“What will happen after the fumigation,” Miller said, lighting another Newport, “is an exorcism.”
I had started making a plan.
“Mr. Ellis, I’m curious about something.”
I did not know that my plan was coinciding with Miller’s.
“Was your father cremated?”
I was going to travel, and I nodded my answer.
“Where are your father’s ashes?”
I was going to fly across the country.
“Did you spread them according to his wishes?”
I was shaking my head silently, because I understood what Miller was saying.
“What were you supposed to do with them?”
I was going to reorganize myself.
“Mr. Ellis? Are you here with us?”
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8
28. Los Angeles
A security guard at the gate checked my name before I drove up the winding road that led to a house the size of a hotel and made entirely from glass at the top of Bel Air. After a valet took my rental car, I stepped into a party where an old girlfriend who was wearing fake eyelashes and had married a billionaire called out, “Hey, gorgeous!” when I entered the room, and we talked about old times and movie people and what she was doing with her life (“I rock” was all I could ascertain), and since guests seemed to be avoiding me because of my battered face I just moved on until I was standing in a library filled with leather-bound scripts and golden retriever puppies were stumbling around everywhere and I found an issue of next week’s National Enquirer in a bathroom and there was a framed poster in the eldest son’s room of two words in huge red block lettering (GET READY) and there was the actress who had costarred in the movie that Keanu Reeves and Jayne made back in 1992 and we had what I felt was an inappropriate, if innocuous, conversation since we had never met (“Jayne left the set for a couple of days to be with you. Someone in your family had died, right?” “Yeah, my dad”) and then Sarah’s father—the record executive—showed up and seemed shocked to see me (I wasn’t shocked by anything since I wasn’t reacting to anything) but then he asked about Sarah and listened haltingly as I told him how great she was doing and even though the record executive kept promising me that he wanted to see his daughter there would always be another “setback” to keep him away but he added not unhopefully that Sarah was always “free” to visit. Seated at the large dining table were wives from Pacific Palisades with a few key members of the Velvet Mafia and Silver Lake hipsters and couples from Malibu and a good-looking chef with his own reality show. Conversations began as the food was served: the second house in Telluride, the new production company, the frequent trips to the plastic surgeon, the tantrum so violent that the police were called, all the exertion that led nowhere. I listened to it all, or imagined I did. There were too many words I didn’t understand the meaning of anymore (happy, cake, jingle, preen), and I was so over this world that it made no impact on me: the number of explosions per scene, the movie that took place in a submarine, the script that lacked a sympathy portal, the S&M dalliance with an underaged hooker, fucking the prom queen recovering from implant surgery, the screaming rockets, the washboard abs, the sex on the air mattress, the Vicodin binge. And then the conversation took a more sober route when talk of a certain movie came up: if it didn’t gross over a billion dollars, the certain movie would lose money for the three studios financing it. After that, the pointlessness of everyone’s enterprise hung placidly over the dinner. And soon you were noticing that the facial surgery had rendered so many of the women and men at the party expressionless, and an actress kept wiping her mouth with a napkin to stem the drooling after too much fat had been injected into her lips. A giant cactus stood blocking a downstairs hallway with the words “believe the skeptics” scrawled in black across its green skin, and as storytelling resumed I wondered how you could ever get past the cactus. But then I realized I was concentrating on that only because I wondered who was going to listen to my story? Who was going to believe in the monsters I had encountered and the things I had seen? Who was going to buy the pitch I was making in order to save myself?
After the initial site reading indicated—no, confirmed—that the house was infested, I had been driven back to the Four Seasons, where I wired a transfer into Miller’s account. I was told “the process” would take two days to complete and I did not want to know the specifics of how they planned on cleansing the house. Obviously, I told myself, this was something they knew how to do—they were professionals; they had proved this to me during the ISR—and I would stay out of their way for those two days by traveling to L.A., under the auspices of the Harrison Ford meeting, where I would retrieve my father’s ashes from the Bank of America on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks. Carrying out this plan was my only focus (I was not going to be waylaid by anything) and so by two o’clock on that Thursday afternoon I had already booked a flight and—after meeting with Marta at the hotel to explain that the house on Elsinore Lane was being fumigated and she would be staying with the children at the Four Seasons until I returned on Sunday—I was driving to the Midland Airport. While steering the Range Rover down the empty interstate, I called ICM and asked them to set up the meeting with Ford’s people for the following day since I was flying in that night and was leaving Sunday morning. Everything went so efficiently that it was almost as if I had willed it. There was no traffic, I was whisked through airport security, the plane left on schedule, it was a smooth flight and we landed before the estimated arrival time at Long Beach (since so much of LAX was under reconstruction). When I spoke to Jayne while driving down the 405 toward Sunset she was “glad” (which I interpreted as “relieved”) that I was doing this for myself. I had opted out on the Chateau Marmont since it was a haunt from the drug days and stayed at the Bel Air Hotel instead; it was close to the dinner party that the producer of the Harrison Ford project had invited me to when he heard I was coming to town, and also to my mother’s house in the Valley. It wasn’t until I was ensconced in my suite at the Bel Air, sorting through a stack of Harrison Ford DVDs the producer had messengered over—along with directions on how to get to his house—that I realized there was one thing I had left undone: saying goodbye to Robby.
On Friday afternoon the Harrison Ford meeting occurred without Harrison Ford. The project that Ford and the producer and the two studio executives were interested in me for concerned a father (a tough rancher) and a son (a lonely drug addict) overcoming the obstacles of loving each other in a small town in northeastern Nevada. I sold them whatever I could muster up, which was absolutely nothing since I had no interest in the project. I was told to think about it and promised numbly that I would, and then voices asked about Jayne, and the kids, and the new book, and what happened to my face (“I fell”), and since I was somewhere else during the entire meeting it seemed over in a matter of minutes.
Later that afternoon, I drove to the Bank of America on Ventura Boulevard to retrieve my father’s ashes. I did not leave the bank with them.
I had dinner with my mother and two sisters and their various husbands and boyfriends on Saturday night in the house on Valley Vista in Sherman Oaks (an exact, if much smaller, replica of the house on Elsinore Lane, with an identical layout). My mother and sisters understood (once the press reported I was the father of Jayne Dennis’s son) that only when I had acquainted myself with Robby to the point at which he felt comfortable enough would my family meet their grandson and nephew. This was the understanding that Jayne and I, and our therapists, had reached—everyone except for Robby (who knew nothing about this arrangement and had never, to my knowledge, inquired about aunts or a grandmother). The saddest moment of the night came when I realized—once they asked—that I carried no photographs of my son. There were questions about Jayne, about life back East in the suburbs, about the damage to my face (“I fell”). My sisters marveled at how much I had begun resembling our father as I moved toward middle age. I just nodded and asked my si
sters about their recent triumphs and dramas: one was an assistant to Diane Keaton; the other was just out of rehab. I helped my mother’s boyfriend—a man from Argentina whom she had been living with for the past fifteen years—grill salmon. Dinner was calm, but afterward, out by the pool, while smoking cigarettes with my sisters, a tense debate ensued about what to do with Dad’s ashes (I did not say anything about what I had found in the safe-deposit box earlier that afternoon) and then morphed into various old issues: the girl he was living with at the time of his death had a boyfriend—had I even known about this? I couldn’t remember. Of course I couldn’t remember, my sisters argued, since I had run away and refused to deal with anything. And then, in rapid succession: the invalid will, the lack of an autopsy, the conspiracy theories, the paranoia. I escaped this by heading upstairs to retrieve something from my old bedroom. (This was another reason that I was in L.A.) Plus the backyard was haunting me; the pool, the chaise longues, the deck—they were all identical to the backyard on Elsinore Lane. As I stood up to leave, my sisters commented on how guarded I seemed. I told them I was just tired. I didn’t want to keep our father alive, which is what we did whenever we had these inevitable conversations. I did not tell them anything about what had been happening to me during the last week. There wasn’t enough time. Inside the house I stopped at the top of the stairs and gazed down into the living room. My reaction was dulled.
Not only was my bedroom just as I had left it as a teenager but it was also Robby’s room as well. I had stayed here often when I visited L.A., after I made the move to Camden and then to New York, and over the years part of this large space overlooking the San Fernando Valley had slowly transformed itself into an office, where I stored old manuscripts and files on shelves built into a walk-in closet. This was where I was heading. I immediately started rummaging carelessly through stacks of papers—drafts of novels, magazine essays, children’s books—until the floor became littered with them. And then I finally located what I was looking for: the original manuscript copy of American Psycho, which had been typed on an electric Olivetti (four drafts in all, which continued to fill me with disbelief). I sat on the futon beneath the framed Elvis Costello poster that still hung on the wall and began flipping through its pages. Without even knowing what I was looking for, I felt a vague desire to touch the book and rid myself of something that Donald Kimball had said. There was a piece of information that had never fit into the pattern revealing itself to us. I wanted to make sure it did not exist. But as I kept turning pages I began knowing what it was.
It made itself apparent the moment I hit page 207 in the original manuscript.
On page 207 was the drawing of a face.
I had drawn a face onto the thin sheet of typing paper (leaving enough space between the chapter breaks to fit it in).
And beneath the face I drew the words, scrawled in red pen: “I’m B a c k.”
This image of words scrawled in blood was used later on, but I had cut the scene that preceded this warning.
This chapter had been omitted.
And I had also removed the crude drawing of the face from any subsequent manuscripts.
Something became confirmed.
This was a copy of the manuscript I had shown no one.
This was the copy that had been rewritten before I handed the book to my agent.
This was the copy that no editor or publisher had ever seen.
This was the one chapter I had cut from the very first draft and that no one but me had ever read.
It included details of the murder of a woman called Amelia Light.
I flashed on the phone call I received on November 5.
“What did you do to her?”
“I’d check the text of that dirty little book you wrote again.”
The fictional details—the missing arms and head, the ropes, the blowtorch—were identical to the details of the murder in the Orsic Motel in a place called Stoneboat, according to what Donald Kimball had imparted.
As I kept turning pages, I realized even before I arrived at the next chapter that it would be titled “Paul Owen.”
The murder that followed Amelia Light’s would be Paul Owen’s.
Donald Kimball was wrong.
Someone was tracking the book.
And a man named Paul Owen in Clear Lake would be the next victim.
I reached for a phone to call Donald Kimball.
But something stopped me.
I reminded myself again, this time with more force, that no one except me had ever seen this copy of the manuscript.
This led to: What was I going to say to Kimball?
What was there to say? That I was going insane? That my book was now reality?
I had no reaction—emotional, physical—to any of this. Because I was now at a point at which I accepted anything that presented itself to me.
I had constructed a life, and this is what it now offered me in return.
I pushed the original manuscript away from myself.
I stood up. I was moving toward a wall of bookshelves.
I was flashing on something else now.
I pulled a copy of the Vintage edition of American Psycho from a shelf.
I flipped through it until, on page 266, I found a chapter titled “Detective.”
I sat back on the bed and began to read.
May slides into June which slides into July which creeps towards August. Because of the heat I’ve had intense dreams the last four nights about vivisection and I’m doing nothing now, vegetating in my office with a sickening headache and a Walkman with a soothing Kenny G CD playing in it, but the bright midmorning sunlight floods the room, piercing my skull, causing my hangover to throb, and because of this, there’s no workout this morning. Listening to the music I notice the second light on my phone blinking off and on, which means that Jean is buzzing me. I sigh and carefully remove the Walkman.
“What is it?” I ask in monotone.
“Um, Patrick?” she begins.
“Ye-es, Je-an?” I ask condescendingly, spacing the two words out.
“Patrick, a Mr. Donald Kimball is here to see you,” she says nervously.
“Who?” I snap, distracted.
She emits a small sigh of worry, then, as if asking, lowers her voice. “Detective Donald Kimball.”
Yes, the room turned sharply at that moment, and yes, my idea about the world changed when I saw the name Donald Kimball printed in a book. I forced myself not to be surprised, because it was only the narrative saving itself.
I did not bother rereading the rest of the scene.
I simply placed the book back on its shelf.
I had to think about this.
First thought: How did the person who said he was Donald Kimball ever see this original unread manuscript with the details of Amelia Light’s murder in it? A murder that was identical to the one that occurred on November third in the Orsic Motel.
Second thought: Someone was impersonating a fictional character named Donald Kimball.
He had been in my home.
He had been in my office.
I suddenly realized—hopefully—that everything he had told me was a lie.
I suddenly hoped that there had been no murders.
I hoped that the book I had written about my father was not responsible for the deaths “Donald Kimball” had relayed to me.
(Will I find out later that this Donald Kimball’s private number was, in fact, Aimee Light’s cell phone number? Yes.)
But then I thought: If Donald Kimball was responsible for the murders in Midland County, then who was Clayton?
As I thought about this I glimpsed something by my shoe.
There was a drawing from a children’s book I had made when I was a boy.
One of a number of pages that had scattered to the floor as I rifled through my closet.
These pages were from an illustrated book I had written when I was seven.
The book had a title.
The t
itle was “The Toy Bret.”
I slowly reached down to pick up the title page but stopped when I saw the tip of a black triangle.
I pulled the other pages away until the entire sheet was revealed.
And I was confronted with the wrecked stare of the Terby.
As I moved the pages around, I saw the Terby replicated a hundred times throughout a book I had written thirty years ago.
The Terby emerging from a coffin.
The Terby taking a bath.
The Terby nibbling the white petal of a bougainvillea flower.
The Terby drinking a glass of milk.
The Terby attacking a dog.
The Terby entering the dog and making it fly.
It was at this moment in L.A. on that Saturday night in November—when I saw the children’s book about the Terby and knew that a person named Donald Kimball did not exist—that I made a decision.
If I had created Patrick Bateman I would now write a story in which he was uncreated and his world was erased.
I would write a story in which he was killed.
I left the house on Valley Vista.
Driving back to Bel Air, I began formulating a story.
I began making notes.
I needed to write the story hurriedly.
It would be short and Patrick Bateman would be killed.
The point of the story: Patrick Bateman was now dead.
I would never find explanations.
(That’s because explanations are boring, the writer whispered as I drove through a canyon.)
Everything would remain disguised and remote.
I would struggle to piece things together, and the writer would ultimately deride me for attempting this task.
There were too many questions.
This would always happen. The further you go, the more there are.
And every answer is a threat, a new abyss that only sleep can close.
No one would ever say, I will show you what happened and I will make everything perfect by taking you to the vacant places where you won’t need to think of this anymore.