I'm talking to the delivery guys from Park Avenue Sound Shop about HDTV, which isn't available yet, when one of the new black AT&T cordless phones rings. I tip them, then answer it. My lawyer, Ronald, is on the other end. I'm listening to him, nodding, showing the delivery guys out of the apartment. Then I say, "The bill is three hundred dollars, Ronald. We only had coffee." A long pause, during which I hear a bizarre sloshing sound coming from the bathroom. Walking cautiously toward it, cordless phone still in hand, I tell Ronald, "But yes... Wait... But I am... But we only had espresso." Then I'm peering into the bathroom.

Perched on the seat of the toilet is a large wet rat that has - I'm assuming - come up out of it. It sits on the rim of the toilet bowl, shaking itself dry, before it jumps, tentatively, to the floor. It's a massive rodent and it lurches, then scrambles, across the tile, out of the bathroom's other entrance and into the kitchen, where I follow it toward the leftover pizza bag from Le Madri that for some reason sits on the floor on top of yesterday's New York Times near the garbage pail from Zona, and the rat, lured by the smell, takes the bag in its mouth and shakes its head furiously, like a dog would, trying to get at the leek-goat cheese-truffle pizza, making squealing sounds of hunger. I'm on a lot of Halcion at this point so the rat doesn't bother me as much as, I suppose, it should.

To catch the rat I buy an extra-large mousetrap at a hardware store on Amsterdam. I also decide to spend the night at my family's suite in the Carlyle. The only cheese I have in the apartment is a wedge of Brie in the refrigerator and before leaving I place the entire slice - it's a really big rat - along with a sun-dried tomato and a sprinkling of dill, delicately on the trap, setting it. But when I come back the following morning, because of the rat's size, the trap hasn't killed it. The rat just lies there, stuck, squeaking, thrashing its tail, which is a horrible, oily, translucent pink, as long as a pencil and twice as thick, and it makes a slapping sound every time it hits against the white oak floor. Using a dustpan - which it takes me over a f**king hour to find - I corner the injured rat just as it frees itself from the trap and I pick the thing up, sending it into a panic, making it squeal even louder, hissing at me, baring its sharp, yellow rat fangs, and dump it into a Bergdorf Goodman hatbox. But then the thing claws its way out and I have to keep it in the sink, a board, heavy with unused cookbooks, covering it, and even then it almost escapes, while I sit in the kitchen thinking of ways to torture girls with this animal (unsurprisingly I come up with a lot), making a list that includes, unrelated to the rat, cutting open both br**sts and deflating them, along with stringing barbed wire tightly around their heads.

Another Night

McDermott and I are supposed to have dinner tonight at 1500 and he calls me around six-thirty, forty minutes before our actual reservation (he couldn't get us in at any other time, except for six-ten or nine, which is when the restaurant closes - it serves Californian cuisine and its seating times are an affectation carried over from that state), and though I'm in the middle of flossing my teeth, all of my cordless phones lie by the sink in the bathroom and I'm able to pick the right one up on the second ring. So far I'm wearing black Armani trousers, a white Armani shirt, a red sad black Armani tie. McDermott lets me know that Hamlin wants to come with us. I'm hungry. There's a pause.

"So?" I ask, straightening my tie. "Okay."

"So?" McDermott sighs. "Hamlin doesn't want to go to 1500."

"Why not?" I turn off the tap in the sink.

"He was there last night."

"So... what are you, McDermott, trying to tell me?"

'"That we're going someplace else," he says.

"Where?" I ask cautiously.

"Alex Goes to Camp is where Ham lin suggested," he says.

"Hold on. I'm Plaxing." After swishing the antiplaque formula around in my mouth and inspecting my hairline in the mirror, I spit out the Plax. "Veto. Bypass. I went there last week."

"I know. So did I," McDermott says. "Besides, it's cheap. So where do we go instead?"

"Didn't Hamlin have a f**king backup?" I growl, irritated.

"Er, no."

"Call him back and get one," I say, walking out of the bathroom. "I seem to have misplaced my Zagat."

"Do you want to hold or should I call you back?" he asks.

"Call me back, bozo." We hang up.

Minutes pass. The phone rings. I don't bother screening it. It's McDermott again.