American Psycho (35 page)

“Things are worse at Sandstone,” I tell Sean later this afternoon, around four o’clock. He’s staying in our father’s suite at the Carlyle. MTV is blasting in the background, other voices shout over its din. I can hear a shower running.

“Like what? Mom ate her pillow? What?”

“I think we should have dinner,” I say.

“Dominique, cool it,” he says, then places his hand over the phone and mutters something, muffled.

“Hello, Sean? What’s going on?” I’m asking.

“I’ll call back,” he says, hanging up.

I happen to like the tie I bought Sean at Paul Smith last week and I’ve decided not to give it to him (though the idea of the asshole, say, hanging himself with it pleases me greatly). In fact
I
decide to wear it to the Quilted Giraffe tonight. Instead of the tie, I’m going to bring him a Casio QD-150 Quick-Dialer combination wristwatch, calculator and data bank. It dials touch-tone phones sonically when held up to a mouthpiece and it stores up to fifty names and numbers. I start laughing while putting this useless gift back into its box, thinking to myself that Sean doesn’t even
have
fifty acquaintances. He couldn’t even
name
fifty people.
The Patty Winters Show
this morning was about Salad Bars.

Sean calls at five from the Racquet Club and tells me to meet him at Dorsia tonight. He just talked to Brin, the owner, and reserved a table at nine. My mind is a mess. I don’t know what to think or how to feel.
The Patty Winters Show
this morning was about Salad Bars.

Later, Dorsia, nine-thirty: Sean is half an hour late. The
maître d’ refuses to seat me until my brother arrives. My worst fear—a reality. A prime booth across from the bar sits there, empty, waiting for Sean to grace it with his presence. My rage is controlled, barely, by a Xanax and an Absolut on the rocks. While taking a piss in the men’s room, I stare into a thin, web-like crack above the urinal’s handle and think to myself that if I were to disappear into that crack, say somehow miniaturize and slip into it, the odds are good that no one would notice I was gone. No … one … would … care. In fact some, if they noticed my absence, might feel an odd, indefinable sense of relief. This is true: the world is better off with some people gone. Our lives are
not
all interconnected. That theory is a crock. Some people truly do not
need
to be here. In fact one of them, my brother, Sean, is sitting in the booth he reserved when I come out of the men’s room after I’ve phoned the apartment and checked for messages (Evelyn’s suicidal, Courtney wants to buy a chow, Luis suggests dinner on Thursday). Sean is already chain-smoking, and I’m thinking to myself:
Damn
, why didn’t I request a table in the nonsmoking section? He’s shaking hands with the maître d’ as I walk over but doesn’t even bother to introduce us. I sit down and nod. Sean nods too, having already ordered a bottle of Cristal, knowing that I’m paying; also knowing, I’m sure, that
I
know he doesn’t drink champagne.

Sean, who is now twenty-three, went to Europe last fall, or at least this is what Charles Conroy said Sean told him, and though Charles
did
receive a substantial bill from the Plaza Athénée, the signature on the receipts didn’t match Sean’s and no one really seemed to know how long Sean was actually in France or even if he had spent real time there. Afterwards he bummed around, then reenrolled at Camden for about three weeks. Now he’s in Manhattan before flying to either Palm Beach or New Orleans. Predictably, tonight he’s alternately moody and insistently arrogant. He has also, I’ve just noticed, started to pluck his eyebrows. He no longer has only one. The overwhelming urge I have to mention this to him is quelled only by squeezing my hand into a fist so tightly that I break the skin on the palm of my hand and the biceps of my left arm bulges then rips through the cloth of the linen Armani shirt I have on.

“So you like this place?” he asks, grinning.

“My … favorite,” I joke through clenched teeth.

“Let’s order,” he says, not looking at me, waving to a hardbody, who brings over two menus and a wine list while smiling appreciatively at Sean, who in turn ignores her totally. I open the menu and—
damnit
—it’s not prix fixe, which means that Sean orders the lobster with caviar and peach ravioli as an appetizer and the blackened lobster with strawberry sauce as an entrée—the two most
expensive
items on the menu. I order the quail sashimi with grilled brioche and the baby soft-shell crabs with grape jelly. A hardbody opens the bottle of Cristal and pours it into crystal
tumblers
, which I guess is supposed to be cool. After she leaves, Sean notices me staring at him in a vaguely disapproving manner.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing,” I say.

“What … is … it … Pat
rick
?” He spaces the words out, obnoxiously.

“Lobster to start with?
And
for an entrée?”

“What do you want me to order? The Pringle Potato Chip appetizer?”

“
Two
lobsters?”

“These matchbooks are slightly larger than the lobster they serve here,” he says. “Besides, I’m not that hungry.”

“Even more of a reason.”

“I’ll fax you an apology.”

“Still, Sean.”

“Rock ’n’ roll—”

“I know, I know, rock ’n’ roll, deal with it, right?” I say, holding up a hand while sipping the champagne. I wonder if it’s not too late to ask one of the waitresses to bring a piece of cake over here with a candle in it—just to embarrass the shit out of him, to put the little bastard in his place—but instead I put the glass down and ask, “Listen, so, oh Jesus.” I breathe in, then force out, “What did you do today?”

“Played squash with Richard Lindquist.” He shrugs contemptuously. “Bought a tuxedo.”

“Nicholas Leigh and Charles Conroy want to know if you’re going to the Hamptons this summer.”

“Not if I can help it,” he says, shrugging.

A blond girl close enough to physical perfection, with big tits and a
Les Misérables
playbill in one hand, wearing a long rayon matte-jersey evening dress by Michael Kors from Bergdorf Goodman, Manolo Blahnik shoes and gold-plated chandelier earrings by Ricardo Siberno, stops by to say hello to Sean and though
I
would fuck this girl, Sean ignores her flirtatious manner and refuses to introduce me. During this encounter Sean is completely rude, yet the girl leaves smiling, raising a gloved hand. “We’ll be at Mortimer’s. Later.” He nods, staring at my water glass, then waves down a waiter and orders a Scotch, straight.

“Who was that?” I ask.

“Some babe who went to Stephens.”

“Where did you meet her?”

“Playing pool at M.K.” He shrugs.

“Is she a du Pont?” I ask.

“Why? Do you want her number?”

“No, I just wanted to know if she’s a du Pont.”

“She might be. I don’t know.” He lights another cigarette, a Parliament, with what looks like an eighteen-karat gold cigarette lighter from Tiffany’s. “She might be a friend of one of the du Ponts.”

I keep thinking of reasons why I’m sitting here, right now, tonight, with Sean, at Dorsia, but none come to mind. Just this infinitely recurring zero floats into view. After dinner—the food is small but very good; Sean touches nothing—I tell him that I have to meet Andrea Rothmere at Nell’s and if he wants espresso or dessert, he should order it now since I have to be downtown by midnight.

“Why rush?” he asks. “Nell’s isn’t that hip anymore.”

“Well.” I falter, quickly regain composure. “We’re just going to meet there. We’re really going to”—my mind races, lands on something—“Chernoble.” I take another sip of champagne from the tumbler.

“Big yawn.
Really
big yawn,” he says, scanning the room.

“Or Contraclub East. I can’t remember.”

“Out. Stone Age. Prehistory.” He laughs cynically.

Tense pause. “How would you know?”

“Rock ’n’ roll.” He shrugs. “Deal with it.”

“Well, Sean, where do
you
go?”

Immediate answer. “Petty’s.”

“Oh yes,” I murmur, having forgotten that it was already open.

He whistles something, smokes a cigarette.

“We’re going to a party Donald Trump’s having,” I lie.

“Big fun. Very big fun.”

“Donald’s a nice guy. You should meet him,” I say. “I’ll … introduce you to him.”

“Really?” Sean asks, maybe hopefully, maybe not.

“Yeah, sure.” Oh,
right.

Now, by the time I get the check … let’s see … pay it, take a cab back to my place, it will be almost midnight, which doesn’t give me enough time to return yesterday’s videotapes, so if I don’t stop by my place I can just go in and rent another videotape, though on my membership doesn’t it say that you can only take out three at a time? So this means last night I took out two (
Body Double
and
Blond, Hot, Dead
) so I
could
rent one more, but I’ve forgotten I’m also part of the Gold Circle Membership Plan, which means that if I’ve spent one thousand dollars (at least) in the last six months then I’m allowed to rent as many videos on any given night as I want, but if I still have two out now that might mean I can’t take any more out, Gold Circle Member or not, if the other ones haven’t been returned, but—

“Damien. You’re Damien,” I think I hear Sean mutter.

“What did you say?” I ask, looking up. “I didn’t hear you.”

“Nice tan,” he sighs. “I said nice tan.”

“Oh,” I say, still confused about the video thing. I look down—at what, my lap? “Uh, thanks.”

“Rock ’n’ roll.” He stamps his cigarette out. Fumes rise from the crystal ashtray, then die.

Sean knows
I
know he can probably get us into Petty’s, which is the new Norman Prager club on Fifty-ninth, but I’m not going to ask him and he’s not going to offer. I place my platinum American Express card over the check. Sean’s eyes are glued to a hardbody by the bar in a Thierry Mugler wool jersey dress and a Claude Montana scarf, sipping from a champagne
tumbler. When our waitress comes by to pick up the check and the card, I shake my head no. Sean’s eyes finally fall on it, for a second, maybe more, and I wave the waitress back over and allow her to take it.

Today I’m meeting Bethany for lunch at Vanities, the new Evan Kiley bistro in Tribeca, and though I worked out for nearly two hours this morning and even lifted weights in my office before noon, I’m still extremely nervous. The cause is hard to locate but I’ve narrowed it down to one of two reasons. It’s either that I’m afraid of rejection (though I can’t understand why:
she
called
me
, she wants to see
me
, she wants to have lunch with
me
, she wants to fuck
me
again) or, on the other hand, it could have something to do with this new Italian mousse I’m wearing, which, though it makes my hair look fuller and smells good, feels very sticky and uncomfortable, and it’s something I could easily blame my nervousness on. So we wouldn’t run out of things to talk about over lunch, I tried to read a trendy new short-story collection called
Wok
that I bought at Barnes & Noble last night and whose young author was recently profiled in the Fast Track section of
New York
magazine, but every story started off with the line “When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie” and I had to put this slim volume back into my bookshelf and drink a J&B on the rocks, followed by two Xanax, to recover from the effort. To make up for this, before I fell asleep I wrote Bethany a poem and it took a long time, which surprised me, since I used to write her poems, long dark ones, quite often when we were both at Harvard, before we broke up. God, I’m thinking to myself as I walk into Vanities, only fifteen minutes late, I hope she hasn’t ended up with Robert Hall, that dumb asshole. I pass by a mirror hung over the bar as I’m led to our table and check out my reflection—the mousse looks good. The topic on
The Patty
Winters Show
this morning was Has Patrick Swayze Become Cynical or Not?

I have to stop moving as I near the table, following the maître d’ (this is all happening in slow motion). She isn’t facing me and I can only catch the back of her neck, her brown hair pinned up into a bun, and when she turns to gaze out the window I see only part of her profile, briefly; she looks
just like a model.
Bethany’s wearing a silk gazar blouse and a silk satin skirt with crinoline. A Paloma Picasso hunter green suede and wrought-iron handbag sits in front of her on the table, next to a bottle of San Pellegrino water. She checks her watch. The couple next to our table is smoking and after I lean in behind Bethany, surprising her, kissing her cheek, I coolly ask the maître d’ to reseat us in the
non
smoking section. I’m suave but loud enough for the nicotine addicts to hear me and hopefully feel a slight twinge of embarrassment about their filthy habit.

“Well?” I ask, standing there, arms crossed, tapping my foot impatiently.

“I’m afraid there is no nonsmoking section, sir,” the maître d’ informs me.