the barrier

The barrier is the narrator’s recurring name for an emotional and perceptual separation that makes catastrophe seem distant even when he is physically present inside it. At a party, under Valium, it places Matt’s death, the cocaine, Terry’s behavior, the Trawler’s crimes, and the disappearance of girls behind a single insulating divide. The same separation later accompanies a collapse into tears and, under Quaalude, an unprecedented numbness. It is both shelter from overwhelming fear and an obstacle to recognizing, explaining, and responding to what is happening.

The Barrier at the Party

At Debbie’s party, the narrator’s distance from events begins as a physical crisis rather than calm detachment. Unable to follow the conversation about the guests’ late arrival, their appearance, and Robert’s encounters with movie stars, he grips a Corona bottle to steady himself and realizes that an anxiety attack is imminent. As Debbie takes his hand and helps guide the girls back toward the pool, he can scarcely hear her: his attention fixes instead on Susan’s hand clasping Robert’s, an intimacy that has become openly permissible. The pool blurs as he moves toward it, and he tells Debbie that he needs to return to the house.

Later, the narrator describes the Valium as having taken effect fully. Susan’s casual use of “babe” for Robert becomes, to him, confirmation of a truth he is beginning to perceive. Yet that recognition takes place behind the barrier: the party, Matt’s death, cocaine, Terry’s conduct, the Trawler, and the missing girls all seem ridiculous and remote. His image of beams of light appearing in a dark cave gives the moment a double meaning. Evidence is beginning to illuminate the situation, but the drug-induced distance also dulls his response to what the evidence implies.

That detachment complicates his exchange with Robert about Terry. Robert condemns Terry’s conduct toward his daughter’s friends, while the narrator privately recalls the accusations against Robert and the things he believes Robert has done since entering their lives. He also recognizes that Robert’s reaction may be homophobic, and briefly connects it to his own earlier discomfort with Liz’s drunken advances. The Valium makes him placid rather than openly confrontational. He answers Robert with restrained, taunting remarks, but the barrier leaves the conflict suspended: he can register its contradictions without turning them into a clear accusation.

From Suspicion to Collapse

The distance does not prevent the narrator from trying to warn Debbie. He insists that there is a timeline connecting Robert to the missing girls and Matt, calls Robert dangerous and dishonest, and says that he fears Robert will do something to Susan. Debbie’s silence and attention to her wineglass make him realize that she is reconsidering his sanity. As he becomes spacier, he feels himself moving almost behind the barrier, and lies down with his eyes shut.

When Debbie asks what he understands, he recognizes that she expects him to give up his account and adopt hers. He goes along with that expectation, apologizes, and says he is tired, even though he cannot make sense of what is happening or of what he will do next. The performance of an ordinary explanation holds only briefly. Debbie notices that he is crying; he touches his face, discovers that his cheeks are wet, and breaks into uncontrollable sobs.

Debbie comforts him and stays close as the crying subsides. The narrator understands the tears as a release of accumulated fear and the stress of being afraid all the time, combined with the relief the Valium brings. He eventually falls asleep in his tennis shorts and T-shirt. At seven-thirty the next morning, Debbie wakes him and reminds him that he will be late for school. The sequence shows the barrier failing to erase fear: what had appeared to him as distant and absurd returns as an involuntary emotional breakdown.

Drugged Numbness and Its Limits

A later night brings another, more deliberate retreat from consciousness. The narrator calls for Shingy while moving through the house, then locks himself in his mother’s bedroom, drags the comforter from the bed, and shuts himself in the walk-in closet. He takes a Quaalude and blacks out. On waking in the early dawn, he thinks he hears Shingy barking, but the sound has occurred only in a dream. The dog is nowhere in the house, and its food and water bowls are empty.

The Quaalude helps him pretend that the morning is normal and imagine that he can face school, Debbie’s confrontation, and whatever awaits him without being fazed. He places Matt’s jockey shorts and the cassette back in the bottom drawer of his bedroom. The concealed objects remain present, but he experiences them from within a newly achieved numbness, as though nothing could hurt him. He imagines himself and Susan floating over the same empty desert plains, with everyone heading there, some sooner than others. His repeated assertion that it means nothing, followed by the reference to “Vienna,” registers emotional blankness rather than resolution.

The Barrier and the Escalating Crisis

The next morning makes the cost of detachment immediate. Steven calls from the American Airlines terminal at LAX, having arrived on an early flight from JFK, and leaves a message asking whether Debbie is with the narrator. She has disappeared from Stone Canyon; Terry and Liz are contacting people close to her, and there is blood by the pool and on the driveway. The narrator does not answer the call. He drives to school and finds Susan beneath the bell tower, where she asks whether Debbie came to his house. He says she did not and that he had not known she left Bel Air.

He is initially shocked that Susan has told Debbie about Matt, and anger briefly rises beneath the drug’s calming warmth. But he does not confront her: Debbie is gone, Matt is gone, and more pressing matters dominate the morning. The account ends with a sense of acceleration, as urgency touches everyone. In that context, the barrier is not simply an image for numbness. It marks the divide between knowing enough to be afraid and being able to respond coherently—a divide that leaves the narrator trying to perform normality while events gather speed.