"What?" She laughs.
"Why don't you come up to my place?" I suggest again.
"Patrick." She laughs suggestively. "Are you serious?"
"I have a bottle of Pouilly-Fuisse, chilled, huh?" I say, arching my eyebrows.
"Listen, that line might've worked at Harvard but" - she laughs, then continues - "um, we're older now and..." She stops.
"And... what?" I ask.
"I shouldn't have had that wine at lunch," she says again.
We start walking. It's a hundred degrees outside, impossible to breathe. It's not day, it's not night. The sky seems yellow. I hand a beggar on the cornea of Duane and Greenwich a dollar just to impress her.
"Listen, come over," I say again, almost whining. "Come on over."
"I can t," she says. "The air-conditioning in my office is broken but I can't. I'd like to but I can't."
"Aw come on," I say, grabbing her shoulders, giving them a good-natured squeeze.
"Patrick, I have to be back at the office," she groans, protesting weakly.
"But you'll be swelt ering in there," I point out.
"I have no choice."
"Come on." Then, trying to entice her, "I have a 1940s Durgin Gorham four-piece sterling silver tea and coffee set I'd like to show you."
"I can't." She laughs, putting on her sunglasses.
"Bethany," I say, warning her.
"Listen," she says, relenting. "I'll buy you a Dove Bar. Have a Dove Bar instead."
"I'm appalled. Do you know how many grams of fat, of sodium, are in the chocolate covering alone?" I gasp, mock horrified.
"Come on," she says. "You don't need to worry about that."
"No, you come on," I say, walking in front of her for a little while so she won't sense any aggressiveness on my part. "Listen, come by for a drink and then we'll walk over to Dorsia and I'll meet Robert, okay?" I turn around, still walking, but backward now. "Please?"
"Patrick," she says. "You're begging."
"I really want to show you that Durgin Gorham tea set." I pause. "Please?" I pause again. "It cost me three and a half thousand dollars."
She stops walking because I stop, looks down, and when she looks back up her brow, both cheeks, are damp with a layer of perspiration, a fine sheen. She's hot. She sighs, smiling to herself. She looks at her watch.
"Well?" I ask.
"If I did...," she starts.
"Ye-e-es?" I ask, stretching the word out.
"If I did, I have to make a phone call."
"No, negative," I say, waving down a cab. "Call from my place."
"Patrick," she protests. "There's a phone right over there."
"Let's go now," I say. "There's a taxi."
In the cab heading toward the Upper West Side, she says, "I shouldn't have had that wine."
"Are you drunk?"
"No," she says, fanning herself with a playbill from Les Miserables someone left in the backseat of the cab, which isn't air-conditioned and even with both windows open she keeps fanning herself. "Just slightly... tipsy.."
We both laugh for no reason and she leans into me, then realizes something and pulls back. "You have a doorman, right?" she asks suspiciously.
"Yes." I smile, turned on by her unawareness of just how close to peril she really is.
Inside my apartment. She moves into the living room area, nodding her head approvingly, murmuring, "Very nice, Mr. Bateman, very nice." Meanwhile I'm locking the door, making sure it's bolted shut, then I move over to the bar and pour some J&B into a glass while she runs her hand over the Wurlitzer jukebox, inspecting it. I've started growling to myself and my hands are shaking so badly I decide to forgo any ice and then I'm in the living room, standing behind her while she looks up at the David Onica that's hung above the fireplace. She cocks her head, studying it, then she starts giggling and looks at me, puzzled, then back at the Onica, still laughing. I don't ask what's wrong - I could care less. Downing the drink in a single gulp, I move over to the Anaholian white-oak armoire where I keep a brand-new nail gun I bought last week at a hardware store near my office in Wall Street. After I've slipped on a pair of black leather gloves, I make sure the nail gun is loaded.
"Patrick?" Bethany asks, still giggling.
