Courtney, McDermott and I have just left a Morgan Stanley party that took place near the Seaport at the tip of Manhattan in a new club called Goldcard, which seemed like a vast city of its own and where I ran into Walter Rhodes, a total Canadian, whom I haven't seen since Exeter and who also, like McDermott, reeked of Xeryus, and I actually told him, "Listen, I'm trying to stay away from people. I'm avoiding even speaking to them," and then I asked to be excused. Only slightly stunned, Walter said, "Uh, sure, I, um, understand." I'm wearing a six-button double-breasted wool-crepe tuxedo with pleated trousers and a silk grosgrain bow tie, all by Valentino. Luis Carruthers is in Atlanta for the week. I did a line of coke with Herbert Gittes at Goldcard and before McDermott hailed this cab to head for Nell's I took a Halcion to get rid of the edge from the cocaine, but it hasn't sunk in yet. Courtney seems attracted to McDermott and since her Chembank card wasn't functioning tonight, at least not at the automated teller we stopped at (the reason being she uses it too often to cut lines of coke with, though she would never admit this; cocaine residue has, at various times, fucked up my card also) and McDermott's was working, she bypassed mine in favor of his, which means, knowing Courtney, that she wants to fuck McDermott. But it doesn't really matter. Even though I'm more handsome than Craig, we both look pretty much the same. Talking animals were the topic of this morning's Patty Winters Show. An octopus was floating in a makeshift aquarium with a microphone attached to one of its tentacles and it kept asking – or so its "trainer," who is positive that mollusks have vocal cords, assured us – for "cheese." I watched, vaguely transfixed, until I started to sob. A beggar dressed as a Hawaiian frets over a garbage can on the darkened corner of Eighth and Tenth.
"With distilled or purified water," McDermott is saying, "most of the minerals have been removed. The water has been boiled and the steam condensed into purified water."
"Wheras distilled water has a flat taste and it's usually not for drinking." I find myself yawning.
"And mineral water?" Courtney asks.
"It's not defined by the–" McDermott and I start simultaneously.
"Go ahead," I say, yawning again, causing Courtney to yawn also.
"No, you go ahead," he says apathetically.
"It's not defined by the FDA," I tell her. "It has no chemicals or salts or sugars or caffeine."
"And sparkling water gets its fizz from carbon dioxide, right?" she asks.
"Yes." Both McDermott and I nod, staring straight ahead.
"I knew that," she says hesitantly, and by the tone of her voice I can sense, without looking over, that she probably smiles when she says this.
"But only buy naturally sparkling water," I caution. "Because that means the carbon dioxide content is in the water at its source."
"Club soda and seltzer, for example, are artificially carbonated," McDermott explains.
"White Rock seltzer is an exception," I mention, nonplussed by McDermott's ridiculous, incessant one-upmanship. "Ramlösa sparkling mineral water is also very good."
The cab is about to turn onto Fourteenth street, but maybe four or five limousines are trying to make the same right so we miss the light. I curse the driver but an old Motown song from the sixties, maybe it's the Supremes, plays muted, up front, the sound blocked by the fiberglass partition. I try to open it but it's locked and won't slide across. Courtney asks, "What kind should you drink after exercising?"
"Well," I sigh. "Whatever it is, it should be really cold."
"Because?" she asks.
"Because it's absorbed faster than if it was at room temperature." Absently I check my Rolex. "It should probably be water. Evian. But not in plastic."
"My trainer says Gatorade's okay," McDermott counters.
"But don't you hunk water is the best fluid replacer since it enters the bloodstream faster than and other liquid?" I can't help but add, "Buddy?"
I check my watch again. If I have one J&B on the rocks at Nell's I can make it home in time to watch all of Bloodhungry by two. Again it's silent in the cab, which moves steadily toward the crowd outside the club, the limousines dropping off passengers then moving on, each of us concentrating on that, and also on the sky above the city, which is heavy, looming with dark clouds. The limousines keep blaring their horns at each other, solving nothing. My throat, because of the coke I did with Gittes, feels parched and I swallow, trying to wet it. Posters for a sale at Crabtree & Evelyn line the boarded windows of abandoned tenement. buildings on the other side of this street. Spell "mogul," Bateman. How do you spell mogul? M-o-g-u-l. Mo-gul. Mog-ul. Ice, ghosts, aliens–
"I don't like Evian," McDermott says somewhat sadly. "It's too sweet." He looks so miserable when he admits this that it moves me to agree.
Glancing over at him in the darkness of the cab, realizing he's probably going to end up in bed with Courtney tonight, I feel an instantaneous moment of pity for him.
"Yes. McDermott," I say slowly. "Evian is too sweet."
Earlier, there was so much of Bethany's blood pooled on the floor that I could make out my reflection in it while I reached for one of my cordless phones, and I watched myself make a haircut appointment at Gio's. Courtney breaks my trance by admitting, "I was afraid to try Pellegrino for the first time." She looks over at me nervously – expecting me to… what, agree? – then at McDermott, who offers her a wan, tight smile. "But once I did, it was… fine."
"How courageous," I murmur, yawning again, the cab inching its way toward Nell's, then, raising my voice, "Listen, does anyone know of a device you can hook up to your phone to simulate that call-waiting sound?"
Back at my place I stand over Bethany's body, sipping a drink contemplatively, studying its condition. Both eyelids are open halfway and her lower teeth look as if they're jutting out since her lips have been torn – actually bitten – off. Earlier in the day I had sawed off her left arm, which is what finally killed her, and right now I pick it up, holding it by the bone that protrudes from where her hand used to be (I have no idea where it is now: the freezer? the closet?), clenching it in my fist like a pipe, flesh and muscle still clinging to it though a lot of it has been hacked or gnawed off, and I bring it down on her head. It takes very few blows, five or six at most, to smash her jaw open completely, and only two more for her face to cave in on itself.
Whitney Houston
Whitney Houston burst onto the music scene in 1985 with her self-titled LP which had four number one hit singles on it, including "The Greatest Love of All," "You Give Good Love" and "Saving All My Love for You," plus it won a Grammy Award for best pop vocal performance by a female and two American Music Awards, one for best rhythm and blues single and another for best rhythm and blues video. She was also cited as best new artist of the year by Billboard and by Rolling Stone magazine. With all this hype one might expect the album to be an anticlimactic, lackluster affair, but the surprise is that Whitney Houston (Arista) is one of the warmest, most complex and altogether satisfying rhythm and blues records of the decade and Whitney herself has a voice that defies belief. From the elegant, beautiful photo of her on the cover of the album (in a gown by Giovanne De Maura) and its fairly sexy counterpart on the back (in a bathing suit by Norma Kaman) one knows that this isn't going to be a blandly professional affair; the record is smooth but intense and Whitney's voice leaps across so many boundaries and is so versatile (though she's mainly a jazz singer) that it's hard to take in the album on a first listening. But you won't want to. You'll want to savor it over many.