"What could be more fun?" I say, unsure. The cab has noticed Daisy and stopped.

"I'll call you," she says.

"Whatever," I say.

Some black guy has opened the cab door for Daisy and she steps in daintily and the black guy holds it open for me too while I get in, waving, nodding to Bethany. "A tip, mister," the black guy asks, "from you and the pretty lady?"

"Yeah," I growl, trying to check my hair in the cabdriver's rearview mirror. "Here's a tip: get a real real job, you dumb fucking nigger." Then I slam the door myself and tell the cabdriver to take us to the Upper West Side. job, you dumb fucking nigger." Then I slam the door myself and tell the cabdriver to take us to the Upper West Side.

"Didn't you think it was interesting in that movie tonight how they were spies but they weren't spies?" Daisy asks.

"And you can drop her off in Harlem," I tell the driver.

I'm in my bathroom, shirtless in front of the Orobwener mirror, debating whether to take a shower and wash my hair since it looks shitty due to the rain. Tentatively I smooth some mousse into it then run a comb over the mousse. Daisy sits in the Louis Montoni brass and chrome chair by the futon, spooning Macadamia Brittle HaagenDazs ice cream into her mouth. She is wearing only a lace bra and a garter belt from Bloomingdale's.

"You know," she calls out, "my exboyfriend Fiddler, at the party earlier tonight, he couldn't understand what I was doing there with a yuppie."

I'm not really listening, but while staring at my hair, I manage, "Oh. Really?"

"He said..." She laughs. "He said you gave him bad vibes."

I sigh, then make a muscle. "That's... too bad."

She shrugs and offhandedly admits. "He used to do a lot of cocaine. He used to beat me up."

I suddenly start paying attention, until she says, "But he never touched my face."

I walk into the bedroom and start undressing.

"You think I'm dumb, don't you?" she asks, staring at me, her legs, tan and aerobicized, slung over one of the chair's arms.

"What?" I slip my shoes off, then bend down to pick them up.

"You think I'm dumb," she says. "You think all models are dumb."

"No," I say, trying to contain my laughter. "I really don't."

"You do," she insists. "I can tell."

"I think you are. . ." I stand there, my voice trailing off.

"Yes?" She's grinning, waiting.

"I think you are totally brilliant and incredibly... brilliant," I say in monotone.

"That's nice." She smiles serenely, licking the spoon "You have, well, a tender quality about you."

"Thanks." I take my pants off and fold them neatly, hanging them along with the shirt and tie over a black steel Philippe Stark clothes hanger. "You know, the other day I caught my maid stealing a piece of bran toast from my wastebasket in the kitchen."

Daisy takes this in, then asks, "Why?"

I pause, staring at her flat, welldefined stomach. Her torso is completely tan and muscular. So is mine. "Because she said she was hungry."

Daisy sighs and licks the spoon thoughtfully.

"You think my hair looks okay?" I'm still standing there, in just my Calvin Klein jockey shorts, hardon bulging, and a fifty-dollar pair of Armani socks.

"Yeah." She shrugs. "Sure."

I sit on the edge of the futon and peel off the socks.

"I beat up a girl today who was asking people on the street for money." I pause, then measure each of the following words carefully. "She was young and seemed frightened and had a sign that explained she was lost in New York and had a child, though I didn't see it. And she needed money, for food or something. For a bus ticket to Iowa. Iowa. I think it was Iowa and..." I stop for a moment, balling the socks up, then unballing them.

Daisy stares at me blankly for a minute, before asking, "And then?"

I pause, distracted, and then stand up. Before walking into the bathroom I mutter, "And then? I beat the living shit out of her." I open the medicine cabinet for a condom and, as I re-enter the bedroom, say, "She had misspelled disabled. disabled. I mean, that's not the reason I did what I did but... you know." I shrug. "She was too ugly to rape." I mean, that's not the reason I did what I did but... you know." I shrug. "She was too ugly to rape."

Daisy stands up, placing the spoon next to the HaagenDazs carton on the Gilbert Rhodedesigned nightstand.

I point. "No. Put it in the carton."

"Oh, sorry," she says.

She admires a Palazzetti vase while I slip on the condom. I get on top of her and we have sex and lying beneath me she is only a shape, even with all the halogen lamps burning. Later, we are lying on opposite sides of the bed. I touch her shoulder.

"I think you should go home," I say.

She opens her eyes, scratches her neck.

"I think I might... hurt you," I tell her. "I don't think I can control myself."

She looks over at me and shrugs. "Okay. Sure," then she starts to get dressed. "I don't want to get too involved anyway," she says.

"I think something bad is going to happen," I tell her.

She pulls her panties on, then checks her hair in the Nabolwev mirror and nods. "I understand."

After she's dressed and minutes of pure, hard silence have passed, I say, not unhopefully, "You don't want to get hurt, do you?"

She buttons up the top of her dress and sighs, without looking over at me. "That's why I'm leaving."

I say, "I think I'm losing it."

Paul Owen

I screened calls all morning long in my apartment, taking none of them, glaring tiredly at a cordless phone while sipping cup after cup of decaf herbal tea. Afterwards I went to the gym, where I worked out for two hours; then I had lunch at the Health Bar and could barely eat half of an endivewithcarrot-dressing salad I ordered. I stopped at Barney's on my way back from an abandoned loft building I had rented a unit in somewhere around Hell's Kitchen. I had a facial. I played squash with Brewster Whipple at the Yale Club and from there made reservations for eight o'clock under the name Marcus Halberstam at Texarkana, where I'm going to meet Paul Owen for dinner. I choose Texarkana because I know that a lot of people I have dealings with are not going to be eating there tonight. Plus I'm in the mood for their chiliwrapped pork and one or two Dixie beers. It's June and I'm wearing a twobutton linen suit, a cotton shirt, a silk tie and leather wingtips, all by Armani. Outside Texarkana a cheerful black bum motions for me, explaining that he's Bob Hope's younger brother, No Hope. He holds out a Styrofoam coffee cup. I think this is funny so I give him a quarter. I'm twenty minutes late. From an open window on Tenth Street I can hear the last strains of "A Day in the Life" by the Beetles.

The bar in.Texarkana is empty and in the dining area only four or five tables have people at them. Owen is at a booth in the back, complaining bitterly to the waiter, grilling him, demanding to know the exact reasons why they are out of the crawfish gumbo tonight. The waiter, a notbadlooking faggot, is at a loss and helplessly lisps an excuse. Owen is in no mood for pleasantries, but then neither am I. As I sit down, the waiter apologizes once more and then takes my drink order. "J&B, straight straight," I stress. "And a Dixie beer." He smiles while writing this down the bastard even bats his eyelashes and when I'm about to warn him not to attempt small taut with me, Owen barks out his drink order, "Double Absolut martini," and the fairy splits. a Dixie beer." He smiles while writing this down the bastard even bats his eyelashes and when I'm about to warn him not to attempt small taut with me, Owen barks out his drink order, "Double Absolut martini," and the fairy splits.

'This is really a beehive of, uh, activity, Halberstam," Owen says, gesturing toward the nearempty room. "This place is hot, very very hot." hot."

"Listen, the mud soup and the charcoal arugula are outrageous outrageous here," I tell him. here," I tell him.

"Yeah, well," he grumbles, staring into his martini glass. "You're late."

"Hey, I'm a child of divorce. Give me a break," I say, shrugging, thinking: Oh Halberstam you are are an asshole. And then, after I've studied the menu, "Hmmm, I see they've omitted the pork loin with lime JellO." an asshole. And then, after I've studied the menu, "Hmmm, I see they've omitted the pork loin with lime JellO."

Owen is wearing a doublebreasted silk and linen suit, a cotton shirt and a silk tie, all by Joseph Abboud, and his tan is impeccable. But he's out of it tonight, surprisingly untalkative, and his dourness drizzles over my jovial, expectant mood, dampening it considerably, and I have suddenly resorted to making comments such as "Is that Ivana Trump over there?" then, laughing, " Jeez, Patrick, I mean Marcus Marcus, what are you think thinking? Why would Ivana be at Texarkana?" But this doesn't make dinner any less monotonous. It doesn't help lessen the fact that Paul Owen is exactly my age, twentyseven, or make this whole thing any less disconcerting to me.

What I've mistaken at first for pomposity on Owen's part is actually just drunkenness. When I press for information about the Fisher account he offers useless statistical data that I already knew about: how Rothschild was originally handling the account, how Owen came to acquire it. And though I had Jean gather this information for my files months ago months ago, I keep nodding, pretending that this primitive info is revelatory and saying things like "This is enlightening" while at the same time telling him "I'm utterly insane" and "I like to dissect girls." Every time I attempt to steer the conversation back to the mysterious Fisher account, he infuriatingly changes the topic back to either tanning salons or brands of cigars or certain health clubs or the best places to jog in Manhattan and he keeps guffawing, which I find totally upsetting. I'm drinking Southern beer for the first part of the meal pre entree, post appetizer then switch to Diet Pepsi midway through since I need to stay slightly sober. I'm about to tell Owen that Cecelia, Marcus Halberstam's girlfriend, has two vaginas and that we plan to wed next spring in East Hampton, but he interrupts.

"I'm feeling, er, slightly mellow," he admits, drunkenly squeezing a lime onto the table, completely missing his beer mug. .

"Uhhuh." I dip a stick of jicama sparingly into a rhubarb mustard sauce, pretending to ignore him.

He's so drunk by the time dinner is over that I (1) make him pay the check, which comes to two hundred and fifty dollars, (2a) make him admit what a dumb sonof abitch he really is, and (3) get him back to my place, where he makes himself another another drink he actually opens a bottle of Acacia I thought I had hidden, with a Mulazoni sterling silver wine opener that Peter Radloff bought me after we completed the Heatherberg deal. In my bathroom I take out the ax I'd stashed in the shower, pop two fivemilligram Valium, washing them down with a tumblerful of Plax, and then I move into the foyer, where I put on a cheap raincoat I picked up at Brooks Brothers on Wednesday and move toward Owen, who is bent over near the stereo system in the living room looking through my CD collection all the lights in the apartment on, the venetian blinds closed. He straightens up and walks slowly backward, sipping from his wineglass, taking in the apartment, until he seats himself in a white aluminum folding chair I bought at the Conran's Memorial Day sale weeks ago, and finally he notices the newspapers copies of drink he actually opens a bottle of Acacia I thought I had hidden, with a Mulazoni sterling silver wine opener that Peter Radloff bought me after we completed the Heatherberg deal. In my bathroom I take out the ax I'd stashed in the shower, pop two fivemilligram Valium, washing them down with a tumblerful of Plax, and then I move into the foyer, where I put on a cheap raincoat I picked up at Brooks Brothers on Wednesday and move toward Owen, who is bent over near the stereo system in the living room looking through my CD collection all the lights in the apartment on, the venetian blinds closed. He straightens up and walks slowly backward, sipping from his wineglass, taking in the apartment, until he seats himself in a white aluminum folding chair I bought at the Conran's Memorial Day sale weeks ago, and finally he notices the newspapers copies of USA Today USA Today and and W W and and The New York Times The New York Times spread out beneath him, covering the floor, to protect the polished whitestained oak from his blood. I move toward him with the ax in one hand, and with my other I button up the raincoat. spread out beneath him, covering the floor, to protect the polished whitestained oak from his blood. I move toward him with the ax in one hand, and with my other I button up the raincoat.

"Hey, Halberstam," he asks, managing to slur both words.

"Yes, Owen," I say, drawing near.

"Why are there, um, copies of the Style section all over the place?" he asks tiredly. "Do you have a dog? A chow or something?"

No, Owen." I move slowly around the chair until I'm facing him, standing directly in his line of vision, and he's so drunk he can't even focus in on the ax, he doesn't even notice once I've raised it high above my head. Or when I change my mind and lower it to my waist, almost holding it as if it's a baseball bat and I'm about to swing at an oncoming ball, which happens to be Owen's head.

Owen pauses, then says, "Anyway, I used to hate Iggy Pop but now that he's so commercial I like him a lot better than"

The ax hits him midsentence, straight in the face, its thick blade chopping sideways into his open mouth, shutting him up. Paul's eyes look up at me, then involuntarily roll back into his head, then back at me, and suddenly his hands are trying to grab at the handle, but the shock of the blow has sapped his strength. There's no blood at first, no sound either except for the newspapers under Paul's kicking feet, rustling, tearing. Blood starts to slowly pour out of the sides of his mouth shortly after the first chop, and when I pull the ax out almost yanking Owen out of the chair by his head and strike him again in the face, splitting it open, his arms flailing at nothing, blood sprays out in twin brownish geysers, staining my raincoat. This is accompanied by a horrible momentary hissing noise actually coming from the wounds in Paul's skull, places where bone and flesh no longer connect, and this is followed by a rude farting noise caused by a section of his brain, which due to pressure forces itself out, pink and glistening, through the wounds in his face. He falls to the floor in agony, his face just gray and bloody, except for one of his eyes, which is blinking uncontrollably; his mouth is a twisted redpink jumble of teeth and meat and jawbone, his tongue hangs out of an open gash on the side of his cheek, connected only by what looks like a thick purple string. I scream at him only once: "Fucking stupid bastard. Fucking bastard." I stand there waiting, staring up at the crack above the Onica that the superintendent hasn't fixed yet. It takes Paul five minutes to finally die. Another thirty to stop bleeding.

I take a cab to Owen's apartment on the Upper East Side and on the ride across Central Park in the dead of this stifling June night in the back of the taxi it hits me that I'm still wearing the bloody raincoat. At his apartment I let myself in with the keys I took from the corpse's pocket and once inside I douse the coat with lighter fluid and burn it in the fireplace. The living room is very spare, minimalist. The walls are white pigmented concrete, except for one wall, which is covered with a trendy largescale scientific drawing, and the wall facing Fifth Avenue has a long strip of fauxcowhide paneling stretched across it. A black leather couch sits beneath it.

I switch on the widescreen thirtyoneinch Panasonic to Late Night with David Letterman, Late Night with David Letterman, then move over to the answering machine to change Owen's message. While erasing the current one (Owen giving all the numbers he can be reached at including the Seaport, then move over to the answering machine to change Owen's message. While erasing the current one (Owen giving all the numbers he can be reached at including the Seaport, for god's sake for god's sake while Vivaldi's while Vivaldi's Four Seasons Four Seasons plays tastefully in the background) I wonder aloud where I should send Paul, and after a few minutes of intense debating decide: London. "I'll send the bastard to England," I cackle while turning the volume down on the TV and then I leave the new message. My voice sounds similar to Owen's and to someone hearing it over the phone probably identical. Tonight Letterman has on Stupid Pet Tricks. A German shepherd with a Mets cap on peels and eats an orange. This is replayed twice, in slow motion. plays tastefully in the background) I wonder aloud where I should send Paul, and after a few minutes of intense debating decide: London. "I'll send the bastard to England," I cackle while turning the volume down on the TV and then I leave the new message. My voice sounds similar to Owen's and to someone hearing it over the phone probably identical. Tonight Letterman has on Stupid Pet Tricks. A German shepherd with a Mets cap on peels and eats an orange. This is replayed twice, in slow motion.

Into a handconstructed bridle leather suitcase with a khakicolored canvas cover, extraheavy cap corners, gold straps and locks, by Ralph Lauren, I pack a wool sixbutton doublebreasted peaklapel chalkstriped suit and one wool flannel navy suit, both from Brooks Brothers, along with a Mitsubishi rechargeable electric shaver, a silverplated shoehorn from Barney's, a TagHeuer sports watch, a black leather Prada currency holder, a Sharp HandyCopier, a Sharp Dialmaster, his passport in its own black leather passport case and a Panasonic portable hair dryer. I also steal for myself a Toshiba portable compact disc player with one of the discs from the original cast recording of Les Miserables Les Miserables still in it. The bathroom is done completely in white except for the Dalmatianspot wallpaper covering one wall. I throw any toiletry articles I might've missed into a plastic Hefty bag. still in it. The bathroom is done completely in white except for the Dalmatianspot wallpaper covering one wall. I throw any toiletry articles I might've missed into a plastic Hefty bag.

Back at my apartment his body is already in rigor mortis, and after wrapping it up in four cheap terrycloth towels I also bought at the Conran's Memorial Day sale, I place Owen headfirst and fully dressed into a Canalino goosedown sleeping bag, which I zip up then drag easily into the elevator, then through the lobby, past the night doorman, down the block, where briefly I run into Arthur Crystal and Kitty Martin, who've just had dinner at Cafe Luxembourg. Luckily Kitty Martin is supposed to be dating Craig McDermott, who is in Houston for the night, so they don't linger, even though Crystal the rude bastard asks me what the general rules of wearing a white dinner jacket are. After answering him curtly I hail a taxi, effortlessly manage to swing the sleeping bag into the backseat, hop in and give the driver the address in Hell's Kitchen. Once there I carry the body up four flights of stairs until we're at the unit I own in the abandoned building and I place Owen's body into an oversize porcelain tub, strip off his Abboud suit and, after wetting the corpse down, pour two bags of lime over it.

Later, around two, in bed, I'm unable to sleep. Evelyn catches me on call waiting while I'm listening to messages on 976TWAT and watching a tape on the VCR of this morning's Patty Winters Show Patty Winters Show which is about Deformed People. which is about Deformed People.

"Patrick?" Evelyn asks.

I pause, then in a dull monotone calmly announce, "You have reached Patrick Bateman's number. He is unable to come to the phone right now. So please leave a message after the tone..." I pause, then add, "Have a nice day." I pause again, praying to god that she bought it, before emitting a pitiful "Beep."

"Oh stop it, Patrick," she says irritably. "I know it's you. What in god's name do you think you're doing?"

I hold the phone out in front of me then drop it on the floor and bang it against the nightstand. I keep pressing some of the numbers down, hoping that when I lift the receiver up to my ear I'll be greeted by a dial tone. "Hello? Hello?" I say. "Is anyone there? Yes?"

"Oh for god's sake stop it. Just stop stop it," Evelyn wails. it," Evelyn wails.

"Hi, Evelyn," I say cheerily, my face twisted into a grimace.

"Where have you been been tonight?" she asks. "I thought we were supposed to have dinner. I thought we had reservations at Raw Space." tonight?" she asks. "I thought we were supposed to have dinner. I thought we had reservations at Raw Space."

"No, Evelyn," I sigh, suddenly very tired. "We didn't. Why would you think that?"

"I thought I had it written down," she whines. "I thought my secretary had written it down for me."

"Well, one of you was wrong," I say, rewinding the tape by remote control from my bed. "Raw Space? Jesus. You... are... insane."

"Honey," she pouts. "Where were were you tonight? I hope you didn't go to Raw Space without me." you tonight? I hope you didn't go to Raw Space without me."

"Oh my god," I moan. "I had to rent some videotapes. I mean I had to return some videos."

"What else did you do?" she asks, still whining.

"Well, I ran into Arthur Crystal and Kitty Martin," I say. 'They just had dinner at Cafe Luxembourg."

"Oh really?" Chillingly, her interest perks up. "What was Kitty wearing?"

"An offtheshoulder ball gown with velvet bodice and a floralpatterned lace skirt by Laura Marolakos, I think."

"And Arthur?"

"Same thing."

"Oh Mr. Bateman." She giggles. "I adore your sense of humor."

"Listen, it's late. I'm tired." I fake a yawn.

"Did I wake you?" she asks worriedly. "I hope I didn't wake you."

"Yes," I say. "You did. But I took your call so it's my fault, not yours."

"Dinner, honey? Tomorrow?" she asks, coyly expecting an affirmative response.

"I can't. Work."

"You practically own that damn company," she moans. "What work? What work? What work work do you do? I do you do? I don't don't understand." understand."

"Evelyn," I sigh. "Please."