“Oh Christ,” I moan. “What shit? Now where do we have reservations at? I mean I’m not really hungry but I would like to have reservations somewhere. How about 220?” An afterthought: “McDermott, how did that rate in the new Zagat’s?”

“No way,” Farrell complains before Craig can answer. “The coke I scored there last time was cut with so much laxative I actually had to take a shit in M.K.”

“Yeah, yeah, life sucks and then you die.”

“Low point of the night,” Farrell mutters.

“Weren’t you with Kyria the last time you were there?” Goodrich asks. “Wasn’t that the low point?”

“She caught me on call waiting. What could I do?” Farrell shrugs. “I apologize.”

“Caught him on call waiting.” McDermott nudges me, dubious.

“Shut up, McDermott,” Farrell says, snapping Craig’s suspenders. “Date a beggar.”

“You forgot something, Farrell,” Preston mentions. “McDermott is a beggar.”

“How’s Courtney?” Farrell asks Craig, leering.

“Just say no.” Someone laughs.

Price looks away from the television screen, then at Craig, and he tries to hide his displeasure by asking me, waving at the TV, “I don’t believe it. He looks so… normal. He seems so… out of it. So… un dangerous.”

“Bimbo, bimbo,” someone says. “Bypass, bypass.”

“He is totally harmless, you geek. Was totally harmless. Just like you are totally harmless. But he did do all that shit and you have failed to get us into 150, so, you know, what can I say?” McDermott shrugs.

“I just don’t get how someone, anyone, can appear that way yet be involved in such total shit,” Price says, ignoring Craig, averting his eyes from Farrell. He takes out a cigar and studies it sadly. To me it still looks like there’s a smudge on Price’s forehead.

“Because Nancy was right behind him?” Farrell guesses, looking up from the Quotrek. “Because Nancy did it?”

“How can you be so fucking, I don’t know, cool about it?” Price, to whom something really eerie has obviously happened, sounds genuinely perplexed. Rumor has it that he was in rehab.

“Some guys are just born cool, I guess.” Farrell smiles, shrugging.

I’m laughing at this answer since Farrell is so obviously uncool, and Price shoots me a reprimanding look, says, “And Bateman—what are you so fucking zany about?”

I shrug too. “I’m just a happy camper.” And I add, remembering, quoting, my brother: “Rocking and a rolling.”

“Be all that you can be,” someone adds.

“Oh brother.” Price won’t let it die. “Look,” he starts, trying for a rational appraisal of the situation. “He presents himself as a harmless old codger. But inside…” He stops. My interest picks up, flickers briefly. “But inside…” Price can’t finish the sentence, can’t add the last two words he needs:doesn’t matter. I’m both disappointed and relieved for him.

“Inside? Yes, inside?” Craig asks, bored. “Believe it or not, we’re actually listening to you. Go on.”

“Bateman,” Price says, relenting slightly. “Come on. What do you think?”

I look up, smile, don’t say anything. From somewhere—the TV?—the national anthem plays. Why? I don’t know. Before a commercial, maybe. Tomorrow, on The Patty Winters Show, Doormen from Nell’s: Where Are They Now? I sigh, shrug, whatever.

“That’s, uh, a pretty good answer.” Price says, then adds, “You’re a real nut.”

“That is the most valuable piece of information I’ve heard since”—I look at my new gold Rolex that insurance paid for—“McDermott suggested we all drink dry beers. Christ, I want a Scotch.”

McDermott looks up with an exaggerated grin and purrs, “Bud. Long neck. Beautiful.”

“Very civilized.” Goodrich nods.

Superstylish English guy Nigel Morrison stops by our table and he’s wearing a flower in the lapel of his Paul Smith jacket. But he can’t stay long since he has to meet other British friends, Ian and Lucy, at Delmonico’s. Seconds after he walks away, I hear someone sneer, “Nigel. A pâté animal.”

Someone else: “Did you know that caveman got more fiber than we do?”

“Who’s handling the Fisher account?”

“Screw that. What about the Shepard thing? The Shepard account?”

“ Is that David Monrowe? What a burnout.”

“Oh brother.”

“For Christ sakes.”

“…lean and mean…”

“What’s in it for me?”

“The Shepard play or the Shepard account?”

“Rich people with cheap stereos.”

“No, girls who can hold their liquor.”

“…total lightweight…”

“Need a light? Nice matches.”

“What’s in it for me?”

“yup yup yup yup yup yup…”

I think it’s me who says, “I have to return some videotapes.”

Someone has already taken out a Minolta cellular phone and called for a car, and then, when I’m not really listening, watching instead someone who looks remarkably like Marcus Halberstam paying a check, someone asks, simply, not in relation to anything, “Why? ” and though I’m very proud that I have cold blood and that I can keep my nerve and do what I’m supposed to do, I catch something, then realize it: Why? and automatically answering, out of the blue, for no reason, just opening my mouth, words coming out, summarizing for the idiots: “Well, though I know I should have done that instead of not doing it, I’m twenty-seven for Christ sakes and this is, uh, how life presents itself in a bar or in a club in New York, maybe anywhere, at the end of the century and how people, you know, me, behave, and this is what being Pat rick means to me, I guess, so, well, yup, uh…” and this is followed by a sigh, then a slight shrug and another sigh, and above one of the doors covered by red velvet drapes in Harry’s is a sign and on the sign in letters that match the drapes’ color are the words THIS IS NOT AN EXIT.