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of Cafe Casino and Julian gets out. He sees me and, though it looks like he doesn’t want to, comes over. His hand falls on my shoulder and I shake his other hand.
    “Julian,” I say. “How’ve you been?”
    “Hey, Clay,” he says. “What’s going on? How long have you been back?”
    “Just like five days,” I say. Just five days.
    “What are you doing?” he asks. “What’s going on?”
    “I’m waiting for Rip.”
    Julian looks really tired and kind of weak, but I tell him he looks great and he says that I do too, even though I need to get a tan.
    “Hey, listen,” he starts. “I’m sorry about not meeting you and Trent at Carney’s that night and freaking out at the party. It’s just like, I’ve been strung out for like the past four days, and I just, like, forgot … I haven’t even been home .…” He slaps his forehead. “Oh man, my mother must be freaking out.” He pauses, doesn’t smile. “I’m just so sick of dealing with people.” He looks past me. “Oh shit, I don’t know.”
    I look over at the black Porsche and try to see past the tinted windows and begin to wonder if there’s anyone else in the car. Julian starts playing with his keys.
    “Do you want something, man?” he asks. “I mean, I like you and if you need anything, just come see me, okay?”
    “Thanks. I don’t need anything, not really.” I stop and feel kind of sad. “Jesus, Julian, how have you been? We’ve got to get together or something. I haven’t seen you in a long time.” I stop. “I’ve missed you.”
    Julian stops playing with his keys and looks away from me. “I’ve been all right. How was … oh shit, where were you, Vermont?”
    “No, New Hampshire.”
    “Oh yeah. How was it?”
    “Okay. Heard you dropped out of U.S.C.”
    “Oh yeah. Couldn’t deal with it. It’s so totally bogus. Maybe next year, you know?”
    “Yeah …” I say. “Have you talked to Trent?”
    “Oh man, if I want to see him, I’ll see him.”
    There’s another pause, this time longer.
    “What have you been doing?” I finally ask.
    “What?”
    “Where have you been? What’ve you been doing?”
    “Oh, I don’t know. I’ve been around. Went to that Tom Petty concert at the … Forum. He sang that song, oh, you know, that song we always used to listen to .…” Julian closes his eyes and tries to remember the song. “Oh, shit, you know .…” He begins to hum and then sing the words. “ Straight into darkness, we went straight into darkness, out over that line, yeah straight into darkness, straight into night. …”
    The two girls look over at us. I look at the Perrier bottle, a little embarrassed, and say, “Yeah, I remember.”
    “Love that song,” he says.
    “Yeah, so did I,” I say. “What else you been up to?”
    “No good,” he laughs. “Oh, I don’t know. Just been hanging out.”
    “You called me and left a message, didn’t you?”
    “Oh, yeah.”
    “What did you want?”
    “Oh forget it, nothing too important.”
    “Come on, what is it?”
    “I said forget it, Clay.”
    He takes off his sunglasses and squints and his eyes look blank, and the only thing I can think of to say is, “How was the concert?”
    “What?” He starts to bite his nails.
    “The concert. How was it?”
    He’s staring off somewhere else. The two girls get up and leave.
    “It was a bummer, man. A real fuckin’ bummer,” he finally says, and then walks away. “Later.”
    “Yeah, later,” I say, and look back at the Porsche and get the feeling that there’s someone else in it.

R ip never shows up at Cafe Casino and he calls me up, later, around three and tells me to come over to the apartment on Wilshire. Spin, his roommate, is sunbathing nude on the balcony and Devo’s on the stereo. I walk into Rip’s bedroom and he’s still in bed, nude, and there’s a mirror on the nightstand, next to the bed,and he’s cutting a line of coke. And he tells me to come in, sit down, check the view out. I walk