“How was the party?” she asks.

“Okay,” I say, guessing.

“How many people were there?”

“Forty. Five hundred.” I shrug. “I’m not sure.”

She licks her lips again, touches her hair once more. “What time did you leave?”

“I don’t remember,” I answer after a long time.

“One? Two?” she asks.

“It must have been one,” I say, almost cutting her off.

“Oh.” She pauses again, straightens her sunglasses, black Ray-Bans I bought her from Bloomingdale’s that cost two hundred dollars.

“It wasn’t very good,” I say uselessly, looking at her.

“Why?” she asks, curious.

“It just wasn’t,” I say, looking back at my hand, the specks of blood under the nail on my thumb, the photograph of my father, when he was a much younger man, on my mother’s bedside table, next to a photograph of Sean and me when we were both teenagers, wearing tuxedos, neither one of us smiling. In the photograph of my father he’s wearing a six-button double-breasted black sport coat, a white spread-collar cotton shirt, a tie, pocket square, shoes, all by Brooks Brothers. He’s standing next to one of the topiary animals a long time ago at his father’s estate in Connecticut and there’s something the matter with his eyes.

And on a rainy Tuesday morning, after working out at Xclusive, I stop by Paul Owen’s apartment on the Upper East Side. One hundred and sixty-one days have passed since I spent the night in it with the two escort girls. There has been no word of bodies discovered in any of the city’s four newspapers or on the local news; no hints of even a rumor floating around. I’ve gone so far as to ask people—dates, business acquaintances—over dinners, in the halls of Pierce & Pierce, if anyone has heard about two mutilated prostitutes found in Paul Owen’s apartment. But like in some movie, no one has heard anything, has any idea of what I’m talking about. There are other things to worry over: the shocking amount of laxative and speed that the cocaine in Manhattan is now being cut with, Asia in the 1990s, the virtual impossibility of landing an eight o’clock reservation at PR, the new Tony McManus restaurant on Liberty Island, crack. So what I’m assuming is that, essentially, like, no bodies have been found. For all I know, Kimball has moved to London too.

The building looks different to me as I step out of the taxi, though I can’t figure out why. I still have the keys I stole from Owen the night I killed him and I take them out, now, to open the lobby door but they don’t work, won’t fit properly. Instead, a uniformed doorman who wasn’t here six months ago opens it for me, excusing himself for taking so long. I stand there in the rain, confused, until he ushers me in, merrily asking, with a thick Irish accent, “Well, are you coming in or staying out—you’re getting soaked.” I move into the lobby, my umbrella held under one arm, tucking the surgical mask I brought with me to deal with the smell back into my pocket. I’m holding a Walkman, debating what to say, how to phrase it.

“Well, now what can I do for you sir?” he asks.

I stall—a long, awkward pause—before saying, simply, “Fourteen-A.”

He looks me over carefully before checking his book, then beams, marking something down. “Ah, of course. Mrs. Wolfe is up there right now.”

“Mrs…. Wolfe?” Weakly, I smile.

“Yes. She’s the real estate agent,” he says, looking up at me. “You do have an appointment, don’t you?”

The elevator operator, also a new addition, stares at the floor as the two of us rise up into the building. I’m trying to retrace my steps on that night, during that whole week, uselessly knowing I have never been back to this apartment after murdering the two girls. How much is Owen’s apartment worth? is a question that keeps forcing its way into my mind until finally it just rests there, throbbing. The Patty Winter Show this morning was about people with half their brains removed. My chest feels like ice.

The elevator doors open. I step out, cautiously, watching behind me as they close, then I’m moving down the hallway toward Owen’s apartment. I can hear voices inside. I lean against the wall, sighing, keys in my hand, knowing already the locks have been changed. As I wonder what I should do, trembling, staring at my loafers, which are black and by A. Testoni, the door to the apartment opens, startling me out of a momentary flash of self-pity. A middle-aged real estate broker walks out, offers a smile, asks, checking her book, “Are you my eleven o’clock?”

“No,” I say.

She says “Excuse me” and, making her way down the hall, looks back at me, once, with a strange expression on her face, before disappearing around the corner. I’m staring into the apartment. A couple in their late twenties stand, conferring with each other, in the middle of the living room. She’s wearing a wool jacket, a silk blouse, wool flannel slacks, Armani, vermeil earrings, gloves, holding a bottle of Evian water. He has on a tweed sport jacket, cashmere sweater vest, cotton chambray shirt, tie, Paul Stuart, Agnes B. cotton trench coat draped over arm. Behind them, the apartment looks spotless. New venetian blinds, the cowhide paneling is gone; however, the furniture, the mural, the glass coffee table, Thonet chairs, black leather couch, all seem intact; the large-screen television set has been moved into the living room and it’s been turned on, the volume low, a commercial where a stain walks off a jacket and addresses the camera is on now, but it doesn’t make me forget what I did to Christie’s breasts, to one of the girls’ heads, the nose missing, both ears bitten off, how you could see her teeth through where I had ripped the flesh from her jaws and both cheeks, the torrents of gore and the blood that washed over the apartment, the stench of the dead, my own confused warning that I had drawn in—

“Can I help you?” the real estate agent, Mrs. Wolfe I’m guessing, intrudes. She has a very angular thin face, the nose is large, distressingly real -looking, heavily lipsticked mouth, white-blue eyes. She’s wearing a wool boucle jacket, washed silk blouse, shoes, earrings, a bracelet, from where? I don’t know. Maybe she’s younger than forty.

I’m still leaning against the wall, staring at the couple, who move back into the bedroom, leaving the main room empty. I’m just noticing that bouquets in glass vases, dozens of them, fill the apartment everywhere, and I can smell them from where I’m standing in the hall. Mrs. Wolfe glances behind her to see what I’m staring at, then back to me. “I’m looking for… Doesn’t Paul Owen live here?”

A long pause before she answers. “No. He doesn’t.”

Another long pause. “Are you, like… sure?” I ask, before feebly adding, “I don’t… understand.”

She realizes something that causes the muscles in her face to tighten. Her eyes narrow but don’t close. She’s noticed the surgical mask I’m gripping in a damp fist and she breathes in, sharply, refusing to look away. I am definitely not feeling right about any of this. On the TV, in a commercial, a man holds up a piece of toast and tells his wife, “Hey, you’re right… this margarine really does taste better than shit.” The wife smiles.

“You saw the ad in the Times?” she asks.

“No… I mean yes. Yes, I did. In the Times,” I falter, gathering a pocket of strength, the smell from the roses thick, masking something revolting. “But… doesn’t Paul Owen… still own this?” I ask, as forcibly as possible.

There’s a long pause before she admits, “There was no ad in the Times.”

We stare at each other endlessly. I’m convinced she senses I’m about to say something. I’ve seen this look on someone’s face before. Was it in a club? A victim’s expression? Had it appeared on a movie screen recently? Or had I seen it in the mirror? It takes what seems like an hour before I can speak again. “But that’s… his”—I stop, my heart skips, resumes beating—“furniture.” I drop my umbrella, then lean down quickly to retrieve it.