In a matter of seconds, she does.
“What can you tell me about Paul Owen?” he finally asks, after Jean leaves, having placed a Fortunoff crystal ashtray on the desk next to the untouched San Pellegrino.
“Well.” I cough, swallowing two Nuprin, dry. “I didn’t know him that well.”
“How well did you know him?” he asks.
“I’m … at a loss,” I tell him, somewhat truthfully. “He was part of that whole … Yale thing, you know.”
“Yale thing?” he asks, confused.
I pause, having no idea what I’m talking about. “Yeah … Yale thing.”
“What do you mean … Yale thing?” Now he’s intrigued.
I pause again—what do I mean? “Well, I think, for one, that he was probably a closet homosexual.” I have no idea; doubt it, considering his taste in babes. “Who did a lot of cocaine.…” I pause, then add, a bit shakily, “That Yale thing.” I’m sure I say this bizarrely, but there’s no other way to put it.
It’s very quiet in the office right now. The room suddenly seems cramped and sweltering and even though the air-conditioning is on full blast, the air seems fake, recycled.
“So …” Kimball looks at his book helplessly. “There’s nothing you can tell me about Paul Owen?”
“Well.” I sigh. “He led what I suppose was an orderly life, I guess.” Really stumped, I offer, “He … ate a balanced diet.”
I’m sensing frustration on Kimball’s part and he asks, “What kind of man was he? Besides”—he falters, tries to smile—“the information you’ve just given.”
How could I describe Paul Owen to this guy? Boasting, arrogant, cheerful dickhead who constantly weaseled his way out of checks at Nell’s? That I’m heir to the unfortunate information that his penis had a name and that name was Michael? No. Calmer, Bateman. I think that I’m smiling.
“I hope I’m not being cross-examined here,” I manage to say.
“Do you feel that way?” he asks. The question sounds sinister but isn’t.
“No,” I say carefully. “Not really.”
Maddeningly he writes something else down, then asks, without looking up, chewing on the tip of the pen, “Where did Paul hang out?”
“Hang … out?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says. “You know … hang out.”
“Let me think,” I say, tapping my fingers across my desk. “The Newport. Harry’s. Fluties. Indochine. Nell’s. Cornell Club. The New York Yacht Club. The regular places.”
Kimball looks confused. “He had a yacht?”
Stuck, I casually say, “No. He just hung out there.”
“And where did he go to school?” he asks.
I pause. “Don’t you know this?”
“I just wanted to know if you know,” he says without looking up.
“Er, Yale,” I say slowly. “Right?”
“Right.”
“And then to business school at Columbia,” I add, “I think.”
“Before all that?” he asks.
“If I remember correctly, Saint Paul’s … I mean—”
“No, it’s okay. That’s not really pertinent,” he apologizes. “I just have no other questions, I guess. I don’t have a lot to go on.”
“Listen, I just …,” I start softly, tactfully. “I just want to help.”
“I understand,” he says.
Another long pause. He marks something down but it doesn’t seem important.
“Anything else you can tell me about Owen?” he asks, sounding almost timid.
I think about it, then feebly announce, “We were both seven in 1969.”
Kimball smiles. “So was I.”
Pretending to be interested in the case, I ask, “Do you have any witnesses or fingerprints—”
He cuts me off, tiredly. “Well, there’s a message on his answering machine saying he went to London.”
“Well,” I ask then, hopefully, “maybe he did, huh?”
“His girlfriend doesn’t think so,” Kimball says tonelessly.
Without even beginning to understand, I imagine, what a speck Paul Owen was in the overall enormity of things.
“But …” I stop. “Has anyone seen him in London?”
Kimball looks at his book, flips over a page and then, looking back at me, says, “Actually, yes.”
“Hmmm,” I say.
“Well, I’ve had a hard time getting an accurate verification,” he admits. “A … Stephen Hughes says he saw him at a restaurant there, but I checked it out and what happened is, he mistook a Hubert Ainsworth for Paul, so …”
“Oh,” I say.
“Do you remember where you were on the night of Paul’s disappearance?” He checks his book. “Which was on the twenty-fourth of June?”
“Gosh … I guess …” I think about it. “I was probably returning videotapes.” I open my desk drawer, take out my datebook and looking through December announce, “I had a date with a girl named Veronica.…” I’m completely lying, totally making this up.
“Wait,” he says, confused, looking at his book., “That’s … not what I’ve got.”
My thigh muscles tense. “What?”
“That’s not the information I’ve received,” he says.
“Well …” I’m suddenly confused and scared, the Nuprin bitter in my stomach. “I … Wait … What information have you received?”
“Let’s see.…” He flips through his pad, finds something. “That you were with—”
“Wait.” I laugh. “I could be wrong.…” My spine feels damp.
“Well …” He stops. “When was the last time you were with Paul Owen?” he asks.
“We had”—oh my god, Bateman, think up something—“gone to a new musical that just opened, called … Oh Africa, Brave Africa.” I gulp. “It was … a laugh riot … and that’s about it. I think we had dinner at Orso’s … no, Petaluma. No, Orso’s.” I stop. “The … last time I physically saw him was … at an automated teller. I can’t remember which … just one that was near, um, Nell’s.”
“But the night he disappeared?” Kimball asks.
“I’m not really sure,” I say.
“I think maybe you’ve got your dates mixed up,” he says, glancing at his book.
“But how?” I ask. “Where do you place Paul that night?”
“According to his datebook, and this was verified by his secretary, he had dinner with … Marcus Halberstam,” he says.
“And?” I ask.
“I’ve questioned him.”
“Marcus?”
“Yes. And he denies it,” Kimball says. “Though at first he couldn’t be sure.”
“But Marcus denied it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, does Marcus have an alibi?” I have a heightened receptivity to his answers now.
“Yes.”
Pause.
“He does?” I ask. “You’re sure?”
“I checked it out,” he says with an odd smile. “It’s clean.”
Pause.
“Oh.”
“Now where were you?” He laughs.
I laugh too, though I’m not sure why. “Where was Marcus?” I’m almost giggling.
Kimball keeps smiling as he looks me over. “He wasn’t with Paul Owen,” he says enigmatically.
“So who was he with?” I’m laughing still, but I’m also very dizzy.
Kimball opens his book and for the first time gives me a slightly hostile look. “He was at Atlantis with Craig McDermott, Frederick Dibble, Harry Newman, George Butner and”—Kimball pauses, then looks up—“you.”
In this office right now I am thinking about how long it would take a corpse to disintegrate right in this office. In this office these are the things I fantasize about while dreaming: Eating ribs at Red, Hot and Blue in Washington, D.C. If I should switch shampoos. What really is the best dry beer? Is Bill Robinson an overrated designer? What’s wrong with IBM? Ultimate luxury. Is the term “playing hardball” an adverb? Th
e fragile peace of Assisi. Electric light. The epitome of luxury. Of ultimate luxury. The bastard’s wearing the same damn Armani linen suit I’ve got on. How easy it would be to scare the living wits out of this fucking guy. Kimball is utterly unaware of how truly vacant I am. There is no evidence of animate life in this office, yet still he takes notes. By the time you finish reading this sentence, a Boeing jetliner will take off or land somewhere in the world. I would like a Pilsner Urquell.
“Oh right,” I say. “Of course … We had wanted Paul Owen to come,” I say, nodding my head as if just realizing something. “But he said he had plans.…” Then, lamely, “I guess I had dinner with Victoria the … following night.”
“Listen, like I said, I was just hired by Meredith.” He sighs, closing his book.
Tentatively, I ask, “Did you know that Meredith Powell is dating Brock Thompson?”
He shrugs, sighs. “I don’t know about that. All I know is that Paul Owen owes her supposedly a lot of money.”
“Oh?” I say, nodding. “Really?”
“Personally,” he says, confiding, “I think the guy went a little nutso. Split town for a while. Maybe he did go to London. Sightseeing. Drinking. Whatever. Anyway, I’m pretty sure hell turn up sooner or later.”
I nod slowly, hoping to look suitably bewildered.
“Was he involved at all, do you think, in, say, occultism or Satan worship?” Kimball asks seriously.
“Er, what?”
“I know it sounds like a lame question but in New Jersey last month—I don’t know if you’ve heard about this, but a young stockbroker was recently arrested and charged with murdering a young Chicano girl and performing voodoo rituals with, well, various body parts—”
“Yikes!” I exclaim.
“And I mean …” He smiles sheepishly again. “Have you heard anything about this?”
“Did the guy deny doing it?” I ask, tingling.
“Right.” Kimball nods.
“That was an interesting case,” I manage to say.
“Even though the guy says he’s innocent he still thinks he’s Inca, the bird god, or something,” Kimball says, scrunching his features up.
We both laugh out loud about this.
“No,” I finally say. “Paul wasn’t into that. He followed a balanced diet and—”
“Yeah, I know, and was into that whole Yale thing,” Kimball finishes tiredly.
There is a long pause that, I think, might be the longest one so far.
“Have you consulted a psychic?” I ask.
“No.” He shakes his head in a way that suggests he’s considered it. Oh who cares?
“Had his apartment been burglarized?” I ask.
“No, it actually hadn’t,” he says. “Toiletries were missing. A suit was gone. So was some luggage. That’s it.”
“Do you suspect foul play?”
“Can’t say,” he says. “But like I told you, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s just hiding out someplace.”
“I mean no one’s dealing with the homicide squad yet or anything, right?” I ask.
“No, not yet. As I said, we’re not sure. But …” He stops, looks dejected. “Basically no one has seen or heard anything.”
“That’s so typical, isn’t it?” I ask.
“It’s just strange,” he agrees, staring out the window, lost. “One day someone’s walking around, going to work, alive, and then …” Kimball stops, fails to complete the sentence.
“Nothing,” I sigh, nodding.
“People just … disappear,” he says.
“The earth just opens up and swallows people,” I say, somewhat sadly, checking my Rolex.
“Eerie.” Kimball yawns, stretching. “Really eerie.”
“Ominous.” I nod my agreement.
“It’s just”—he sighs, exasperated—“futile.”
I pause, unsure of what to say, and come up with “Futility is … hard to deal with.”
I am thinking about nothing. It’s silent in the office. To break it, I point out a book on top of the desk, next to the San Pellegrino bottle. The Art of the Deal, by Donald Trump.
“Have you read it?” I ask Kimball.
“No,” he sighs, but politely asks, “Is it any good?”
“It’s very good,” I say, nodding.
“Listen.” He sighs again. “I’ve taken up enough of your time.” He pockets the Marlboros.
“I have a lunch meeting with Cliff Huxtable at The Four Seasons in twenty minutes anyway,” I lie, standing up. “I have to go too.”
“Isn’t The Four Seasons a little far uptown?” He looks concerned, also getting up. “I mean aren’t you going to be late?”
“Uh, no,” I stall. “There’s one … down here.”
“Oh really?” he asks. “I didn’t know that.”
“Yes,” I say, leading him to the door. “It’s very good.”
“Listen,” he says, turning to face me. “If anything occurs to you, any information at all …”
I hold up a hand. “Absolutely. I’m one hundred percent with you,” I say solemnly.
“Great,” the ineffectual one says, relieved. “And thanks for your, uh, time, Mr. Bateman.”
Moving him toward the door, my legs wobbly, astronaut-like, leading him out of the office, though I’m empty, devoid of feeling, I still sense—without deluding myself—that I’ve accomplished something and then, anticlimactically, we talk for a few minutes more about razor-burn balms and tattersall shirts. There was an odd general lack of urgency to the conversation that I found soothing—nothing happened at all—but when he smiles, hands me his card, leaves, the door closing sounds to me like a billion insects screaming, pounds of bacon sizzling, a vast emptiness. And after he leaves the building (I have Jean buzz Tom at Security to make sure) I call someone recommended by my lawyer, to make sure none of my phones are wiretapped, and after a Xanax I’m able to meet with my nutritionist at an expensive, upscale health-food restaurant called Cuisine de Soy in Tribeca and while sitting beneath the dolphin, stuffed and shellacked, that hangs over the tofu bar, its body bent into an arc, I’m able to ask the nutritionist questions like “Okay, so give me the muffin lowdown” without cringing. Back at the office two hours later, I find out that none of my phones are tapped.
I also run into Meredith Powell later this week, on Friday night, at Ereze with Brock Thompson, and though we talk for ten minutes, mostly about why neither one of us is in the Hamptons, with Brock glaring at me the entire time, she doesn’t mention Paul Owen once. I’m having an excruciatingly slow dinner with my date, Jeannette. The restaurant is flashy and new and the meal inches along, drags by. The portions are meager. I grow increasingly agitated. Afterwards I want to bypass M.K., even though Jeanette complains because she wants to dance. I’m tired and I need to rest. At my apartment I lie in bed, too distracted to have sex with her, so she leaves, and after watching a tape of this morning’s Patty Winters Show, which is about the best restaurants in the Middle East, I pick up my cordless phone and tentatively, reluctantly, call Evelyn.
Summer
Most of the summer I spent in a stupor, sitting either in my office or in new restaurants, in my apartment watching videotapes or in the backs of cabs, in nightclubs that just opened or in movie theaters, at the building in Hell’s Kitchen or in new restaurants. There were four major air disasters this summer, the majority of them captured on videotape, almost as if these events had been planned, and repeated on television endlessly. The planes kept crashing in slow motion, followed by countless roaming shots of the wreckage and the same random views of the burned, bloody carnage, weeping rescue workers retrieving body parts. I started using Oscar de la Renta men’s deodorant, which gave me a slight rash. A movie about a small talking bug was released to great fanfare and grossed over two hundred million dollars. The Mets were doing badly. Beggars and homeless seemed to have multiplied in August and the ranks of the unfortunate, weak and aged lined the streets everywhere. I found myself asking
too many summer associates at too many dinners in flashy new restaurants before taking them to Les Misérables if anyone had seen The Toolbox Murders on HBO and silent tables would stare back at me, before I would cough politely and summon the waiter over for the check, or I’d ask for sorbet or, if this was earlier in the dinner, for another bottle of San Pellegrino, and then I’d ask the summer associates, “No?” and assure them, “It was quite good.” My platinum American Express card had gone through so much use that it snapped in half, self-destructed, at one of those dinners, when I took two summer associates to Restless and Young, the new Pablo Lester restaurant in midtown, but I had enough cash in my gazelleskin wallet to pay for the meal. The Patty Winters Shows were all repeats. Life remained a blank canvas, a cliché, a soap opera. I felt lethal, on the verge of frenzy. My nightly bloodlust overflowed into my days and I had to leave the city. My mask of sanity was a victim of impending slippage. This was the bone season for me and I needed a vacation. I needed to go to the Hamptons.
I suggested this to Evelyn and, like a spider, she accepted.
The house we stayed at was actually Tim Price’s, which Evelyn had the keys to for some reason, but in my stupefied state I refused to ask for specifics.
Tim’s house was on the water in East Hampton and was adorned with many gable roofs and was four stories high, all connected by a galvanized-steel staircase, and had what at first I thought was a Southwestern motif but wasn’t. The kitchen was one thousand square feet of pure minimalist design; one wall held everything: two huge ovens, massive cupboards, a walk-in freezer, a three-door refrigerator. An island of custom-crafted stainless steel divided the kitchen into three separate spaces. Four of the nine bathrooms contained trompe l’oeil paintings and five of them had antique lead ram’s heads that hung over the sink, water spouting from their mouths. All the sinks and bathtubs and showers were antique marble and the floors were composed of tiny marble mosaics. A television was built into a wall alcove above the master bathtub. Every room had a stereo. The house also contained twelve Frank Lloyd Wright standing lamps, fourteen Josef Heffermann club chairs, two walls of floor-to-ceiling videocassette cases and another wall stacked solely with thousands of compact discs encased in glass cabinets. A chandelier by Eric Schmidt hung in the front entranceway, below it stood an Atomic Ironworks steel moose hatrack by a young sculptor I’d never heard of. A round nineteenth-century Russian dining table sat in a room adjacent to the kitchen, but had no chairs. Spooky photographs by Cindy Sherman lined the walls everywhere. There was an exercise room. There were eight walk-in closets, five VCRs, a Noguchi glass and walnut dining table, a hall table by Marc Schaffer and a fax machine. There was a topiary tree in the master bedroom next to a Louis XVI window bench. An Eric Fischl painting hung over one of the marble fireplaces. There was a tennis court. There were two saunas and an indoor Jacuzzi in a small guesthouse that sat by the pool, which was black-bottomed. There were stone columns in odd places.