Into a hand-constructed bridle leather suitcase with a khaki-colored canvas cover, extra-heavy cap corners, gold straps and locks, by Ralph Lauren, I pack a wool six-button double-breasted peak-lapel chalk-striped suit and one wool flannel navy suit, both from Brooks Brothers, along with a Mitsubishi rechargeable electric shaver, a silver-plated shoehorn from Barney’s, a Tag-Heuer sports watch, a black leather Prada currency holder, a Sharp Handy-Copier, a Sharp Dialmaster, his passport in its own black leather passport case and a Panasonic portable hair dryer. I also steal for myself a Toshiba portable compact disc player with one of the discs from the original cast recording of Les Misérables still in it. The bathroom is done completely in white except for the Dalmatian-spot wallpaper covering one wall. I throw any toiletry articles I might’ve missed into a plastic Hefty bag.
Back at my apartment his body is already in rigor mortis, and after wrapping it up in four cheap terry-cloth towels I also bought at the Conran’s Memorial Day sale, I place Owen headfirst and fully dressed into a Canalino goose-down sleeping bag, which I zip up then drag easily into the elevator, then through the lobby, past the night doorman, down the block, where briefly I run into Arthur Crystal and Kitty Martin, who’ve just had dinner at Café Luxembourg. Luckily Kitty Martin is suppoed to be dating Craig McDermott, who is in Houston for the night, so they don’t linger, even though Crystal—the rude bastard—asks me what the general rules of wearing a white dinner jacket are. After answering him curtly I hail a taxi, effortlessly manage to swing the sleeping bag into the backseat, hop in and give the driver the address in Hell’s Kitchen. Once there I carry the body up four flights of stairs until we’re at the unit I own in the abandoned building and I place Owen’s body into an oversize porcelain tub, strip off his Abboud suit and, after wetting the corpse down, pour two bags of lime over it.
Later, around two, in bed, I’m unable to sleep. Evelyn catches me on call waiting while I’m listening to messages on 976-TWAT and watching a tape on the VCR of this morning’s Patty Winters Show which is about Deformed People.
“Patrick?” Evelyn asks.
I pause, then in a dull monotone calmly announce, “You have reached Patrick Bateman’s number. He is unable to come to the phone right now. So please leave a message after the tone.…” I pause, then add, “Have a nice day.” I pause again, praying to god that she bought it, before emitting a pitiful “Beep.”
“Oh stop it, Patrick,” she says irritably. “I know it’s you. What in god’s name do you think you’re doing?”
I hold the phone out in front of me then drop it on the floor and bang it against the nightstand. I keep pressing some of the numbers down, hoping that when I lift the receiver up to my ear I’ll be greeted by a dial tone. “Hello? Hello?” I say. “Is anyone there? Yes?”
“Oh for god’s sake stop it. Just stop it,” Evelyn wails.
“Hi, Evelyn,” I say cheerily, my face twisted into a grimace.
“Where have you been tonight?” she asks. “I thought we were supposed to have dinner. I thought we had reservations at Raw Space.”
“No, Evelyn,” I sigh, suddenly very tired. “We didn’t. Why would you think that?”
“I thought I had it written down,” she whines. “I thought my secretary had written it down for me.”
“Well, one of you was wrong,” I say, rewinding the tape by remote control from my bed. “Raw Space? Jesus. You … are … insane.”
“Honey,” she pouts. “Where were you tonight? I hope you didn’t go to Raw Space without me.”
“Oh my god,” I moan. “I had to rent some videotapes. I mean I had to return some videos.”
“What else did you do?” she asks, still whining.
“Well, I ran into Arthur Crystal and Kitty Martin,” I say. “They just had dinner at Café Luxembourg.”
“Oh really?” Chillingly, her interest perks up. “What was Kitty wearing?”
“An off-the-shoulder ball gown with velvet bodice and a floral-patterned lace skirt by Laura Marolakos, I think.”
“And Arthur?”
“Same thing.”
“Oh Mr. Bateman.” She giggles. “I adore your sense of humor.”
“Listen, it’s late. I’m tired.” I fake a yawn.
“Did I wake you?” she asks worriedly. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“Yes,” I say. “You did. But I took your call so it’s my fault, not yours.”
“Dinner, honey? Tomorrow?” she asks, coyly expecting an affirmative response.
“I can’t. Work.”
“You practically own that damn company,” she moans. “What work? What work do you do? I don’t understand.”
“Evelyn,” I sigh. “Please.”
“Oh Patrick, let’s go away this summer,” she says wistfully. “Let’s go to Edgartown or the Hamptons.”
“I’ll do that,” I say. “Maybe I’ll do that.”
Paul Smith
I’m standing in Paul Smith talking to Nancy and Charles Hamilton and their two-year-old daughter, Glenn. Charles is wearing a four-button double-breasted linen suit by Redaelli, a cotton broadcloth shirt by Ascot Chang, a patterned silk tie by Eugenio Venanzi and loafers by Brooks Brothers. Nancy is wearing a silk blouse with mother-of-pearl sequins and a silk chiffon skirt by Valentino and silver earrings by Reena Pachochi. I’m wearing a six-button double-breasted chalk-striped wool suit and a patterned silk tie, both by Louis, Boston, and a cotton oxford cloth shirt by Luciano Barbera. Glenn is wearing silk Armani overalls and a tiny Mets cap. As the salesgirl rings up Charles’s purchases, I’m playing with the baby while Nancy holds her, offering Glenn my platinum American Express card, and she grabs at it excitedly, and I’m shaking my head, talking in a high-pitched baby voice, squeezing her chin, waving the card in front of her face, cooing, “Yes I’m a total psychopathic murderer, oh yes I am, I like to kill people, oh yes I do, honey, little sweetie pie, yes I do …” After the office today I played squash with Ricky Hendricks, then had drinks with Stephen Jenkins at Fluties and I’m supposed to meet Bonnie Abbott for dinner at Pooncakes, the new Bishop Sullivan restaurant in Gramercy Park, at eight o’clock. The Patty Winters Show this morning was about Concentration Camp Survivors. I take out a Sony Watchman pocket TV (the FD-270) that has a 2.7-inch black-and-white miniscreen and weighs only thirteen ounces, and hold it out to Glenn. Nancy asks, “How’s the shad roe at Rafaeli’s?” Right now, outside this store, it’s not dark yet but it is getting there.
“It’s terrific,” I murmur, staring happily at Glenn.
Charles signs the slip and while placing his gold American Express card back into his wallet he turns to me and recognizes someone over my shoulder.
“Hey Luis,” Charles says, smiling.
I turn around.
“Hi, Charles. Hi, Nancy.” Luis Carruthers kisses Nancy’s cheek, then shakes the baby’s hand. “Oh hiya, Glenn. My my, you look so big.”
“Luis, you know Robert Chanc—” Charles starts.
“Pat Bateman,” I say, putting the Watchman back in my pocket. “Forget it. We’ve met.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. That’s right. Pat Bateman,” Charles says. Luis is wearing a wool-crepe suit, a cotton broadcloth shirt and a silk tie, all by Ralph Lauren. Like me, like Charles, he wears his hair slicked back and he’s wearing Oliver Peoples redwood-framed glasses. Mine, at least, are nonprescription.
“Well well,” I say, shaking his hand. Luis’s grip is overly firm, yet horribly sensuous at the same time. “Excuse me, I have to purchase a tie.” I wave bye-bye to baby Glenn once more and move off to inspect the neckwear in the adjoining room, wiping my hand against a two-hundred-dollar bath towel that hangs on a marble rack.
Soon enough Luis wanders over and leans against the tie drawer, pretending to examine the ties like I’m doing.
“What are you doing here?” he whispers.
“Buying a tie for my brother. It’s his birthday soon. Excuse me.” I move down the rack, away from him.
&nbs
p; “He must feel very lucky to have a brother like you,” he says, sliding up next to me, grinning sincerely.
“Maybe, but I find him completely repellent,” I say. “You might like him though.”
“Patrick, why won’t you look at me?” Luis asks, sounding anguished. “Look at me.”
“Please, please leave me alone, Luis,” I say, my eyes closed, both fists clenched in anger.
“Come on, let’s have a drink at Sofi’s and talk about this,” he suggests, starting to plead.
“Talk about what?” I ask incredulously, opening my eyes.
“Well … about us.” He shrugs.
“Did you follow me in here?” I ask.
“Into where?”
“Here. Paul Smith. Why?”
“Me? Follow you? Oh come on.” He tries to laugh, scoffing at my remark. “Jesus.”
“Luis,” I say, forcing myself to make eye contact. “Please leave me alone. Go away.”
“Patrick,” he says. “I love you very much. I hope you realize this.”
I moan, moving over to the shoes, smiling wanly at a salesperson.
Luis follows. “Patrick, what are we doing here?”
“Well, I’m trying to buy a tie for my brother and”—I pick up a loafer, then sigh—“and you’re trying to give me head, figure it out. Jesus, I’m getting out of here.”
I move back over to the tie rack, grab one without choosing and take it up to the register. Luis follows. Ignoring him, I hand the salesgirl the platinum AmEx card and tell her, “There’s a bum outside the door.” I point out the window at the crying homeless man with the bag of newspapers standing on a bench next to the store’s entrance. “You should call the police or something.” She nods thanks and runs my card through the computer. Luis just stands there, shyly staring at the ground. I sign the receipt, take the bag and inform the salesgirl, pointing at Luis, “He’s not with me.”
Outside I try to wave down a cab on Fifth Avenue. Luis hurries out of the store after me.
“Patrick, we’ve got to talk,” he calls out over the roar of traffic. He runs up to me, grabbing my coat sleeve. I whirl around, my switchblade already open, and I jab it threateningly, warning Luis to stay back. People move out of our way, continue walking.
“Hey, whoa, Patrick,” he says, holding his hands up, backing off. “Patrick …”
I hiss at him, still holding out the knife until a cab I flag down skids to a stop. Luis tries to get near me, his hands still up, and I keep the knife aimed at him, slicing the air with it, while I open the door to the cab and back in, still hissing, then I close the door and tell the driver to head over to Gramercy Park, to Pooncakes.
Birthday, Brothers
I spend all day thinking about what kind of table my brother Sean and I will be seated at tonight in the Quilted Giraffe. Since it’s his birthday and he happens to be in the city, my father’s accountant, Charles Conroy, and the trustee of his estate, Nicholas Leigh, both called last week and mutually suggested that it would be in everyone’s best interest to use this date as an excuse to find out what Sean’s doing with his life and perhaps to ask a pertinent question or two. And though both of these men know I despise Sean, and that the feeling is unambiguously reciprocated, it would be a good idea to get him to come to dinner, and as a lure, as bait in case he refuses, by mentioning, not lightly, that something bad has happened. I was on a conference call to Conroy and Leigh last Wednesday afternoon.
“Something bad? Like what?” I asked, trying to concentrate on the numbers sliding across my monitor while simultaneously waving Jean away, even though she was holding a sheaf of papers I was supposed to sign. “That all Michelob breweries in the Northeast are closing? That 976-BIMBO has stopped making house calls?”
“No,” Charles said, then quietly mentioned, “Tell him your mother is … worse.”
I mulled over this tactic, then said, “He might not care.”
“Tell him …” Nicholas paused, then cleared his throat and rather delicately proposed, “it has to do with her estate.”
I looked up from the monitor, lowering my Wayfarer aviator sunglasses, and stared at Jean, then lightly fingered the Zagat guide that sat next to the monitor. Pastels would be impossible. Ditto Dorsia. Last time I called Dorsia someone had actually hung up on me even before I asked, “Well, if not next month, how about January?” and though I have vowed to get a reservation at Dorsia one day (if not during this calendar year, then at least before I’m thirty), the energy I would spend attempting this feat isn’t worth wasting on Sean. Besides, Dorsia’s far too chic for him. I want to make him endure this dinner; to not be allowed the pleasure of being distracted by hardbodies on their way to Nell’s; somewhere with a men’s room attendant so he would have to be painfully subtle about what is now, I’m sure, his chronic cocaine usage. I handed the Zagat to Jean and asked her to find the most expensive restaurant in Manhattan. She made a nine o’clock reservation at the Quilted Giraffe.
“Things are worse at Sandstone,” I tell Sean later this afternoon, around four o’clock. He’s staying in our father’s suite at the Carlyle. MTV is blasting in the background, other voices shout over its din. I can hear a shower running.
“Like what? Mom ate her pillow? What?”
“I think we should have dinner,” I say.
“Dominique, cool it,” he says, then places his hand over the phone and mutters something, muffled.
“Hello, Sean? What’s going on?” I’m asking.
“I’ll call back,” he says, hanging up.
I happen to like the tie I bought Sean at Paul Smith last week and I’ve decided not to give it to him (though the idea of the asshole, say, hanging himself with it pleases me greatly). In fact I decide to wear it to the Quilted Giraffe tonight. Instead of the tie, I’m going to bring him a Casio QD-150 Quick-Dialer combination wristwatch, calculator and data bank. It dials touch-tone phones sonically when held up to a mouthpiece and it stores up to fifty names and numbers. I start laughing while putting this useless gift back into its box, thinking to myself that Sean doesn’t even have fifty acquaintances. He couldn’t even name fifty people. The Patty Winters Show this morning was about Salad Bars.
Sean calls at five from the Racquet Club and tells me to meet him at Dorsia tonight. He just talked to Brin, the owner, and reserved a table at nine. My mind is a mess. I don’t know what to think or how to feel. The Patty Winters Show this morning was about Salad Bars.
Later, Dorsia, nine-thirty: Sean is half an hour late. The maître d’ refuses to seat me until my brother arrives. My worst fear—a reality. A prime booth across from the bar sits there, empty, waiting for Sean to grace it with his presence. My rage is controlled, barely, by a Xanax and an Absolut on the rocks. While taking a piss in the men’s room, I stare into a thin, web-like crack above the urinal’s handle and think to myself that if I were to disappear into that crack, say somehow miniaturize and slip into it, the odds are good that no one would notice I was gone. No … one … would … care. In fact some, if they noticed my absence, might feel an odd, indefinable sense of relief. This is true: the world is better off with some people gone. Our lives are not all interconnected. That theory is a crock. Some people truly do not need to be here. In fact one of them, my brother, Sean, is sitting in the booth he reserved when I come out of the men’s room after I’ve phoned the apartment and checked for messages (Evelyn’s suicidal, Courtney wants to buy a chow, Luis suggests dinner on Thursday). Sean is already chain-smoking, and I’m thinking to myself: Damn, why didn’t I request a table in the nonsmoking section? He’s shaking hands with the maître d’ as I walk over but doesn’t even bother to introduce us. I sit down and nod. Sean nods too, having already ordered a bottle of Cristal, knowing that I’m paying; also knowing, I’m sure, that I know he doesn’t drink champagne.
Sean, who is now twenty-three, went to Europe last fall, or at least this is what Charles Conroy said Sean told him, and though Charles did receive a substantial bill from the
Plaza Athénée, the signature on the receipts didn’t match Sean’s and no one really seemed to know how long Sean was actually in France or even if he had spent real time there. Afterwards he bummed around, then reenrolled at Camden for about three weeks. Now he’s in Manhattan before flying to either Palm Beach or New Orleans. Predictably, tonight he’s alternately moody and insistently arrogant. He has also, I’ve just noticed, started to pluck his eyebrows. He no longer has only one. The overwhelming urge I have to mention this to him is quelled only by squeezing my hand into a fist so tightly that I break the skin on the palm of my hand and the biceps of my left arm bulges then rips through the cloth of the linen Armani shirt I have on.
“So you like this place?” he asks, grinning.
“My … favorite,” I joke through clenched teeth.
“Let’s order,” he says, not looking at me, waving to a hardbody, who brings over two menus and a wine list while smiling appreciatively at Sean, who in turn ignores her totally. I open the menu and—damnit—it’s not prix fixe, which means that Sean orders the lobster with caviar and peach ravioli as an appetizer and the blackened lobster with strawberry sauce as an entrée—the two most expensive items on the menu. I order the quail sashimi with grilled brioche and the baby soft-shell crabs with grape jelly. A hardbody opens the bottle of Cristal and pours it into crystal tumblers, which I guess is supposed to be cool. After she leaves, Sean notices me staring at him in a vaguely disapproving manner.
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