Bret Ellis - American psycho - a novel

"Honey?" she asks.

"Don't call me that, " I snap.

"What? Honey?" she asks.

"Yes," I snap again.

"What do you want me to call you?" she asks, indignantly. "CEO?" She stifles a giggle.

"Oh Christ."

"No, really Patrick. What do you want me to call you?"

King, I'm thinking. King, Evelyn. I want you to call me King. But I don't say this. "Evelyn. I don't want you to call me anything. I don't think we should see each other anymore."

"But your friends are my friends. My friends are your friends. I don't think it would work," she says, and then, staring at a spot above my mouth, "You have a tiny fleck on the top of your lip. Use your napkin."

Exasperated, I brush the fleck away. "Listen, I, know that your friends are my friends and vice versa. I've thought about that." After a pause I say, breathing in, "You can have them."

Finally she looks at me, confused, and murmurs, "You're really serious, aren't you?"

"Yes", I say, "I am."

"But… what about us? What about the past?" she asks blankly.

"The past isn't real. It's just a dream," I say. "Don't mention the past."

She narrows her eyes with suspicion. "Do you have something against me, Patrick?" And then the hardness in her face changes instantaneously to expectation, maybe hope.

"Evelyn," I sigh. "I'm sorry. You're just… not terribly important… to me."

Without missing a beat she demands, "Well, who is? Who do you think is , Patrick? Who do you want ?" After an angry pause she asks, "Cher?"

"Cher?" I ask back, confused. " Cher? What are you talking about? Oh forget it. I want it over. I need sex on a regular basis. I need to be distracted."

In a matter of seconds she becomes frantic, barely able to contain the rising hysteria that's surging through her body. I'm not enjoying it as much as I thought I would. "But what about the past? Our past ?" she asks again, uselessly.

"Don't mention it," I tell her, leaning in.

"Why not ?"

"Because we never really shared one," I say, keeping my voice from rising.

She calms herself down and, ignoring me, opening her handbag again, mutters, "Pathological. Your behavior is pathological."

"What does that mean?" I ask, offended.

"Abhorrent. You're pathological." She finds a Laura Ashley pillbox and unsnaps it.

"Pathological what ?" I ask, trying to smile.

"Forget it." She takes a pill that I don't recognize and uses my water to swallow it.

" I'm pathological? You're telling me that I'm pathological?" I ask.

"We look at the world differently, Patrick." She sniffs.

"Thank god," I say viciously.

"You're inhuman," she says, trying, I think, not to cry.

"I'm" – I stall, attempting to defend myself – "in touch with… humanity."

"No, no, no." She shakes her head.

"I know my behavior is… erratic sometimes," I say, fumbling.

Suddenly, desperately, she takes my hand from acres the table, pulling it closer to her. "What do you want me to do? What is it you want?"

"Oh Evelyn," I groan, pulling my hand away, shocked that I've finally gotten through to her.

She's crying. "What do you want me to do, Patrick? Tell me. Please," she begs.

"You should… oh god, I don't know. Wear erotic underwear?" I say, guessing. "Oh Jesus, Evelyn. I don't know. Nothing. You can't do anything."

"Please, what can I do?" she sobs quietly.

"Smile less often? Know more about cars? Say my name with less regularity? Is this what you want to hear?" I ask. "It won't change anything. You don't even drink beer," I mutter.

"But you don't drink beer either."

"'That doesri t matter. Besides, I just ordered one. So there."

"Oh Patrick."

"If you really want to do something for me, you can stop making a scene right now," I say, looking uncomfortably around the room.

"Waiter?" she asks, as soon as he sets down the decaf espresso, the port and the dry beer. "I'll have a… I'll have a… a what?" She looks over at me tearfully, confused and panicked. "A Corona? Is that what you drink, Patrick? A Corona?"

"Oh my god. Give it up. Please, just excuse her," I tell the waiter, then, as soon as he walks away, "Yes. A Corona. But we're in a fucking Chinese-Cajun bistro so–"

"Oh god, Patrick," she sobs, blowing her nose into the handkerchief I've tossed at her. "You're so lousy. You're… inhuman."

"No, I'm…" I stall again.

"You… are not…" She stops, wiping her face, unable to finish.

"I'm not what?" I ask, waiting, interested.

"You are not" – she sniffs, looks down, her shoulders heaving – "all there. You" – she chokes – "don't add up."

"I do too," I say indignantly, defending myself. "I do too add up."

"You're a ghoul," she sobs.

"No, no," I say, confused, watching her. " You're the ghoul."

"Oh god," she moans, causing the table next to ours to look over, then away. "I can't believe this."

"I'm leaving now," I say soothingly. "I've assessed the situation and I'm going."

"Don't," she says, trying to grab my hand. "Don't go."

"I'm leaving, Evelyn."

"Where are you going?" Suddenly she looks remarkably composed. She's been careful not to let the tears, which actually I've just noticed are very few, affect her makeup. "Tell me, Patrick, where are you going?"

I've placed a cigar on the table. She's too upset to even comment. "I'm just leaving," I say simply.

"But where ?" she asks, more tears welling up. "Where are you going?"

Everyone in the restaurant within a particular aural distance seems to be looking the other way.

"Where are you going?'.' she asks again.

I make no comment, lost in my own private maze, thinking about other things: warrants, stock offerings, ESOPs, LBOs, IPOs, finances, refinances, debentures, converts, proxy statements, 8-Ks, 10-Qs, zero coupons, PiKs, GNPs, the IMF, hot executive gadgets, billionaires, Kenkichi Nakajima, infinity, Infinity, how fast a luxury car should go, bailouts, junk bonds, whether to cancel my subscription to The Economist, the Christmas Eve when I was fourteen and had raped one of our maids, Inclusivity, envying someone's life, whether someone could survive a fractured skull, waiting in airports, stifling a scream, credit cards and someone's passport and a book of matches from La Côte Basque splattered with blood, surface surface surface, a Rolls is a Rolls is a Rolls. To Evelyn our relationship is yellow and blue, but to me it's a gray place, most of it blacked out, bombed, footage from the film in my head is endless shots of stone and any language heard is utterly foreign, the sound flickering away over new images: blood pouring from automated tellers, women giving birth through their assholes, embryos frozen or scrambled (which is it?), nuclear warheads, billions of dollars, the total destruction of the world, someone gets beaten up, someone else dies, sometimes bloodlessly, more often mostly by rifle shot, assassinations, comas, life played out as a sitcom, a blank canvas that reconfigures itself into a soap opera. It's an isolation ward that serves only to expose my own severely impaired capacity to feel. I am at its center, out of season, and no one ever asks me for any identification. I suddenly imagine Evelyn's skeleton, twisted and crumbling, and this fills me with glee. It takes a long time to answer her question – Where are you going? – but after a sip of the port, then the dry beer, rousing myself, I tell her, at the same time wondering: If I were an actual automaton what difference would there really be?

"Libya," and then, after a significant pause, "Pago Pago. I meant to say Pago Pago," and then I add, "Because of your outburst I'm not paying for this meal."