Most of the summer I spent in a stupor, sitting either in myoɽce or in new restaurants, in my apartment watchingvideotapes or in the backs of cabs, in nightclubs that just openedor in movie theaters, at the building in Hell's Kitchen or in newrestaurants. There were four major air disasters this summer, themajority of them captured on videotape, almost as if these eventshad been planned, and repeated on television endlessly. Theplanes kept crashing in slow motion, followed by countlessroaming shots of the wreckage and the same random views of theburned, bloody carnage, weeping rescue workers retrieving bodyparts. I started using Oscar de la Renta men's deodorant, whichgave me a slight rash. A movie about a small talking bug wasreleased to great fanfare and grossed over two hundred milliondollars. The Mets were doing badly. Beggars and homelessseemed to have multiplied in August and the ranks of theunfortunate, weak and aged lined the streets everywhere. I foundmyself asking too many summer associates at too many dinners inɻashy new restaurants before taking them to Les Misérables ifanyone had seen The Toolbox Murders on HBO and silent tableswould stare back at me, before I would cough politely andsummon the waiter over for the check, or I'd ask for sorbet or, ifthis was earlier in the dinner, for another bottle of San Pellegrino,and then I'd ask the summer associates, "No?" and assure them,"It was quite good." My platinum American Express card hadgone through so much use that it snapped in half, self-destructed,at one of those dinners, when I took two summer associates toRestless and Young, the new Pablo Lester restaurant in midtown,but I had enough cash in my gazelleskin wallet to pay for themeal. The Patty Winters Shows were all repeats. Life remained ablank canvas, a cliché, a soap opera. I felt lethal, on the verge offrenzy. My nightly bloodlust overɻowed into my days and I hadto leave the city. My mask of sanity was a victim of impendingslippage. This was the bone season for me and I needed avacation. I needed to go to the Hamptons.I suggested this to Evelyn and, like a spider, she accepted.The house we stayed at was actually Tim Price's, which Evelynhad the keys to for some reason, but in my stupeɹed state Irefused to ask for speciɹcs.Tim's house was on the water in East Hampton and wasadorned with many gable roofs and was four stories high, allconnected by a galvanized-steel staircase, and had what at ɹrst Ithought was a Southwestern motif but wasn't. The kitchen wasone thousand square feet of pure minimalist design; one wall heldeverything: two huge ovens, massive cupboards, a walk-infreezer, a three-door refrigerator. An island of custom-craftedstainless steel divided the kitchen into three separate spaces. Fourof the nine bathrooms contained trompe l'oeil paintings and ɹveof them had antique lead ram's heads that hung over the sink,water spouting from their mouths. All the sinks and bathtubs andshowers were antique marble and the ɻoors were composed oftiny marble mosaics. A television was built into a wall alcoveabove the master bathtub. Every room had a stereo. The housealso contained twelve Frank Lloyd Wright standing lamps,fourteen Josef Heʃermann club chairs, two walls of ɻoor-toceiling videocassette cases and another wall stacked solely withthousands of compact discs encased in glass cabinets. Achandelier by Eric Schmidt hung in the front entranceway, belowit stood an Atomic Ironworks steel moose hatrack by a youngsculptor I'd never heard of. A round nineteenth-century Russiandining table sat in a room adjacent to the kitchen, but had nochairs. Spooky photographs by Cindy Sherman lined the wallseverywhere. There was an exercise room. There were eight walkin closets, ɹve VCRs, a Noguchi glass and walnut dining table, ahall table by Marc Schaʃer and a fax machine. There was atopiary tree in the master bedroom next to a Louis XVI windowbench. An Eric Fischl painting hung over one of the marbleɹreplaces. There was a tennis court. There were two saunas andan indoor Jacuzzi in a small guesthouse that sat by the pool,which was black-bottomed. There were stone columns in oddplaces.I really tried to make things work the weeks we were out there.Evelyn and I rode bicycles and jogged and played tennis. Wetalked about going to the south of France or to Scotland; wetalked about driving through Germany and visiting unspoiledopera houses. We went windsurɹng. We talked about onlyromantic things: the light on eastern Long Island, the moonrise inOctober over the hills of the Virginia hunt country. We took bathstogether in the big marble tubs. We had breakfast in bed,snuggling beneath cashmere blankets after I'd poured importedcoʃee from a Melior pot into Hermès cups. I woke her up withfresh ɻowers. I put notes in her Louis Vuitton carry bag beforeshe left for her weekly facials in Manhattan. I bought her apuppy, a small black chow, which she named NutraSweet and feddietetic chocolate truʀes to. I read long passages aloud fromDoctor Zhivago and A Farewell to Arms (my favorite Hemingway). Irented movies in town that Price didn't own, mostly comediesfrom the 1930s, and played them on one of the many VCRs, ourfavorite being Roman Holiday, which we watched twice. Welistened to Frank Sinatra (only his 1950s period) and Nat KingCole's After Midnight, which Tim had on CD. I bought herexpensive lingerie, which sometimes she wore.After skinny-dipping in the ocean late at night, we would comeinto the house, shivering, draped in huge Ralph Lauren towels,and we'd make omelets and noodles tossed with olive oil andtruʀes and porcini mushrooms; we'd make souʀés with poachedpears and cinnamon fruit salads, grilled polenta with pepperedsalmon, apple and berry sorbet, mascarpone, red beans witharrozo wrapped in romaine lettuce, bowls of salsa and skatepoached in balsamic vinegar, chilled tomato soup and risottosɻavored with beets and lime and asparagus and mint, and wedrank lemonade or champagne or well-aged bottles of ChâteauMargaux. But soon we stopped lifting weights together andswimming laps and Evelyn would eat only the dietetic chocolatetruʀes that NutraSweet hadn't eaten, complaining about weightshe hadn't gained. Some nights I would ɹnd myself roaming thebeaches, digging up baby crabs and eating handfuls of sand—thiswas in the middle of the night when the sky was so clear I couldsee the entire solar system and the sand, lit by it, seemed almostlunar in scale. I even dragged a beached jellyɹsh back to thehouse and microwaved it early one morning, predawn, whileEvelyn slept, and what I didn't eat of it I fed to the chow.Sipping bourbon, then champagne, from cactus-etched highballglasses, which Evelyn would set on adobe coasters and into whichshe would stir raspberry cassis with papier-mâché jalapeñoshaped stirrers, I would lie around, fantasizing about killingsomeone with an Allsop Racer ski pole, or I would stare at theantique weather vane that hung above one of the ɹre-places,wondering wild-eyed if I could stab anyone with it, then I'dcomplain aloud, whether Evelyn was in the room or not, that weshould have made reservations at Dick Loudon's Stratford Inninstead. Evelyn soon started talking only about spas and cosmeticsurgery and then she hired a masseur, some scary faggot wholived down the road with a famous book publisher and whoɻirted openly with me. Evelyn went back to the city three timesthat last week we were in the Hamptons, once for a manicure anda pedicure and a facial, the second time for a one-on-one trainingsession at Stephanie Herman, and ɹnally to meet with herastrologer."Why helicopter in?" I asked in a whisper."What do you want me to do?" she shrieked, popping anotherdietetic truʀe into her mouth. "Rent a Volvo?"While she was gone I would vomit—just to do it—into therustic terra-cotta jars that lined the patio in front or I would driveinto town with the scary masseur and collect razor blades. Atnight I'd place a faux-concrete and aluminum-wire sconce byJerry Kott over Evelyn's head and since she'd be so knocked outon Halcion she wouldn't brush it oʃ, and though I laughed atthis, while the sconce rose evenly with her deep breathing, soonit made me sad and I stopped placing the sconce over Evelyn'shead.Everything failed to subdue me. Soon everything seemed dull:another sunrise, the lives of heroes, falling in love, war, thediscoveries people made about each other. The only thing thatdidn't bore me, obviously enough, was how much money TimPrice made, and yet in its obviousness it did. There wasn't a clear,identiɹable emotion within me, except for greed and, possibly,total disgust. I had all the characteristics of a human being—ɻesh, blood, skin, hair—but my depersonalization was so intense,had gone so deep, that the normal ability to feel compassion hadbeen eradicated, the victim of a slow, purposeful erasure. I wassimply imitating reality, a rough resemblance of a human being,with only a dim corner of my mind functioning. Somethinghorrible was happening and yet I couldn't ɹgure out why—Icouldn't put my ɹnger on it. The only thing that calmed me wasthe satisfying sound of ice being dropped into a glass of J&B.Eventually I drowned the chow, which Evelyn didn't miss; shedidn't even notice its absence, not even when I threw it in thewalk-in freezer, wrapped in one of her sweaters from BergdorfGoodman. We had to leave the Hamptons because I would ɹndmyself standing over our bed in the hours before dawn, with anice pick gripped in my ɹst, waiting for Evelyn to open her eyes.At my suggestion, one morning over breakfast, she agreed, and onthe last Sunday before Labor Day we returned to Manhattan by helicopter.
