Less Than Zero Read Online Free PDF Page B

he would keep touching them lightly.
    “Why aren’t you having the usual?” I ask, actually interested, after we order.
    He smiles, showing off the caps. “Nutritionist won’t allow it.”
    “Oh.”
    “How is your mother?” he asks calmly.
    “She’s fine.”
    “Is she really feeling fine?”
    “Yes, she’s really feeling fine.” I’m tempted, for a moment, to tell him about the Ferrari parked in the driveway.
    “Are you sure?”
    “There’s nothing to worry about.”
    “That’s good.” He pauses. “Is she still seeing that Dr. Crain?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “That’s good.”
    There’s a pause. Another businessman stops by, then leaves.
    “Well, Clay, what do you want for Christmas?”
    “Nothing,” I say after a while.
    “Do you want your subscription to
Variety
renewed?”
    “It already is.”
    Another pause.
    “Do you need money?”
    “No,” I tell him, knowing that he’ll slip me some later on, outside Ma Maison maybe, or on the way back to his office.
    “You look thin,” he says.
    “Hmmm.”
    “And pale.”
    “It’s the drugs,” I mumble.
    “I didn’t quite hear that.”
    I look at him and say, “I’ve gained five pounds since I’ve been back home.”
    “Oh,” he says, and pours himself a glass of white wine.
    Some other business guy drops by. After he leaves, my father turns to me and asks. “Do you want to go to Palm Springs for Christmas?”

    D uring the end of my senior year one day, I didn’t go to school. Instead I drove out to Palm Springs alone and listened to a lot of old tapes I used to like but didn’t much anymore, and I stopped at a McDonald’s in Sunland for a Coke and then drove out to the desert and parked in front of the old house. I didn’t like the new one that the family had bought; well, it was okay, but it wasn’t like the old house. The old house was empty and the outside looked really scummy and unkempt and there were weeds and a television aerial that had fallen off the roof and empty trash cans were lying on what used to be the front lawn. The pool was drained and all these memories rushed back to me and I had to sit down in my school uniform on the steps of the empty pool and cry. I remembered all the Friday nights driving in and the Sunday nights leaving and afternoons spent playing cards on the chaise longues out by the pool with my grandmother. But those memories seemed faded compared to empty beer cans that were scattered all over the dead lawn and the windows that were all smashed and broken. My aunt had tried to sell the house, but I guess she got sentimental and no longer wanted to. My father had wanted to sell it and was really bitter that no one had done so. But they stopped talking about it and the house lay between them and was never brought up anymore. I didn’t go out to Palm Springs that day to look around or see the house and I didn’t go because I wanted to miss school or anything. I guess I went out there because I wanted to remember the way things were. I don’t know.

    O n 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