Bret Ellis - American psycho - a novel

When I'm moving down Broadway to meet Jean, my secretary, for brunch, in front of Tower Records a college student with a clipboard asks me to name the saddest song I know. I tell him, without pausing, "You Can't Always Get What You Want" by the Beatles. Then he asks me to name the happiest song I know, and I say "Brilliant Disguise" by Bruce Springsteen. He nods, makes a note, and I move on, past Lincoln Center. An accident has happened. An ambulance is parked at the curb. A pile of intestines lies on the sidewalk in a pool of blood. I buy a very hard apple at a Korean deli which I eat on my way to meet Jean who, right now, stands at the Sixty-seventh Street entrance to Central Park on a cool, sunny day in September. When we look up at the clouds she sees an island, a puppy dog, Alaska, a tulip. I see, but don't tell her, a Gucci money clip, an ax, a woman cut in two, a large puffy white puddle of blood that spreads across the sky, dripping over the city, onto Manhattan.

We stop at an outdoor café, Nowheres, on the Upper West Side, debating which movie to see, if there are any museum exhibits we should attend, maybe just a walk, she suggests the zoo, I'm nodding mindlessly. Jean is looking good, like she's been working out, and she's wearing a gilt lamb jacket and velvet shorts by Matsuda. I'm imagining myself on television, in a commercial for a new product – wine cooler? tanning lotion? sugarless gum? – and I'm moving in jump-cut, walling along a beach, the film is black-and-white, purposefully scratched, eerie vague pop music from the mid-1960s accompanies the footage, it echoes, sounds as if it's coming from a calliope. Now I'm looking into the camera, now I'm holding up the product – a new mousse? tennis shoes? – now my hair is windblown then it's day then night then day again and then it's night.

"I'll have an iced decaf au lait," Jean tells the waiter.

"I'll have a decapitated coffee also," I say absently, before catching myself. "I mean… de caff einated." I glance over at Jean, worried, but she just smiles emptily at me. A Sunday Times sits on the table between us. We discuss plans for dinner tonight, maybe. Someone who looks like Taylor Preston walks by, waves at me. I lower my Ray-Bans, wave back. Someone on a bike pedals past. I ask a busboy for water. A waiter arrives instead and after that a dish containing two scoops of sorbet, cilantro-lemon and vodka-lime, are brought to the table that I didn't hear Jean order.

"Want a bite?" she asks.

"I'm on a diet," I say. "But thank you."

"You don't need to lose any weight," she says, genuinely surprised. "You're kidding, right? You look great. Very fit."

"You can always be thinner," I mumble, staring at the traffic in the street, distracted by something – what? I don't know. "Look… better."

"Well, maybe we shouldn't go out to dinner," she says, concerned. "I don't want to ruin your… willpower."

"No. It's all right," I say. "I'm not… very good at controlling it anyway."

"Patrick, seriously. I'll do whatever you want," she says. "If you don't want to go to dinner, we won't. I mean–"

"It's okay," I stress. Something snaps. "You shouldn't fawn over him…" I pause before correcting myself. "I mean… me . Okay?"

"I just want to know what you want to do," she says.

"To live happily ever after, right?" I say sarcastically. "That's what I want." I stare at her hard, for maybe half a minute, before turning away. This quiets her. After a while she orders a beer. It's hot out on the street.

"Come on, smile," she urges sometime later. "You have no reason to be so sad."

"I know," I sigh, relenting. "But it's . . tough to smile. These days. At least I find it hard to. I'm not used to it, I guess. I don't know."

"That's… why people need each other," she says gently, trying to make eye contact while spooning the not inexpensive sorbet into her mouth.

"Some don't." I clear my throat self-consciously. "Or, well, people compensate… They adjust…" After a long pause, "People can get accustomed to anything, right?" I ask. "Habit does things to people."

Another long pause. Confused, she says, "I don't know. I guess… but one still has to maintain… a ratio of more good things than… bad in this world," she says, adding, "I mean, right?" She looks puzzled, as if she finds it strange that this sentence has come out of her mouth. A blast of music from a passing cab, Madonna again, "life is a mystery, everyone must stand alone…" Startled by the laughter at the table next to ours, I cock my head and hear someone admit, "Sometimes what you wear to the office makes all the difference," and then Jean says something and I ask her to repeat it.

"Haven't you ever wanted to make someone happy?" she asks.

"What?" I ask, trying to pay attention to her. "Jean?"

Shyly, she repeats herself. "Haven't you ever wanted to make someone happy?"

I stare at her, a cold, distant wave of fright washes over me, dousing something. I clear my throat again and, trying to speak with great purposefulness, tell her, "I was at Sugar Reef the other night… that Caribbean place on the Lower East Side… you know it–"

"Who were you with?" she interrupts.

Jeanette. "Evan McGlinn."

"Oh." She nods, silently relieved, believing me.

..Anyway…" I sigh, continuing, "I saw some guy in the men's room… a total… Wall Street guy… wearing a one-button viscose, wool and nylon suit by… Luciano Soprani… a cotton shirt by… Gitman Brothers… a silk tie by Ermenegildo Zegna and, I mean, I recognized the guy, a broker, named Eldridge… I've seen him at Harry's and Au Bar and DuPlex and Alex Goes to Camp… all the places, but… when I went in after him, I saw… he was writing… something on the wall above the… urinal he was standing at." I pause, take a swallow of her beer. "When he saw me come in… he stopped writing… put away the Mont Blanc pen… he zipped up his pants… said Hello, Henderson to me… checked his hair in the mirror, coughed… like he was nervous or… something and… left the room." I pause again, another swallow. "Anyway… I went over to use the… urinal and… I leaned over… to read what he… wrote." Shuddering, I slowly wipe my forehead with a napkin.

"Which was?" Jean asks cautiously.

I close my eyes, three words fall from my mouth, these lips: " 'Kill… All… Yuppies.' "

She doesn't say anything.

To break the uncomfortable silence that follows, I mention all I can come up with, which is, "Did you know that Ted Bundy's first dog, a collie, was named Lassie?" Pause. "Had you heard this?"

Jean looks at her dish as if it's confusing her, then back up at me. "Who's… Ted Bundy?"

"Forget it," I sigh.

"Listen, Patrick. We need to talk about something;" she says. "Or at least I need to talk about something."

…where there was nature and earth, life and water, I saw a desert landscape that was unending, resembling some sort of crater, so devoid of reason and light and spirit that the mind could not grasp it on any sort of conscious level and if you came close the mind would reel backward, unable to take it in. It was a vision so clear and real and vital to me that in its purity it was almost abstract. This was what I could understand, this was how I lived my life, what I constructed my movement around, how I dealt with the tangible. This was the geography around which my reality revolved: it did not occur to me, ever, that people were good or that a man was capable of change or that the world could be a better place through one's taking pleasure in a feeling or a look or a gesture, of receiving another person's love or kindness. Nothing was affirmative, the term "generosity of spirit" applied to nothing, was a cliché, was some kind of bad joke. Sex is mathematics. Individuality no longer an issue. What does intelligence signify? Define reason. Desire – meaningless. Intellect is not a cure. Justice is dead. Fear, recrimination, innocence, sympathy, guilt, waste, failure, grief, were things, emotions, that no one really felt anymore. Reflection is useless, the world is senseless. Evil is its only permanence. God is not alive. Love cannot be trusted. Surface, surface, surface was all that anyone found meaning in… this was civilization as I saw it, colossal and jagged…