Bret Easton Ellis - Imperial Bedrooms Chapter 1 - continued lyrics

After pouring myself a tumbler of Grey Goose that was left in the freezer when I escaped last August, I'm about to turn on the balcony lights but then stop and move slowly out into the shadow of the overhang. The blue Jeep is parked on the corner of Elevado and Doheny. From inside the Jeep a cell phone glows. I realize the hand not holding the vodka is now clenched into a fist. The fear returns as I gaze at the Jeep. And then a flash of light:someone lit a cigarette. From behind me the phone rings. I don't answer it. The reason I've sold myself on being back in Los Angeles: the casting of The Listeners is under way. The producer who had brought me in to adapt the complicated novel it was based on was so relieved when I figured it out that he had almost instantly hired an enthusiastic director, and the three of us were acting as collaborators (even after a tense negotiation where my lawyer and manager insisted that I receive a producing credit as well). They had already cast the four adult leads but their children were trickier and more specific roles and the director and the producer wanted my input. This is the official reason why I'm in L.A. But, really, coming back to the city is an excuse to escape New York and whatever had happened to me there that fall. The cell vibrates inside my pocket. I glance at it curiously. A text from Julian, a person I haven't had any contact with in over a year. When do you get back? Are you here? Wanna hang? Almost automatically the landline rings. I move into the kitchen and look at the receiver. PRIVATE NAME. PRIVATE NUMBER. After four rings, whoever is calling hangs up. When I look back outside the mist keeps drifting in over the city, enveloping everything. I go into my office without turning on the lights. I check e-mails from all of the accounts: reminder of a dinner with the Germans financing a script, another director meeting, my TV agent asking if I've finished the Sony pilot yet, a couple of young actors wanting to know what's happening with The Listeners, a series of invites to various Christmas parties, my trainer at Equinox - having heard from another client that I'm back - wondering if I'd like to book any sessions. I take an Ambien to get to sleep since there's not enough vodka. When I move to the bedroom window and look down at Elevado, the Jeep is pulling away, its headlights flashing, and it turns onto Doheny, then moves up toward Sunset, and in the closet I find a few things left by a girl who hung around last summer, and suddenly I don't want to think of where she might be at this moment. I get another text from Laurie: Do you still want me? It's almost four in the morning in the apartment below Union Square. So many people died last year: the accidental overdose, the car wreck in East Hampton, the surprise illness. People just disappeared. I fall asleep to the music coming from the Abbey, a song from the past, "Hungry Like the Wolf," rising faintly above the leaping chatter of the club, transporting me for one long moment into someone both young and old. Sadness: it's everywhere. The premiere is at the Chinese tonight and it's a movie that has something to do with confronting evil, a situation set up so obviously that the movie becomes safely vague in a way that will entice the studio to buy awards for it, in fact there's a campaign already under way, and I'm with the director and the producer of The Listeners and we drift with the rest of the crowd across Hollywood Boulevard to the Roosevelt for the after-party where paparazzi cling to the hotel's entrance and I immediately grab a drink at the bar while the producer disappears into the bathroom and the director stands next to me talking on the phone to his wife, who's in Australia. When I scan the darkened room, smiling back at unfamiliar people, the fear returns and soon it's everywhere and it keeps streaming forward: it's in the looming success of the film we just watched, it's in the young actors' seductive questions about possible roles in The Listeners, and it's in the texts they send walking away, their faces glowing from the cell light as they cross the cavernous lobby, and it's in the spray-on tans and the teeth stained white. I've been in New York the last four months is the mantra, my mask an expressionless smile. Finally the producer appears from behind a Christmas tree and says, "Let's get out of here," then mentions something about a couple of parties up in the hills, and Laurie keeps texting from New York (Hey. You.) and I cannot get it out of my head that someone in this room is following me. Sudden rapid cameraflashes are a distraction, but the pale fear returns when I realize whoever was in that blue Jeep last night is probably in the crowd. We head west on Sunset in the producer's Porsche and then turn up Doheny to the first of two parties Mark wants to hit, the director following us in a black Jaguar, and we start speeding past the bird streets until we spot a valet. Small decorated firs surround the bar I'm standing at pretending to listen while a grinning actor tells me what he's got lined up and I'm drunkenly staring at the gorgeous girl he's with, U2 Christmas songs drowning everything out, and guys in Band of Outsiders suits sit on a low-slung ivory sofa snorting lines off a long gla** co*ktail table, and when someone offers me a bump I'm tempted but decline knowing where that will lead. The producer, buzzed, needs to hit another party in Bel Air, and I'm drunk enough to let him maneuver me out of this one even though there's a vague shot of getting laid here. The producer wants to meet someone at the party in Bel Air, it's business in Bel Air, his presence in Bel Air is supposed to prove something about his status, and my eyes wander over to the boys barely old enough to drive swimming in the heated pool, girls in string bikinis and high heels lounging by the Jacuzzi, anime sculptures everywhere, a mosaic of youth, a place you don't really belong anymore. At the house in the upper reaches of Bel Air, the producer loses me and I move from room to room and become momentarily disoriented when I see Trent Burroughs and everything gets complicated while I try and sync myself with the party, and then I soberly realize that this is the house where Trent and Blair live. There's no recourse except to have another drink. That I'm not driving is the consolation. Trent is standing with a manager and two agents - all of them gay, one engaged to a woman, the other two still in the closet. I know Trent's sleeping with the junior agent, blond with fake white teeth, so blandly good-looking he's not even a variation on a type. I realize I have nothing to say to Trent Burroughs as I tell him, "I've been in New York the last four months." New Age Christmas music fails to warm up the chilly vibe. I'm suddenly unsure about everything. Trent looks at me, nodding, slightly bewildered by my presence. He knows he needs to say something. "So, that's great about The Listeners. It's really happening." "That's what they tell me." After the nonconversation starts itself we enter into a hazy area about a supposed friend of ours, someone named Kelly. "Kelly disappeared," Trent says, straining. "Have you heard anything?" "Oh, yeah?" I ask, and then, "Wait, what do you mean?" "Kelly Montrose. He disappeared. No one can find him." Pause. "What happened?" "He went out to Palm Springs," Trent says. "They think maybe he met someone online." Trent seems to want a reaction. I stare back. "That's strange," I murmur disinterestedly. "Or ... is he prone to things like that?" Trent looks at me as if something has been confirmed, and then reveals his disgust. "Prone? No, Clay, he's not prone to things like that." "Trent - " Walking away from me, Trent says, "He's probably dead, Clay." On the veranda overlooking the ma**ive lit pool bordered by palms wrapped in white Christmas lights, I'm smoking a cigarette, contemplating another text from Julian. I look up from the phone when a shadow steps slowly out of the darkness and it's such a dramatic moment - her beauty and my subsequent reaction to it - that I have to laugh, and she just stares at me, smiling, maybe buzzed, maybe wasted. This is the girl who would usually make me afraid, but tonight she doesn't. The look is blond and wholesome, midwestern, distinctly American, not what I'm usually into. She's obviously an actress because girls who look like this aren't out here for any other reason, and she just gazes at me like this is all a dare. So I make it one. "Do you want to be in a movie?" I ask her, swaying. The girl keeps smiling. "Why? Do you have a movie you want to put me in?" Then the smile freezes and quickly fades as she glances behind me. I turn around and squint at the woman heading toward us, backlit by the room she's leaving. When I turn back around the girl'swalking away, her silhouette enhanced by the glow of the pool, and from somewhere in the darkness there's the sound of a fountain splashing, and then the girl is replaced. "Who was that?" Blair asks. "Merry Christmas." "Why are you here?" "I was invited." "No. You weren't." "My friends brought me." "Friends? Congratulations." "Merry Christmas" again is all I can offer. "Who was that girl you were talking to?" I turn around and glance back into the darkness. "I don't know." Blair sighs. "I thought you were in New York." "I'm back and forth." She just stares at me. "Yeah." And then: "You and Trent still happy?" "Why are you here tonight? Who are you with?" "I didn't know this was your place," I say, looking away. "I'm sorry." "Why don't you know these things?" "Because you haven't talked to me in two years." Another text from Julian tells me to meet him at the Polo Lounge. Not wanting to go back to the condo, I have the producer drop me off at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Outside, on the patio, next to a heat lamp, Julian sits in a booth, his face glowing while he texts someone. He looks up, smiles. As soon as I slide into the booth a waiter appears and I order a Belvedere on the rocks. When I offer Julian a questioning look he taps a bottle of Fiji water I hadn't noticed before and says, "I'm not drinking." I take this in and deliberate slightly. "Because ... you have to drive?" "No," he says. "I've been sober for about a year." "That's a little drastic." Julian glances at his phone, then back at me. "And how's that going?" I ask. "It's hard." He shrugs. "You more cheerful now?" "Clay ... " "Can we smoke out here?" The waiter brings the drink. "How was the premiere?" Julian asks. "Not a soul in sight." I sigh, studying the tumbler of vodka. "So you're back from New York for how long?" "I don't know yet." He tries again. "How's The Listeners coming?" he asks with a sudden interest, trying to move me into the same world. I gaze at him, then answer cautiously. "It's coming along. We're casting." I wait as long as I can, then I knock back the drink and light a cigarette. "For some reason the producer and director think my input's important. Valuable. They're artists." I take a drag off the cigarette. "It's basically a joke." "I think it's cool," Julian says. "It's all about control, right?" He considers something. "It's not a joke. You should take it seriously. I mean, you're also one of the producers - " I cut him off. "Why have you been tracking this?" "It's a big deal and - " "Julian, it's a movie," I say. "Why have you been tracking this? It's just another movie." "Maybe for you." "What does that mean?" "Maybe for others it's something else," Julian says. "Something more meaningful." "I get where you're coming from, but there's a vampire in it." Inside, the piano player's doing jazzy riffs on Christmas carols. I concentrate on that. I'm already locked out of everything. It's that time of night when I've entered the dead zone and I'm not coming out. "What happened to that girl you were seeing?" he asks. "Laurie? In New York?" "No, out here. Last summer." He pauses. "The actress." I try to pause but fail. "Meghan," I say casually. "Right." He draws the word out. "I really have no idea." I lift the gla**, rattle the ice around. Julian innocently glances at me, his eyes widening slightly. This makes it clear he has information he wants to give me. I realize that I sat here, in this very same booth, one afternoon with Blair, in a different era, something I wouldn't have remembered if I hadn't seen her tonight. "Are we lost again, Julian?" I sigh. "Are we gonna play out another scene?" "Hey, you've been gone a long time and - " "How do you even know about that?" I ask suddenly. "You and I weren't hanging then." "What do you mean?" he asks. "I saw you last summer."