"Will you wear that sexy black Anne Klein dress?" he asks, his hands on her shoulders, whispering this into her ear, as he smells it. "Bateman's not welcome."
I laugh good-naturedly while getting up from the bed, escorting him out of the room.
"Wait! My espresso!" he calls out.
Evelyn laughs, then claps as if delighted by Timothy's reluctance to vacate.
"Come on fella," I say as I push him roughly out of the bedroom. "Beddy-bye time."
He still manages to blow her a kiss before I get him out and away. He is completely silent as I walk him out of the brownstone.
After he leaves I pour myself a brandy and drink it from a checkered Italian tumbler and when I come back to the bedroom I find Evelyn lying in bed watching the Home Shopping Club. I lie down next to her and loosen my Armani tie. Finally I ask something without looking at her.
"Why don't you just go for Price?"
"Oh god, Patrick," she says, her eyes shut. "Why Price? Price?" And she says this in a way that makes me think she has had sex with him.
"He's rich," I say.
"Everybody's rich," she says, concentrating on the TV screen.
"He's good-looking," I tell her.
"Everybody's good-looking, Patrick," she says remotely.
"He has a great body," I say.
"Everybody has a great body now," she says.
I place the tumbler on the nightstand and roll over on top of her. While I kiss and lick her neck she stares passionlessly at the wide-screen Panasonic remote-control television set and lowers the volume. I pull my Armani shirt up and place her hand on my torso, wanting her to feel how rock-hard, how halved my stomach is, and I flex the muscles, grateful it's light in the room so she can see how bronzed and defined my abdomen has become.
"You know," she says clearly, "Stash tested positive for the AIDS virus. And..." She pauses, something on the screen catching her interest; the volume goes slightly up and then is lowered. "And... I think he will probably sleep with Vanden tonight."
"Good," I say, biting lightly at her neck, one of my hands on a firm, cold breast.
"You're evil," she says, slightly excited, running her hands along my broad, hard shoulder.
"No," I sigh. "Just your fiance."
After attempting to have sex with her for around fifteen minutes, I decide not to continue trying.
She says, "You know, you can always be in better shape."
I reach for the tumbler of brandy. I finish it. Evelyn is addicted to Parnate, an antidepressant. I lie there beside her watching the Home Shopping Club - at glass dolls, embroidered throw pillows, lamps shaped like footballs, Lady Zirconia - with the sound turned off. Evelyn starts drifting.
"Are you using minoxidil?" she asks, after a long time.
"No. I'm not," I say. "Why should I?"
"Your hairline looks like it's receding," she murmurs.
"It's not," I find myself saying. It's hard to tell. My hair is very thick and I can't tell if I'm losing it. I really doubt it.
I walk back to my place and say good night to a doorman I don't recognize (he could be anybody) and then dissolve into my living room high above the city, the sounds of the Tokens singing "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" coming from the glow of the Wurlitzer 1015 jukebox (which is not as good as the hard-to-find Wurlitzer 850) that stands in the comer of the living room. I masturbate, thinking about first Evelyn, then Courtney, then Vanden and then Evelyn again, but right before I come - a weak orgasm - about a near-naked model in a halter top I saw today in a Calvin Klein advertisement.
Chapter Two
Morning
In the early light of a May dawn this is what the living room of my apartment looks like: Over the white marble and granite gas-log fireplace hangs an original David Onica. It's a six-foot-by-four-foot portrait of a naked woman, mostly done in muted grays and olives, sitting on a chaise longue watching MTV, the backdrop a Martian landscape, a gleaming mauve desert scattered with dead, gutted fish, smashed plates rising like a sunburst above the woman's yellow head, and the whole thing is framed in black aluminum steel. The painting overlooks a long white down-filled sofa and a thirty-inch digital TV set from Toshiba; it's a high-contrast highly defined model plus it has a four-corner video stand with a high-tech tube combination from NEC with a picture-in-picture digital effects system (plus freeze-frame); the audio includes built-in MTS and a five-watt-per-channel on-board amp. A Toshiba VCR sits in a glass case beneath the TV set; it's a super-high-band Beta unit and has built-in editing function including a character generator with eight-page memory, a high-band record and playback, and three-week, eight-event timer. A hurricane halogen lamp is placed in each corner of the living room. Thin white venetian blinds cover all eight floor-to-ceiling windows. A glass-top coffee table with oak legs by Turchin sits in front of the sofa, with Steuben glass animals placed strategically around expensive crystal ashtrays from Fortunoff, though I don't smoke. Next to the Wurlitzer jukebox is a black ebony Baldwin concert grand piano. A polished white oak floor runs throughout the apartment. On the other side of the room, next to a desk and a magazine rack by Gio Ponti, is a complete stereo system (CD player, tape deck, tuner, amplifier) by Sansui with six-foot Duntech Sovereign 2001 speakers in Brazilian rosewood. A downfilled futon lies on an oakwood frame in the center of the bedroom. Against the wall is a Panasonic thirty-one-inch set with a direct-view screen and stereo sound and beneath it in a glass case is a Toshiba VCR. I'm not sure if the time on the Sony digital alarm clock is correct so I have to sit up then look down at the time flashing on and off on the VCR, then pick up the Ettore Sottsass push-button phone that rests on the steel and glass nightstand next to the bed and dial the time number. A cream leather, steel and wood chair designed by Eric Marcus is in one corner of the room, a molded plywood chair in the other. A black-dotted beige and white Maud Sienna carpet covers most of the floor. One wall is hidden by four chests of immense bleached mahogany drawers.