I'm trying to catch a glimpse of our hardbody waitress; she's bending over to pick up a dropped napkin. Without looking back at Evelyn, I ask, "Do… what?"
"Get married," she says, blinking. "Have a wedding."
"Evelyn?"
"Yes darling?"
"Is your kir… spiked?" I ask.
"We should do it," she says softly. "Patrick…"
"Are you proposing to me?" I laugh, trying to fathom this reasoning. I take the champagne glass away from her and sniff its rim.
"Patrick?" she asks, waiting for my answer.
"Jeez, Evelyn," I say, stuck. "I don't know."
"Why not?" she asks petulantly. "Give me one good reason we shouldn't."
"Because trying to fuck you is like trying to French-kiss a very… small and… lively gerbil?" I tell her. "I don't know."
"Yes?" she says. "And?"
"With braces?" I finish, shrugging.
"What are you going to do?" she asks. "Wait three years until you're thirty?"
"Four years," I say, glaring. "It's four years until I'm thirty."
"Four years. Three years. Three months. Oh god, what's the difference? You'll still be an old man." She takes her hand away from mine. "You know, you wouldn't be saying this if you'd been to Jayne Simpson's wedding. You'd take one look at it and want to marry me immediately."
"But I was at Jayne Simpson's wedding, Evelyn, love of my life," I say. "I was seated next to Sukhreet Gabel. Believe me, I was there."
"You're impossible," she whines. "You're a party pooper."
"Or maybe I didn't," I wonder aloud. "Maybe I… was it covered by MTV?"
"And their honeymoon was so romantic. Two hours later they were on the Concorde. To London. Oh, Claridge's." Evelyn sighs, her hand clasped under her chin, eyes tearing.
Ignoring her, I reach into my pocket for a cigar, pull it out and tap it against the table. Evelyn orders three flavors of sorbet: peanut, licorice and doughnut. I order a decaffeinated espresso. Evelyn sulks. I light a match.
"Patrick," she warns, staring at the flame.
"What?" I ask, my hand frozen in midair, about to light the tip of the cigar.
"You didn't ask permission," she says, unsmiling.
"Did I tell you I'm wearing sixty-dollar boxer shorts?" I ask, trying to appease her.
Tuesday
There's a black-tie party at the Puck Building tonight for a. new brand of computerized professional rowing machine, and after playing squash with Frederick Dibble I have drinks at Harry's with Jamie Conway, Kevin Wynn and Jason Gladwin, and we hop into the limousine Kevin rented for the night and take it uptown. I'm wearing a wing-collar jacquard waistcoat by Kilgour, French & Stanbury from Barney's, a silk bow tie from Sales, patent-leather slip-ons by Baker-Benjes, antique diamond studs from Kentshire Galleries and a gray wool silk-lined coat with drop sleeves and a button-down collar by Luciano Soprani. An ostrich wallet from Bosca carries four hundred dollars cash in the back pocket of my black wool trousers. Instead of my Rolex I'm wearing a fourteen-karat gold watch from H. Stern.
I wander aimlessly around the Puck Building's first-floor ballroom, bored, sipping bad champagne (could it be nonvintage Bollinger?) from plastic flutes, chewing on kiwi slices, each topped with a dollop of chèvre, vaguely looking around to score some cocaine. Instead of finding anyone who knows a dealer I bump into Courtney by the stairs. Wearing a silk and cotton stretch-tulle bodywrap with jeweled lace pants, she seems tense and warns me to stay away from Luis. She mentions that he suspects something. A cover band plays lame versions of old Motown hits from the sixties.
"Like what?" I ask, scanning the room. "That two plus two equals four? That you're secretly Nancy Reagan?"
"Don't have lunch with him next week at the Yale Club," she says, smiling for a photographer, the flash blinding us momentarily.
"You look… voluptuous tonight," I say, touching her neck, running a finger up over her chin until it reaches the bottom lip.
"I'm not joking, Patrick." Smiling, she waves to Luis, who is dancing clumsily with Jennifer Morgan. He's wearing a cream-colored wool dinner jacket, wool trousers, a cotton shirt, and a silk glen-plaid cummerbund, all from Hugo Boss, a bow tie from Sales and a pocket square from Paul Stuart. He waves back. I give him thumbs-up.
"What a dork," Courtney whispers sadly to herself.
"Listen, I'm leaving," I say, finishing the champagne. "Why don't you go dance with the… receptacle tip?"
"Where are you going?" she asks, gripping my arm.
"Courtney, I don't want to experience another one of your… emotional outbursts," I tell her. "Besides, the canapés are shitty."
"Where are you going?" she asks again. "Details, Mr. Bateman."
"Why are you so concerned?"
"Because I'd like to know," she says. "You're not going to Evelyn's, are you?"
"Maybe," I lie.
"Patrick," she says. "Don't leave me here. I don't want you to go."
"I have to return some videos," I lie again, handing her my empty champagne glass, just as another camera flashes somewhere. I walk away.
The band segues into a rousing version of "Life in the Fast Lane" and I start looking around for hardbodies. Charles Simpson – or someone who looks remarkably like him, slicked-back hair, suspenders, Oliver Peoples glasses – shakes my hand, shouts "Hey, Williams" and tells me to meet a group of people with Alexandra Craig at Nell's around midnight. I give him a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder and tell him I'll be there.
Outside, smoking a cigar, contemplating the sky, I spot Reed Thompson, who emerges from the Puck Building with his entourage – Jamie Conway, Kevin Wynn, Marcus Halberstam, no babes – and invites me along to dinner; and though I suspect they have drugs, I have misgivings about spending the evening with them and decide not to trek up to that Salvadorian bistro, especially since they don't have reservations and aren't guaranteed a table. I wave them off, then cross Houston, dodging other limos leaving the party, and start moving uptown. Walking along Broadway I stop at an automated teller where just for the hell of it I take out another hundred dollars, feeling better having an even five hundred in my wallet.
I find myself walking through the antique district below Fourteenth Street. My watch has stopped so I'm not sure what time it is, but probably ten-thirty or so. Black guys pass by offering crack or hustling tickets to a party at the Palladium. I walk by a newsstand, a dry cleaners, a church, a diner. The streets are empty; the only noise breaking up the silence is an occasional taxi cruising toward Union Square. A couple of skinny faggots walk by while I'm at a phone booth checking my messages, staring at my reflection in an antique store's window. One of them whistles at me, the other laughs: a high, fey, horrible sound A torn playbill from Les Misérables tumbles down the cracked, urine-stained sidewalk. A streetlamp burns out. Someone in a Jean-Paul Gaultier topcoat takes a piss in an alleyway. Steam rises from below the streets, billowing up in tendrils, evaporating. Bags of frozen garbage line the curbs. The moon, pale and low, hangs just above the tip of the Chrysler Building. Somewhere from over in the West Village the siren from an ambulance screams, the wind picks it up, it echoes then fades.
The bum, a black man, lies in the doorway of an abandoned antique store on Twelfth Street on top of an open grate, surrounded by bags of garbage and a shopping cart from Gristede's loaded with what I suppose are personal belongings: newspapers, bottles, aluminum cans. A handpainted cardboard sign attached to the front of the cart reads I AM HUNGRY AND HOMELESS PLEASE HELP ME. A dog, a small mutt, short-haired and rail thin, lies next to him, its makeshift leash tied to the handle of the grocery cart. I don't notice the dog the first time I pass by. It's only after I circle the block and come back that I see it lying on a pile of newspapers, guarding the bum, a collar around its neck with an oversize nameplate that reads GIZMO. The dog looks up at me wagging its skinny, pathetic excuse for a tail and when I hold out a gloved hand it licks at it hungrily. The stench of some kind of cheap alcohol mixed with excrement hangs here like a heavy, invisible cloud, and I have to hold my breath, before adjusting to the stink. The bum wakes up, opens his eyes, yawning, exposing remarkably stained teeth between cracked purple lips.