“What are you going to do?” I ask. “Isn’t there a reward of some kind?”
“No. No reward,” he mutters, shuffling the bills with one hand, the gun, still pointed at me, in the other.
“How do you know I’m not going to call you in and get your license revoked?” I ask, handing over a knife I just found in my pocket that looks as if it was dipped into a bowl of blood and hair.
“Because you’re guilty,” he says, and then, “Get that away from me,” waving the gun at the stained knife.
“Like you know,” I mutter angrily.
“The sunglasses.” He points again with the gun.
“How do you know I’m guilty?” I can’t believe I’m asking this patiently.
“Look what you’re doing, asshole,” he says. “The sunglasses.”
“These are expensive,” I protest, then sigh, realizing the mistake. “I mean cheap. They’re very cheap. Just … Isn’t the money enough?”
“The sunglasses. Give them now,” he grunts.
I take the Wayfarers off and hand them to him. Maybe I really did kill a Solly, though I’m positive that any cabdrivers I’ve killed lately were not American. I probably did. There probably is a wanted poster of me at … where, the taxi—the place where all the taxis congregate? What’s it called? The driver tries the sunglasses on, looks at himself in the rearview mirror and then takes them off. He folds the glasses and puts them in his jacket pocket.
“You’re a dead man.” I smile grimly at him.
“And you’re a yuppie scumbag,” he says.
“You’re a dead man, Abdullah,” I repeat, no joke. “Count on it.”
“Yeah? And you’re a yuppie scumbag. Which is worse?”
He starts the cab up and pulls away from me.
While walking back to the highway I stop, choke back a sob, my throat tightens. “I just want to …” Facing the skyline, through all the baby talk, I murmur, “keep the game going.” As I stand, frozen in position, an old woman emerges behind a Threepenny Opera poster at a deserted bus stop and she’s homeless and begging, hobbling over, her face covered with sores that look like bugs, holding out a shaking red hand. “Oh will you please go away?” I sigh. She tells me to get a haircut.
At Harry’s
On a Friday evening, a group of us have left the office early, finding ourselves at Harry’s. Group consists of Tim Price, Craig McDermott, myself, Preston Goodrich, who is currently dating a total hardbody named, I think, Plum—no last name, just Plum, an actress/model, which I have a feeling we all think is pretty hip. We’re having a debate over where to make reservations for dinner: Flamingo East, Oyster Bar, 220, Counterlife, Michael’s, SpagoEast, Le Cirque. Robert Farrell is here too, the Lotus Quotrek, a portable stock-quotation device, in front of him on the table, and he’s pushing buttons while the latest commodities flash by. What are people wearing? McDermott has on a cashmere sport coat, wool trousers, a silk tie, Hermès. Farrell is wearing a cashmere vest, leather shoes, wool cavalry twill trousers, Garrick Anderson. I’m wearing a wool suit by Armani, shoes by Allen-Edmonds, pocket square by Brooks Brothers. Someone else has on a suit tailored by Anderson and Sheppard. Someone who looks like Todd Lauder, and may in fact be, gives thumbs-up from across the room, etc., etc.
Questions are routinely thrown my way, among them: Are the rules for wearing a pocket square the same as for a white dinner jacket? Is there any difference at all between boat shoes and Top-Siders? My futon has already flattened out and it’s uncomfortable to sleep on—what can I do? How does one judge the quality of compact discs before buying them? What tie knot is less bulky than a Windsor? How can one maintain a sweater’s elasticity? Any tips on buying a shearling coat? I am, of course, thinking about other things, asking myself my own questions: Am I a fitness junkie? Man vs. Conformity? Can I get a date with Cindy Crawford? Does being a Libra signify anything and if so, can you prove it? Today I was obsessed with the idea of faxing Sarah’s blood I drained from her vagina over to her office in the mergers division at Chase Manhattan, and I didn’t work out this morning because I’d made a necklace from the bones of some girl’s vertebrae and wanted to stay home and wear it around my neck while I masturbated in the white marble tub in my bathroom, grunting and moaning like some kind of animal. Then I watched a movie about five lesbians and ten vibrators. Favorite group: Talking Heads. Drink: J&B or Absolut on the rocks. TV show: Late Night with David Letterman. Soda: Diet Pepsi. Water: Evian. Sport: Baseball.
The conversation follows its own rolling accord—no real structure or topic or internal logic or feeling; except, of course, for its own hidden, conspiratorial one. Just words, and like in a movie, but one that has been transcribed improperly, most of it overlaps. I’m having a sort of hard time paying attention because my automated teller has started speaking to me, sometimes actually leaving weird messages on the screen, in green lettering, like “Cause a Terrible Scene at Sotheby’s” or “Kill the President” or “Feed Me a Stray Cat,” and I was freaked out by the park bench that followed me for six blocks last Monday evening and it too spoke to me. Disintegration—I’m taking it in stride. Yet the only question I can muster up at first and add to the conversation is a worried “I’m not going anywhere if we don’t have a reservation someplace, so do we have a reservation someplace or not?” I notice that we’re all drinking dry beers. Am I the only one who notices this? I’m also wearing mock-tortoiseshell glasses that are nonprescription.
On the TV screen in Harry’s is The Patty Winters Show, which is now on in the afternoon and is up against Geraldo Rivera, Phil Donahue and Oprah Winfrey. Today’s topic is Does Economic Success Equal Happiness? The answer, in Harry’s this afternoon, is a roar of resounding “Definitely,” followed by much hooting, the guys all cheering together in a friendly way. On the screen now are scenes from President Bush’s inauguration early this year, then a speech from former President Reagan, while Patty delivers a hard-to-hear commentary. Soon a tiresome debate forms over whether he’s lying or not, even though we don’t, can’t, hear the words. The first and really only one to complain is Price, who, though I think he’s bothered by something else, uses this opportunity to vent his frustration, looks inappropriately stunned, asks, “How can he lie like that? How can he pull that shit?”
“Oh Christ,” I moan. “What shit? Now where do we have reservations at? I mean I’m not really hungry but I would like to have reservations somewhere. How about 220?” An afterthought: “McDermott, how did that rate in the new Zagat’s?”
“No way,” Farrell complains before Craig can answer. “The coke I scored there last time was cut with so much laxative I actually had to take a shit in M.K.”
“Yeah, yeah, life sucks and then you die.”
“Low point of the night,” Farrell mutters.
“Weren’t you with Kyria the last time you were there?” Goodrich asks. “Wasn’t that the low point?”
“She caught me on call waiting. What could I do?” Farrell shrugs. “I apologize.”
“Caught him on call waiting.” McDermott nudges me, dubious.
“Shut up, McDermott,” Farrell says, snapping Craig’s suspenders. “Date a beggar.”
“You forgot something, Farrell,” Preston mentions. “McDermott is a beggar.”
“How’s Courtney?” Farrell asks Craig, leering.
“Just say no.” Someone laughs.
Price looks away from the television screen, then at Craig, and he tries to hide his displeasure by asking me, waving at the TV, “I don’t believe it. He looks so … normal. He seems so … out of it. So … undangerous.”
“Bimbo, bimbo,” someone says. “Bypass, bypass.”
“He is totally harmless, you geek. Was totally harmless. Just like you are totally harmless. But he did do all that shit and you have failed to get us into 150, so, you know, what can I say?” McDermott shrugs.
“I just don’t get how someone, anyone, can appear that way yet be involved in such total shit,” Price says,
ignoring Craig, averting his eyes from Farrell. He takes out a cigar and studies it sadly. To me it still looks like there’s a smudge on Price’s forehead.
“Because Nancy was right behind him?” Farrell guesses, looking up from the Quotrek. “Because Nancy did it?”
“How can you be so fucking, I don’t know, cool about it?” Price, to whom something really eerie has obviously happened, sounds genuinely perplexed. Rumor has it that he was in rehab.
“Some guys are just born cool, I guess.” Farrell smiles, shrugging.
I’m laughing at this answer since Farrell is so obviously uncool, and Price shoots me a reprimanding look, says, “And Bateman—what are you so fucking zany about?”
I shrug too. “I’m just a happy camper.” And I add, remembering, quoting, my brother: “Rocking and a rolling.”
“Be all that you can be,” someone adds.
“Oh brother.” Price won’t let it die. “Look,” he starts, trying for a rational appraisal of the situation. “He presents himself as a harmless old codger. But inside …” He stops. My interest picks up, flickers briefly. “But inside …” Price can’t finish the sentence, can’t add the last two words he needs: doesn’t matter. I’m both disappointed and relieved for him.
“Inside? Yes, inside?” Craig asks, bored. “Believe it or not, we’re actually listening to you. Go on.”
“Bateman,” Price says, relenting slightly. “Come on. What do you think?”
I look up, smile, don’t say anything. From somewhere—the TV?—the national anthem plays. Why? I don’t know. Before a commercial, maybe. Tomorrow, on The Patty Winters Show, Doormen from Nell’s: Where Are They Now? I sigh, shrug, whatever.
“That’s, uh, a pretty good answer,” Price says, then adds, “You’re a real nut.”
“That is the most valuable piece of information I’ve heard since”—I look at my new gold Rolex that insurance paid for—“McDermott suggested we all drink dry beers. Christ, I want a Scotch.”
McDermott looks up with an exaggerated grin and purrs, “Bud. Long neck. Beautiful.”
“Very civilized.” Goodrich nods.
Superstylish English guy Nigel Morrison stops by our table and he’s wearing a flower in the lapel of his Paul Smith jacket. But he can’t stay long since he has to meet other British friends, Ian and Lucy, at Delmonico’s. Seconds after he walks away, I hear someone sneer, “Nigel. A pâté animal.”
Someone else: “Did you know that caveman got more fiber than we do?”
“Who’s handling the Fisher account?”
“Screw that. What about the Shepard thing? The Shepard account?”
“Is that David Monrowe? What a burnout.”
“Oh brother.”
“For Christ sakes.”
“… lean and mean …”
“What’s in it for me?”
“The Shepard play or the Shepard account?”
“Rich people with cheap stereos.”
“No, girls who can hold their liquor.”
“… total lightweight …”
“Need a light? Nice matches.”
“What’s in it for me?”
“yup yup yup yup yup yup …”
I think it’s me who says, “I have to return some videotapes.”
Someone has already taken out a Minolta cellular phone and called for a car, and then, when I’m not really listening, watching instead someone who looks remarkably like Marcus Halberstam paying a check, someone asks, simply, not in relation to anything, “Why?” and though I’m very proud that I have cold blood and that I can keep my nerve and do what I’m supposed to do, I catch something, then realize it: Why? and automatically answering, out of the blue, for no reason, just opening my mouth, words coming out, summarizing for the idiots: “Well, though I know I should have done that instead of not doing it, I’m twenty-seven for Christ sakes and this is, uh, how life presents itself in a bar or in a club in New York, maybe anywhere, at the end of the century and how people, you know, me, behave, and this is what being Patrick means to me, I guess, so, well, yup, uh …” and this is followed by a sigh, then a slight shrug and another sigh, and above one of the doors covered by red velvet drapes in Harry’s is a sign and on the sign in letters that match the drapes’ color are the words THIS IS NOT AN EXIT.
About the Author
Bret Easton Ellis is the author of four other novels and a collection of stories, which have been translated into twenty-seven languages. He divides his time between Los Angeles and New York City.
www.eastonellis.com
FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES OPEN-MARKET EDITION, SEPTEMBER 2006
Copyright © 1991 by Bret Easton Ellis
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in trade paperback in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1991.
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks and Vintage Contemporaries is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material: Bantam Books: Excerpt from Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Mirra Ginsburg. Translation copyright © 1974 by Mirra Ginsburg. Reprinted by permission of Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Fortune Magazine: Excerpt from “Miss Manners on Office Etiquette” from the November 6, 1989 issue of Fortune. Copyright © 1989 by Fortune Magazine. Index Music, Inc.: Excerpt from the lyrics of “(Nothing But) Flowers” by David Byrne. Copyright © 1988 by Index Music, Inc. (ASCAP).
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Vintage trade paperback edition as follows:
Ellis, Bret Easton.
American psycho : a novel / Bret Easton Ellis.
p. cm.—(Vintage contemporaries)
I. Title
PS3555.L5937A8 1991
813′.54—dc20 90-10247
eISBN: 978-0-307-75643-5
www.vintagebooks.com
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Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho
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