The Informers - Bret Easton Ellis [9]
On Wednesday morning, after William gets out of bed and asks where the Valium is and after I stumble out of bed to retrieve it from my purse and after he reminds me that the family has reservations at Spago at eight and after I hear the wheels on the Mercedes screech out of the driveway and after Susan tells me that she is going to Westwood with Alana and Blair after school and will meet us at Spago and after I fall back asleep and dream of rats drowning, crawling desperately over each other in a steaming, bubbling Jacuzzi, and dozens of poolboys, nude, standing over the Jacuzzi, laughing, pointing at the drowning rats, their heads nodding in unison to the beat of the music coming from portable stereos they hold in golden arms, I wake up and walk downstairs and take a Tab out of the refrigerator and find twenty milligrams of Valium in a pillbox in another purse in the alcove by the refrigerator and take ten milligrams. From the kitchen I can hear the maid vacuuming in the living room and it moves me to get dressed and I drive to a Thrifty drugstore in Beverly Hills and walk toward the pharmacy, the empty bottle that used to be filled with black-and-green capsules clenched tightly in my fist. But the store is air conditioned and cool and the glare from the fluorescent lighting and the Muzak playing somewhere above me as background noise have a pronounced anesthetic effect and my grip on the brown plastic bottle relaxes, loosens.
At the counter I hand the empty bottle to the pharmacist. He puts glasses on and looks at the plastic container. I study my fingernails and uselessly try to remember the name of the song that is floating through the store’s sound system.
“Miss?” the pharmacist begins awkwardly.
“Yes?” I lower my sunglasses.
“It says here ‘no refills.’ ”
“What?” I ask, startled. “Where?”
The pharmacist points to two typed words at the bottom of the piece of paper taped to the bottle, next to my psychiatrist’s name and, next to that, the date 10/10/83.
“I think Dr. Nova made some kind of … mistake,” I say slowly, lamely, glancing at the bottle again.
“Well.” The pharmacist sighs. “There’s nothing I can do.”
I look at my fingernails again and try to think of something to say, which, finally, is “But I … need it refilled.”
“I’m sorry,” the pharmacist says, clearly uncomfortable, shifting from one foot to the other nervously. He hands me the bottle and when I try to hand it back to him he shrugs.
“There are reasons why your doctor did not want the prescription refilled,” he offers kindly, as if speaking to a child.
I try to laugh, wipe my face and gaily say, “Oh, he’s always playing jokes on me.”
I think about the way the pharmacist looked at me after I said this as I drive home, and I walk past the maid, the smell of marijuana drifting past me for an instant, and up in the bedroom I lock the door and close the shades and take off my clothes and put a movie in the Betamax and get into washed, cool sheets and cry for an hour and try to watch the movie and I take some more Valium and then I ransack the bathroom looking for an old prescription of Nembutal and then I rearrange my shoes in the closet and then I put another movie in the Betamax and then I open the windows and the smell of bougainvillea drifts through the partially closed shades and I smoke a cigarette and wash my face.
I call Martin.
“Hello?” another boy answers.
“Martin?” I ask anyway.
“Uh, no.”
I pause. “Is Martin there?”
“Uh, let me check.”
I can hear the phone being set down and I want to laugh at the idea of someone, some boy, probably tan, young, blond, like Martin, standing in Martin’s apartment, putting the phone down and