American psycho: a novel

"Yes," I reiterate, looking up at the guard.

"You sure?" the guard asks.

Smiling professionally, I tell him, "Please just give us a minute. We need some privacy." I turn back to Luis. "Now come on, Luis. Get up. You're slobbering." I look back up at the security guard and mouth, holding up a hand, while nodding, "Just a minute, please."

The security guard nods unsurely and moves hesitantly back to his post.

Still kneeling, I grab Luis by his heaving shoulders and calmly tell him, my voice lowered, as threatening as possible, as if speaking to a child about to be punished, "Listen to me, Luis. If you do not stop crying, you fucking pathetic faggot, I am going to slit your fucking throat. Are you listening to me?" I slap him lightly on the face a couple of times. "I can't be more emphatic."

"Oh just kill me," he wails, his eyes closed, nodding his head back and forth, retreating further into incoherence; then he blubbers, "If I can't have you, I don't want to live. I want to die."

My sanity is in danger of fading, right here in Barney's, and I grab Luis by the collar, scrunching it up in my fist, and pulling his face very close to mine, I whisper, under my breath, "Listen to me, Luis. Are you listening to me? I usually don't warn people, Luis. So-be-thankful-I-am-warning-you."

His rationality shot to hell, making guttural noises, his head bent down shamefully, he offers a response that's barely audible. I grab his hair – it's stiff with mousse; I recognize the scent as Cactus, a new brand – and yanking his head up, snarling, I spit out, "Listen, you want to die? I'll do it, Luis. I've done it before and I will fucking gut you, rip your fucking stomach open and cram your intestines down your fucking faggot throat until you choke on them."

He's not listening. Still on my haunches, I just stare at him in disbelief.

"Please, Patrick, please. Listen to me, I've figured it all out. I'm quitting P & P, you can too, and, and, and we'll relocate to Arizona, and then–"

"Shut up, Luis." I shake him. "Oh my god, just shut up." I quickly stand, brushing myself off, and when I think his outburst has subsided and I'm able to walk away, Luis grabs at my right ankle and tries to hang on as I'm leaving Barney's and I end up dragging him along for six feet before I have to kick him in the face, while smiling helplessly at a couple who are browsing near the sock department. Luis looks up at me, imploring, the beginnings of a small gash forming on his left cheek. The couple move away.

"I love you," he miserably wails. "I love you."

"I'm convinced, Luis," I shout at him. "You've convinced me. Now get up."

Luckily, a salesperson, alarmed by the scene Luis has made, intervenes and helps him up.

A few minutes later, after he's sufficiently calmed down, the two of us are standing just inside Barney's main entrance. He has a handkerchief in one hand, his eyes are shut tightly, a bruise slowly forms, swelling beneath his left eye. He seems composed.

"Just, you know, have the guts to face, uh, reality," I tell him.

Anguished, he stares out the revolving doors at the warm falling rain and then, with a mournful sigh, turns to me. I'm looking at the rows, the endless rows, of ties, then at the ceiling.

Killing Child at Zoo

A string of days pass. During the nights I've been sleeping in twenty-minute intervals. I feel aimless, things look cloudy, my homicidal compulsion, which surfaces, disappears, surfaces, leaves again, lies barely dormant during a quiet lunch at Alex Goes to Camp, where I have the lamb sausage salad with lobster and white beans sprayed with lime and foie gras vinegar. I'm wearing faded jeans, an Armani jacket, and a white, hundred-and-forty-dollar Comme des Garçons T-shirt. I make a phone call to check my messages. I return some videotapes. I stop at an automated teller. Last night, Jeanette asked me, "Patrick, why do you keep razor blades in your wallet?" The Patty Winters Show this morning was about a boy who fell in love with a box of soap.

Unable to maintain a credible public persona, I find myself roaming the zoo in Central Park, restlessly. Drug dealers hang out along the perimeter by the gates and the smell of horse shit from passing carriages drifts over them into the zoo, and the tips of skyscrapers, apartment buildings on Fifth Avenue, the Trump Plaza, the AT&T building, surround the park which surrounds the zoo and heightens its unnaturalness. A black custodian mopping the floor in the men's room asks me to flush the urinal after I use it. "Do it yourself, nigger," I tell him and when he makes a move toward me, the flash of a knifeblade causes him to back off. All the information booths seem closed. A blind man chews, feeds, on a pretzel. Two drunks, faggots, console each other on a bench. Nearby a mother breast-feeds her baby, which awakens something awful in me.

The zoo seems empty, devoid of life. The polar bears look stained and drugged. A crocodile floats morosely in an oily makeshift pond. The puffins stare sadly from their glass cage. Toucans have beaks as sharp as knives. The seals stupidly dive off rocks into swirling black water, barking mindlessly. The zookeepers feed them dead fish. A crowd gathers around the tank, mostly adults, a few accompanied by children. On the seals' tank a plaque warns: COINS CAN KILL – IF SWALLOWED, COINS CAN LODGE IN AN ANIMAL'S STOMACH AND CAUSE ULCERS, INFECTIONS AND DEATH. DO NOT THROW COINS IN THE POOL. So what do I do? Toss a handful of change into the tank when none of the zookeepers are watching. It's not the seals I hate – it's the audience's enjoyment of them that bothers me. The snowy owl has eyes that look just like mine, especially when it widens them. And while I stand there, staring at it, lowering my sunglasses, something unspoken passes between me and the bird – there's this weird kind of tension, a bizarre pressure, that fuels the following, which starts, happens, ends, very quickly.

In the darkness of the penguin habitat – Edge of the Icepack is what the zoo pretentiously calls it – it's cool, in sharp contrast to the humidity outside. The penguins in the tank glide lazily underwater past the glass walls where spectators crowd in to stare. The penguins on the rocks, not swimming, look dazed, stressed out, tired and bored; they mostly yawn, sometimes stretching. Fake penguin noises, cassettes probably, play over a sound system and someone has turned up the volume because it's so crowded in the room. The penguins are cute, I guess. I spot one that looks like Craig McDermott.

A child, barely five, finishes eating a candy bar. His mother tells him to throw the wrapper away, then resumes talking to another woman, who is with a child around the same age, the three of them staring into the dirty blueness of the penguin habitat. The first child moves toward the trash can, located in a dim corner in the back of the room, that I am now crouching behind. He stands on tiptoes, carefully throwing the wrapper into the trash. I whisper something. The child spots me and just stands there, away from the crowd, slightly scared but also dumbly fascinated. I stare back.

"Would you like… a cookie?" I ask, reaching into my pocket.

He nods his small head, up, then down, slowly, but before he can answer, my sudden lack of care crests in a massive wave of fury and I pull the knife out of my pocket and I stab him, quickly, in the neck.

Bewildered, he backs into the trash can, gurgling like an infant, unable to scream or cry out because of the blood that starts spurting out of the wound in his throat. Though I'd like to watch this child die, I push him down behind the garbage can, then casually mingle in with the rest of the crowd and touch the shoulder of a pretty girl, and smiling I point to a penguin preparing to make a dive. Behind me, if one were to look closely, one could see the child's feet kicking in back of the trash can. I keep an eye on the child's mother, who after a while notices her son's absence and starts scanning the crowd. I touch the girl's shoulder again, and she smiles at me and shrugs apologetically, but I can't figure out why.

When the mother finally notices him she doesn't scream because she can see only his feet and assumes that he's playfully hiding from her. At first she seems relieved that she's spotted him and moving toward the trash can she coos, "Are you playing hide-and-seek, honey?" But from where I stand, behind the pretty girl, who I've already found out is foreign, a tourist, I can see the exact moment when the expression on the mother's face changes into fear, and slinging her purse over her shoulder she pulls the trash can away, revealing a face completely covered in red blood and the child's having trouble blinking its eyes because of this, grabbing at his throat, now kicking weakly. The mother makes a sound that I cannot describe – something high-pitched that turns into screaming.

After she falls to the floor beside the body, a few people turning around, I find myself shouting out, my voice heavy with emotion, "I'm a doctor, move back, I'm a doctor," and I kneel beside the mother before an interested crowd gathers around us and I pry her arms off the child, who is now on his back struggling vainly for breath, the blood coming evenly but in dying arcs out of his neck and onto his Polo shirt, which is drenched with it. And I have a vague awareness during the minutes I hold the child's head, reverently, careful not to bloody myself, that if someone makes a phone call or if a real doctor is at hand, there's a good chance the child can be saved. But this doesn't happen. Instead I hold it, mindlessly, while the mother – homely, Jewish-looking, overweight, pitifully trying to appear stylish in designer jeans and an unsightly leaf-patterned black wool sweater – shrieks do something, do something, do something, the two of us ignoring the chaos, the people who start screaming around us, concentrating only on the dying child.

Though I am satisfied at first by my actions, I'm suddenly jolted with a mournful despair at how useless, how extraordinarily painless, it is to take a child's life. This thing before me, small and twisted and bloody, has no real history, no worthwhile past, nothing is really lost. It's so much worse (and more pleasurable) taking the life of someone who has hit his or her prime, who has the beginnings of a full history, a spouse, a network of friends, a career, whose death will upset far more people whose capacity for grief is limitless than a child's would, perhaps ruin many more lives than just the meaningless, puny death of this boy. I'm automatically seized with an almost overwhelming desire to knife the boy's mother too, who is in hysterics, but all I can do is slap her face harshly and shout for her to calm down. For this I'm given no disapproving looks. I'm dimly aware of light coming into the room, of a door being opened somewhere, of the presence of zoo officials, a security guard, someone – one of the tourists? – taking flash pictures, the penguins freaking out in the tank behind us, slamming themselves against the glass in a panic. A cop pushes me away, even though I tell him I'm a physician. Someone drags the boy outside, lays him on the ground and removes his shirt. The boy gasps, dies. The mother has to be restrained.

I feel empty, hardly here at all, but even the arrival of the police seems an insufficient reason to move and I stand with the crowd outside the penguin habitat, with dozens of others, taking a long time to slowly blend in and then back away, until finally I'm walking down Fifth Avenue, surprised by how little blood has stained my jacket, and I stop in a bookstore and buy a book and then at a Dove Bar stand on the corner of Fifty-sixth Street, where I buy a Dove Bar – a coconut one – and I imagine a hole, widening in the sun, and for some reason this breaks the tension I started feeling when I first noticed the snowy owl's eyes and then when it recurred after the boy was dragged out of the penguin habitat and I walked away, my hands soaked with blood, uncaught.

Girls

My appearances in the office the last month or so have been sporadic to say the least. All I seem to want to do now is work out, lifting weights, mostly, and secure reservations at new restaurants I've already been to, then cancel them. My apartment reeks of rotten fruit, though actually the smell is caused by what I scooped out of Christie's head and poured into a Marco glass bowl that sits on a counter near the entranceway. The head itself lies covered with brain pulp, hollow and eyeless, in the corner of the living room beneath the piano and I plan to use it as a jack-o'-lantern on Halloween. Because of the stench I decide to use Paul Owen's apartment for a little tryst I have planned for tonight. I've had the premises scanned for surveillance devices; disappointingly, there were none. Someone I talk to through my lawyer tells me that Donald Kimball, the private investigator, has heard that Owen really is in London, that someone spotted him twice in the lobby of Claridge's, once each at a tailor on Savile Row and at a trendy new restaurant in Chelsea. Kimball flew over two nights ago, which means no one is keeping watch over the apartment anymore, and the keys I stole from Owen still function so I was able to bring the tools (a power drill, a bottle of acid, the nail gun, knives, a Bic lighter) over there after lunch. I hire two escort girls from a reputable if somewhat sleazy private establishment I've never used before, charging them on Owen's gold American Express card which, I suppose because everyone thinks Owen is now in London, no one has put a trace on, though there is one on his platinum AmEx. The Patty Winters Show today was – ironically, I thought – about Princess Di's beauty tips.

Midnight. The conversation I have with the two girls, both very young, blond hardbodies with big tits, is brief, since I'm having a difficult time containing my disordered self.

"You live in a palace, mister," one of the girls, Torri, says in a baby's voice, awed by Owen's ridiculous-looking condo. "It's a real palace."

Annoyed, I shoot her a glance. "It's not that nice."

While making drinks from Owen's well-stocked bar, I mention to both of them that I work on Wall Street, at Pierce & Pierce. Neither seems particularly interested. Again, I find myself hearing a voice – one of theirs – asking if that's a shoe store. Tiffany flips through an issue of GQ that's three months old, sitting on the black leather couch beneath the strip of faux-cowhide paneling, and she's looking confused, like she doesn't understand something, anything. I'm thinking, Pray, you bitch, just pray, and then I have to admit to myself what a turn-on it is encouraging these girls to debase themselves in front of me for what amounts to pocket change. I also mention, after pouring them another drink, that I went to Harvard, and then I ask, after a pause, "Ever hear of it?"

I'm shocked when Torri answers, "I had a business acquaintance who said he went there." She shrugs dumbly.

"A client?" I ask, interested.

"Well," she starts nervously. "Let's just say a business acquaintance."

"Was this a pimp?" I ask – then the weird part happens.

"Well" – she stalls again before continuing – "let's just call him a business acquaintance." She sips from her glass. "He said he went to Harvard, but… I didn't believe him." She looks over at Tiffany, then back at me. Our mutual silence encourages her to keep talking and she continues haltingly. "He had, like, this monkey. And I would have to watch this monkey in… his apartment." She stops, starts, continues in monotone, occasionally gulping. "I'd want to watch TV all day, 'cause there was nothing else to do while the guy was out… and while I tried to keep an eye on the monkey. But there was… something wrong with this monkey." She stops and takes a deep breath. "The monkey would only watch…" Again she stops, takes in the room, a quizzical expression creasing her face as if she's not sure she should be telling us this story; if we, me and the other bitch, should be privy to this information. And I brace myself for something shocking, something revelatory, a connection. "It would only watch…" She sighs, then in a sudden rush admits, "The Opnah Winfrey Show and that's all it would watch. The guy had tapes and tapes of it and he had made all of them for this monkey" – now she looks over at me, imploringly, as if she's losing her mind here, right now, in Owen's apartment and wants me to, what, verify it? – "with the commercials edited out. One time I tried to… turn the channel, turn one of the tapes off… if I wanted to watch a soap instead or something… but" – she finishes her drink and rolling her eyes, obviously upset by this story, continues bravely – "the monkey would s-s-screech at me and it would only calm down when Oprah was on." She swallows, clears her throat, looks like she's going to cry but doesn't. "And you know, you try to turn the channel and that d-damn monkey would try to scratch you," she concludes bitterly and hugs herself, shivering, uselessly trying to warm herself.

Silence. Arctic, frigid, utter silence. The light burning over us in the apartment is cold and electric. Standing there, I look at Torri then at the other girl, Tiffany, who looks queasy.

I finally say something, stumbling over my own words. "I don't care… whether you've led a… decent life… or not."

Sex happens – a hard-core montage. After I shave Torri's pussy she lies on her back on Paul's futon and spreads her legs while I finger her and suck it off, sometimes licking her asshole. Then Tiffany sucks my cock – her tongue is hot and wet and she keeps flicking it over the head, irritating me – while I call her a nasty whore, a bitch. Fucking one of them with a condom while the other sucks my balls, lapping at them, I stare at the Angelic silk-screen print hanging over the bed and I'm thinking about pools of blood, geysers of the stuff. Sometimes it's very quiet in the room except for the wet sounds my cock makes slipping in and out of one of the girls' vaginas. Tiffany and I take turns eating Torri's hairless cunt and asshole. The two of them come, yelling simultaneously, in a sixty-nine position. Once their cunts are wet enough I bring out a dildo and let the two of them play with it. Torri spreads her legs and fingers her own slit while Tiffany fucks her with the huge, greased dildo, Torri urging Tiffany to fuck her cunt harder with it, until finally, gasping, she comes.

Again I make the two of them eat each other out but it starts failing to turn me on – all I can think about is blood and what their blood will look like and though Torri knows what to do, how to eat pussy, it doesn't subdue me and I push her away from Tiffany's cunt and start licking and biting at the pink, soft, wet cuntness while Torri spreads her ass and sits on Tiffany's face while fingering her own slit. Tiffany hungrily tongues her pussy, wet and glistening, and Torri reaches down and squeezes Tiffany's big, firm tits. I'm biting hard, gnawing at Tiffany's cunt, and she starts tensing up. "Relax," I say soothingly. She starts squealing, trying to pull away, and finally she screams as my teeth rip into her flesh. Torri thinks Tiffany is coming and grinds her own cunt harder onto Tiffany's mouth, smothering her screams, but when I look up at Torri, blood covering my face, meat and pubic hair hanging from my mouth, blood pumping from Tiffany's torn cunt onto the comforter, I can feel her sudden rush of horror. I use Mace to blind both of them momentarily and then I knock them unconscious with the butt of the nail gun.

Torri awakens to find herself tied up, bent over the side of the bed, on her back, her face covered with blood because I've cut her lips off with a pair of nail scissors. Tiffany is tied up with six pairs of Paul's suspenders on the other side of the bed, moaning with fear, totally immobilized by the monster of reality. I want her to watch what I'm going to do to Torri and she's propped up in a way that makes this unavoidable. As usual, in an attempt to understand these girls I'm filming their deaths. With Torri and Tiffany I use a Minox LX ultra-miniature camera that takes 9.5mm film, has a 15mm f/3.5 lens, an exposure meter and a built-in neutral density filter and sits on a tripod. I've put a CD of the Traveling Wilburys into a portable CD player that sits on the headboard above the bed, to mute any screams.

I start by skinning Torri a little, making incisions with a steak knife and ripping bits of flesh from her legs and stomach while she screams in vain, begging for mercy in a high thin voice, and I'm hoping that she realizes her punishment will end up being relatively light compared to what I've planned for the other one. I keep spraying Torri with Mace and then I try to cut off her fingers with nail scissors and finally I pour acid onto her belly and genitals, but none of this comes close to killing her, so I resort to stabbing her in the throat and eventually the blade of the knife breaks off in what's left of her neck, stuck on bone, and I stop. While Tiffany watches, finally I saw the entire head off – torrents of blood splash against the walls, even the ceiling – and holding the head up, like a prize, I take my cock, purple with stiffness, and lowering Torri's head to my lap I push it into her bloodied mouth and start fucking it, until I come, exploding into it. Afterwards I'm so hard I can even walk around the blood-soaked room carrying the head, which feels warm and weightless, on my dick. This is amusing for a while but I need to rest so I remove the head, placing it in Paul's oak and teak armoire, and then I'm sitting in a chair, naked, covered with blood, watching HBO on Owen's TV, drinking a Corona, complaining out loud, wondering why Owen doesn't have Cinemax.

Later – now – I'm telling Tiffany, "I'll let you go, shhh…," and I'm stroking her face, which is slick, owing to tears and Mace, gently, and it burns me that she actually looks up hopefully for a moment before she sees the lit match I'm holding in my hand that I've torn from a matchbook I picked up in the bar at Palio's where I was having drinks with Robert Farrell and Robert Prechter last Friday, and I lower it to her eyes, which she instinctively closes, singeing both eyelashes and brows, then I finally use a Bic lighter and hold it up to both sockets, making sure they stay open with my fingers, burning my thumb and pinkie in the process, until the eyeballs burst. While she's still conscious I roll her over, and spreading her ass cheeks, I nail a dildo that I've tied to a board deep into her rectum, using the nail gun. Then, turning her over again, her body weak with fear, I cut all the flesh off around her mouth and using the power drill with a detachable, massive head I widen that hole while she shakes, protesting, and once I'm satisfied with the size of the hole I've created, her mouth open as wide as possible, a reddish-black tunnel of twisted tongue and loosened teeth, I force my hand down, deep into her throat, until it disappears up to my wrist – all the while her head shakes uncontrollably, but she can't bite down since the power drill ripped her teeth out of her gums – and grab at the veins lodged there like tubes and I loosen them with my fingers and when I've gotten a good grip on them violently yank them out through her open mouth, pulling until the neck caves in, disappears, the skin tightens and splits though there's little blood. Most of the neck's innards, including the jugular, hang out of her mouth and her whole body starts twitching, like a roach on its back, shaking spasmodically, her melted eyes running down her face mixing with the tears and Mace, and then quickly, not wanting to waste time, I turn off the lights and in the dark before she dies I rip open her stomach with my bare hands. I can't tell what I'm doing with them but it's making wet snapping sounds and my hands are hot and covered with something.

The aftermath. No fear, no confusion. Unable to linger since there are things to be done today: return videotapes, work out at the gym, a new British musical on Broadway I promised Jeanette I'd take her to, a dinner reservation to be made somewhere. What's left of both bodies is in early rigor mortis. Part of Tiffany's body – I think it's her even though I'm having a hard time telling the two apart – has sunken in and her ribs jut out, most broken in half, from what's left of her stomach, both breasts having been pierced by them. A head has been nailed to the wall, fingers lie scattered or arranged in some kind of circle around the CD player. One of the bodies, the one on the floor, has been defecated on and seems to be covered with teeth marks where I had bitten into it, savagely. With the blood from one of the corpses' stomachs that I dip my hand into, I scrawl, in dripping red letters above the faux-cowhide paneling in the living room, the words I AM BACK and below it a scary drawing which looks like this

Rat

The following are delivered mid-October.

An audio receiver, the Pioneer VSX-9300S, which features an integrated Dolby Prologic Surround Sound processor with digital delay, plus a full-function infrared remote control that masters up to 154 programmed functions from any other brand's remote and generates 125 watts of front speaker power as well as 30 watts in back.

An analog cassette deck by Akai, the GX-950B, which comes complete with manual bias, Dolby recording level controls, a built-in calibrated tone generator and a spot-erase editing system enabling one to mark the beginning and end points of a certain musical passage, which can then be erased with a single push of a button. The three-head design features a self-enclosed tape unit, resulting in minimized interference, and its noise-reduction setup is fortified with Dolby HX-Pro while its front-panel controls are activated by a full-function wireless remote.

A multidisc CD player by Sony, the MDP-700, which spins both audios and videos – anything from three-inch digital audio singles to twelve-inch video discs. It contains a still-frame slow-motion multispeed visual/audio laser that incorporates four-times-over sampling and a dual-motor system that helps ensure consistent disc rotation while the disc-protect system helps prevent the discs from warping. An automatic music sensor system lets you make up to ninety-nine track selections while an auto chapter search allows you to scan up to seventy-nine segments of a video disc. Included is a ten-key remote control joy-shuttle dial (for frame-by-frame search) and a memory stop. This also has two sets of gold-plated A-V jacks for topnotch connections.

A high-performance cassette deck, the DX-5000 from NEC, which combines digital special effects with excellent hi-fi, and a connected four-head VHS-HQ unit, which comes equipped with a twenty-one-day eight-event programmer, MTS decoding and 140 cable-ready channels. An added bonus: a fifty-function unified remote control lets me zap out TV commercials.

Included in the Sony CCD-V200 8mm camcorder is a seven-color wipe, a character generator, an edit switch that's also capable of time-lapse recording, which allows me to, say, record a decomposing body at fifteen-second intervals or tape a small dog as it lies in convulsions, poisoned. The audio has built-in digital stereo record/playback, while the zoom lens has four-lux minimum illumination and six variable shutter speeds.

A new TV monitor with a twenty-seven-inch screen, the CX-2788 from Toshiba, has a built-in MTS decoder, a CCD comb filter, programmable channel scan, a super-VHS connection, seven watts per channel of power, with an additional ten watts dedicated to drive a subwoofer for extra low-frequency oomph, and a Carver Sonic Holographing sound system that produces a unique stereo 3-D sound effect.

Pioneer's LD-ST disc player with wireless remote and the Sony MDP-700 multidisc player with digital effects and universal-wireless-remote programming (one for the bedroom, one for the living room), which play all sizes and formats of audio and video discs – eight-inch and twelve-inch laser discs, five-inch CD video discs and three- and five-inch compact discs – in two autoload drawers. The LD-W1 from Pioneer holds two full-sized discs and plays both sides sequentially with only a several-second lag per side during the changeover so you don't have to change or flip the discs. It also has digital sound, wireless remote and a programmable memory. Yamaha's CDV-16oo multidisc player handles all disc formats and has a fifteen-selection random-access memory and a wireless remote.

A pair of Threshold monoblock amplifiers that cost close to $15,000 are also delivered. And for the bedroom, a bleached oak cupboard to store one of the new televisions arrives on Monday. A tailored cotton-upholstered sofa framed by eighteenth-century Italian bronze and marble busts on contemporary painted wood pedestals arrives on Tuesday. A new bed headboard (white cotton covered with beige brass nail trim) also arrives on Tuesday. A new Frank Stella print for the bathroom arrives on Wednesday along with a new Superdeluxe black suede armchair. The Onica, which I'm selling, is being replaced by a new one: a huge portrait of a graphic equalizer done in chrome and pastels.

I'm talking to the delivery guys from Park Avenue Sound Shop about HDTV, which isn't available yet, when one of the new black AT&T cordless phones rings. I tip them, then answer it. My lawyer, Ronald, is on the other end. I'm listening to him, nodding, showing the delivery guys out of the apartment. Then I say, "The bill is three hundred dollars, Ronald. We only had coffee." A long pause, during which I hear a bizarre sloshing sound coming from the bathroom. Walking cautiously toward it, cordless phone still in hand, I tell Ronald, "But yes… Wait… But I am… But we only had espresso." Then I'm peering into the bathroom.

Perched on the seat of the toilet is a large wet rat that has – I'm assuming – come up out of it. It sits on the rim of the toilet bowl, shaking itself dry, before it jumps, tentatively, to the floor. It's a massive rodent and it lurches, then scrambles, across the tile, out of the bathroom's other entrance and into the kitchen, where I follow it toward the leftover pizza bag from Le Madri that for some reason sits on the floor on top of yesterday's New York Times near the garbage pail from Zona, and the rat, lured by the smell, takes the bag in its mouth and shakes its head furiously, like a dog would, trying to get at the leek-goat cheese-truffle pizza, making squealing sounds of hunger. I'm on a lot of Halcion at this point so the rat doesn't bother me as much as, I suppose, it should.

To catch the rat I buy an extra-large mousetrap at a hardware store on Amsterdam. I also decide to spend the night at my family's suite in the Carlyle. The only cheese I have in the apartment is a wedge of Brie in the refrigerator and before leaving I place the entire slice – it's a really big rat – along with a sun-dried tomato and a sprinkling of dill, delicately on the trap, setting it. But when I come back the following morning, because of the rat's size, the trap hasn't killed it. The rat just lies there, stuck, squeaking, thrashing its tail, which is a horrible, oily, translucent pink, as long as a pencil and twice as thick, and it makes a slapping sound every time it hits against the white oak floor. Using a dustpan – which it takes me over a fucking hour to find – I corner the injured rat just as it frees itself from the trap and I pick the thing up, sending it into a panic, making it squeal even louder, hissing at me, baring its sharp, yellow rat fangs, and dump it into a Bergdorf Goodman hatbox. But then the thing claws its way out and I have to keep it in the sink, a board, heavy with unused cookbooks, covering it, and even then it almost escapes, while I sit in the kitchen thinking of ways to torture girls with this animal (unsurprisingly I come up with a lot), making a list that includes, unrelated to the rat, cutting open both breasts and deflating them, along with stringing barbed wire tightly around their heads.

Another Night

McDermott and I are supposed to have dinner tonight at 1500 and he calls me around six-thirty, forty minutes before our actual reservation (he couldn't get us in at any other time, except for six-ten or nine, which is when the restaurant closes – it serves Californian cuisine and its seating times are an affectation carried over from that state), and though I'm in the middle of flossing my teeth, all of my cordless phones lie by the sink in the bathroom and I'm able to pick the right one up on the second ring. So far I'm wearing black Armani trousers, a white Armani shirt, a red sad black Armani tie. McDermott lets me know that Hamlin wants to come with us. I'm hungry. There's a pause.

"So?" I ask, straightening my tie. "Okay."

"So?" McDermott sighs. "Hamlin doesn't want to go to 1500."

"Why not?" I turn off the tap in the sink.

"He was there last night."

"So… what are you, McDermott, trying to tell me?"

'"That we're going someplace else," he says.

"Where?" I ask cautiously.

"Alex Goes to Camp is where Hamlin suggested," he says.

"Hold on. I'm Plaxing." After swishing the antiplaque formula around in my mouth and inspecting my hairline in the mirror, I spit out the Plax. "Veto. Bypass. I went there last week."

"I know. So did I," McDermott says. "Besides, it's cheap. So where do we go instead?"

"Didn't Hamlin have a fucking backup?" I growl, irritated.

"Er, no."

"Call him back and get one," I say, walking out of the bathroom. "I seem to have misplaced my Zagat."

"Do you want to hold or should I call you back?" he asks.

"Call me back, bozo." We hang up.

Minutes pass. The phone rings. I don't bother screening it. It's McDermott again.

"Well?" I ask.

"Hamlin doesn't have a backup and he wants to invite Luis Carruthers and what I want to know is, does this mean Courtney's coming?" McDermott asks.

"Luis cannot come," I say.

"Why not?"

"He just can't." I ask, "Why does he want Luis to come?"

There's a pause. "Hold on," McDermott says. "He's on the other line. I'll ask him."

"Who?" A flash of panic. "Luis?"

"Hamlin."

While holding I move into the kitchen, over to the refrigerator, and take out a bottle of Perrier. I'm looking for a glass when I hear a click.

"Listen," I say when McDermott gets back on the line. "I don't want to see Luis or Courtney so, you know, dissuade them or something. Use your charm. Be charming."

"Hamlin has to have dinner with a client from Texas and–"

I cut him off. "Wait, this has nothing to do with Luis. Let Hamlin take the fag out himself."

"Hamlin wants Carruthers to come because Hamlin is supposed to be dealing with the Panasonic case, but Carruthers knows a lot more about it and that's why he wants Carruthers to come," McDermott explains.

I pause while taking this in. "If Luis comes I'll kill him. I swear to god I'll kill him. I'll fucking kill him."

"Jeez, Bateman," McDermott murmurs, concerned. "You're a real humanitarian. A sage."

"No. just…" I start, confused, irritated. "Just… sensible."

"I just want to know if Luis comes does this mean that Courtney will come too?" he wonders again.

"Tell Hamlin to invite – oh shit, I don't know." I stop. "Tell Hamlin to have dinner with the Texas guy alone." I stop again, realizing something. "Wait a minute. Does this mean Hamlin will… take us out? I mean pay for it, since it's a business dinner?"

"You know, sometimes I think you're very smart, Bateman," McDermott says. "Other times…"

"Oh shit, what the hell am I saying?" I ask myself out loud, annoyed. "You and I can have a goddamn business dinner together. Jesus. I'm not going. That's it. I'm not going."

"Not even if Luis doesn't come?" he asks.

"No. Nope."

"Why not?" he whines. "We have reservations at 1500."

"I… have to… watch The Cosby Show."

"Oh tape it for Christ sakes, you ass."

"Wait." I've realized something else. "Do you think Hamlin will" – I pause awkwardly – "have some drugs, perhaps… for the Texan?"

"What does Bateman think?" McDermott asks, the jaded asshole.

"Hmmm. I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about this."

After a pause McDermott says "Tick-tock, tick-tock" in singsong. "We're getting nowhere. Of course Hamlin is going to be carrying."

"Get Hamlin, have him… get him on three-way," I sputter, checking my Rolex. "Hurry. Maybe we can talk him into 1500."

"Okay," McDermott says. "Hold on."

There are four clicking noises and then I hear Hamlin saying, "Bateman, is it okay to wear argyle socks with a business suit?" He's attempting a joke but it fails to amuse me.

Sighing inwardly, my eyes closed, I answer, impatient, "Not really, Hamlin. They're too sporty. They interfere with a business image. You can wear them with casual suits. Tweeds, whatever. Now Hamlin?"

"Bateman?" And then he says, '"Thank you."

"Luis cannot come," I tell him. "And you're welcome."

"No prob," he says. "The Texan's not coming anyway."

"Why not?" I ask.

"Hay letsyall go to See Bee Jee Bees I har that's pretty new wave. Lifestyle difference," Hamlin explains. "The Texan is not accepted until Monday. I quickly, and quite nimbly I might add, rearranged my hectic schedule. A sick father. A forest fire. An excuse."

"How does that take care of Luis?" I ask suspiciously.

"Luis is having dinner with the Texan tonight, which saves me a whole lotta trouble, pardner. I'm seeing him at Smith and Wollensky on Monday," Hamlin says, pleased with himself. "So everything is A-okay."

"Wait," McDermott asks tentatively, "does this mean that Courtney isn't coming?"

"We have missed or are going to miss our reservations at 1500," I point out. "Besides, Hamlin, you went there last night, huh?"

"Yeah," he says. "It's got passable carpaccio. Decent wren. Okay sorbets. But let's go somewhere else and, uh, then go on the search for the, uh, perfect body. Gentlemen?"

"Sounds good," I say, amused that Hamlin, for once, has the right idea. "But what is Cindy going to say about this?"

"Cindy has to go to a charity thing at the Plaza, something–"

"That's the Trump Plaza," I note absently, while finally opening the Perrier bottle.

"Yeah, the Trump Plaza," he says. "Something about trees near the library. Money for trees or a bush of some kind," he says, unsure. "Plants? Beats me."

"So where to?" McDermott asks.

"Who cancels 1500?" I ask.

"You do," McDermott says.

"Oh McDermott," I moan, "Just do it."

"Wait," Hamlin says. "Let's decide where we're going first."

"Agreed." McDermott, the parliamentarian.

"I am fanatically opposed to anywhere not on the Upper West or Upper East side of this city," I say.

"Bellini's?" Hamlin suggests.

"Nope. Can't smoke cigars there," McDermott and I say at the same time.

"Cross that one out," Hamlin says. "Gandango?" he suggests.

"Possibility, possibility," I murmur, mulling it over. "Trump eats there."

"Zeus Bar?" one of them asks.

"Make a reservation," says the other.

"Wait," I tell them, "I'm thinking."

"Bateman…," Hamlin warns.

"I'm toying with the idea," I say.

"Bateman…"

"Wait. Let me toy for a minute."

"I'm really too irritated to be dealing with this right now," McDermott says.

"Why don't we just forget this shit and bash some Japs," Hamlin suggests. "Then find the perfect body."

"Not a bad idea, actually." I shrug. "Decent combo."

"What do you want to do, Bateman?" McDermott asks.

Thinking about it, thousands of miles away, I answer, "I want to…"

"Yes… ?" they both ask expectantly.

"I want to… pulverize a woman's face with a large, heavy brick."

"Besides that," Hamlin moans impatiently.

"Okay, fine," I say, snapping out of it. "Zeus Bar."

"You sure? Right? Zeus Bar?" Hamlin concludes, he hopes.

"Guys. I am finding myself increasingly incapable of dealing with this at all," McDermott says. "Zeus Bar. That's final."

"Hold on," Hamlin says. "I'll call and make a reservation." He clicks off, leaving McDermott and myself on hold. It's silent for a long time before either one of us says anything.

"You know," I finally say. "It will probably be impossible to get a reservation there."

"Maybe we should go to M.K. The Texan would probably like to go to M.K.," Craig says.

"But, McDermott, the Texan isn't coming," I point out.

"I can't go to M.K. anyway," he says, not listening, and he doesn't mention why.

"I don't want to know about it."

We wait two more minutes for Hamlin.

"What in the hell is he doing?" I ask, then my call waiting clicks in.

McDermott hears it too. "Do you want to take that?"

"I'm thinking." It clicks again. I moan and tell McDermott to hold on. It's Jeanette. She sounds tired and sad. I don't want to get back on the other line so I ask her what she did last night.

"After you were supposed to meet me?" she asks.

I pause, unsure. "Uh, yeah."

"We ended up at Palladium which was completely empty. They were letting in people for free." She signs. "We saw maybe four or five people."

"That you knew?" I ask hopefully.

"In . .. the… club," she says, spacing each word out bitterly.

"I'm sorry," I finally say. "I had to… return some videotapes…" And then, reacting to her silence, "You know, I would've met you–"

"I.don't want to hear about it," she sighs, cutting me off. "What are you doing tonight?"

I pause, wondering how to answer, before admitting, "Zeus Bar at nine. McDermott. Hamlin." And then, less hopefully, "Would you like to meet us?"

"I don't know," she sighs. Without a trace of softness she asks, "Do you want me to?"

"Must you insist on being so pathetic?" I ask back.

She hangs up on me. I get back on the other line.

"Bateman, Bateman, Bateman, Bateman, " Hamlin is droning.

"I'm here. Shut the fuck up."

"Are we still procrastinating?" McDermott asks. "Don't procrastinate."

"I've decided I'd rather play golf," I say. "I haven't been golfing in a long time."

"Fuck golf, Batsman," Hamlin says. "We have a nine o'clock reservation at Kaktus–"

"And a reservation to cancel at 1500 in, um, let's see… twenty minutes ago, Batsman," McDermott says.

"Oh shit, Craig. Cancel them now," I say tiredly.

"God, I hate golf," Hamlin says, shuddering.

"You cancel them," McDermott says, laughing.

"What name are they under?" I ask, not laughing, my voice rising.

After a pause, McDermott says "Carruthers" softly.

Hamlin and I burst out laughing.

"Really?" I ask.

"We couldn't get into Zeus Bar," Hamlin says. "So it's Kaktus."

"Hip," I say dejectedly. "I guess."

"Cheer up." Hamlin chortles.

My call waiting buzzes again and before I can even decide whether to take it or not, Hamlin makes up my mind for me. "Now if you guys don't want to go to Kaktus–"

"Wait, my call waiting," I say. "Hold on."

Jeanette is in tears. "What aren't you capable of?" she asks, sobbing. "Just tell me what you are not capable of."

"Baby. Jeanette," I say soothingly. "Listen, please. We'll be at Zeus Bar at ten. Okay?"

"Patrick, please," she begs. "I'm okay. I just want to talk–"

"I'll see you at nine or ten, whenever," I say. "I've gotta go. Hamlin and McDermott are on the other line."

"Okay." She sniffs, composing herself, clearing her throat. "I'll see you there. I'm really sor–"

I click back onto the other line. McDermott is the only one left.

"He got off," McDermott says. "He'll see us at nine."

"Great," I murmur. "I feel settled."

"Who was that?"

"Jeanette," I say.

I hear a faint click, then another one.

"Was that yours or mine?" McDermott asks.

"Yours," I say, "I think."

"Hold on."

I wait, impatiently pacing the length of the kitchen. McDermott clicks back on.

"It's Van Patten," he says. "I'm putting him on three-way."

Four more clicks.

"Hey Bateman," Van Patten cries out. "Buddy."

"Mr. Manhattan," I say. "I'm acknowledging you."

"Hey, what's the correct way to wear a cummerbund?" he asks.

"I already answered that twice today," I warn.

The two of them start talking about whether or not Van Patten can get to Kaktus by nine and I've stopped concentrating on the voices coming through the cordless phone and started watching instead, with growing interest, the rat I've bought – I still have the mutant one that emerged from the toilet – in its new glass cage, heave what's left of its acid-ridden body halfway across the elaborate Habitrail system that sits on the kitchen table, where it attempts to drink from the water holder that I filled with poisoned Evian this morning. The scene seems too pitiful to me or not pitiful enough. I can't decide. A call-waiting noise takes me out of my mindless delirium and I tell Van Patten and McDermott to please hold.

I click off, then pause before saying, "You have reached the home of Patrick Bateman. Please leave a message after–"

"Oh for god's sake, Patrick, grow up," Evelyn moans. "Just stop it. Why do you insist on doing that? Do you really think you're going to get away with it?"

"With what?" I ask innocently. "Protecting myself?"

"With torturing me," she pouts.

"Honey," I say.

"Yes?" she sniffs.

"You don't know what torture is. You don't know what you're talking about," I tell her. "You really don't know what you're talking about."

"I don't want to talk about it," she says. "It's over. Now, what are you doing for dinner tonight?" Her voice softens. "I was thinking maybe dinner at TDK at, oh, say ninish?"

"I'm eating at the Harvard Club by myself tonight," I say.

"Oh don't be silly," Evelyn says. "I know you're having dinner at Kaktus with Hamlin and McDermott."

"How do you know that?" I ask, not caring if I've been caught in a lie. "Anyway, it's Zeus Bar, not Kaktus."

"Because I just talked to Cindy," she says.

"I thought Cindy was going to this plant or tree – this bush benefit," I say.

"Oh no, no, no," Evelyn says. "That's next week. Do you want to go?"

"Hold on," I say.

I get back on the line with Craig and Van Patten.

"Bateman?" Van Patten asks. "What the fuck are you doing?"

"How the hell does Cindy know we're having dinner at Kaktus?" I demand.

"Hamlin told her?" McDermott guesses. "I don't know."

"Because now Evelyn knows," I say.

"When the fuck is Wolfgang Puck going to open a restaurant in this goddamn city?" Van Patten asks us.

"Is Van Patten on his third six-pack of Fosters or is he still, like, working on his first?" I ask McDermott.

"The question you're asking, Patrick," McDermott begins, "is, should we exclude the women or not? Right?"

"Something is turning into nothing very quickly," I warn. "That's all I'm saying."

"Should you invite Evelyn?" McDermott asks. "Is this what you want to know?"

"No, we should not," I stress.

"Well, hey, I wanted to bring Elizabeth," Van Patten says timidly (mock-timidly?).

"No," I say. "No women."

"What's wrong with Elizabeth?" Van Patten asks.

"Yeah?" McDermott follows.

"She's an idiot. No, she's intelligent. I can't tell. Don't invite her," I say.

After a pause I hear Van Patten say, "I sense weirdness starting."

"Well, if not Elizabeth, what about Sylvia josephs?" McDermott suggests.

"Nah, too old to fuck," Van Patten says.

"Oh Christ," McDermott says. "She's twenty-three."

"Twenty-eight," I correct.

"Really?" a concerned McDermott asks, after pausing.

"Yes" I say. "Really."

McDermott's left saying "Oh."

"Shit, I just forgot," I say, slapping my hand to my forehead "I invited Jeanette."

"Now that is one babe I would not mind, ahem, inviting," Van Patten says lewdly.

"Why does a nice young babe like Jeanette put up with you?" McDermott asks. "Why does she put up with you, Bateman?"

"I keep her in cashmere. A great deal of cashmere," I murmur, and then, "I've got to call her and tell her not to come."

"Aren't you forgetting something?" McDermott asks me.

"What?" I'm lost in thought.

"Is, like, Evelyn still on the other line?"

"Oh shit," I exclaim. "Hold on."

"Why am I even bothering with this?" I hear McDermott ask himself, sighing.

"Bring Evelyn," Van Patten cries out. "She's a babe too! Tell her to meet us at Zeus Bar at nine-thirty!"

"Okay, okay," I shout before clicking back to the other line.

"I do not appreciate this, Patrick," Evelyn is saying.

"How about meeting us at Zeus Bar at nine-thirty?" I suggest.

"Can I bring Stash and Vanden?" she asks coyly.

"Is she the one with a tattoo?" I ask back, coyly.

"No," she sighs. "No tattoo."

"Bypass, bypass."

"Oh Patrick," she whines.

"Look, you were lucky you were even invited, so just…" My voice trails off.

Silence, during which I don't feel bad.

"Come on, just meet us there," I say. "I'm sorry."

"Oh all right," she says, resigned. "Nine-thirty?"

I click back onto the other line, interrupting Van Patter and McDermott's conversation about whether it's proper or not to wear a blue suit as one would a navy blazer.

"Hello?" I interrupt. "Shut up. Does everyone have my undivided attention?"

"Yes, yes, yes," Van Patter sighs, bored.

"I am calling Cindy up to get Evelyn out of coming to dinner with us," I announce.

"Why in the hell did you invite Evelyn in the first place?" one of them asks.

"We were joking, you idiot," the other adds.

"Er, good question," I say, stammering. "Uh, h-hold on."

I dial Cindy's number after finding it in my Rolodex. She answers after screening the call.

"Hello, Patrick," she says.

"Cindy," I say. "I need a favor."

"Hamlin's not coming to dinner with you guys," she says. "He tried calling back but your lines were all busy. Don't you guys have call waiting?"

"Of course we have call waiting," I say. "What do you think we are, barbarians?"

"Hamlin's not coming," she says again, flatly.

"What's he doing instead?" I ask. "Oiling his Top-Siders?"

"He's going out with me, Mr. Bateman."

"But what about your, uh, bush benefit?" I ask.

"Hamlin got it mixed up," she says.

"Pumpkin," I start.

"Yes?" she asks.

"Pumpkin, you're dating an asshole," I say sweetly.

"Thanks, Patrick. That's nice."

"Pumpkin," I warn, "you're dating the biggest dickweed in New York."

"You're telling me like I don't know this." She yawns.

"Pumpkin, you're dating a tumbling, tumbling dickweed."

"Do you know that Hamlin owns six television sets and seven VCRs?"

"Does he ever use that rowing machine I got him?" I actually wonder.

"Unused," she says. "Totally unused."

"Pumpkin, he's a dickweed."

"Will you stop calling me pumpkin," she asks, annoyed.

"Listen, Cindy, if you had a choice to read WWD or…" I stop, unsure of what I was going to say. "Listen, is there anything going on tonight?" I ask. "Something not too… boisterous?"

"What do you want, Patrick?" she sighs.

"I just want peace, love, friendship, understanding," I say dispassionately.

"What-do-you-want?" she repeats.

"Why don't the two of you come with us?"

"We have other plans."

"Hamlin made the goddamn reservations," I cry, outraged.

"Well, you guys use them."

"Why don't you come?" I ask lasciviously. "Dump dickweed off at Juanita's or something."

"I think I'm passing on dinner," she says. "Apologize to 'the guys' for me."

"But we're going to Kaktus, uh, I mean Zeus Bar," I say, then, confused, add, "No, Kaktus."

"Are you guys really going there?" she asks.

"Why?"

"Conventional wisdom has it that it is no longer the 'in' place to dine," she says.

"But Hamlin made the fucking reservation!" I cry out.

"Did he make reservations there?" she asks, bemused.

"Centuries ago!" I shout.

"Listen," she says, "I'm getting dressed."

"I'm not at all happy about this," I say.

"Don't worry," she says, and then hangs up.

I get back on the other line.

"Bateman, I know this sounds like an impossibility," McDermott says. "But the void is actually widening."

"I am not into Mexican," Van Patten states.

"But wait, we're not having Mexican, are we?" I say. "Am I confused? Aren't we going to Zeus Bar?"

"No, moron," McDermott spits. "We couldn't get into Zeus Bar. Kaktus. Kaktus at nine."

"But I don't want Mexican," Van Patten says.

"But you, Van Patten, made the reservation," McDermott hollers.

"I don't either," I say suddenly. "Why Mexican?"

"It's not Mexican Mexican," McDermott says, exasperated "It's something called nouvelle Mexicana, tapas or some other south of the border thing. Something like that. Hold on. My call waiting."

He clicks off, leaving Van Patten and myself on the line.

"Bateman," Van Patten sighs, "my euphoria is quickly subsiding."

"What are you talking about?" I'm actually trying to remember where I told Jeanette and Evelyn to meet us.

"Let's change the reservation," he suggests.

I think about it, then suspiciously ask, "Where to?"

"1969, " he says, tempting me. "Hmmm? 1969?"

"I would like to go there," I admit.

"What should we do?" he asks.

I think about it. "Make a reservation. Quick."

"Okay. For three? Five? How many?"

"Five or six, I guess."

"Okay. Hold."

Just as he clicks off, McDermott gets back on.

"Where's Van Patten?" he asks.

"He… had to take a piss," I say.

"Why don't you want to go to Kaktus?"

"Because I'm gripped by an existential panic," I lie.

"You think that's a good enough reason," McDermott says. "I do not."

"Hello?" Van Patten says, clicking back on. "Bateman?"

"Well?" I ask. "McDermott's here too."

"Nope. No way, José."

"Shit."

"What's going on?" McDermott asks.

"Well, guys, do we want margaritas?" Van Patten asks. "Or no margaritas?"

"I could go for a margarita," McDermott says.

"Bateman?" Van Patten asks.

"I would like several bottles of beer, preferably un-Mexican," I say.

"Oh shit," McDermott says. "Call waiting. Hold on." He clicks off.

If I am not mistaken it is now eight-thirty.

An hour later. We're still debating. We have canceled the reservation at Kaktus and maybe someone has remade it. Confused, I actually cancel a nonexistent table at Zeus Bar. Jeanette has left her apartment and cannot be reached at home and I have no idea which restaurant she's going to, nor do I remember which one I told Evelyn to meet us at. Van Patten, who has already had two large shots of Absolut, asks about Detective Kimball and what we talked about and all I really remember is something like how people fail between cracks.

"Did you talk to him?" I ask.

"Yeah, yeah."

"What did he say happened to Owen?"

"Vanished. Just vanished. Poof," he says. I can hear him opening a refrigerator. "No incident. Nothing. The authorities have nada."

"Yeah," I say. "I'm in heavy turmoil over it."

"Well, Owen was… I don't know," he says. I can hear a beer being opened.

"What else did you tell him, Van Patten?" I ask.

"Oh the usual," he sighs. "That he wore yellow and maroon ties. That he had lunch at '21.' That in reality he was not an arbitrageur – which was what Thimble thought he was – but a merger-maker. Only the usual." I can almost hear him shrug.

"What else?" I ask.

"Let's see. That he didn't wear suspenders. A belt man. That he stopped doing cocaine, simpatico beer. You know, Bateman."

"He was a moron," I say. "And now he's in London."

"Christ," he mutters, "general competence is on the fucking decline."

McDermott clicks back on. "Okay. Now where to?"

"What time is it?" Van Patter asks.

"Nine-thirty," both of us answer.

"Wait, what happened to 1969?" I ask van Patter.

"What's this about 1969?" McDermott doesn't have a clue.

"I don't remember," I say.

"Closed. No reservations," Van Patter reminds me.

"Can we get back to 1500?" I ask.

"1500 is now closed," McDermott shouts. "The kitchen is closed. The restaurant is closed. It's over. We have to go to Kaktus."

Silence.

"Hello? Hello? Are you guys there?" he hollers, losing it.

"Bouncy as a beach ball," Van Patter says.

I laugh.

"If you guys think this is funny," McDermott warns.

"Oh yeah, what? What are you going to do?" I ask.

"Guys, it's just that I am apprehensive about failure in terms of securing a table before, like, well, midnight."

"Are you sure about 1500?" I ask. "That seems really bizarre."

"That suggestion is moot!" McDermott screams. "Why, you may ask? Because-they-are-closed! Because-they-are-closed-they-have-stopped-taking-reservations! Are-you-following-this?"

"Hey, no sweat, babe," Van Patter says coolly. "We'll go to Kaktus.

"We have a reservation there in ten, no, fifteen minutes ago," McDermott says.

"But I canceled them, I thought," I say, taking another Xanax.

"I remade them,'. McDermott says.

"You are indispensable," I tell him in monotone.

"I can be there by ten," McDermott says.

"By the time I stop at my automated teller, I can be there by ten-fifteen," Van Patter says slowly, counting the minutes.

"Does anyone have any idea that Jeanette and Evelyn are meeting us at Zeus Bar, where we do not have a reservation? Has this passed through anyone's mind?" I ask, doubting it.

"But Zeus Bar is closed. and besides that we canceled a reservation we didn't even have there," McDermott says, trying to stay calm.

"But I think I told Jeanette and Evelyn to meet us there," I say, bringing my fingers up to my mouth, horrified by this possibility.

After a pause McDermott asks, "Do you want to get into trouble? Are you asking for it or something?"

"My call waiting," I say. "Oh my god. What time is it? My call waiting."

"It's gotta be one of the girls," Van Patten says gleefully.

"Hold on," I croak.

"Good luck," I hear Van Patten say before I click off.

"Hello?" I ask meekly. "You have reached the–"

"It's me," Evelyn shouts, the noise in the background almost drowning her out.

"Oh hi," I say casually. "What's going on?"

"Patrick, what are you doing.at home?"

"Where are you?" I ask good-naturedly.

"I-am-at-Kaktus," she hisses.

"What are you doing there?" I ask.

"You said you'd meet me here, that-is-what," she says. "I confirmed your reservations."

"Oh god, I'm sorry," I say. "I forgot to tell you."

"Forgot-to-tell-me-what?"

"To tell you that we aren't" – I gulp – "going there." I close my eyes.

"Who-in-the-hell-is-Jeanette?" she hisses calmly.

"Well, aren't you guys having fun?" I ask, ignoring her question.

"No-we-are-not."

"Why not?" I ask. "We'll be there… soon."

"Because this whole thing feels, gee, I don't know… inappropriate?" she screams.

"Listen, I'll call you right back." I'm about to pretend to take the number down.

"You won't be able to," Evelyn says, her voice tense and lowered.

"Why not? The phone strike's over," I joke, sort of.

"Because-Jeanette-is-behind-me-and-wants-to-use-it," Evelyn says.

I pause for a very long time.

"Pat-rick?"

"Evelyn. Let it slide. I'm leaving right now. We'll all be there shortly. I promise."

"Oh my god–"

I click back to the other line.

"Guys, guys, someone fucked up. I fucked up. You fucked up. I don't know," I say in a total panic.

"What's wrong?" one of them asks.

"Jeanette and Evelyn are at Kaktus," I say.

"Oh boy." Van Patter cracks up.

"You know, guys, it's not beyond my capacity to drive a lead pipe repeatedly into a girl's vagina," I tell Van Patter and McDermott, then add, after a silence I mistake for shock, finally on their parts an acute perception of my cruelty, "but compassionately."

"We all know about your lead pipe, Bateman," McDermott says. "Stop bragging."

"Is he like trying to tell us he has a big dick?" Van Patter asks Craig.

"Gee, I'm not sure," McDermott says. "Is that what you're trying to tell us, Bateman?"

I pause before answering. "It's… well, no, not exactly." My call waiting buzzes.

"Fine, I'm officially jealous," McDermott wisecracks. "Now where? Christ, what time is it?"

"It doesn't really matter. My mind has already gone numb."

I'm so hungry now that I'm eating oat bran cereal out of a box.

My call waiting buzzes again.

"Maybe we can get some drugs."

"Call Hamlin."

"Jesus, you can't walk into a bathroom in this city without coming out with a gram, so don't worry."

"Anyone hear about Bell South's cellular deal?"

"Spuds McKenzie is on The Patty Winters Show tomorrow.

Girl

On a Wednesday night another girl, who I meet at M.K. and I plan to torture and film. This one remains nameless to me and she sits on the couch in the living room of my apartment. A bottle of champagne, Cristal, half empty, sits on the glass table. I punch in tunes, numbers that light up the Wurlitzer. She finally asks, "What's that… smell in here?" and I answer, under my breath, "A dead… rat," and then I'm opening the windows, the sliding glass door that leads out to the terrace, even though it's a chilly night, mid-autumn, and she's dressed scantily, but she has another glass of the Cristal and it seems to warm her enough so that she is able to ask me what I do for a living. I tell her that I went to Harvard then started working on Wall Street, at Pierce & Pierce, after I graduated from business school there, and when she asks, either confused or jokingly, "What's that?" I swallow and with my back to her, straightening the new Onica, find the strength to force out, "A… shoe store." I did a line of cocaine I found in my medicine cabinet when we first came back to my place, and the Cristal takes the edge off it, but only slightly: The Patty Winters Show this morning was about a machine that lets people talk to the dead. This girl is wearing a wool barathea jacket and skirt, a silk georgette blouse, agate and ivory earrings by Stephen Dweck, a silk jacquard torsolette vest, all from… where? Charivari, I'm guessing.

In the bedroom she's naked and oiled and sucking my dick and I'm standing over her and then I'm slapping her in the face with it, grabbing her hair with my hand, calling her a "fucking whore bitch," and this turns her on even more and while lamely sucking my cock she starts fingering her clit and when she's asking me "Do you like this?" while licking at the balls, I'm answering "yap, yap" and breathing hard. Her breasts are high and full and firm, both nipples very stiff, and while she's choking on my cock while I'm fucking her mouth roughly with it, I reach down to squeeze them and then while I'm fucking her, after ramming a dildo up her ass and keeping it there with a strap, I'm scratching at her tits, until she warns me to stop. Earlier in the evening I was having dinner with Jeanette at a new Northern Italian restaurant near Central Park on the Upper East Side that was very expensive. Earlier in the evening I was wearing a suit tailored by Edward Sexton and thinking sadly about my family's house in Newport. Earlier in the night after dropping Jeanette off I stopped at M.K. for a fund-raiser that had something to do with Dan Quayle, who even I don't like. At M.K. the girl I'm fucking came on to me, hard, upstairs on a couch while I was waiting to play pool. "Oh god," she's saying. Excited, I slap her, then lightly punch her in the mouth, then kiss it, biting her lips. Fear, dread, confusion overwhelm her. The strap breaks and the dildo slides out of her ass while she tries to push me off. I roll away and pretend to let her escape and then, while she's gathering her clothes, muttering about what a "crazy fucking bastard" I am, I leap out at her, jackal-like, literally foaming at the mouth. She cries, apologizing, sobbing hysterically, begging for me not to hurt her, in tears, covering her breasts, now shamefully. But even her sobs fail to arouse me. I feel little gratification when I Mace her, less when I knock her head against the wall four or five times, until she loses consciousness, leaving a small stain, hair stuck to it. After she drops to the floor I head for the bathroom and cut another line of the mediocre coke I scored at Nells or Au Bar the other night. I can hear a phone ringing, an answering machine picking up the call. I'm bent low, over a mirror, ignoring the message, not even bothering to screen it.

Later, predictably, she's tied to the floor, naked, on her back, both feet, both hands, tied to makeshift posts that are connected to boards which are weighted down with metal. The hands are shot full of nails and her legs are spread as wide as possible. A pillow props her ass up and cheese, Brie, has been smeared across her open cunt, some of it even pushed up into the vaginal cavity. She's barely gained consciousness and when she sees me, standing over her, naked, I can imagine that my virtual absence of humanity fills her with mind-bending horror. I've situated the body in front of the new Toshiba television set and in the VCR is an old tape and appearing on the screen is the last girl I filmed. I'm wearing a Joseph Abboud suit, a tie by Paul Stuart, shoes by J. Crew, a vest by someone Italian and I'm kneeling on the floor beside a corpse, eating the girl's brain, gobbling it down, spreading Grey Poupon over hunks of the pink, fleshy meat.

"Can you see?" I ask the girl not on the television set. "Can you see this? Are you watching?" I whisper.

I try using the power drill on her, forcing it into her mouth, but she's conscious enough, has strength, to close her teeth, clamping them down, and even though the drill goes through the teeth quickly, it fails to interest me and so I hold her head up, blood dribbling from her mouth, and make her watch the rest of the tape and while she's looking at the girl on the screen bleed from almost every possible orifice, I'm hoping she realizes that this would have happened to her no matter what. That she would have ended up lying here, on the floor in my apartment, hands nailed to posts, cheese and broken glass pushed up into her cunt, her head cracked and bleeding purple, no matter what other choice she might have made; that if she had gone to Nell's or Indochine or Mars or Au Bar instead of M.K., if she had simply not taken the cab with me to the Upper West Side, that this all would have happened anyway. I would have found her. This is the way the earth works. I decide not to bother with the camera tonight.

I'm trying to ease one of the hollow plastic tubes from the dismantled Habitrail system up into her vagina, forcing the vaginal lips around one end of it, and even with most of it greased with olive oil, it's not fitting in properly. During this, the jukebox plays Frankie Valli singing "The Worst That Could Happen" and I'm grimly lip-syncing to it, while pushing the Habitrail tube up into this bitch's cunt. I finally have to resort to pouring acid around the outside of the pussy so that the flesh can give way to the greased end of the Habitrail and soon enough it slides in, easily. "I hope this hurts you," I say.

The rat hurls itself against the glass cage as I move it from the kitchen into the living room. It refused to eat what was left of the other rat I had bought it to play with last week, that now lies dead, rotting in a corner of the cage. (For the last five days I've purposefully starved it.) I set the glass cage down next to the girl and maybe because of the scent of the cheese the rat seems to go insane, first running in circles, mewling, then trying to heave its body, weak with hunger, over the side of the cage. The rat doesn't need any prodding and the bent coat hanger I was going to use remains untouched by my side and with the girl still conscious, the thing moves effortlessly on newfound energy, racing up the tube until half of its body disappears, and then after a minute – its rat body shaking while it feeds – all of it vanishes, except for the tail, and I yank the Habitrail tube out of the girl, trapping the rodent. Soon even the tail disappears. The noises the girl is making are, for the most part, incomprehensible.

I can already tell that it's going to be a characteristically useless, senseless death, but then I'm used to the horror. It seems distilled, even now it fails to upset or bother me. I'm not mourning, and to prove it to myself, after a minute or two of watching the rat move under her lower belly, making sure the girl is still conscious, shaking her head in pain, her eyes wide with terror and confusion, I use a chain saw and in a matter of seconds cut the girl in two with it. The whirring teeth go through skin and muscle and sinew and bone so fast that she stays alive long enough to watch me pull her legs away from her body – her actual thighs, what's left of her mutilated vagina – and hold them up in front of me, spouting blood, like trophies almost. Her eyes stay open for a minute, desperate and unfocused, then close, and finally, before she dies, I force a knife uselessly up her nose until it slides out of the flesh on her forehead, and then I hack the bone off her chin. She has only half a mouth left and I fuck it once, then twice, three times in all. Not caring whether she's still breathing or not I gouge her eyes out, finally using my fingers. The rat emerges headfirst – somehow it turned itself around inside the cavity – and it's stained with purple blood (I also notice where the chain saw took off about half of its tail) and I feed it extra Brie until I feel I have to stomp it to death, which I do. Later the girl's femur and left jawbone lie in the oven, baking, and tufts of pubic hair fill a Steuben crystal ashtray, and when I light them they burn very quickly.

At Another New Restaurant

For a limited period of time I'm capable of being halfway cheerful and outgoing, so I accept Evelyn's invitation to dinner during the first week of November at Luke, a new superchic nouvelle Chinese restaurant that also serves, oddly enough, Creole cuisine. We have a good table (I reserved under Wintergreen's name – the simplest of triumphs) and I feel anchored, calm, even with Evelyn sitting across from me prattling on about a very large Fabergé egg she thought she saw at the Pierre, rolling around the lobby of its own accord or something like that. The office Halloween party was at the Royalton last week and I went as a mass murderer, complete with a sign painted on my back that read MASS MURDERER (which was decidedly lighter than the sandwich board I had constructed earlier that day that read DRILLER KILLER), and beneath those two words I had written in blood Yep, that's me and the suit was also covered with blood, some of it fake, most of it real. In one fist I clenched a hank of Victoria Bell's hair, and pinned next to my boutonniere (a small white rose) was a finger bone I'd boiled the flesh off of. As elaborate as my costume was, Craig McDermott still managed to win first place in the competition. He came as Ivan Boesky, which I thought was unfair since a lot of people thought I'd gone as Michael Milken last year. The Patty Winters Show this morning was about Home Abortion Kits.

The first five minutes after being seated are fine, then the drink I ordered touches the table and I instinctively reach for it, but I find myself cringing every time Evelyn opens her mouth. I notice that Saul Steinberg is eating here tonight, but refuse to mention this to Evelyn.

"A toast?" I suggest.

"Oh? To what?" she murmurs uninterestedly, craning her neck, looking around the stark, dimly lit, very white room.

"Freedom?" I ask tiredly.

But she's not listening, because some English guy wearing a three-button wool houndstooth suit, a tattersall wool vest, a spread-collar cotton oxford shirt, suede shoes and a silk tie, all by Carrick Anderson, whom Evelyn pointed out once after we'd had a fight at Au Bar and called "gorgeous," and whom I had called "a dwarf," walks over to our table, openly flirting with her, and it pisses me off to think that she feels I'm jealous about this guy but I eventually get the last laugh when he asks if she still has the job at "that art gallery on First Avenue" and Evelyn, clearly stressed, her face falling, answers no, corrects him, and after a few awkward words he moves on. She sniffs, opens her menu, immediately starts on about something else without looking at me.

"What are all these T-shirts I've been seeing?" she asks. "All over the city? Have you seen them? Silkience Equals Death? Are people having problems with their conditioners or something? Am I missing something? What were we talking about?"

"No, that's absolutely wrong. It's Science Equals Death." I sigh, close my eyes. "Jesus, Evelyn, only you could confuse that and a hair product." I have no idea what the hell I'm saying but I nod, waving to someone at the bar, an older man, his face covered in shadow, someone I only half know, actually, but he manages to raise his champagne glass my way and smile back, which is a relief.

"Who's that?" I hear Evelyn asking.

"He's a friend of mine," I say.

"I don't recognize him," she says. "P & P?"

"Forget it," I sigh.

"Who is it, Patrick?" she asks, more interested in my reluctance than in an actual name.

"Why?" I ask back.

"Who is it?" she asks. "Tell me."

"A friend of mine," I say, teeth gritted.

"Who, Patrick?" she asks, then, squinting, "Wasn't he at my Christmas party?"

."No, he was not," I say, my hands drumming the tabletop.

"Isn't it… Michael J. Fox?" she asks, still squinting. "The actor?"

"Hardly," I say, then, fed up, "Oh for Christ sakes, his name is George Levanter and no, he didn't star in The Secret of My Success."

"Oh how interesting." Already Evelyn is back poring over the menu. "Now, what were we talking about?"

Trying to remember, I ask, "Conditioners? Or some kind of conditioner?" I sigh. "I don't know. You were talking to the dwarf."

"Ian is not a midget, Patrick," she says.

"He is unusually short, Evelyn," I counter. "Are you sure he wasn't at your Christmas party" – and then, my voice lowered – "serving hors d'oeuvres?"

"You cannot keep referring to Ian as a dwarf," she says, smoothing her napkin over her lap. "I will not stand for it," she whispers, not looking at me.

I can't restrain myself from snickering.

"It isn't funny, Patrick," she says.

"You cut the conversation short," I point out.

"Did you expect me to be flattered?" she spits out bitterly.

"Listen, baby, I'm just trying to make that encounter seem as legitimate as possible, so don't, uh, you know, screw it up for yourself."

"Just stop it," she says, ignoring me. "Oh look, it's Robert Farrell." After waving to him, she discreetly points him out to me and sure enough, Bob Farrell, whom everyone likes, is sitting on the north side of the room at a window table, which secretly drives me mad. "He's very good-looking," Evelyn confides admiringly, only because she's noticed me contemplating the twenty-year-old hardbody he's sitting with, and to make sure I've registered this she teasingly chirps, "Hope I'm not making you jealous."

"He's handsome," I admit. "Stupid-looking but handsome."

"Don't be nasty. He's very handsome," she says and then suggests, "Why don't you get your hair styled that way?"

Before this comment I was an automaton, only vaguely paying attention to Evelyn, but now I'm panicked, and I ask, "What's wrong with my hair?" In a matter of seconds my rage quadruples. "What the hell is wrong with my hair?" I touch it lightly.

"Nothing," she says, noticing how upset I've gotten. "Just a suggestion," and then, really noticing how flushed I've become, "Your hair looks really… really great." She tries to smile but only succeeds in looking worried.

A sip – half a glass – of the J&B calms me enough to say, looking over at Farrell, "Actually, I'm horrified by his paunch."

Evelyn studies Farrell too. "Oh, he doesn't have a paunch."

"That's definitely a paunch," I say. "Look at it."

"That's just the way he's sitting," she says, exasperated. "Oh you're–"

"It's a paunch, Evelyn," I stress.

"Oh you're crazy." She waves me off. "A lunatic."

"Evelyn, the man is barely thirty."

"So what? Everyone's not into weight lifting like you," she says, annoyed, looking back at the menu.

"I do not 'weight lift,' " I sigh.

"Oh go over and sock him in the nose, then, you big bully," she says, brushing me off. "I really don't care."

"Don't tempt me," I warn her, then looking back at Farrell I mutter, "What a creep."

"Oh my god, Patrick. You have no right to be so embittered," Evelyn says angrily, still staring into her menu. "Your animosity is grounded on nothing. There must be something really the matter with you."

"Look at his suit," I point out, unable to help myself. "Look at what he's wearing."

"Oh so what, Patrick." She turns a page, finds it has nothing on it and turns back to the page she was previously studying.

"Hasn't it occurred to him that his suit might inspire loathing?" I ask.

"Patrick you are being a lunatic," she says, shaking her head, now looking over the wine list.

"Goddamnit, Evelyn. What do you mean, being?" I say. "I fucking am one."

"Must you be so militant about it?" she asks.

"I don't know." I shrug.

"Anyway, I was going to tell you what happened to Melania and Taylor and…" She notices something and in the same sentence adds, sighing, "…stop looking at my chest, Patrick. Look at me, not my chest. Now anyway, Taylor Grassgreen and Melania were… You know Melania, she went to Sweet Briar. Her father owns all those banks in Dallas? And Taylor went to Cornell. Anyway, they were supposed to meet at the Cornell Club and then they had a reservation at Mondrian at seven and he was wearing…" She stops, retraces. "No. Le Cygne. They were going to Le Cygne and Taylor was…" She stops again. "Oh god, it was Mondrian. Mondrian at seven and he was wearing a Piero Dimitri suit. Melania had been shopping. I think she'd been to Bergdorf's, though I'm not positive – but anyway, oh yes… it was Bergdorf's because she was wearing the scarf at the office the other day, so anyway, she hadn't been to her aerobics class for something like two days and they were mugged on one of–"

"Waiter?" I call to someone passing by. "Another drink? J&B?" I point to the glass, upset that I phrased it as a question rather than a command.

"Don't you want to find out what happened?" Evelyn asks, displeased.

"With bated breath," I sigh, totally uninterested. "I can hardly wait."

"Anyway, the most amusing thing happened," she starts.

I am absorbing what you are saying to me, I'm thinking. I notice her lack of carnality and for the first time it taunts me. Before, it was what attracted me to Evelyn. Now its absence upsets me, seems sinister, fills me with a nameless dread. At our last session – yesterday, in fact – the psychiatrist I've been seeing for the past two months asked, "What method of contraception do you and Evelyn use?" and I sighed before answering, my eyes fixed out the window on a skyscraper, then at the painting above the Turchin glass coffee table, a giant visual reproduction of a graphic equalizer by another artist, not Onica. "Her job." When he asked about her preferred sexual act, I told him, completely serious, "Foreclosure." Dimly aware that if it weren't for the people in the restaurant I would take the jade chopsticks sitting on the table and push them deep into Evelyn's eyes and snap them in two, I nod, pretending to listen, but I've already phased out and I don't do the chopsticks thing. Instead I order a bottle of the Chassagne Montrachet.

"Isn't that amusing?" Evelyn asks.

Casually laughing along with her, the sounds coming out of my mouth loaded with scorn, I admit, "Riotous." I say it suddenly, blankly. My gaze traces the line of women at the bar. Are there any I'd like to fuck? Probably. The long-legged hardbody sipping a kir on the last stool? Perhaps. Evelyn is agonizing between the mâché raisin and gumbo salade or the gratinized beet, hazelnut, baby greens and endive salad and I suddenly feel like I've been pumped full of clonopin, which is an anticonvulsive, but it wasn't doing any good.

"Christ, twenty dollars for a fucking egg roll?" I mutter, studying the menu.

'It's a moo shu custard, lightly grilled," she says.

"It's a fucking egg roll," I protest.

To which Evelyn replies, "You're so cultivated, Patrick."

"No." I shrug. "Just reasonable."

"I'm desperate for some Beluga," she says. "Honey?"

"No," I say.

"Why not?" she asks, pputing.

"Because I don't want anything out of a can or that's Iranian," I sigh.

She sniffs haughtily and looks back at the menu. "The moo foo jambalaya is really first-rate," I hear her say.

The minutes tick by. We order. The meal arrives. Typically, the plate is massive, white porcelain; two pieces of blackened yellowtail sashimi with ginger lie in the middle, surrounded by tiny dots of wasabi, which is circled by a minuscule amount of hijiki, and on top of the plate sits one lone baby prawn; another one, even smaller, lies curled on the bottom, which confuses me since I thought this was primarily a Chinese restaurant. I stare at the plate for a long time and when I ask for some water, our waiter reappears with a pepper shaker instead and insists on hanging around our table, constantly asking us at five-minute intervals if we'd like "some pepper, perhaps?" or "more pepper?" and once the fool moves over to another booth, whose occupants, I can see out of the corner of my eye, both cover their plates with their hands, I wave the maître d' over and ask him, "Could you please tell the waiter with the pepper shaker to stop hovering over our table? We don't want pepper. We haven't ordered anything that needs pepper. No pepper. Tell him to get lost.-

"Of course. My apologizes." The maître d' humbly bows.

Embarrassed, Evelyn asks, "Must you be so overly polite?"

I put down my fork and shut my eyes. "Why are you constantly undermining my stability?"

She breathes in. "Let's just have a conversation. Not an interrogation. Okay?"

"About what?" I snarl.

"Listen," she says. "The Young Republican bash at the Pla…" She stops herself as if remembering something, then continues, "at the Trump Plaza is next Thursday." I want to tell her I can't make it, hoping to god she has other plans, even though two weeks ago, drunk and coked up at Mortimer's or Au Bar, I invited her, for Christ sakes. "Are we going?"

After a pause, "I guess," I say glumly.

For dessert I've arranged something special. At a power breakfast at the '21' Club this morning with Craig McDermott, Alex Baxter and Charles Kennedy, I stole a urinal cake from the men's room when the attendant wasn't looking. At home I covered it with a cheap chocolate syrup, froze it, then placed it in an empty Godiva box, tying a silk bow around it, and now, in Luke, when I excuse myself to the rest room, I make my way instead to the kitchen, after I've stopped at the coatcheck to retrieve the package, and I ask our waiter to present this to the table "in the box" and to tell the lady seated there that Mr. Bateman called up earlier to order this especially for her. I even tell him, while opening the box, to put a flower on it, whatever, hand him a fifty. He brings it over once a suitable amount of time has elapsed, after our plates have been removed, and I'm impressed by what a big deal he makes over it; he's even placed a silver dome over the box and Evelyn coos with delight when he lifts it off, saying "Voi-ra," and she makes a move for the spoon he's laid next to her water glass (that I make sure is empty) and, turning to me, Evelyn says, "Patrick, that's so sweet," and I nod to the waiter, smiling, and wave him away when he tries to place a spoon on my side of the table.

"Aren't you having any?" Evelyn asks, concerned. She hovers over the chocolate-dipped urinal cake anxiously, poised. "I adore Godiva."

"I'm not hungry," I say. "Dinner was… filling."

She leans down, smelling the brown oval, and, catching a scent of something (probably disinfectant), asks me, now dismayed, "Are you… sure?"

"No, darling," I say. "I want you to eat it. There's not a lot there."

She takes the first bite, chewing dutifully, immediately and obviously disgusted, then swallows. She shudders, then makes a grimace but tries to smile as she takes another tentative bite.

"How is it?" I ask, then, urging, "Eat it. It's not poisoned or anything."

Her face, twisted with displeasure, manages to blanch again as if she were gagging.

"What?" I ask, grinning. "What is it?"

"It's so…" Her face is now one long agonized grimace mask and, shuddering, she coughs. "…minty." But she tries to smile appreciatively, which becomes an impossibility. She reaches for my glass of water and gulps it down, desperate to rid her mouth of the taste. Then, noticing how worried I look, she tries to smile, this time apologetically. "It's just" – she shudders again – "it's just… so minty."

To me she looks like a big black ant – a big black ant in an original Christian Lacroix – eating a urinal cake and I almost start laughing, but I also want to keep her at ease. I don't want her to get second thoughts about finishing the urinal cake. But she can't eat any more and with only two bites taken, pretending to be full, she pushes the tainted plate away, and at this moment I start feeling strange. Even though I marveled at her eating that thing, it also makes me sad and suddenly I'm reminded that no matter how satisfying it was to see Evelyn eating something I, and countless others, had pissed on, in the end the displeasure it caused her was at my expense – it's an anticlimax, a futile excuse to put up with her for three hours. My jaw begins to clench, relax, clench, relax, involuntarily. There is music playing somewhere but I can't hear it. Evelyn asks the waiter, hoarsely, if perhaps he could get her some Life Savers from the Korean deli around the block.

Then, very simply, dinner reaches its crisis point, when Evelyn says, "I want a firm commitment."

The evening has already deteriorated considerably so this comment doesn't ruin anything or leave me unprepared, but the unreasonableness of our situation is choking me and I push my water glass back toward Evelyn and ask the waiter to remove the half-eaten urinal cake. My endurance for tonight is shot the second the melting dessert is taken away. For the first time I notice that she has been eyeing me for the last two years not with adoration but with something closer to greed. Someone finally brings her a water glass along with a bottle of Evian I didn't hear her order.

"I think, Evelyn, that…" I start, stall, start again. "…that we've lost touch."

"Why? What's wrong?" She's waving to a couple – Lawrence Montgomery and Geena Webster, I think – and from across the room Geena (?) holds up her hand, which has a bracelet on it. Evelyn nods approvingly.

"My… my need to engage in… homicidal behavior on a massive scale cannot be, um, corrected," I tell her, measuring each word carefully. "But I… have no other way to express my blocked… needs." I'm surprised at how emotional this admission makes me, and it wears me down; I feel light-headed. As usual, Evelyn misses the essence of what I'm saying, and I wonder how long it will take to finally rid myself of her.

"We need to talk," I say quietly.

She puts her empty water glass down and stares at me. "Patrick," she begins. "If you're going to start in again on why I should have breast implants, I'm leaving," she warns.

I consider this, then, "It's over, Evelyn. It's all over."

"Touchy, touchy," she says, motioning to the waiter for more water.

"I'm serious," I say quietly. "It is fucking over. Us. This is no joke."

She looks back at me and I think that maybe someone is actually comprehending what I'm trying to get through to them, but then she says, "Let's just avoid the issue, all right? I'm sorry I said anything. Now, are we having coffee?" Again she waves the waiter over.

"I'll have a decaf espresso," Evelyn says. "Patrick?"

"Port," I sigh. "Any kind of port."

"Would you like to see–" the waiter begins.

"Just the most expensive port," I cut him off. "And oh yeah, a dry beer."

"My my," Evelyn murmurs after the waiter leaven.

"Are you still seeing your shrink?" I ask.

"Patrick, " she warns. "Who?"

"Sorry," I sigh. "Your doctor."

"No." She opens her handbag, looking for something.

"Why not?" I ask, concerned.

"I told you why," she says dismissively.

"But I don't remember," I say, mimicking her.

"At the end of a session he asked me if I could get him plus three into Nell's that night." She checks her mouth, the lips, in the mirror of the compact. "Why do you ask?"

"Because I think you need to see someone," I begin, hesitantly, honestly. "I think you are emotionally unstable."

"You have a poster of Oliver North in your apartment and you're calling me unstable?" she asks, searching for something else in the handbag.

"No. You are, Evelyn." I say.

"Exaggerating. You"re exaggerating," she says, rifling through the bag, not looking at me.

I sigh, but then begin gravely, "I'm not going to push the issue, but–"

"How uncharacteristic of you, Patrick," she says.

"Evelyn. This has got to end," I sigh, talking to my napkin. "I'm twenty-seven. I don't want to be weighed down with a commitment."

"Honey?" she asks.

"Don't call me that, " I snap.

"What? Honey?" she asks.

"Yes," I snap again.

"What do you want me to call you?" she asks, indignantly. "CEO?" She stifles a giggle.

"Oh Christ."

"No, really Patrick. What do you want me to call you?"

King, I'm thinking. King, Evelyn. I want you to call me King. But I don't say this. "Evelyn. I don't want you to call me anything. I don't think we should see each other anymore."

"But your friends are my friends. My friends are your friends. I don't think it would work," she says, and then, staring at a spot above my mouth, "You have a tiny fleck on the top of your lip. Use your napkin."

Exasperated, I brush the fleck away. "Listen, I, know that your friends are my friends and vice versa. I've thought about that." After a pause I say, breathing in, "You can have them."

Finally she looks at me, confused, and murmurs, "You're really serious, aren't you?"

"Yes", I say, "I am."

"But… what about us? What about the past?" she asks blankly.

"The past isn't real. It's just a dream," I say. "Don't mention the past."

She narrows her eyes with suspicion. "Do you have something against me, Patrick?" And then the hardness in her face changes instantaneously to expectation, maybe hope.

"Evelyn," I sigh. "I'm sorry. You're just… not terribly important… to me."

Without missing a beat she demands, "Well, who is? Who do you think is, Patrick? Who do you want?" After an angry pause she asks, "Cher?"

"Cher?" I ask back, confused. "Cher? What are you talking about? Oh forget it. I want it over. I need sex on a regular basis. I need to be distracted."

In a matter of seconds she becomes frantic, barely able to contain the rising hysteria that's surging through her body. I'm not enjoying it as much as I thought I would. "But what about the past? Our past?" she asks again, uselessly.

"Don't mention it," I tell her, leaning in.

"Why not?"

"Because we never really shared one," I say, keeping my voice from rising.

She calms herself down and, ignoring me, opening her handbag again, mutters, "Pathological. Your behavior is pathological."

"What does that mean?" I ask, offended.

"Abhorrent. You're pathological." She finds a Laura Ashley pillbox and unsnaps it.

"Pathological what?" I ask, trying to smile.

"Forget it." She takes a pill that I don't recognize and uses my water to swallow it.

"I'm pathological? You're telling me that I'm pathological?" I ask.

"We look at the world differently, Patrick." She sniffs.

"Thank god," I say viciously.

"You're inhuman," she says, trying, I think, not to cry.

"I'm" – I stall, attempting to defend myself – "in touch with… humanity."

"No, no, no." She shakes her head.

"I know my behavior is… erratic sometimes," I say, fumbling.

Suddenly, desperately, she takes my hand from acres the table, pulling it closer to her. "What do you want me to do? What is it you want?"

"Oh Evelyn," I groan, pulling my hand away, shocked that I've finally gotten through to her.

She's crying. "What do you want me to do, Patrick? Tell me. Please," she begs.

"You should… oh god, I don't know. Wear erotic underwear?" I say, guessing. "Oh Jesus, Evelyn. I don't know. Nothing. You can't do anything."

"Please, what can I do?" she sobs quietly.

"Smile less often? Know more about cars? Say my name with less regularity? Is this what you want to hear?" I ask. "It won't change anything. You don't even drink beer," I mutter.

"But you don't drink beer either."

"'That doesri t matter. Besides, I just ordered one. So there."

"Oh Patrick."

"If you really want to do something for me, you can stop making a scene right now," I say, looking uncomfortably around the room.

"Waiter?" she asks, as soon as he sets down the decaf espresso, the port and the dry beer. "I'll have a… I'll have a… a what?" She looks over at me tearfully, confused and panicked. "A Corona? Is that what you drink, Patrick? A Corona?"

"Oh my god. Give it up. Please, just excuse her," I tell the waiter, then, as soon as he walks away, "Yes. A Corona. But we're in a fucking Chinese-Cajun bistro so–"

"Oh god, Patrick," she sobs, blowing her nose into the handkerchief I've tossed at her. "You're so lousy. You're… inhuman."

"No, I'm…" I stall again.

"You… are not…" She stops, wiping her face, unable to finish.

"I'm not what?" I ask, waiting, interested.

"You are not" – she sniffs, looks down, her shoulders heaving – "all there. You" – she chokes – "don't add up."

"I do too," I say indignantly, defending myself. "I do too add up."

"You're a ghoul," she sobs.

"No, no," I say, confused, watching her. "You're the ghoul."

"Oh god," she moans, causing the table next to ours to look over, then away. "I can't believe this."

"I'm leaving now," I say soothingly. "I've assessed the situation and I'm going."

"Don't," she says, trying to grab my hand. "Don't go."

"I'm leaving, Evelyn."

"Where are you going?" Suddenly she looks remarkably composed. She's been careful not to let the tears, which actually I've just noticed are very few, affect her makeup. "Tell me, Patrick, where are you going?"

I've placed a cigar on the table. She's too upset to even comment. "I'm just leaving," I say simply.

"But where?" she asks, more tears welling up. "Where are you going?"

Everyone in the restaurant within a particular aural distance seems to be looking the other way.

"Where are you going?'.' she asks again.

I make no comment, lost in my own private maze, thinking about other things: warrants, stock offerings, ESOPs, LBOs, IPOs, finances, refinances, debentures, converts, proxy statements, 8-Ks, 10-Qs, zero coupons, PiKs, GNPs, the IMF, hot executive gadgets, billionaires, Kenkichi Nakajima, infinity, Infinity, how fast a luxury car should go, bailouts, junk bonds, whether to cancel my subscription to The Economist, the Christmas Eve when I was fourteen and had raped one of our maids, Inclusivity, envying someone's life, whether someone could survive a fractured skull, waiting in airports, stifling a scream, credit cards and someone's passport and a book of matches from La Côte Basque splattered with blood, surface surface surface, a Rolls is a Rolls is a Rolls. To Evelyn our relationship is yellow and blue, but to me it's a gray place, most of it blacked out, bombed, footage from the film in my head is endless shots of stone and any language heard is utterly foreign, the sound flickering away over new images: blood pouring from automated tellers, women giving birth through their assholes, embryos frozen or scrambled (which is it?), nuclear warheads, billions of dollars, the total destruction of the world, someone gets beaten up, someone else dies, sometimes bloodlessly, more often mostly by rifle shot, assassinations, comas, life played out as a sitcom, a blank canvas that reconfigures itself into a soap opera. It's an isolation ward that serves only to expose my own severely impaired capacity to feel. I am at its center, out of season, and no one ever asks me for any identification. I suddenly imagine Evelyn's skeleton, twisted and crumbling, and this fills me with glee. It takes a long time to answer her question – Where are you going? – but after a sip of the port, then the dry beer, rousing myself, I tell her, at the same time wondering: If I were an actual automaton what difference would there really be?

"Libya," and then, after a significant pause, "Pago Pago. I meant to say Pago Pago," and then I add, "Because of your outburst I'm not paying for this meal."

Tries to Cook and Eat Girl

Dawn. Sometime in November. Unable to sleep, writhing on my futon, still in a suit, my head feeling like someone has lit a bonfire on it, in it, a constant searing pain that keeps both eyes open, utterly helpless. There are no drugs, no food, no liquor that can appease the forcefulness of this greedy pain; all my muscles are stiff, all my nerves burning, on fire. I'm taking Sontinex by the hour since I've run out of Dalmane, but nothing really helps and soon even the box of Sominex is empty. Things are lying in the corner of my bedroom: a pair of girl's shoes from Edward Susan Bennis Allen, a hand with the thumb and forefinger missing, the new issue of Vanity Fair splashed with someone's blood, a cummerbund drenched with gore, and from the kitchen wafting into the bedroom is the fresh smell of blood cooking, and when I stumble up out of bed into the living room, the walls are breathing, the stench of decay smothers everything. I light a cigar, hoping the smoke will mask at least some of it.

Her breasts have been chopped off and they look blue and deflated, the nipples a disconcerting shade of brown. Surrounded by dried black blood, they lie, rather delicately, on a china plate I bought at the Pottery Barn on top of the Wurlitzer jukebox in the corner, though I don't remember doing this. I have also shaved all the skin and most of the muscle off her face so that it resembles a skull with a long, flowing mane of blond hair falling from it, which is connected to a full, cold corpse; its eyes are open, the actual eyeballs hanging out of their sockets by their stalks. Most of her chest is indistinguishable from her neck, which looks like ground-up meat, her stomach resembles the eggplant and goat cheese lasagna at Il Marlibro or some other kind of dog food, the dominant colors red and white and brown. A few of her intestines are smeared across one wall and others are mashed up into balls that lie strewn across the glasstop coffee table like long blue snakes, mutant worms. The patches of skin left on her body are blue-gray, the color of tinfoil. Her vagina has discharged a brownish syrupy fluid that smells like a sick animal, as if that rat had been forced back up in there, had been digested or something.

I spend the next fifteen minutes beside myself, pulling out a bluish rope of intestine, most of it still connected to the body, and shoving it into my mouth, choking on it, and it feels moist in my mouth and it's filled with some kind of paste which smells bad. After an hour of digging, I detach her spinal cord and decide to Federal Express the thing without cleaning it, wrapped in tissue, under a different name, to Leona Helmsley. I want to drink this girl's blood as if it were champagne and I plunge my face deep into what's left of her stomach, scratching my chomping jaw on a broken rib. The huge new television set is on in one of the rooms, first blaring out The Patty Winters Show, whose topic today is Human Dairies, then a game show, Wheel of Fortune, and the applause coming from the studio audience sounds like static each time a new letter is turned. I'm loosening the tie I'm still wearing with a blood-soaked hand, breathing in deeply. This is my reality. Everything outside of this is like some movie I once saw.

In the kitchen I try to make meat loaf out of the girl but it becomes too frustrating a task and instead I spend the afternoon smearing her meat all over the walls, chewing on strips of skin I ripped from her body, then I rest by watching a tape of last week's new CBS sitcom, Murphy Brown. After that and a large glass of J&B I'm back in the kitchen. The head in the microwave is now completely black and hairless and I place it in a tin pot on the stove in an attempt to boil any remaining flesh I forgot to shave off. Heaving the rest of her body into a garbage bag – my muscles, slathered with Ben-Gay, easily handling the dead weight – I decide to use whatever is left of her for a sausage of some kind.

A Richard Marx CD plays on the stereo, a bag from Zabar's loaded with sourdough onion bagels and spices sits on the kitchen table while I grind bone and fat and flesh into patties, and though it does sporadically penetrate how unacceptable some of what I'm doing actually is, I just remind myself that this thing, this girl, this meat, is nothing, is shit, and along with a Xanax (which I am now taking half-hourly) this thought momentarily calms me and then I'm humming, humming the theme to a show I watched often as a child – The Jetsons? The Banana Splits? Scooby Doo? Sigmund and the Sea Monsters? I'm remembering the song, the melody, even the key it was sung in, but not the show. Was it Lidsville? Was it H. R. Pufnstuf? These questions are punctuated by other questions, as diverse as "Will I ever do time?" and "Did this girl have a trusting heart?" The smell of meat and blood clouds up the condo until I don't notice it anymore. And later my macabre joy sours and I'm weeping for myself, unable to find solace in any of this, crying out, sobbing "I just want to be loved," cursing the earth and everything I have been taught: principles, distinctions, choices, morals, compromises, knowledge, unity, prayer – all of it was wrong, without any final purpose. All it came down to was: die or adapt. I imagine my own vacant face, the disembodied voice coming from its mouth: These are terrible times. Maggots already writhe across the human sausage, the drool pouring from my lips dribbles over them, and still I can't tell if I'm cooking any of this correctly, because I'm crying too hard and I have never really cooked anything before.

Taking an Uzi to the Gym

On a moonless night, in the starkness of the locker room at Xclusive, after working out for two hours, I'm feeling good. The gun in my locker is an Uzi which cost me seven hundred dollars and though I am also carrying a Ruger Mini ($469) in my Bottega Veneta briefcase and it's favored by most hunters, I still don't like the way it looks; there's something more manly about an Uzi, something dramatic about it that gets me excited, and sitting here, Walkman on my head, in a pair of two-hundred-dollar black Lycra bicycle shorts, a Valium just beginning to take effect, I stare into the darkness of the locker, tempted. The rape and subsequent murder last night of an NYU student behind the Gristede's on University Place, near her dorm, however inappropriate the timing, no matter how uncharacteristic the lapse, was highly satisfying and though I'm unprepared by my change of heart, I'm in a reflective mood and I place the gun, which is a symbol of order to me, back in the locker, to be used at another time. I have videotapes to return, money to be taken out of an automated teller, a dinner reservation at 150 Wooster that was difficult to get.

Chase, Manhattan

Tuesday night, at Bouley, in No Man's Land, a fairly unremarkable marathon dinner, even after I tell the table, "Listen, guys, my life is a living hell," they utterly ignore me, the group assembled (Richard Perry, Edward Lampert, John Constable, Craig McDermott, Jim Kramer, Lucas Tanner) continuing to argue about allocating assets, which stocks look best for the upcoming decade, hardbodies, real estate, gold, why long-term bonds are too risky now, the spread collar, portfolios, how to use power effectively, new ways to exercise, Stolichnaya Cristall, how best to impress very important people, eternal vigilance, life at its best, here in Bouley I cannot seem to control myself, here in a room that contains a whole host of victims, lately I can't help noticing them everywhere – in business meetings, nightclubs, restaurants, in passing taxis and in elevators, on line at automated tellers and on porno tapes, in David's Cookies and on CNN, everywhere, all of them having one thing in common: they are prey, and during dinner I almost become unglued, plummeting into a state of near vertigo that forces me to excuse myself before dessert, at which point I use the rest room, do a line of cocaine, pick up my Giorgio Armani wool overcoat and the .357 magnum barely concealed within it from the coatcheck, strap on a holster and then I'm outside, but on The Patty Winters Show this morning there was an interview with a man who set his daughter on fire while she was giving birth, at dinner we all had shark…

…in Tribeca it's misty out, sky on the verge of rain, the restaurants down here empty, after midnight the streets remote, unreal, the only sign of human life someone playing a saxophone on the corner of Duane Street, in the doorway, of what used to be Duplex, which is now an abandoned bistro that closed last month, a young guy, bearded, white beret, playing a very beautiful but clichéd saxophone solo, at his feet an open umbrella with a dollar, damp, and some change in it, unable to resist I move up to him, listening to the music, something from Les Misérables, he acknowledges my presence, nods, and while he closes his eyes – lifting the instrument up, leaning his head back during what I guess he thinks is a passionate moment – in one fluid motion I take the .357 magnum out of its holster and, not wanting to arouse anyone in the vicinity, I screw a silencer onto the gun, a cold autumn wind rushes up the street, engulfing us, and when the victim opens his eyes, spotting the gun, he stops playing, the tip of the saxophone still in his mouth, I pause too, then nod for him to go on, and, tentatively, he does, then I raise the gun to his face and in midnote pull the trigger, but the silencer doesn't work and in the same instant a huge crimson ring appears behind his head the booming sound of the gunshot deafens me, stunned, his eyes still alive, he falls to his knees, then onto his saxophone, I pop the clip and replace it with a full one, then something bad happens…

…because while doing this I've failed to notice the squad car that was traveling behind me – doing what? god only knows, handing out parking tickets? – and after the noise the magnum makes echoes, fades, the siren of the squad car pierces the night, out of nowhere, sending my heart into palpitations, I start walking away from the trembling body, slowly, casually at first, as if innocent, then I break into a run, full-fledged, the cop car screeching after me, over a loudspeaker a cop shouts uselessly, "halt stop halt put down your weapon," ignoring them I make a left on Broadway, heading down toward City Hall Park, ducking into an alleyway, the squad car follows but only makes it halfway as the alley narrows, a spray of blue sparks flying up before it gets stuck and I run out the end of the alley as fast as I can onto Church Street, where I flag down a cab, hop in the front seat and scream at its driver, a young Iranian guy completely taken by surprise, to "get the hell out of here fast – no drive," I'm waving the gun at him, in his face, but he panics, cries out in mangled English "don't shoot me please don't kill me," holding his hands up, I mutter "oh shit" and scream "drive" but he's terrified, "oh don't shoot me man don't shoot," I impatiently mutter "fuck yourself" and, raising the gun to his face, pull the trigger, the bullet splatters his head open, cracks it in half like a dark red watermelon against the windshield, and I reach over him, open the door, push the corpse out, slam the door, start driving…

…in an adrenaline rush causing panting, I can only get a few blocks, partly because of panic, mostly because of the blood, brains, chunks of head covering the windshield, and I barely avoid a collision with another cab on Franklin – is it? – and Greenwich, veering the taxi sharply to the right, swerving into the side of a parked limousine, then I shift into reverse, screech down the street, turn on the windshield wipers, realizing too late that the blood sprayed across the glass is on the inside, attempt to wipe it away with a gloved hand, and racing blindly down Greenwich I lose control entirely, the cab swerves into a Korean deli, next to a karaoke restaurant called Lotus Blossom I've been to with Japanese clients, the cab rolling over fruit stands, smashing through a wall of glass, the body of a cashier thudding across the hood, Patrick tries to put the cab in reverse but nothing happens, he staggers out of the cab, leaning against it, a nerve-racking silence follows, "nice going, Bateman," he mutters, limping out of the store, the body on the hood moaning in agony, Patrick with no idea where the cop running toward him across the street has come from, he's yelling something into his walkie-talkie, thinking Patrick is stunned, but Patrick surprises him by lunging out before the cop can get to his gun and he knocks him over onto the sidewalk…

…where people from the Lotus Blossom are now standing, staring dumbly at the wreckage, no one helping the cop as the two men lie struggling on the sidewalk, the cop wheezing from exertion on top of Patrick, trying to wrestle the magnum from his grasp, but Patrick feels infected, like gasoline is coursing through his veins instead of blood, it gets windier, the temperature drops, it starts raining, but softly they roll into the street, Patrick keeps thinking there should be music, he forces a demonic leer, his heart thumping, and manages quite easily to bring the gun up to the cop's face, two pairs of hands holding it but Patrick's finger pulls the trigger, the bullet blowing a crease in the top of the officer's skull yet failing to kill him, but lowering his aim with the aid of the loosening grip of the officer's fingers Patrick shoots him in the face, the bullet's exit casting a lingering pinkish mist while some of the people on the sidewalk scream, do nothing, hide, run back into the restaurant, as the cop car Patrick thought he evaded in the alley careens toward the deli, red lights flashing, screeching to a halt right when Patrick trips over the curb, collapsing onto the sidewalk, at the same time reloading the magnum, hiding behind the corner, the terror he thought had passed engulfing him again, thinking: I have no idea what I've done to increase my chances of getting caught, I shot a saxophonist? a saxophonist? who was probably a mime too? for that I get this? and in the near distance he can hear other cars coming, lost in the maze of streets, the cops now, right here, don't bother with warnings anymore, they just start shooting and he returns their gunfire from his belly, getting a glimpse of both cops behind the open doors of the squad car, guns flashing like in a movie and this makes Patrick realize he's involved in an actual gunfight of sorts, that he's trying to dodge bullets, that the dream threatens to break, is gone, that he's not aiming carefully, just obliviously returning gunfire, lying there, when a stray bullet, sixth in a new round, hits the gas tank of the police car, the headlights dim before it bursts apart, sending a fireball billowing up into the darkness, the bulb of a streetlamp above it exploding unexpectedly in a burst of yellow-green sparks, flames washing over the bodies of the policemen both living and dead, shattering all the windows of Lotus Blossom, Patrick's ears ringing…

…while running toward Wall Street, still in Tribeca, he stays away from where the streetlamps shine the brightest, notices that the entire block he's lurching down is gentrified, then he dashes past a row of Porsches, tries to open each one and sets a string of car alarm sirens off, the car he would like to steal is a black Range Rover with permanent four-wheel drive, an aircraft-grade aluminum body on a boxed steel chassis and a fuel-injected V-8 engine, but he can't find one, and though this disappoints him he's also intoxicated by the whirlwind of confusion, by the city itself, the rain falling from an ice-cold sky but still warm enough in the city, on the ground, for fog to drift through the passageways the skyscrapers create in Battery Park, in Wall Street, wherever, most of them a kaleidoscopic blur, and now he's jumping over an embankment, somersaulting over it, then he's running like crazy, running full tilt, his brain locked into the physical exertion of utter, sheer panic, helter-skelter, now he thinks a car is following him down a deserted highway, now he feels the night accepts him, from somewhere else a shot is heard but doesn't really register because Patrick's mind is out of sync, forgetting his destination, until like a mirage his once building, where Pierce & Pierce is located, comes into view, the lights in it going off, floor by floor, as if a darkness is rising through it, running another hundred yards, two hundred yards, ducking into the stairs, below, where? his senses blocked for the first time with fear and bewilderment, and dumbstruck with confusion he rushes into the lobby of what he thinks is his building, but no, something seems wrong, what is it? you moved (the move itself was a nightmare even though Patrick has a better office now; the new Barney's and Godiva stores adjacent to the lobby ease the strain) and he's gotten the buildings mixed up, it's only at the elevator…

…doors, both of which are locked, where he notices the huge Julian Schnabel in the lobby and he realizes wrong fucking building and he whirls around, making a mad scramble for the revolving doors, but the night watchman who tried to get Patrick's attention before now waves him in, as he's about to bolt out of the lobby, "Burning the midnight oil, Mr. Smith? You forgot to sign in," and frustrated, Patrick shoots at him while spinning once, twice through the glass doors which thrust him back into the lobby of god only knows where as the bullet catches the watchman in the throat, knocking him backward, leaving a spray of blood hanging momentarily in midair before drizzling down on the watchman's contorted, twisted face, and the black janitor Patrick has just noticed has been watching the scene from a corner of the lobby, mop in hand, bucket by his feet, drops the mop, raises his hands, and Patrick shoots him right between the eyes, a stream of blood covers his face, the back of his head explodes in a spray, behind him the bullet knocks out a chunk of marble, the force of the blast slams him against the wall, Patrick dashing across the street toward the light of his new office, when he walks in…

…nodding toward Gus, our night watchman, signing in, heading up in the elevator, higher, toward the darkness of his floor, calm is eventually restored, safe in the anonymity of my new office, able with shaking hands to pick up the cordless phone, looking through my Rolodex, exhausted, eyes falling upon Harold Carnes' number, dialing the seven digits slowly, breathing deeply, evenly, I decide to make public what has been, until now, my private dementia, but Harold isn't in, business, London, I leave a message, admitting everything, leaving nothing out, thirty, forty, a hundred murders, and while I'm on the phone with Harold's machine a helicopter with a searchlight appears, flying low over the river, lightning cracks the sky open in jagged bolts behind it, heading toward the building I was last at, descending to land on the building's roof across from this one, the bottom of the building surrounded already by police cars, two ambulances, and a SWAT team leaps out of the helicopter, a half-dozen armed men disappear into the entrance on the deck of the roof, flares are lined up what seems like everywhere, and I'm watching all of this with the phone in my hand, crouched by my desk, sobbing though I don't know why, into Harold's machine, "I left her in a parking lot… near a Dunkin' Donuts… somewhere around midtown…" and finally, after ten minutes of this, I sign off by concluding, "Uh, I'm a pretty sick guy," then hang up, but I call back and after an interminable beep, proving my message was indeed recorded, I leave another: "Listen, it's Bateman again, and if you get back tomorrow, I may show up at Da Umberto's tonight so, you know, keep your eyes open," and the sun, a planet on fire, gradually rises over Manhattan, another sunrise, and soon the night turns into day so fast it's like some kind of optical illusion…

Huey Lewis and the News

Huey Lewis and the News burst out of San Francisco onto the national music scene at the beginning of the decade, with their self-titled rock pop album released by Chrysalis, though they really didn't come into their own, commercially or artistically, until their 1983 smash, Sports. Though their roots were visible (blues, Memphis soul, country) on Huey Lewis and the News they seemed a little too willing to cash in on the late seventies/early eighties taste for New Wave, and the album – though it's still a smashing debut – seems a little too stark, too punk. Examples of this being the drumming on the first single, "Some of My Lies Are True (Sooner or Later)," and the fake handclaps on "Don't Make Me Do It" as well as the organ on "Taking a Walk." Even though it was a little bit strained, their peppy boy-wants-girl lyrics and the energy with which Lewis, as a lead singer, instilled all the songs were refreshing. Having a great lead guitarist like Chris Hayes (who also shares vocals) doesn't hurt either. Hayes' solos are as original and unrehearsed as any in rock. Yet the keyboardist, Sean Hopper, seemed too intent on playing the organ a little too mechanically (though his piano playing on the second half of the album gets better) and Bill Gibson's drumming was too muted to have much impact. The songwriting also didn't mature until much later, though many of the catchy songs had hints of longing and regret and dread ("Stop Trying" is just one example).

Though the boys hail from San Francisco and they share some similarities with their Southern California counterparts, the Beach Boys (gorgeous harmonies, sophisticated vocalizing, beautiful melodies – they even posed with a surfboard on the cover of the debut album), they also carried with them some of the bleakness and nihilism of the (thankfully now forgotten) "punk rock" scene of Los Angeles at the time. Talk about your Angry Young Man! – listen to Huey on "Who Cares," "Stop Trying," "Don't Even Tell Me That You Love Me," "Trouble in Paradise" (the titles say it all). Huey hits his notes like an embittered survivor and the band often sounds as angry as performers like the Clash or Billy Joel or Blondie. No one should forget that we have Elvis Costello to thank for discovering Huey in the first place. Huey played harmonica on Costello's second record, the thin, vapid My Aim Was You. Lewis has some of Costello's supposed bitterness, though Huey has a more bitter, cynical sense of humor. Elvis might think that intellectual wordplay is as important as having a good time and having one's cynicism tempered by good spirits, but I wonder what he thinks about Lewis selling so many more records than he?

Things looked up for Huey and the boys on the second album, 1982's Picture This, which yielded two semihits, "Workin' for a Livin' " and "Do You Believe in Love," and the fact that this coincided with the advent of video (there was one made for both songs) undoubtedly helped sales. The sound, though still tinged with New Wave trappings, seemed more roots-rock than the previous album, which might have something to do with the fact that Bob Clearmountain mixed the record or that Huey Lewis and the News took over the producing reins. Their songwriting grew more sophisticated and the group wasn't afraid to quietly explore other genres – notably reggae ("Tell Her a Little Lie") and ballads ("Hope You Love Me Like You Say" and "Is It Me?"). But for all its power-pop glory, the sound and the band seem, gratefully, less rebellious, less angry on this record (though the blue-collar bitterness of "Workin' for a Livin' " seems like an outtake from the earlier album). They seem more concerned with personal relationships – four of the album's ten songs have the word "love" in their title – rather than strutting around as young nihilists, and the mellow good-times feel of the record is a surprising, infectious change.

The band is playing better than it last did and the Tower of Power horns give the record a more open, warmer sound. The album hits its peak with the back-to-back one-two punch of "Workin' for a Livin' " and "Do You Believe in Love," which is the best song on the album and is essentially about the singer asking a girl he's met while "looking for someone to meet" if she "believes in love." The fact that the song never resolves the question (we never find out what the girl says) gives it an added complexity that wasn't apparent on the group's debut. Also on "Do You Believe in Love" is a terrific sax solo by Johnny Colla (the guy gives Clarence Clemons a run for his money), who, like Chris Hayes on lead guitar and Sean Hopper on keyboards, has by now become an invaluable asset to the band (the sax solo on the ballad "Is It Me?" is even stronger). Huey's voice sounds more searching, less raspy, yet plaintive, especially on "The Only One," which is a touching song about what happens to our mentors and where they end up (Bill Gibson's drumming is especially vital to this track). Though the album should have ended on that powerful note, it ends instead with "Buzz Buzz Buzz," a throwaway blues number that doesn't make much sense compared to what preceded it, but in its own joky way it amuses and the Tower of Power horns are in excellent form.

There are no such mistakes made on the band's third album and flawless masterpiece, Sports (Chrysalis). Every song has the potential to be a huge hit and most of them were. It made the band rock 'n' roll icons. Gone totally is the bad-boy image, and a new frat-guy sweetness takes over (they even have the chance to say "ass" in one song and choose to bleep it instead). The whole album has a clear, crisp sound and a new sheen of consummate professionalism that gives the songs on the album a big boost. And the wacky, original videos made to sell the record ("Heart and Soul," "The Heart of Rock 'n' Roll," "If This Is It," "Bad Is Bad," "I Want a New Drug") made them superstars on MTV.

Produced by the band, Sports opens with what will probably become their signature song, "The Heart of Rock 'n Roll," a loving ode to rock 'n' roll all over the United States. It's followed by "Heart and Soul," their first big single, which is a trademark Lewis song (though it's written by outsiders Michael Chapman and Nicky Chinn) and the tune that firmly and forever established them as the premier rock band in the country for the 1980s. If the lyrics aren't quite up to par with other songs, most of them are more than serviceable and the whole thing is a jaunty enterprise about what a mistake one-night stands are (a message the earlier, rowdier Huey would never have made). "Bad Is Bad," written solely by Lewis, is the bluesiest song the band had recorded up to this point and Mario Cipollina's bass playing gets to shine on it, but it's really Huey's harmonica solos that give it an edge. "I Want a New Drug," with its killer guitar riff (courtesy of Chris Hayes), is the album's centerpiece – not only is it the greatest antidrug song ever written, it's also a personal statement about how the band has grown up, shucked off their bad-boy image and learned to become more adult. Hayes' solo on it is incredible and the drum machine used, but not credited, gives not only "I Want a New Drug" but most of the album a more consistent backbeat than any of the previous albums – even though Bill Gibson is still a welcome presence.

The rest of the album whizzes by flawlessly – side two opens with their most searing statement yet: "Walking on a Thin Line," and no one, not even Bruce Springsteen, has written as devastatingly about the plight of the Vietnam vet in modern society. This song, though written by outsiders, shows a social awareness that was new to the band and proved to anyone who ever doubted it that the band, apart from its blues background, had a heart. And again in "Finally Found a Home" the band proclaims its newfound sophistication with this paean to growing up. And though at the same time it's about shedding their rebel image, it's also about how they "found themselves" in the passion and energy of rock 'n' roll. In fact the song works on so many levels it's almost too complex for the album to carry, though it never loses its beat and it still has Sean Hopper's ringing keyboards, which make it danceable. "If This Is It" is the album's one ballad, but it's not downbeat. It's a plea for a lover to tell another lover if they want to carry on with the relationship, and the way Huey sings it (arguably the most superb vocal on the album), it becomes instilled with hope. Again, this song – as with the rest of the album – isn't about chasing or longing after girls, it's about dealing with relationships. "Crack Me Up" is the album's only hint at a throwback to the band's New Wave days and it's minor but amusing, though its antidrinking, antidrug, pro-growing-up statement isn't.

And as a lovely ending to an altogether remarkable album, the band does a version of "Honky Tonk Blues" (another song written by someone not in the band, named Hank Williams), and even though it's a very different type of song, you can feel its presence throughout the rest of the album. For all its professional sheen, the album has the integrity of honky-tonk blues. (Aside: During this period Huey also recorded two songs for the movie Back to the Future, which both went Number One, "The Power of Love" and "Back in Time," delightful extras, not footnotes, in what has been shaping up into a legendary career.) What to say to Sports dissenters in the long run? Nine million people can't be wrong.

Fore! (Chrysalis; 1986) is essentially a continuation of the Sports album but with an even more professional sheen. This is the record where the guys don't need to prove they've grown up and that they've accepted rock 'n' roll, because in the three year transition between Sports and Fore! they already had. (In fact three of them are wearing suits on the cover of the record.) It opens with a blaze of fire, "Jacob's Ladder," which is essentially a song about struggle and overcoming compromise, a fitting reminder of what Huey and the News represents, and with the exception of "Hip to Be Square" it's the best song on the album (though it wasn't written by anyone in the band). This is followed by the sweetly good-matured "Stuck with You," a lightweight paean to relationships and marriage. In fact most of the love songs on the album are about sustained relationships, unlike the early albums, where the concerns were about either lusting after girls and not getting them or getting burned in the process. On Fore! the songs are about guys who are in control (who have the girls) and now have to deal with them. This new dimension in the News gives the record an added oomph and they seem more content and satisfied, less urgent, and this makes for their most pleasingly crafted record to date. But also for every "Doing It All for My Baby" (a delightful ode about monogamy and satisfaction) there's a barn-banning blues scorcher number like "Whole Lotta Lovin'," and side one (or, on the CD, song number five) ends with the masterpiece "Hip to Be Square" (which, ironically, is accompanied by the band's only bad video), the key song on Fore!; which is a rollicking ode to conformity that's so catchy most people probably don't even listen to the lines, but with Chris Hayes blasting guitar and the terrific keyboard playing who cares? And it's not just about the pleasures of conformity and the importance of trends – it's also a personal statement about the band itself, though of what I'm not quite sure.

If the second part of Fore! doesn't have the intensity of the first, there are some real gems that are actually quite complicated. "I Know What I Like" is a song that Huey would never have sung six years back – a blunt declaration of independence – while the carefully placed "I Never Walk Alone," which follows, actually complements the song and explains it in broader terms (it also has a great organ solo and except for "Hip to Be Square" has Huey's strongest vocals). "Forest for the Trees" is an upbeat antisuicide tract, and though its title might seem like a cliché, Huey and the band have a way of energizing clichés and making them originals wholly their own. The nifty a cappella "Naturally" evokes an innocent time while showcasing the band's vocal harmonies (if you didn't know better you'd think it was the Beach Boys coming out of your CD player), and even if it's essentially a throwaway, a trifle of sorts, the album ends on a majestic note with "Simple as That," a blue-collar ballad that sounds not a note of resignation but one of hope, and its complex message (it wasn't written by anyone in the band) of survival leads the way to their next album, Small World, where they take on global issues. Fore! might not be the masterpiece Sports is (what could be?), but in its own way it's just as satisfying and the mellower, gentler Huey of '86 is just as happening.

Small World (Chrysalis; 1988) is the most ambitious, artistically satisfying record yet produced by Huey Lewis and the News. The Angry Young Man has definitely been replaced by a smoothly professional musician and even though Huey has only really mastered one instrument (the harmonica), its majestic Dylanesque sounds give Small World a grandeur few artists have reached. It's an obvious transition and their first album that tries to make thematic sense – in fact Huey takes on one of the biggest subjects of all: the importance of global communication. It's no wonder four out of the album's ten songs have the word "world" in their titles and that for the first time there's not only one but three instrumentals.

The CD gets off to a rousing start with the Lewis/Hayes-penned "Small World (Part One)," which, along with its message of harmony, has a blistering solo by Hayes at its center. In "Old Antone's" one can catch the zydeco influences that the band has picked up on touring around the country, and it gives it a Cajun flavor that is utterly unique. Bruce Hornsby plays the accordion wonderfully and the lyrics give you a sense of a true Bayou spirit. Again, on the hit single "Perfect World," the Tower of Power horns are used to extraordinary effect. It's also the best cut on the album (written by Alex Call, who isn't in the band) and it ties up all the album's themes – about accepting the imperfections of this world but still learning to "keep on dreamin' of livin' in a perfect world." Though the sang is fastpaced pop it's still moving in terms of its intentions and the band plays splendidly on it. Oddly this is followed by two instrumentals: the eerie African-influenced reggae dance track "Bobo Tempo" and the second part of "Small World." But just because these tunes are wordless doesn't mean the global message of communication is lost, and they don't seem like filler or padding because of the implications of their thematic reprise; the band gets to show off its improvisational skills as well.

Side two opens smashingly with "Walking with the Kid," the first Huey song to acknowledge the responsibilities of fatherhood. His voice sounds mature and even though we, as listeners, don't find out until the last line that "the kid" (who we assume is a buddy) is actually his son, the maturity in Huey's voice tips us off and it's hard to believe that the man who once sang "Heart and Soul" and "Some of My Lies Are True" is singing this. The album's big ballad, "World to Me," is a dreamy pearl of a song, and though it's about sticking together in a relationship, it also makes allusions to China and Alaska and Tennessee, carrying on the album's "Small World" theme – and the band sounds really good on it. "Better Be True" is also a bit of a ballad, but it's not a dreamy pearl and its lyrics aren't really about sticking together in a relationship nor does it make allusions to China or Alaska and the band sounds really good on it.

"Give Me the Keys (And I'll Drive You Crazy)" is a good-times blues rocker about (what else?) driving around, incorporating the album's theme in a much more playful way than previous songs on the album did, and though lyrically it might seem impoverished, it's still a sign that the new "serious" Lewis – that Huey the artist hasn't totally lost his frisky sense of humor. The album ends with "Slammin'," which has no words and it's just a lot of horns that quite frankly, if you turn it up really loud, can give you a fucking big headache and maybe even make you feel a little sick, though it might sound different on an album or on a cassette though I wouldn't know anything about that. Anyway it set off something wicked in me that lasted for days. And you cannot dance to it very well.

It took something like a hundred people to put Small World together (counting all the extra musicians, drum technicians, accountants, lawyers – who are all, thanked), but this actually adds to the CD's theme of community and it doesn't clutter the record – it makes it a more joyous experience. With this CD and the four previous ones behind it, Huey Lewis and the News prove that if this really is a small world, then these guys are the best American band of the 1980s on this or any other continent – and it has with it Huey Lewis, a vocalist, musician and writer who just can't be topped.

In Bed with Courtney

I'm in Courtney's bed. Luis is in Atlanta. Courtney shivers, presses against me, relaxes. I roll off her onto my back, landing on something hard and covered with fur. I reach under myself to find a stuffed black cat with blue jewels for eyes that I think I spotted at F.A.O. Schwarz when I was doing some early Christmas shopping. I'm at a loss as to what to say, so I stammer, "Tiffany lamps… are making a comeback." I can barely see her face in the darkness but hear the sigh, painful and low, the sound of a prescription bottle snapping open, her body shifting in the bed. I drop the cat on the floor, get up, take a shower. On The Patty Winters Show this morning the topic was Beautiful Teenage Lesbians, which I found so erotic I had to stay home, miss a meeting, jerk off twice. Aimless, I spent an inordinate amount of the day at Sotheby's, bored and confused. Last night, dinner with Jeanette at Deck Chairs, she seemed tired and ordered little. We split a pizza that cost ninety dollars. After toweling my hair dry I put on a Ralph Lauren robe and walk back into the bedroom, start to dress. Courtney is smoking a cigarette, watching Late Night with David Letterman, the sound turned down low.

"Will you call me before Thanksgiving?' she asks.

"Maybe." I button up the front of my shirt, wondering why I even came here in the first place.

"What are you doing?" she asks, speaking slowly.

My response is predictably cool. "Dinner at the River Café. Afterwards Au Bar, maybe."

"That's nice," she murmurs.

"You and… Luis?" I ask.

"We were supposed to have dinner at Tad and Maura's," she sighs. "But I don't think we're going to anymore."

"Why not?" I slip on my vest, black cashmere from Polo, thinking: I am really interested.

"Oh you know how Luis is about the Japanese," she starts, her eyes already glazed over.

When she fails to continue I ask, annoyed, "You're making sense. Go on."

"Luis refused to play Trivial Pursuit at Tad and Maura's last Sunday because they have an Akita." She takes a drag off her cigarette.

"So, like…" I pause. "What happened?"

"We played at my place."

"I never knew you smoked," I say.

She smiles sadly but in a dumb way. "You never noticed."

"Okay, I admit I'm embarrassed, but just a little." I move over to the Martian mirror that hangs above a Sottsass teakwood desk to make sure the knot in my Armani paisley tie isn't crooked.

"Listen, Patrick," she says, with effort. "Can we talk?"

"You look marvelous." I sigh, turning my head, offering an airkiss. "There's nothing to say. You're going to marry Luis. Next week, no less."

"Isn't that special?" she asks sarcastically, but not in a frustrated way.

"Read my lips," I say, turning back to the mirror. "You look marvelous."

"Patrick?"

"Yes, Courtney?"

"If I don't see you before Thanksgiving…" She stops, confused. "Have a nice one?"

I look at her for a moment before replying, tonelessly, "You too."

She picks up the stuffed black cat, strokes its head. I step out the door into the hallway, heading down it toward the kitchen.

"Patrick?" she calls sofy from her bedroom.

I stop but don't turn around. "Yes?"

"Nothing."

Smith & Wollensky

I'm with Craig McDermott in Harry's on Hanover. He's smoking a cigar, drinking a Stoli Cristall martini, asking me what the rules are for wearing a pocket square. I'm drinking the same thing, answering him. We're waiting for Harold Carnes, who just got back from London on Tuesday, and he's half an hour late. I'm nervous, impatient, and when I tell McDermott that we should have invited Todd or at least Hamlin, who was sure to have cocaine, he shrugs and says that maybe we'll be able to find Carnes at Delmonico's. But we don't find Carnes at Delmonico's so we head uptown to Smith & Wollensky for an eight o'clock reservation that one of us made. McDermott is wearing a six-button double-breasted wool suit by Cerruti 1881, a tattersall cotton shirt by Louis, Boston, a silk tie by Dunhill. I'm wearing a six-button double-breasted wool suit by Ermenegildo Zegna, a striped cotton shirt by Luciano Barbera, a silk tie by Armani, suede wing-tips by Ralph Lauren, socks by E. G. Smith. Men Who've Been Raped by Women was the topic on The Patty Winters Show this morning. Sitting in a booth at Smith and Wollensky, which is strangely empty, I'm on Valium, drinking a good glass of red wine, wondering absently about that cousin of mine at St. Albans in Washington who recently raped a girl, biting her earlobes off, getting a sick thrill not ordering the hash browns, how my brother and I once rode horses together, played tennis – this is burning from my memory but McDermott eclipses these thoughts when he notices I haven't ordered the hash browns after dinner has arrived.

"What is this? You can't eat at Smith and Wollensky without ordering the hash browns," he complains.

I avoid his eyes and touch the cigar I'm saving in my jacket pocket.

"Jesus, Bateman, you're a raving maniac. Been at P & P too long," he mutters. "No fucking hash browns."

I don't say anything. How can I tell McDermott that this is a very disjointed time of my life and that I notice the walls have been painted a bright, almost painful white and under the glare of the fluorescent lights they seem to pulse and glow. Frank Sinatra is somewhere, singing "Witchcraft." I'm staring at the walls, listening to the words, suddenly thirsty, but our waiter is taking orders from a very large table of exclusively Japanese businessmen, and someone who I think is either George MacGowan or Taylor Preston, in the booth behind this one, wearing something by Polo, is eyeing me suspiciously and McDermott is still staring at my steak with this stunned look on his face and one of the Japanese businessmen is holding an abacus, another one is trying to pronounce the word "teriyaki," another is mouthing, then singing, the words to the song, and the table laughs, an odd, not completely foreign sound, as he lifts up a pair of chopsticks, shaking his head confidently, imitating Sinatra. His mouth opens, what comes out of it is: "that sry comehitle stale… that clazy witchclaft…"

Something on Television

While getting dressed to meet Jeanette for a new British musical that opened on Broadway last week and then dinner at Progress, the new Malcolm Forbes restaurant on the Upper East Side, I watch a tape of this morning's Patty Winters Show, which is split into two parts. The first section is a feature on the lead singer of the rock band Guns n' Roses, Axl Rose, whom Patty quoted as telling an interviewer, "When I get stressed I get violent and take it out on myself. I've pulled razor blades on myself but then realized that having a scar is more detrimental than not having a stereo… I'd rather kick my stereo in than go punch somebody in the face. When I get mad or upset or emotional, sometimes I'll walk over and play my piano." Part two consists of Patty reading letters that Ted Bundy, the mass murderer, had written to his fiancée during one of his many trials. " 'Dear Carole,' " she reads, while an unfairly bloated head shot of Bundy, just weeks away from execution, Hashes across the screen, " 'please do not sit in the same row in court with Janet. When I look over toward you there she sits contemplating me with her mad eyes like a deranged seagull studying a clam… I can feel her spreading hot sauce on me already…' "

I wait for something to happen. I sit in my bedroom for close to an hour. Nothing does. I get up, do the rest of the coke – a minuscule amount that's in my closet left over from a late Saturday at M.K. or Au Bar, stop at Orso for a drink before meeting Jeanette, who I called earlier, mentioning that I had two tickets to this particular musical and she didn't say anything except "I'll go" and I told her to meet me in front of the theater at ten to eight and she hung up. I tell myself while I'm sitting alone at the bar in Orso that I was going to call one of the numbers that flashed on the bottom of the screen, but then I realize that I didn't know what to say and I remember ten of the words Patty read: "I can feel her spreading hot sauce on me already."

I remember these words again for some reason while Jeanette and I are sitting in Progress after the musical and it's late, the restaurant is crowded. We order something called eagle carpaccio, mesquite-grilled mahi-mahi, endive with chèvre and chocolate-covered almonds, this weird kind of gazpacho with raw chicken in it, dry beer. Right now there really is nothing edible on my plate, what there is tastes like plaster. Jeanette is wearing a wool smoking jacket, a silk chiffon shawl with one sleeve, wool tuxedo pants, all Armani, antique gold and diamond earrings, stockings from Givenchy, grosgrain flats. She keeps sighing and threatens to light a cigarette even though we're seated in the nonsmoking section of the restaurant. Jeanette's behavior deeply unsettles me, causes black thoughts to form and expand in my head. She's been drinking champagne kirs but has already had too many and when she orders her sixth I suggest that maybe she's had enough. She looks at me and says, "I am cold and thirsty and I will order what I fucking want."

I say, "Then have an Evian or San Pellegrino for Christ sakes."

Sandstone

My mother and I are sitting in her private room at Sandstone, where she is now a permanent resident. Heavily sedated, she has her sunglasses on and keeps touching her hair and I keep looking at my hands, pretty sure that they're shaking. She tries to smile when she asks what I want for Christmas. I'm not surprised at how much effort it takes to raise my head and look at her. I'm wearing a two-button wool gabardine suit with notched lapels by Gian Marco Venturi, cap-toed leather laceups by Armani, tie by Polo, socks I'm not sure where from. It's nearing the middle of April.

"Nothing," I say, smiling reassuringly.

There's a pause. I break it by asking, "What do you want?"

She says nothing for a long time and I look back at my hands, at dried blood, probably from a girl named Suki, beneath the thumbnail. My mother licks her lips tiredly and says, "I don't know. I just want to have a nice Christmas."

I don't say anything. I've spent the last hour studying my hair in the mirror I've insisted the hospital keep in my mother's room.

"You look unhappy," she says suddenly.

"I'm not," I tell her with a brief sigh.

"You look unhappy," she says, more quietly this time. She touches her hair, stark blinding white, again.

"Well, you do too," I say slowly, hoping that she won't say anything else.

She doesn't say anything else. I'm sitting in a chair by the window, and through the bars the lawn outside darkens, a cloud passes over the sun, soon the lawn turns green again. She sits on her bed in a nightgown from Bergdorf's and slippers by Norma Kamali that I bought her for Christmas last year.

"How was the party?" she asks.

"Okay," I say, guessing.

"How many people were there?"

"Forty. Five hundred." I shrug. "I'm not sure."

She licks her lips again, touches her hair once more. "What time did you leave?"

"I don't remember," I answer after a long time.

"One? Two?" she asks.

"It must have been one," I say, almost cutting her off.

"Oh." She pauses again, straightens her sunglasses, black Ray-Bans I bought her from Bloomingdale's that cost two hundred dollars.

"It wasn't very good," I say uselessly, looking at her.

"Why?" she asks, curious.

"It just wasn't," I say, looking back at my hand, the specks of blood under the nail on my thumb, the photograph of my father, when he was a much younger man, on my mother's bedside table, next to a photograph of Sean and me when we were both teenagers, wearing tuxedos, neither one of us smiling. In the photograph of my father he's wearing a six-button double-breasted black sport coat, a white spread-collar cotton shirt, a tie, pocket square, shoes, all by Brooks Brothers. He's standing next to one of the topiary animals a long time ago at his father's estate in Connecticut and there's something the matter with his eyes.

The Best City for Business

And on a rainy Tuesday morning, after working out at Xclusive, I stop by Paul Owen's apartment on the Upper East Side. One hundred and sixty-one days have passed since I spent the night in it with the two escort girls. There has been no word of bodies discovered in any of the city's four newspapers or on the local news; no hints of even a rumor floating around. I've gone so far as to ask people – dates, business acquaintances – over dinners, in the halls of Pierce & Pierce, if anyone has heard about two mutilated prostitutes found in Paul Owen's apartment. But like in some movie, no one has heard anything, has any idea of what I'm talking about. There are other things to worry over: the shocking amount of laxative and speed that the cocaine in Manhattan is now being cut with, Asia in the 1990s, the virtual impossibility of landing an eight o'clock reservation at PR, the new Tony McManus restaurant on Liberty Island, crack. So what I'm assuming is that, essentially, like, no bodies have been found. For all I know, Kimball has moved to London too.

The building looks different to me as I step out of the taxi, though I can't figure out why. I still have the keys I stole from Owen the night I killed him and I take them out, now, to open the lobby door but they don't work, won't fit properly. Instead, a uniformed doorman who wasn't here six months ago opens it for me, excusing himself for taking so long. I stand there in the rain, confused, until he ushers me in, merrily asking, with a thick Irish accent, "Well, are you coming in or staying out – you're getting soaked." I move into the lobby, my umbrella held under one arm, tucking the surgical mask I brought with me to deal with the smell back into my pocket. I'm holding a Walkman, debating what to say, how to phrase it.

"Well, now what can I do for you sir?" he asks.

I stall – a long, awkward pause – before saying, simply, "Fourteen-A."

He looks me over carefully before checking his book, then beams, marking something down. "Ah, of course. Mrs. Wolfe is up there right now."

"Mrs…. Wolfe?" Weakly, I smile.

"Yes. She's the real estate agent," he says, looking up at me. "You do have an appointment, don't you?"

The elevator operator, also a new addition, stares at the floor as the two of us rise up into the building. I'm trying to retrace my steps on that night, during that whole week, uselessly knowing I have never been back to this apartment after murdering the two girls. How much is Owen's apartment worth? is a question that keeps forcing its way into my mind until finally it just rests there, throbbing. The Patty Winter Show this morning was about people with half their brains removed. My chest feels like ice.

The elevator doors open. I step out, cautiously, watching behind me as they close, then I'm moving down the hallway toward Owen's apartment. I can hear voices inside. I lean against the wall, sighing, keys in my hand, knowing already the locks have been changed. As I wonder what I should do, trembling, staring at my loafers, which are black and by A. Testoni, the door to the apartment opens, startling me out of a momentary flash of self-pity. A middle-aged real estate broker walks out, offers a smile, asks, checking her book, "Are you my eleven o'clock?"

"No," I say.

She says "Excuse me" and, making her way down the hall, looks back at me, once, with a strange expression on her face, before disappearing around the corner. I'm staring into the apartment. A couple in their late twenties stand, conferring with each other, in the middle of the living room. She's wearing a wool jacket, a silk blouse, wool flannel slacks, Armani, vermeil earrings, gloves, holding a bottle of Evian water. He has on a tweed sport jacket, cashmere sweater vest, cotton chambray shirt, tie, Paul Stuart, Agnes B. cotton trench coat draped over arm. Behind them, the apartment looks spotless. New venetian blinds, the cowhide paneling is gone; however, the furniture, the mural, the glass coffee table, Thonet chairs, black leather couch, all seem intact; the large-screen television set has been moved into the living room and it's been turned on, the volume low, a commercial where a stain walks off a jacket and addresses the camera is on now, but it doesn't make me forget what I did to Christie's breasts, to one of the girls' heads, the nose missing, both ears bitten off, how you could see her teeth through where I had ripped the flesh from her jaws and both cheeks, the torrents of gore and the blood that washed over the apartment, the stench of the dead, my own confused warning that I had drawn in–

"Can I help you?" the real estate agent, Mrs. Wolfe I'm guessing, intrudes. She has a very angular thin face, the nose is large, distressingly real-looking, heavily lipsticked mouth, white-blue eyes. She's wearing a wool boucle jacket, washed silk blouse, shoes, earrings, a bracelet, from where? I don't know. Maybe she's younger than forty.

I'm still leaning against the wall, staring at the couple, who move back into the bedroom, leaving the main room empty. I'm just noticing that bouquets in glass vases, dozens of them, fill the apartment everywhere, and I can smell them from where I'm standing in the hall. Mrs. Wolfe glances behind her to see what I'm staring at, then back to me. "I'm looking for… Doesn't Paul Owen live here?"

A long pause before she answers. "No. He doesn't."

Another long pause. "Are you, like… sure?" I ask, before feebly adding, "I don't… understand."

She realizes something that causes the muscles in her face to tighten. Her eyes narrow but don't close. She's noticed the surgical mask I'm gripping in a damp fist and she breathes in, sharply, refusing to look away. I am definitely not feeling right about any of this. On the TV, in a commercial, a man holds up a piece of toast and tells his wife, "Hey, you're right… this margarine really does taste better than shit." The wife smiles.

"You saw the ad in the Times?" she asks.

"No… I mean yes. Yes, I did. In the Times," I falter, gathering a pocket of strength, the smell from the roses thick, masking something revolting. "But… doesn't Paul Owen… still own this?" I ask, as forcibly as possible.

There's a long pause before she admits, "There was no ad in the Times."

We stare at each other endlessly. I'm convinced she senses I'm about to say something. I've seen this look on someone's face before. Was it in a club? A victim's expression? Had it appeared on a movie screen recently? Or had I seen it in the mirror? It takes what seems like an hour before I can speak again. "But that's… his" – I stop, my heart skips, resumes beating – "furniture." I drop my umbrella, then lean down quickly to retrieve it.

"I think you should go," she says.

"I think… I want to know what happened." I feel sick, my chest and back covered with sweat, drenched, it seems, instantaneously.

"Don't make any trouble," she says.

All frontiers, if there had ever been any, seem suddenly detachable and have been removed, a feeling that others are creating my fate will not leave me for the rest of the day. This… is… not… a… game, I want to shout, but I can't catch my breath though I don't think she can tell. I turn my face away. I need rest. I don't know what to say. Confused, I reach out for a moment to touch Mrs. Wolfe's arm, to steady myself, but I stop it in midair, move it to my chest instead, but I can't feel it, not even when I loosen my tie; it rests there, trembling, and I can't make it stop. I'm blushing, speechless.

"I suggest you go," she says.

We stand there in the hallway facing each other.

"Don't make any trouble," she says again, quietly.

I stand there a few seconds longer before finally backing away, holding up my hands, a gesture of assurance.

"Don't come back," she says.

"I won't," I say. "Don't worry."

The couple appears in the doorway. Mrs. Wolfe watches me until I'm at the elevator door, pressing the button for the attendant. In the elevator, the smell of the roses is overpowering.

Working Out

Free weights and Nautilus equipment relieve stress. My body responds to the workout accordingly. Shirtless, I scrutinize my image in the mirror above the sinks in the locker room at Xclusive. My arm muscles burn; my stomach is as taut as possible, my chest steel, pectorals granite hard, my eyes white as ice. In my locker in the locker room at Xclusive lie three vaginas I recently sliced out of various women I've attacked in the past week. Two are washed off, one isn't. There's a barrette clipped to one of them, a blue ribbon from Hermès tied around my favorite.

End of the 1980s

The smell of blood works its way into my dreams, which are, for the most part, terrible: on an ocean liner that catches fire, witnessing volcanic eruptions in Hawaii, the violent deaths of most of the inside traders at Salomon, James Robinson doing something bad to me, finding myself back at boarding school, then at Harvard, the dead walk among the living. The dreams are an endless reel of car wrecks and disaster footage, electric chairs and grisly suicides, syringes and mutilated pinup girls, flying saucers, marble Jacuzzis, pink peppercorns. When I wake up in a cold sweat I have to turn on the wide-screen television to block out the construction sounds that continue throughout the day, rising up from somewhere. A month ago was the anniversary of Elvis Presley's death. Football games flash by, the sound turned off. I can hear the answering machine click once, its volume lowered, then twice. All summer long Madonna cries out to us, "life is a mystery, everyone must stand alone. . ."

When I'm moving down Broadway to meet Jean, my secretary, for brunch, in front of Tower Records a college student with a clipboard asks me to name the saddest song I know. I tell him, without pausing, "You Can't Always Get What You Want" by the Beatles. Then he asks me to name the happiest song I know, and I say "Brilliant Disguise" by Bruce Springsteen. He nods, makes a note, and I move on, past Lincoln Center. An accident has happened. An ambulance is parked at the curb. A pile of intestines lies on the sidewalk in a pool of blood. I buy a very hard apple at a Korean deli which I eat on my way to meet Jean who, right now, stands at the Sixty-seventh Street entrance to Central Park on a cool, sunny day in September. When we look up at the clouds she sees an island, a puppy dog, Alaska, a tulip. I see, but don't tell her, a Gucci money clip, an ax, a woman cut in two, a large puffy white puddle of blood that spreads across the sky, dripping over the city, onto Manhattan.

We stop at an outdoor café, Nowheres, on the Upper West Side, debating which movie to see, if there are any museum exhibits we should attend, maybe just a walk, she suggests the zoo, I'm nodding mindlessly. Jean is looking good, like she's been working out, and she's wearing a gilt lamb jacket and velvet shorts by Matsuda. I'm imagining myself on television, in a commercial for a new product – wine cooler? tanning lotion? sugarless gum? – and I'm moving in jump-cut, walling along a beach, the film is black-and-white, purposefully scratched, eerie vague pop music from the mid-1960s accompanies the footage, it echoes, sounds as if it's coming from a calliope. Now I'm looking into the camera, now I'm holding up the product – a new mousse? tennis shoes? – now my hair is windblown then it's day then night then day again and then it's night.

"I'll have an iced decaf au lait," Jean tells the waiter.

"I'll have a decapitated coffee also," I say absently, before catching myself. "I mean… decaffeinated." I glance over at Jean, worried, but she just smiles emptily at me. A Sunday Times sits on the table between us. We discuss plans for dinner tonight, maybe. Someone who looks like Taylor Preston walks by, waves at me. I lower my Ray-Bans, wave back. Someone on a bike pedals past. I ask a busboy for water. A waiter arrives instead and after that a dish containing two scoops of sorbet, cilantro-lemon and vodka-lime, are brought to the table that I didn't hear Jean order.

"Want a bite?" she asks.

"I'm on a diet," I say. "But thank you."

"You don't need to lose any weight," she says, genuinely surprised. "You're kidding, right? You look great. Very fit."

"You can always be thinner," I mumble, staring at the traffic in the street, distracted by something – what? I don't know. "Look… better."

"Well, maybe we shouldn't go out to dinner," she says, concerned. "I don't want to ruin your… willpower."

"No. It's all right," I say. "I'm not… very good at controlling it anyway."

"Patrick, seriously. I'll do whatever you want," she says. "If you don't want to go to dinner, we won't. I mean–"

"It's okay," I stress. Something snaps. "You shouldn't fawn over him…" I pause before correcting myself. "I mean… me. Okay?"

"I just want to know what you want to do," she says.

"To live happily ever after, right?" I say sarcastically. "That's what I want." I stare at her hard, for maybe half a minute, before turning away. This quiets her. After a while she orders a beer. It's hot out on the street.

"Come on, smile," she urges sometime later. "You have no reason to be so sad."

"I know," I sigh, relenting. "But it's . . tough to smile. These days. At least I find it hard to. I'm not used to it, I guess. I don't know."

"That's… why people need each other," she says gently, trying to make eye contact while spooning the not inexpensive sorbet into her mouth.

"Some don't." I clear my throat self-consciously. "Or, well, people compensate… They adjust…" After a long pause, "People can get accustomed to anything, right?" I ask. "Habit does things to people."

Another long pause. Confused, she says, "I don't know. I guess… but one still has to maintain… a ratio of more good things than… bad in this world," she says, adding, "I mean, right?" She looks puzzled, as if she finds it strange that this sentence has come out of her mouth. A blast of music from a passing cab, Madonna again, "life is a mystery, everyone must stand alone…" Startled by the laughter at the table next to ours, I cock my head and hear someone admit, "Sometimes what you wear to the office makes all the difference," and then Jean says something and I ask her to repeat it.

"Haven't you ever wanted to make someone happy?" she asks.

"What?" I ask, trying to pay attention to her. "Jean?"

Shyly, she repeats herself. "Haven't you ever wanted to make someone happy?"

I stare at her, a cold, distant wave of fright washes over me, dousing something. I clear my throat again and, trying to speak with great purposefulness, tell her, "I was at Sugar Reef the other night… that Caribbean place on the Lower East Side… you know it–"

"Who were you with?" she interrupts.

Jeanette. "Evan McGlinn."

"Oh." She nods, silently relieved, believing me.

..Anyway…" I sigh, continuing, "I saw some guy in the men's room… a total… Wall Street guy… wearing a one-button viscose, wool and nylon suit by… Luciano Soprani… a cotton shirt by… Gitman Brothers… a silk tie by Ermenegildo Zegna and, I mean, I recognized the guy, a broker, named Eldridge… I've seen him at Harry's and Au Bar and DuPlex and Alex Goes to Camp… all the places, but… when I went in after him, I saw… he was writing… something on the wall above the… urinal he was standing at." I pause, take a swallow of her beer. "When he saw me come in… he stopped writing… put away the Mont Blanc pen… he zipped up his pants… said Hello, Henderson to me… checked his hair in the mirror, coughed… like he was nervous or… something and… left the room." I pause again, another swallow. "Anyway… I went over to use the… urinal and… I leaned over… to read what he… wrote." Shuddering, I slowly wipe my forehead with a napkin.

"Which was?" Jean asks cautiously.

I close my eyes, three words fall from my mouth, these lips: " 'Kill… All… Yuppies.' "

She doesn't say anything.

To break the uncomfortable silence that follows, I mention all I can come up with, which is, "Did you know that Ted Bundy's first dog, a collie, was named Lassie?" Pause. "Had you heard this?"

Jean looks at her dish as if it's confusing her, then back up at me. "Who's… Ted Bundy?"

"Forget it," I sigh.

"Listen, Patrick. We need to talk about something;" she says. "Or at least I need to talk about something."

…where there was nature and earth, life and water, I saw a desert landscape that was unending, resembling some sort of crater, so devoid of reason and light and spirit that the mind could not grasp it on any sort of conscious level and if you came close the mind would reel backward, unable to take it in. It was a vision so clear and real and vital to me that in its purity it was almost abstract. This was what I could understand, this was how I lived my life, what I constructed my movement around, how I dealt with the tangible. This was the geography around which my reality revolved: it did not occur to me, ever, that people were good or that a man was capable of change or that the world could be a better place through one's taking pleasure in a feeling or a look or a gesture, of receiving another person's love or kindness. Nothing was affirmative, the term "generosity of spirit" applied to nothing, was a cliché, was some kind of bad joke. Sex is mathematics. Individuality no longer an issue. What does intelligence signify? Define reason. Desire – meaningless. Intellect is not a cure. Justice is dead. Fear, recrimination, innocence, sympathy, guilt, waste, failure, grief, were things, emotions, that no one really felt anymore. Reflection is useless, the world is senseless. Evil is its only permanence. God is not alive. Love cannot be trusted. Surface, surface, surface was all that anyone found meaning in… this was civilization as I saw it, colossal and jagged…

"…and I don't remember who it was you were talking to… it doesn't matter. What does is that you were very forceful, yet… very sweet and, I guess, I knew then that…" She places her spoon down, but I'm not watching her. I'm looking out at the taxis moving up Broadway, yet they can't stop things from unraveling, because Jean says the following: "A lot of people seem to have…" She stops, continues hesitantly, "lost touch with life and I don't want to be among them." After the waiter clears her dish, she adds, "I don't want to get… bruised."

I think I'm nodding.

"I've learned what it's like to be alone and… I think I'm in love with you." She says this last part quickly, forcing it out.

Almost superstitiously, I turn toward her, sipping an Evian water, then, without thinking, say, smiling, "I love someone else."

As if this film had speeded up she laughs immediately, looks quickly away, down, embarrassed. "I'm, well, sorry… gosh."

"But…" I add quietly, "you shouldn't be… afraid."

She looks back up at me, swollen with hope.

"Something can be done about it," I say. Then, not knowing why I'd said that, I modify the statement, telling her straight on,"Maybe something can't. I don't know. I've thrown away a lot of time to be with you, so it's not like I don't care."

She nods mutely.

"You should never mistake affection for… passion," I warn her. "It can be… not good. It can . .. . get you into, well, trouble."

She's not saying anything and I can suddenly sense her sadness, flat and calm, like a daydream. "What are you trying to say?" she asks lamely, blushing.

"Nothing. I'm just… letting you know that… appearances can be deceiving."

She stares at the Times stacked in heavy folds on the table. A breeze barely causes it to flutter. "Why… are you telling me this?"

Tactfully, almost touching her hand but stopping myself, I tell her, "I just want to avoid any future misconnections." A hardbody walks by. I notice her, then look back at Jean. "Oh come on, don't look that way. You have nothing to be ashamed of."

"I'm not," she says, trying to act casual. "I just want to know if you're disappointed in me for admitting this."

How could she ever understand that there isn't any way I could be disappointed since I no longer find anything worth looking forward to?

"You don't know much about me, do you?" I ask teasingly.

"I know enough," she says, her initial response, but then she shakes her head. "Oh let's just drop this. I made a mistake. I'm sorry." In the next instant she changes her mind. "I want to know more," she says, gravely.

I consider this before asking, "Are you sure?"

"Patrick," she says breathlessly, "I know my life would be… much emptier without you… in it."

I consider this too, nodding thoughtfully.

"And I just can't…" She stops, frustrated. "I can't pretend these feelings don't exist, can I?"

"Shhh…"

…there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there. It is hard for me to make sense on any given level. Myself is fabricated, an aberration. I am a noncontingent human being. My personality is sketchy and unformed, my heartlessness goes deep and is persistent. My conscience, my pity, my hopes disappeared a long time ago (probably at Harvard) if they ever did exist. There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it, I have now surpassed. I still, though, hold on to one single bleak truth: no one is safe, nothing is redeemed. Yet I am blameless. Each model of human behavior must be assumed to have some validity. Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do? My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this – and I have, countless times, in just about every act I've committed – and coming face-to-face with these truths, there is no catharsis. I gain no deeper knowledge about myself, no new understanding can be extracted from my telling. There has been no reason for me to tell you any of this. This confession has meant nothing ….

I'm asking Jean, "How many people in this world are like me?"

She pauses, carefully answers, "I don't… think anyone?" She's guessing.

"Let me rephrase the ques– Wait, how does my hair look?" I ask, interrupting myself.

"Uh, fine."

"Okay. Let me rephrase the question." I take a sip of her dry beer. "Okay. Why do you like me?" I ask.

She asks back, "Why?"

"Yes," I say, "Why."

"Well…" A drop of beer has fallen onto my Polo shirt. She hands me her napkin. A practical gesture that touches me. "You're… concerned with others," she says tentatively. "That's a very rare thing in what" – she stops again – "is a… I guess, a hedonistic world. This is… Patrick, you're embarrassing me." She shakes her head, closing her eyes.

"Go on," I urge. "Please. I want to know."

"You're sweet." She rolls her eyes up. "Sweetness is… sexy… I don't know. But so is… mystery." Silence. "And I think… mystery… you're mysterious." Silence, followed by a sigh. "And you're… considerate." She realizes something, no longer scared, stares at me straight on. "And I think shy men are romantic."

"How many people in this world are like me?" I ask again. "Do I really appear like that?"

"Patrick," she says. "I wouldn't lie."

"No, of course you wouldn't… but I think that…" My turn to sigh, contemplatively. "I think… you know how they say no two snowflakes are ever alike?"

She nods.

"Well, I don't think that's true. I think a lot of snowflakes are alike… and I think a lot of people are alike too."

She nods again, though I can tell she's very confused.

"Appearances can be deceiving," I admit carefully.

"No," she says, shaking her head, sure of herself for the first time. "I don't think they are deceiving. They're not."

"Sometimes, Jean," I explain, "the lines separating appearance – what you see – and reality – what you don't – become, well, blurred."

"That's not true," she insists. "'That's simply not true."

"Really?" I ask, smiling.

"I didn't use to think so," she says. "Maybe ten years ago I didn't. But I do now."

"What do you mean?" I ask, interested. "You used to?"

…a flood of reality. I get an odd feeling that this is a crucial moment in my life and I'm startled by the suddenness of what I guess passes for an epiphany. There is nothing of value I can offer her. For the first time I see Jean as uninhibited; she seems stronger, less controllable, wanting to take me into a new and unfamiliar land – the dreaded uncertainty of a totally different world. I sense she wants to rearrange my life in a significant way – her eyes tell me this and though I see truth in them, I also know that one day, sometime very soon, she too will be locked in the rhythm of my insanity. All I have to do is keep silent about this and not bring it up – yet she weakens me, it's almost as if she's making the decision about who I am, and in my own stubborn, willful way I can admit to feeling a pang, something tightening inside, and before I can stop it I find myself almost dazzled and moved that I might have the capacity to accept, though not return, her love. I wonder if even now, right here in Nowheres, she can see the darkening clouds behind my eyes lifting. And though the coldness I have always felt leaves me, the numbness doesn't and probably never will. This relationship will probably lead to nothing… this didn't change anything. I imagine her smelling clean, like tea…

"Patrick… talk to me… don't be so upset," she is saying. "I think it's… time for me to… take a good look… at the world I've created," I choke, tearfully, finding myself admitting to her, "I came upon… a half gram of cocaine… in my armoire last… night." I'm squeezing my hands together, forming one large fist, all knuckles white.

"What did you do with it?" she asks.

I place one hand on the table. She takes it.

"I threw it away. I threw it all away. I wanted to do it," I gasp, "but I threw it away."

She squeezes my hand tightly. "Patrick?" she asks, moving her hand up until it's gripping my elbow. When I find the strength to look back at her, it strikes me how useless, boring, physically beautiful she really is, and the question Why not end up with her? floats into my line of vision. An answer: she has a better body than most other girls I know. Another one: everyone is interchangeable anyway. One more: it doesn't really matter. She sits before me, sullen but hopeful, characterless, about to dissolve into tears. I squeeze her hand back, moved, no, touched by her ignorance of evil. She has one more test to pass.

"Do you own a briefcase?" I ask her, swallowing.

"No," she says. "I don't."

"Evelyn carries a briefcase," I mention.

"She does… ?" Jean asks.

"And what about a Filofax?"

"A small one," she admits.

"Designer?" I ask suspiciously.

"No."

I sigh, then take her hand, small and hard, in mine .

…and in the southern deserts of Sudan the heat rises in airless waves, thousands upon thousands of men, women, children, roam throughout the vast bushland, desperately seeking food. Ravaged and starving, leaving a trail of dead, emaciated bodies, they eat weeds and leaves and… lily pads, stumbling from village to village, dying slowly, inexorably; a gray morning in the miserable desert, grit flies through the sir, a child with a face like a black moon lies in the sand, scratching at his throat, cones of dust rising, flying across land like whirling tops, no one can see the sun, the child is covered with sand, almost dead, eyes unblinking, grateful (stop and imagine for an instant a world where someone is grateful for something) none of the haggard pay attention as they file by, dazed and in pain (nothere is one who pays attention, who notices the boy's agony and smiles, as if holding a secret), the boy opens and closes his cracked, chapped mouth soundlessly, there is a school bus in the distance somewhere and somewhere else, above that, in space, a spirit rises, a door opens, it asks "Why?" – a home for the dead, an infinity, it hangs in a void, time limps by, love and sadness rush through the boy

"Okay."

I am dimly aware of a phone ringing somewhere. In the café on Columbus, countless numbers, hundreds of people, maybe thousands, have walked by our table during my silence. "Patrick," Jean says. Someone with a baby stroller stops at the corner and purchases a Dove Bar. The baby stares at Jean and me. We stare back. It's really weird and I'm experiencing a spontaneous kind of internal sensation, I feel I'm moving toward as well as away from something, and anything is possible.

Aspen

It is four days before Christmas, at two in the afternoon. I'm sitting in the back of a pitch-black limousine parked in front of a nondescript, brownstone off Fifth Avenue trying to read an article about Donald Trump in the new issue of Fame magazine. Jeanette wants me to come in with her but I say "Forget it." She has a black eye from last night since I had to coerce her over dinner at Il Marlibro to even consider doing this; then, after a more forceful discussion at my apartment, she consented. Jeanette's dilemma lies outside my definition of guilt, and I had told her, truthfully, over dinner that it was very hard for me to express concern for her that I don't feel. During the entire drive from my place on the Upper West Side, she's been sobbing. The only clear, identifiable emotion coming from her is desperation and maybe longing, and though I successfully ignore her for most of the ride I finally have to tell her, "Listen, I've already taken two Xanax this morning so, uh, you're incapable of, like, upsetting me." Now, as she stumbles out of the limo onto the frozen pavement, I mumble, "It's for the best," and, offering consolation, "Don't take it so seriously." The driver, whose name I've forgotten, leads her into the brownstone and she gives a last, regretful look back. I sigh and wave her off. She's still wearing, from last night, a leopard-print cotton balmacaan coat with wool challis lining over a wool crepe shirtless dress by Bill Bless. Bigfoot was interviewed on The Patty Winters Show this morning and to my shock I found him surprisingly articulate and charming. The glass I'm drinking Absolut vodka from is Finnish. I'm very suntanned compared to Jeanette.

The driver comes out of the building, gives me thumbs-up, carefully pulls the limousine away from the curb and begins the trek to JFK airport, where my flight to Aspen leaves in ninety minutes. When I get back, in January, Jeanette will be out of the country. I relight a cigar, search for an ashtray. There's a church on the corner of this street. Who cares? This is, I think, the fifth child I've had aborted, the third I haven't aborted myself (a useless statistic, I admit). The wind outside the limousine is brisk and cold and the rain hits the darkened windows in rhythmic waves, mimicking Jeanette's probable weeping in the operating room, dizzy from the anesthesia, thinking about a memory from her past, a moment where the world was perfect. I resist the impulse to start cackling hysterically.

At the airport I instruct the chauffeur to stop by F.A.O. Schwarz before picking Jeanette up and purchase the following: a doll, a rattle, a teething ring, a white Gund polar bear, and have them sitting in the backseat for her, unwrapped. Jeanette should be okay – she has her whole life in front of her (that is, if she doesn't run into me). Besides, this girl's favorite movie is Pretty in Pink and she thinks Sting is cool, so what is happening to her is, like, not totally undeserved and one shouldn't feel bad for her. This is no time for the innocent.

Valentine's Day

Tuesday morning and I'm standing by my desk in the living room on the phone with my lawyer, alternately keeping my eye on The Patty Winters Show and the maid as she waxes the floor, wipes blood smears off the walls, throws away gore-soaked newspapers without a word. Faintly it hits me that she too is lost in a world of shit, completely drowning in it, and this somehow sets off my remembering that the piano tuner will be stopping by this afternoon and that I should leave a note with the doorman to let him in. Not that the Yamaha has ever been played; it's just that one of the girls fell against it and some strings (which I used later) were pulled out, snapped or something. Into the phone I'm saying, "I need more tax breaks." Patty Winters is on the TV screen asking a child, eight or nine, "But isn't that just another term for an orgy?" The timer buzzes on the microwave. I'm heating up a soufflé.

There's no use in denying it: this has been a bad week. I've started drinking my own urine. I laugh spontaneously at nothing. Sometimes I sleep under my futon. I'm flossing my teeth constantly until my gums are aching and my mouth tastes like blood. Before dinner last night at 1500 with Reed Goodrich and Jason Rust I was almost caught at a Federal Express in Times Square trying to send the mother of one of the girls I killed last week what might be a dried-up, brown heart. And to Evelyn I successfully Federal Expressed, through the office, a small box of flies along with a note, typed by Jean, saying that I never, ever wanted to see her face again and, though she doesn't really need one, to go on a fucking diet. But there are also things that the average person would think are nice that I've done to celebrate the holiday, items I've bought Jean and had delivered to her apartment this morning: Castellini cotton napkins from Bendel's, a wicker chair from Jenny B. Goode, a taffeta table throw from Barney's, a vintage chain-mail-vent purse and a vintage sterling silver dresser set from Macy's, a white pine whatnot from Conran's, an Edwardian nine-carat-gold "gate" bracelet from Bergdorfs and hundreds upon hundreds of pink and white roses.

The office. Lyrics to Madonna songs keep intruding, bursting into my head, announcing themselves in tiring, familiar ways, and I stare into space, my eyes lazily lit up while I try to forget about the day looming before me, but then a phrase that fills me with a nameless dread keeps interrupting the Madonna songs – isolated farmhouse constantly returns to me, over and over. Someone I've been avoiding for the last year, a nerd from Fortune who wants to write an article about me, calls again this morning and I end up calling the reporter back to arrange an interview. Craig McDermott is having some kind of fax frenzy and won't take any of my phone calls, preferring to communicate by fax only. The Post this morning says the remains of three bodies that disappeared aboard a yacht last March have been recovered, frozen in ice, hacked up and bloated, in the East River; some maniac is going around the city poisoning one-liter bottles of Evian water, seventeen dead already; talk of zombies, the public mood, increasing randomness, vast chasms of misunderstanding.

And, for the sake of form, Tim Price resurfaces, or at least I'm pretty sure he does. While I'm at my desk simultaneously crossing out the days in my calendar that have already passed and reading a new best seller about once management called Why It Works to Be a Jerk, Jean buzzes in, announcing that Tim Price wants to talk, and fearfully I say, "Send him… in." Price strolls into the office wearing a wool suit by Canali Milano, a cotton shirt by Ike Behar, a silk tie by Bill Bless, cap-toed leather lace-ups from Brooks Brothers. I'm pretending to be on the phone. He sits down, across from me, on the other side of the Palazzetti glass-top desk. There's a smudge on his forehead or at least that's what I think I see. Aside from that he looks remarkably fit. Our conversation probably resembles something like this but is actually briefer.

"Price," I say, shaking his hand. "Where have you been?"

"Oh, just making the rounds." He smiles. "But hey, I'm back."

"Far out." I shrug, confused. "How was… it?"

"It was…surprising." He shrugs too. "It was… depressing."

"I thought I saw you in Aspen," I murmur.

"Hey, how are you, Bateman?" he asks.

"I'm okay," I tell him, swallowing. "Just… existing."

"And Evelyn?" he asks. "How is she?"

"Well, we broke up." I smile.

'"That's too bad." He takes this in, remembers something. "Courtney?"

"She married Luis."

"Grassgreen?"

"No. Carruthers."

He takes this in too. "Do you have her number?"

While writing it down for him, I mention, "You've been gone, like, forever, Tim. What's the story?" I ask, again noticing the smudge on his forehead, though I get the feeling that if I asked someone else if it was truly there, he (or she) would just say no.

He stands up, takes the card. "I've been back. You just probably missed me. Lost track. Because of the move." He pauses, teasingly. "I'm working for Robinson. Right-hand man, you know?"

"Almond?" I ask, offering one, a futile effort on my part to mask my dismay at his smugness.

He pats my back, says, "You're a madman, Batsman. An animal. A total animal."

"I can't disagree." I laugh weakly, walking him to the door. As he leaves I'm wondering and not wondering what happens in the world of Tim Price, which is really the world of most of us: big ideas, guy stuff, boy meets the world, boy gets it.

Bum on Fifth

I'm coming back from Central Park where, near the children's zoo, close to the spot I murdered the McCaffrey boy, I fed portions of Ursula's brain to passing dogs. Walking down Fifth Avenue around four o'clock in the afternoon, everyone on the street looks sad, the air is full of decay, bodies lie on the cold pavement, miles of it, some are moving, most are not. History is sinking and only a very few seem dimly aware that things are getting bad. Airplanes fly low across the city, crossing in front of the sun. Winds shoot up Fifth, then funnel down Fifty-seventh Street. Flocks of pigeons rise in slow motion and burst up against the sky. The smell of burning chestnuts mixes with carbon monoxide fumes. I notice the skyline has changed only recently. I look up, admiringly, at Trump Tower, tall, proudly gleaming in the late afternoon sunlight. In front of it two smartass nigger teenagers are ripping off tourists at three-card monte and I have to fight the impulse to blow them away.

A bum I blinded one spring sits cross-legged on a ratty blanket near the corner of Fifty-fifth Street. Moving closer I see the beggar's scarred face and then the sign he's holding beneath it, which reads VIETNAM VET BLINDED IN VIETNAM. PLEASE HELP ME. WE ARE HUNGRY AND HOMELESS. We? Then I notice the dog, who is already eyeing me suspiciously and, as I approach its master, gets up, growling, and when I'm standing over the bum, it finally barks, wagging its tail frantically. I kneel down, threateningly raise a hand at it. The dog backs off, its paws askew.

I've pulled out my wallet, pretending to drop a dollar into his empty coffee can, but then realize: Why bother pretending? No one's watching anyway, definitely not him. I retract the dollar, leaning in. He senses my presence and stops shaking the can. The sunglasses he wears don't even begin to cover the wounds I inflicted. His nose is so junked up I can't imagine a person breathing through it.

"You never were in Vietnam," I whisper in his ear.

After a silence, during which he pisses in his pants, the dog whimpering, he croaks, "Please… don't hurt me."

"Why would I waste my time?" I mutter, disgusted.

I move away from the bum, noticing, instead, a little girl smoking a cigarette, begging for change outside Trump Tower. "Shoo," I say. She says "Shoo" back. On The Patty Winters Show this morning a Cheerio sat in a very small chair and was interviewed for close to an hour. Later this afternoon, a woman wearing a silver fox and mink coat has her face slashed in front of the Stanhope by an enraged fur activist. But now, still staring at the sightless bum from across the street, I buy a Dove Bar, a coconut one, in which I find part of a bone.

New Club

Thursday night I run into Harold Carnes at a party for a new club called World's End that opens in a space where Petty's used to be on the Upper East Side. I'm with Nina Goodrich and Jean in a booth and Harold's standing at the bar drinking champagne. I'm drunk enough to finally confront him about the message I left on his machine. Excused from the booth, I make my way to the other side of the bar, realizing that I need a martini to fortify myself before discussing this with Cannes (it has been a very unstable week for me – I found myself sobbing during an episode of Alf on Monday). Nervously, I approach. Harold is wearing a wool suit by Gieves & Hawkes, a silk twill tie, cotton shirt, shoes by Paul Stuart; he looks heavier than I remember. "Face it," he's telling Truman Drake, "the Japanese will own most of this country by the end of the '90s."

Relieved that Harold is, as usual, still dispensing valuable and new information, with the addition of a faint but unmistakable trace of, god forbid, an English accent, I find myself brazen enough to blurt out, "Shut up, Carnes, they will not." I down the martini, Stoli, while Cannes, looking quite taken aback, stricken almost, turns around to face me, and his bloated head breaks out into an uncertain smile. Someone behind us is saying, "But look what happened to Gekko…"

Truman Drake pats Harold on the back and asks me, "Is there one suspender width that's more, well, appropriate than others?" Irritably I push dim into the crowd and he disappears.

"So Harold," I say, "did you get my message?"

Carnes seems confused at first and, while lighting a cigarette, finally laughs. "Jesus, Davis. Yes, that was hilarious. That was you, was it?"

"Yes, naturally." I'm blinking, muttering to myself, really, waving his cigarette smoke away from my face.

"Bateman killing Owen and the escort girl?" He keeps chuckling. "Oh that's bloody marvelous. Really key, as they say at the Groucho Club. Really key." Then, looking dismayed, he adds, "It was a rather long message, no?"

I'm smiling idiotically and then I say, "But what exactly do you mean, Harold?" Secretly thinking to myself that this fat bastard couldn't possibly have gotten into the fucking Groucho Club, and even if he had, to admit it in such a fashion obliterates the fact that his entrance was accepted.

"Why, the message you left." Carnes is already looking around the club, waving to various people and bimbos. "By the way, Davis, how is Cynthia?" He accepts a glass of champagne from a passing waiter. "You're still seeing her, right?"

"But wait, Harold. What-do-you-mean?" I repeat emphatically.

He's already bored, neither concerned nor listening, and excusing himself, says, "Nothing. Good to see you. Oh my, is that Edward Towers?"

I crane my neck to look, then turn back to Harold. "No," I say. "Carnes? Wait."

"Davis," he sighs, as if patiently trying to explain something to a child, "I am not one to bad-mouth anyone, your joke was amusing. But come on, man, you had one fatal flaw: Bateman's such a bloody ass-kisser, such a brown-nosing goody-goody, that I couldn't fully appreciate it. Otherwise it was amusing. Now let's have lunch, or we'll have dinner at 150 Wooster or something with McDermott or Preston. A real raver." He tries to move on.

"Ray-vah? Ray-vah? Did you say ray-vah, Carnes?" I'm wide-eyed, feeling wired even though I haven't done any drugs. "What are you talking about? Bateman is what?"

"Oh good god, man. Why else would Evelyn Richards dump him? You know, really. He could barely pick up an escort girl, let alone… what was it you said he did to her?" Harold is still looking distractedly around the club and he waves to another couple, raising his champagne glass. "Oh yes, 'chop her up.' " He starts laughing again, though this time it sounds polite. "Now if you'll excuse me, I must really."

"Wait. Stop," I shout, looking up into Carnes' face, making sure he's listening. "You don't seem to understand. You're not really comprehending any of this. I killed him. I did it, Carnes. I chopped Owen's fucking head off. I tortured dozens of girls. That whole message I left on your machine was true." I'm drained, not appearing calm, wondering why this doesn't feel like a blessing to me.

"Excuse me," he says, trying to ignore my outburst. "I really must be going."