The Informers - Bret Easton Ellis [76]
I stop trying to roll the joint—the rolling papers are too wet and dissolving all over my fingers—and Mary moans some name. The kid has been tied up in the bathtub for something like four days now and everyone’s a little nervous.
“I’m getting itchy,” Peter says.
“You said it was going to be really easy,” I say. “You said everything was going to be cool. That it was all working out, man.”
“I fucked up.” He shrugs. “I know it.” He looks away from the cartoons. “And I know you know it.”
“You get a medal, m-man.”
“Mary doesn’t know anything.” Peter sighs. “That girl never knew a damn thing.”
“So you know that I know that you fucked up in, like, a real big way?” I’m asking. “Huh—is that it?”
He starts laughing. “We gonna kill the kid?” and Mary starts laughing with him and I’m wiping my hands listening to them.
Peter gets hold of me from some dealer I used to work for and he calls for me from Barstow. Peter is in Barstow with an Indian he picked up near a slot machine in Reno. The dealer gives me the number of a hotel out in the desert and I call Peter up and he tells me that he’s coming down to L.A. and that he and the Indian need a place to hang out for a couple of days. I have not seen Peter in three years, since a fire we both started got out of control. I whisper to him, over the phone, “I know you’re fucked up, dude,” and he says, back over the line, “Yeah, sure, let me come on down.”
“I don’t want you to do what I fucking think you’re going to do,” I say, my face in my hands. “I want you to stay a night and move on.”
“You want to know something?” he asks.
I can’t say anything.
“It’s not going to happen like that,” he says.
Peter and Mary, who isn’t even an Indian, come out to L.A. and they find me in a place out in Van Nuys around midnight and Peter comes in and grabs me and says, “Tommy, dude, how’s it hanging, buddy?” and I stand there shaking and say, “Hi, Peter,” and he’s fat, three hundred, four hundred pounds, and his hair is long and blond and greasy and he’s wearing a green T-shirt, sauce all over his face, marks all up and down his arms, and I get pissed.
“Peter?” I ask. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Oh, man,” he says. “So what? It’s cool.” His eyes are wide and weird and he’s creeping me out.
“Where’s the chick?” I ask.
“Out in the van,” he says.
I wait and Peter just stands there.
“Out in the van? Is that right?” I ask.
“Yeah,” Peter says. “Out in the van.”
“I guess I’m expecting you to move or something,” I say. “Like, maybe, get the girl?”
He doesn’t. He just stands there.
“The girl’s in the van?” I say.
“That’s right,” he says.
I’m getting pissed. “Why don’t you bring the cunt out here, you fat fuck?”
But he doesn’t.
“Well, man.” I sigh. “Let’s see her.”
“Who?” he asks. “Who, man?”
“Who do you think I mean?”
He finally says, “Oh yeah. Mary. Sure.”
This girl is all passed out in the back of the van and she’s tan and dark with long blond hair, skinny because of drugs but in a good way and cute. She sleeps on the mattress the first night in my room and I sleep on the couch and Peter sits in the armchair watching late-night TV shows and I think he goes out once or twice for some food but I’m tired and pissed off and ignoring the situation.
The next morning Peter asks me for money.
“That’s a lot of money,” I say.
“What’s that mean?” he asks.
“That you’re out of your fucking mind,” I say. “That I don’t have any money.”
“Nothing?” he asks. He starts to giggle.
“You’re taking this pretty good,” I point out.
“I need to pay off some guy out here.”
“Sorry, dude,” I say. “I just don’t have it.”
He doesn’t say too much, just goes back into the dark room with Mary, and I go to the car wash in Reseda that I work at when I’m not doing anything else.
I come home after a fairly crappy day and Peter is in the armchair and Mary is still in the back room listening to the radio and I notice these two little shoes on the table next to the TV and I ask Peter, “Where did you get those two little shoes, man?”
Peter is wasted, out of it, a dumb scary grin on his balloon face, staring at