Imperial Bedrooms - By Bret Easton Ellis Page 0,5

flashes 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 glass cocktail 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 massive 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's