The Informers - Bret Easton Ellis [72]
I go back downstairs, get a seltzer, make Dirk a mimosa, then we hang out, watch the movie, drink some more beer, look through worn copies of GQ, Vanity Fair, True Life Atrocities, smoke some pot, and that’s around the time I can smell the blood, coming from the next room, so fresh it’s pulsing.
“I think I have the munchies,” I say. “I think I may go berserk.”
Dirk rewinds the movie and we start watching it again. But I can’t concentrate. Sean Penn keeps getting beat up and I get hungrier but don’t say anything and then the movie’s over and he turns the channel to HBO, where Bad Boys is on, so we start watching it again and we smoke some more pot and finally I have to stand up and walk around the room.
“Marsha’s with one of the Beach Boys,” Dirk says. “Walter called me.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I had dinner with Miranda at the Ivy the other night. Can you dig it?”
“Gnarly. I can dig it.” He shrugs. “I haven’t talked to Marsha since”—he stops, thinks about something, says, hesitantly—“since Roderick.” He switches the channel, then back again.
No one mentions Roderick a whole lot anymore. Last year, Marsha and Dirk were supposed to have dinner with Roderick at Chinois and when they stopped by his place in Brentwood, they found, at the bottom of Roderick’s empty swimming pool, a wooden stake (which was really a Wilson 5 baseball bat crudely whittled down) driven into the concrete near the drain, which had been all scratched up (Roderick prided himself on long, manicured claws), and gray-black sand and dust and chunks of ash were scattered in piles in one corner. Marsha and Dirk had taken the stake, which was slathered with Lawry’s garlic powder, and burned it in Roderick’s empty house, and no one has seen Roderick since.
“I’m sorry, man,” Dirk says. “It scares the shit out of me.”
“Aw, come on, dude, let’s not talk about that,” I say. “Come on.”
“Righty-o, Professor.” Dirk does his Felix the Cat impersonation, slaps his Wayfarers on and smiles.
I’m walking around the room now, in the dark, shouts coming from the TV, moving toward the door, the smell rich and very thick, and I take another deep breath and it’s sweet too and definitely male. I’m hoping I’ll be offered some but I don’t want to act like a leech and I lean up against the wall and Dirk is talking about stealing pints from Cedars and I’m moving toward that door, stepping over the towel drenched with blood, trying casually to open it.
“Don’t open that door, dude,” Dirk says, his voice low, raspy, sunglasses still on. “Don’t go in there.”
I pull my hand away real quick, put it in my pocket, pretend I was never going to check it out, whistle a Billy Idol song that I can’t get out of my head. “I wasn’t gonna go in there, dude. Chill out.”
He nods slowly, takes off the sombrero, switching to another channel, then back to Bad Boys. He sighs and flicks something off one of his cowboy boots. “He’s not dead yet.”
“No, no, I get it, dude,” I tell him. “Just mellow out.”
I go downstairs, bring up some more beer, and we smoke some more pot, tell some more jokes, one about a koala bear and one about black people, another about a plane crash, and then we watch the rest of the movie, basically not saying a lot, long pauses between sentences, even words, the credits are rolling and Dirk takes off his sunglasses, then puts them back on, and I’m stoned. He looks at me and says, “Ally Sheedy looks good beaten up,” and then outside, like ritual, a storm arrives.
I’m hanging out at Phases over in Studio City and it’s getting late and I’m with some young girl with long blond hair who could be maybe twenty who I first saw with some geek dancing to “Material Girl” and she’s bored and with me now and I’m bored and I want to get out of here and we finish our drinks and go to my car and get in and I’, sort of drunk and don’t turn on the radio and it’s silent in the car as she rolls down her window and Ventura is so deserted it’s still silent except for the air-conditioning