American Psycho (46 page)

The zoo seems empty, devoid of life. The polar bears look stained and drugged. A crocodile floats morosely in an oily makeshift pond. The puffins stare sadly from their glass cage. Toucans have beaks as sharp as knives. The seals stupidly dive off rocks into swirling black water, barking mindlessly. The zookeepers feed them dead fish. A crowd gathers around the tank, mostly adults, a few accompanied by children. On the seals’ tank a plaque warns:
COINS CAN KILL—IF SWALLOWED, COINS CAN LODGE IN AN ANIMAL’S STOMACH AND CAUSE ULCERS, INFECTIONS AND DEATH. DO NOT THROW COINS IN THE POOL
. So what do I do? Toss a handful of change into the tank when none of the zookeepers are watching. It’s not the seals I hate—it’s the audience’s enjoyment of them that bothers me. The snowy owl has eyes that look just like mine, especially when it widens them. And while I stand there, staring at it, lowering my sunglasses, something unspoken passes between me and the bird—there’s this weird kind of tension, a bizarre pressure, that fuels the following, which starts, happens, ends, very quickly.

In the darkness of the penguin habitat—Edge of the Icepack is what the zoo pretentiously calls it—it’s cool, in sharp
contrast to the humidity outside. The penguins in the tank glide lazily underwater past the glass walls where spectators crowd in to stare. The penguins on the rocks, not swimming, look dazed, stressed out, tired and bored; they mostly yawn, sometimes stretching. Fake penguin noises, cassettes probably, play over a sound system and someone has turned up the volume because it’s so crowded in the room. The penguins are cute, I guess. I spot one that looks like Craig McDermott.

A child, barely five, finishes eating a candy bar. His mother tells him to throw the wrapper away, then resumes talking to another woman, who is with a child around the same age, the three of them staring into the dirty blueness of the penguin habitat. The first child moves toward the trash can, located in a dim corner in the back of the room, that I am now crouching behind. He stands on tiptoes, carefully throwing the wrapper into the trash. I whisper something. The child spots me and just stands there, away from the crowd, slightly scared but also dumbly fascinated. I stare back.

“Would you like … a cookie?” I ask, reaching into my pocket.

He nods his small head, up, then down, slowly, but before he can answer, my sudden lack of care crests in a massive wave of fury and I pull the knife out of my pocket and I stab him, quickly, in the neck.

Bewildered, he backs into the trash can, gurgling like an infant, unable to scream or cry out because of the blood that starts spurting out of the wound in his throat. Though I’d like to watch this child die, I push him down behind the garbage can, then casually mingle in with the rest of the crowd and touch the shoulder of a pretty girl, and smiling I point to a penguin preparing to make a dive. Behind me, if one were to look closely, one could see the child’s feet kicking in back of the trash can. I keep an eye on the child’s mother, who after a while notices her son’s absence and starts scanning the crowd. I touch the girl’s shoulder again, and she smiles at me and shrugs apologetically, but I can’t figure out why.

When the mother finally notices him she doesn’t scream because she can see only his feet and assumes that he’s playfully hiding from her. At first she seems relieved that she’s spotted
him, and moving toward the trash can she coos, “Are you playing hide-and-seek, honey?” But from where I stand, behind the pretty girl, who I’ve already found out is foreign, a tourist, I can see the exact moment when the expression on the mother’s face changes into fear, and slinging her purse over her shoulder she pulls the trash can away, revealing a face completely covered in red blood and the child’s having trouble blinking its eyes because of this, grabbing at his throat, now kicking weakly. The mother makes a sound that I cannot describe—something high-pitched that turns into screaming.

After she falls to the floor beside the body, a few people turning around, I find myself shouting out, my voice heavy with emotion, “I’m a doctor, move back, I’m a doctor,” and I kneel beside the mother before an interested crowd gathers around us and I pry her arms off the child, who is now on his back struggling vainly for breath, the blood coming evenly but in dying arcs out of his neck and onto his Polo shirt, which is drenched with it. And I have a vague awareness during the minutes I hold the child’s head, reverently, careful not to bloody myself, that if someone makes a phone call or if a real doctor is at hand, there’s a good chance the child can be saved. But this doesn’t happen. Instead I hold it, mindlessly, while the mother—homely, Jewish-looking, overweight, pitifully trying to appear stylish in designer jeans and an unsightly leaf-patterned black wool sweater—shrieks
do something, do something, do something
, the two of us ignoring the chaos, the people who start screaming around us, concentrating only on the dying child.

Though I am satisfied at first by my actions, I’m suddenly jolted with a mournful despair at how useless, how extraordinarily painless, it is to take a child’s life. This thing before me, small and twisted and bloody, has no real history, no worthwhile past, nothing is really lost. It’s so much worse (and more pleasurable) taking the life of someone who has hit his or her prime, who has the beginnings of a full history, a spouse, a network of friends, a career, whose death will upset far more people whose capacity for grief is limitless than a child’s would, perhaps ruin many more lives than just the meaningless, puny death of this boy. I’m automatically seized with an almost overwhelming
desire to knife the boy’s mother too, who is in hysterics, but all I can do is slap her face harshly and shout for her to calm down. For this I’m given no disapproving looks. I’m dimly aware of light coming into the room, of a door being opened somewhere, of the presence of zoo officials, a security guard, someone—one of the tourists?—taking flash pictures, the penguins freaking out in the tank behind us, slamming themselves against the glass in a panic. A cop pushes me away, even though I tell him I’m a physician. Someone drags the boy outside, lays him on the ground and removes his shirt. The boy gasps, dies. The mother has to be restrained.

I feel empty, hardly here at all, but even the arrival of the police seems an insufficient reason to move and I stand with the crowd outside the penguin habitat, with dozens of others, taking a long time to slowly blend in and then back away, until finally I’m walking down Fifth Avenue, surprised by how little blood has stained my jacket, and I stop in a bookstore and buy a book and then at a Dove Bar stand on the corner of Fifty-sixth Street, where I buy a Dove Bar—a coconut one—and I imagine a hole, widening in the sun, and for some reason this breaks the tension I started feeling when I first noticed the snowy owl’s eyes and then when it recurred after the boy was dragged out of the penguin habitat and I walked away, my hands soaked with blood, uncaught.

My appearances in the office the last month or so have been sporadic to say the least. All I seem to want to do now is work out, lifting weights, mostly, and secure reservations at new restaurants I’ve already been to, then cancel them. My apartment reeks of rotten fruit, though actually the smell is caused by what I scooped out of Christie’s head and poured into a Marco glass bowl that sits on a counter near the entranceway. The head itself lies covered with brain pulp, hollow and eyeless, in the corner of the living room beneath the piano and I plan to use
it as a jack-o’-lantern on Halloween. Because of the stench I decide to use Paul Owen’s apartment for a little tryst I have planned for tonight. I’ve had the premises scanned for surveillance devices; disappointingly, there were none. Someone I talk to through my lawyer tells me that Donald Kimball, the private investigator, has heard that Owen really
is
in London, that someone spotted him twice in the lobby of Claridge’s, once each at a tailor on Savile Row and at a trendy new restaurant in Chelsea. Kimball flew over two nights ago, which means no one is keeping watch over the apartment anymore, and the keys I stole from Owen still function so I was able to bring the tools (a power drill, a bottle of acid, the nail gun, knives, a Bic lighter) over there after lunch. I hire two escort girls from a reputable if somewhat sleazy private establishment I’ve never used before, charging them on Owen’s gold American Express card which, I suppose because everyone thinks Owen is now in London, no one has put a trace on, though there is one on his platinum AmEx.
The Patty Winters Show
today was—ironically, I thought—about Princess Di’s beauty tips.

Midnight. The conversation I have with the two girls, both very young, blond hardbodies with big tits, is brief, since I’m having a difficult time containing my disordered self.

“You live in a palace, mister,” one of the girls, Torri, says in a baby’s voice, awed by Owen’s ridiculous-looking condo. “It’s a real palace.”

Annoyed, I shoot her a glance. “It’s not
that
nice.”

While making drinks from Owen’s well-stocked bar, I mention to both of them that I work on Wall Street, at Pierce & Pierce. Neither seems particularly interested. Again, I find myself hearing a voice—one of theirs—asking if that’s a shoe store. Tiffany flips through an issue of
GQ
that’s three months old, sitting on the black leather couch beneath the strip of faux-cowhide paneling, and she’s looking confused, like she doesn’t understand something, anything. I’m thinking, Pray, you bitch, just pray, and then I have to admit to myself what a turn-on it is encouraging these girls to debase themselves in front of me for what amounts to pocket change. I also mention, after pouring them another drink, that I went to Harvard, and then I ask, after a pause, “Ever hear of it?”

I’m shocked when Torri answers, “I had a business acquaintance who said he went there.” She shrugs dumbly.

“A client?” I ask, interested.

“Well,” she starts nervously. “Let’s just say a business acquaintance.”

“Was this a pimp?” I ask—then the weird part happens.

“Well”—she stalls again before continuing—“let’s just call him a business acquaintance.” She sips from her glass. “He
said
he went to Harvard, but … I didn’t believe him.” She looks over at Tiffany, then back at me. Our mutual silence encourages her to keep talking and she continues haltingly. “He had, like, this monkey. And I would have to watch this monkey in … his apartment.” She stops, starts, continues in monotone, occasionally gulping. “I’d want to watch TV all day, ’cause there was nothing else to do while the guy was out … and while I tried to keep an eye on the monkey. But there was … something wrong with this monkey.” She stops and takes a deep breath. “The monkey would only watch …” Again she stops, takes in the room, a quizzical expression creasing her face as if she’s not sure she should be telling us this story; if we, me and the other bitch, should be privy to this information. And I brace myself for something shocking, something revelatory, a connection. “It would only watch …” She sighs, then in a sudden rush admits, “
The Oprah Winfrey Show
and that’s all it would watch. The guy had tapes and tapes of it and he had made all of them for this monkey”—now she looks over at me, imploringly, as if she’s losing her mind here, right now, in Owen’s apartment and wants me to, what, verify it?—“with the commercials edited out. One time I tried to … turn the channel, turn one of the tapes off … if I wanted to watch a soap instead or something … but”—she finishes her drink and rolling her eyes, obviously upset by this story, continues bravely—“the monkey would s-s-screech at me and it would only calm down when Oprah was on.” She swallows, clears her throat, looks like she’s going to cry but doesn’t. “And you know, you try to turn the channel and that d-damn monkey would try to scratch you,” she concludes bitterly and hugs herself, shivering, uselessly trying to warm herself.

Silence. Arctic, frigid, utter silence. The light burning over
us in the apartment is cold and electric. Standing there, I look at Torri then at the other girl, Tiffany, who looks queasy.

I finally say something, stumbling over my own words. “I don’t care … whether you’ve led a … decent life … or not.”

Sex happens—a hard-core montage. After I shave Torri’s pussy she lies on her back on Paul’s futon and spreads her legs while I finger her and suck it off, sometimes licking her asshole. Then Tiffany sucks my cock—her tongue is hot and wet and she keeps flicking it over the head, irritating me—while I call her a nasty whore, a bitch. Fucking one of them with a condom while the other sucks my balls, lapping at them, I stare at the Angelis silk-screen print hanging over the bed and I’m thinking about pools of blood, geysers of the stuff. Sometimes it’s very quiet in the room except for the wet sounds my cock makes slipping in and out of one of the girls’ vaginas. Tiffany and I take turns eating Torri’s hairless cunt and asshole. The two of them come, yelling simultaneously, in a sixty-nine position. Once their cunts are wet enough I bring out a dildo and let the two of them play with it. Torri spreads her legs and fingers her own clit while Tiffany fucks her with the huge, greased dildo, Torri urging Tiffany to fuck her cunt harder with it, until finally, gasping, she comes.