American Psycho (51 page)

For a limited period of time I’m capable of being halfway cheerful and outgoing, so I accept Evelyn’s invitation to dinner during the first week of November at Luke, a new superchic nouvelle Chinese restaurant that also serves, oddly enough, Creole cuisine. We have a good table (I reserved under Wintergreen’s name—the simplest of triumphs) and I feel anchored, calm, even with Evelyn sitting across from me prattling on about a very large Fabergé egg she thought she saw at the Pierre, rolling around the lobby of its own accord or something like that. The office Halloween party was at the Royalton last week and I went as a mass murderer, complete with a sign painted on my back that read
MASS MURDERER
(which was decidedly lighter than the sandwich board I had constructed earlier that day that read
DRILLER KILLER
), and beneath those two words I had written in blood
Yep, that’s me
and the suit was also covered with blood, some of it fake, most of it real. In one fist I clenched a hank of Victoria Bell’s hair, and pinned next to my boutonniere (a small white rose) was a finger bone I’d boiled the flesh off of. As elaborate as my costume was, Craig McDermott still managed to win first place in the competition. He came as Ivan Boesky, which I thought was unfair since a lot of people thought I’d gone as Michael Milken last year.
The Patty Winters Show
this morning was about Home Abortion Kits.

The first five minutes after being seated are fine, then the drink I ordered touches the table and I instinctively reach for it, but I find myself cringing every time Evelyn opens her mouth. I notice that Saul Steinberg is eating here tonight, but refuse to mention this to Evelyn.

“A toast?” I suggest.

“Oh? To what?” she murmurs uninterestedly, craning her neck, looking around the stark, dimly lit, very white room.

“Freedom?” I ask tiredly.

But she’s not listening, because some English guy wearing a three-button wool houndstooth suit, a tattersall wool vest, a spread-collar cotton oxford shirt, suede shoes and a silk tie, all by Garrick Anderson, whom Evelyn pointed out once after we’d had a fight at Au Bar and called “gorgeous,” and whom I had called “a dwarf,” walks over to our table, openly flirting with her, and it pisses me off to think that she feels I’m jealous about this guy but I eventually get the last laugh when he asks if she still has the job at “that art gallery on First Avenue” and Evelyn, clearly stressed, her face falling, answers no, corrects him, and after a few awkward words he moves on. She sniffs, opens her menu, immediately starts on about something else without looking at me.

“What are all these T-shirts I’ve been seeing?” she asks. “All over the city? Have you seen them? Silkience Equals Death? Are people having problems with their conditioners or something? Am I missing something? What were we talking about?”

“No, that’s absolutely wrong. It’s
Science
Equals Death.” I sigh, close my eyes. “Jesus, Evelyn, only you could confuse
that
and a hair product.” I have no idea what the hell I’m saying but I nod, waving to someone at the bar, an older man, his face covered in shadow, someone I only half know, actually, but he manages to raise his champagne glass my way and smile back, which is a relief.

“Who’s that?” I hear Evelyn asking.

“He’s a friend of mine,” I say.

“I don’t recognize him,” she says. “P & P?”

“Forget it,” I sigh.

“Who
is
it, Patrick?” she asks, more interested in my reluctance than in an actual name.

“Why?” I ask back.

“Who is it?” she asks. “Tell me.”

“A friend of mine,” I say, teeth gritted.

“Who, Patrick?” she asks, then, squinting, “Wasn’t he at my Christmas party?”

“No, he was not,” I say, my hands drumming the tabletop.

“Isn’t it … Michael J. Fox?” she asks, still squinting. “The actor?”

“Hardly,” I say, then, fed up, “Oh for Christ sakes, his name
is George Levanter and no, he didn’t star in
The Secret of My Success
.”

“Oh how interesting.” Already Evelyn is back poring over the menu. “Now, what were we talking about?”

Trying to remember, I ask, “Conditioners? Or some
kind
of conditioner?” I sigh. “I don’t know. You were talking to the dwarf.”

“Ian is
not
a midget, Patrick,” she says.

“He is unusually
short
, Evelyn,” I counter. “Are you sure
he
wasn’t at your Christmas party”—and then, my voice lowered—“serving hors d’oeuvres?”

“You cannot keep referring to Ian as a dwarf,” she says, smoothing her napkin over her lap. “I will not stand for it,” she whispers, not looking at me.

I can’t restrain myself from snickering.

“It isn’t funny, Patrick,” she says.

“
You
cut the conversation short,” I point out.

“Did you expect me to be flattered?” she spits out bitterly.

“Listen, baby, I’m just trying to make that encounter seem as legitimate as possible, so don’t, uh, you know, screw it up for yourself.”

“Just stop it,” she says, ignoring me. “Oh look, it’s Robert Farrell.” After waving to him, she discreetly points him out to me and sure enough, Bob Farrell, whom everyone likes, is sitting on the north side of the room at a window table, which secretly drives me mad. “He’s very good-looking,” Evelyn confides admiringly, only because she’s noticed me contemplating the twenty-year-old hardbody he’s sitting with, and to make sure I’ve registered this she teasingly chirps, “Hope I’m not making you jealous.”

“He’s handsome,” I admit. “Stupid-looking but handsome.”

“Don’t be nasty. He’s very handsome,” she says and then suggests, “Why don’t you get your hair styled that way?”

Before this comment I was an automaton, only vaguely paying attention to Evelyn, but now I’m panicked, and I ask, “What’s wrong with my hair?” In a matter of seconds my rage quadruples. “What the hell is wrong with my hair?” I touch it lightly.

“Nothing,” she says, noticing how upset I’ve gotten. “Just a
suggestion,” and then, really noticing how flushed I’ve become, “Your hair looks really … really great.” She tries to smile but only succeeds in looking worried.

A sip—half a glass—of the J&B calms me enough to say, looking over at Farrell, “Actually, I’m horrified by his paunch.”

Evelyn studies Farrell too. “Oh, he doesn’t have a paunch.”

“That’s definitely a paunch,” I say. “Look at it.”

“That’s just the way he’s sitting,” she says, exasperated. “Oh you’re—”

“It’s a
paunch
, Evelyn,” I stress.

“Oh you’re crazy.” She waves me off. “A lunatic.”

“Evelyn, the man is
barely
thirty.”

“So what? Everyone’s not into weight lifting like you,” she says, annoyed, looking back at the menu.

“I do not ‘weight lift,’” I sigh.

“Oh go over and sock him in the nose, then, you big bully,” she says, brushing me off. “I really don’t care.”

“Don’t tempt me,” I warn her, then looking back at Farrell I mutter, “What a creep.”

“Oh my god, Patrick. You have no right to be so embittered,” Evelyn says angrily, still staring into her menu. “Your animosity is grounded on nothing. There must be something really the matter with you.”

“Look at his suit,” I point out, unable to help myself. “Look at what he’s wearing.”

“Oh so
what
, Patrick.” She turns a page, finds it has nothing on it and turns back to the page she was previously studying.

“Hasn’t it occurred to him that his suit might inspire
loathing
?” I ask.

“Patrick you are being a
lunatic
,” she says, shaking her head, now looking over the wine list.

“Goddamnit, Evelyn. What do you mean,
being
?” I say. “I fucking
am
one.”

“Must you be so militant about it?” she asks.

“I don’t know.” I shrug.

“Anyway, I was going to tell you what happened to Melania and Taylor and …” She notices something and in the same sentence adds, sighing, “… stop looking at my chest, Patrick. Look at
me, not
my chest. Now anyway, Taylor Grassgreen and
Melania were … You know Melania, she went to Sweet Briar. Her father owns all those banks in Dallas? And Taylor went to Cornell. Anyway, they were supposed to meet at the Cornell Club and then they had a reservation at Mondrian at seven and he was wearing …” She stops, retraces. “No. Le Cygne. They were going to Le Cygne and Taylor was …” She stops again. “Oh god, it
was
Mondrian. Mondrian at seven and he was wearing a Piero Dimitri suit. Melania had been shopping. I think she’d been to Bergdorf s, though I’m not positive—but anyway, oh yes … it
was
Bergdorf’s because she was wearing the scarf at the office the other day, so anyway, she hadn’t been to her aerobics class for something like two days and they were mugged on one of—”

“Waiter?” I call to someone passing by. “Another drink? J&B?” I point to the glass, upset that I phrased it as a question rather than a command.

“Don’t you want to find out what happened?” Evelyn asks, displeased.

“With bated breath,” I sigh, totally uninterested. “I can hardly wait.”

“Anyway, the most amusing thing happened,” she starts.

I am absorbing what you are saying to me, I’m thinking. I notice her lack of carnality and for the first time it taunts me. Before, it was what attracted me to Evelyn. Now its absence upsets me, seems sinister, fills me with a nameless dread. At our last session—yesterday, in fact—the psychiatrist I’ve been seeing for the past two months asked, “What method of contraception do you and Evelyn use?” and I sighed before answering, my eyes fixed out the window on a skyscraper, then at the painting above the Turchin glass coffee table, a giant visual reproduction of a graphic equalizer by another artist, not Onica. “Her job.” When he asked about her preferred sexual act, I told him, completely serious, “Foreclosure.” Dimly aware that if it weren’t for the people in the restaurant I would take the jade chopsticks sitting on the table and push them deep into Evelyn’s eyes and snap them in two, I nod, pretending to listen, but I’ve already phased out and I don’t do the chopsticks thing. Instead I order a bottle of the Chassagne Montrachet.

“Isn’t that amusing?” Evelyn asks.

Casually laughing along with her, the sounds coming out of
my mouth loaded with scorn, I admit, “Riotous.” I say it suddenly, blankly. My gaze traces the line of women at the bar. Are there any I’d like to fuck? Probably. The long-legged hardbody sipping a kir on the last stool? Perhaps. Evelyn is agonizing between the mâché raisin and gumbo
salade
or the gratinized beet, hazelnut, baby greens and endive salad and I suddenly feel like I’ve been pumped full of clonopin, which is an anticonvulsive, but it wasn’t doing any good.

“Christ, twenty dollars for a fucking egg roll?” I mutter, studying the menu.

“It’s a moo shu custard, lightly grilled,” she says.

“It’s a fucking egg roll,” I protest.

To which Evelyn replies, “You’re
so
cultivated, Patrick.”

“No.” I shrug. “Just reasonable.”

“I’m desperate for some Beluga,” she says. “Honey?”

“No,” I say.

“Why not?” she asks, pouting.

“Because I don’t want anything out of a can or that’s Iranian,” I sigh.

She sniffs haughtily and looks back at the menu. “The moo foo jambalaya is really first-rate,” I hear her say.

The minutes tick by. We order. The meal arrives. Typically, the plate is massive, white porcelain; two pieces of blackened yellowtail sashimi with ginger lie in the middle, surrounded by tiny dots of wasabi, which is circled by a minuscule amount of hijiki, and on top of the plate sits one lone baby prawn; another one, even smaller, lies curled on the bottom, which confuses me since I thought this was primarily a Chinese restaurant. I stare at the plate for a long time and when I ask for some water, our waiter reappears with a pepper shaker instead and insists on hanging around our table, constantly asking us at five-minute intervals if we’d like “some pepper, perhaps?” or “more pepper?” and once the fool moves over to another booth, whose occupants, I can see out of the corner of my eye, both cover their plates with their hands, I wave the maître d’ over and ask him, “Could you please tell the waiter with the pepper shaker to stop hovering over our table? We don’t want pepper. We haven’t ordered anything that
needs
pepper. No
pepper.
Tell him to get lost.”

“Of course. My apologizes.” The maître d’ humbly bows.

Embarrassed, Evelyn asks, “Must you be so overly po
lite
?”

I put down my fork and shut my eyes. “Why are you constantly undermining my stability?”

She breathes in. “Let’s just have a conversation. Not an interrogation. Okay?”

“About
what
?” I snarl

“Listen,” she says. “The Young Republican bash at the Pla …” She stops herself as if remembering something, then continues, “at the
Trump
Plaza is next Thursday.” I want to tell her I can’t make it, hoping to god she has other plans, even though two weeks ago, drunk and coked up at Mortimer’s or Au Bar, I
invited
her, for Christ sakes. “Are we going?”

After a pause, “I guess,” I say glumly.

For dessert I’ve arranged something special. At a power breakfast at the ’21′ Club this morning with Craig McDermott, Alex Baxter and Charles Kennedy, I stole a urinal cake from the men’s room when the attendant wasn’t looking. At home I covered it with a cheap chocolate syrup, froze it, then placed it in an empty Godiva box, tying a silk bow around it, and now, in Luke, when I excuse myself to the rest room, I make my way instead to the kitchen, after I’ve stopped at the coatcheck to retrieve the package, and I ask our waiter to present this to the table “in the box” and to tell the lady seated there that Mr. Bateman called up earlier to order this especially for her. I even tell him, while opening the box, to put a flower on it, whatever, hand him a fifty. He brings it over once a suitable amount of time has elapsed, after our plates have been removed, and I’m impressed by what a big deal he makes over it; he’s even placed a silver dome over the box and Evelyn coos with delight when he lifts it off, saying “Voi-ra,” and she makes a move for the spoon he’s laid next to her water glass (that I make sure is empty) and, turning to me, Evelyn says, “Patrick, that’s
so
sweet,” and I nod to the waiter, smiling, and wave him away when he tries to place a spoon on my side of the table.