Less Than Zero Read Free Page A

drive onto her street and then to her driveway. We kiss and she notices that I’ve been gripping the steering wheel too hard and she looks at my fists and says, “Your hands are red,” then gets out of the car.

    W e have been in Beverly Hills shopping most of the late morning and early afternoon. My mother and my two sisters and me. My mother has spent most of this time probably at Neiman-Marcus, and my sisters have gone to Jerry Magnin and have used our father’s charge account to buy him and me something and then to MGA and Camp Beverly Hills and Privilege to buy themselves something. I sit at the bar at La Scala Boutique for most of this time, bored out of my mind, smoking, drinking red wine. Finally, my mother drives up in her Mercedes and parks the car in front of La Scala and waits for me. I get up and leave some money on the counter and get in the car and lean my head up against the headrest.
    “She’s going out with the biggest babe,” one of my sisters is saying.
    “Where does he go to school?” the other one asks, interested.
    “Harvard.”
    “What grade is he in?”
    “Ninth. One year above her.”
    “I heard their house is for sale,” my mother says.
    “I wonder if he’s for sale,” the older of my two sisters, who I think is fifteen, mumbles, and both of them giggle from the backseat.
    A truck with video games strapped in the back passes by and my sisters are driven into some sort of frenzy.
    “Follow that video game!” one of them commands.
    “Mom, do you think if I asked Dad he’d get me Galaga for Christmas?” the other one asks, brushing her short blond hair. I think she’s thirteen, maybe.
    “What is a Galaga?” my mother asks.
    “A video game,” one of them says.
    “You have Atari though,” my mother says.
    “Atari’s cheap,” she says, handing the brush to my other sister, who also has blond hair.
    “I don’t know,” my mother says, adjusting her sunglasses, opening the sunroof. “I’m having dinner with him tonight.”
    “That’s encouraging,” the older sister says sarcastically.
    “Where would we put it though?” one of them asks.
    “Put what?” my mother asks back.
    “Galaga! Galaga!” my sisters scream.
    “In Clay’s room, I suppose,” my mother says.
    I shake my head.
    “Bullshit! No way,” one of them yells. “Clay can’t have Galaga in his room. He always locks his door.”
    “Yeah, Clay, that really pisses me off,” one of them says, a real edge in her voice.
    “Why do you lock your door anyway, Clay?”
    I don’t say anything.
    “Why do you lock your door, Clay?” one of them, I don’t know which one, asks again.
    I still don’t say anything. I consider grabbing one of the bags from MGA or Camp Beverly Hills or a box of shoes from Privilege and flinging them out the window.
    “Mom, tell him to answer me. Why do you lock your door, Clay?”
    I turn around. “Because you both stole a quarter gram of cocaine from me the last time I left my door open. That’s why.”
    My sisters don’t say anything. “Teenage Enema Nurses in Bondage” by a group called Killer Pussy comes on the radio, and my mother asks if we have to listen to this and my sisters tell her to turn it up, and no one says anything else until the song’s over. When we get home, my younger sister finally tells me, out by the pool, “That’s bullshit. I can get my own cocaine.”

    T he psychiatrist I see during the four weeks I’m back is young and has a beard and drives a 450 SL and has a house in Malibu. I’ll sit in his office in Westwood with the shades drawn and my sunglasses on, smoking a cigarette, sometimes cloves, just to irritate him, sometimes crying. Sometimes I’ll yell at him and he’ll yell back. I tell him that I have these bizarre sexual fantasies and his interest will increase noticeably. I’ll start to laugh for no reason and then feel sick. I lie to him sometimes. He’ll tell me about his mistress and the repairs being done on the house in