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The bar in.Texarkana is empty and in the dining area only four or five tables have people at them. Owen is at a booth in the back, complaining bitterly to the waiter, grilling him, demanding to know the exact reasons why they are out of the crawfish gumbo tonight. The waiter, a not-bad-looking faggot, is at a loss and helplessly lisps an excuse. Owen is in no mood for pleasantries, but then neither am I. As I sit down, the waiter apologizes once more and then takes my drink order. "J&B, straight," I stress. "And a Dixie beer." He smiles while writing this down - the bastard even bats his eyelashes - and when I'm about to warn him not to attempt small taut with me, Owen barks out his drink order, "Double Absolut martini," and the fairy splits.

'This is really a beehive of, uh, activity, Halberstam," Owen says, gesturing toward the near-empty room. "This place is hot, very hot."Advertisement

"Listen, the mud soup and the charcoal arugula are outrageous here," I tell him.

"Yeah, well," he grumbles, staring into his martini glass. "You're late."

"Hey, I'm a child of divorce. Give me a break," I say, shrugging, thinking: Oh Halberstam you are an ass**le. And then, after I've studied the menu, "Hmmm, I see they've omitted the pork loin with lime Jell-O."

Owen is wearing a double-breasted silk and linen suit, a cotton shirt and a silk tie, all by Joseph Abboud, and his tan is impeccable. But he's out of it tonight, surprisingly untalkative, and his dourness drizzles over my jovial, expectant mood, dampening it considerably, and I have suddenly resorted to making comments such as "Is that Ivana Trump over there?" then, laughing, " Jeez, Patrick, I mean Marcus, what are you think ing? Why would Ivana be at Texarkana?" But this doesn't make dinner any less monotonous. It doesn't help lessen the fact that Paul Owen is exactly my age, twenty-seven, or make this whole thing any less disconcerting to me.

What I've mistaken at first for pomposity on Owen's part is actually just drunkenness. When I press for information about the Fisher account he offers useless statistical data that I already knew about: how Rothschild was originally handling the account, how Owen came to acquire it. And though I had Jean gather this information for my files months ago, I keep nodding, pretending that this primitive info is revelatory and saying things like "This is enlightening" while at the same time telling him "I'm utterly insane" and "I like to dissect girls." Every time I attempt to steer the conversation back to the mysterious Fisher account, he infuriatingly changes the topic back to either tanning salons or brands of cigars or certain health clubs or the best places to jog in Manhattan and he keeps guffawing, which I find totally upsetting. I'm drinking Southern beer for the first part of the meal - pre entree, post appetizer - then switch to Diet Pepsi midway through since I need to stay slightly sober. I'm about to tell Owen that Cecelia, Marcus Halberstam's girlfriend, has two vaginas and that we plan to wed next spring in East Hampton, but he interrupts.

"I'm feeling, er, slightly mellow," he admits, drunkenly squeezing a lime onto the table, completely missing his beer mug..

"Uh-huh." I dip a stick of jicama sparingly into a rhubarb mustard sauce, pretending to ignore him.

He's so drunk by the time dinner is over that I (1) make him pay the check, which comes to two hundred and fifty dollars, (2a) make him admit what a dumb son-of a-bitch he really is, and (3) get him back to my place, where he makes himself another drink - he actually opens a bottle of Acacia I thought I had hidden, with a Mulazoni sterling silver wine opener that Peter Radloff bought me after we completed the Heatherberg deal. In my bathroom I take out the ax I'd stashed in the shower, pop two five-milligram Valium, washing them down with a tumblerful of Plax, and then I move into the foyer, where I put on a cheap raincoat I picked up at Brooks Brothers on Wednesday and move toward Owen, who is bent over near the stereo system in the living room looking through my CD collection - all the lights in the apartment on, the venetian blinds closed. He straightens up and walks slowly backward, sipping from his wineglass, taking in the apartment, until he seats himself in a white aluminum folding chair I bought at the Conran's Memorial Day sale weeks ago, and finally he notices the newspapers - copies of USA Today and W and The New York Times - spread out beneath him, covering the floor, to protect the polished white-stained oak from his blood. I move toward him with the ax in one hand, and with my other I button up the raincoat.

"Hey, Halberstam," he asks, managing to slur both words.

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"Yes, Owen," I say, drawing near. pqdm.com