He stares at me as if we are both underwater and shouts back, very clearly over the din of the club, “Because… I had… dinner… with Paul Owen… twice… in London… just ten days ago.”

After we stare at each other for what seems like a minute, I finally have the nerve to say something back to him but my voice lacks any authority and I’m not sure if I believe myself when I tell him, simply, “No, you… didn’t.” But it comes out a question, not a statement.

“Now, Donaldson,” Carnes says, removing my hand from his arm. “If you’ll excuse me.”

“Oh you’re excused,” I sneer. Then I make my way back to our booth where John Edmonton and Peter Beavers are now sitting and I numb myself with a Halcion before taking Jean home, back to my place. Jean is wearing something by Oscar de la Renta. Nina Goodrich was wearing a sequined dress by Matsuda and refused to give me her number, even though Jean was in the women’s room downstairs.

Another broken scene in what passes for my life occurs on Wednesday, seemingly pointing to someone’s fault, though whose I can’t be sure. Stuck in gridlock in a cab heading downtown toward Wall Street after a power breakfast at the Regency with Peter Russell, who used to be my dealer before he got a real job, and Eddie Lambert. Russell was wearing a two-button wool sport coat by Redaelli, a cotton shirt by Hackert, a silk tie by Richel, pleated wool trousers by Krizia Uomo and leather Cole-Haan shoes. The Patty Winters Show this morning was about girls in the fourth grade who trade sex for crack and I almost canceled with Lambert and Russell to catch it. Russell ordered for me while I was in the lobby on the phone. It was, unfortunately, a high-fat, high-sodium breakfast and before I could comprehend what was happening, plates of herbed waffles with ham in Madeira cream sauce, grilled sausages and sour cream coffee cake were set at our table and I had to ask the waiter for a pot of decaf herbal tea, a plate of sliced mango with blueberries and a bottle of Evian. In the early morning light that poured through the windows at the Regency I watched as our waiter shaved black truffles gracefully over Lambert’s steaming eggs. Overcome, I broke down and demanded to have the black truffles shaved over my mango slices. Nothing much happened during the breakfast. I had to make another phone call, and when I returned to our table I noticed that a mango slice was missing, but I didn’t accuse anyone. I had other things on my mind: how to help America’s schools, the trust gap, desk sets, a new era of possibilities and what’s in it for me, getting tickets to see Sting in The Threepenny Opera, which just opened on Broadway, how to take more and remember less…

In the cab I’m wearing a double-breasted cashmere and wool overcoat by Studio 000.1 from Ferré, a wool suit with pleated trousers by DeRigueur from Schoeneman, a silk tie by Givenchy Gentleman, socks by Interwoven, shoes by Armani, reading the Wall Street Journal with my Ray-Ban sunglasses on and listening to a Walkman with a Bix Beiderbecke tape playing in it. I put down the Journal, pick up the Post, just to check Page Six. At the light on Seventh and Thirty-fourth, in the cab next to this one sits, I think, Kevin Gladwin, wearing a suit by Ralph Lauren. I lower my sunglasses. Kevin looks up from the new issue of Money magazine and spots me looking over at him in a curious way before his cab moves forward in the traffic. The cab I’m in suddenly breaks free of the gridlock and turns right on Twenty-seventh, taking the West Side Highway down to Wall Street. I put the paper down, concentrate on the music and the weather, how unseasonably cool it is, and I’m just beginning to notice the way the cabdriver looks at me in the rearview mirror. A suspicious, hungry expression keeps changing the features on his face—a mass of clogged pores, ingrown hairs. I sigh, expecting this, ignoring him. Open the hood of a car and it will tell you something about the people who designed it, is just one of many phrases I’m tortured by.

But the driver knocks on the plexiglass divider, motions to me. While taking the Walkman off I notice he’s locked all the doors—I see the locks lower in a flash, hear the hollow clicking noise, the moment I turn the volume off. The cab is speeding faster than it should down the highway, in the far right lane. “Yes?” I ask irritably. “What?”

“Hey, don’t I know you?” he asks in a thick, barely penetrable accent that could easily be either New Jersey or Mediterranean.

“No.” I start putting the Walkman back on.

“You look familiar,” he says. “What’s your name?”

“No I don’t. You don’t either,” I say, then, an afterthought, “Chris Hagen.”

“Come on.” He’s smiling like there’s something wrong. “I know who you are.”

“I’m in a movie. I’m an actor,” I tell him. “A model.”

“Nah, that’s not it,” he says grimly.

“Well”—I lean over, checking his name—“Abdullah, do you have a membership at M.K.?”

He doesn’t answer. I reopen the Post to a photo of the mayor dressed as a pineapple, then close it again and rewind the tape in my Walkman. I start counting to myself—one, two, three, four—my eyes focus in on the meter. Why didn’t I carry a gun with me this morning? Because I didn’t think I had to. The only weapon on me is a used knife from last night.

“No,” he says again. “I’ve seen your face somewhere.”

Finally, exasperated, I ask, trying to appear casual, “You have? Really? Interesting. Just watch the road, Abdullah.”

There’s a long, scary pause while he stares at me in the rearview mirror and the grim smile fades. His face is blank. He says, “I know. Man, I know who you are,” and he’s nodding, his mouth drawn tight. The radio that was tuned into the news is shut off.

Buildings pass by in a gray-red blur, the cab passes other cabs, the sky changes color from blue to purple to black back to blue. At another light—a red one he races straight through—we pass, on the other side of the West Side Highway, a new D’Agostino’s on the corner where Mars used to be and it moves me to tears, almost, because it’s something that’s identifiable and I get as nostalgic for the market (even though it’s not one I will ever shop at) as I have about anything and I almost interrupt the driver, tell him to pull over, have him let me out, let him keep the change from a ten—no, a twenty—but I can’t move because he’s driving too fast and something intervenes, something unthinkable and ludicrous, and I hear him say it, maybe. “You’re the guy who kill Solly.” His face is locked into a determined grimace. As with everything else, the following happens very quickly, though it feels like an endurance test.

I swallow, lower my sunglasses and tell him to slow down before asking, “Who, may I ask, is Sally?”

“Man, your face is on a wanted poster downtown,” he says, unflinching.

“I think I would like to stop here,” I manage to croak out.

“You’re the guy, right?” He’s looking at me like I’m some kind of viper.

Another cab, its light on, empty, cruises past ours, going at least eighty. I’m not saying anything, just shaking my head. “I am going to take”—I swallow, trembling, open my leather datebook, pull out a Mount Blanc pen from my Bottega Veneta briefcase—“your license number down...”

“You kill Solly,” he says, definitely recognizing me from somewhere, cutting another denial on my part by growling, “You son-of-a-bitch.”

Near the docks downtown he swerves off the highway and races the cab toward the end of a deserted parking area and it hits me somewhere, now, this moment, when he drives into and then over a dilapidated, rust-covered aluminum fence, heading toward water, that all I have to do is put the Walkman on, blot out the sound of the cabdriver, but my hands are twisted into paralyzed fists that I can’t unclench, held captive in the cab as it hurtles toward a destination only the cabdriver, who is obviously deranged, knows. The windows are rolled down partially and I can feel the cool morning air drying the mousse on my scalp. I feel naked, suddenly tiny. My mouth tastes metallic, then it gets worse. My vision: a winter road. But I’m left with one comforting thought: I am rich—millions are not.