The driver comes out of the building, gives me thumbs-up, carefully pulls the limousine away from the curb and begins the trek to JFK airport, where my flight to Aspen leaves in ninety minutes. When I get back, in January, Jeanette will be out of the country. I relight a cigar, search for an ashtray. There's a church on the corner of this street. Who cares? This is, I think, the fifth child I've had aborted, the third I haven't aborted myself (a useless statistic, I admit). The wind outside the limousine is brisk and cold and the rain hits the darkened windows in rhythmic waves, mimicking Jeanette's probable weeping in the operating room, dizzy from the anesthesia, thinking about a memory from her past, a moment where the world was perfect. I resist the impulse to start cackling hysterically.

At the airport I instruct the chauffeur to stop by F.A.O. Schwarz before picking Jeanette up and purchase the following: a doll, a rattle, a teething ring, a white Gund polar bear, and have them sitting in the backseat for her, unwrapped. Jeanette should be okay - she has her whole life in front of her (that is, if she doesn't run into me). Besides, this girl's favorite movie is Pretty in Pink and she thinks Sting is cool, so what is happening to her is, like, not totally undeserved and one shouldn't feel bad for her. This is no time for the innocent.

Valentine's Day

Tuesday morning and I'm standing by my desk in the living room on the phone with my lawyer, alternately keeping my eye on The Patty Winters Show and the maid as she waxes the floor, wipes blood smears off the walls, throws away gore-soaked newspapers without a word. Faintly it hits me that she too is lost in a world of shit, completely drowning in it, and this somehow sets off my remembering that the piano tuner will be stopping by this afternoon and that I should leave a note with the doorman to let him in. Not that the Yamaha has ever been played; it's just that one of the girls fell against it and some strings (which I used later) were pulled out, snapped or something. Into the phone I'm saying, "I need more tax breaks." Patty Winters is on the TV screen asking a child, eight or nine, "But isn't that just another term for an orgy?" The timer buzzes on the microwave. I'm heating up a souffle.

There's no use in denying it: this has been a bad week. I've started drinking my own urine. I laugh spontaneously at nothing. Sometimes I sleep under my futon. I'm flossing my teeth constantly until my gums are aching and my mouth tastes like blood. Before dinner last night at 1500 with Reed Goodrich and Jason Rust I was almost caught at a Federal Express in Times Square trying to send the mother of one of the girls I killed last week what might be a dried-up, brown heart. And to Evelyn I successfully Federal Expressed, through the office, a small box of flies along with a note, typed by Jean, saying that I never, ever wanted to see her face again and, though she doesn't really need one, to go on a f**king diet. But there are also things that the average person would think are nice that I've done to celebrate the holiday, items I've bought Jean and had delivered to her apartment this morning: Castellini cotton napkins from Bendel's, a wicker chair from Jenny B. Goode, a taffeta table throw from Barney's, a vintage chain-mail-vent purse and a vintage sterling silver dresser set from Macy's, a white pine whatnot from Conran's, an Edwardian nine-carat-gold "gate" bracelet from Bergdorfs and hundreds upon hundreds of pink and white roses.

The office. Lyrics to Madonna songs keep intruding, bursting into my head, announcing themselves in tiring, familiar ways, and I stare into space, my eyes lazily lit up while I try to forget about the day looming before me, but then a phrase that fills me with a nameless dread keeps interrupting the Madonna songs - isolated farmhouse constantly returns to me, over and over. Someone I've been avoiding for the last year, a nerd from Fortune who wants to write an article about me, calls again this morning and I end up calling the reporter back to arrange an interview. Craig McDermott is having some kind of fax frenzy and won't take any of my phone calls, preferring to communicate by fax only. The Post this morning says the remains of three bodies that disappeared aboard a yacht last March have been recovered, frozen in ice, hacked up and bloated, in the East River; some maniac is going around the city poisoning one-liter bottles of Evian water, seventeen dead already; talk of zombies, the public mood, increasing randomness, vast chasms of misunderstanding.

And, for the sake of form, Tim Price resurfaces, or at least I'm pretty sure he does. While I'm at my desk simultaneously crossing out the days in my calendar that have already passed and reading a new best seller about once management called Why It Works to Be a Jerk, Jean buzzes in, announcing that Tim Price wants to talk, and fearfully I say, "Send him... in." Price strolls into the office wearing a wool suit by Canali Milano, a cotton shirt by Ike Behar, a silk tie by Bill Bless, cap-toed leather lace-ups from Brooks Brothers. I'm pretending to be on the phone. He sits down, across from me, on the other side of the Palazzetti glass-top desk. There's a smudge on his forehead or at least that's what I think I see. Aside from that he looks remarkably fit. Our conversation probably resembles something like this but is actually briefer.