Less Than Zero

Later, Clay goes to Kim’s house and sees Blair. They discuss going to a movie while a dog eats a cigarette off the floor.

Clay goes with Kim and Blair to a gruesome movie about teenage girls being murdered. There they run into a very blonde and tan couple, Lene and Troy, whom Kim wants to avoid. The couple tells them that they were on MV3, and asks if they saw them. Blair and Kim say that they haven’t, although they, in fact, were aware of the couple’s appearance.

Later, Clay goes out drinking with Blair and Kim using Blair’s fake ID, and Kim drinks heavily while they make fun of the couple they just saw.

The following day, Trent calls Clay and apathetically explains that he is bummed out about the fact that he suspects that a girl he likes is seeing someone else. The two decide to go to a movie and smoke joints in the theater. Leaving the movie, they see a girl named Ronette, whom Trent knows. Ronette suggests that they go rollerblading, but the security guard explains that it is not allowed.

Trent falls asleep in Clay’s car, while Ronette explains that she dropped out of school to become a hairdresser and also sings backup vocals. Clay drops her off and Trent offers Clay another joint. The next day, Clay brings Julian the requested money in an envelope. Julian barely converses with him and sits watching MTV. The following day, Rip calls Clay and suggests that the two meet for lunch. While waiting for him, Clay drinks three glasses of wine, and Rip asks if he wants drugs. A woman at the cafe across the street faints from the heat, and a few people rush to her side before an ambulance arrives. Rip asks Clay what he remembers from the previous summer, which includes various isolated memories such as listening to the B-52s, seeing a lot of men dressed as women, and meeting a lot of English men, one of whom he thinks that Blair slept with.

Some time later, Clay, Blair, and Kim are looking for a club to go to, first in search of a particular DJ. They don’t go to the intended club, The Palace, because Kim sees Lene outside. Eventually settling on The Edge, Clay finds himself snorting cocaine in the bathroom with another friend, Lindsay. In the club, Clay watches a girl attempt to converse with the bartender. Clay realizes he will be home for only two more weeks.

On the subsequent day, Clay visits Trent’s apartment and finds Rip—who, in Julian’s absence, has become Clay’s dealer—there. While Trent is in his room, Clay makes conversation with Trent’s roommate, Chris, who tells Trent that he thinks he is enrolled in UCLA but can’t remember if he registered for classes. Clay also sees Atiff, a freshman at UCLA, who complains about losing his Louis Vuitton luggage on a flight back from Italy. Clay stares at Trent’s Jacuzzi and then happens upon another kid named Alan, who, according to Chris, has been passed out in Chris’s room due to mono. Rip explains that he was offered $600 recently to escort a man to Laguna. Clay has a flashback within his dreams of walking home as a child and staring at the colors of the sky. He admits that when he was younger, he would take Valium to fall asleep to come down from his cocaine use.

On a rainy night back in the present, Clay occasionally gets phone calls on which no one on the other line speaks, even though he waits three minutes. Clay wonders how many days he has been home. Clay’s psychiatrist tells him that he is writing a screenplay, and asks if Clay will help, since he encourages Clay to be less passive.

Clay meets Trent and Blair at Spago, a famous LA restaurant. Trent complains that he has to spend the following day with his mom at their home in Palm Springs to watch the gardeners plant cacti. He decides it might be worth going since he knows a cocaine dealer there. Trent tells Clay that there are people doing cocaine in the bathroom. Clay suggests that Trent join them, which leads the two to bicker about who each one is having sex with. During the argument, Blair goes to the bathroom, and Clay claims that he and Blair are not together. Trent says that he needs to tell Blair that. She returns from the restroom and asks what they were talking about. She seems to be in a good mood, which makes Clay think that she did cocaine in the bathroom.

At the next club they go to, called After Hours, a 16-year-old blonde flirts with Clay. He ends up going home to sleep with her at her parents’ house, and when he goes back out to his car, there is a note in Blair’s handwriting asking if he had fun.

At the psychiatrist’s office again, Clay is sneezing blood because of his cocaine use. He also begins to cry, but the psychiatrist assures him that he will be fine and tells him not to be so mundane.

Clay flashes back to a memory from his grandfather’s birthday in Palm Springs: His father drank too much, and, when a cousin read about a plane crash, he announced that such would be his preferred way to die.

Back in the present, Clay visits Trent. Then, he goes to Rip’s house, where they make plans to visit a 40-year-old man named Dead in Malibu to buy cocaine. When they meet Dead, he explains that the high schooler who bought drugs from him was recently shot by a narc. The three go to an arcade in Westwood, where they spend two hours before the man at the ticket booth tells Trent that he cannot make change for his one-hundred-dollar bills, at which point they leave to go finish their cocaine.

Later, Clay goes to a party that Blair’s father is hosting to celebrate the film premier of an Australian actor whom he wants to appear in one of his films. Several famous actors attend, including one female actor who has just left the Golden Globe Awards, where her husband lost, and needs a drink. Clay talks with a film student while Blair, Alana, and Kim join them, but Blair ignores Clay.

Blair suggests a good-looking actor named Marco Ferraro for the role in her dad’s new movie, Beastman. Her dad promises to cast him or Sting in one of his movies for her soon. Blair remains demonstrably angry with Clay.

Clay calls Blair to apologize for sleeping with someone else, but she hangs up on him. After calling Rip and visiting Trent’s apartments, Clay still cannot locate Julian. At a party at Kim’s house, Clay meets a young man who knows Julian, but his advice that Julian may be in Aspen leads Clay nowhere.