“Ecstasy? LSD? Is it smack?” I’m gagging. She lies there silently.

“Oh Christ no,” I say, feeling it. “It’s … heroin,” I croak. “Oh shit. Now I’m majorly tripping.”

I roll off the bed onto the floor, naked, my head killing me, this poison cramping my stomach up, and I crawl toward the bathroom, and all the time this f**king drugged-out bitch who has snapped out of her stupor is now crawling along with me, squealing “Let’s play let’s play let’s play you’re a cowboy and I’m a squaw, got it?” and I growl at her, trying to scare her, showing her my teeth, the fangs, my horrible transformed mouth, my eyes black, lidless. But she doesn’t freak out, just laughs, completely high. I finally make it to the toilet and on my back vomit up her blood in geysers and then pass out with the door closed, on the floor. I wake the next night, groggy, her blood dried all over my face and neck and chest. I wash it off in a long, hot shower with a loofah and then I walk into the bedroom. On the bed, written on a matchbook from California Pizza Kitchen, is her name and phone number and below that, “Had a wild time.” I go to the other room, swallow some Valium, open up my coffin and take a little nap.

I wake up later, restless, still kind of weak, grateful for the new customized coffin I had this guy out in Burbank build for me: FM radio, tape cassette, digital alarm clock, Perry Ellis sheets, phone, small color TV with built-in VCR and cable (MTV, HBO). Elvira is the hottest-looking woman on TV and she hosts this horror-movie show on Sunday nights which is my favorite show on TV and I would like to meet Elvira one day and maybe one day I will.

I get up, take my vitamins, work out with weights while playing Madonna on CD, take a shower, study my hair, blond and thick, and I’m thinking about calling Attila, my hairdresser, and making an appointment for tomorrow night and then I call and leave a message. The maid has come and cleaned, which she is supposed to do, and I have specified to her that if she ever tries to open the coffin I will take her two little children and turn them into a human tostada with extra lettuce and saisa and eat them, muchas gracias. I get dressed: Levi’s, penny loafers, no socks, a white T-shirt from Maxfield’s, an Armani vest.

I drive over to the Sun ‘n’ Fun twenty-four-hour tanning parlor on Woodman and get ten minutes of rays, then head over to Hollywood to maybe visit Dirk, who is mostly into pretty boys, hustlers down on Santa Monica, in bars, at gyms. He likes chain saws, which are okay if you have your place soundproofed like Dirk does. I pass an alley, four parking lots, a 7-Eleven, numerous police cars.

It’s a warm night and I pop open the sunroof, play the radio loud. Stop off at Tower Records and buy a couple of tapes, then it’s to the twenty-four-hour Hughes on Beverly and Doheny and pick up a lot of steak in case I don’t feel like going out next week because raw meat is okay even though the juice is thin and not salty enough. The fat chick at checkout flirts with me while I write a check for seven hundred and forty dollars—the only thing I bought is filet mignon. Stop off at a couple of clubs, places where I have a free pass or know the doormen, check out the scene, then drive around some more. Think about the girl I picked up at Powertools, the way I drove her to a bus stop on Ventura Boulevard, dropped her off, hoping she doesn’t remember. I drive by a sporting goods store and think about what happened to Roderick and shudder, get queasy. But I take a Valium and soon I’m feeling pretty good, passing by the billboard on Sunset that says DISAPPEAR HERE and I wink over at two blond girls, both wearing Walkmen, in a convertible 450SL at a stoplight we’re at and I smile back at them and they giggle and I start following them down Sunset, think about stopping for maybe some sushi with them, and I’m about to tell them to pull over when I suddenly see that Thrifty drugstore sign coming up, the huge neon-blue lowercase t flashing off and on, floating above buildings and billboards, the moon hanging low behind, above it, and I’m getting closer to it, getting weak, and I make this totally illegal U-turn, and still feeling sort of sick but better the farther I get from it, my rearview mirror turned down, I head over to Dirk’s place.

Dirk lives in a huge old-style Spanish-looking place that was built a long time ago up in the hills and I let myself in through the back door, and walking through the kitchen, I can hear the TV blaring up above. There are two hacksaws in a sink filled with pink water and suds and I smile to myself, hungry. Whenever I hear about some young guy on the news who was found near the beach, maybe part of his body, an arm or a leg or a torso, sucked clean in a bag near a freeway underpass, I have to whisper to myself, “Dirk.” Take two Coronas out of the fridge and run upstairs to his room, open the door and it’s dark. Dirk’s sitting on the couch, wearing a PHIL COLLINS T-shirt and jeans, a sombrero on his head and Tony Lamas, watching Bad Boys on the VCR, rolling a joint, and he looks full, a bloody towel in the corner.