The Informers - Bret Easton Ellis [74]
“You poor pitiful bitch,” I murmur.
I lie down on the bed, kick back, my head resting on some bunched-up pillows, stare at her, reach down, adjust myself.
“You don’t have any furniture?” she asks.
“I’ve got a fridge. I got this bed,” I tell her, running my hand across designer sheets.
“Yeah. That’s true. Boy, you sure have a point.” She walks around the room, then over to the door near the end of the room, tries it, locked. “What’s in there?” she asks, looking at the sunrise/sunset chart I clipped from the L.A. Herald-Examiner for this week, Scotch-taped to the door.
“Just another room,” I tell her.
“Oh.” She looks at me, finally a little scared.
I pull my pants off, fold them, throw them on the floor.
“Why do you have so much, like … ” She stops. She’s not drinking the beer. She’s looking over at me, confused.
“So much what?” I ask, unbuttoning my shirt.
“Well … so much meat,” she says meekly. “I mean, there’s so much meat in your refrigerator.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Because I get hungry? Because red snapper appalls me?” I put the shirt down, next to the pants. “Christ.”
“Oh.” She just stands there.
I don’t say anything else, prop my head back up on the pillows. I ease my underwear off slowly and motion for her to come over here, to me, and she slowly walks over, helpless, with a full beer, a silver of lime in its top, a joint that has gone out. Bracelets circling her wrist look like they are made from fur.
“Uh, listen, this is—this is gonna sound like totally bizarre,” she stammers. “But are you … ”
She’s coming nearer now, toward me, floating, unaware that her feet aren’t even touching the floor. I rise up, a huge erection on the verge of bursting jutting out in front of me.
“Are you, like … ” She stops smiling. “Like, a … ” She doesn’t finish.
“A vampire?” I suggest, grinning.
“No—an agent,” she asks seriously.
I clear my throat.
When I say no, I’m not an agent, she moans and I have her by the shoulders now and I’m taking her very slowly, calmly, to the bathroom and while I’m stripping her, throwing the ESPRIT T-shirt aside, into the bidet, she keeps giggling, wasted, and asking, “Doesn’t that sound weird to you?” and then finally her young perfect body is naked and she looks up into eyes that cloud over completely, black and bottomless, and she reaches up, weeping with disbelief, and touches my face and I smile and touch her smooth, hairless pussy and she says, “Just don’t give me a hickey,” and then I scream and jump on her and rip her throat out and then I fuck her and then I play with her blood and after that basically everything’s Okay.
• • •
I’m driving down Ventura tonight toward my psychiatrist’s office, over the hill. I did a couple of lines earlier and “Boys of Summer” is blasting from the tape deck and I’m singing along with it, air-jamming at stoplights, passing the Galleria, passing Tower Records and the Factory and the La Reina theater, which will close soon, and past the new Fatburger and the giant Nautilus that just opened. I got a call from Marsha earlier, inviting me to a party in Malibu. Dirk sent me these ZZ Top stickers to put on the lid of my coffin and I think that’s pretty tacky but I’ll keep them anyway. I’m watching all these people in their cars tonight and I’ve been thinking a lot about nuclear bombs since I’ve seen a couple of bumper stickers complaining about them.
In Dr. Nova’s office I’m having a hard time.
“What’s going on tonight, Jamie?” Dr. Nova asks. “You seem … agitated.”
“I have these images, man, no, these visions,” I’m telling him. “Visions of nuclear missiles blowing this place away.”
“What place, Jamie?”
“Melting the Valley, the whole Valley. All the chicks rotting away. The Galleria just a memory. Everything gone.” Pause. “Evaporated.” Pause. “Is that a word?”
“Wow,” Dr. Nova says.
“Yeah, wow,” I say, staring out the window.
“What will happen to you?” he asks.
“Why? You think that would stop me?” I ask back.
“What do you think?”
“You think a fucking nuclear bomb is gonna end all this?” I’m saying. “No way, dude.”
“End all what?” Dr. Nova