The Informers - Bret Easton Ellis [7]
“Are you going somewhere?” he asks.
“Yes.”
He waits for a moment and when I don’t say anything he shrugs and turns away and begins to peel the orange and somewhere on the way to Le Dôme to meet Martin for lunch I realize that Graham is only one year younger than Martin and I have to pull the Jaguar over to a curb on Sunset and turn the volume down and unroll a window, then the sunroof, and let the heat from today’s sun warm the inside of the car, as I concentrate on a tumbleweed that the wind is pushing slowly across an empty boulevard.
Martin is sitting at the round bar in Le Dôme. He is wearing a suit and a tie and he is tapping his foot impatiently to the music that is playing through the restaurant’s sound system. He watches me as I make my way over to him.
“You’re late,” he says, showing me the time on a gold Rolex.
“Yes. I am,” I say, and then, “Let’s sit down.”
Martin looks at his watch and then at his empty glass and then back at me and I am clutching my purse tightly against my side. Martin sighs, then nods. The maître d’ shows us to a table and we sit down and Martin starts to talk about his classes at UCLA and then about how his parents are irritating him, about how they came over to his apartment in Westwood unannounced, about how his stepfather wanted him to come to a dinner party he was throwing at Chasen’s, about how Martin did not want to go to a dinner party his stepfather was throwing at Chasen’s, about how tiredly words were exchanged.
I’m looking out a window, at a Spanish valet standing in front of a Rolls-Royce, staring into it, muttering. When Martin begins to complain about his BMW and how much the insurance is, I interrupt.
“Why did you call the house?”
“I wanted to talk to you,” he says. “I was going to cancel.”
“Don’t call the house.”
“Why?” he asks. “There’s someone there who cares?”
I light a cigarette.
He puts his fork down next to his plate and then looks away. “We’re eating at Le Dôme,” Martin says. “I mean, Jesus.”
“Okay?” I ask.
“Yeah. Okay.”
I ask for the check and pay it and follow Martin back to his apartment in Westwood where we have sex and I give Martin a pith helmet as a gift.
I am lying on a chaise longue by the pool. Issues of Vogue and Los Angeles magazine and the Calendar section from the Times are stacked next to where I am lying but I can’t read them because the color of the pool takes my eyes away from the words and I stare longingly into thin aquamarine water. I want to go swimming but the heat of the sun has made the water too warm and Dr. Nova has warned about the dangers of taking Librium and swimming laps.
A poolboy is cleaning the pool. The poolboy is very young and tan and has blond hair and he is not wearing a shirt and he is wearing very tight white jeans and when he leans down to check the temperature of the water, muscles in his back ripple gently beneath smooth clean brown skin. The poolboy has brought a portable cassette player that sits by the edge of the Jacuzzi and someone is singing “Our love’s in jeopardy” and I’m hoping the sound of palm fronds moving in warm wind will carry the music into the Suttons’ yard. I’m intrigued by how deep the poolboy’s concentration seems to be, at how gently the water moves when he skims a net across it, at how he empties the net, which catches leaves and multicolored dragonflies that seem to litter the water’s gleaming surface. He opens a drain, the muscles in his arm flexing, lightly, only for a moment. And I keep watching, transfixed, as he reaches into the round hole and his arm begins to lift something out of the hole, muscles momentarily flexing again, and his hair is blond and windblown, streaked by sun, and I shift my body in the lounge chair, not moving my eyes.
The poolboy begins to raise his arm out of the drain and he lifts two large gray rags up and drops them, dripping, onto concrete and stares at them. He stares at the rags for a long time. And then he makes his way toward me. I panic for a