American Psycho (Page 156)
"Nothing," I say, smiling reassuringly.
There's a pause. I break it by asking, "What do you want?"
She says nothing for a long time and I look back at my hands, at dried blood, probably from a girl named Suki, beneath the thumbnail. My mother licks her lips tiredly and says, "I don't know. I just want to have a nice Christmas."
I don't say anything. I've spent the last hour studying my hair in the mirror I've insisted the hospital keep in my mother's room.
"You look unhappy," she says suddenly.
"I'm not," I tell her with a brief sigh.
"You look unhappy," she says, more quietly this time. She touches her hair, stark blinding white, again.
She doesn't say anything else. I'm sitting in a chair by the window, and through the bars the lawn outside darkens, a cloud passes over the sun, soon the lawn turns green again. She sits on her bed in a nightgown from Bergdorf's and slippers by Norma Kamali that I bought her for Christmas last year.
"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.
The Best City for Business
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?"