Bret Ellis - Less than zero

"Hi, Daniel."

"Having a good time?" he asks real slowly, turning to face me.

"I just got here."

"Oh." He pauses for a minute. "Who'd you come with?"

"Blair. She's getting a drink." I take off my sunglasses and look at his bandaged hand. "I think she thinks that we're lovers."

Daniel leaves his sunglasses on and nods and doesn't smile.

I put my sunglasses back on.

Daniel turns back to the pool.

"Where are your parents?" I ask.

"My parents?"

"Yeah."

"In Japan, I think."

"What are they doing there?"

"Shopping."

I nod.

"They might be in Aspen," he says. "Does it make any difference?"

Blair comes over with a gin and tonic in one hand and a beer in the other and she hands me the beer and lights a cigarette and says, "Don't talk to that guy in the blue and red Polo shirt. He's a total narc," and then, "Are my sunglasses crooked?"

"No," I tell her, and she smiles and then puts her hand on my leg and whispers into my ear, "I don't know anyone here. Let's leave. Now." She glances over at Daniel. "Is he alive?"

"I don't know."

"What?" Daniel turns to look at us. "Hi, Blair."

"Hi, Daniel," Blair says.

"We're leaving," I tell him, kind of excited by Blair's whisper and the gloved hand on my thigh.

"Why?"

"Why? Well, because..." My voice trails off.

"But you just got here."

"But we really have to go." I don't want to stay that much either and maybe going over to Blair's house seems like a good idea.

"Stick around." Daniel tries to lift himself from the chaise longue but can't.

"Why?" I ask.

This confuses him, I guess, because he doesn't say anything.

Blair looks over at me.

"Just to be here," he says.

"Blair isn't feeling well," I tell him.

"But I wanted you to meet Carleton and Cecil. They were supposed to be here but their limo broke down in the Palisades and... " Daniel sighs and looks back into the pool.

"Sorry, dude," I say, getting up. "We'll have lunch."

"Carleton goes to AFI."

"Well, Blair really doesn't... She wants to go. Now."

Blair nods her head and coughs.

"Maybe I'll drop by later," I tell him, feeling guilty about leaving so soon; feeling guilty about going to Blair's house.

"No, you won't." Daniel sits back down and sighs again.

Blair's getting really anxious and says to me, "Listen, I'm really not too crazy about arguing over this all fucking night. Let's go, Clay." She finishes the rest of the gin and tonic.

"See, Daniel, we're leaving, okay?" I say. "Bye."

Daniel tells me that he'll call me tomorrow. "Let's have lunch or something."

"Great," I say, without a whole lot of enthusiasm. "Lunch."

Once in the car, Blair says, "Let's go somewhere. Hurry."

I'm thinking to myself, Why don't you just say it. "Where?" I ask.

She stalls, names a club.

"I left my wallet at home," I lie.

"I have a pass there," she says, knowing I lied.

"I really don't want to."

She turns the volume on the radio up and hums along with the song for a minute and I'm thinking that I should just drive to her house. I keep driving, not sure where to go. We stop at a coffee shop in Beverly Hills and afterwards, when we get back in the car, I ask, "Where do you want to go, Blair?"

"I want to go..." she stops. "To my house."

I'm lying in Blair's bed. There are all these stuffed animals on the floor and at the foot of the bed and when I roll over onto my back, I feel something hard and covered with fur and I reach under myself and it's this stuffed black cat. I drop it on the floor and then get up and take a shower. After I've toweled my hair dry, I wrap the towel around my waist and walk back into her room, start to dress. Blair's smoking a cigarette and watching MTV, the sound turned down low.

"Will you call me before Christmas?" she asks.

"Maybe." I pull on my vest, wondering why I even came here in the first place.

"You've still got my number, don't you?" She reaches for a pad and begins to write it down.

"Yeah, Blair. I've got your number. I'll get in touch." I button up my jeans and turn to leave.

"Clay?"

"Yeah, Blair."

"If I don't see you before Christmas," she stops. "Have a good one."

I look at her a moment. "Hey, you too."

She picks up the stuffed black cat and strokes its head. I step out the door and start to close it.

"Clay?" she whispers loudly.

I stop but don't turn around. "Yeah?"

"Nothing."

I t hadn't rained in the city for too long and Blair would keep calling me up and tell me that the two of us should get together and go to the beach club. I'd be too tired or stoned or wasted to get up in the afternoon to even go out and sit beneath the umbrellas in the hot sun at the beach club with Blair. So the two of us decided to go to Pajaro Dunes in Monterey where it was cool and where the sea was shimmering and green and my parents had a house on the beach. We drove up in my car and we slept in the master bedroom, and we drove into town and bought food and cigarettes and candles. There was nothing much to do in town; an old movie theater in need of paint and seagulls and crumbling docks and Mexican fishermen who whistled at Blair and an old church Blair took pictures of but didn't go in. We found a case of champagne in the garage and drank the whole case that week. We'd open a bottle usually in the late morning after we went walking along the beach. In the early morning we'd make love, either in the living room, or, if not in the living room, then on the floor in the master bedroom, and we'd close the blinds and light the candles we'd bought in town and we'd watch our shadows, illuminated against the white walls, move, shift.

The house was old and faded and had a courtyard and a tennis court, but we didn't play tennis. Instead, I'd wander around the house at night and listen to old records I used to like and sit in the courtyard and drink what was left of the champagne. I didn't like the house that much, and sometimes I'd have to go out onto the deck at night because I couldn't stand the white walls and the thin venetian blinds and the black tile in the kitchen. I'd walk along the beach at night and sometimes sit down in the damp sand and smoke a cigarette and stare up at the lighted house and see Blair's silhouette in the living room, talking on the phone to someone who was in Palm Springs. When I came back in we'd both be drunk and she would suggest that we go swimming, but it was too cold and dark, and so we'd sit in the small jacuzzi in the middle of the courtyard and make love.

During the day I'd sit in the living room and try to read the San Francisco Chronicle and she'd walk along the beach and collect seashells, and before too long we started going to bed sometime before dawn and then waking up in the midafternoon, and then we'd open another bottle. One day we took the convertible and drove to a secluded part of the beach. We ate caviar and Blair had chopped up some onions and eggs and cheese, and we brought fruit and these cinnamon cookies Blair was really into, and a sic-pack of Tab, because that and the champagne were all Blair would drink, and we'd either jog on the empty shore or try to swim in the rough surf.

But I soon became disoriented and I knew I'd drunk too much, and whenever Blair would say something, I found myself closing my eyes and sighing. The water turned colder, raging, and the sand became wet, and Blair would sit by herself on the deck overlooking the sea and spot boats in the afternoon fog. I'd watch her play Solitaire through the glass window in the living room, and I'd hear the boats moan and creak, and Blair would pour herself another glass of champagne and it would all unsettle me.

Soon the champagne ran out and I opened the liquor cabinet. Blair got tan and so did I, and by the end of the week, all we did was watch television, even though the reception wasn't too good, and drink bourbon, and Blair would arrange shells into circular patterns on the floor of the living room. When Blair muttered one night, while we sat on opposite sides of the living room, "We should have gone to Palm Springs," I knew then that it was time to leave.