“Yeah,” I say offhandedly, giving Price the card like I don’t give a shit, but I’m finding it hard to swallow.
“Red snapper pizza,” McDermott reminds me. “I’m fucking starving.”
“No pizza,” I murmur, relieved when Montgomery’s card is placed away, out of sight, back in Timothy’s pocket.
“Come on,” McDermott says, whining. “Let’s order the red snapper pizza.”
“Shut up, Craig,” Van Patten says, eyeing a waitress taking a booth’s order. “But call that hardbody over.”
“But she’s not ours,” McDermott says, fidgeting with the menu he’s yanked from a passing busboy.
“Call her over anyway,” Van Patten insists. “Ask her for water or a Corona or something.”
“Why her?” I’m asking no one in particular. My card lies on the table, ignored next to an orchid in a blue glass vase. Gently I pick it up and slip it, folded, back into my wallet.
“She looks exactly like this girl who works in the Georgette Klinger section of Bloomingdale’s,” Van Patten says. “Call her over.”
“Does anyone want the pizza or not?” McDermott’s getting testy.
“How would you know?” I ask Van Patten.
“I buy Kate’s perfume there,” he answers.
Price’s gestures gather the table’s attention. “Did I forget to tell everyone that Montgomery’s a dwarf?”
“Who’s Kate?” I say.
“Kate is the chick who Van Patten’s having the affair with,” Price explains, staring back at Montgomery’s table.
“What happened to Miss Kittridge?” I ask.
“Yeah,” Price smiles. “What about Amanda?”
“Oh god, guys, lighten up. Fidelity? Right.”
“Aren’t you afraid of diseases?” Price asks.
“From who, Amanda or Kate?” I ask.
“I thought we agreed that we can’t get it.” Van Patten’s voice rises. “So-o-o-o … shithead. Shut up.”
“Didn’t I tell you—”
Four more Bellinis arrive. There are now eight Bellinis on the table.
“Oh my god,” Price moans, trying to grab at the busboy before he scampers off.
“Red snapper pizza … red snapper pizza …” McDermott has found a mantra for the evening.
“We’ll soon become targets for horny Iranian chicks,” Price drones.
“It’s like zero zero zero percentage whatever, you know—are you listening?” Van Patten asks.
“… snapper pizza … red snapper pizza …” Then McDermott slams his hand on the table, rocking it. “Goddamnit, isn’t anybody listening to me?”
I’m still tranced out on Montgomery’s card—the classy coloring, the thickness, the lettering, the print—and I suddenly raise a fist as if to strike out at Craig and scream, my voice booming, “No one wants the fucking red snapper pizza! A pizza should be yeasty and slightly bready and have a cheesy crust! The crusts here are too fucking thin because the shithead chef who cooks here overbakes everything! The pizza is dried out and brittle!” Red-faced, I slam my Bellini down on the table and when I look up our appetizers have arrived. A hardbody waitress stands looking down at me with this strange, glazed expression. I wipe a hand over my face, genially smiling up at her. She stands there looking at me as if I were some kind of monster—she actually looks scared—and I glance over at Price—for what? guidance?—and he mouths “Cigars” and pats his coat pocket.
McDermott quietly says, “I don’t think they’re brittle.”
“Honey,” I say, ignoring McDermott, taking an arm and pulling her toward me. She flinches but I smile and she lets me pull her closer. “Now we’re all going to eat a nice big meal here—” I start to explain.
“But this isn’t what I ordered,” Van Patten says, looking at his plate. “I wanted the mussel sausage.”
“Shut up.” I shoot him a glance then calmly turn toward the hardbody, grinning like an idiot, but a handsome idiot. “Now listen, we are good customers here and we’re probably going to order some fine brandy, cognac, who knows, and we want to relax and bask in this”—I gesture with my arm—“atmosphere. Now”—with the other hand I pull out my gazelleskin wallet—“we would like to enjoy some fine Cuban cigars afterwards and we don’t want to be bothered by some loutish—”
“Loutish.” McDermott nods to Van Patten and Price.
“Loutish and inconsiderate patrons or tourists who are inevitably going to complain about our innocuous little habit.… So”—I press what I hope is fifty into a small-boned hand—“if you could make sure we aren’t bothered while we do, we would gratefully appreciate it.” I rub the hand, closing it into a fist over the bill. “And if anyone complains, well …” I pause, then warn menacingly, “Kick em out.”
She nods mutely and backs away with this dazed, confused look on her face.
“And,” Price adds, smiling, “if another round of Bellinis comes within a twenty-foot radius of this table we are going to set the maître d’ on fire. So, you know, warn him.”
After a long silence during which we contemplate our appetizers, Van Patten speaks up. “Bateman?”
“Yes?” I fork a piece of monkfish, push it into some of the golden caviar, then place the fork back down.
“You are pure prep perfection,” he purrs.
Price spots another waitress approaching with a tray of four champagne flutes filled with pale pinkish liquid and says, “Oh for Christ sakes, this is getting ridiculous.…” She sets them down, however, at the table next to us, for the four babes.
“She is hot,” Van Patten says, ignoring his scallop sausage.
“Hardbody.” McDermott nods in agreement. “Definitely.”
“I’m not impressed,” Price sniffs. “Look at her knees.”
While the hardbody stands there we check her out, and though her knees do support long, tan legs, I can’t help noticing that one knee is, admittedly, bigger than the other one. The left knee is knobbier, almost imperceptibly thicker than the right knee and this unnoticeable flaw now seems overwhelming and we all lose interest. Van Patten is looking at his appetizer, stunned, and then he looks at McDermott and says, “That isn’t what you ordered either. That’s sushi, not sashimi.”
“Jesus,” McDermott sighs. “You don’t come here for the food anyway.”
Some guy who looks exactly like Christopher Lauder comes over to the table and says, patting me on the shoulder, “Hey Hamilton, nice tan,” before walking into the men’s room.
“Nice tan, Hamilton,” Price mimics, tossing tapas onto my bread plate.
“Oh gosh,” I say, “hope I’m not blushin’.”
“Actually, where do you go, Bateman?” Van Patten asks. “For a tan.”
“Yeah, Bateman. Where do you go?” McDermott seems genuinely intrigued.
“Read my lips,” I say, “a tanning salon,” then irritably, “like everyone else.”
“I have,” Van Patten says, pausing for maximum impact, “a tanning bed at … home,” and then he takes a large bite out of his scallop sausage.
“Oh bullshit,” I say, cringing.
“It’s true,” McDermott confirms, his mouth full. “I’ve seen it.”
“That is fucking outrageous,” I say.
“Why the hell is it fucking outrageous?” Price asks, pushing tapas around his plate with a fork.
“Do you know how expensive a fucking tanning salon membership is?” Van Patten asks me. “A membership for a year?”
“You’re crazy,” I mutter.
“Look, guys,” Van Patten says. “Bateman’s indignant.”
Suddenly a busboy appears at our table and without asking if we’re finished removes our mostly uneaten appetizers. None of us complain except for McDermott, who asks, “Did he just take our appetizers away?” and then laughs uncomprehendingly. But when he sees no one else laughing he stops.
“He took them away because the portions are so small he probably thought we were finished,” Price says tire
dly.
“I just think that’s crazy about the tanning bed,” I tell Van Patten, though secretly I think it would be a hip luxury except I really have no room for one in my apartment. There are things one could do with it besides getting a tan.
“Who is Paul Owen with?” I hear McDermott asking Price.
“Some weasel from Kicker Peabody,” Price says distractedly. “He knew McCoy.”
“Then why is he sitting with those dweebs from Drexel?” McDermott asks. “Isn’t that Spencer Wynn?”
“Are you freebasing or what?” Price asks. “That’s not Spencer Wynn.”
I look over at Paul Owen, sitting in a booth with three other guys—one of whom could be Jeff Duvall, suspenders, slicked-back hair, horn-rimmed glasses, all of them drinking champagne—and I lazily wonder about how Owen got the Fisher account. It makes me not hungry but our meals arrive almost immediately after our appetizers are taken away and we begin to eat. McDermott undoes his suspenders. Price calls him a slob. I feel paralyzed but manage to turn away from Owen and stare at my plate (the potpie a yellow hexagon, strips of smoked salmon circling it, squiggles of pea-green tomatillo sauce artfully surrounding the dish) and then I gaze at the waiting crowd. They seem hostile, drunk on complimentary Bellinis perhaps, tired of waiting hours for shitty tables near the open kitchen even though they had reservations. Van Patten interrupts the silence at our table by slamming his fork down and pushing his chair back.
“What’s wrong?” I say, looking up from my plate, a fork poised over it, but my hand will not move; it’s as if it appreciated the plate’s setup too much, as if my hand had a mind of its own and refused to break up its design. I sigh and put the fork down, hopeless.
“Shit. I have to tape this movie on cable for Mandy.” He wipes his mouth with a napkin, stands up. “I’ll be back.”
“Have her do it, idiot,” Price says. “What are you, demented?”
“She’s in Boston, seeing her dentist.” Van Patten shrugs, pussywhipped.
“What in the hell are you going to do?” My voice wavers. I’m still thinking about Van Patten’s card. “Call up HBO?”
“No,” he says. “I have a touch-tone phone hooked up to program a Videonics VCR programmer I bought at Hammacher Schlemmer.” He walks away pulling his suspenders up.
“How hip,” I say tonelessly.
“Hey, what do you want for dessert?” McDermott calls out.
“Something chocolate and flourless,” he shouts back.
“Has Van Patten stopped working out?” I ask. “He looks puffy.”
“It looks that way, doesn’t it,” Price says.
“Doesn’t he have a membership at the Vertical Club?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Price murmurs, studying his plate, then sitting up he pushes it away and motions to the waitress for another Finlandia on the rocks.
Another hardbody waitress approaches us tentatively, bringing over a bottle of champagne, Perrier-Jouët, nonvintage, and tells us it’s complimentary from Scott Montgomery.
“Nonvintage, that weasel,” Price hisses, craning his neck to find Montgomery’s table. “Loser.” He gives him a thumbs-up sign from across the room. “The fucker’s so short I could barely see him. I think I gave thumbs-up to Conrad. I can’t be sure.”
“Where’s Conrad?” I ask. “I should say hello to him.”
“The dude who called you Hamilton,” Price says.
“That wasn’t Conrad,” I say.
“Are you sure? It looked a helluva lot like him,” he says but he’s not really listening; he blatantly stares at the hardbody waitress, at exposed cleavage as she leans down to get a firmer grip on the bottle’s cork.
“No. That wasn’t Conrad,” I say, surprised at Price’s inability to recognize co-workers. “That guy had a better haircut.”
We sit in silence while the hardbody pours the champagne. Once she leaves, McDermott asks if we liked the food. I tell him the potpie was fine but there was way too much tomatillo sauce. McDermott nods, says, “That’s what I’ve heard.”
Van Patten returns, mumbling, “They don’t have a good bathroom to do coke in.”
“Dessert?” McDermott suggests.
“Only if I can order the Bellini sorbet,” Price says, yawning.
“How about just the check,” Van Patten says.
“Time to go bird-dogging, gentlemen,” I say.
The hardbody brings the check over. The total is $475, much less than we expected. We split it but I need the cash so I put it on my platinum AmEx and collect their bills, mostly fresh fifties. McDermott demands ten dollars back since his scallop sausage appetizer was only sixteen bucks. Montgomery’s bottle of champagne is left at the table, undrunk. Outside Pastels a different bum sits in the street, with a sign that says something completely illegible. He gently asks us for some change and then, more hopefully, for some food.
“That dude needs a facial real bad,” I say.
“Hey McDermott,” Price cackles. “Throw him your tie.”
“Oh shit. What’s that gonna get him?” I ask, staring at the bum.
“Appetizers at Jams.” Van Patten laughs. He gives me high-five.
“Dude,” McDermott says, inspecting his tie, clearly offended.
“Oh, sorry … cab,” Price says, waving down a cab. “… and a beverage.”
“Off to Tunnel,” McDermott tells the driver.
“Great, McDermott,” Price says, getting in the front seat. “You sound really excited.”
“So what if I’m not some burned-out decadent faggot like yourself,” McDermott says, getting in ahead of me.
“Did anyone know cavemen got more fiber than we do?” Price asks the cabdriver.
“Hey, I heard that too,” McDermott says.
“Van Patten,” I say. “Did you see the comp bottle of champagne Montgomery sent over?”
“Really?” Van Patten asks, leaning over McDermott. “Let me guess. Perrier-Jouët?”
“Bingo,” Price says. “Nonvintage.”
“Fucking weasel,” Van Patten says.
Tunnel
All of the men outside Tunnel tonight are for some reason wearing tuxedos, except for a middle-aged homeless bum who sits by a Dumpster, only a few feet away from the ropes, holding out to anyone who pays attention a Styrofoam coffee cup, begging for change, and as Price leads us around the crowd up to the ropes, motioning to one of the doormen, Van Patten waves a crisp one-dollar bill in front of the homeless bum’s face, which momentarily lights up, then Van Patten pockets it as we’re whisked into the club, handed a dozen drink tickets and two VIP Basement passes. Once inside we’re vaguely hassled by two more doormen—long wool coats, ponytails, probably German—who demand to know why we’re not wearing tuxedos. Price handles this all suavely, somehow, either by tipping the dorks or by persuading them with his clout (probably the former). I stay uninvolved and with my back to him try to listen as McDermott complains to Van Patten about how crazy I am for putting down the pizzas made at Pastels, but it’s hard to hear anything with Belinda Carlisle’s version of “I Feel Free” blasting over the sound system. I have a knife with a serrated blade in the pocket of my Valentino jacket and I’m tempted to gut McDermott with it right here in the entranceway, maybe slice his face open, sever his spine; but Price finally waves us in and the temptation to kill McDermott is replaced by this strange anticipation to have a good time, drink some champagne, flirt with a hardbody, find some blow, maybe even dance to some oldies or that new Janet Jackson song I like.
It gets quieter as we move into the front hallway, heading toward the actual entrance, and we pass by three hardbodies. One is wearing a black side-buttoned notched-collar wool jacket, wool-crepe trousers and a fitted cashmere turtleneck, all by Oscar de la Renta; another is wearing a double-breasted coat of wool, mohair and nylon tweed, matching jeans-style pants and a man’s cotton dress shirt, all by Stephen Sprouse; the best-looking one is wearing a checked wool jacket and high-waisted wool skirt, both
from Barney’s, and a silk blouse by Andra Gabrielle. They’re definitely paying attention to the four of us and we repay the compliment, turning our heads—except for Price, who ignores them and says something rude.
“Jesus Christ, Price, lighten up,” McDermott whines. “What’s your problem? Those girls were very hot.”
“Yeah, if you speak Farsi,” Price says, handing McDermott a couple of drink tickets as if to placate him.
“What?” Van Patten says. “They didn’t look Spanish to me.”
“You know, Price, you’re going to have to change your attitude if you want to get laid,” McDermott says.
“You’re telling me about getting laid?” Price asks Craig. “You, who scored with a hand-job the other night?”
“Your outlook sucks, Price,” Craig says.
“Listen, you think I act like I do around you guys when I want some pussy?” Price challenges.
“Yeah, I do,” McDermott and Van Patten say at the same time.
“You know,” I say, “it’s possible to act differently from how one actually feels to get sex, guys. I hope I’m not causing you to relose your innocence, McDermott.” I start walking faster, trying to keep up with Tim.
“No, but that doesn’t explain why Tim acts like such a major asshole,” McDermott says, trying to catch up with me.
“Like these girls care,” Price snorts. “When I tell them what my annual income is, believe me, my behavior couldn’t matter less.”
“And how do you drop this little tidbit of info?” Van Patten asks. “Do you say, Here’s a Corona and by the way I pull in a hundred eighty thou a year and what’s your sign?”
“One ninety,” Price corrects him, and then, “Yeah, I do. Subtlety is not what these girls are after.”
“And what are these girls after, O knowledgeable one?” McDermott asks, bowing slightly as he walks.
Van Patten laughs and still in motion they give each other high-five.
“Hey,” I laugh, “you wouldn’t ask if you knew.”
“They want a hardbody who can take them to Le Cirque twice a week, get them into Nell’s on a regular basis. Or maybe a close personal acquaintance of Donald Trump,” Price says flatly.
American Psycho Page 6