Archive of Our Own

I'm wearing a charcoal Brioni three-button suit. It's my most expensive suit, and it feels like a calfskin glove on my body. It's not a work suit usually, but I felt the need today. My eggshell Egyptian cotton dress shirt, by Donna Karan, has white gold cuff links in the shape of hammers from Tiffany's. The tie is Versace, but I'm going to get rid of it the instant I'm out of here. Van Patten has one, too, in burgundy that looks so much better it's embarrassing.

I'm looking at Penthouse, tucked inside the folder of the Hughes account. I already looked at the pictures and felt nothing. They were all ugly whores with fake tits. They're nothing. I think about writing to the Letters column: "It wasn't that long ago that watching girl on girl porn was enough to get me off. Now, I have to fuck their corpse to feel anything at all. Is this normal?" Would they print it? I think they would. The thought makes me want to laugh.

Jean buzzes. "Mister Bateman, Detective Murray, NYPD, is here to see you."

Panic lurches in my chest, grabbing at my throat. I have to clear it before answering, "Of course, Jean. Send him in."

I close the folder with the magazine inside and wish vainly for a Halcion. Or a drink. It's about Paul, it must be. Someone has finally figured out he's not actually in London, and he's missing. But there's nothing connecting me to Paul's disappearance. Nothing at all. I hope.

The door opens and Jean comes in first. "I'm sorry, Patrick," she murmurs, and stares at me. I'm used to her cow-like adoration, but now she looks... afraid.

I have no idea what she's sorry for -- interrupting, probably.

But then the policeman enters. He's wearing an ill-fitting off-the-rack blue suit that probably cost less than my fucking shoes, and a collar at least an inch too small making him look half-strangled. He's tall, has thinning blonde-brown hair, and a paunch, and he reminds me of my father. It's not a thought that I want in my head.

"Detective... Murray, was it? Come in. Would you like a drink? Jean, get the detective a Pellegrino."

The detective interrupts, "No. I have some questions for you, Mister Bateman." His voice is hard, and I feel chilled. The police know something.

"Uh, sure." I try to smile helpfully and gesture to the opposite chair. "Thank you, Jean," I say, and she goes, with a last look at me and the cop, who isn't sitting down. "I'd be glad to help about Paul, if I can."

The detective frowns and repeats in puzzlement, "Paul?"

"Paul Allen? Isn't he why you're here? That's why someone was here before, to ask me and his other work colleagues about him. He abruptly went to London without telling anyone, and -- "

"No," the detective answers, cutting me off. "This isn't about Paul Allen."

"Then ... I'm at a loss." I stare at him, and in that moment I really don't have any idea what he can possibly ask me about.

Then the memories seep back, flowing through my body like a slow creep of ice. I knew it would happen; I knew it, and now here it is. My stomach tightens up and I'm afraid I'm going to vomit. My heart is thumping so hard suddenly I can't hear myself think. If I die of a heart attack right now, my asshole brother will probably win a lawsuit against the city, and that really is unbearable to imagine. I take a breath. I really should've taken that Halcion. There's one in my desk drawer, but that seems impossibly far away now.

"What is this about?" I ask, and my voice goes weak.

"The murder of Julia Alfonso."

The name catches me by surprise. "Who?" Do I know a Julia? Did I kill a Julia? I don't think so. "Wait a minute? A murder? You can't possibly think that I -- that I killed anyone? I don't know a Julia, I'm sure of it. Oh, wait, there was a Julia at Harvard. At the business school. Not that she was in business school, she was a co-ed at the time. A real leggy blonde, but I only dated her twice, maybe three times. And I haven't seen her since, I don't think."

The detective watches me, impassive, and then he says, "This Julia didn't go to Harvard. Julia Alfonso was a prostitute."

"Oh. One of them."

"Them?" the detective repeats, curiously.

"Whores," I answer and I bite my tongue on saying that I'm pretty sure I never killed a Hispanic whore, but who the fuck knows, these days? It's not like I knew their real names. "I might have seen her. I don't know. The name doesn't mean anything to me, but then it probably wouldn't."

"You hire a lot of prostitutes, Mister Bateman?" the detective asks.

"I don't know, what's a lot? A few. I don't pay for it often." I shrug, and smile, because I spend a lot of money to make sure I look good enough to not have to pay for it.

"I would guess not," the detective agrees. "So what makes you hire a prostitute then? Instead of just picking up a girl from a club?"

I answer somewhat truthfully, shrugging, "Because I can get two at a time that way. High class chicks don't want to fuck each other for my entertainment. But whores will, if I pay them. Then they're all over each other like they're in heat."

Murray isn't shocked or surprised. But then, I suppose a homicide cop hears about worse things than rich guys hiring live-action porn. Like homeless people getting stabbed to death. Or whores getting tortured and carved up. Or vice presidents of Pierce and Pierce getting an ax in the face.

"And then what?" he asks. "What else do you have them do?"

"Whatever I feel like," I answer. "Depends. Screw them in various ways." Put screws to them. But I don't say that. I look at the detective and I think: I could make you go pale, Detective. I could break that stony expression if I told you what I really do -- what I want to do to them. But I just smile at him and hold the thoughts inside. "But I -- I don't really see how my sex life is all that relevant here."

"Oh, it's very relevant, Mister Bateman. More so now than before. You'll need to come to the station to answer some more questions."

"Why don't we finish here?" I ask.

"Do you really want to be taken from here in handcuffs?" he returns, and for the first time, I notice the two uniformed cops outside the glass of my office. Were they there before? "Come to the station now, willingly, or I will have you arrested for solicitation. Which you just freely admitted to."

"But, but I didn't do anything," I protest.

"Then you have nothing to worry about," Murray tells me.

Oh, but I do. I know it, and Murray knows it, too. I just don't know what he has. I wish I could fucking remember some bitch named Julia and know what I did to her. My leg is twitching, and I stare at it, trying to make it stop. But it continues to twitch and spasm as if it doesn't belong to me. My fingertips tingle. I try to calm myself, thinking about each breath, but nothing works until I picture Murray's head in a display case at Bloomingdale's, next to the Lalique.

I get up, button my jacket, and head for the door.

Outside, I tell Jean, "Call my lawyer."

She looks up. "Mister Carnes?"

I think back to that prick and shake my head. "No. Richard Silverman. Call dad's secretary if you need the number. There's been some terrible mix up." I look around and realize people are watching, and I raise my voice. "There's been some kind of awful mistake. You need to get Silverman on the line and get me out of this."

Oh Jesus fucking Christ, they're all staring at me. When this is all over, I'm going to have to go on a very long trip somewhere far away. Monaco, maybe. I've never been there. Bahamas. Thailand. I've heard you can buy whatever and whoever you want in Thailand. Like that song from Chess, and in Miss Saigon, too, come to think of it.

I didn't like Miss Saigon. Did they have to do another musical about a woman whoring herself out to feed her child? It struck me as pathetic and repetitive, and nothing like the transcendence of Les Miz. But the Engineer's song about the American dream is deliciously ironic, if only any of my colleagues could understand that it's mocking us.

My voice keeps going, explaining to everyone I pass as we walk to the elevator. "It's just questioning, there's nothing to worry about. We can still go to lunch at Trelisse. I'm sure of it. It's just a mistake."

I make sure to hold out my hands to my sides, so it's obvious I'm not in handcuffs. "I'm helping a police investigation. I'll be right back."

In the elevator, with only Murray and the other two cops present, I lean against the wall, shaking. "Fuck."

"Mister Bateman?"

"You just ruined my life, Detective. How the hell am I supposed to walk back in here after this? Taken out of the building by police? No one is going to take my calls, I'll get terrible tables... oh God. This is a nightmare."

Murray laughs a little. It's a secretive laugh, like he's in on a joke and I'm not. "This is your idea of a nightmare? Really."

It seems like a nightmare, though. I pass through the lobby - the night guard is there behind the desk. I shot you. And I think I see Christie in the group of women heading outside. It's not her, but whoever she is, she and her friends are staring at me as I go past with my police escort.

Brian Fucking Sloan comes in through the glass doors. He's a special nightmare all his own. He works at Chase as an account sniper, and I've hated him since we were at Exeter together. He thinks we're friends. "Bateman! What's going on?"

"Can't talk, Sloan. I'm off to be interrogated for the murder of some piece of street trash."

He frowns at me. "The Consolidated Waste and Borough Disposal merger? I didn't know you were handling that..."

I don't try to correct him. There's no point. "What a fucking prick," I mutter as we pass outside.

"That what you think?" Murray asks. "'Street trash'?"

I set him straight with my utter disdain. "Hookers are street trash, Detective. If they're not street trash, we call them call-girls," I inform him. "But the only real difference is what drugs they're taking."

In the police car as it nudges its way through traffic I think of killing hookers. Whether I should go back to Versace to get a different tie. If I can get a reservation at Arnaud's -- is being investigated for murder a positive or a negative for a better table? I wonder if the police have any actual evidence and if it matters. If they search my apartment, they'll find my library of videotapes. I don't even watch them again, so I don't know why I made them. They could also find the lease to the place in Hell's Kitchen where Paul's corpse is dissolving. Unless he's in London.

There's a spike of pain gathering behind my right eyeball. I use two fingers to press on my forehead, careful not to stretch the skin in any one direction too much.

I think of Madonna and "Like a Virgin". Vodka martinis. Karl Lagerfeld. Spike heels. How much I'd like an oxytocin right now. What flesh smells like when burned with cigarettes.

We reach the police station.

I'm in what they call The Box. Their interrogation room is designed to be as featureless and boring and intimidating as possible -- all steel and wire and concrete, in unrelieved grey. There's a large mirrored window behind which any number of people might be watching.

I look around as the two uniforms show me the far chair. "This place could use a new coat of paint." My nose tickles and I sneeze. "And a cleaning. Your janitorial staff should be fired."

Murray doesn't respond. "Sit down."

He doesn't offer me coffee or water. I look up. "Am I under arrest?"

"No," he answers, with a thin smile. "You are voluntarily assisting the police with our inquiries."

Strangely I feel no panic inside the police station. It's a terrible place, and less terrible than jail will be, but looking at Murray's eyes, I know he's listening to me. Unlike almost all the people I know and have known, this one is trying to look beneath the surface. He's looking for the truth, and he's not going to be satisfied with the illusion. Relief washes through me, leaving warmth behind.

I smile back, and I let the mask slip just for him, so he can see that there is nothing underneath. He thinks he's caught Patrick Bateman, when what he's caught is air. "Glad to know where I stand."

He hesitates, and I think he glimpsed the emptiness inside. Then he opens a thick file folder.

"Do you recognize this woman?" He puts a photo on the table in front of me.

I look at the photo. A stranger looks back, and I shake my head. "No." She's wearing too much eye makeup, probably to cover up the dark shadows caused by her drug use, and her eyebrows are too dark for her brassy blonde hair. I don't recognize her face, and I wouldn't fuck her if she had paid me. But my fingers are trembling on the surface of the table. There's something there that reminds me of touching cold steel and warm blood. "You should buy a larger collar size, Detective. It'll be more comfortable and not make you look fat. A four-in-hand knot -- "

His hand slams down on the table and I jump. "You killed this girl, Bateman. I know it, and you know it."

"I don't! I don't know her! I'm trying to help you, and I'm telling the truth: I don't remember if I fucked her, or if I killed her or if I cut her up and put her in the trash."

Murray smiles as if he's got something. He leans closer. "I never said how she died."

I look him right in the eyes. "I don't remember her at all. Nothing. As far as I know, I never even met her."

"Then how'd she end up in your building's trash in five separate garbage bags?" Murray returns. "And a doorman who saw you move heavy garbage bags across the floor?"

Fuck. I've been careless. "I take out my trash like everyone else, detective."

"You really want to play games?" Murray sneers. "You think you're so smart with your Harvard degree and your daddy's money? You think you're smarter than us dumb cops and you can get away with murder? Because you can't. What goes around, comes around, you parasite."

If he's trying to scare me, it's not working. "Most people who went to Harvard are dumb as rocks," I tell him. "And you're right, they're parasites. We are parasites, sucking the lifeblood out of the world and giving back nothing. It's a hollow, meaningless existence. Why the fuck do you think we all do drugs?"

Murray pauses, inhales a deep breath, and starts again. "It can go easier on you if you admit what you did."

"I can't admit what I can't remember." I am losing my patience with him. I thought he was listening, but he's like all the others.

"Can you remember this?" He takes a thin, leather-bound book out from the folder on his side of the table and slams it down in front of me. It has the initials PB on the cover.

It's my planner. I stare at it. "How did you get that? I couldn't find it."

"You recognize it?" he asks. "Good. Your secretary brought it to us. She was really horrified by what she found inside."

Jean gave my planner to the cops? Betraying bitch. I should have nailed her to the floor. No wonder she said she was sorry.

Then Murray opens it and flips through the pages.

It starts out as my planner, with notations of meetings and dinner plans. But slowly the book gets overtaken by drawings and doodles, spread across the pages. It's like looking at something someone else did. I know I did them, but as he flips the pages I see so much I don't recognize or remember.

"You sick fuck," Murray murmurs. "You drew pictures of it. Of everything you did. Everything you wanted to do to those girls."

I see pictures of knives, of body parts, saws, and black pools of blood. I see scrawled words like "kill" and "meat" and "eviscerate" that barely look like my handwriting.

I shake my head in furious denial and shove the planner away. "No. No, I didn't. This isn't me," I stammer. "I didn't. I dreamed it. That's all. They were just dreams; they weren't real."

Murray grabs my head, fingers pulling my hair, and slams my forehead into the formica. The blow hurts, and stuns me.

"Julia Alfonso was real, motherfucker, and you butchered her and threw her away like garbage! How many others? I know there are more. How many more?" He holds my head down, so my cheek and nose are smashed against the cold formica. "How many?"

"I don't know! One, three, dozens, I don't know!" I yell back, my voice high and shrill. Then he stops, and for a moment, the only sound I hear is my heart beat thumping in my ears and my short panting breaths, then he lets go and steps away.

"Oh, Jesus," he whispers. "Dozens?"

I straighten slowly, blinking away the bright spots in my vision. "You gave me a concussion," I complain and touch my throbbing head. It doesn't feel as if he broke the skin, but I'll probably have a bruise. "I need ice. I should sue the police for mistreatment."

"Shut up. You're a.... a monster. I could kill you right now," he threatens, "and after I show them this book, no one would even give me a reprimand."

Our eyes meet, and I smile, because I know he can't do it. But still, I think I like him. He's interesting.

Then the outer door bursts open and another cop bursts in, reprimanding him in shock, "Murray!"

At first I think they're going to try 'good cop, bad cop' on me, but then a man in a suit comes inside, and my smile widens.

Richard Silverman has been a family friend for years and years. He golfs with my father, and he's a criminal defense attorney with few peers in the city. He smiles like a benevolent shark. "Did I just hear you deliver a death threat to my client, Detective? And I know he requested a lawyer before he left Pierce and Pierce, so your questions and his answers after that are all inadmissible in court." He cocks his head a little. "Listen! I think I hear the sound of your badge hitting the floor. The rest of you, get out. I need to talk to my client. In private."

Murray gathers his papers and goes, but not without glaring at me.

"Patrick," Silverman shakes his head in dismay. "I got a call from your secretary that you've been arrested. What the hell is going on?"

"They think I killed a hooker. I -- I don't remember her," I point to the picture Murray left on the table and the torrent of words comes out of me, unstoppable. "But I... I think I might have. And if they search my place, I made tapes. But I don't know what's on them. I don't know if any of it's real; I think it is, I think I did these things, but then I see them alive again and I don't know. I know the ATM didn't really tell me to feed it a cat, but I saw it like I'm seeing you. Is Paul Allen really dead? Because I thought I killed him with an ax, and then Carnes said he actually ate dinner with him, and I went to his apartment, and it was as if he'd never lived there..."

Silverman sinks into the seat across from me, staring. "Patrick?" he asks, as if he thinks he must have misheard. "What are you talking about? You think you killed people? But you don't know?"

"I thought I was, I remember doing it -- some of it, but some of it must be in my head, even though it seems so real to me," I explain. My heart's racing and I can barely breathe. "I just ... I had to. I wanted to feel something."

His expression turns dumbfounded, and then he gets an idea of what this is about. He sighs. "Patrick, what drugs have you been taking?"

"You're not hearing me!" I insist, furious. "You're not listening. Nobody fucking listens." I draw in a deep but ragged breath to calm down a little. I stare at Richard and enunciate, "I am a monster. I killed people, I know I have, and I liked it."

He listens, impassive to my revelation, and shakes his head. "What drugs?"

"Halcion, Ecstasy, and coke," I enumerate carefully. "Oh, and speed this morning, to wake up."

"Oh, Jesus, Patrick, how fucking stupid are you?" he mutters. "You're obsessive about your body, and then you poison your brain with all this shit."

How dare he? Rage rushes through me. My fingers twitch, and I fold them around the handle of my kitchen knife. It has an evidence tag on it that doesn't belong, but I don't rip it off before I plunge the blade into Silverman's neck, right under his ear and in, until it hits the bone. His eyes are wide in shock, and his mouth open -- until I open another one in his throat. Blood gushes out, a scarlet waterfall onto his grey Cerutti suit and quickly covering the table.

"Patrick?"

I blink. Silverman's there, intact. Not bleeding. There's no knife.

My hands shake, and the adrenaline tastes like absinthe on the back of my tongue. "I think -- I think I'm insane," I whisper. "I think I killed that girl and I don't remember her. What the fuck good is it to kill some hooker and not even remember it?"

"Maybe you didn't," he offers.

I ignore that bit of stupidity. "I wish I remembered what I did to her. My head -- " I bend and pull at my hair, feeling the stiffness of the gel crackling under my fingertips. "It's gotten so much worse. I see things, and there's so much... anger. Rage. Even killing only helps a little while now."

Silverman hesitates, and I feel his eyes dig into me like the little claws of a rat. "Clearly we need to get a psych evaluation on you," he says eventually. He finally seems to believe me, that something's wrong. This isn't a mistake by the police. "And then I need to find out what they have. You... you just need to keep calm and keep quiet."

As he begins the tedious process of arranging my defense, it passes me by. I watch from afar, but none of it touches me. When they finally put me under formal arrest and take me to lock up, I give Richard my suit jacket, so the cops don't fuck it up, but I have to sit on that filthy metal cot in my four thousand dollar suit trousers.

There are two street gang kids in the cell, too, who think they're tough. But they're smarter than they seem, and one look keeps them away from me. They're close enough to monsters themselves to recognize the one in the cage with them.

I don't eat their terrible food. I don't sleep either. I've evaded the end of the road for so long, I wonder if Silverman is going to help me slip out of this one, too. I spend the night humming "The Lady in Red" and fantasizing about putting my hands around the young hoodlums' necks and slowly squeezing the life from them.

The next morning the net closes. They bring me to The Box again, where Silverman is waiting. This time the cops cuff me to the chair.

"Patrick. This is Linda Caldwell, prosecutor," he introduces her. She's got a narrow, pinched face like a school teacher and is wearing a navy St. John suit.

She doesn't look at me, as she brings out a paper from the file folder she's carrying. "I have here a plea deal. Your client gives us the names and details of those he murdered, and he gets life, no parole, instead of the death penalty."

Silverman smiles. "Linda, the state of New York hasn't executed anyone since 1963. Don't be ridiculous. Besides, my client hasn't done anything."

I am reminded of watching the US Open - they both strike back and forth, hitting a ball into the other court. The ball is me, and my future, but I find myself more interested in the game.

She gives him a look. "We have six videotapes that demonstrate your client is a sadistic killer. He deserves to go to the electric chair."

"You have one body and the only evidence connecting Patrick to it is one doorman saying he was taking out his trash."

"I'm sure forensics will find some interesting things in his apartment and the building's incinerator," she counters. "We have his book, detailing his state of mind and impulses to torture and kill."

"Mister Bateman has been taking Halcion, a drug with known psychotic side-effects. Just looking through the book should demonstrate an obvious growing instability, and I can have twenty professionals testify to that. Even if you can prove Patrick did anything wrong, I can prove he was not in his right mind."

It sounds theoretically possible that the Halcion has been making me crazy, but I killed that girl at Harvard when she started babbling on about "enlightened" bullshit. Of course, Silverman doesn't know about her, though I'm sure someone will eventually connect it. The case made national news, when her head was found in that tree.

Linda lowers her eyes for a moment, thinking, and I imagine cutting off each button of her blouse with a knife, stabbing her in the gut, and licking her blood. I wonder if she went to Harvard Law. She looks vaguely familiar to me, as if I've met her before. I try to figure out where we might have met, which is more difficult than you might think, since she's too old to be in my social circle and not connected to my business circle. For two professionals in the same city, we lead very different lives.

Linda nods. "All right. Assuming the court-ordered psych eval comes out with an acceptable result, then I can offer incarceration at Ward Island in the Kirby facility, instead. No parole."

Silverman snorts. "We'll take our chances with a jury. I hope the DA is prepared for the circus, when the media gets a hold of this case and a young, upstanding handsome professional, being accused of an impossible series of crimes."

"Trial favors us, Mister Silverman," she retorts. "We'll be finding evidence for weeks, if this is really the bottomless pit I think it is."

This new turn in the conversation attracts my attention. Trial. Jesus, I don't want a trial and put on a show like some sort of fucking monkey.

"I'll take it," I announce. Silverman turns to me in a panic.

"Patrick! No, we need to go to trial. What they're offering -- it's for life, forever. In maximum security in a psychiatric lockdown. That's not an offer."

I stare at the table top. "I don't want a trial. I'm ... I'm not right. I know that."

"It's the drugs, Patrick. They're making you have psychotic episodes--" he protests.

I shake my head. "They make it worse, I'm sure. I remember things that didn't happen and I don't remember things that did." I look toward Julia's photo. I still have no memory of touching her. Maybe I didn't even kill her. But it doesn't make any difference. Death has given Julia an importance she never had in life -- she has become the face of the faceless. Against that power, I find myself confessing. "But the truth is I've been pretending a long time. I pretend to care about all that shit -- money and status and my stupid job, fitting in -- but none of it means anything. I'm the only one who sees clearly - it's all empty. People running around on treadmills, going nowhere, doing nothing. They care about stupid things and they disgust me. They don't fucking matter. If you let me loose, I will kill again. Because it's the only thing that has ever made me feel like I exist."

Silence falls. Linda doesn't even have to point out that I just admitted I killed someone. "I'll draw up the papers," she says and leaves.

Silverman sits next to me. "Patrick, you don't understand what you're agreeing to. Your father told me to fight this all the way."

I look right into his eyes. "I am the client, and I am signing those papers. Not because I'm sorry, because I'm not. Do you hear me? I'm not remorseful. I barely remember most of them, but the ones I remember, I liked it. I wish I'd done more. So shut up, or I will take that pen off the table and put it into your eye and kill you fucking dead."

The good thing about being an admitted psychotic murderer, is that people believe your threats, even when I'm shackled to the chair and can't actually carry them out. Silverman leans back, away from me, and I see the fear flash in his eyes. It's both amusing and arousing, and I have to quell my reaction with thoughts of "In the Air Tonight", with its percussive perfection and haunting lyric.

I realize I'm tired. Exhaustion is in every muscle, in the sluggish flow of my own blood, and down to the bone. I'm tired of people, tired of the pretense, tired of eluding what should have happened years ago... If not for stupidly neglecting to put most of Julia in the fucking incinerator, I might still be in my apartment, listening to my music, watching porn, and trying to stifle my rage with only occasional success. But instead, I'm here, and I'm done.

"Whitney Houston is the first artist to have seven consecutive number one hits in America. But her eighth single, "Love Will Save the Day" was a mediocre dance song, and barely cracked the top ten." I pause, and he stares at me in confusion. I explain slowly, because he obviously isn't getting it. "She made a mistake. She was careless in her choices, too high on her success to make a wise selection. And yet, that string would have broken eventually -- everyone's luck runs out, everyone makes mistakes."

My eyes drift across the shabby interior and the window covered with its white plastic and metal grate, which dims the sun, so its light is thin and grey to match the room.

I'm wearing a blue cotton t-shirt and loose pants. They're cheap, but at least the colors match. The white socks still make me cringe, but my feet get cold easily with all the concrete around me. My universe has shrunk to this cell, half an hour on the yard alone, and an hour with the shrink every other day -- I talk about whatever's in my head and my trust fund pays for him to continue to prescribe whatever I want.

I have a cot, a toilet, and enough room to do my crunches on the floor. I read books. There's a small desk where I can draw and where I write down everything I remember of my kills. I embroider the accounts with every dark idea I ever had. It amuses me to think of people squirming when they read it, wondering that they had such a monster in their midst and they never knew.

That assumes anyone cares enough to be horrified. I would have been caught long ago, if people cared about anything useful. People are so busy living like a hamster in one of those plastic cages, going from their bed to their food to their little wheel, that they never see they're walking in their own shit.

At least I know I'm in a cage. I have less than I've ever had in my whole life: I have no music, no freedom, no privacy, no clothes of my own.... No one visits me, except Silverman occasionally. The food is inedible. My life should be hell, but it's not. I find my solitude a welcome relief; I don't need to put on the shell of humanity if I'm alone.

But something strange has started to happen to me in here. Without the mask of Patrick Bateman, there should be nothing left. But when I look in the metal mirror above the sink, for the first time, I see myself looking back.

I am there.