The Informers - Bret Easton Ellis [65]
Next day we’re sitting at Carny’s and Martin’s eating a cheeseburger and he can’t believe that an ex-girlfriend of mine is on the cover of this week’s People. I tell him I can’t believe it either. I finish my french fries, take a swallow of Coke and tell Martin I want to get stoned. Martin also slept with the girl on the cover of this week’s People. I watch as a red Mercedes passes by slowly in the heat, a shirtless guy at the wheel, who Martin also slept with, and in an instant my and Martin’s reflection flashes by in the side of the car. Martin starts complaining that he hasn’t finished the English prices video yet, that Leon’s causing hassles, that the smoke machine still doesn’t work, will probably never work, that Christie is a drag, that yellow is his favorite color, that he recently made friends with a tumbleweed named Roy.
“Why do you shoot those things?” I ask.
“Videos? Why?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know.” He looks at me and then at the cars passing by on Sunset. “Not everyone has a rich mommy and daddy. I mean, mommy. And”—he takes a swallow of my Coke—“not everyone deals drugs.”
“But your parents are loaded,” I protest.
“Loaded can be interpreted in a lot of ways, dude,” Martin says.
I sigh, pick at a napkin. “You’re a real … enigma.”
“Listen, Graham. I feel bad enough crashing out at your place. You footing the bill for Nautilus, Maxfield’s. All that.”
Another red Mercedes passes by.
“Listen,” Martin’s saying. “After these next two videos I’ll be hot.”
“Hot?” I ask.
“Yeah, hot,” he says.
“Like, how hot? Medium hot? How hot?” I ask.
“Maybe really hot. Maybe spicy,” he says. “The English Prices are big. Heavy rotation on MTV. Opening for Bryan Metro. Big.”
“Yeah?” I ask. “Hot and big?”
“Sure. Easy. Leon is a star.”
“Did you sleep with Christie while I was gone?” I ask.
He looks at me, groaning. “Oh man, of course I did.”
Christie and I are standing in line for a movie in Westwood. It’s almost midnight and hot and Westwood is packed. The sidewalks are so crowded in fact that the movie line merges with the people walking along the street and the people on the other side of the movie line coming out of shoe stores and places that sell frozen yogurt and posters. Christie is eating Italian ice cream and telling me that Tommy is actually hanging out in Delaware and that it was Monty and not Tommy who was found hacked to death in San Diego, not Mexico, his blood drained, not Tommy’s, like she heard, because she got a postcard with Richard Gere on it from Tommy but Corey was found sealed in a metal drum buried in the desert. She asks me if Delaware is a state and I tell her that I’m not too sure but that I’m really certain I saw Jim Morrison at a car wash on Pico this morning. He was drinking soda and minding his own business. Christie finishes the ice cream and wipes her lips with a napkin, complains about her implants.
Two people in front of us are talking about a drug bust in Encino last night, how the new year is approaching steadily. I watch as a young Hispanic girl crosses the street, moving toward the theater. As she crosses the street in long, purposeful strides, a black convertible Rolls-Royce almost hits her, braking suddenly, swerving. The people on the sidewalk watch silently. One girl, maybe, says “oh no.” The driver of the Corniche, a tan guy, shirtless and wearing a sailor’s cap, smoking a cigar, yells “Watch out, you dumb spic” and the girl, not shaken at all, walks calmly to the other side of the street. I wipe sweat off my forehead and watch as the girl, unfazed, walks over to a palm tree and leans against it, her white T-shirt with the word CALIFORNIA on it soaked with sweat, her breasts outlined beneath the cotton, a gold cross hanging from her neck, small, a glimmer, and even when she notices me looking at her I keep staring at the smooth brown face and the vacant black eyes and the calm, bored expression, and now she’s moving away from the palm tree and making her way toward where I stand, still staring, transfixed, and she walks up to me slowly, the warm winds blowing, the crowd parting