He’s standing in the stall, his back to me, wearing a cashmere blazer, pleated wool trousers, a cotton-silk white shirt, pissing into the toilet. I can tell he senses movement in the stall because he stiffens noticeably and the sound of his urine hitting water stops abruptly in midstream. In slow motion, my own heavy breathing blocking out all other sounds, my vision blurring slightly around the edges, my hands move up over the collar of his cashmere blazer and cotton-flannel shirt, circling his neck until my thumbs meet at the nape and my index fingers touch each other just above Luis’s Adam’s apple. I start to squeeze, tightening my grip, but it’s loose enough to let Luis turn around—still in slow motion—so he can stand facing me, one hand over his wool and silk Polo sweater, the other hand reaching up. His eyelids flutter for an instant, then widen, which is exactly what I want. I want to see Luis’s face contort and turn purple and I want him to know who it is who is killing him. I want to be the last face, the last thing, that Luis sees before he dies and I want to cry out, “I’m fucking Courtney. Do you hear me? I’m fucking Courtney. Ha-ha-ha,” and have these be the last words, the last sounds he hears until his own gurglings, accompanied by the crunching of his trachea, drown everything else out. Luis stares at me and I tense the muscles in my arms, preparing myself for a struggle that, disappointingly, never comes.
Instead he looks down at my wrists and for a moment wavers, as if he’s undecided about something, and then he lowers his head and … kisses my left wrist, and when he looks back up at me, shyly, it’s with an expression that’s … loving and only part awkward. His right hand reaches up and tenderly touches the side of my face. I stand there, frozen, my arms still stretched out in front of me, fingers still circled around Luis’s throat.
“God, Patrick,” he whispers. “Why here?”
His hand is playing with my hair now. I look over at the side of the stall, where someone has scratched into the paint Edwin gives marvelous head, and I’m still paralyzed in this position and gazing at the words, confused, studying the frame surrounding the words as if that contained an answer, a truth. Edwin? Edwin who? I shake my head to clear it and look back at Luis, who has this horrible, love-struck grin plastered on his face, and I try to squeeze harder, my face twisted with exertion, but I can’t do it, my hands won’t tighten, and my arms, still stretched out, look ludicrous and useless in their fixed position.
“I’ve seen you looking at me,” he says, panting. “I’ve noticed your”—he gulps—“hot body.”
He tries to kiss me on the lips but I back away, into the stall door, accidentally closing it. I drop my hands from Luis’s neck and he takes them and immediately places them back. I drop them once again and stand there contemplating my next move, but I’m immobile.
“Don’t be … shy,” he says.
I take a deep breath, close my eyes, count to ten, open them and make a helpless attempt to lift my arms back up to strangle Luis, but they feel weighed down and lifting them becomes an impossible task.
“You don’t know how long I’ve wanted it.…” He’s sighing, rubbing my shoulders, trembling. “Ever since that Christmas party at Arizona 206. You know the one, you were wearing that red striped paisley Armani tie.”
For the first time I notice his pants are still unzipped and calmly and without difficulty I turn out of the stall and move over to a sink to wash my hands, but my gloves are still on and I don’t want to take them off. The bathroom at the Yale Club suddenly seems to me to be the coldest room in the universe and I shudder involuntarily. Luis trails behind, touching my jacket, leaning next to me at the sink.
“I want you,” he says in a low, faggoty whisper and when I slowly turn my head to glare at him, while hunched over the sink, seething, my eye contact radiating revulsion, he adds, “too.”
I storm out of the men’s room, bumping into Brewster Whipple, I think. I smile at the maître d’ and after shaking his hand I make a run for the closing elevator but I’m too late and I cry out, pounding a fist against the doors, cursing. Composing myself, I notice the maître d’ conferring with a waiter, the two of them looking my way questioningly, and so I straighten up, smile shyly and wave at them. Luis strides over calmly, still grinning, flushed, and I just stand there and let him walk up to me. He says nothing.
“What … is … it?” I finally hiss.
“Where are you going?” he whispers, bewildered.
“I … I’ve gotta …” Stumped, I look around the crowded dining room, then back at Luis’s quivering, yearning face. “I’ve gotta return some videotapes,” I say, jabbing at the elevator button, then, my patience shot, I start to walk away and head back toward my table.
“Patrick,” he calls out.
I whirl around. “What?”
He mouths “I’ll call you” with this expression on his face that lets me know, that assures me, my “secret” is safe with him. “Oh my god,” I practically gag, and shaking visibly I sit back at our table, completely defeated, my gloves still on, and gulp down the rest of a watery J&B on the rocks. As soon as I’ve seated myself Van Patten asks, “Hey Bateman, what’s the right way to wear a tie bar or clasp?”
“While a tie holder is by no means required businesswear, it adds to a clean, neat overall appearance. But the accessory shouldn’t dominate the tie. Choose a simple gold bar or a small clip and place it at the lower end of the tie at a downward forty-five-degree angle.”
Killing Dog
Courtney calls, too wasted on Elavil to meet me for a coherent dinner at Cranes, the new Kitty Oates Sanders restaurant in Gramercy Park where Jean, my secretary, made reservations for us last week, and I’m nonplussed. Even though it got excellent reviews (one in New York magazine; the other in The Nation) I don’t complain or persuade Courtney to change her mind since I have two files I should go over and The Patty Winters Show I taped this morning hasn’t been watched yet. It’s sixty minutes about women who’ve had mastectomies, which at seven-thirty, over breakfast, before the office, I couldn’t bear to sit through, but after today—hanging out at the office, where the air-conditioning broke down, a tedious lunch with Cunningham at Odeon, my fucking Chinese cleaners unable to get bloodstains out of another Soprani jacket, four videotapes overdue that ended up costing me a fortune, a twenty-minute wait at the Stairmasters—I’ve adapted; these events have toughened me and I’m prepared to deal with this particular topic.
Two thousand abdominal crunches and thirty minutes of rope-jumping in the living room, the Wurlitzer jukebox blasting “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” over and over, even though I worked out in the gym today for close to two hours. After this I get dressed to pick up groceries at D’Agostino’s: blue jeans by Armani, a white Polo shirt, an Armani sport coat, no tie, hair slicked back with Thompson mousse; since it’s drizzling, a pair of black waterproof lace-ups by Manolo Blahnik; three knives and two guns carried in a black Epi leather attaché case ($3,200) by Louis Vuitton; because it’s cold and I don’t want to fuck up my manicure, a pair of Armani deerskin gloves. Finally, a belted trench coat in black leather by Gianfranco Ferre that cost four thousand dollars. Though it’s only a short walk to D’Agostino’s, I put on a CD Walkman anyway, with the long version of Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive” already in it. I grab an Etro wood-handled paisley umbrella from Bergdorf Goodman, three hundred dollars on sale, off a newly installed umbrella rack in the closet near the entranceway and I’m out the door.
After the office I worked out at Xclusive and once home made obscene phone calls to young Dalton girls, the numbers I chose coming from the register I stole a copy of from the administration office when I broke in last Thursday night. “I’m a corporate raider,” I whispered lasciviously into the cordless phone. “I orchestrate hostile takeovers. What do you think of that?” and I would pause before making sucking noises, freakish piglike grunts, and then ask, “Huh, bitch?” Most of the time I could tell they were frightened and this pleased me greatly, enabled me to maintain a strong, pulsing erection for the duration of t
he phone calls, until one of the girls, Hilary Wallace, asked, unfazed, “Dad, is that you?” and whatever enthusiasm I’d built up plummeted. Vaguely disappointed, I made a few more calls, but only halfheartedly, opening today’s mail while doing so, and I finally hung up in midsentence when I came across a personalized reminder from Clifford, the guy who helps me at Armani, that there was a private sale at the boutique on Madison … two weeks ago! and though I figured out that one of the doormen probably withheld the card to piss me off, it still doesn’t erase the fact that I missed the fucking sale, and dwelling over this loss while wandering down Central Park West somewhere around Seventy-sixth, Seventy-fifth, it strikes me profoundly that the world is more often than not a bad and cruel place.
Someone who looks almost exactly like Jason Taylor—black hair slicked back, navy double-breasted cashmere coat with a beaver collar, black leather boots, Morgan Stanley—passes beneath a streetlamp and nods as I turn down the volume on the Walkman to hear him say “Hello, Kevin” and I catch a whiff of Grey Flannel and, still walking, I look back at the person who resembles Taylor, who could be Taylor, wondering if he’s still dating Shelby Phillips, when I almost stumble over a beggar lying on the street, sprawled in the doorway of an abandoned restaurant—a place Tony McManus opened two summers ago called Amnesia—and she’s black and out-of-her-mind crazy, repeating the words “Money please help mister money please help mister” like some kind of Buddhist chant. I try to lecture her on the merits of getting a job somewhere—perhaps at Cineplex Odeon, I suggested not impolitely—silently debating whether or not to open the briefcase, pull out the knife or the gun. But it strikes me that she’s too easy a target to be truly satisfying, so I tell her to go to hell and turn up the Walkman just as Bon Jovi cries “It’s all the same, only the names have changed …” and move on, stopping at an automated teller to take three hundred dollars out for no particular reason, all the bills crisp, freshly printed twenties, and I delicately place them in my gazelleskin wallet so as not to wrinkle them. At Columbus Circle, a juggler wearing a trench cloak and top hat, who is usually at this location afternoons and who calls himself Stretch Man, performs in front of a small, uninterested crowd; though I smell prey, and he seems fully worthy of my wrath, I move on in search of a less dorky target. Though if he’d been a mime, odds are he’d already be dead.
Faded posters of Donald Trump on the cover of Time magazine cover the windows of another abandoned restaurant, what used to be Palaze, and this fills me with a newfound confidence. I’ve arrived at D’Agostino’s, standing directly in front of it, gazing into it, and I have an almost overwhelming urge to walk in and browse through each aisle, filling my basket with bottles of balsamic vinegar and sea salt, roam through the vegetable and produce stands inspecting the color tones of red peppers and yellow peppers and green peppers and purple peppers, deciding what flavor, what shape of gingerbread cookie to buy, but I’m still longing for something deeper, something undefined to do beforehand, and I start to stalk the dark, cold streets off Central Park West and I catch sight of my face reflected in the tinted windows of a limousine that’s parked in front of Café des Artistes and my mouth is moving involuntarily, my tongue wetter than usual, and my eyes are blinking uncontrollably of their own accord. In the streetlamp’s glare, my shadow is vividly cast on the wet pavement and I can see my gloved hands moving, alternately clutching themselves into fists, fingers stretching, wriggling, and I have to stop in the middle of Sixty-seventh Street to calm myself down, whisper soothing thoughts, anticipating D’Agostino’s, a reservation at Dorsia, the new Mike and the Mechanics CD, and it takes an awesome amount of strength to fight down the urge to start slapping myself in the face.
Coming slowly up the street is an old queer wearing a cashmere turtleneck, a paisley wool ascot and a felt hat, walking a brown and white sharpei, its bunched-up face sniffing low to the ground. The two of them get closer, passing beneath one streetlamp, then another, and I’ve composed myself sufficiently to slowly take off the Walkman and inconspicuously unlock the briefcase. I’m standing in the middle of the thin strip of sidewalk next to a white BMW 320i and the queer with the sharpei is now within feet of me and I get a good look at him: late fifties, pudgy, with obscenely healthy-looking pink skin, no wrinkles, all of this topped off with a ridiculous mustache that accentuates his feminine features. He gives me the once-over with a quizzical smile, while the sharpei sniffs a tree, then a garbage bag sitting next to the BMW.
“Nice dog.” I smile, leaning down.
The sharpei eyes me warily, then growls.
“Richard.” The man glares at the dog, then looks back up at me, apologetic, and I can sense he’s flattered, not only that I’ve noticed his dog but that I’ve actually stopped to talk to him about it, and I swear the old bastard is positively flushed, creaming in his tacky loose corduroys from, I’m guessing, Ralph Lauren.
“It’s okay,” I tell him and pet the dog gently, laying the briefcase on the ground. “It’s a sharpei, right?”
“No. Shar-pei,” he says, lisping, a way I’ve never heard it pronounced before.
“Shar-pei?” I try to say it the same way he does, still stroking the velvet bumpiness of the dog’s neck and back.
“No.” He laughs flirtatiously. “Shar-pei. Accent on the last syllable.” Akthent on thee latht thyllable.
“Well, whatever,” I say, standing up and grinning boyishly. “It’s a beautiful animal.”
“Oh thank you,” he says, then, exathperated, “It costs a fortune.”
“Really? Why?” I ask, leaning down again and stroking the dog. “Hiya Richard. Hiya little fella.”
“You wouldn’t believe it,” he says. “You see, the bags around its eyes have to be lifted surgically every two years, so we have to go all the way down to Key West—which has the only vet I really trust in this world—and a little snip, a little tuck, and Richard can see splendidly once again, can’t you, baby?” He nods approvingly as I continue to run my hand seductively across the dog’s back.
“Well,” I say. “He looks great.”
There’s a pause in which I watch the dog. The owner keeps eyeing me and then he just can’t help it, he has to break the silence.
“Listen,” he says. “I really hate to ask this.”
“Go ahead,” I urge.
“Oh gosh, this is so silly,” he admits, chuckling.
I start laughing. “Why?”
“Are you a model?” he asks, not laughing anymore. “I could swear I’ve seen you in a magazine or somewhere.”
“No, I’m not,” I say, deciding not to lie. “But I’m flattered.”
“Well, you look just like a movie star.” He waves a limp wrist, then, “I don’t know,” and finally he lisps the following—I swear to God—to himself: “Oh stop it, silly, you’re embarrassing yourself.”
I lean down, giving the appearance of picking up the briefcase, but because of the shadows I’m leaning into he doesn’t see me pull out the knife, the sharpest one, with the serrated edge, and I’m asking him what he paid for Richard, naturally but also very deliberately, without even looking up to check to see if other people are walking down the street. In one swift movement I pick the dog up quickly by the neck and hold it with my left arm, pushing it back against the streetlamp while it nips at me, trying to bite my gloves, its jaws snapping, but since I’ve got such a tight grip on its throat it can’t bark and I can actually hear my hand crush its trachea. I push the serrated blade into its stomach and quickly slice open its hairless belly in a squirt of brown blood, its legs kicking and clawing at me, then blue and red intestines bulge out and I drop the dog onto the sidewalk, the queer just standing there, still gripping the leash, and this has all happened so fast he’s in shock and he just stares in horror saying “oh my god oh my god” as the sharpei drags itself around in a circle, its tail wagging, squealing, and it starts licking and sniffing the pile of its own intestines, spilled out in a mound on the sidewalk, some still connected to its
stomach, and as it goes into its death throes still attached to its leash I whirl around on its owner and I push him back, hard, with a bloodied glove and start randomly stabbing him in the face and head, finally slashing his throat open in two brief chopping motions; an arc of red-brown blood splatters the white BMW 320i parked at the curb, setting off its car alarm, four fountainlike bursts coming from below his chin. The spraylike sound of the blood. He falls to the sidewalk, shaking like mad, blood still pumping, as I wipe the knife clean on the front of his jacket and toss it back in the briefcase and begin to walk away, but to make sure the old queer is really dead and not faking it (they sometimes do) I shoot him with a silencer twice in the face and then I leave, almost slipping in the puddle of blood that has formed by the side of his head, and I’m down the street and out of darkness and like in a movie I appear in front of the D’Agostino’s, sales clerks beckoning for me to enter, and I’m using an expired coupon for a box of oat-bran cereal and the girl at the checkout counter—black, dumb, slow—doesn’t get it, doesn’t notice the expiration date has passed even though it’s the only thing I buy, and I get a small but incendiary thrill when I walk out of the store, opening the box, stuffing handfuls of the cereal into my mouth, trying to whistle “Hip to Be Square” at the same time, and then I’ve opened my umbrella and I’m running down Broadway, then up Broadway, then down again, screaming like a banshee, my coat open, flying out behind me like some kind of cape.