"What is this? You can't eat at Smith and Wollensky without ordering the hash browns," he complains.

I avoid his eyes and touch the cigar I'm saving in my jacket pocket.

"Jesus, Bateman, you're a raving maniac. Been at P & P too long," he mutters. "No f**king hash browns."

I don't say anything. How can I tell McDermott that this is a very disjointed time of my life and that I notice the walls have been painted a bright, almost painful white and under the glare of the fluorescent lights they seem to pulse and glow. Frank Sinatra is somewhere, singing "Witchcraft." I'm staring at the walls, listening to the words, suddenly thirsty, but our waiter is taking orders from a very large table of exclusively Japanese businessmen, and someone who I think is either George MacGowan or Taylor Preston, in the booth behind this one, wearing something by Polo, is eyeing me suspiciously and McDermott is still staring at my steak with this stunned look on his face and one of the Japanese businessmen is holding an abacus, another one is trying to pronounce the word "teriyaki," another is mouthing, then singing, the words to the song, and the table laughs, an odd, not completely foreign sound, as he lifts up a pair of chopsticks, shaking his head confidently, imitating Sinatra. His mouth opens, what comes out of it is: "that sry comehitle stale... that clazy witchclaft... "

Something on Television

While getting dressed to meet Jeanette for a new British musical that opened on Broadway last week and then dinner at Progress, the new Malcolm Forbes restaurant on the Upper East Side, I watch a tape of this morning's Patty Winters Show, which is split into two parts. The first section is a feature on the lead singer of the rock band Guns n' Roses, Axl Rose, whom Patty quoted as telling an interviewer, "When I get stressed I get violent and take it out on myself. I've pulled razor blades on myself but then realized that having a scar is more detrimental than not having a stereo... I'd rather kick my stereo in than go punch somebody in the face. When I get mad or upset or emotional, sometimes I'll walk over and play my piano." Part two consists of Patty reading letters that Ted Bundy, the mass murderer, had written to his fiancee during one of his many trials. " 'Dear Carole,'" she reads, while an unfairly bloated head shot of Bundy, just weeks away from execution, Hashes across the screen, " 'please do not sit in the same row in court with Janet. When I look over toward you there she sits contemplating me with her mad eyes like a deranged seagull studying a clam... I can feel her spreading hot sauce on me already...'"

I wait for something to happen. I sit in my bedroom for close to an hour. Nothing does. I get up, do the rest of the coke - a minuscule amount that's in my closet left over from a late Saturday at M.K. or Au Bar, stop at Orso for a drink before meeting Jeanette, who I called earlier, mentioning that I had two tickets to this particular musical and she didn't say anything except "I'll go" and I told her to meet me in front of the theater at ten to eight and she hung up. I tell myself while I'm sitting alone at the bar in Orso that I was going to call one of the numbers that flashed on the bottom of the screen, but then I realize that I didn't know what to say and I remember ten of the words Patty read: "I can feel her spreading hot sauce on me already."

I remember these words again for some reason while Jeanette and I are sitting in Progress after the musical and it's late, the restaurant is crowded. We order something called eagle carpaccio, mesquite-grilled mahi-mahi, endive with chevre and chocolate-covered almonds, this weird kind of gazpacho with raw chicken in it, dry beer. Right now there really is nothing edible on my plate, what there is tastes like plaster. Jeanette is wearing a wool smoking jacket, a silk chiffon shawl with one sleeve, wool tuxedo pants, all Armani, antique gold and diamond earrings, stockings from Givenchy, grosgrain flats. She keeps sighing and threatens to light a cigarette even though we're seated in the nonsmoking section of the restaurant. Jeanette's behavior deeply unsettles me, causes black thoughts to form and expand in my head. She's been drinking champagne kirs but has already had too many and when she orders her sixth I suggest that maybe she's had enough. She looks at me and says, "I am cold and thirsty and I will order what I f**king want."

I say, "Then have an Evian or San Pellegrino for Christ sakes."

Sandstone

My mother and I are sitting in her private room at Sandstone, where she is now a permanent resident. Heavily sedated, she has her sunglasses on and keeps touching her hair and I keep looking at my hands, pretty sure that they're shaking. She tries to smile when she asks what I want for Christmas. I'm not surprised at how much effort it takes to raise my head and look at her. I'm wearing a two-button wool gabardine suit with notched lapels by Gian Marco Venturi, cap-toed leather laceups by Armani, tie by Polo, socks I'm not sure where from. It's nearing the middle of April.