Video Store then D’Agostino’s

I’m wandering around VideoVisions, the video rental store near my apartment on the Upper West Side, sipping from a can of Diet Pepsi, the new Christopher Cross tape blaring from the earphones of my Sony Walkman. After the office I played racquetball with Montgomery, then had a shiatsu massage and met Jesse Lloyd, Jamie Conway and Kevin Forrest for drinks at Rusty’s on Seventy-third Street. Tonight I’m wearing a new wool topcoat by Ungaro Uomo Paris and carrying a Bottega Veneta briefcase and an umbrella by Georges Gaspar.

The video store is more crowded than usual. There are too many couples in line for me to rent She-Male Reformatory or Ginger’s Cunt without some sense of awkwardness or discomfort, plus I’ve already bumped into Robert Ailes from First Boston in the Horror aisle, or at least I think it was Robert Ailes. He mumbled “Hello, McDonald” as he passed me by, holding Friday the 13th: Part 7 and a documentary on abortions in what I noticed were nicely manicured hands marred only by what looked to me like an imitation-gold Rolex.

Since pornography seems out of the question I browse through Light Comedy and, feeling ripped off, settle for a Woody Allen movie but I’m still not satisfied. I want something else. I pass through the Rock Musical section—nothing—then find myself in Horror Comedy—ditto—and suddenly I’m seized by a minor anxiety attack. There are too many fucking movies to choose from. I duck behind a promotional cardboard display for the new Dan Aykroyd comedy and take two five-milligram Valiums, washing them down with the Diet Pepsi. Then, almost by rote, as if I’ve been programmed, I reach for Body Double—a movie I have rented thirty-seven times—and walk up to the counter where I wait for twenty minutes to be checked out by a dumpy girl (five pounds overweight, dry frizzy hair). She’s actually wearing a baggy, nondescript sweater—definitely not designer—probably to hide the fact that she has no tits, and even though she has nice eyes: so fucking what? Finally it’s my turn. I hand her the empty boxes.

“Is this it?” she asks, taking my membership card from me. I’m wearing Mario Valentino Persian-black gloves. My VideoVisions membership costs only two hundred and fifty dollars annually.

“Do you have any Jami Gertz movies?” I ask her, trying to make direct eye contact.

“What?” she asks, distracted.

“Any movies that Jami Gertz is in?”

”Who?” She enters something into the computer and then says without looking at me, “How many nights?”

“Three,” I say. “Don’t you know who Jami Gertz is?”

“I don’t think so.” She actually sighs.

“Jami Gertz,” I say. “She’s an actress.”

“I don’t think I know who you mean,” she says in a tone that suggests I’m harassing her, but hey, she works in a video rental store and since it’s such a demanding high-powered profession her bitchy behavior is completely reasonable, right? The things I could do to this girl’s body with a hammer, the words I could carve into her with an ice pick. She hands the guy behind her my boxes—and I pretend to ignore his horrified reaction as he recognizes me after he looks at the Body Double box—but he dutifully walks into some kind of vault in the back of the store to get the movies.

“Yeah. Sure you do,” I say good-naturedly. “She’s in those Diet Coke commercials. You know the ones.”

“I really don’t think so,” she says in a monotone that almost cuts me off. She types the names of the movies and then my membership number into the computer.

“I like the part in Body Double where the woman … gets drilled by the … power driller in the movie … the best,” I say, almost gasping. It seems very hot in the video store right now all of a sudden and after murmuring “oh my god” under my breath I place a gloved hand on the counter to settle it from shaking. “And the blood starts pouring out of the ceiling.” I take a deep breath and while I’m saying this my head starts nodding of its own accord and I keep swallowing, thinking I have to see her shoes, and so as inconspicuously as possible I try to peer over the counter to check out what kind of shoes she’s wearing, but maddeningly they’re only sneakers—not K-Swiss, not Tretorn, not Adidas, not Reebok, just cheap ones.

“Sign here.” She hands me the tapes without even looking at me, refusing to recognize who I am; and breathing in hard and exhaling, she motions for the next in line, a couple with a baby.

On the way back to my apartment I stop at D’Agostino’s, where for dinner I buy two large bottles of Perrier, a six-pack of Coke Classic, a head of arugula, five medium-sized kiwis, a bottle of tarragon balsamic vinegar, a tin of creme fraiche, a carton of microwave tapas, a box of tofu and a white-chocolate candy bar I pick up at the checkout counter.

Once outside, ignoring the bum lounging below the Les Miserables poster and holding a sign that reads: I’VE LOST MY JOB I AM HUNGRY I HAVE NO MONEY PLEASE HELP, whose eyes tear after I pull the tease-the-bum-with-a-dollar trick and tell him, “Jesus, will you get a fucking shave, please,” my eyes almost like they were guided by radar, focus in on a red Lamborghini Countach parked at the curb, gleaming beneath the streetlamps, and I have to stop moving, the Valium shockingly, unexpectedly kicking in, everything else becomes obliterated: the crying bum, the black kids on crack rapping along to the blaring beatbox, the clouds of pigeons flying overhead looking for space to roost, the ambulance sirens, the honking taxis, the decent-looking babe in the Betsey Johnson dress, all of that fades and in what seems like time-lapse photography—but in slow motion, like a movie—the sun goes down, the city gets darker and all I can see is the red Lamborghini and all I can hear is my own even, steady panting. I’m still standing, drooling, in front of the store, staring, minutes later (I don’t know how many).