“Mom, tell him to answer me. Why do you lock your door, Clay?”

I turn around. “Because you both stole a quarter gram of cocaine from me the last time I left my door open. That’s why.”

My sisters don’t say anything. “Teenage Enema Nurses in Bondage” by a group called Killer Pussy comes on the radio, and my mother asks if we have to listen to this and my sisters tell her to turn it up, and no one says anything else until the song’s over. When we get home, my younger sister finally tells me, out by the pool, “That’s bullshit. I can get my own cocaine.”

The psychiatrist I see during the four weeks I’m back is young and has a beard and drives a 450 SL and has a house in Malibu. I’ll sit in his office in Westwood with the shades drawn and my sunglasses on, smoking a cigarette, sometimes cloves, just to irritate him, sometimes crying. Sometimes I’ll yell at him and he’ll yell back. I tell him that I have these bizarre sexual fantasies and his interest will increase noticeably. I’ll start to laugh for no reason and then feel sick. I lie to him sometimes. He’ll tell me about his mistress and the repairs being done on the house in Tahoe and I’ll shut my eyes and light another cigarette, gritting my teeth. Sometimes I just get up and leave.

I’m sitting in Du-par’s in Studio City, waiting for Blair and Alana and Kim. They had called me and asked me to go to a movie with them, but I’d taken some Valium and had fallen asleep earlier that afternoon, and I couldn’t get ready in time to meet them at the movie. So I told them I’d meet them at Du-par’s. I’m sitting at a booth near a large window, and I ask the waitress for a cup of coffee, but she doesn’t bring me anything, and she’s already started to wipe the table next to mine and taken another table’s order. But it’s just as well that she doesn’t bring me anything since my hands are shaking pretty badly. I light a cigarette and notice the big Christmas display above the main counter. A plastic, neon-lit Santa Claus is holding a three-foot-long Styrofoam candy cane and there are all these large green and red boxes leaning against it and I wonder if there’s anything in the boxes. Eyes suddenly focus in on the eyes of a small, dark, intense-looking guy wearing a Universal Studios T-shirt sitting two booths across from me. He’s staring at me and I look down and take a drag, a deep one, off the cigarette. The man keeps staring at me and all I can think is either he doesn’t see me or I’m not here. I don’t know why I think that. People are afraid to merge. Wonder if he’s for sale.

Blair suddenly kisses me on the cheek and sits down along with Alana and Kim. Blair tells me that Muriel was hospitalized for anorexia today. “She passed out in film class. So they took her to Cedars-Sinai which is not exactly the closest hospital to U.S.C.,” Blair says in a rush, lighting a cigarette. Kim is wearing pink sunglasses and she also lights one and then Alana asks for one.

“You are coming to Kim’s party, Clay? Aren’t you?” Alana asks.

“Oh yes, Clay. You’ve totally got to,” Kim says.

“When is it?” I ask, knowing that Kim always throws these parties, once a week or something like that.

“Sometime near the end of next week,” she tells me, though I realize that probably means tomorrow.

“I don’t know who to go with,” Alana says suddenly. “Oh, God, I don’t know who the f**k to go with.” She pauses. “I just realized that.”

“What about Cliff? Weren’t you going with Cliff?” asks Blair.

“I’m going with Cliff,” Kim says, looking at Blair.

“Oh, that’s right,” Blair says.

“Well, if you’re going with Cliff, I’ll go with Warren,” Alana says.

“But I thought you were going out with Warren,” Kim says to Blair.

I glance over at Blair.

“I was, but I’m not ‘going-out’ with Warren,” Blair says, missing a beat.

“You were not. You f**ked. You didn’t ‘go-out,’ ” Alana says.

“Whatever, whatever,” Blair says, flipping through her menu, glancing over at me, then away.

“Did you sleep with Warren?” Kim asks Alana.

Alana looks at Blair and then at Kim and then at me and says, “No. I didn’t.” She looks back at Blair and then at Kim again. “Did you?”

“No, but I thought Cliff was sleeping with Warren,” Kim says, confused for a moment.

“That might be true, but I thought Cliff was sleeping with that creepy Valley-turned-Punk, Didi Hellman,” says Blair.