Summary
Patrick attends a U2 concert with Evelyn, Luis, Courtney, Paul Owen, and others. Sitting in the front row, Patrick argues with Luis over Japanese food. Switching seats to talk to Paul Owen, Patrick suddenly feels an overwhelming personal connection to Bono's physical presence and music—especially the line "I am the devil and I am just like you," which gives him an erection. Patrick tries probing Paul Owen about the Fisher account and once again admires his hair. Later one Thursday afternoon, experiencing severe cramps and migraines, a violently delirious Patrick tells Jean from a payphone that he won't make it to the office. He mentions procuring two rats and buying butcher knives, axes, and a bottle of hydrochloric acid to torture them with, before leaving the bag in Pottery Barn. Patrick vomits, goes to Tower Records, eats five vials of crack cocaine, and harangues a waitress at a Kosher delicatessen by demanding an extra-thick vanilla milkshake.
Patrick sits arguing etiquette with Craig and David at the Yale Club before spotting Luis at another table, and wonders if Courtney would like him better if Luis were dead. Upstairs at the club in a men's room stall, Patrick sneaks up while Luis is urinating and clasps his gloved hands around Luis's neck, but cannot bring himself to squeeze. Patrick is shocked when Luis turns, kisses his wrists, and begins playing with his hair, admitting he has desired Patrick "since that Christmas party at Arizona 206." Confused and repulsed, Patrick storms out of the bathroom and sits back down with Craig and David, still wearing his gloves.
Patrick goes to work, exercises, and spends the evening arousing himself by dialing the phone numbers of female Dalton School students from a stolen registry and frightening them. Walking in the Upper West Side, Patrick passes a man he describes as, "almost like Jason Taylor," who addresses him as Kevin, then stops near a parked white BMW 320i and an older gay man walking a sharpei. After Patrick stops to admire the dog, the man asks Patrick if he is a model or celebrity. Patrick responds by stabbing the dog and cutting the man's throat, then shooting him twice in the face.
Patrick confuses Courtney after having dinner at a restaurant called Raw Space by saying he needs to score drugs first from Noj, the chef at Deck Chairs, then from a man named Fiddler. Patrick takes a limousine to the meat-packing district, looking for a blonde, white sex worker to solicit. Patrick finds a girl who meets his criteria and pays her $100 to accompany him back to his apartment, calling her Christie. Patrick calls another woman named Sabrina to his apartment via an escort service, though he is disappointed when she is not a full blonde. Patrick, whom the women call Paul, has Sabrina do a striptease before the three have sex in multiple positions. Patrick does not let the women touch his Rolex, and leaves them "bleeding but well-paid." Later while Christmas shopping, Patrick curses a Pierce & Pierce colleague named Bradley Simpson in Bergdorf's and a Bloomingdale's employee, before taking three Halcion pills to "ward off total madness."
At a bar named Rusty's before Evelyn's Christmas party, Patrick drinks with a colleague named Charles Murphy, and on the way out slits the throat of a Chinese delivery boy cycling by, whom he mistakes as Japanese. At the party, Patrick first talks to a colleague named Donald Petersen and then Paul Owen, who once again mistakes Patrick for Marcus Halberstam and Evelyn for Marcus's girlfriend Cecilia. After Meredith and Evelyn join the conversation, Evelyn refers to Patrick by name in front of Paul, causing Patrick to panic and abscond from the party with a reluctant Evelyn in Paul Owen's limo. Evelyn finds a Tiffany's necklace in the limo, assuming it is for her, and Patrick offers her a blood-stained fortune cookie from his pocket. At a club named Chernoble, Evelyn frets over her party's subpar Waldorf salad. While waiting in line for a bathroom stall to do cocaine, Patrick argues viciously with another couple, which causes both Evelyn and the other man's date to leave in disgust.
At Nell's, Patrick sits with Craig, a colleague named Alex Taylor, and three models named Libby, Daisy, and Caron, who discuss furs. Patrick remembers having to ward off an anxiety attack after meeting with a lawyer to discuss "bogus rape charges" earlier in the day. Though Patrick tells Daisy his business is "murders and executions," she hears "mergers and acquisitions." A woman named Francesca who recognizes both Patrick and Daisy stops by the table, along with a woman named Alison Poole, whom Patrick recognizes as a woman he raped the previous spring after meeting her at the Kentucky Derby. On the way out of the club, Patrick runs into an old college flame named Bethany and accepts her invitation to lunch, before taking Daisy back to his apartment. After listening to Daisy talk about an ex named Fiddler, Patrick admits he attacked a homeless woman earlier in the day, and quietly asks her to go home lest he lose control.
Patrick meets Paul Owen for dinner at a restaurant named Texarkana to talk about the Fisher account. Patrick takes an inebriated Paul back to his apartment and murders him with an axe, then uses Paul's keys to access his apartment on the Upper East Side. There, Patrick watches Late Night with David Letterman and pilfers various items so that it will seem like Paul is on vacation. Patrick returns and disposes of Paul's corpse by storing it in an apartment unit in Hell's Kitchen, running into a couple named Arthur Crystal and Kitty Martin on the way. Later, in a Paul Smith store buying a tie for his brother, Patrick talks to a couple named Nancy and Charles Hamilton, before running into Luis. Luis insistently declares his love for Patrick, who panics and brandishes a switchblade at him before fleeing in a taxi. Patrick is amazed when his younger brother Sean secures a reservation at Dorsia through the manager, Brin, and further annoyed when Sean shows up thirty minutes late, orders two lobsters, and critiques Patrick's social hotspots.
Analysis
In the U2 concert chapter, the novel’s pattern of misrecognition continues to build: Paul Owen calls Patrick “Marcus” and Evelyn “Cecilia,” which Patrick encourages, and multiple characters refer to the group’s lead guitarist The Edge as a drummer named, “The Ledge.” One exception is Patrick’s blinding moment of mutual recognition with U2’s lead singer Bono. The rapt encounter showcases Patrick’s uncharacteristic emotional susceptibility to popular music, also on display in chapters like “Genesis” and “Whitney Houston.” It is also the only moment in the book that Patrick allows himself to admit to being physically aroused by another man, notably arriving just before Patrick’s conversation with Paul Owen.
Though Ellis leaves much implied in how Patrick feels about Paul Owen, Patrick’s fascination with his colleague seems primarily rooted in jealousy and desire. When Patrick tells Paul, “I want it,” it is unclear whether he means the marijuana at the concert, the Fisher account, Paul’s perfect part and tan scalp, or Paul himself. Patrick “want[ing]” Paul may mean that he desires Paul sexually, and it may also mean that he longs to occupy the role Paul has—to live his life, which he later strives to do by stealing Paul's limo, lounging in his apartment and using his name during sexual encounters. The competitive, homoerotic relationship between the two men—in which one desires, idolizes, and seeks to assume the identity of the other—is perhaps also a nod to the plot of suspense novelist Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 queer classic The Talented Mr. Ripley.
The coherence of Patrick’s already unreliable narration begins to unspool rapidly in the middle chapters of the book, after he reports killing Al and his dog. The chapter “A Glimpse of a Thursday Afternoon,” for instance is a stark stylistic departure from the rest of the book—a single continuous paragraph that rambles along for several pages in an attempt to render Patrick’s delirious subjectivity. Here Ellis borrows Faulknerian literary techniques like “stream-of-consciousness” narration, free indirect discourse, lengthy syntax, and unconventional punctuation to convey the ravages of Patrick’s disordered mind. The dreamlike chapter also asks the reader to accept surreal and improbable events, such as Patrick swallowing five glass vials of crack cocaine whole and a Korean store owner randomly breaking into song.
Patrick’s increasingly surreal and elliptical narration makes the true nature of his relationship with Luis, as with Paul Owen, difficult to discern. Patrick himself seems mystified by his own inability to harm Luis physically, despite the fact that he disdains Luis's taste in food and clothes, and outwardly seems to loathe all gay men. Luis's cryptic reference to a Christmas party suggests that the two may have a history, which Patrick never acknowledges. Their tension leads to the ironic, fetishistic image of Patrick softly placing his leather gloves on Luis's neck, which Luis mistakes for a sexual advance. Patrick's impotence and embarrassment at the Yale Club likely drives his compensatory decision to gratuitously slay, or imagine gratuitously slaying, an older gay man and his dog in a homophobic rage in the following chapter.
Patrick's relationship with his younger brother Sean seems laced with mutual resentment, and the fact that the two only meet at the urging of their family's lawyer and accountant suggests that the Bateman family is composed of wealthy, estranged eccentrics. Only two scenes in the novel take place at Dorsia, the ultra-exclusive restaurant of Patrick's dreams, and both are humiliating experiences. Rather than paradise, Dorsia seems, for Patrick, like one of Dante's inner circles of Hell: Patrick pettily describes his wait for Sean there in grandiose terms: "My mind is a mess... my worst fear—a reality." The spiteful rage causes him to dissociate in the bathroom while staring at a crack above the urinal, which he also does when staring at the crack in the wall in his apartment, suggesting that Patrick's visions of cracks may in fact be imagined manifestations of his deteriorating, "split" mental condition.
