“Yes, you simpleton. I am Mr. Grouchy today,” I hiss, grabbing the file and shoving it in the top desk drawer.
She stares at me, uncomprehending, then, actually looking crestfallen, says, “Ted Madison called and so did James Baker. They want to meet you at Fluties at six.”
I sigh, glaring at her. “Well, what should you do?”
She laughs nervously, standing there, her eyes wide. “I’m not sure.”
“Jean.” I stand up to lead her out of the office. “What … do … you … say?”
It takes her a little while but finally, frightened, she guesses, “Just … say … no?”
“Just … say … no.” I nod, pushing her out and slamming the door.
Before leaving my office for the meeting I take two Valium, wash them down with a Perrier and then use a scruffing cleanser on my face with premoistened cotton balls, afterwards applying a moisturizer. I’m wearing a wool tweed suit and a striped cotton shirt, both by Yves Saint Laurent, and a silk tie by Armani and new black cap-toed shoes by Ferragamo. I Plax then brush my teeth and when I blow my nose, thick, ropy strings of blood and snot stain a forty-five-dollar handkerchief from Hermes that, unfortunately, wasn’t a gift. But I’ve been drinking close to twenty liters of Evian water a day and going to the tanning salon regularly and one night of binging hasn’t affected my skin’s smoothness or color tone. My complexion is still excellent. Three drops of Visine clear the eyes. An ice pack tightens the skin. All it comes down to is: I feel like shit but look great.
I’m also the first to make it to the boardroom. Luis Carruthers follows like a puppy dog at my heels, a close second, and takes the seat next to mine which means I’m supposed to take off my Walkman. He’s wearing a wool plaid sports jacket, wool slacks, a Hugo Boss cotton shirt and paisley tie—slacks, I’m guessing, from Brooks Brothers. He starts rattling on about a restaurant in Phoenix, Propheteers, that I’m actually interested in hearing about but not from Luis Carruthers, yet I’m on ten milligrams of Valium and for that reason I can manage. On The Patty Winters Show this morning were descendants of members of the Donner Party.
“The clients were total hicks, predictably,” Luis is saying. “They wanted to take me to a local production of Les Miz, which I already saw in London, but—”
“Did you have any trouble getting reservations at Propheteers?” I ask, cutting him off.
“No. None at all,” he says. “We ate late.”
“What did you order?” I ask.
“I had the poached oysters, the lotte and the walnut tart.”
“I hear the lotte is good there,” I murmur, lost in thought.
“The client had the boudin blanc, the roasted chicken and the cheesecake,” he says.
“Cheesecake?” I say, confused by this plain, alien-sounding list. “What sauce or fruits were on the roasted chicken? What shapes was it cut into?”
“None, Patrick,” he says, also confused. “It was … roasted.”
“And the cheesecake, what flavor? Was it heated?” I say. “Ricotta cheesecake? Goat cheese? Were there flowers or cilantro in it?”
“It was just … regular,” he says, and then, “Patrick, you’re sweating.”
“What did she have?” I ask, ignoring him. “The client’s bimbo.”
“Well, she had the country salad, the scallops and the lemon tart,” Luis says.
“The scallops were grilled? Were they sashimi scallops? In a ceviche of sorts?” I’m asking. “Or were they gratinized?”
“No, Patrick,” Luis says. “They were … broiled.”
It’s silent in the boardroom as I contemplate this, thinking it through before asking, finally, “What’s ‘broiled,’ Luis?”
“I’m not sure,” he says. “I think it involves … a pan.”
“Wine?” I ask.
“An ’85 sauvignon blanc,” he says. “Jordan. Two bottles.”
“Car?” I ask. “Did you rent while in Phoenix?”
“BMW.” He smiles. “Little black beamer.”
“Hip,” I murmur, remembering last night, how I lost it completely in a stall at Nell’s—my mouth foaming, all I could think about were insects, lots of insects, and running at pigeons, foaming at the mouth and running at pigeons. “Phoenix. Janet Leigh was from Phoenix.…” I stall, then continue. “She got stabbed in the shower. Disappointing scene.” I pause. “Blood looked fake.”
“Listen, Patrick,” Luis says, pressing his handkerchief into my hand, my fingers clenched into a fist that relaxes at Luis’s touch. “Dibble and I are having lunch next week at the Yale Club. Would you like to join us?”
“Sure.” I think about Courtney’s legs, spread and wrapped around my face, and when I look over at Luis in one brief, flashing moment his head looks like a talking vagina and it scares the bejesus out of me, moves me to say something while mopping the sweat off my brow. “That’s a nice … suit, Luis.” The farthest thing from my mind.
He looks down as if stunned, and then blushing, embarrassed, he touches his own lapel. “Thanks, Pat. You look great too … as usual.” And when he reaches out to touch my tie, I catch his hand before his fingers make it, telling him, “Your compliment was sufficient.”
Reed Thompson walks in wearing a wool plaid four-button double-breasted suit and a striped cotton shirt and a silk tie, all Armani, plus slightly tacky blue cotton socks by Interwoven and black Ferragamo cap-toe shoes that look exactly like mine, with a copy of the Wall Street Journal held in a nicely manicured fist and a Bill Kaiserman tweed balmacaan overcoat draped casually across the other arm. He nods and sits across from us at the table. Soon after, Todd Broderick walks in wearing a wool chalk-striped six-button double-breasted suit and a striped broadcloth shirt and silk tie, all by Polo, plus an affected linen pocket square that I’m fairly sure is also by Polo. McDermott walks in next, carrying a copy of this week’s New York magazine and this morning’s Financial Times, wearing new nonprescription Oliver Peoples redwood-framed glasses, a black and white wool houndstooth-check single-breasted suit with notch lapels, a striped cotton dress shirt with spread collar and a silk paisley tie, all of it designed and tailored by John Reyle.
I smile, raising my eyebrows at McDermott, who sullenly takes the seat next to mine. He sighs and opens the newspaper, silently reading. Since he hasn’t offered a “hello” or “good morning” I can tell that he’s pissed off and I suspect that it has something to do with me. Finally, sensing that Luis is about to ask something, I turn to McDermott.
“So, McDermott, what’s wrong?” I smirk. “Long line at the Stairmaster this morning?”
“Who said anything’s wrong?” he asks, sniffing, turning pages in the Financial Times.
“Listen,” I tell him, leaning in, “I already apologized about yelling at you because of the pizza at Pastels the other night.”
“Who said it was about that?” he asks tensely.
“I thought we already cleared this up,” I whisper, gripping the arm of his chair, smiling over at Thompson. “I’m sorry I insulted the pizzas at Pastels. Happy?”
“Who said it’s about that?” he asks again.
“Then what is it, McDermott?” I whisper, noticing movement behind me. I count to three then whirl around, catching Luis leaning toward me trying to eavesdrop. He knows he’s been caught and he sinks slowly back into his chair, guilty.
“McDermott, this is ridiculous,” I whisper. “You can’t stay angry at me because I think the pizza at Pastels is … crusty.”
“Brittle,” he says, shooting me a glance. “The word you used was brittle.”
“I apologize,” I say. “But I’m right. It is. You read the review in the Times, right?”
“Here.” He reaches into his pocket and hands me a Xeroxed article. “I just wanted to prove you wrong. Read this.”
“What is it?” I ask, opening the folded page.
“It’s an article on your hero, Donald Trump.” McDermott grins.
“It sure is,” I say apprehens
ively. “Why didn’t I ever see this, I wonder.”
“And …” McDermott scans the article and points an accusatory finger at the bottom paragraph, which he’s highlighted in red ink. “Where does Donald Trump think the best pizza in Manhattan is served?”
“Let me read this,” I sigh, waving him away. “You might be wrong. What a lousy photo.”
“Bateman. Look. I circled it,” he says.
I pretend to read the Fucking article but I’m getting very angry and I have to hand the article back to McDermott and ask, thoroughly annoyed, “So what? What does it mean? What are you, McDermott, trying to tell me?”
“What do you think of the pizza at Pastels now, Bateman?” he asks smugly.
“Well,” I say, choosing my words carefully. “I think I have to go back and retaste the pizza.…” I’m saying this through gritted teeth. “I’m just suggesting that the last time I was there the pizza was …”
“Brittle?” McDermott offers.
“Yeah.” I shrug. “Brittle.”
“Uh-huh.” McDermott smiles, triumphant.
“Listen, if the pizza at Pastels is okay with Donny,” I start, hating to admit this to McDermott, then sighing, almost unintelligibly, “it’s okay with me.”
McDermott cackles gleefully, a victor.
I count three silk-crepe ties, one Versace silk-satin woven tie, two silk foulard ties, one silk Kenzo, two silk jacquard ties. The fragrances of Xeryus and Tuscany and Armani and Obsession and Polo and Grey Flannel and even Antaeus mingle, wafting into each other, rising from the suits and into the air, forming their own mixture: a cold, sickening perfume.
“But I’m not apologizing,” I warn McDermott.
“You already have, Bateman,” he says.
Paul Owen walks in wearing a cashmere one-button sports jacket, tropical wool flannel slacks, a button-down tab-collared shirt by Ronaldus Shamask, but it’s really the tie—blue and black and red and yellow bold stripes from Andrew Fezza by Zanzarra—that impresses me. Carruthers gets excited too, and he leans into my chair and asks, if I’m listening correctly, “Do you think he has a power jock strap to go along with that thing?” When I don’t answer he retreats, opens one of the Sports Illustrateds that sit in the middle of the table and, humming to himself, starts to read an article on Olympic divers.
“Hello, Halberstam,” Owen says, walking by.
“Hello, Owen,” I say, admiring the way he’s styled and slicked back his hair, with a part so even and sharp it … devastates me and I make a mental note to ask him where he purchases his hair-care products, which kind of mousse he uses, my final guess after mulling over the possibilities being Ten-X.
Greg McBride walks in and stops by my chair. “Did you watch the Winters Show this morning? Riot. Total riot,” and we give each other high-five before he takes a seat between Dibble and Lloyd. God knows where they came from.
Kevin Forrest, who walks in with Charles Murphy, is saying, “My call waiting is busted. Felicia screwed it up somehow.” I’m not even paying attention to what they’re wearing. But I find myself staring at Murphy’s vintage owl cuff links with blue crystal eyes.
Video Store then D’Agostino’s
I’m wandering around VideoVisions, the video rental store near my apartment on the Upper West Side, sipping from a can of Diet Pepsi, the new Christopher Cross tape blaring from the earphones of my Sony Walkman. After the office I played racquetball with Montgomery, then had a shiatsu massage and met Jesse Lloyd, Jamie Conway and Kevin Forrest for drinks at Rusty’s on Seventy-third Street. Tonight I’m wearing a new wool topcoat by Ungaro Uomo Paris and carrying a Bottega Veneta briefcase and an umbrella by Georges Gaspar.
The video store is more crowded than usual. There are too many couples in line for me to rent She-Male Reformatory or Ginger’s Cunt without some sense of awkwardness or discomfort, plus I’ve already bumped into Robert Ailes from First Boston in the Horror aisle, or at least I think it was Robert Ailes. He mumbled “Hello, McDonald” as he passed me by, holding Friday the 13th: Part 7 and a documentary on abortions in what I noticed were nicely manicured hands marred only by what looked to me like an imitation-gold Rolex.
Since pornography seems out of the question I browse through Light Comedy and, feeling ripped off, settle for a Woody Allen movie but I’m still not satisfied. I want something else. I pass through the Rock Musical section—nothing—then find myself in Horror Comedy—ditto—and suddenly I’m seized by a minor anxiety attack. There are too many fucking movies to choose from. I duck behind a promotional cardboard display for the new Dan Aykroyd comedy and take two five-milligram Valiums, washing them down with the Diet Pepsi. Then, almost by rote, as if I’ve been programmed, I reach for Body Double—a movie I have rented thirty-seven times—and walk up to the counter where I wait for twenty minutes to be checked out by a dumpy girl (five pounds overweight, dry frizzy hair). She’s actually wearing a baggy, nondescript sweater—definitely not designer—probably to hide the fact that she has no tits, and even though she has nice eyes: so fucking what? Finally it’s my turn. I hand her the empty boxes.
“Is this it?” she asks, taking my membership card from me. I’m wearing Mario Valentino Persian-black gloves. My VideoVisions membership costs only two hundred and fifty dollars annually.
“Do you have any Jami Gertz movies?” I ask her, trying to make direct eye contact.
“What?” she asks, distracted.
“Any movies that Jami Gertz is in?”
“Who?” She enters something into the computer and then says without looking at me, “How many nights?”
“Three,” I say. “Don’t you know who Jami Gertz is?”
“I don’t think so.” She actually sighs.
“Jami Gertz,” I say. “She’s an actress.”
“I don’t think I know who you mean,” she says in a tone that suggests I’m harassing her, but hey, she works in a video rental store and since it’s such a demanding high-powered profession her bitchy behavior is completely reasonable, right? The things I could do to this girl’s body with a hammer, the words I could carve into her with an ice pick. She hands the guy behind her my boxes—and I pretend to ignore his horrified reaction as he recognizes me after he looks at the Body Double box—but he dutifully walks into some kind of vault in the back of the store to get the movies.
“Yeah. Sure you do,” I say good-naturedly. “She’s in those Diet Coke commercials. You know the ones.”
“I really don’t think so,” she says in a monotone that almost cuts me off. She types the names of the movies and then my membership number into the computer.
“I like the part in Body Double where the woman … gets drilled by the … power driller in the movie … the best,” I say, almost gasping. It seems very hot in the video store right now all of a sudden and after murmuring “oh my god” under my breath I place a gloved hand on the counter to settle it from shaking. “And the blood starts pouring out of the ceiling.” I take a deep breath and while I’m saying this my head starts nodding of its own accord and I keep swallowing, thinking I have to see her shoes, and so as inconspicuously as possible I try to peer over the counter to check out what kind of shoes she’s wearing, but maddeningly they’re only sneakers—not K-Swiss, not Tretorn, not Adidas, not Reebok, just cheap ones.
“Sign here.” She hands me the tapes without even looking at me, refusing to recognize who I am; and breathing in hard and exhaling, she motions for the next in line, a couple with a baby.
On the way back to my apartment I stop at D’Agostino’s, where for dinner I buy two large bottles of Perrier, a six-pack of Coke Classic, a head of arugula, five medium-sized kiwis, a bottle of tarragon balsamic vinegar, a tin of crème fraîche, a carton of microwave tapas, a box of tofu and a white-chocolate candy bar I pick up at the checkout counter.
Once outside, ignoring the bum lounging below the Les Misérables poster and holding a sign that reads: I’VE LOST MY JOB I AM HUNGRY I HAVE NO MONEY PLEASE HELP, whose e
yes tear after I pull the tease-the-bum-with-a-dollar trick and tell him, “Jesus, will you get a fucking shave, please,” my eyes almost like they were guided by radar, focus in on a red Lamborghini Countach parked at the curb, gleaming beneath the streetlamps, and I have to stop moving, the Valium shockingly, unexpectedly kicking in, everything else becomes obliterated: the crying bum, the black kids on crack rapping along to the blaring beatbox, the clouds of pigeons flying overhead looking for space to roost, the ambulance sirens, the honking taxis, the decent-looking babe in the Betsey Johnson dress, all of that fades and in what seems like time-lapse photography—but in slow motion, like a movie—the sun goes down, the city gets darker and all I can see is the red Lamborghini and all I can hear is my own even, steady panting. I’m still standing, drooling, in front of the store, staring, minutes later (I don’t know how many).
Facial
I leave the office at four-thirty, head up to Xclusive where I work out with free weights for an hour, then taxi across the park to Gio’s in the Pierre Hotel for a facial, a manicure and, if time permits, a pedicure. I’m lying on the elevated table in one of the private rooms waiting for Helga, the skin technician, to facialize me. My Brooks Brothers shirt and Garrick Anderson suit hang in the closet, my A. Testoni loafers sit on the floor, thirty-dollar socks from Barney’s balled up in them, sixty-dollar boxer shorts from Comme des Garçons are the only article of clothing I’m still wearing. The smock I’m supposed to have on is crumpled next to the shower stall since I want Helga to check my body out, notice my chest, see how fucking buff my abdominals have gotten since the last time I was here, even though she’s much older than I am—maybe thirty or thirty-five—and there’s no way I’d ever fuck her. I’m sipping a Diet Pepsi that Mario, the valet, brought me, with crushed ice in a glass on the side that I asked for but don’t want.
I pick up today’s Post that hangs from a Smithly Watson glass magazine rack and scan the gossip columns, then my eye catches a story about recent sightings of these creatures that seem to be part bird, part rodent—essentially pigeons with the heads and tails of rats—found deep in the center of Harlem and now making their way steadily toward midtown. A grainy photograph of one of these things accompanies the article, but experts, the Post assures us, are fairly certain this new breed is a hoax. As usual this fails to soothe my fear, and it fills me with a nameless dread that someone out there has wasted the energy and time to think this up: to fake a photograph (and do a half-assed job at that, the thing looks like a fucking Big Mac) and send the photograph in to the Post, then for the Post to decide to run the story (meetings, debates, last-minute temptations to cancel the whole thing?), to print the photograph, to have someone write about the photo and interview the experts, finally to run this story in today’s edition and have it discussed over hundreds of thousands of lunches in the city this afternoon. I close the paper and lie back, exhausted.