American Psycho

by Bret Easton Ellis

  “Yeah. You know. Like a band,” I explain, sensing from her expression that I’m saying totally the wrong things. “Oh, I forgot. I did see U2.”

  “How were they?” she asks. “I liked the new CD a lot.”

  “They were great, just totally great. Just totally …” I pause, unsure of what to say. Bethany raises her eyebrows quizzically, wanting to know more. “Just totally … Irish.”

  “I’ve heard they’re quite good live,” she says, and her own voice has a light, musical lilt to it. “Who else do you like?”

  “Oh you know,” I say, completely stuck. “The, Kingsmen. ‘Louie, Louie.’ That sort of stuff.”

  “Gosh, Patrick,” she says, looking at every part of my face.

  “What?” I panic, immediately touching my hair. “Too much mousse? You don’t like the Kingsmen?”

  “No.” She laughs. “I just don’t remember you being so tan back at school.”

  “I had a tan then, didn’t I?” I ask. “I mean I wasn’t Casper the Ghost or anything, was I?” I put my elbow on the table and flex my biceps, asking her to squeeze the muscle. After she touches it, reluctantly, I resume my questions. “Was I really not that tan at Harvard?” I ask mock-worriedly, but worriedly.

  “No, no.” She laughs. “You were definitely the George Hamilton of the class of eighty-four.”

  “Thanks,” I say, pleased.

  The waiter brings our drinks—two bottles of San Pellegrino water. Scene Two.

  “So you’re at Mill … on the water? Taffeta? What is it?” I ask. Her body, her skin tone, seem firm and rosy.

  “Milbank Tweed,” she says. “That’s where I am.”

  “Well,” I say, squeezing a lime into my glass. “That’s just wonderful. Law school really paid off.”

  “And you’re at … P & P?” she asks.

  “Yes,” I say.

  She nods, pauses, wants to say something, debates whether she should, then asks, all in a matter of seconds: “But doesn’t your family own—”

  “I don’t want to talk about this,” I say, cutting her off. “But yes, Bethany. Yes.”

  “And you still work at P & P?” she asks. Each syllable is spaced so that it bursts, booming sonically, into my head.

  “Yes,” I say, looking furtively around the room.

  “But—” She’s confused. “Didn’t your father—”

  “Yes, of course,” I say, interrupting. “Have you had the focaccia at Pooncakes?”

  “Patrick.”

  “Yes?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I just don’t want to talk about …” I stop. “About work.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I hate it,” I say. “Now listen, have you tried Pooncakes yet? I think Miller underrated it.”

  “Patrick,” she says slowly. “If you’re so uptight about work, why don’t you just quit? You don’t have to work.”

  “Because,” I say, staring directly at her, “I … want … to … fit … in.”

  After a long pause, she smiles. “I see.” There’s another pause.

  This one I break. “Just look at it as, well, a new approach to business,” I say.

  “How”—she stalls—“sensible.” She stalls again. “How, um, practical.”

  Lunch is alternately a burden, a puzzle that needs to be solved, an obstacle, and then it floats effortlessly into the realm of relief and I’m able to give a skillful performance—my overriding intelligence tunes in and lets me know that it can sense how much she wants me, but I hold back, uncommitted. She’s also holding back, but flirting nonetheless. She has made a promise by asking me to lunch and I panic, once the squid is served, certain that I will never recover unless it’s fulfilled. Other men notice her as they pass by our table. Sometimes I coolly bring my voice down to a whisper. I’m hearing things—noise, mysterious sounds, inside my head; her mouth opens, closes, swallows liquid, smiles, takes me in like a magnet covered with lipstick, mentions something involving fax machines, twice. I finally order a J&B on the rocks, then a cognac. She has mint-coconut sorbet. I touch, hold her hand across the table, more than a friend. Sun pours into Vanities, the restaurant empties out, it nears three. She orders a glass of chardonnay, then another, then the check. She has relaxed but something happens. My heartbeat rises and falls, momentarily stabilizes. I listen carefully. Possibilities once imagined plummet. She lowers her eyes and when she looks back at me I lower mine.

  “So,” she asks. “Are you seeing anyone?”

  “My life is essentially uncomplicated,” I say thoughtfully, caught off guard.

  “What does that mean?” she asks.

  I take a sip of cognac and smile secretly to myself, teasing her, dashing her hopes, her dreams of being reunited.

  “Are you seeing anyone, Patrick?” she asks. “Come on, tell me.”

  Thinking of Evelyn, I murmur to myself, “Yes.”

  “Who?” I hear her ask.

  “A very large bottle of Desyrel,” I say in a faraway voice, suddenly very sad.

  “What?” she asks, smiling, but then she realizes something and shakes her head. “I shouldn’t be drinking.”

  “No, I’m not really,” I say, snapping out of it, then, not of my own accord, “I mean, does anyone really see anyone? Does anyone really see anyone else? Did you ever see me? See? What does that mean? Ha! See? Ha! I just don’t get it. Ha!” I laugh.

  After taking this in, she says, nodding, “That has a certain kind of tangled logic to it, I suppose.”

  Another long pause and I fearfully ask the next question. “Well, are you seeing anyone?”

  She smiles, pleased with herself, and still looking down, admits, with incomparable clarity, “Well, yes, I have a boyfriend and—”

  “Who?”

  “What?” She looks up.

  “Who is he? What’s his name?”

  “Robert Hall. Why?”

  “With Salomon Brothers?”

  “No, he’s a chef.”

  “With Salomon Brothers?”

  “Patrick, he’s a chef. And co-owner of a restaurant.”

  “Which one?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “No, really, which one?” I ask, then under my breath, “I want to cross it out of my Zagat guide.”

  “It’s called Dorsia,” she says, then, “Patrick, are you okay?”

  Yes, my brain does explode and my stomach bursts open inwardly—a spastic, acidic, gastric reaction; stars and planets, whole galaxies made up entirely of little white chef hats, race over the film of my vision. I choke out another question.

  “Why Robert Hall?” I ask. “Why him?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” she says, sounding a little tipsy. “I guess it has to do with being twenty-seven and—”

  “Yeah? So am I. So is half of Manhattan. So what? That’s no excuse to marry Robert Hall.”

  “Marry?” she asks, wide-eyed, defensive. “Did I say that?”

  “Didn’t you say marry?”

  “No, I didn’t, but who knows.” She shrugs. “We might.”

  “Ter-rific.”

  “As I was saying, Patrick”—she glares at me, but in a playful way that makes me sick—“I think you know that, well, time is running out. That biological clock just won’t stop ticking,” she says, and I’m thinking: My god, it took only two glasses of chardonnay to get her to admit this? Christ, what a lightweight. “I want to have children.”

  “With Robert Hall?” I ask, incredulous. “You might as well do it with Captain Lou Albano, for Christ sakes. I just don’t get you, Bethany.”

  She touches her napkin, looking down and then out onto the sidewalk, where waiters are setting up tables for dinner. I watch them too. “Why do I sense hostility on your part, Patrick?” she asks softly, then sips her wine.

  “Maybe because I’m hostile,” I spit out. “Maybe because you sense this.”

  “Jesus, Patrick,” she says, searching my face, genuinely upset. “I though
t you and Robert were friends.”

  “What?” I ask. “I’m confused.”

  “Weren’t you and Robert friends?”

  I pause, doubtful. “Were we?”

  “Yes, Patrick, you were.”

  “Robert Hall, Robert Hall, Robert Hall,” I mutter to myself, trying to remember. “Scholarship student? President of our senior class?” I think about it a second longer, then add, “Weak chin?”

  “No, Patrick,” she says. “The other Robert Hall.”

  “I’m confusing him with the other Robert Hall?” I ask.

  “Yes, Patrick,” she says, exasperated.

  Inwardly cringing, I close my eyes and sigh. “Robert Hall. Not the one whose parents own half of, like, Washington? Not the one who was”—I gulp—“captain of the crew team? Six feet?”

  “Yes,” she says. “That Robert Hall.”

  “But …” I stop.

  “Yes? But what?” She seems prepared to wait for an answer.

  “But he was a fag,” I blurt out.

  “No, he was not, Patrick,” she says, clearly offended.

  “I’m positive he was a fag.” I start nodding my head.

  “Why are you so positive?” she asks, not amused.

  “Because he used to let frat guys—not the ones in my house—like, you know, gang bang him at parties and tie him up and stuff. At least, you know, that’s what I’ve heard,” I say sincerely, and then, more humiliated than I have ever been in my entire life, I confess, “Listen, Bethany, he offered me a … you know, a blow-job once. In the, um, civics section of the library.”

  “Oh my god,” she gasps, disgusted. “Where’s the check?”

  “Didn’t Robert Hall get kicked out for doing his thesis on Babar? Or something like Babar?” I ask. “Babar the elephant? The, oh Jesus, French elephant?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Listen to me,” I say. “Didn’t he go to business school at Kellogg? At Northwestern, right?”

  “He dropped out,” she says without looking at me.

  “Listen.” I touch her hand.

  She flinches and pulls back.

  I try to smile. “Robert Hall’s not a fag—”

  “I can assure you of that,” she says a tad too smugly. How can anyone get indignant over Robert Hall? Instead of saying “Oh yeah, you dumb sorry bitch” I say soothingly, “I’m sure you can,” then, “Tell me about him. I want to know how things stand with the two of you,” and then, smiling, furious, full of rage, I apologize. “I’m sorry.”

  It takes some time but she finally relents and smiles back at me and I ask her, once again, “Tell me more,” and then, under my breath, smiling a rictus at her, “I’d like to slice open your beaver.” The chardonnay has mellowed her, so she softens and talks freely.

  I think about other things while she describes her recent past: air, water, sky, time, a moment, a point somewhere when I wanted to show her everything beautiful in the world. I have no patience for revelations, for new beginnings, for events that take place beyond the realm of my immediate vision. A young girl, a freshman, I met in a bar in Cambridge my junior year at Harvard told me early one fall that “Life is full of endless possibilities.” I tried valiantly not to choke on the beer nuts I was chewing while she gushed this kidney stone of wisdom, and I calmly washed them down with the rest of a Heineken, smiled and concentrated on the dart game that was going on in the corner. Needless to say, she did not live to see her sophomore year. That winter, her body was found floating in the Charles River, decapitated, her head hung from a tree on the bank, her hair knotted around a low-hanging branch, three miles away. My rages at Harvard were less violent than the ones now and it’s useless to hope that my disgust will vanish—there is just no way.

  “Oh, Patrick,” she’s saying. “You’re still the same. I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”

  “Say it’s good.”

  “Why? Is it?” she asks, frowning. “Was it? Then?”

  “You only knew one facet of my personality,” I say. “Student.”

  “Lover?” she asks, her voice reminding me of someone human.

  My eyes fall on her coldly, untouched. Out on the street, music that sounds like salsa blares. The waiter finally brings the check.

  “I’ll pay for it,” I sigh.

  “No,” she says, opening her handbag. “I invited you.”

  “But I have a platinum American Express card,” I tell her.

  “But so do I,” she says, smiling.

  I pause, then watch her place the card on the tray the check came on. Violent convulsions seem close at hand if I do not get up. “The women’s movement. Wow.” I smile, unimpressed.

  Outside, she waits on the sidewalk while I’m in the men’s room throwing up my lunch, spitting out the squid, undigested and less purple than it was on my plate. When I come out of Vanities onto the street, putting on my Wayfarers, chewing a Cert, I murmur something to myself, and then I kiss her on the cheek and make up something else. “Sorry it took so long. Had to call my lawyer.”

  “Oh?” She acts concerned—the dumb bitch.

  “Just a friend of mine.” I shrug. “Bobby Chambers. He’s in prison. Some friends of his, well, mainly me, are trying to remount his defense,” I say with another shrug, then, changing the subject, “Listen.”

  “Yes?” she asks, smiling.

  “It’s late. I don’t want to go back to the office,” I say, checking my Rolex. The sun, setting, glints off it, momentarily blinding her. “Why don’t you come up to my place?”

  “What?” She laughs.

  “Why don’t you come up to my place?” I suggest again.

  “Patrick.” She laughs suggestively. “Are you serious?”

  “I have a bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé, chilled, huh?” I say, arching my eyebrows.

  “Listen, that line might’ve worked at Harvard but”—she laughs, then continues—“um, we’re older now and …” She stops.

  “And … what?” I ask.

  “I shouldn’t have had that wine at lunch,” she says again.

  We start walking. It’s a hundred degrees outside, impossible to breathe. It’s not day, it’s not night. The sky seems yellow. I hand a beggar on the corner of Duane and Greenwich a dollar just to impress her.

  “Listen, come over,” I say again, almost whining. “Come on over.”

  “I can’t,” she says. “The air-conditioning in my office is broken but I can’t. I’d like to but I can’t.”

  “Aw come on,” I say, grabbing her shoulders, giving them a good-natured squeeze.

  “Patrick, I have to be back at the office,” she groans, protesting weakly.

  “But you’ll be sweltering in there,” I point out.

  “I have no choice.”

  “Come on.” Then, trying to entice her, “I have a 1940s Durgin Gorham four-piece sterling silver tea and coffee set I’d like to show you.”

  “I can’t.” She laughs, putting on her sunglasses.

  “Bethany,” I say, warning her.

  “Listen,” she says, relenting. “I’ll buy you a Dove Bar. Have a Dove Bar instead.”

  “I’m appalled. Do you know how many grams of fat, of sodium, are in the chocolate covering alone?” I gasp, mock horrified.

  “Come on,” she says. “You don’t need to worry about that.”

  “No, you come on,” I say, walking in front of her for a little while so she won’t sense any aggressiveness on my part. “Listen, come by for a drink and then we’ll walk over to Dorsia and I’ll meet Robert, okay?” I turn around, still walking, but backward now. “Please?”

  “Patrick,” she says. “You’re begging.”

  “I really want to show you that Durgin Gorham tea set.” I pause. “Please?” I pause again. “It cost me three and a half thousand dollars.”

  She stops walking because I stop, looks down, and when she looks back up her brow, both cheeks, are damp with a layer of perspiration, a fine sheen. She’s hot
. She sighs, smiling to herself. She looks at her watch.

  “Well?” I ask.

  “If I did …,” she starts.

  “Ye-e-es?” I ask, stretching the word out.

  “If I did, I have to make a phone call.”

  “No, negative,” I say, waving down a cab. “Call from my place.”

  “Patrick,” she protests. “There’s a phone right over there.”

  “Let’s go now,” I say. “There’s a taxi.”

  In the cab heading toward the Upper West Side, she says, “I shouldn’t have had that wine.”

  “Are you drunk?”

  “No,” she says, fanning herself with a playbill from Les Misérables someone left in the backseat of the cab, which isn’t air-conditioned and even with both windows open she keeps fanning herself. “Just slightly … tipsy.”

  We both laugh for no reason and she leans into me, then realizes something and pulls back. “You have a doorman, right?” she asks suspiciously.

  “Yes.” I smile, turned on by her unawareness of just how close to peril she really is.

  Inside my apartment. She moves into the living room area, nodding her head approvingly, murmuring, “Very nice, Mr. Bateman, very nice.” Meanwhile I’m locking the door, making sure it’s bolted shut, then I move over to the bar and pour some J&B into a glass while she runs her hand over the Wurlitzer jukebox, inspecting it. I’ve started growling to myself and my hands are shaking so badly I decide to forgo any ice and then I’m in the living room, standing behind her while she looks up at the David Onica that’s hung above the fireplace. She cocks her head, studying it, then she starts giggling and looks at me, puzzled, then back at the Onica, still laughing. I don’t ask what’s wrong—I could care less. Downing the drink in a single gulp, I move over to the Anaholian white-oak armoire where I keep a brand-new nail gun I bought last week at a hardware store near my office in Wall Street. After I’ve slipped on a pair of black leather gloves, I make sure the nail gun is loaded.

  “Patrick?” Bethany asks, still giggling.

  “Yes?” I say, then, “Darling?”

  “Who hung the Onica?” she asks.

  “You like it?” I ask.

  “It’s fine, but …” She stops, then says, “I’m pretty sure it’s hung upside down.”

  “What?”

  “Who hung the Onica?”