Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis

ridiculous,” and pushes in some Spandau Ballet tape and turns the volume up.
    “Let’s just go to the fucking Edge,” Kim yells.
    Blair begins to laugh and then says, “Oh, all right.”
    “What do you think, Clay? Should we go to the Edge?” Kim asks.
    I’m sitting in the back seat drunk and I shrug, and when we get to the Edge, I drink two more drinks.
    The DJ at the Edge tonight isn’t wearing a shirt and his nipples are pierced and he wears a leather cowboy hat and between songs he keeps mumbling “Hip-Hip-Hooray.” Kim tells me that the DJ obviously cannot decide whether he’s butch or New Wave. Blair introduces me to one of her friends, Christie, who’s on this new TV show on ABC. Christie is with Lindsay, who’s tall and looks a lot like Matt Dillon. Lindsay and I walk upstairs to the restroom and do some coke in one of the stalls. Above the sink, on the mirror, someone’s written in big black letters “Gloom Rules.”
    After we leave the restroom, Lindsay and I sit at the bar upstairs and he tells me that there’s not too much going on anywhere in the city. I nod, watch the large strobe light blink off and on, flashing across the big dance floor. Lindsay lights my cigarette and begins to talk, but the music’s loud and I can’t hear a lot of what he’s saying. Some surfer bumps into me and then smiles and asks fora light. Lindsay gives the boy a light and smiles back. Lindsay then begins to talk about how he hasn’t met anyone for the past four months who’s over nineteen. “Blows your mind away, huh?” he screams, over the sound of the music.
    Lindsay gets up and says that he spots his dealer and has to go talk to her. I sit at the bar alone and light another cigarette, order another drink. There’s a fat girl also sitting alone at the near empty bar, trying to talk to the bartender, who, like the DJ, is also shirtless and dancing by himself, behind the bar, to the music that’s pouring out of the club’s sound system. The fat girl has a lot of makeup on and she’s sipping a Tab with a straw and wearing purple Calvin Klein jeans and matching cowboy boots. The bartender isn’t listening to her and I have this image of her, sitting alone in a room somewhere in the city, waiting for a phone to ring. The fat girl orders another Tab. From downstairs the music stops and the DJ announces that there’ll be a miniskirt beach party at The Florentine Gardens in two weeks.
    “It’s really … lively tonight,” the fat girl tells the bartender.
    “Where?” the bartender asks.
    The girl looks down, embarrassed for a moment, and pays for her drink and I can barely hear her mumble, “Somewhere,” and she gets up and buttons the top button on her jeans and leaves the bar and sometime, later that night, I realize I’m going to be home for two more weeks.

T he psychiatrist I see tells me that he has a new idea for a screenplay. Instead of listening, I sling a leg over the arm of the huge black leather chair in the posh office and light another cigarette, a clove. This guy goes on and on and after every couple of sentences he runs his fingers through his beard and looks at me. I have my sunglasses on and he isn’t too sure if I’m looking at him. I am. The psychiatrist talks some more and soon it really doesn’t matter what he says. He pauses and asks me if I would like to help him write it. I tell him that I’m not interested. The psychiatrist says something like, “You know, Clay, that you and I have been talking about how you should become more active and not so passive and I think it would be a good idea if you would help me write this. At least a treatment.”
    I mumble something, blow some of the clove smoke toward him and look out the window.

I park my car in front of Trent’s new apartment, a few blocks from U.C.L.A. in Westwood, the apartment he lives in when he has classes. Rip answers the door since he’s now Trent’s dealer, since Trent hasn’t been able to find