After skinny-dipping in the ocean late at night, we would come into the house, shivering, draped in huge Ralph Lauren towels, and we'd make omelets and noodles tossed with olive oil and truffles and porcini mushrooms; we'd make soufflés with poached pears and cinnamon fruit salads, grilled polenta with peppered salmon, apple and berry sorbet, mascarpone, red beans with arrozo wrapped in romaine lettuce, bowls of salsa and skate poached in balsamic vinegar, chilled tomato soup and risottos flavored with beets and lime and asparagus and mint, and we drank lemonade or champagne or well-aged bottles of Château Margaux. But soon we stopped lifting weights together and wing laps and Evelyn would eat only the dietetic chocolate trues that NutraSweet hadn't eaten, complaining about weight she hadn't gained. Some nights I would find my self roaming the beaches, digging up baby crabs and eating handfuls of sand – this was in the middle of the night when the sky was so clear I could see the entire solar system and the sand, lit by it, seemed almost lunar in scale. I even dragged a beached jellyfish back to the house and microwaved it early one morning, predawn, while Evelyn slept, and what I didn't eat of it I fed to the chow.
Sipping bourbon, then champagne, from cactus-etched highball glasses, which Evelyn would set on adobe coasters and into which she would stir raspberry cassis with papier-mâché jalapeño-shaped stirrers, I would lie around, fantasizing about killing someone with an Allsop Racer ski pole, or I would stare at the antique weather vane that hung above one of the fireplaces, wondering wild-eyed if I could stab anyone with it, then I'd complain aloud, whether Evelyn was in the room or not, that we should have made reservations at Dick Loudon's Stratford Inn instead. Evelyn soon started talking only about spas and cosmetic surgery and then she hired a masseur, some scary faggot who lived down the road with a famous book publisher and who flirted openly with me. Evelyn went back to the city three times that last week we were in the Hamptons, once for a manicure and a pedicure and a facial, the second time for a one-on-one training session at Stephanie Herman, and finally to meet with her astrologer.
"Why helicopter in?" I asked in a whisper.
"What do you want me to do?" she shrieked, popping another dietetic true into her mouth. "Rent a Volvo?"
While she was gone I would vomit – just to do it – into the rustic terra-cotta jars that lined the patio in front or I would drive into town with the scary masseur and collect razor blades. At night I'd place a faux-concrete and aluminum-wire sconce by Jerry Kott over Evelyn's head and since she'd be so knocked out on Halcion she wouldn't brush it off, and though I laughed at this, while the sconce rose evenly with her deep breathing, soon it made me sad and I stopped placing the sconce over Evelyn's head.
Everything failed to subdue me. Soon everything seemed dulclass="underline" another sunrise, the lives of heroes, falling in love, war, the discoveries people made about each other. The only thing that didn't bore me, obviously enough, was how much money Tim Price made, and yet in its obviousness it did. There wasn't a clear, identifiable emotion within me, except for greed and, possibly, total disgust. I had all the characteristics of a human being – flesh, blood, skin, hair – but my depersonalization was so intense, had gone so deep, that the normal ability to feel compassion had been eradicated, the victim of a slow, purposeful erasure. I was simply imitating reality, a rough resemblance of a human being, with only a dim corner of my mind functioning. Something horrible was happening and yet I couldn't figure out why – I couldn't put my finger on it. The only thing that calmed me was the satisfying sound of ice being dropped into a glass of J&B. Eventually I drowned the chow, which Evelyn didn't miss; she didn't even notice its absence, not even when I threw it in the walk-in freezer, wrapped in one of her sweaters from Bergdorf Goodman. We had to leave the Hamptons because I would find myself standing over our bed in the hours before dawn, with an ice pick gripped in my fist, waiting for Evelyn to open her eyes. At my suggestion, one morning over breakfast, she agreed, and on the last Sunday before Labor Day we returned to Manhattan by helicopter.
Girls
"I thought the pinto beans with salmon and mint were really, really… you know," Elizabeth says, walking into the living room of my apartment and in one graceful movement kicking off both satin and suede Maud Frizon pumps and flopping onto the couch, "good, but Patrick, my god it was expensive and," then, bristling, she bitches, "it was only pseudo nouvelle."
"Was it my imagination or were there goldfish on the tables?" I ask, undoing my Brooks Brothers suspenders while searching the refrigerator for a bottle of sauvignon blanc. "Anyway, I thought it was hip."
Christie has taken a seat on the long, wide sofa, away from Elizabeth, who stretches out lazily.
"Hip, Patrick?" she calls out. "Donald Trump eats there."
I locate the bottle and stand it on the counter and, before finding a wine opener, stare at her blankly from across the room. "Yes? Is this a sarcastic comment?"
"Guess," she moans and follows it with a "Duh" so loud that Christie flinches.
"Where are you working now, Elizabeth?" I ask, closing drawers. "Polo outlet or something?"
Elizabeth cracks up at this and says blithely, while I uncork the Acacia, "I don't have to work, Bateman," and after a beat she adds, bored, "You of all people should know how that feels, Mr. Wall Street." She's checking her lipstick in a Gucci compact; predictably it looks perfect.
Changing the subject, I ask, "Who chose that place anyway?" I pour the two girls wine and then make myself a J&B on the rocks with a little water. "The restaurant, I mean."
"Carson did. Or maybe Robert." Elizabeth shrugs and then after snapping the compact shut, staring intently at Christie, asks, "You look really familiar. Did you go to Dalton?"
Christie shakes her head no. It's almost three in the morning. I'm grinding up a tab of Ecstasy and watching it dissolve in the wineglass I plan to hand Elizabeth. This morning's topic on The Patty Winters Show was People Who Weigh Over Seven Hundred Pounds – What Can We Do About Them? I switch on the kitchen lights, find two more tabs of the drug in the freezer, then shut the lights off.
Elizabeth is a twenty-year-old hardbody who sometimes models in Georges Marciano ads and who comes from an old Virginia banking family. We had dinner earlier tonight with two friends of hers, Robert Farrell, twenty-seven, a guy who's had a rather sketchy career as a financier, and Carson Whitall, who was Robert's date. Robert wore a wool suit by Belvest, a cotton shirt with French cuffs by Charvet, an abstract-patterned silk-crepe tie by Hugo Boss and sunglasses by Ray-Ban that he insisted on wearing during the meal. Carson wore a suit by Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche and a pearl necklace with matching pearl and diamond earrings by Harry Winston. We had dinner at Free Spin, the new Albert Lioman restaurant in the Flatiron district, then took the limousine to Nell's, where I excused myself, assuring an irate Elizabeth I'd be right back, and directed the chauffeur to the meat-packing district, where I picked up Christie. I made her wait in the back of the locked limousine while I reentered Nell's and had drinks with Elizabeth and Carson and Robert in one of the booths up front, empty since the place had no celebrities in it tonight – a bad sign. Finally, at two-thirty, while Carson bragged drunkenly about her monthly flower bill, Elizabeth and I split. She was so pissed off about something Carson told her was in the latest issue of W that she didn't even question Christie's presence.