"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 sir, 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 (nothere 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 Bless. 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 Bergdorfs 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 calls, 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.