American Psycho

by Bret Easton Ellis

  As if this film had speeded up she laughs immediately, looks quickly away, down, embarrassed. “I’m, well, sorry … gosh.”

  “But …” I add quietly, “you shouldn’t be … afraid.”

  She looks back up at me, swollen with hope.

  “Something can be done about it,” I say. Then, not knowing why I’d said that, I modify the statement, telling her straight on, “Maybe something can’t. I don’t know. I’ve thrown away a lot of time to be with you, so it’s not like I don’t care.”

  She nods mutely.

  “You should never mistake affection for … passion,” I warn her. “It can be … not good. It can … get you into, well, trouble.”

  She’s not saying anything and I can suddenly sense her sadness, flat and calm, like a daydream. “What are you trying to say?” she asks lamely, blushing.

  “Nothing. I’m just … letting you know that … appearances can be deceiving.”

  She stares at the Times stacked in heavy folds on the table. A breeze barely causes it to flutter. “Why … are you telling me this?”

  Tactfully, almost touching her hand but stopping myself, I tell her, “I just want to avoid any future misconnections.” A hardbody walks by. I notice her, then look back at Jean. “Oh come on, don’t look that way. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “I’m not,” she says, trying to act casual. “I just want to know if you’re disappointed in me for admitting this.”

  How could she ever understand that there isn’t any way I could be disappointed since I no longer find anything worth looking forward to?

  “You don’t know much about me, do you?” I ask teasingly.

  “I know enough,” she says, her initial response, but then she shakes her head. “Oh let’s just drop this. I made a mistake. I’m sorry.” In the next instant she changes her mind. “I want to know more,” she says, gravely.

  I consider this before asking, “Are you sure?”

  “Patrick,” she says breathlessly, “I know my life would be … much emptier without you … in it.”

  I consider this too, nodding thoughtfully.

  “And I just can’t …” She stops, frustrated. “I can’t pretend these feelings don’t exist, can I?”

  “Shhh …”

  … there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there. It is hard for me to make sense on any given level. Myself is fabricated, an aberration. I am a noncontingent human being. My personality is sketchy and unformed, my heartlessness goes deep and is persistent. My conscience, my pity, my hopes disappeared a long time ago (probably at Harvard) if they ever did exist. There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it, I have now surpassed. I still, though, hold on to one single bleak truth: no one is safe, nothing is redeemed. Yet I am blameless. Each model of human behavior must be assumed to have some validity. Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do? My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this—and I have, countless times, in just about every act I’ve committed—and coming face-to-face with these truths, there is no catharsis. I gain no deeper knowledge about myself, no new understanding can be extracted from my telling. There has been no reason for me to tell you any of this. This confession has meant nothing.…

  I’m asking Jean, “How many people in this world are like me?”

  She pauses, carefully answers, “I don’t … think anyone?” She’s guessing.

  “Let me rephrase the ques—Wait, how does my hair look?” I ask, interrupting myself.

  “Uh, fine.”

  “Okay. Let me rephrase the question.” I take a sip of her dry beer. “Okay. Why do you like me?” I ask.

  She asks back, “Why?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Why.”

  “Well …” A drop of beer has fallen onto my Polo shirt. She hands me her napkin. A practical gesture that touches me. “You’re … concerned with others,” she says tentatively. “That’s a very rare thing in what”—she stops again—“is a … I guess, a hedonistic world. This is … Patrick, you’re embarrassing me.” She shakes her head, closing her eyes.

  “Go on,” I urge. “Please. I want to know.”

  “You’re sweet.” She rolls her eyes up. “Sweetness is … sexy … I don’t know. But so is … mystery.” Silence. “And I think … mystery … you’re mysterious.” Silence, followed by a sigh. “And you’re … considerate.” She realizes something, no longer scared, stares at me straight on. “And I think shy men are romantic.”

  “How many people in this world are like me?” I ask again. “Do I really appear like that?”

  “Patrick,” she says. “I wouldn’t lie.”

  “No, of course you wouldn’t … but I think that …” My turn to sigh, contemplatively. “I think … you know how they say no two snowflakes are ever alike?”

  She nods.

  “Well, I don’t think that’s true. I think a lot of snowflakes are alike … and I think a lot of people are alike too.”

  She nods again, though I can tell she’s very confused.

  “Appearances can be deceiving,” I admit carefully.

  “No,” she says, shaking her head, sure of herself for the first time. “I don’t think they are deceiving. They’re not.”

  “Sometimes, Jean,” I explain, “the lines separating appearance—what you see—and reality—what you don’t—become, well, blurred.”

  “That’s not true,” she insists. “That’s simply not true.”

  “Really?” I ask, smiling.

  “I didn’t use to think so,” she says. “Maybe ten years ago I didn’t. But I do now.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, interested. “You used to?”

  … a flood of reality. I get an odd feeling that this is a crucial moment in my life and I’m startled by the suddenness of what I guess passes for an epiphany. There is nothing of value I can offer her. For the first time I see Jean as uninhibited; she seems stronger, less controllable, wanting to take me into a new and unfamiliar land—the dreaded uncertainty of a totally different world. I sense she wants to rearrange my life in a significant way—her eyes tell me this and though I see truth in them, I also know that one day, sometime very soon, she too will be locked in the rhythm of my insanity. All I have to do is keep silent about this and not bring it up—yet she weakens me, it’s almost as if she’s making the decision about who I am, and in my own stubborn, willful way I can admit to feeling a pang, something tightening inside, and before I can stop it I find myself almost dazzled and moved that I might have the capacity to accept, though not return, her love. I wonder if even now, right here in Nowheres, she can see the darkening clouds behind my eyes lifting. And though the coldness I have always felt leaves me, the numbness doesn’t and probably never will. This relationship will probably lead to nothing … this didn’t change anything. I imagine her smelling clean, like tea …

  “Patrick … talk to me … don’t be so upset,” she is saying.

  “I think it’s … time for me to … take a good look … at the world I’ve created,” I choke, tearfully, finding myself admitting to her, “I came upon … a half gram of cocaine … in my armoire last … night.” I’m squeezing my hands together, forming one large fist, all knuckles white.

  “What did you do with it?” she asks.

  I place one hand on the table. She takes it.

  “I threw it away. I threw it all away. I wanted to do it,” I gasp, “but I threw it away.”

  She squeezes my hand tightly. “Patrick?” she asks, moving her hand up until it�
��s gripping my elbow. When I find the strength to look back at her, it strikes me how useless, boring, physically beautiful she really is, and the question Why not end up with her? floats into my line of vision. An answer: she has a better body than most other girls I know. Another one: everyone is interchangeable anyway. One more: it doesn’t really matter. She sits before me, sullen but hopeful, characterless, about to dissolve into tears. I squeeze her hand back, moved, no, touched by her ignorance of evil. She has one more test to pass.

  “Do you own a briefcase?” I ask her, swallowing.

  “No,” she says. “I don’t.”

  “Evelyn carries a briefcase,” I mention.

  “She does …?” Jean asks.

  “And what about a Filofax?”

  “A small one,” she admits.

  “Designer?” I ask suspiciously.

  “No.”

  I sigh, then take her hand, small and hard, in mine.

  … and in the southern deserts of Sudan the heat rises in airless waves, thousands upon thousands of men, women, children, roam throughout the vast bushland, desperately seeking food. Ravaged and starving, leaving a trail of dead, emaciated bodies, they eat weeds and leaves and … lily pads, stumbling from village to village, dying slowly, inexorably; a gray morning in the miserable desert, grit flies through the air, a child with a face like a black moon lies in the sand, scratching at his throat, cones of dust rising, flying across land like whirling tops, no one can see the sun, the child is covered with sand, almost dead, eyes unblinking, grateful (stop and imagine for an instant a world where someone is grateful for something) none of the haggard pay attention as they file by, dazed and in pain (no—there is one who pays attention, who notices the boy’s agony and smiles, as if holding a secret), the boy opens and closes his cracked, chapped mouth soundlessly, there is a school bus in the distance somewhere and somewhere else, above that, in space, a spirit rises, a door opens, it asks “Why?”—a home for the dead, an infinity, it hangs in a void, time limps by, love and sadness rush through the boy …

  “Okay.”

  I am dimly aware of a phone ringing somewhere. In the café on Columbus, countless numbers, hundreds of people, maybe thousands, have walked by our table during my silence. “Patrick,” Jean says. Someone with a baby stroller stops at the corner and purchases a Dove Bar. The baby stares at Jean and me. We stare back. It’s really weird and I’m experiencing a spontaneous kind of internal sensation, I feel I’m moving toward as well as away from something, and anything is possible.

  Aspen

  It is four days before Christmas, at two in the afternoon. I’m sitting in the back of a pitch-black limousine parked in front of a nondescript brownstone off Fifth Avenue trying to read an article about Donald Trump in the new issue of Fame magazine. Jeanette wants me to come in with her but I say “Forget it.” She has a black eye from last night since I had to coerce her over dinner at Il Marlibro to even consider doing this; then, after a more forceful discussion at my apartment, she consented. Jeanette’s dilemma lies outside my definition of guilt, and I had told her, truthfully, over dinner that it was very hard for me to express concern for her that I don’t feel. During the entire drive from my place on the Upper West Side, she’s been sobbing. The only clear, identifiable emotion coming from her is desperation and maybe longing, and though I successfully ignore her for most of the ride I finally have to tell her, “Listen, I’ve already taken two Xanax this morning so, uh, you’re incapable of, like, upsetting me.” Now, as she stumbles out of the limo onto the frozen pavement, I mumble, “It’s for the best,” and, offering consolation, “Don’t take it so seriously.” The driver, whose name I’ve forgotten, leads her into the brownstone and she gives a last, regretful look back. I sigh and wave her off. She’s still wearing, from last night, a leopard-print cotton balmacaan coat with wool challis lining over a wool crepe shirtless dress by Bill Blass. Bigfoot was interviewed on The Patty Winters Show this morning and to my shock I found him surprisingly articulate and charming. The glass I’m drinking Absolut vodka from is Finnish. I’m very suntanned compared to Jeanette.

  The driver comes out of the building, gives me thumbs-up, carefully pulls the limousine away from the curb and begins the trek to JFK airport, where my flight to Aspen leaves in ninety minutes. When I get back, in January, Jeanette will be out of the country. I relight a cigar, search for an ashtray. There’s a church on the corner of this street. Who cares? This is, I think, the fifth child I’ve had aborted, the third I haven’t aborted myself (a useless statistic, I admit). The wind outside the limousine is brisk and cold and the rain hits the darkened windows in rhythmic waves, mimicking Jeanette’s probable weeping in the operating room, dizzy from the anesthesia, thinking about a memory from her past, a moment where the world was perfect. I resist the impulse to start cackling hysterically.

  At the airport I instruct the chauffeur to stop by F.A.O. Schwarz before picking Jeanette up and purchase the following: a doll, a rattle, a teething ring, a white Gund polar bear, and have them sitting in the backseat for her, unwrapped. Jeanette should be okay—she has her whole life in front of her (that is, if she doesn’t run into me). Besides, this girl’s favorite movie is Pretty in Pink and she thinks Sting is cool, so what is happening to her is, like, not totally undeserved and one shouldn’t feel bad for her. This is no time for the innocent.

  Valentine’s Day

  Tuesday morning and I’m standing by my desk in the living room on the phone with my lawyer, alternately keeping my eye on The Patty Winters Show and the maid as she waxes the floor, wipes blood smears off the walls, throws away gore-soaked newspapers without a word. Faintly it hits me that she too is lost in a world of shit, completely drowning in it, and this somehow sets off my remembering that the piano tuner will be stopping by this afternoon and that I should leave a note with the doorman to let him in. Not that the Yamaha has ever been played; it’s just that one of the girls fell against it and some strings (which I used later) were pulled out, snapped or something. Into the phone I’m saying, “I need more tax breaks.” Patty Winters is on the TV screen asking a child, eight or nine, “But isn’t that just another term for an orgy?” The timer buzzes on the microwave. I’m heating up a soufflé.

  There’s no use in denying it: this has been a bad week. I’ve started drinking my own urine. I laugh spontaneously at nothing. Sometimes I sleep under my futon. I’m flossing my teeth constantly until my gums are aching and my mouth tastes like blood. Before dinner last night at 1500 with Reed Goodrich and Jason Rust I was almost caught at a Federal Express in Times Square trying to send the mother of one of the girls I killed last week what might be a dried-up, brown heart. And to Evelyn I successfully Federal Expressed, through the office, a small box of flies along with a note, typed by Jean, saying that I never, ever wanted to see her face again and, though she doesn’t really need one, to go on a fucking diet. But there are also things that the average person would think are nice that I’ve done to celebrate the holiday, items I’ve bought Jean and had delivered to her apartment this morning: Castellini cotton napkins from Bendel’s, a wicker chair from Jenny B. Goode, a taffeta table throw from Barney’s, a vintage chain-mail-vent purse and a vintage sterling silver dresser set from Macy’s, a white pine whatnot from Conran’s, an Edwardian nine-carat-gold “gate” bracelet from Bergdorf’s and hundreds upon hundreds of pink and white roses.

  The office. Lyrics to Madonna songs keep intruding, bursting into my head, announcing themselves in tiring, familiar ways, and I stare into space, my eyes lazily lit up while I try to forget about the day looming before me, but then a phrase that fills me with a nameless dread keeps interrupting the Madonna songs—isolated farmhouse constantly returns to me, over and over. Someone I’ve been avoiding for the last year, a nerd from Fortune who wants to write an article about me, calls again this morning and I end up calling the reporter back to arrange an interview. Craig McDermott is having some kind of fax frenzy and won’t take any of my phone call
s, preferring to communicate by fax only. The Post this morning says the remains of three bodies that disappeared aboard a yacht last March have been recovered, frozen in ice, hacked up and bloated, in the East River; some maniac is going around the city poisoning one-liter bottles of Evian water, seventeen dead already; talk of zombies, the public mood, increasing randomness, vast chasms of misunderstanding.

  And, for the sake of form, Tim Price resurfaces, or at least I’m pretty sure he does. While I’m at my desk simultaneously crossing out the days in my calendar that have already passed and reading a new best seller about office management called Why It Works to Be a Jerk, Jean buzzes in, announcing that Tim Price wants to talk, and fearfully I say, “Send him … in.” Price strolls into the office wearing a wool suit by Canali Milano, a cotton shirt by Ike Behar, a silk tie by Bill Blass, cap-toed leather lace-ups from Brooks Brothers. I’m pretending to be on the phone. He sits down, across from me, on the other side of the Palazzetti glass-top desk. There’s a smudge on his forehead or at least that’s what I think I see. Aside from that he looks remarkably fit. Our conversation probably resembles something like this but is actually briefer.

  “Price,” I say, shaking his hand. “Where have you been?”

  “Oh, just making the rounds.” He smiles. “But hey, I’m back.”

  “Far out.” I shrug, confused. “How was … it?”

  “It was … surprising.” He shrugs too. “It was … depressing.”

  “I thought I saw you in Aspen,” I murmur.

  “Hey, how are you, Bateman?” he asks.

  “I’m okay,” I tell him, swallowing. “Just … existing.”

  “And Evelyn?” he asks. “How is she?”

  “Well, we broke up.” I smile.

  “That’s too bad.” He takes this in, remembers something. “Courtney?”

  “She married Luis.”

  “Grassgreen?”

  “No. Carruthers.”