“Nekenieh?” Hamlin asks. “What’s Nekenieh?”
“Guys, guys,” I say. “Who’s sitting with Paul Owen over there? Is that Trent Moore?”
“Where?” Reeves.
“They’re getting up. That table,” I say. “Those guys.”
“Isn’t that Madison? No, it’s Dibble,” Reeves says. He puts on his clear prescription eyeglasses just to make sure.
“No,” Hamlin says. “It’s Trent Moore.”
“Are you sure?” Reeves asks.
Paul Owen stops by our table on his way out. He’s wearing sunglasses by Persol and he’s carrying a briefcase by Coach Leatherware.
“Hello, men,” Owen says and he introduces the two guys he’s with, Trent Moore and someone named Paul Denton.
Reeves and Hamlin and I shake their hands without standing up. George and Todd start talking to Trent, who is from Los Angeles and knows where Nekenieh is located. Owen turns his attention my way, which makes me slightly nervous.
“How have you been?” Owen asks.
“I’ve been great,” I say. “And you?”
“Oh terrific,” he says. “How’s the Hawkins account going?”
“It’s …” I stall and then continue, faltering momentarily, “It’s … all right.”
“Really?” he asks, vaguely concerned. “That’s interesting,” he says, smiling, hands clasped together behind his back. “Not great?”
“Oh well,” I say. “You … know.”
“And how’s Marcia?” he asks, still smiling, looking over the room, not really listening to me. “She’s a great girl.”
“Oh yes,” I say, shaken. “I’m … lucky.”
Owen has mistaken me for Marcus Halberstam (even though Marcus is dating Cecelia Wagner) but for some reason it really doesn’t matter and it seems a logical faux pas since Marcus works at P & P also, in fact does the same exact thing I do, and he also has a penchant for Valentino suits and clear prescription glasses and we share the same barber at the same place, the Pierre Hotel, so it seems understandable; it doesn’t irk me. But Paul Denton keeps staring at me, or trying not to, as if he knows something, as if he’s not quite sure if he recognizes me or not, and it makes me wonder if maybe he was on that cruise a long time ago, one night last March. If that’s the case, I’m thinking, I should get his telephone number or, better yet, his address.
“Well, we should have drinks,” I tell Owen.
“Great,” he says. “Let’s. Here’s my card.”
“Thanks,” I say, looking at it closely, relieved by its crudeness, before slipping it into my jacket. “Maybe I’ll bring …” I pause, then carefully say, “Marcia?”
“That would be great,” he says. “Hey, have you been to that Salvadorian bistro on Eighty-third?” he asks. “We’re eating there tonight.”
“Yeah. I mean no,” I say. “But I’ve heard it’s quite good.” I smile weakly and take a sip of my drink.
“Yes, so have I.” He checks his Rolex. “Trent? Denton? Let’s split. Reservation’s in fifteen minutes.”
Goodbyes are said and on their way out of Harry’s they stop by the table Dibble and Hamilton are sitting at, or at least I think it’s Dibble and Hamilton. Before they leave, Denton looks over at our table, at me, one last time, and he seems panicked, convinced of something by my presence, as if he recognized me from somewhere, and this, in turn, freaks me out.
“The Fisher account,” Reeves says.
“Oh shit,” I say. “Don’t remind us.”
“Lucky bastard,” Hamlin says.
“Has anyone seen his girlfriend?” Reeves asks. “Laurie Kennedy? Total hardbody.”
“I know her,” I say, admit, “I knew her.”
“Why do you say it like that?” Hamlin asks, intrigued. “Why does he say it like that, Reeves?”
“Because he dated her,” Reeves says casually.
“How did you know that?” I ask, smiling.
“Girls dig Bateman.” Reeves sounds a little drunk. “He’s GQ. You’re total GQ, Bateman.”
“Thanks guy, but …” I can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic but it makes me feel proud in a way and I try to downplay my good looks by saying, “She’s got a lousy personality.”
“Oh Christ, Bateman,” Hamlin groans. “What does that mean?”
“What?” I say. “She does.”
“So what? It’s all looks. Laurie Kennedy is a babe,” Hamlin says, emphatically. “Don’t even pretend you were interested for any other reason.”
“If they have a good personality then … something is very wrong,” Reeves says, somehow confused by his own statement.
“If they have a good personality and they are not great-looking”—Reeves holds his hands up, signifying something—“who fucking cares?”
“Well, let’s just say hypothetically, okay? What if they have a good personality?” I ask, knowing full well what a hopeless, asinine question it is.
“Fine. Hypothetically even better but—” Hamlin says.
“I know, I know.” I smile.
“There are no girls with good personalities,” we all say in unison, laughing, giving each other high-five.
“A good personality,” Reeves begins, “consists of a chick who has a little hardbody and who will satisfy all sexual demands without being too slutty about things and who will essentially keep her dumb fucking mouth shut.”
“Listen,” Hamlin says, nodding in agreement. “The only girls with good personalities who are smart or maybe funny or halfway intelligent or even talented—though god knows what the fuck that means—are ugly chicks.”
“Absolutely.” Reeves nods.
“And this is because they have to make up for how fucking unattractive they are,” Hamlin says, sitting back in his chair.
“Well, my theory’s always been,” I start, “men are only here to procreate, to carry on the species, you know?”
They both nod.
“And so the only way to do that,” I continue, choosing words carefully, “is … to get turned on by a little hardbody, but sometimes money or fame—”
“No buts,” Hamlin says, interrupting. “Bateman, are you telling me that you’re gonna make it with Oprah Winfrey—hey, she’s rich, she’s powerful—or go down on Nell Carter—hey, she’s got a show on Broadway, a great voice, residuals pouring in?”
“Wait,” Reeves says. “Who is Nell Carter?”
“I don’t know,” I say, confused by the name. “She owns Nell’s, I guess.”
“Listen to me, Bateman,” Hamlin says. “The only reason chicks exist is to get us turned on, like you said. Survival of the species, right? It’s as simple”—he lifts an olive out of his drink and pops it into his mouth—“as that.”
After a deliberate pause I say, “Do you know what Ed Gein said about women?”
“Ed Gein?” one of them asks. “Maître d’ at Canal Bar?”
“No,” I say. “Serial killer, Wisconsin in the fifties. He was an interesting guy.”
“You’ve always been interested in stuff like that, Bateman,” Reeves says, and then to Hamlin, “Bateman reads these biographies all the time: Ted Bundy and Son of Sam and Fatal Vision and Charlie Manson. All of them.”
“So what did Ed say?” Hamlin asks, interested.
“He said,” I begin, “‘When I see a pretty girl walking down the street I think two things. One part of me wants to take her out and talk to her and be real nice and sweet and treat her right.’” I stop, finish my J&B in one swallow.
“What does the other part of him think?” Hamlin asks tentatively.
“What her head would look like on a stick,” I say.
Hamlin and Reeves look at each other and then back at me before I start laughing, and then the two of them uneasily join in.
“Listen, what about dinner?” I say, casually changing subjects.
“How about that Indian-Californian place on the Upper West Side?” Hamlin suggests.
“Fine with me,” I say.<
br />
“Sounds good,” Reeves says.
“Who’ll make the rez?” Hamlin asks.
Deck Chairs
Courtney Lawrence invites me out to dinner on Monday night and the invitation seems vaguely sexual so I accept, but part of the catch is that we have to endure dinner with two Camden graduates, Scott and Anne Smiley, at a new restaurant they chose on Columbus called Deck Chairs, a place I had my secretary research so thoroughly that she presented me with three alternative menus of what I should order before I left the office today. The things that Courtney told me about Scott and Anne—he works at an advertising agency, she opens restaurants with her father’s money, most recently 1968 on the Upper East Side—on the interminable cab ride uptown was only slightly less interesting than hearing about Courtney’s day: facial at Elizabeth Arden, buying kitchen utensils at the Pottery Barn (all of this, by the way, on lithium) before coming down to Harry’s where we had drinks with Charles Murphy and Rusty Webster, and where Courtney forgot the bag of Pottery Barn utensils she’d put underneath our table. The only detail of Scott and Anne’s life that seems even remotely suggestive to me is that they adopted a Korean boy of thirteen the year after they married, named him Scott Jr. and sent him to Exeter, where Scott had gone to school four years before I attended.
“They better have reservations,” I warn Courtney in the cab.
“Just don’t smoke a cigar, Patrick,” she says slowly.
“Is that Donald Trump’s car?” I ask, looking over at the limousine stuck next to us in gridlock.
“Oh god, Patrick. Shut up,” she says, her voice thick and drugged.
“You know, Courtney, I have a Walkman in my Bottega Veneta briefcase I could easily put on,” I say. “You should take some more lithium. Or have a Diet Coke. Some caffeine might get you out of this slump.”
“I just want to have a child,” she says softly, staring out the window, to no one. “Just … two … perfect … children.”
“Are you talking to me or Shlomo here?” I sigh, but loudly enough for the Israeli driver to hear me, and predictably Courtney doesn’t say anything.
The Patty Winters Show this morning was about Perfumes and Lipsticks and Makeups. Luis Carruthers, Courtney’s boyfriend, is out of town in Phoenix and will not be back in Manhattan until late Thursday. Courtney is wearing a wool jacket and vest, a wool jersey T-shirt and wool gabardine pants by Bill Blass, crystal, enamel and gold-plated earrings by Gerard E. Yosca and silk-satin d’Orsay pumps from Manolo Blahnik. I am wearing a custom-made tweed jacket, pants and a cotton shirt from the Alan Flusser shop and a silk tie by Paul Stuart. There was a twenty-minute wait at the Stairmaster machine at my health club this morning. I wave to a beggar on the corner of Forty-ninth and Eighth, then give him the finger.
Tonight the talk centers around Elmore Leonard’s new book—which I haven’t read; certain restaurant critics—who I have; the British sound track from Les Misérables versus the American cast recording; that new Salvadorian bistro on Second and Eighty-third; and which gossip columns are better written—the Post’s or the News’s. It seems that Anne Smiley and I share a mutual acquaintance, a waitress from Abetone’s in Aspen who I raped with a can of hairspray last Christmas when I was skiing there over the holidays. Deck Chairs is crowded, earsplitting, the acoustics lousy because of the high ceilings, and if I’m not mistaken, accompanying the din is a New Age version of “White Rabbit” blaring from speakers mounted in the ceiling corners. Someone who looks like Forrest Atwater—slicked-back blond hair, nonprescription redwood-framed glasses, Armani suit with suspenders—is sitting with Caroline Baker, an investment banker at Drexel, maybe, and she doesn’t look too good. She needs more makeup, the Ralph Lauren tweed outfit is too severe. They’re at a mediocre table up front by the bar.
“It’s called California classic cuisine,” Anne tells me, leaning in close, after we ordered. The statement deserves a reaction, I suppose, and since Scott and Courtney are discussing the merits of the Post’s gossip column, it’s up to me to reply.
“You mean compared to, say, California cuisine?” I ask carefully, measuring each word, then lamely add, “Or post-California cuisine?”
“I mean I know it sounds so trendy but there is a world of difference. It’s subtle,” she says, “but it’s there.”
“I’ve heard of post-California cuisine,” I say, acutely aware of the design of the restaurant: the exposed pipe and the columns and the open pizza kitchen and the … deck chairs. “In fact I’ve even eaten it. No baby vegetables? Scallops in burritos? Wasabi crackers? Am I on the right track? And by the way, did anyone ever tell you that you look exactly like Garfield but run over and skinned and then someone threw an ugly Ferragamo sweater over you before they rushed you to the vet? Fusilli? Olive oil on Brie?”
“Exactly,” Anne says, impressed. “Oh Courtney, where did you find Patrick? He’s so knowledgeable about things. I mean Luis’s idea of California cuisine is half an orange and some gelati,” she gushes, then laughs, encouraging me to laugh with her, which I do, hesitantly.
For an appetizer I ordered radicchio with some kind of free-range squid. Anne and Scott both had the monkfish ragout with violets. Courtney almost fell asleep when she had to exert the energy to read the menu, but before she slid off her chair I grabbed both shoulders, propping her up, and Anne ordered for her, something simple and light like Cajun popcorn perhaps, which wasn’t on the menu but since Anne knows Noj, the chef, he made up a special little batch … just for Courtney! Scott and Anne insisted that we all order some kind of blackened medium-rare redfish, a Deck Chairs specialty which was, luckily for them, an entrée on one of the mock menus that Jean made up for me. If it hadn’t, and if they nevertheless insisted on my ordering it, the odds were pretty good that after dinner tonight I would have broken into Scott and Anne’s studio at around two this morning—after Late Night with David Letterman—and with an ax chopped them to pieces, first making Anne watch Scott bleed to death from gaping chest wounds, and then I would have found a way to get to Exeter where I would pour a bottle of acid all over their son’s slanty-eyed zipperhead face. Our waitress is a little hardbody who is wearing gold faux-pearl tasseled lizard sling-back pumps. I forgot to return my videotapes to the store tonight and I curse myself silently while Scott orders two large bottles of San Pellegrino.
“It’s called California classic cuisine,” Scott is telling me.
“Why don’t we all go to Zeus Bar next week?” Anne suggests to Scott. “You think we’d have a problem getting a table on Friday?” Scott is wearing a red and purple and black striped cashmere intarsia sweater from Paul Stuart, baggy Ralph Lauren corduroys and Cole-Haan leather moccasins.
“Well … maybe,” he says.
“That’s a good idea. I like it a lot,” Anne says, picking up a small violet off her plate and sniffing the flower before placing it carefully on her tongue. She’s wearing a red, purple and black hand-knitted mohair and wool sweater from Koos Van Den Akker Couture and slacks from Anne Klein, with suede open-toe pumps.
A waiter, though not the hardbody, strides over to take another drink order.
“J&B. Straight,” I say before anyone else orders.
Courtney orders a champagne on the rocks, which secretly appalls me. “Oh,” she says as if reminded by something, “can I have that with a twist?”
“A twist of what?” I ask irritably, unable to stop myself. “Let me guess. Melon?” And I’m thinking oh my god why didn’t you return those goddamn videos Bateman you dumb son-of-a-bitch.
“You mean lemon, miss,” the waiter says, giving me an icy stare.
“Yes, of course. Lemon.” Courtney nods, seeming lost in some kind of dream—but enjoying it, oblivious to it.
“I’ll have a glass of the … oh gosh, I guess the Acacia,” Scott says and then addresses the table: “Do I want a white? Do I really want a chardonnay? We can eat the redfish with a cabernet.”
“Go for it,” Anne says cheerily.
&
nbsp; “Okay, I’ll have the … oh jeez, the sauvignon blanc,” Scott says.
The waiter smiles, confused.
“Scottie,” Anne shrieks. “The sauvignon blanc?”
“Just teasing,” he snickers. “I’ll have the chardonnay. The Acacia.”
“You complete jerk.” Anne smiles, relieved. “You’re funny.”
“I’m having the chardonnay,” Scott tells the waiter.
“That’s nice,” Courtney says, patting Scott’s hand.
“I’ll just have …” Anne stalls, deliberating. “Oh, I’ll just have a Diet Coke.”
Scott looks up from a piece of corn bread he was dipping into a small tin of olive oil. “You’re not drinking tonight?”
“No,” Anne says, smiling naughtily. Who knows why? And who fucking cares? “I’m not in the mood.”
“Not even for a glass of the chardonnay?” Scott asks. “How about a sauvignon blanc?”
“I have this aerobics class at nine,” she says, slipping, losing control. “I really shouldn’t.”
“Well then, I don’t want anything,” Scott says, disappointed. “I mean I have one at eight at Xclusive.”
“Does anyone want to guess where I won’t be tomorrow morning at eight?” I ask.
“No, honey. I know how much you like the Acacia.” Anne reaches out and squeezes Scott’s hand.
“No, babe. I’ll stick to the Pellegrino,” Scott says, pointing.
I’m tapping my fingers very loudly on the tabletop, whispering “shit, shit, shit, shit” to myself. Courtney’s eyes are half closed and she’s breathing deeply.
“Listen. I’ll be daring,” Anne says finally. “I’ll have a Diet Coke with rum.”
Scott sighs, then smiles, beaming really. “Good.”
“That’s a caffeine-free Diet Coke, right?” Anne asks the waiter.
“You know,” I interrupt, “you should have it with Diet Pepsi. It’s much better.”
“Really?” Anne asks. “What do you mean?”
“You should have the Diet Pepsi instead of the Diet Coke,” I say. “It’s much better. It’s fizzier. It has a cleaner taste. It mixes better with rum and has a lower sodium content.”
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