“All of them.” I shudder. “Whew.”

“Where’s my gram?” she asks, then, “Oh look, a sale at Robinson’s.”

I light another cigarette.

“I usually don’t smoke,” I tell her. “But you’re doing something weird to me.”

“You shouldn’t smoke.” She yawns. “Those things’ll kill you. At least that’s what my hideous mother always said.”

“Did she die from cigarettes?” I ask. “No, her throat was slashed by some maniac ” she says.

“She didn’t smoke.” Pause. “Mexicans have basically raised me.” Another pause. “Let me tell you, that is no fun.”

“Yeah?” I smile grimly. “You think cigarettes will kill me?”

She takes another drag off her joint and then it’s gone and I pull into the garage and then we’re walking into the bedroom and everything’s speeding up, where the night’s heading is becoming clearer, and she checks out the house and asks for a large vodka on the rocks. I tell her beer is in the fridge and that she can get it the f**k herself. She pulls some kind of demented hissy fit and slouches into the kitchen, muttering, “Jesus, my father has better manners.”

“You can’t be fourteen,” I’m saying. “No way.” I’m taking off my tie and jacket, kicking my loafers off.

She walks back in with a Corona in one hand, a fresh j in the other. She’s wearing too much makeup, these ugly white Guess jeans but she looks like most girls, waxy and artificial.

“You poor pitiful bitch,” I murmur.

I lie down on the bed, kick back, my head resting on some bunched-up pillows, stare at her, reach down, adjust myself.

“You don’t have any furniture?” she asks.

“I’ve got a fridge. I got this bed,” I tell her, running my hand across designer sheets.

“Yeah. That’s true. Boy, you sure have a point.” She walks around the room, then over to the door near the end of the room, tries it, locked. “What’s in there?” she asks, looking at the sunrise/sunset chart I clipped from the L.A. Herald-Examiner for this week, Scotch-taped to the door.

“Just another room,” I tell her.

“Oh.” She looks at me, finally a little scared.

I pull my pants off, fold them, throw them on the floor. “Why do you have so much, like …” She stops. She’s not drinking the beer. She’s looking over at me, confused.

“So much what?” I ask, unbuttoning my shirt.

“Well … so much meat,” she says meekly. “I mean, there’s so much meat in your refrigerator.”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Because I get hungry? Because red snapper appalls me?” I put the shirt down, next to the pants. “Christ.”

“Oh.” She just stands there.

I don’t say anything else, prop my head back up on the pillows. I ease my underwear off slowly and motion for her to come over here, to me, and she slowly walks over, helpless, with a full beer, a sliver of lime in its top, a joint that has gone out. Bracelets circling her wrist look like they are made from fur.

“Uh, listen, this is—this is gonna sound like totally bizarre,” she stammers. “But are you …”

She’s coming nearer now, toward me, floating, unaware that her feet aren’t even touching the floor. I rise up, a huge erection on the verge of bursting jutting out in front of me.

“Are you, like …” She stops smiling. “Like, a …” She doesn’t finish.

“A vampire?” I suggest, grinning.

“No—an agent,” she asks seriously.

I clear my throat.

When I say no, I’m not an agent, she moans and I have her by the shoulders now and I’m taking her very slowly, calmly, to the bathroom and while I’m stripping her, throwing the ESPRIT T-shirt aside, into the bidet, she keeps giggling, wasted, and asking, “Doesn’t that sound weird to you?” and then finally her young perfect body is naked and she looks up into eyes that cloud over completely, black and bottomless, and she reaches up, weeping with disbelief, and touches my face and I smile and touch her smooth, hairless pu**y and she says, “Just don’t give me a hickey,” and then I scream and jump on her and rip her throat out and then I f**k her and then I play with her blood and after that basically everything’s okay.

I’m driving down Ventura tonight toward my psychiatrist’s office, over the hill. I did a couple of lines earlier and “Boys of Summer” is blasting from the tape deck and I’m singing along with it, air-jamming at stoplights, passing the Galleria, passing Tower Records and the Factory and the La Reina theater, which will close soon, and past the new Fatburger and the giant Nautilus that just opened. I got a call from Marsha earlier, inviting me to a party in Malibu. Dirk sent me these ZZ Top stickers to put on the lid of my coffin and I think that’s pretty tacky but I’ll keep them anyway. I’m watching all these people in their cars tonight and I’ve been thinking a lot about nuclear bombs since I’ve seen a couple of bumper stickers complaining about them.