Lunar Park

Not only was my bedroom just as I had left it as a teenager but it was also Robby’s room as well. I had stayed here often when I visited L.A., after I made the move to Camden and then to New York, and over the years part of this large space overlooking the San Fernando Valley had slowly transformed itself into an office, where I stored old manuscripts and files on shelves built into a walk-in closet. This was where I was heading. I immediately started rummaging carelessly through stacks of papers—drafts of novels, magazine essays, children’s books—until the floor became littered with them. And then I finally located what I was looking for: the original manuscript copy of American Psycho, which had been typed on an electric Olivetti (four drafts in all, which continued to fill me with disbelief). I sat on the futon beneath the framed Elvis Costello poster that still hung on the wall and began flipping through its pages. Without even knowing what I was looking for, I felt a vague desire to touch the book and rid myself of something that Donald Kimball had said. There was a piece of information that had never fit into the pattern revealing itself to us. I wanted to make sure it did not exist. But as I kept turning pages I began knowing what it was.

It made itself apparent the moment I hit page 207 in the original manuscript.

On page 207 was the drawing of a face.

I had drawn a face onto the thin sheet of typing paper (leaving enough space between the chapter breaks to fit it in).

And beneath the face I drew the words, scrawled in red pen: “I’m B a c k.”

This image of words scrawled in blood was used later on, but I had cut the scene that preceded this warning.

This chapter had been omitted.

And I had also removed the crude drawing of the face from any subsequent manuscripts.

Something became confirmed.

This was a copy of the manuscript I had shown no one.

This was the copy that had been rewritten before I handed the book to my agent.

This was the copy that no editor or publisher had ever seen.

This was the one chapter I had cut from the very first draft and that no one but me had ever read.

It included details of the murder of a woman called Amelia Light.

I flashed on the phone call I received on November 5.

“What did you do to her?”

“I’d check the text of that dirty little book you wrote again.”

The fictional details—the missing arms and head, the ropes, the blowtorch—were identical to the details of the murder in the Orsic Motel in a place called Stoneboat, according to what Donald Kimball had imparted.

As I kept turning pages, I realized even before I arrived at the next chapter that it would be titled “Paul Owen.”

The murder that followed Amelia Light’s would be Paul Owen’s.

Donald Kimball was wrong.

Someone was tracking the book.

And a man named Paul Owen in Clear Lake would be the next victim.

I reached for a phone to call Donald Kimball.

But something stopped me.

I reminded myself again, this time with more force, that no one except me had ever seen this copy of the manuscript.

This led to: What was I going to say to Kimball?

What was there to say? That I was going insane? That my book was now reality?

I had no reaction—emotional, physical—to any of this. Because I was now at a point at which I accepted anything that presented itself to me.

I had constructed a life, and this is what it now offered me in return.

I pushed the original manuscript away from myself.

I stood up. I was moving toward a wall of bookshelves.

I was flashing on something else now.

I pulled a copy of the Vintage edition of American Psycho from a shelf.

I flipped through it until, on page 266, I found a chapter titled “Detective.”

I sat back on the bed and began to read.

May slides into June which slides into July which creeps towards August. Because of the heat I’ve had intense dreams the last four nights about vivisection and I’m doing nothing now, vegetating in my office with a sickening headache and a Walkman with a soothing Kenny G CD playing in it, but the bright midmorning sunlight floods the room, piercing my skull, causing my hangover to throb, and because of this, there’s no workout this morning. Listening to the music I notice the second light on my phone blinking off and on, which means that Jean is buzzing me. I sigh and carefully remove the Walkman.

“What is it?” I ask in monotone.

“Um, Patrick?” she begins.

“Ye-es, Je-an?” I ask condescendingly, spacing the two words out.

“Patrick, a Mr. Donald Kimball is here to see you,” she says nervously.