Bret Ellis - Less than zero

"No," I tell her.

"Well, that's good. He promised to pay for a gram of coke I got him." She shakes her head. "Nope. He never did." She shakes her head again, slowly, her voice thick, a bottle of gin, half-empty, by her side.

The weightlifter with the braces on asks me if I want to buy a Temple of Doom bootleg cassette. I tell him no and then ask him to tell Julian that I stopped by. The weightlifter nods his head like he doesn't understand and the girl asks him if he got the backstage passes to the Missing Persons concert. He says, "Yeah, baby," and she jumps in the pool. Some caveman gets thrown off a cliff and I split.

On the way to my car I bump into Julian. He's pale beneath the tan and doesn't look too great and I get the feeling he's going to faint, standing there, looking almost dead, but his mouth opens and he says, "Hi, Clay."

"Hey, Julian."

"Wanna get stoned."

"Not now."

"I'm glad you came by."

"Heard you wanted to see me."

"Yeah."

"What did you want? What's going on?"

Julian looks down and then up at me, squinting at the setting sun and says, "Money."

"What for?" I ask after a little while.

He looks at the ground, touches the back of his neck and says, "Hey, let's go to the Galleria, okay? Come on."

I don't want to go to the Galleria and I don't want to give Julian any money either, but it's a sunny afternoon and I don't have too much else to do and so I follow Julian into Sherman Oaks.

We're sitting at a table at the Galleria. Julian's picking at a cheeseburger, not really eating it. He takes a napkin and wipes the ketchup off with it. I'm drinking a Coke. Julian says he needs some money, some cash.

"What for?" I ask.

"Do you want some fries?"

"Could you kind of get to the point?"

"An abortion for someone." He takes a bite out of the cheeseburger and I take the napkin covered with ketchup and put it on the table behind ours.

"An abortion?"

"Yeah."

"For who?"

There's a long pause and Julian says, "Some girl."

"I would think so. But who?"

"She's living with some friends in Westwood. Look, can you let me borrow the money or not?"

I look down at the people walking around the first floor of the Galleria and wonder what would happen if I spill the Coke over the side. "Yeah," I finally answer. "I guess."

"Wow. That's great," Julian says, relieved.

"Don't you have any money?" I ask.

Julian looks at me quickly and says, "Um, not now. But I will and, oh, by then it'll be, like, too late, you know? And I don't want to have to sell the Porsche. I mean that would be a bummer." He takes a long pause, fingers the cheeseburger. "Just for some abortion?" He tries to laugh.

I tell Julian that I really doubt he'd have to sell his Porsche to pay for an abortion.

"What is it really for?" I ask him.

"What do you mean?" he says, getting really defensive. "It's for an abortion."

"Julian, that's a lot of money for an abortion."

"Well, the doctor's expensive," he says slowly, lamely. "She doesn't want to go to one of those clinics or anything. I don't know why. She just doesn't."

I sigh and sit back in my seat.

"I swear to God, Clay, it's for an abortion."

"Julian, come on."

"I have credit cards and a checking account, but I think my parents put a freeze on it. All I need is some cash. Will you give me the money or not?"

"Yeah, Julian, I will, but I just want you to tell me what it's for."

"I told you."

We get up and begin to walk around. Two girls pass us and smile. Julian smiles back. We stop at some punk clothing store and Julian picks up a pair of police boots and looks at them closely.

"These are weird looking," he says. "I like them."

He puts them down and then starts to bite his fingernails. He picks up a belt, a black leather one, and looks at it closely. And then I remember Julian in fifth grade playing soccer with me after school and then him and Trent and me going to Magic Mountain the next day on Julian's eleventh birthday.

"Do you remember when we were in fifth grade?" I ask him. "In Sports Club, after school?"

"I can't remember," Julian says.

He picks up another leather belt, puts it down and then the two of us leave the Galleria.

That afternoon, after Julian asked me for the money and told me to give it to him two days later at his house, I come home and the phone rings and it's Rip and he asks me if I've gotten in touch with Julian. I tell him no and Rip asks me if I need anything. I tell him I need a quarter ounce. He's silent for a long time and then says, "Six hundred." I look over at the Elvis Costello poster and then out the window and then I count to sixty. Rip hasn't said anything by the time I've finished counting.

"Okay?" I ask.

Rip says, "Okay. Tomorrow. Maybe."

I get up and drive to a record store and walk down the aisles, look through the record bins, but I don't find anything I want that I don't already have. I pick up some of the new records and stare at the covers and before I realize it, an hour's passed and it's almost dark outside.

Spit walks into the record store and I almost walk over to him, say hi, ask about Kim, but I spot the track marks on his arm and I walk out of the store, wondering if Spit would remember me anyway. As I walk to my car, I see Alana and Kim and this blond rockabilly guy named Benjamin coming toward me. It's too late for me to turn around, so I smile and walk up to them and the four of us end up at some sushi bar in Studio City.

At the sushi bar in Studio City, Alana doesn't say much. She keeps looking down at her Diet Coke and lighting cigarettes and after a few drags, putting them out. When I ask her about Blair, she looks at me and says, "Do you really want to know?" and then smiles grimly and says, "You sound like you really care." I turn away from her, kind of freaked out and talk to this Benjamin guy, who goes to Oakwood. It seems that his BMW was stolen and he goes on about how he finds it really lucky that he found a new BMW 320i in the same off-green his father originally bought him and he tells me, "I mean, I can't believe I found it. Can you?"

"No. I can't," I tell him, glancing over at Alana.

Kim feeds Benjamin a piece of sushi and then he takes a sip of sake he got with his fake I.D. and starts to talk about music. "New Wave. Power Pop. Primitive Muzak. It's all bullshit. Rockabilly is where it's at. And I don't mean those limp-wristed Stray Cats, I mean real rockabilly. I'm going to New York in April to check the rockabilly scene out. I'm not too sure if it's happening there. It might be happening in Baltimore."

"Yeah. Baltimore," I say.

"Yeah, I like rockabilly too," Kim says, wiping her hands. "But I'm still into the Psychedelic Furs and I like that new Human League song."

Benjamin says, "The Human League are out. Over. Finished. You don't know what's going on, Kim."

Kim shrugs. I wonder where Dimitri is; if Jeff is still holed up with some surfer out in Malibu.

"No, I mean, you really don't," he goes on. "I bet you don't even read The Face. You've got to." He lights a clove cigarette. "You've got to."

"Why do you have to?" I ask.

Benjamin looks at me, runs his fingers over his pompadour and says, "Otherwise you'll get bored."

I say I guess so, then make plans with Kim to meet her later tonight at her house with Blair and then I go home and out to dinner with my mother. When I get home from that I take a long cold shower and sit on the floor of the stall and let the water hit me full on.

I drive over to Kim's house and find Blair sitting in Kim's room and she has this shopping bag from Jurgenson's over her head and when I come in, her body gets all tense and she turns around, startled, and she reaches over and turns down the stereo. "Who is it?"