Pioneer’s LD-ST disc player with wireless remote and the Sony MDP-700 multidisc player with digital effects and universal-wireless-remote programming (one for the bedroom, one for the living room), which play all sizes and formats of audio and video discs—eight-inch and twelve-inch laser discs, five-inch CD video discs and three- and five-inch compact discs—in two autoload drawers. The LD-W1 from Pioneer holds two full-sized discs and plays both sides sequentially with only a several-second lag per side during the changeover so you don’t have to change or flip the discs. It also has digital sound, wireless remote and a programmable memory. Yamaha’s CDV-16oo multidisc player handles all disc formats and has a fifteen-selection random-access memory and a wireless remote.

A pair of Threshold monoblock amplifiers that cost close to $15,000 are also delivered. And for the bedroom, a bleached oak cupboard to store one of the new televisions arrives on Monday. A tailored cotton-upholstered sofa framed by eighteenth-century Italian bronze and marble busts on contemporary painted wood pedestals arrives on Tuesday. A new bed headboard (white cotton covered with beige brass nail trim) also arrives on Tuesday. A new Frank Stella print for the bathroom arrives on Wednesday along with a new Superdeluxe black suede armchair. The Onica, which I’m selling, is being replaced by a new one: a huge portrait of a graphic equalizer done in chrome and pastels.

I’m talking to the delivery guys from Park Avenue Sound Shop about HDTV, which isn’t available yet, when one of the new black AT&T cordless phones rings. I tip them, then answer it. My lawyer, Ronald, is on the other end. I’m listening to him, nodding, showing the delivery guys out of the apartment. Then I say, “The bill is three hundred dollars, Ronald. We only had coffee.” A long pause, during which I hear a bizarre sloshing sound coming from the bathroom. Walking cautiously toward it, cordless phone still in hand, I tell Ronald, “But yes… Wait… But I am… But we only had espresso.” Then I’m peering into the bathroom.

Perched on the seat of the toilet is a large wet rat that has—I’m assuming—come up out of it. It sits on the rim of the toilet bowl, shaking itself dry, before it jumps, tentatively, to the floor. It’s a massive rodent and it lurches, then scrambles, across the tile, out of the bathroom’s other entrance and into the kitchen, where I follow it toward the leftover pizza bag from Le Madri that for some reason sits on the floor on top of yesterday’s New York Times near the garbage pail from Zona, and the rat, lured by the smell, takes the bag in its mouth and shakes its head furiously, like a dog would, trying to get at the leek-goat cheese-truffle pizza, making squealing sounds of hunger. I’m on a lot of Halcion at this point so the rat doesn’t bother me as much as, I suppose, it should.

To catch the rat I buy an extra-large mousetrap at a hardware store on Amsterdam. I also decide to spend the night at my family’s suite in the Carlyle. The only cheese I have in the apartment is a wedge of Brie in the refrigerator and before leaving I place the entire slice—it’s a really big rat—along with a sun-dried tomato and a sprinkling of dill, delicately on the trap, setting it. But when I come back the following morning, because of the rat’s size, the trap hasn’t killed it. The rat just lies there, stuck, squeaking, thrashing its tail, which is a horrible, oily, translucent pink, as long as a pencil and twice as thick, and it makes a slapping sound every time it hits against the white oak floor. Using a dustpan—which it takes me over a fucking hour to find—I corner the injured rat just as it frees itself from the trap and I pick the thing up, sending it into a panic, making it squeal even louder, hissing at me, baring its sharp, yellow rat fangs, and dump it into a Bergdorf Goodman hatbox. But then the thing claws its way out and I have to keep it in the sink, a board, heavy with unused cookbooks, covering it, and even then it almost escapes, while I sit in the kitchen thinking of ways to torture girls with this animal (unsurprisingly I come up with a lot), making a list that includes, unrelated to the rat, cutting open both breasts and deflating them, along with stringing barbed wire tightly around their heads.

McDermott and I are supposed to have dinner tonight at 1500 and he calls me around six-thirty, forty minutes before our actual reservation (he couldn’t get us in at any other time, except for six-ten or nine, which is when the restaurant closes—it serves Californian cuisine and its seating times are an affectation carried over from that state), and though I’m in the middle of flossing my teeth, all of my cordless phones lie by the sink in the bathroom and I’m able to pick the right one up on the second ring. So far I’m wearing black Armani trousers, a white Armani shirt, a red sad black Armani tie. McDermott lets me know that Hamlin wants to come with us. I’m hungry. There’s a pause.

“So?” I ask, straightening my tie. “Okay.”

“So?” McDermott sighs. “Hamlin doesn’t want to go to 1500.”

“Why not?” I turn off the tap in the sink.

“He was there last night.”

“So… what are you, McDermott, trying to tell me?”

‘“That we’re going someplace else,” he says.

“Where?” I ask cautiously.

“Alex Goes to Camp is where Ham lin suggested,” he says.

“Hold on. I’m Plaxing.” After swishing the antiplaque formula around in my mouth and inspecting my hairline in the mirror, I spit out the Plax. “Veto. Bypass. I went there last week.”

“I know. So did I,” McDermott says. “Besides, it’s cheap. So where do we go instead?”

“Didn’t Hamlin have a fucking backup?” I growl, irritated.

“Er, no.”

“Call him back and get one,” I say, walking out of the bathroom. “I seem to have misplaced my Zagat.”

“Do you want to hold or should I call you back?” he asks.

“Call me back, bozo.” We hang up.

Minutes pass. The phone rings. I don’t bother screening it. It’s McDermott again.

“Well?” I ask.

“Hamlin doesn’t have a backup and he wants to invite Luis Carruthers and what I want to know is, does this mean Courtney’s coming?” McDermott asks.

“Luis cannot come,” I say.

“Why not?”

“He just can’t.” I ask, “Why does he want Luis to come?”

There’s a pause. “Hold on,” McDermott says. “He’s on the other line. I’ll ask him.”

“Who?” A flash of panic. “Luis?”

“Hamlin.”

While holding I move into the kitchen, over to the refrigerator, and take out a bottle of Perrier. I’m looking for a glass when I hear a click.

“Listen,” I say when McDermott gets back on the line. “I don’t want to see Luis or Courtney so, you know, dissuade them or something. Use your charm. Be charming.”

“Hamlin has to have dinner with a client from Texas and—”

I cut him off. “Wait, this has nothing to do with Luis. Let Hamlin take the fag out himself.”

“Hamlin wants Carruthers to come because Hamlin is supposed to be dealing with the Panasonic case, but Carruthers knows a lot more about it and that’s why he wants Carruthers to come,” McDermott explains.

I pause while taking this in. “If Luis comes I’ll kill him. I swear to god I’ll kill him. I’ll fucking kill him.”

“Jeez, Bateman,” McDermott murmurs, concerned. “You’re a real humanitarian. A sage.”

“No. just…” I start, confused, irritated. “Just… sensible.”

“I just want to know if Luis comes does this mean that Courtney will come too?” he wonders again.

“Tell Hamlin to invite—oh shit, I don’t know.” I stop. “Tell Hamlin to have dinner with the Texas guy alone.” I stop again, realizing something. “Wait a minute. Does this mean Hamlin will… take us out? I mean pay for it, since it’s a business dinner?”