Bret Easton Ellis - Imperial Bedrooms Chapter 2 lyrics

Chapter 2 "How do you know about Meghan Reynolds?" "Someone told me you were helping her out ... giving her a break - " "We were f**ing, Julian." "She said that you - " "I don't care what she said." I stand up. "Everyone lies." "Hey," he says softly. "It's just a code." "No. Everyone lies." I stub the cigarette out. "It's just another language you have to learn." Then he delicately adds, "I think you need some coffee, dude." Pause. "Why are you so angry?" "I'm out of here, Julian." I start walking away. "As usual, a total mistake." A blue Jeep follows me from the Beverly Hills Hotel to where the cab drops me offin front of the Doheny Plaza. Something has changed since I was here seven hours ago. I call the doorman while staring at the desk in my office. The computer is on. It wasn't when I left. I'm staring at the stack of paper next to the computer. When the doorman answers I'm staring at a small knife used to open envelopes that was placed on the stack of paper. It was in a drawer when I headed out to the premiere. I hang the phone up without saying anything. Moving around the condo I ask, "Is anyone here?" I lean over the duvet in the bedroom. I run my hand across it. It smells different. I check the door for the third time. It's locked. I stare at the Christmas tree longer than I should and then I take the elevator down to the lobby. The night doorman sits at the front desk in the lushly lit lobby. I walk toward him, unsure of what to say. He looks up from a small TV. "Did someone come by my place?" I ask. "Tonight? While I was out?" The doorman checks the log. "No. Why?" "I think there was someone in my place." "What do you mean?" the doorman asks. "I don't understand." "I think someone was in my condo while I was out." "I've been here all night," the doorman says. "No one came by." I just stand there. The sound of a helicopter roars over the building. "Anyway, they couldn't get in the elevator without me opening it for them," the doorman says. "Plus Bobby's outside." He motions to the security guard slowly pacing the driveway. "Are you sure someone was in there?" He sounds amused. He notices I'm drunk. "Maybe it was no one," he says. Pare it down, I warn myself. Put it away. Just pare everything down. Or else the bells will start chiming. "Things were rearranged," I murmur. "My computer was on ... " "Is anything missing?" the doorman asks, now openly humoring me. "You want me to call the police?" In a neutral voice: "No." And then I say it again. "No." "It's been a quiet night." "Well ... " I'm backing away. "That's good." An actress I met at the casting sessions this morning is having lunch with me at Comme Ça. When she walked into the room at the casting director's complex in Culver City she instantly provided a steady hum of menace that left me dazed, which acted as a mask so I appeared as calm as a cipher. I haven't heard of her agent or the management company that reps her - she came in as someone's favor - and I'm thinking how different things would be if I had. Certain tensions melt away but they're always replaced with new ones. She's drinking a gla** of champagne and I still have my sungla**es on and she keeps touching her hair and talking vaguely about her life. She lives in Elysian Park. She's a hostess at the Formosa Cafe. I twist in my chair while she answers a text. She notices this and then offers an apology. It's not coy, exactly, but it's premeditated. Like everything else she does it wants a reaction. "So what are you doing for Christmas?" I ask her. "Seeing my family." "Will that be fun?" "It depends." She looks at me quizzically. "Why?" I shrug. "I'm just interested." She touches her hair again: blond, blown out. A napkin becomes faintly stained after she wipes her lips with it. I mention the parties I went to last night. The actress is impressed, especially by the one I went to first. She says she had friends who were at that party. She says she wanted to go but she had to work. She wants me to confirm if a certain young actor was there. When I say he was, the expression on her face makes me realize something. She notices. "I'm sorry," she says. "He's an idiot." Some people at that party, she adds, are freaks, then mentions a drug I've never heard of, and tells me a story that involves ski masks, zombies, a van, chains, a secret community, and asks me about a Hispanic girl who disappeared in some desert. She drops the name of an actress I've never heard of. I'm trying to stay focused, trying to stay in the moment, not wanting to lose the romance of it all. Concealed, a movie I wrote, is brought up. And then I get the connection: she asked about the young actor with the gorgeous girl I was gazing at because he had a small role in Concealed. "I don't really want to know." I'm staring at the traffic on Melrose. "I didn't stay long. I had another party to go to." And suddenly I remember the blond girl walking out of the shadows in Bel Air. I'm surprised she has stayed with me, and that her image has lingered for so long. "How do you think it went?" she asks. "I thought you were great," I say. "I told you that." She laughs, pleased. She could be twenty. She could be thirty. You can't tell. And if you could, everything would be over. Destiny. "Destiny" is the word I'm thinking about. The actress murmurs a line from The Listeners. I made sure the director and producer had no interest in her for the role she auditioned for before asking her out. This is the only reason she's with me at lunch and I've been here so many times and I realize there's another premiere tonight and that I'm meeting the producer in Westwood at six. I check my watch. I've kept the afternoon open. The actress drains the gla** of champagne. An attentive and handsome waiter fills it up again. I've had nothing to drink because something else in the lunch is working for me. She needs to take this to the next level if anything's ever going to pan out for her. "Are you happy?" she asks. Startled, I say, "Yeah. Are you?" She leans in. "I could be." "What do you want to do?" I look at her straight on. We spend an hour in the bedroom in the condo on the fifteenth floor of the Doheny Plaza. That's all it requires. Afterward she says she feels disconnected from reality. I tell her it doesn't matter. I'm blushing when she tells me how nice my hands are. The premiere is at the Village and the after-party, elaborate and fanciful, is at the W Hotel. (It was supposed to be at the Napa Valley Grille - because of overcrowding was moved to this less accessible but larger venue.) Forced to watch people pretend to yell and cry for two and a half hours can push you to a dark distance that takes a day to come back from, yet I found the movie well made and coherent (which is always a miracle) even though I often had to think awful thoughts in order to stay awake. I'm standing by the pool talking to a young actress about fasting and her yoga routine and how superstoked she is to be in a movie about human sacrifices, and the initial shyness - apparent in large, soft eyes - is encouraging. But then you say the wrong thing and those eyes reveal an innate distrust mixed with a lingering curiosity that everyone shares out here and she drifts off, and looking up at the hotel, encased in the crowd, clutching my phone, I start counting how many rooms are lit and how many aren't and then realize I've had s** with five different people in this hotel, one of them now dead. I take a piece of sushi from a pa**ing tray. "Well, you did it," I tell the executive who allowed this movie to be made. Daniel Carter, who I've known since we were freshmen at Camden, is the director, but our friendship is worn out and he's been avoiding me. And tonight I see why: he's with Meghan Reynolds, so I can't offer the faked congratulations I prepared. Daniel sold his first script when he was twenty-two and has had no problems with his career since then. "She's dressed like a teenager," Blair says. "I guess that's because she is one." I glance over at Blair, then look back across the crowd at Meghan and Daniel. "I'm not going there with you now." "We all make choices, right?" "Your husband hates me." "No, he doesn't." "There was a girl at your house, at the party ... " The need to ask about this is so physical I can't put a halt to it. I turn to Blair. "Never mind." "I heard you had drinks with Julian last night," Blair says. She's staring at the pool, the title of the movie shimmering on the bottom in giant cursive lettering. "You heard?" I light a cigarette. "How did you hear this unless Julian told you?" Blair doesn't say anything. "So you're still in touch with Julian?" I ask. "Why?" I pause. "Does Trent know?" Another pause. "Or is that just a ... detail?" "What are you trying to say?" "That I'm surprised you're actually talking to me." "I just wanted to warn you about him. That's all." "Warn me? About what?" I ask. "I've been through the whole Julian thing before. I think I can handle it." "It's not a big ha**le," she says. "If you can just do me a favor and not talk to him if he tries to make contact it would make everything a lot easier." And then for emphasis she adds, "I'd appreciate it." "What's Julian doing these days? There was a rumor he was actually running a teenage hooker service." I pause. "It sounded like old times." "Look, if you can just do this one thing I'd really appreciate it." "Is this real? Or is this just an excuse to talk to me again?" "You could have called. You could have ... " Her voice trails off. "I tried," I say. "But you were angry." "Not angry," she says. "Just ... disappointed." She pauses. "You didn't try hard enough." For a few seconds we're both silent and it's a cold and minor variation on so many conversations we've had and I'm thinking about the blond girl on the veranda and I imagine Blair's thinking about the last time I made love to her. This disparity should scar me but doesn't. And then Blair's talking to a guy from CAA and a band begins playing, which I take as my cue to leave, but really it's the text I suddenly get that says I'm watching you that pushes me out of the party. At the valet in front of the hotel, Rip Millar grabs my arm as I'm texting Who is this? and I have to yank my arm away since I'm so alarmed by his appearance. I don't recognize Rip at first. His face is unnaturally smooth, redone in such a way that the eyes are shocked open with perpetual surprise; it's a face mimicking a face, and it looks agonized. The lips are too thick. The skin's orange. The hair is dyed yellow and carefully gelled. He looks like he's been quickly dipped in acid; things fell off, skin was removed. It's almost defiantly grotesque. He's on d**, I'm thinking. He has to be on d** to look like this. Rip's with a girl so young I mistake her for his daughter but then I remember Rip doesn't have any children. The girl has had so much work done that she looks deformed. Rip had been handsome once and his voice is the same whisper it was when we were nineteen. "Hey, Clay," Rip says. "Why are you back in town?" "Because I live here," I say. Rip's visage calmly scrutinizes me. "I thought you spent most of your time in New York." "I mean I'm back and forth." "I heard you met a friend of mine." "Who?" "Yeah," he says with a dreadful grin, his mouth filled with teeth that are too white. "I heard you really hit it off." I just want to leave. The fear is swarming. The black BMW suddenly materializes. A valet holds the door open. The horrible face forces me to glance anywhere but at him. "Rip, I've gotta go." I gesture helplessly at my car. "Let's have dinner while you're back," Rip says. "I'm serious." "Okay, but I really have to go now." "Descansado," he tells me. "What does that mean?" "Descansado," Rip says. "It means 'take it easy,'" he whispers, clutching the child next to him. "Yeah?" "It means relax." It happens again. While waiting for the girl to come over I'm reaching into the refrigerator for a bottle of white wine when I notice that a Diet Coke's missing and that cartons and jars have been rearranged and I'm telling myself this isn't possible, and after looking around the condo for other clues maybe it isn't. It's not until I'm staring at the Christmas tree that I finally hear the bones tapping against the windowpane: one strand of lights not connected to the other strands has been unplugged leaving a jagged black streak within the lit tree. This is the detail that announces: you've been warned. This is the detail that says: they want you to know. I drink a gla** of vodka, and then I drink another. Who is this? I text. A minute later I receive an answer from a blocked number that annihilates whatever peace the alcohol brought on. I promised someone I wouldn't tell you. I'm walking through the Grove to have lunch with Julian, who texts me that he's at a table next to the Pinkberry in the Farmers Market. I thought you said I was a total mistake, he typed back when I e-mailed him earlier. Maybe you are but I still want to see you was my reply. I keep ignoring the feeling of being followed. I keep ignoring the texts from the blocked number telling me I'm watching you. I tell myself the texts are coming from the dead boy whose condo I bought. It's easier that way. This morning the girl I called over when I got home from the W Hotel was asleep in the bedroom. I woke her up and told her she had to get out because the maid was coming. At the casting sessions it was all boys and though I wasn't exactly bored I didn't need to be there, and songs constantly floating in the car keep commenting on everything neutral encased within the windshield's frame ( ... one time you were blowing young ruffians ... sung over the digital billboard on Sunset advertising the new Pixar movie) and the fear builds into a muted fury and then has no choice but to melt away into a simple and addictive sadness. Daniel's arm around Meghan Reynolds's waist sometimes blocks the view at traffic lights. And then it's the blond girl on the veranda. It's almost always her image now that deflects everything. You knew that Meghan Reynolds was with Daniel," I say. "I saw them last night. You knew I'd been with her over the summer. You also knew she's with Daniel now." "Everyone knows," Julian says, confused. "So what?" "I didn't," I say. "Everyone? What does that mean?" "It means I guess you weren't paying attention." I move the conversation to the reason I'm here in the Farmers Market with him. I ask him a question about Blair. There's a longish pause. Julian's usual affability gets washed away with that question. "We were involved, I guess," he finally says. "You and Blair?" "Yeah." "She doesn't want you to talk to me," I say. "She warned me, in fact, not to." "Blair asked you not to speak to me? She warned you?" He sighs. "She must really be hurt." "Why is she so hurt?" "Didn't she tell you why?" he asks. "No," I say. "I didn't ask."