Party Girl: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

can’t drive. “And I have to sleep for at least a few hours if I’m going to be able to go to that event tonight and get my article done by the next day.”
    Event tonight? Article? Tomorrow and the day after? Jesus. Before I even have time to resent Stephanie for dosing me with so much reality, she literally yanks me to my feet.
    “But Molly…and Jane…”
    “They’re in the car passed out,” she says, suddenly the very model of a Stepford wife, only with three wayward girls in place of a husband. “Come on.”
    Adam stands up, as if he’s going to either try to stop us from leaving or at least try to hug me good-bye and ask for my number, but then he sits down again. It’s kind of a relief because my breath probably smells like a hundred drunkards smoked several hundred cartons of cigarettes over a period of a year inside my mouth. But I have to admit I’m a little disappointed. Maybe I was imagining this guy had a crush on me. Then again, that whole speech about my rubbing my tummy, while original, was surely his lame rap. I mean, he did get up and leave me passed out on the floor without even thinking of putting a blanket on me. I’m about to say something to him, something cutting just to show him that I couldn’t care less about him, but Stephanie grabs me by the hand and starts marching me out before I have a chance.
    “Thanks, Gus!” she yells. “Call me if you want to hook up at an after-party tonight!”
     
    I sleep most of the drive back to West Hollywood, only waking up when we stop so that Molly and Jane can pee. Though my throat feels like someone carved their initials on the side of it, I open the extra pack of Camel Lights I’d left in Stephanie’s car, wordlessly handing cigarettes to Molly and Jane when they get back in the car.
    “This is disgusting,” Molly says, taking a long drag.
    “Horrible,” Jane agrees.
    “It’s making me nauseous,” I chime in. We continue to smoke.
    “Me, too,” says Molly.
    “Not me,” says Jane. “But I almost wish it would.”
    Stephanie glances in her rearview mirror so she can look at Jane and Molly in the back. “I’m sorry, but I will never understand the compulsion to take a burning stick and suck on it , especially when it doesn’t even do anything to you. I can’t imagine anything more foul.”
    “There’s no rest for the truly sick,” I say, and Molly laughs so hard she ends up throwing up out the window.
     
    After Stephanie drops me off and I start walking up the building’s entryway to my apartment, it occurs to me that eventually we all get old and die, and the sadness I feel over this thought seems wholly debilitating. Sometimes I just become so overwhelmingly depressed by my thoughts—like when I’m watching movies from the ’70s and ’80s and they’re starring and costarring people I’ve never heard of, and they’re directed by people whose names don’t even sound vaguely familiar, and I think, These people were once this town’s big deal. They ate at all the right restaurants, and got invited to all the right parties, and had their names in Variety and were adored, and I’ve never even heard of them, and now they’re gone and who the hell cares about them today? When I used to say things like this, my college roommate would tell me I sounded tired or hungover, and I should never come to massive conclusions about life when I’m tired or hungover, and alcohol is a depressant, and blah blah blah. I’m thinking about this and about how much it sucks that my college roommate and I had that falling out so she’s not around to say things like that anymore.
    The cats moan in their catlike way, seemingly berating me for leaving them alone for the past thirty or so hours while I got drunk and kissed a girl and did an impromptu striptease at a party. I feel so depressed, I know that throwing their food in a bowl and diving into bed is all I can manage at the moment. Someone told me at a party recently that L.A. is