Autumn: a Sunday around four o’clock in the afternoon. I’m at Barney’s, buying cuff links. I had walked into the store at two-thirty, after a cold, tense brunch with Christie’s corpse, rushed up to the front counter, told a salesclerk, “I need a whip. Really.” In addition to the cuff links, I’ve bought an ostrich travel case with double-zippered openings and vinyl lining, an antique silver, crocodile and glass pill jar, an antique toothbrush container, a badger-bristle toothbrush and a faux-tortoiseshell nailbrush. Dinner last night? At Splash. Not much to remember: a watery Bellini, soggy arugula salad, a sullen waitress. Afterwards I watched a repeat of an old Patty Winters Show that I found on what I originally thought was a videotape of the torture and subsequent murder of two escort girls from last spring (the topic was Tips on How Your Pet Can Become a Movie Star). Right now I’m in the middle of purchasing a belt—not for myself—as well as three ninety-dollar ties, ten handkerchiefs, a four-hundred-dollar robe and two pairs of Ralph Lauren pajamas, and I’m having it all mailed to my apartment except for the handkerchiefs, which I’m having monogrammed then sent to P & P. I’ve already made somewhat of a scene in the ladies’ shoe department and, embarrassingly, was chased out by a distressed salesperson. At first it’s only a sense of vague uneasiness and I’m unsure of its cause, but then it feels, though I can’t be positive, as if I’m being followed, as if someone has been tracking me throughout Barney’s.

  Luis Carruthers is, I suppose, incognito. He’s wearing some kind of jaguar-print silk evening jacket, deerskin gloves, a felt hat, aviator sunglasses, and he’s hiding behind a column, pretending to inspect a row of ties, and, gracelessly, he gives me a sidelong glance. Leaning down, I sign something, a bill I think, and fleetingly Luis’s presence forces me to consider that maybe a life connected to this city, to Manhattan, to my job, is not a good idea, and suddenly I imagine Luis at some horrible party, drinking a nice dry rosé, fags clustered around a baby grand, show tunes, now he’s holding a flower, now he has a feather boa draped around his neck, now the pianist bangs out something from Les Miz, darling.

- American Psycho, Confronted by Fag