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"He said..." She laughs. "He said you gave him bad vibes."

I sigh, then make a muscle. "That's... too bad."Advertisement

She shrugs and offhandedly admits. "He used to do a lot of cocaine. He used to beat me up."

I suddenly start paying attention, until she says, "But he never touched my face."

I walk into the bedroom and start undressing.

"You think I'm dumb, don't you?" she asks, staring at me, her legs, tan and aerobicized, slung over one of the chair's arms.

"What?" I slip my shoes off, then bend down to pick them up.

"You think I'm dumb," she says. "You think all models are dumb."

"No," I say, trying to contain my laughter. "I really don't."

"You do," she insists. "I can tell."

"I think you are..." I stand there, my voice trailing off.

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"Yes?" She's grinning, waiting.

"I think you are totally brilliant and incredibly... brilliant," I say in monotone.

"That's nice." She smiles serenely, licking the spoon "You have, well, a tender quality about you."

"Thanks." I take my pants off and fold them neatly, hanging them along with the shirt and tie over a black steel Philippe Stark clothes hanger. "You know, the other day I caught my maid stealing a piece of bran toast from my wastebasket in the kitchen."

Daisy takes this in, then asks, "Why?"

I pause, staring at her flat, well-defined stomach. Her torso is completely tan and muscular. So is mine. "Because she said she was hungry."

Daisy sighs and licks the spoon thoughtfully.

"You think my hair looks okay?" I'm still standing there, in just my Calvin Klein jockey shorts, hard-on bulging, and a fifty-dollar pair of Armani socks.

"Yeah." She shrugs. "Sure."

I sit on the edge of the futon and peel off the socks.

"I beat up a girl today who was asking people on the street for money." I pause, then measure each of the following words carefully. "She was young and seemed frightened and had a sign that explained she was lost in New York and had a child, though I didn't see it. And she needed money, for food or something. For a bus ticket to Iowa. Iowa. I think it was Iowa and..." I stop for a moment, balling the socks up, then unballing them.

Daisy stares at me blankly for a minute, before asking, "And then?"

I pause, distracted, and then stand up. Before walking into the bathroom I mutter, "And then? I beat the living shit out of her." I open the medicine cabinet for a condom and, as I re-enter the bedroom, say, "She had misspelled disabled. I mean, that's not the reason I did what I did but... you know." I shrug. "She was too ugly to rape."

Daisy stands up, placing the spoon next to the Haagen-Dazs carton on the Gilbert Rhode-designed nightstand.

I point. "No. Put it in the carton."

"Oh, sorry," she says.

She admires a Palazzetti vase while I slip on the condom. I get on top of her and we have sex and lying beneath me she is only a shape, even with all the halogen lamps burning. Later, we are lying on opposite sides of the bed. I touch her shoulder.

"I think you should go home," I say.

She opens her eyes, scratches her neck.

"I think I might... hurt you," I tell her. "I don't think I can control myself."

She looks over at me and shrugs. "Okay. Sure," then she starts to get dressed. "I don't want to get too involved anyway," she says.

"I think something bad is going to happen," I tell her.

She pulls her panties on, then checks her hair in the Nabolwev mirror and nods. "I understand."

After she's dressed and minutes of pure, hard silence have passed, I say, not unhopefully, "You don't want to get hurt, do you?"

She buttons up the top of her dress and sighs, without looking over at me. "That's why I'm leaving."

I say, "I think I'm losing it."

Chapter Thirteen

Paul Owen

I screened calls all morning long in my apartment, taking none of them, glaring tiredly at a cordless phone while sipping cup after cup of decaf herbal tea. Afterwards I went to the gym, where I worked out for two hours; then I had lunch at the Health Bar and could barely eat half of an endive-with-carrot-dressing salad I ordered. I stopped at Barney's on my way back from an abandoned loft building I had rented a unit in somewhere around Hell's Kitchen. I had a facial. I played squash with Brewster Whipple at the Yale Club and from there made reservations for eight o'clock under the name Marcus Halberstam at Texarkana, where I'm going to meet Paul Owen for dinner. I choose Texarkana because I know that a lot of people I have dealings with are not going to be eating there tonight. Plus I'm in the mood for their chili-wrapped pork and one or two Dixie beers. It's June and I'm wearing a two-button linen suit, a cotton shirt, a silk tie and leather wing-tips, all by Armani. Outside Texarkana a cheerful black bum motions for me, explaining that he's Bob Hope's younger brother, No Hope. He holds out a Styrofoam coffee cup. I think this is funny so I give him a quarter. I'm twenty minutes late. From an open window on Tenth Street I can hear the last strains of "A Day in the Life" by the Beetles. pqdm.com