I get a message that Trent stopped by. He was wearing a really expensive suit, my sisters said, and driving someone else’s Mercedes. “Friend of mine’s,” Trent told them. He also told them to tell me that Scott O.D.’d. I don’t know who Scott is. It keeps raining. And that night, after I get three of the weird silent phone calls, I break a glass by throwing it against the wall. No one comes in to see what the sound was. Then I lie on the bed, awake, take twenty milligrams of Valium to come off the coke, but it doesn’t get me to sleep. I turn MTV off and the radio on, but KNAC won’t come in so I turn the radio off and stare out across the Valley and look at the canvas of neon and fluorescent lights lying beneath the purple night sky and I stand there, nude, by the window, watching the clouds pass and then I lie on my bed and try to remember how many days I’ve been home and then I get up and pace the room and light another cigarette and then the phone will ring. This is how the nights are when it rains.
I’m sitting in Spago with Trent and Blair and Trent says he’s positive that there were people doing cocaine at the bar and I tell him why don’t you go join them and he tells me to shut up. Since we did half a gram before leaving Trent’s apartment, none of us are too hungry, and we only order appetizers and one pizza and keep drinking grapefruit juice and vodka. Blair keeps smelling her wrist and humming along with the new Human League single that’s playing over the stereo system. Blair asks the waiter, after he brings us our fourth round of greyhounds, if he was at the Edge the other night. He smiles and shakes his head.
“So tell me,” Blair asks Trent. “Is Walker really an alcoholic?”
“Yeah, yeah. Walker is,” Trent says.
“I knew it. But Walker’s great though. Walker’s nice.”
Trent laughs and agrees, then looks at me.
I’m totally startled for a moment and I look at both of them and say, “Walker is nice.” I don’t know who Walker is.
“Yeah, I like Walker,” Trent says.
“Yeah, Walker’s nice.” Blair nods.
“Hey, did I tell you,” Trent begins. “I’m going to the Springs tomorrow. I have to go down and watch some dumb-ass Mexican gardener plant cactus in the backyard. Is that the most typical thing you have ever heard of? So typical. Mom asked me and I said, ‘No way, dude,’ and she said, ‘You never do anything for me,’ and I mean, she was right, and so I said, ‘Okay,’ because I felt sorry for her, you know? Besides, I heard that Sandy has some great coke and he’ll be there.”
Blair smiles. “You’re such a nice boy.”
It’s getting to be toward midnight and someone pays the check and I tell Trent, after Blair’s left for the restroom, that I didn’t have the slightest idea who Walker is. Trent looks at me and says, “You don’t make any sense, you know that?”
“I make sense.”
“No, dude. You’re ridiculous.”
“Why don’t I make sense?”
“Because you just don’t.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe it doesn’t.”
“Jesus.”
“You’re a fool, Clay,” Trent laughs.
“No, I’m not,” I tell him, laughing back.
“Yeah, I think you are. In fact, I’m totally sure of it,” he says.
“Are you?”
Trent finishes his drink, sucks on an ice cube and asks, “So, who are you f**king?”
“No one. Who I f**k is not your business or Blair’s, okay?”
“Yeah, right,” he snorts.
“What is this?” I ask Trent.
He doesn’t say anything.
“Who are you f**king?” I ask him.
“Oh, come on, Clay, please.”
“No, who are you f**king, Trent?” I ask again.
“You don’t get it, do you?”
“Get what? What is there to get?” I ask. “If this has anything to do with Blair, you’re really screwed. She should know better. Does she think we’re still going-out? Is that what she told you? Well, we’re not, okay? Got it?” The coke’s wearing off and I’m about to get up and go to the men’s room.
“Have you told her?” he finally asks.
“No,” I say, still looking at him, then out the window.
“Tacky. Really tacky,” he says slowly.
“What’s tacky?” Blair asks, sitting down.
“Roberto,” Trent says, averting his eyes from mine.
