"Oh, Patrick," she's saying. "You're still the same. I don't know if that's good or bad."
"Say it's good."
"Why? Is it?" she asks, frowning. "Was it? Then?"
"You only knew one facet of my personality," I say. "Student."
"Lover?" she asks, her voice reminding me of someone human.
My eyes fall on her coldly, untouched. Out on the street, music that sounds like salsa blares. The waiter finally brings the check.
"I'll pay for it," I sigh.
"No," she says, opening her handbag. "I invited you."
"But I have a platinum American Express card," I tell her.
"But so do I," she says, smiling.
I pause, then watch her place the card on the tray the check came on. Violent convulsions seem close at hand if I do not get up. "The women's movement. Wow." I smile, unimpressed.
Outside, she waits on the sidewalk while I'm in the men's room throwing up my lunch, spitting out the squid, undigested and less purple than it was on my plate. When I come out of Vanities onto the street, putting on my Wayfarers, chewing a Cert, I murmur something to myself, and then I kiss her on the cheek and make up something else. "Sorry it took so long. Had to call my lawyer."
"Oh?" She acts concerned – the dumb bitch.
'Just a friend of mine." I shrug. "Bobby Chambers. He's in prison. Some friends of his, well, mainly me, are trying to remount his defense," I say with another shrug, then, changing the subject, "Listen."
"Yes?" she asks, smiling.
"It's late. I don't want to go back to the office," I say, checking my Rolex. The sun, setting, glints off it, momentarily blinding her. "Why don't you come up to my place?"
"What?" She laughs.
"Why don't you come up to my place?" I suggest again.
"Patrick." She laughs suggestively. "Are you serious?"
"I have a bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé, chilled, huh?" I say, arching my eyebrows.
"Listen, that line might've worked at Harvard but" – she laughs, then continues – "um, we're older now and. . ." She stops.
"And… what?" I ask.
"I shouldn't have had that wine at lunch," she says again.
We start walking. It's a hundred degrees outside, impossible to breathe. It's not day, it's not night. The sky seems yellow. I hand a beggar on the cornea of Duane and Greenwich a dollar just to impress her.
"Listen, come over," I say again, almost whining. "Come on over."
"I can t," she says. "The air-conditioning in my office is broken but I can't. I'd like to but I can't."
"Aw come on," I say, grabbing her shoulders, giving them a good-natured squeeze.
"Patrick, I have to be back at the office," she groans, protesting weakly.
"But you'll be sweltering in there," I point out.
"I have no choice."
"Come on." Then, trying to entice her, "I have a 1940s Durgin Gorham four-piece sterling silver tea and coffee set I'd like to show you."
"I can't." She laughs, putting on her sunglasses.
"Bethany," I say, warning her.
"Listen," she says, relenting. "I'll buy you a Dove Bar. Have a Dove Bar instead."
"I'm appalled. Do you know how many grams of fat, of sodium, are in the chocolate covering alone?" I gasp, mock horrified.
"Come on," she says. "You don't need to worry about that."
"No, you come on," I say, walking in front of her for a little while so she won't sense any aggressiveness on my part. "Listen, come by for a drink and then we'll walk over to Dorsia and I'll meet Robert, okay?" I turn around, still walking, but backward now. "Please?"
"Patrick," she says. "You're begging."
"I really want to show you that Durgin Gorham tea set." I pause. "Please?" I pause again. "It cost me three and a half thousand dollars."
She stops walking because I stop, looks down, and when she looks back up her brow, both cheeks, are damp with a layer of perspiration, a fine sheen. She's hot. She sighs, smiling to herself. She looks at her watch.
"Well?" I ask.
"If I did…," she starts.
"Ye-e-es?" I ask, stretching the word out.
"If I did, I have to make a phone call."
"No, negative," I say, waving down a cab. "Call from my place."
"Patrick," she protests. "There's a phone right over there."
"Let's go now," I say. "There's a taxi."
In the cab heading toward the Upper West Side, she says, "I shouldn't have had that wine."
"Are you drunk?"
"No," she says, fanning herself with a playbill from Les Misérables someone left in the backseat of the cab, which isn't air-conditioned and even with both windows open she keeps fanning herself. "Just slightly… tipsy.."
We both laugh for no reason and she leans into me, then realizes something and pulls back. "You have a doorman, right?" she asks suspiciously.
"Yes." I smile, turned on by her unawareness of just how close to peril she really is.
Inside my apartment. She moves into the living room area, nodding her head approvingly, murmuring, "Very nice, Mr. Bateman, very nice." Meanwhile I'm locking the door, making sure it's bolted shut, then I move over to the bar and pour some J&B into a glass while she runs her hand over the Wurlitzer jukebox, inspecting it. I've started growling to myself and my hands are shaking so badly I decide to forgo any ice and then I'm in the living room, standing behind her while she looks up at the David Onica that's hung above the fireplace. She cocks her head, studying it, then she starts giggling and looks at me, puzzled, then back at the Onica, still laughing. I don't ask what's wrong – I could care less. Downing the drink in a single gulp, I move over to the Anaholian white-oak armoire where I keep a brand-new nail gun I bought last week at a hardware store near my office in Wall Street. After I've slipped on a pair of black leather gloves, I make sure the nail gun is loaded.
"Patrick?" Bethany asks, still giggling.
"Yes?" I say, then, "Darling?"
"Who hung the Onica?" she asks.
"You like it?" I ask.
"It's fine, but…" She stops, then says, "I'm pretty sure it's hung upside down."
"What?"
"Who hung the Onica?"
"I did," I say, my back still to her.
"You've hung the Onica upside down." She laughs.
"Hmmm?" I'm standing at the armoire, squeezing the nail gun, getting used to its weight in my gloved fist.
"I can't believe it's upside down," she says. "How long has it been this way?"
"A millennium," I whisper, turning around, nearing her.
"What?" she asks, still studying the Onica.
"I said, what in the fuck are you doing with Robert Hall?" I whisper.
"What did you say?" As if in slow motion, like in a movie, she turns around.
I wait until she's seen the nail gun and the gloved hands to scream, "What the fuck are you doing with Robert Hall?"
Perhaps on instinct, perhaps from memory, she makes a futile dash for the front door, crying out. Though the chardonnay has dulled her reflexes, the Scotch I've drunk has sharpened mine, and effortlessly I'm leaping in front of her, blocking her escape, knocking her unconscious with four blows to the head from the nail gun. I drag her back into the living room, laying her across the floor over a white Voilacutro cotton sheet, and then I stretch her arms out, placing her hands flat on thick wooden boards, palms up, and nail three fingers on each hand, at random, to the wood by their tips. This causes her to regain consciousness and she starts screaming. After I've sprayed Mace into her eyes, mouth, into her nostrils, I place a camel-hair coat from Ralph Lauren over her head, which drowns out the screams, sort of. I keep shooting nails into her hands until they're both covered – nails bunched together, twisted over each other in places, making it impossible for her to try and sit up. I have to remove her shoes, which slightly disappoints me, but she's kicking at the floor violently, leaving black scuff marks on the stained white oak. During this period I keep shouting "You bitch" at her and then my voice drops to a raspy whisper and into her ear I drool the line "You fucking cunt."