One Fifth Avenue

“Okay.” Philip sighed. “Ten weeks. What’s the difference?”

“Were you in love with her?” Lola said.

“Come on, Kitty,” Philip said. “You’re being silly.” He went up to her, but she tried—not very hard, Philip noted—to push him away. “Listen,” he said. “I’m very, very fond of you. But it’s too soon to say ‘I love you.’”

She crossed her arms. “I’m going to leave.”

“Lola,” he said. “What do you want from me?”

“I want you to be in love with me. And I want to go to that Halloween party.”

He sighed. Relieved to be off the topic of his feelings for her, he said, “If you want to go to the party, we’ll go.”

This seemed to mollify her, and she put her hands in the waistband of his jeans. She unzipped his pants, and unable to object, he put his hands in her hair as she knelt in front of him. At one point, she pulled her mouth away from his penis and, looking up at him, said, “Will you dress up?”

“Huh?” he said.

“For Halloween?”

He closed his eyes. “Sure,” he said, thinking, If it means more blow jobs, why not?

In the week before Halloween, the city was hit by a cold snap. The temperature dropped to thirty degrees, causing people to remark that maybe global warming wasn’t such an issue. For Thayer Core, the weather simply put him in a bad mood. He didn’t own an overcoat, and the cold air reminded him that he was about to experience his third winter in New York, in which his lack of proper attire would make him hate the cold, hate the businessmen in their long cashmere coats and cashmere scarves and thick, leather-soled loafers. He hated everything about winter: the giant puddles of slush on the street corners and the disgusting puddles of dirty water in the subway and the puffy coat filled with acrylic batting that he was forced to wear when the temperature dropped below forty. His only protection against the icy weather was this silly ski jacket his mother had given him for his birthday the year he’d moved to New York. She’d been so excited about the gift, her flat brown eyes exuding a rarely seen sparkle of anticipation that had hurt him because his mother was pathetic, and irritated him because he was her son. Still, she loved him no matter what he did. She loved him although she had no idea who he was or what he really thought. Her assumption that he would love the gift of a ski coat for its practicality annoyed him and made him want to drink and drug away his infuriation, but when winter came to New York, he wore the coat. He had nothing else.

In the middle of the day in the middle of the week, when he imagined most people in America were wasting the company’s time at their dull and unrewarding office jobs, Thayer Core took the subway to Fifty-first Street and walked up Fifty-second to the Four Seasons, where he would eat caviar and drink champagne under the pretense of reporting on how the privileged filled up their many hours of free time.

It was his third attendance at such a lunch, which appeared to be a regular once-a-week event, the purpose of which was the promotion of a movie (independent, often worthy, and usually boring). The guests were supposed to discuss the movie, like one of those middle-aged-lady book clubs that his mother belonged to, but no one ever did. Instead, they cooed over each other about how fabulous they were, which was especially galling to Thayer, who saw them as ol

d and frightening and misguided. Nevertheless, he had managed to keep himself invited each week by not yet writing about the event in Snarker. He would have to soon. But in the meantime, he planned to enjoy his free lunch.

Thayer was always one of the first people to arrive, in order to do so anonymously. He took off his coat and was about to hand it to the coat-check man when he saw that Billy Litchfield had come up behind him. The sight of Billy filled Thayer with bile. Billy, Thayer had decided, was what could happen to a person who stayed too long in New York. What was his point? He appeared to do nothing but go to parties. He was a hanger-on to the rich and privileged. Didn’t he get bored? Thayer had been going to parties for only two years, and already he was bored out of his mind. If he wasn’t careful, time would pass, and he would end up like Billy Litchfield.

And now Billy had seen his coat.

“Hello, young man,” Billy said pleasantly.

“Hello,” Thayer muttered. No doubt Billy Litchfield couldn’t remember his name. He held out his hand aggressively, forcing Billy to take it. “I’m Thayer Core,” he said. “From Snarker?”

“I know exactly who you are,” Billy replied.

“Good,” Thayer said. Giving Billy a backward glance, he bounded up the steps ahead of him, if only to remind himself—and Billy—of his youth and energy. Then he took up his usual position at the bar, where he could observe and overhear and largely be ignored until lunch.

Billy handed his overcoat to the coat-check man, wishing he could have avoided shaking the hand of Thayer Core. Why was he here? Billy wondered. Thayer Core was a blogger on one of those vicious new websites that had popped up in the last few years, displaying a hatred and vitriol that was unprecedented in civilized New York. The things the bloggers wrote made no sense to him. The readers’ comments made no sense to him. None of it appeared to be written by humans, at least not humans as he knew them. This was the problem with the Internet: The more the world opened up, the more unpleasant people seemed to be.

It was one of the reasons he’d begun taking the pills. Good old-fashioned Prozac. “Been around for twenty-five years. Babies take it,” the shrink said. “You’ve got anhedonia. Lack of pleasure in anything.”

“It’s not a lack of pleasure,” Billy protested. “It’s more a horror of the world.”

The doctor’s office was located on Eleventh Street in a two-bedroom town house apartment. “We’ve met before,” the doctor said the first time Billy walked in.

“Have we?” Billy said. He was so hoping this wouldn’t be true, that he and his psychiatrist would have no acquaintances in common.

“You know my mother.”

“Do I?” Billy said, trying to put him off. But there was a degree of comfort in the information.

“Cee Cee Lightfoot,” the doctor said.

“Ah. Cee Cee,” Billy said. He knew Cee Cee well. The muse to a famous fashion designer who had died of AIDS back in the days when fashion designers had muses. How he missed those times, he thought. “What happened to your mother?” he asked.