GQ and, still laughing, puts it over his face.
“Want to go and get something to eat?” I ask.
On the cover is John Travolta and it almost looks like John Travolta is lying on the floor, giggling, wasted, wearing only a pair of cutoff jeans. I turn away and look at the TV screen: a toy airplane with a rock star inside it trying to control the panels in mock desperation and he’s singing to a girl not looking at him, doing her nails. I walk out of the apartment and drive onto Wilshire and then to some café in Beverly Hills called Café Beverly Hills where I order a salad and an iced tea.
I wake up out of some kind of stupor at eleven-twenty and when I walk into the kitchen looking for an orange or some matches for my bong I find a note written on Beverly Hills Hotel stationery that tells me to meet someone for lunch at a house up in the hills above Sunset where someone is directing a video for a band called the English Prices. Someone has left an address and directions and after about an hour of lying on the balcony, dreaming beneath the sun in my Jockey shorts, listening to the sound of videos flashing by in a soothing, endless hum, I decide to meet someone for lunch. Before I leave, Spin calls and tells me that ever since Lance left for Venezuela he’s had a hard time finding good coke and that there are lots of frightened people in town and that he might drop out of USC if he can’t find the right Mercedes in the fall and that the service at Spago is getting worse.
“But what do you want?” I ask, turning the TV off.
“Need some coke. Anything. Four, five ounces.”
“I can get you that by, uh …” I stop. “Um, Saturday.”
“Dude,” Spin says. “Like I need it before Saturday.”
“Not Saturday? Like when?”
“Like tonight.”
“Like Friday?”
“Like tomorrow.”
“Like Friday,” I sigh. “I could get it for you tonight but I don’t really want to.”
“Dude,” he sighs. “Bogus but okay.”
“Okay? Just come over sometime Friday,” I say.
“Friday, right? I appreciate this. There are a lot of frightened people in this town, dude.”
“Yeah, I know,” I tell him. “I sort of understand what you’re talking about.”
“Friday, right?” he asks.
“Uh-huh.”
I park the car outside the house and walk up the steps leading to a front door. Two girls, young and tan and blond, wearing ripped sweatshirts and headbands, are sitting on the steps staring off into space, not saying anything to each other, ignoring me as I walk past them into the house. I can hear music coming from above and then it stops. I walk slowly upstairs, into a large room that seems to take up the entire second floor of the house. I stand in the doorway and watch as Martin talks to a cameraman and points at Leon, who is the lead singer of the English Prices, and he’s smoking a cigarette and holding a gun, a toy, in one hand and in the other a small hand mirror that he keeps checking his hair in. Behind Leon is a long table with nothing on it and behind that the rest of the band and someone has painted the backdrop behind the band a pale pink with green stripes and Martin is walking over to Leon who puts the hand mirror away after Martin slaps his wrist and Leon hands Martin the toy gun. I move into the room and lean against a wall, being careful not to step on any wires or cables. There’s a girl sitting on a pile of pillows next to where I’m standing and she’s young and tan and blond and wearing a ripped sweatshirt and a pink headband holding up a lot of hair and when I ask her what she’s doing here she tells me that she kind of knows Leon and she doesn’t look at me when she says this and I turn away from her and