American Psycho (59 page)

It is four days before Christmas, at two in the afternoon. I’m sitting in the back of a pitch-black limousine parked in front of a nondescript brownstone off Fifth Avenue trying to read an article about Donald Trump in the new issue of
Fame
magazine.
Jeanette wants me to come in with her but I say “Forget it.” She has a black eye from last night since I had to coerce her over dinner at Il Marlibro to even consider doing this; then, after a more forceful discussion at my apartment, she consented. Jeanette’s dilemma lies outside my definition of guilt, and I had told her, truthfully, over dinner that it was very hard for me to express concern for her that I don’t feel. During the entire drive from my place on the Upper West Side, she’s been sobbing. The only clear, identifiable emotion coming from her is desperation and maybe longing, and though I successfully ignore her for most of the ride I finally have to tell her, “Listen, I’ve already taken two Xanax this morning so, uh, you’re incapable of, like, upsetting me.” Now, as she stumbles out of the limo onto the frozen pavement, I mumble, “It’s for the best,” and, offering consolation, “Don’t take it so seriously.” The driver, whose name I’ve forgotten, leads her into the brownstone and she gives a last, regretful look back. I sigh and wave her off. She’s still wearing, from last night, a leopard-print cotton balmacaan coat with wool challis lining over a wool crepe shirtless dress by Bill Blass. Bigfoot was interviewed on
The Patty Winters Show
this morning and to my shock I found him surprisingly articulate and charming. The glass I’m drinking Absolut vodka from is Finnish. I’m very suntanned compared to Jeanette.

The driver comes out of the building, gives me thumbs-up, carefully pulls the limousine away from the curb and begins the trek to JFK airport, where my flight to Aspen leaves in ninety minutes. When I get back, in January, Jeanette will be out of the country. I relight a cigar, search for an ashtray. There’s a church on the corner of this street. Who cares? This is, I think, the fifth child I’ve had aborted, the third I haven’t aborted myself (a useless statistic, I admit). The wind outside the limousine is brisk and cold and the rain hits the darkened windows in rhythmic waves, mimicking Jeanette’s probable weeping in the operating room, dizzy from the anesthesia, thinking about a memory from her past, a moment where the world was perfect. I resist the impulse to start cackling hysterically.

At the airport I instruct the chauffeur to stop by F.A.O. Schwarz before picking Jeanette up and purchase the following:
a doll, a rattle, a teething ring, a white Gund polar bear, and have them sitting in the backseat for her, unwrapped. Jeanette should be okay—she has her whole life in front of her (that is, if she doesn’t run into me). Besides, this girl’s favorite movie is
Pretty in Pink
and she thinks Sting is cool, so what is happening to her is, like, not totally undeserved and one shouldn’t feel bad for her. This is no time for the innocent.

Tuesday morning and I’m standing by my desk in the living room on the phone with my lawyer, alternately keeping my eye on
The Patty Winters Show
and the maid as she waxes the floor, wipes blood smears off the walls, throws away gore-soaked newspapers without a word. Faintly it hits me that she too is lost in a world of shit, completely drowning in it, and this somehow sets off my remembering that the piano tuner will be stopping by this afternoon and that I should leave a note with the doorman to let him in. Not that the Yamaha has ever been played; it’s just that one of the girls fell against it and some strings (which I used later) were pulled out, snapped or something. Into the phone I’m saying, “I need more tax breaks.” Patty Winters is on the TV screen asking a child, eight or nine, “But isn’t that just another term for an orgy?” The timer buzzes on the microwave. I’m heating up a soufflé.

There’s no use in denying it: this has been a bad week. I’ve started drinking my own urine. I laugh spontaneously at nothing. Sometimes I sleep under my futon. I’m flossing my teeth constantly until my gums are aching and my mouth tastes like blood. Before dinner last night at 1500 with Reed Goodrich and Jason Rust I was almost caught at a Federal Express in Times Square trying to send the mother of one of the girls I killed last week what might be a dried-up, brown heart. And to Evelyn I successfully Federal Expressed, through the office, a small box of flies along with a note, typed by Jean, saying that I never,
ever
wanted to see her face again and, though she doesn’t really need one, to go on a fucking diet. But there are also things that the average person would think are nice that I’ve done to celebrate the holiday, items I’ve bought Jean and had delivered to her apartment this morning: Castellini cotton napkins from Bendel’s, a wicker chair from Jenny B. Goode, a taffeta table throw from Barney’s, a vintage chain-mail-vent purse and a vintage sterling silver dresser set from Macy’s, a white pine whatnot from Conran’s, an Edwardian nine-carat-gold “gate” bracelet from Bergdorf’s and hundreds upon hundreds of pink and white roses.

The office. Lyrics to Madonna songs keep intruding, bursting into my head, announcing themselves in tiring, familiar ways, and I stare into space, my eyes lazily lit up while I try to forget about the day looming before me, but then a phrase that fills me with a nameless dread keeps interrupting the Madonna songs—
isolated farmhouse
constantly returns to me, over and over. Someone I’ve been avoiding for the last year, a nerd from
Fortune
who wants to write an article about me, calls again this morning and I end up calling the reporter back to arrange an interview. Craig McDermott is having some kind of fax frenzy and won’t take any of my phone calls, preferring to communicate by fax only. The
Post
this morning says the remains of three bodies that disappeared aboard a yacht last March have been recovered, frozen in ice, hacked up and bloated, in the East River; some maniac is going around the city poisoning one-liter bottles of Evian water, seventeen dead already; talk of zombies, the public mood, increasing randomness, vast chasms of misunderstanding.

And, for the sake of form, Tim Price resurfaces, or at least I’m pretty sure he does. While I’m at my desk simultaneously crossing out the days in my calendar that have already passed and reading a new best seller about office management called
Why It Works to Be a Jerk
, Jean buzzes in, announcing that Tim Price wants to talk, and fearfully I say, “Send him … in.” Price strolls into the office wearing a wool suit by Canali Milano, a cotton shirt by Ike Behar, a silk tie by Bill Blass, cap-toed leather lace-ups from Brooks Brothers. I’m pretending to be on the phone. He sits down, across from me, on the other side of the
Palazzetti glass-top desk. There’s a smudge on his forehead or at least that’s what I think I see. Aside from that he looks remarkably fit. Our conversation probably resembles something like this but is actually briefer.

“Price,” I say, shaking his hand. “Where have you been?”

“Oh, just making the rounds.” He smiles. “But hey, I’m back.”

“Far out.” I shrug, confused. “How was … it?”

“It was … surprising.” He shrugs too. “It was … depressing.”

“I thought I saw you in Aspen,” I murmur.

“Hey, how are you, Bateman?” he asks.

“I’m okay,” I tell him, swallowing. “Just … existing.”

“And Evelyn?” he asks. “How is she?”

“Well, we broke up.” I smile.

“That’s too bad.” He takes this in, remembers something. “Courtney?”

“She married Luis.”

“Grassgreen?”

“No. Carruthers.”

He takes this in too. “Do you have her number?”

While writing it down for him, I mention, “You’ve been gone, like, forever, Tim. What’s the story?” I ask, again noticing the smudge on his forehead, though I get the feeling that if I asked someone else if it was truly there, he (or she) would just say no.

He stands up, takes the card. “I’ve been back. You just probably missed me. Lost track. Because of the move.” He pauses, teasingly. “I’m working for Robinson. Right-hand man, you know?”

“Almond?” I ask, offering one, a futile effort on my part to mask my dismay at his smugness.

He pats my back, says, “You’re a madman, Bateman. An animal. A total animal.”

“I can’t disagree.” I laugh weakly, walking him to the door. As he leaves I’m wondering and not wondering what happens in the world of Tim Price, which is really the world of most of us: big ideas, guy stuff, boy meets the world, boy gets it.

I’m coming back from Central Park where, near the children’s zoo, close to the spot I murdered the McCaffrey boy, I fed portions of Ursula’s brain to passing dogs. Walking down Fifth Avenue around four o’clock in the afternoon, everyone on the street looks sad, the air is full of decay, bodies lie on the cold pavement, miles of it, some are moving, most are not. History is sinking and only a very few seem dimly aware that things are getting bad. Airplanes fly low across the city, crossing in front of the sun. Winds shoot up Fifth, then funnel down Fifty-seventh Street. Flocks of pigeons rise in slow motion and burst up against the sky. The smell of burning chestnuts mixes with carbon monoxide fumes. I notice the skyline has changed only recently. I look up, admiringly, at Trump Tower, tall, proudly gleaming in the late afternoon sunlight. In front of it two smartass nigger teenagers are ripping off tourists at three-card monte and I have to fight the impulse to blow them away.

A bum I blinded one spring sits cross-legged on a ratty blanket near the corner of Fifty-fifth Street. Moving closer I see the beggar’s scarred face and then the sign he’s holding beneath it, which reads
VIETNAM VET BLINDED IN VIETNAM. PLEASE HELP ME. WE ARE HUNGRY AND HOMELESS
. We? Then I notice the dog, who is already eyeing me suspiciously and, as I approach its master, gets up, growling, and when I’m standing over the bum, it finally barks, wagging its tail frantically. I kneel down, threateningly raise a hand at it. The dog backs off, its paws askew.

I’ve pulled out my wallet, pretending to drop a dollar into his empty coffee can, but then realize: Why bother pretending? No one’s watching anyway, definitely not
him.
I retract the dollar, leaning in. He senses my presence and stops shaking the can. The sunglasses he wears don’t even begin to cover the wounds I inflicted. His nose is so junked up I can’t imagine a person breathing through it.

“You never were in Vietnam,” I whisper in his ear.

After a silence, during which he pisses in his pants, the dog whimpering, he croaks, “Please … don’t hurt me.”

“Why would I waste my time?” I mutter, disgusted.

I move away from the bum, noticing, instead, a little girl smoking a cigarette, begging for change outside Trump Tower. “Shoo,” I say. She says “Shoo” back. On
The Patty Winters Show
this morning a Cheerio sat in a very small chair and was interviewed for close to an hour. Later this afternoon, a woman wearing a silver fox and mink coat has her face slashed in front of the Stanhope by an enraged fur activist. But now, still staring at the sightless bum from across the street, I buy a Dove Bar, a coconut one, in which I find part of a bone.