I check my Rolex while I'm buying scruffing lotion at the Clinique counter, still in Bergdorf's, to make sure I have enough time to shop some more before I have to meet Tim Severt for drinks at the Princeton Club at seven. I worked out this morning for two hours before the office and though I could have used this time for a massage (since my muscles are sore from the exhausting exercise regimen I'm now on) or a facial, even though I had one yesterday, there are just too many cocktail parties in the upcoming weeks that I have to attend and my presence at them will put a crimp in my shopping schedule so it's best if I get the shopping out of the way now. I run into Bradley Simpson from P & P outside F.A.O. Schwarz and he's wearing a glen-plaid worsted wool suit with notched lapels by Perry Ellis, a cotton broadcloth shirt by Gitman Brothers, a silk tie by Savoy, a chronograph with a crocodileskin band by Breil, a cotton raincoat by Paul Smith and a fur felt hat by Paul Stuart. After he says, "Hey Davis," I inexplicably start listing the names of all eight reindeer, alphabetically, and when I've finished, he smiles and says, "Listen, there's a Christmas party at Nekenieh on the twentieth, see you there?" I smile and assure him I'll be at Nekenieh on the twentieth and as I walk off, nodding to no one, I call back to him, "Hey ass**le, I wanna watch youdie, motherfuck-aaahhh," and then I start screaming like a banshee, moving across Fifty-eighth, banging my Bottega Veneta briefcase against a wall. Another choir, on Lexington, sings "Hark the Herald Angels" and I tap-dance, moaning, in front of them before I move like a zombie toward Bloomingdale's, where I rush over to the first tie rack I see and murmur to the young faggot working behind the counter, "Too, too fabulous," while fondling a silk ascot. He flirts and asks if I'm a model. "I'll see you in hell," I tell him, and move on.

...vases and felt fedoras with feather headbands and alligator toiletry cases with gilt-silver bottles and brushes and shoehorns that cost two hundred dollars and candlesticks and pillow covers and gloves and slippers and powder puffs and handknitted cotton snowflake sweaters and leather skates and Porsche-design ski goggles and antique apothecary bottles and diamond earrings and silk ties and boots and perfume bottles and diamond earrings and boots and vodka glasses and card cases and cameras and mahogany servers and scarves and aftershaves and photo albums and salt and pepper shakers and ceramic-toaster cookie jars and two-hundred-dollar shoehorns and backpacks and aluminum lunch pails and pillow covers...

Some kind of existential chasm opens before me while I'm browsing in Bloomingdale's and causes me to first locate a phone and check my messages, then, near tears, after taking three Halcion (since my body has mutated and adapted to the drug it no longer causes sleep - it just seems to ward off total madness), I head toward the Clinique counter where with my platinum American Express card I buy six tubes of shaving cream while flirting nervously with the girls who work there and I decide this emptiness has, at least in part, some connection with the way I treated Evelyn at Barcadia the other night, though there is always the possibility it could just as easily have somexhing to do with the tracking device on my VCR, and while I make a mental note to put in an appearance at Evelyn's Christmas party - I'm even tempted to ask one of the Clinique girls to escort me - I also remind myself to look through my VCR handbook and deal with the tracking device problem. I see a ten-year-old girl standing by her mother, who is buying a scarf, some jewelry, and I'm thinking: Not bad. I'm wearing a cashmere topcoat, a double-breasted plaid wool and alpaca sport coat, pleated wool trousers, patterned silk tie, all by Valentino Couture, and leather lace-ups by Allen-Edmonds.

Christmas Party

I'm having drinks with Charles Murphy at Rusty's to fortify myself before making an appearance at Evelyn's Christmas party. I'm wearing a four-button double-breasted wool and silk suit, a cotton shirt with a button-down collar by Valentino Couture, a patterned silk tie by Armani and cap-toed leather slipons by Allen-Edmonds. Murphy is wearing a six-button double-breasted wool gabardine suit by Courreges, a striped cotton shirt with a tab collar and a foulard-patterned silk-crepe tie, both by Hugo Boss. He's on a tirade about the Japanese - "They've bought the Empire State Building and Nell's. Nell's, can you believe it, Bateman?" he exclaims over his second Absolut on the rocks - and it moves something in me, it sets something off, and after leaving Rusty's, while wandering around the Upper West Side, I find myself crouched in the doorway of what used to be Carly Simon's, a very hot J. Akail restaurant that closed last fall, and leaping out at a passing Japanese delivery boy, I knock him off his bicycle and drag him into the doorway, his legs tangled somehow in the Schwinn he was riding which works to my advantage since when I slit his throat - easily, effortlessly - the spasmodic kicking that usually accompanies this routine is blocked by the bike, which he still manages to lift five, six times while he's choking on his own hot blood. I open the cartons of Japanese food and dump their contents over him, but to my surprise instead of sushi and teriyaki and hand rolls and soba noodles, chicken with cashew nuts falls all over his gasping bloodied face and beef chow mein and shrimp fried rice and moo shu pork splatter onto his heaving chest, and this irritating setback - accidentally killing the wrong type of Asian - moves me to check where this order was going - Sally Rubinstein - and with my Mont Blanc pen to write I'm gonna get you too... bitch on the back of it, then place the order over the dead kid's face and shrug apologetically, mumbling "Uh, sorry" and recall that The Patty Winters Show this morning was about Teenage Girls Who Trade Sex for Crack I spent two hours at the gym today and can now complete two hundred abdominal crunches in less than three minutes. Near Evelyn's brownstone I hand a freezing bum one of the fortune cookies I took from the delivery boy and he stuffs it, fortune and all, into his mouth, nodding thanks. "Fucking slob," I mutter loud enough for him to hear. As I turn the corner and head for Evelyn's, I notice the police lines are still up around the brownstone where her neighbor Victoria Bell was decapitated. Four limousines are parked in front, one still running.