The door to the private room opens and a girl I haven’t seen before walks in and through half-closed eyes I can see that she’s young, Italian, okay-looking. She smiles, sitting in a chair at my feet, and begins the pedicure. She switches off the ceiling light and except for strategically placed halogen bulbs shining down on my feet, hands and face, the room darkens, making it impossible to tell what kind of body she has, only that she’s wearing gray suede and black leather buttoned ankle boots by Maud Frizon. The Patty Winters Show this morning was about UFOs That Kill. Helga arrives.
“Ah, Mr. Bateman,” Helga says. “How are you?”
“Very good, Helga,” I say, flexing the muscles in my stomach and chest. My eyes are closed so it looks casual, as if the muscles are acting on their own accord and I can’t help it. But Helga drapes the smock gently across my heaving chest and buttons it up, pretending to ignore the undulations beneath the tan, clean skin.
“You’re back so soon,” she says.
“I was only here two days ago,” I say, confused.
“I know, but …” She stalls, washing her hands in the sink. “Never mind.”
“Helga?” I ask.
“Yes, Mr. Bateman?”
“Walking in here I spotted a pair of men’s gold-tasseled loafers from Bergdorf Goodman, waiting to be shined, outside the door of the next room. Who do they belong to?” I ask.
“That’s Mr. Erlanger,” she says.
“Mr. Erlanger from Lehman’s?”
“No. Mr. Erlanger from Salomon Brothers,” she says.
“Did I ever tell you that I want to wear a big yellow smiley-face mask and then put on the CD version of Bobby McFerrin’s ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’ and then take a girl and a dog—a collie, a chow, a sharpei, it doesn’t really matter—and then hook up this transfusion pump, this IV set, and switch their blood, you know, pump the dog’s blood into the hardbody and vice versa, did I ever tell you this?” While I’m speaking I can hear the girl working on my feet humming one of the songs from Les Misérables to herself, and then Helga runs a moistened cotton ball across my nose, leaning close to the face, inspecting the pores. I laugh maniacally, then take a deep breath and touch my chest—expecting a heart to be thumping quickly, impatiently, but there’s nothing there, not even a beat.
“Shhh, Mr. Bateman,” Helga says, running a warm loofah sponge over my face, which stings then cools the skin. “Relax.”
“Okay,” I say. “I’m relaxing.”
“Oh Mr. Bateman,” Helga croons, “you have such a nice complexion. How old are you? May I ask?”
“I’m twenty-six.”
“Ah, that’s why. It’s so clean. So smooth.” She sighs. “Just relax.”
I drift, my eyes rolling back into my head, the Muzak version of “Don’t Worry, Baby” drowning out all bad thoughts, and I start thinking only positive things—the reservations I have tonight with Marcus Halberstam’s girlfriend, Cecelia Wagner, the mashed turnips at Union Square Café, skiing down Buttermilk Mountain in Aspen last Christmas, the new Huey Lewis and the News compact disc, dress shirts by Ike Behar, by Joseph Abboud, by Ralph Lauren, beautiful oiled hardbodies eating each other’s pussies and assholes under harsh video lights, truckloads of arugula and cilantro, my tan line, the way the muscles in my back look when the lights in my bathroom fall on them at the right angle, Helga’s hands caressing the smooth skin on my face, lathering and spreading cream and lotions and tonics into it admiringly, whispering, “Oh Mr. Bateman, your face is so clean and smooth, so clean,” the fact that I don’t live in a trailer park or work in a bowling alley or attend hockey games or eat barbecued ribs, the look of the AT&T building at midnight, only at midnight. Jeannie comes in and starts the manicure, first clipping and filing the nails, then brushing them with a sandpaper disk to smooth out the remaining edges.
“Next time I’d prefer them a bit longer, Jeannie,” I warn her.
Silently she soaks them in warm lanolin cream, then dries both hands off and uses a cuticle moisturizer, then removes all the cuticles while cleaning under the nails with a cotton-on-wood stick. A heat vibrator massages the hand and forearm. The nails are buffed first with chamois and then with buffing lotion.
Date with Evelyn
Evelyn comes in on the call waiting of my third line and I wasn’t going to take it, but since I’m holding on the second line to find out if Bullock, the maître d’ at the new Davis Frangois restaurant on Central Park South, has any cancellations for tonight so Courtney (holding on the first line) and I might have dinner, I pick it up in the hope that it’s my dry cleaners. But no, it’s Evelyn and though it really isn’t fair to Courtney, I take her call. I tell Evelyn I’m on the other line with my private trainer. I then tell Courtney I have to take Paul Owen’s call and that I’ll see her at Turtles at eight and then I cut myself off from Bullock, the maître d’. Evelyn’s staying at the Carlyle since the woman who lives in the brownstone next to hers was found murdered last night, decapitated, and this is why Evelyn’s all shook up. She couldn’t deal with the office today so she spent the afternoon calming herself with facials at Elizabeth Arden. She demands that we have dinner tonight, and then says, before I can make up a plausible lie, an acceptable excuse, “Where were you last night, Patrick?”
I pause. “Why? Where were you?” I ask, while guzzling from a liter of Evian, still slightly sweaty from this afternoon’s workout.
“Arguing with the concierge at the Carlyle,” she says, sounding rather pissed off. “Now tell me, Patrick, where were you?”
“Why were you arguing with him?” I ask.
“Patrick,” she says—a declarative statement.
“I’m here,” I say after a minute.
“Patrick. It doesn’t matter. The phone in my room didn’t have two lines and there was no call waiting,” she says. “Where were you?”
“I was … fooling around renting videotapes,” I say, pleased, giving myself high-five, the cordless phone cradled in my neck.
“I wanted to come over,” she says in a whiny, little-girl tone. “I was scared. I still am. Can’t you hear it in my voice?”
“Actually, you sound like anything but.”
“No, Patrick, seriously. I’m quite terrified,” she says. “I’m shaking. Just like a leaf I’m shaking. Ask Mia, my facialist. She said I was tense.”
“Well,” I say, “you couldn’t have come over anyway.”
“Honey, why not?” she whines, and then addresses someone who just entered her suite. “Oh wheel it over there near the window … no, that window … and can you tell me where that damn masseuse is?”
“Because your neighbor’s head was in my freezer.” I yawn, stretching. “Listen. Dinner? Where? Can you hear me?”
At eight-thirty, the two of us are sitting across from each other in Barcadia. Evelyn’s wearing an Anne Klein rayon jacket, a wool-crepe skirt, a silk blouse from Bonwit’s, antique gold and agate earrings from James Robinson that cost, roughly, four thousand dollars; and I’m wearing a double-breasted suit, a silk shirt with woven stripes, a patterned silk tie and leather slip-ons, all by Gianni Versace. I neither canceled the reservation at Turtles nor told Courtney not to meet me there, so she’ll probably show up around eight-fifteen, completely confused, and if she hasn’t taken any Elavil today she’ll probably be furious and it’s this fact—not the bottle of Cristal that Evelyn insists on ordering and then adds cassis to—that I laugh out loud about.
I spent most of the afternoon buying myself early Christmas presents—a large pair of scissors at a drugstore near City Hall, a letter opener from Hammacher Schlemmer, a cheese knife from Bloomingdale’s to go along with the cheese board that Jean, my secretary who’s in love with me, left on my desk before she went to lunch while I was in a meeting. The Patty Winters Show this morning was about the possibility of nuclear war, and according to the panel of experts the odds are pretty good it will happen sometime within the next month. Evelyn’s face seems chalky to me right now, her mouth li
ned with a purple lipstick that gives off an almost startling effect, and I realize that she’s belatedly taken Tim Price’s advice to stop using her tanning lotion. Instead of mentioning this and have her bore me silly with inane denials, I ask about Tim’s girlfriend, Meredith, whom Evelyn despises for reasons never made quite clear to me. And because of rumors about Courtney and myself, Courtney’s also on Evelyn’s shit list, for reasons that are a little clearer. I place a hand over the top of the champagne flute when the apprehensive waitress, at Evelyn’s request, attempts to add some blueberry cassis into my Cristal.
“No thank you,” I tell her. “Maybe later. In a separate glass.”
“Party pooper.” Evelyn giggles, then takes a sharp breath. “But you smell nice. What are you wearing—Obsession? You party pooper, is it Obsession?”
“No,” I say grimly. “Paul Sebastian.”
“Of course.” She smiles, downs her second glass. She seems in a much better mood, boisterous almost, more than you’d expect of someone whose neighbor’s head was sliced off in a matter of seconds while she was still conscious by an electric mini-chain saw. Evelyn’s eyes momentarily glitter in the candlelight, then revert to their normal pallid gray.
“How is Meredith?” I ask, trying to mask my void of disinterest.
“Oh god. She’s dating Richard Cunningham.” Evelyn moans. “He’s at First Boston. If you can believe it.”
“You know,” I mention, “Tim was going to break it off with her. Call it quits.”
“Why, for god’s sake?” Evelyn asks, surprised, intrigued. “They had that fabulous place in the Hamptons.”
“I remember him telling me that he was sick to death of watching her do nothing but her nails all weekend.”
“Oh my god,” Evelyn says, and then, genuinely confused, “You mean … wait, she didn’t have someone do them for her?”
“Tim said, and he reiterated this fact quite often, that she had all the personality of a game-show host,” I say dryly, sipping from the flute.
She smiles to herself, secretly. “Tim is a rascal.”
Idly, I wonder if Evelyn would sleep with another woman if I brought one over to her brownstone and, if I insisted, whether they’d let me watch the two of them get it on. If they’d let me direct, tell them what to do, position them under hot halogen lamps. Probably not; the odds don’t look good. But what if I forced her at gunpoint? Threatened to cut them both up, maybe, if they didn’t comply? The thought doesn’t seem unappealing and I can imagine the whole scenario quite clearly. I start counting the banquettes that encircle the room, then I start counting the people sitting in the banquettes.
She’s asking me about Tim. “Where do you think that rascal has been? Rumor is he’s at Sachs,” she says ominously.
“Rumor is” I say, “he’s in rehab. This champagne isn’t cold enough.” I’m distracted. “Doesn’t he send you postcards?”
“Has he been sick?” she asks, with the slightest trepidation.
“Yes, I think so,” I say. “I think that’s what it is. You know, if you order a bottle of Cristal it should at least be, you know, cold.”
“Oh my god,” Evelyn says. “You think he might be sick?”
“Yes. He’s in a hospital. In Arizona,” I add. The word Arizona has a mysterious tinge to it and I say it again. “Arizona. I think.”
“Oh my god,” Evelyn exclaims, now truly alarmed, and she gulps down what little Cristal is left in her glass.
“Who knows?” I manage the slightest of shrugs.
“You don’t think …” She breathes in and puts her glass down. “You don’t think it’s”—and now she looks around the restaurant before leaning in, whispering—“AIDS?”
“Oh no, nothing like that,” I say, though immediately I wish I had paused long enough before answering to scare her. “Just … general … brain”—I bite the tip off an herbed breadstick and shrug—“injuries.”
Evelyn sighs, relieved, and then says, “Is it warm in here?”
“All I can think about is this poster I saw in the subway station the other night before I killed those two black kids—a photo of a baby calf, its head turned toward the camera, its eyes caught wide and staring by the flash, and its body seemed like it was boxed into some kind of crate, and in big, black letters below the photo it read, ‘Question: Why Can’t This Veal Calf Walk?’ Then, ‘Answer: Because It Only Has Two Legs.’ But then I saw another one, the same exact photo, the same exact calf, yet beneath it, this one read, ’Stay Out of Publishing.”’ I pause, still fingering the breadstick, then ask, “Is any of this registering with you or would I get more of a response from, oh, an ice bucket?” I say all of this staring straight at Evelyn, enunciating precisely, trying to explain myself, and she opens her mouth and I finally expect her to acknowledge my character. And for the first time since I’ve known her she is straining to say something interesting and I pay very close attention and she asks, “Is that …”
“Yes?” This is the only moment of the evening where I feel any genuine interest toward what she has to say, and I urge her to go on. “Yes? Is that …?”
“Is that … Ivana Trump?” she asks, peering over my shoulder.
I whirl around. “Where? Where’s Ivana?”
“In the booth near the front, second in from”—Evelyn pauses—“Brooke Astor. See?”
I squint, put on my Oliver Peoples nonprescription glasses and realize that Evelyn, her vision clouded by the cassis-riddled Cristal, not only has mistaken Norris Powell for Ivana Trump but has mistaken Steve Rubell for Brooke Astor, and I can’t help it, I almost explode.
“No, oh my god, oh my god, Evelyn,” I moan, crushed, disappointed, my adrenaline rush turning sour, my head in my hands. “How could you mistake that wench for Ivana?”
“Sorry,” I hear her chirp. “Girlish mistake?”
“That is infuriating,” I hiss, both eyes clenched tight.
Our hardbody waitress, who has on satin high-backed pumps, sets down two new champagne flutes for the second bottle of Cristal Evelyn orders. The waitress pouts her lips at me when I reach for another breadstick and I lift my head toward her and pout mine back, then press my head again into the palms of my hands, and this happens again when she brings our appetizers. Dried peppers in a spicy pumpkin soup for me; dried corn and jalapeño pudding for Evelyn. I’ve kept my hands over both ears trying to block out Evelyn’s voice during this whole interim between her mistaking Norris Powell for Ivana Trump and the arrival of our appetizers but now I’m hungry so I tentatively remove my right hand from my ear. Immediately the whine seems deafening.
“… Tandoori chicken and foie gras, and lots of jazz, and he adored the Savoy, but shad roe, the colors were gorgeous, aloe, shell, citrus, Morgan Stanley …”
I clasp my hands back where they were, pressing even tighter. Once again hunger overtakes me and so humming loudly to myself I reach again for the spoon, but it’s hopeless: Evelyn’s voice is at a particular pitch that cannot be ignored.
“Gregory’s graduating from Saint Paul soon and will be attending Columbia in September,” Evelyn is saying, carefully blowing on her pudding, which, by the way, is served cold. “And I’ve got to get him a graduation present and I’m at a total loss. Suggestions, hon?”
“A poster from Les Misérables?” I sigh, only half joking.
“Perfect,” she says, blowing on the pudding again, then after a sip of Cristal she makes a face.
“Yes, dear?” I ask, spitting a pumpkin seed that arches through the air before gracefully hitting the dead center of the ashtray instead of Evelyn’s dress, my original target. “Hmmm?”
“We need more cassis,” she says. “Will you get our waitress?”
“Of course we do,” I say good-naturedly and, still smiling, “I have no idea who Gregory is. You do know that, right?”
Evelyn puts her spoon down delicately next to the plate of pudding and looks into my eyes. “Mr. Bateman, I really like you. I adore your sense of humor.”
She gives my hand a soft squeeze and laughs, actually says, “Ha-ha-ha …,” but she’s serious, not joking. Evelyn really is paying me a compliment. She does admire my sense of humor. Our appetizers are removed and at the same time our entrées arrive, so Evelyn has to take her hand off mine to make room for the plates. She ordered quail stuffed into blue corn tortillas garnished with oysters in potato skins. I have the free-range rabbit with Oregon morels and herbed french fries.
“… He went to Deerfield then Harvard. She went to Hotchkiss then Radcliffe …”
Evelyn is talking but I’m not listening. Her dialogue overlaps her own dialogue. Her mouth is moving but I’m not hearing anything and I can’t listen, I can’t really concentrate, since my rabbit has been cut to look … just … like … a … star! Shoestring french fries surround it and chunky red salsa has been smeared across the top of the plate—which is white and porcelain and two feet wide—to give the appearance of a sunset but it looks like one big gunshot wound to me and shaking my head slowly in disbelief I press a finger into the meat, leaving the indentation of one finger, then another, and then I look for a napkin, not my own, to wipe my hand with. Evelyn hasn’t broken her monologue—she talks and chews exquisitely—and smiling seductively at her I reach under the table and grab her thigh, wiping my hand off, and still talking she smiles naughtily at me and sips more champagne. I keep studying her face, bored by how beautiful it is, flawless really, and I think to myself how strange it is that Evelyn has pulled me through so much; how she’s always been there when I needed her most. I look back at the plate, thoroughly unhungry, pick up my fork, study the plate hard for a minute or two, whimper to myself before sighing and putting the fork down. I pick up my champagne glass instead.