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The fountain pen was not out of alignment at the edge of Hannibal’s desk blotter. Nevertheless, he took a moment to adjust it with a finger before rising to greet his newest patient.
“Welcome to my office, Mr. Bateman.”
A smile assaulted the composed room. Too broad, overly smug, meant to disarm those who saw it or to seduce them. Panic, however, laid uneasily beneath the veneer of this one. Hannibal smiled in return, keeping his teeth hidden.
“Thank you, Dr. Lecter. You were the most highly recommended psychiatrist in the city. So, obviously…” Mr. Bateman gestured between them with an open hand, and presented a business card with the other.
“Quite. I hope you find our time together to be of the highest quality,” Hannibal said, gesturing with his own hand to the chair. Bateman’s silk suit slid against the leather. The padding at the shoulders was slightly too robust, even for the current American fashion. Hannibal took Bateman’s card from his still extended, if slightly flagging hand. “Shall we begin with you sharing why you’ve come here today?”
Hannibal chose the word sharing intentionally.
For weeks he had been studying Bateman from afar. Detective Crawford had presented the open casefile to Hannibal after their dessert course. Hannibal savored the lingering flavors of fig and creme fraiche, thyme, sweet and crisp flakes of his own reimagined chicharrónes as he perused the file. Crawford quietly found this yet-anonymous killer to be fascinating, and his enthusiasm had rather unintentionally bled its way into the file’s organization. Vivid color photographs showed wrath as though John Martin himself had painted the scene with a knife. Hannibal blotted his mouth with his napkin.
It had taken a mere evening to find the limousine trolling beneath the overpass, a power player within, the type no one ever suspected of these types of things. Hannibal contemplated the obviousness of Patrick Bateman. Dismantled bodies, showing signs of defilement. Abandoned with no regard except that the killer had taken what he desired. He used those bodies and then threw them aside as disposable. These were the marks of a selfish killer. Hannibal suspected that the killer’s trophy was fucking the bodies before he left them to rot, using bleach to disguise himself, but leaving with the powerful notion that these humans -- these receptacles -- were lucky enough to have crossed paths with him.
In Hannibal’s office, Bateman smelled of high end cologne, and the skin near his manicured fingernails was a shade too pale. Bleach.
Bateman’s smile persisted, straining at the corners at Hannibal’s request for him to share. It was not something that would come naturally.
“Yes, ah, well. As you know, patient-doctor privilege.” He chuckled. There was no humor behind it.
Hannibal let his face betray nothing. “Of course, your words are safe with me.”
Bateman shifted against the leather. His smile faded abruptly, leaving behind a mask of smooth skin. A sheen of face cream made him look plastic. It was à propos.
“In that case, I kill people.” Bateman thumbed the latch of his attache. He almost certainly had a cutting utensil of some sort within.
“Indeed you do.”
The mask cracked. Bateman betrayed his surprise with a widening of his eyes. His thumb stilled.
Hannibal crossed his legs, settling into his chair. “Please, elaborate. I am something of an admirer.”
That statement was a half-truth. Bateman was selfish and benefiting from circumstance more than talent. His brutality and urge toward a perfection -- cartoonish and derivative as it may be -- was tempting nonetheless. It was something in which Hannibal saw potential, something that he could mold. Ridding Bateman of his paranoia could reveal a pristine id. He could be a perfect, rage-filled killer, plastic in only Hannibal Lecter’s hands.
****
Bateman’s compulsions grew fat under Hannibal’s watchful eye. His apartment was retrofit with two-way mirrors so they could both watch as he used and killed. It was nearly a still life, sculptural in the long, lean expanses of flesh. It was a portrait of birth, life, love, and death replete with gouts of blood and semen, bleached white as bone at the end of each cycle.
****
“They are going to find out and I’ll be ruined.”
Hannibal allowed Bateman into his office. He put himself between Bateman and the door. “Who is they?”
“My clients. My boss. People who matter.”
“I see.” Hannibal had been working on Patrick for months, guiding him toward something more. But the experiment had plateaued. Bateman resisted at every turn, preferring ego over id even while rage overtook him and he wallowed in it. He could not give up the need to impress. Perhaps Hannibal's design was flawed, since he could not remove himself as a variable. Patrick would always look to him for approval.
"Oh, you see?" Rage seethed in Bateman. It was a glimpse of what Hannibal was trying to create.
Hannibal let the pause linger, cultivating Bateman's discomfort and anger.
“While it is somewhat inappropriate, I would like to invite you to my home for dinner.” He played on Bateman’s ego. “Bring one of your peers, and we will leave them suitably impressed.”
****
The one who called himself Chuck pretended to know enough about wine to scoff when Hannibal displayed the bottle.
“Bordeauxs are so passe.”
Hannibal poured a glass for their guest nonetheless. “I chose the Chateau Margaux for its fruit and leather notes. I hope you find the flavors pair well with tonight’s soup. I’ve prepared the stock from freshly slaughtered veal.”
Watching Chuck ladle spoonfuls into his maw was enough to ameliorate his earlier rudeness. Patrick was less forgiving. He used Hannibal’s cleaver to slice him groin to neck before they got to cigars.
The fragrance of soup and warmed wine flooded over the plastic sheeting. Patrick’s broad, manic laugh spilled throughout the house as he stood over his fallen, conquered challenger. Hannibal sipped his port.
****
“I think,” Hannibal said quietly as they finished wrapping up the body, “that our time together is drawing to a close.”
Patrick’s mask returned. “Without you, people will find out.”
Hannibal smoothed a new plastic sheet over the first as though he was going to add another layer to Chuck’s containment. “No one will find out.”
Red blossomed over Patrick’s pressed, white shirt.
In the end, Patrick’s face eased into something that looked like relief. There was no gratitude on his features, but perhaps this was always what he had sought: an exit that preserved his own reputation.
****
Hannibal read the headlines as he sat down for a breakfast of trippa alla romana and soft boiled eggs. Bateman had been found in an alley beside Dorsia, wallet gone, a stab wound to his stomach so brutal that a portion of his stomach appeared to be missing.
Yolk spilled as Hannibal’s fork pierced the white. He closed the paper.