On the way home from lunch, I stop by Cedars-Sinai to visit Muriel, since Blair told me that she really wanted to see me. She’s really pale and so totally thin that I can make out the veins in her neck too clearly. She also has dark circles under her eyes and the pink lipstick she’s put on clashes badly with the pale white skin on her face. She’s watching some exercise show on TV and all these issues of Glamour and Vogue and Interview lie by her bed. The curtains are closed and she asks me to open them. After I do, she puts her sunglasses on and tells me that she’s having a nicotine fit and that she’s “absolutely dying” for a cigarette. I tell her I don’t have any. She shrugs and turns the volume up on the television and laughs at the people doing the exercises. She doesn’t say that much, which is just as well since I don’t say much either.
I leave the parking lot of Cedars-Sinai and make a couple of wrong turns and end up on Santa Monica. I sigh, turn up the radio, some little girls are singing about an earthquake in L.A. “My surfboard’s ready for the tidal wave.” A car pulls up next to mine at the next light and I turn my head to see who’s in it. Two young guys in a Fiat and both have short hair and bushy mustaches and are wearing plaid short-sleeve shirts and ski vests and one looks at me, with this total look of surprise and disbelief and he tells his friend something and now both of them are looking at me. “Smack, smack, I fell in a crack.” The driver rolls down his window and I tense up and he asks me something, but my window’s rolled up and the top isn’t down and so I don’t answer his question. But the driver asks me again, positive that I’m this certain actor. “Now I’m part of the debris,” the girls are squealing. The light turns green and I drive away, but I’m in the left-hand lane and it’s a Friday afternoon nearing five and the traffic’s bad, and when I come to another red light, the Fiat’s next to me again, and these two insane fags are laughing and pointing and asking me the same f**king question over and over. I finally make an illegal left turn and come to a side street, where I park for a minute and turn the radio off, light a cigarette.
Rip’s supposed to meet me at Cafe Casino in Westwood, and he hasn’t shown up yet. There’s nothing to do in Westwood. It’s too hot to walk around and I’ve seen all the movies, some even twice, and so I sit under the umbrellas at Cafe Casino and drink Perrier and grapefruit juice and watch the cars roll by in the heat. Light a cigarette and stare at the Perrier bottle. Two girls, sixteen, seventeen, both with short hair, sit at the table next to mine and I keep looking over at both of them and they both flirt back; one’s peeling an orange and the other’s sipping an espresso. The one who’s peeling an orange asks the other if she should put a maroon streak through her hair. The girl with the espresso takes a sip and tells her no. The other girl asks about other colors, about anthracite. The girl with the espresso takes another sip and thinks about this for a minute and then tells her no, that it should be red, and if not red, then violet, but definitely not maroon or anthracite. I look over at her and she looks at me and then I look at the Perrier bottle. The girl with the espresso pauses a couple of seconds and then asks, “What’s anthracite?”
A black Porsche with tinted windows pulls up in front of Cafe Casino and Julian gets out. He sees me and, though it looks like he doesn’t want to, comes over. His hand falls on my shoulder and I shake his other hand.
“Julian,” I say. “How’ve you been?”
“Hey, Clay,” he says. “What’s going on? How long have you been back?”
“Just like five days,” I say. Just five days.
“What are you doing?” he asks. “What’s going on?”
“I’m waiting for Rip.”
Julian looks really tired and kind of weak, but I tell him he looks great and he says that I do too, even though I need to get a tan.
“Hey, listen,” he starts. “I’m sorry about not meeting you and Trent at Carney’s that night and freaking out at the party. It’s just like, I’ve been strung out for like the past four days, and I just, like, forgot … I haven’t even been home .…” He slaps his forehead. “Oh man, my mother must be freaking out.” He pauses, doesn’t smile. “I’m just so sick of dealing with people.” He looks past me. “Oh shit, I don’t know.”
I look over at the black Porsche and try to see past the tinted windows and begin to wonder if there’s anyone else in the car. Julian starts playing with his keys.
