He's standing in the stall, his back to me, wearing a cashmere blazer, pleated wool trousers, a cotton-silk white shirt, pissing into the toilet. I can tell he senses movement in the stall because he stiffens noticeably and the sound of his urine hitting water stops abruptly in midstream. In slow motion, my own heavy breathing blocking out all other sounds, my vision blurring slightly around the edges, my hands move up over the collar of his cashmere blazer and cotton-flannel shirt, circling his neck until my thumbs meet at the nape and my index fingers touch each other just above Luis's Adam's apple. I start to squeeze, tightening my grip, but it's loose enough to let Luis turn around – still in slow motion – so he can stand facing me, one hand over his wool and silk Polo sweater, the other hand reaching up. His eyelids flutter for an instant, then widen, which is exactly what I want. I want to see Luis's face contort and turn purple and I want him to know who it is who is killing him. I want to be the last face, the last thing, that Luis sees before he dies and I want to cry out, "I'm fucking Courtney. Do you hear me? I'm fucking Courtney. Ha-ha-ha," and have these be the last words, the last sounds he hears until his own gurglings, accompanied by the crunching of his trachea, drown everything else out. Luis stares at me and I tense the muscles in my arms, preparing myself for a struggle that, disappointingly, never comes.
Instead he looks down at my wrists and for a moment wavers, as if he's undecided about something, and then he lowers 'his head and… kisses my left wrist, and when he looks back up at me, shyly, it's with an expression that's… loving and only part awkward. His right hand reaches up and tenderly touches the side of my face. I stand there, frozen, my arms still stretched out in front of me, fingers still circled around Luis's throat.
"God, Patrick,.. he whispers. "Why here?"
His hand is playing with my hair now. I look over at the side of the stall, where someone has scratched into the paint Edwin gives marvelous head, and I'm still paralyzed in this position and gazing at the words, confused, studying the frame surrounding the words as if that contained an answer, a truth. Edwin? Edwin who? I shake my head to clear it and look back at Luis, who has this horrible, love-struck grin plastered on his face, and I try to squeeze harder, my face twisted with exertion, but I can't do it, my hands won't tighten, and my arms, still stretched out, look ludicrous and useless in their fixed position.
"I've seen you looking at me," he says, panting. "I've noticed your" – he gulps – "hot body."
He tries to kiss me on the lips but I back away, into the stall door, accidentally closing it. I drop my hands from Luis's neck and he takes them and immediately places them back. I drop them once again and stand there contemplating my next move, but I'm immobile.
"Don't be… shy," he says.
I take a deep breath, close my eyes, count to ten, open them and make a helpless attempt to lift my arms back up to strangle Luis, but they feel weighed down and lifting them becomes an impossible task.
"You don't know how long I've wanted it…" He's sighing, rubbing my shoulders, trembling. "Ever since that Christmas party at Arizona 206. You know the one, you were wearing that red striped paisley Armani tie."
For the first time I notice his pants are still unzipped and calmly and without difficulty I turn out of the stall and move over to a sink to wash my hands, but my gloves are still on and I don't want to take them off. The bathroom at the Yale Club suddenly seems to me to be the coldest room in the universe and I shudder involuntarily. Luis trails behind, touching my jacket, leaning next to me at the sink.
"I want you," he says in a low, faggoty whisper and when I slowly turn my head to glare at him, while hunched over the sink, seething, my eye contact radiating revulsion, he adds, "too."
I storm out of the men's room, bumping into Brewster Whipple, I think. I smile at the maître d' and after shaking his hand I make a run for the closing elevator but I'm too late and I cry out, pounding a fist against the doors, cursing. Composing myself, I notice the maître d' conferring with a waiter, the two of them looking my way questioningly, and so I straighten up, smile shyly and wave at them. Luis strides over calmly, still grinning, flushed, and I just stand there and let him walk up to me. He says nothing.
"What… is… it?" I finally hiss.
"Where are you going?" he whispers, bewildered.
"I… I've gotta…" Stumped, I look around the crowded dining room, then back at Luis's quivering, yearning face. "I've gotta return some videotapes," I say, jabbing at the elevator button, then, my patience shot, I start to walk away and head back toward my table.
"Patrick," he calls out.
I whirl around. "What?"
He mouths "I'll call you" with this expression on his face that lets me know, that assures me, my "secret" is safe with him. "Oh my god," I practically gag, and shaking visibly I sit back at our table, completely defeated, my gloves still on, and gulp down the rest of a watery J&B on the rocks. As soon as I've seated myself Van Patten asks, "Hey Bateman, what's the right way to wear a tie bar or clasp?"
"While a tie holder is by no means required businesswear, it adds to a clean, neat overall appearance. But the accessory shouldn't dominate the tie. Choose a simple gold bar or a small clip and place it at the lower end of the tie at a downward forty-five-degree angle."
Killing Dog
Courtney calls, too wasted on Elavil to meet me for a coherent dinner at Cranes, the new Kitty Oates Sanders restaurant in Gramercy Park where Jean, my secretary, made reservations for us last week, and I'm nonplussed. Even though it got excellent reviews (one in New York magazine; the other in The Nation) I don't complain or persuade Courtney to change her mind since I have two files I should go over and The Patty Winters Show I taped this morning hasn't been watched yet. It's sixty minutes about women who've had mastectomies, which at seven-thirty, over breakfast, before the office, I couldn't bear to sit through, but after today – hanging out at the office, where the air-conditioning broke down, a tedious lunch with Cunningham at Odeon, my fucking Chinese cleaners unable to get bloodstains out of another Soprani jacket, four videotapes overdue that ended up costing me a fortune, a twenty-minute wait at the Stairmasters – I've adapted; these events have toughened me and I'm prepared to deal with this particular topic.
Two thousand abdominal crunches and thirty minutes of rope jumping in the living room, the Wurlitzer jukebox blasting "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" over and over, even though I worked out in the gym today for close to two hours. After this I get dressed to pick up groceries at D'Agostino's: blue jeans by Armani, a white Polo shirt, an Armani sport coat, no tie, hair slicked back with Thompson mousse; since it's drizzling, a pair of black waterproof lace-ups by Manolo Blahnik; three knives and two guns carried in a black Epi leather attaché case ($3,200) by Louis Vuitton; because it's cold and I don't want to fuck up my manicure, a pair of Armani deerskin gloves. Finally, a belted trench coat in black leather by Cianfranco Ferré that cost four thousand dollars. Though it's only a short walk to D'Agostino's, I put on a CD Walkman anyway, with the long version of Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead or Alive" already in it. I grab an Etro wood-handled paisley umbrella from Bergdorf Goodman, three hundred dollars on sale, off a newly installed umbrella rack in the closet near the entranceway and I'm out the door.
After the office I worked out at Xclusive and once home made obscene phone calls to young Dalton girls, the numbers I chose coming from the register I stole a copy of from the administration office when I broke in last Thursday night. "I'm a corporate raider," I whispered lasciviously into the cordless phone. "I orchestrate hostile takeovers. What do you think of that?" and I would pause before making sucking noises, freakish piglike grunts, and then ask, "Huh, bitch?" Most of the time I could tell they were frightened and this pleased me greatly, enabled me to maintain a strong, pulsing erection for the duration of the phone calls, until one of the girls, Hilary Wallace, asked, unfazed, "Dad, is that you?" and whatever enthusiasm I'd built up plummeted. Vaguely disappointed, I made a few more calls, but only halfheartedly, opening today's mail while doing so, and I finally hung up in midsentence when I came across a personalized reminder from Clifford, the guy who helps me at Armani, that there was a private sale at the boutique on Madison… two weeks ago! and though I figured out that one of the doormen probably withheld the card to piss me off, it still doesn't erase the fact that I missed the fucking sale, and dwelling over this loss while wandering down Central Park West somewhere around Seventy-sixth, Seventy-fifth, it strikes me profoundly that the world is more often than not a bad and cruel place.