Brightness Falls

by Jay McInerney

  "This is me you're talking to, Bernie. Your decorator ordered those books by the yard."

  Melman rolled his eyes and shook his head sadly. "That doesn't mean I don't like them. I have my own books at home. Have you read Plutarch?" Melman demanded. "Plutarch on Caesar? Well, you should. You might learn something besides numbers." Although he had graduated from Denison and the Wharton School of Business, Melman had something of the autodidact's innocent enthusiasm when it came to the liberal arts, to which he had come only recently. People didn't understand how hard you had to work, he often reflected, after single-mindedly succeeding in business, to acquire the habits and hobbies and interests of a rich man.

  Bernie Melman's right-hand man and chief number-cruncher was worried about this latest scheme. Never predictable, Melman was increasingly liberated from quotidian restraints and notions of common sense with the exponential increase in his wealth and power. And his illness, tamed though it might be by lithium sulfate, always threatened to assert itself. Carl Linder feared that Bernie had been building up to a major manic phase for the past year and a half. He was increasingly imperial. The recent purchase of the giant fashion empire whose offices they now occupied had seemed to Linder and others to be motivated by extrafinancial considerations. The board of the old company rebuffed Melman's advances and wooed other bidders, and the eventual price Melman paid exceeded even the most optimistic assessment of the com- pany's value and seemed to reflect Melman's desire to own a big, glamorous corporation after years of cement and discount retail. The day after pulling the ripcord on his seven-million-dollar golden parachute, the departing CEO commented scornfully to The New York Times that it was the highest price ever paid for a good table at '21.' Linder himself thought it was fine to buy Picassos and Légers for image-enhancing purposes. And for that matter they turned out to be excellent investments. Himself, he did not particularly like the Modigliani nude, the Picasso Blue Period saltimbanque, or the Braque collage that hung in the office. But that was one thing. He figured Bernie was competing with all those other guys and their wives. Even the ten million Melman was thinking of giving to the Metropolitan—the terms were clear. You buy prestige, good press, then take the tax write-off. But buying a company was something else. Linder believed in details and numbers, which, along with tax laws that favored debt over equity, were the basis of the Melman empire.

  Melman was orbiting his desk now, pacing madly, doing what Linder, not normally given to metaphor, called his gerbil walk. His young daughter had once owned a pair of gerbils that ran obsessively in place on the exercise wheel, and Bernie, when he was in the middle of a deal, could scarcely sit down, even when he was on the phone. He always moved clockwise. At the end of each business day one of his secretaries would untwist the cords of the phones in his office, twirling counterclockwise.

  Bernie Melman had his own reasons for wanting to buy Corbin, Dern, but he got a kick out of exasperating Linder. Mystifying your functionaries and followers was one of the secrets of leadership. Corbin, Dern was small change and didn't promise much immediate cash even if he busted up the company, but publishing had a certain cachet and strategically the acquisition fit into his long-range program, giving him a wedge into an industry he wanted to enter. Media was the coming thing, no question. Besides, he was intrigued by the kid who'd brought him the deal. He had a lot of baby bankers breaking down his doors but this one was something different.

  Melman was lighting his first cigar when his secretary announced Trina Cox. "You stay," he said to Linder as he sat down behind his desk. Trina was shown in and directed to a leather armchair. She was wearing a snugly fitted bright red suit.

  "Nice threads—Donna Karan, am I right?" Trina looked down at her skirt and shrugged. "Ask Christopher." The chair had a slung leather seat which dropped the butt and thrust the knees up, making it awkward to lean forward or keep a skirt closed.

  "You guys've met, right? Trina, Carl, et cetera... Carl can't stay long—he's got a fox-hunting date with Princess Di." Watching Trina fix her skirt as she settled into her chair, he added, "Saw your man Aldridge at Mortimer's the other night. What's his story? Kind of a tight-ass, isn't he?" Melman was curious to test both her loyalty and her powers of observation.

  "He's of the old school. A little conservative, yes."

  "A little too wimpy for your tastes, right?"

  "I think we're missing out on some exceptional opportunities."

  "Like Corbin, Dern?"

  "That's one example."

  "So let's look at it. Tell me about your man Calloway. He can really deliver one of the family? What, the junkie sister? It's gotta be her. I've met the other one at Palm Beach, a real Eva Braun—this ice-queen socialite with a riding crop up her ass. So it's the junkie, right?"

  "Let's say we're dealing on a need-to-know basis here."

  "Come on, honey, are we doing business here or yanking each other's chains?"

  "We're deciding whether we can do business, Bernard."

  Melman raised his eyebrows at this unexpected and possibly disrespectful use of his given name. Like many powerful men, he got a kick out of going by his nickname. He leaned back in his chair, looked up at the ceiling and sighed a huge cloud of smoke, which hung over him like a troubled thought. Scorning the big marble ashtray in the center of the desk, he tapped his ashes into a half-full Spode coffee cup. "You're a real Wasp, aren't you," he said.

  She shrugged. "We Coxes missed the Mayflower, but we caught pretty much the next boat over. "

  "Is Calloway fucking the junkie?"

  "I'd be extremely surprised."

  "You would, would you? But you don't know for sure? Listen, honey, first thing—you do business with me, right?—first thing is you know your shit backwards and forwards, you become the world's leading authority on your target, right? You find out whose name the CEO's wife moans in her sleep, who she meets for lunch at Le Cirque, and what's his favorite position. You learn everything there is to know. Knowledge is power, right?"

  "Calloway's not fucking the sister."

  "Is he fucking you?"

  "Only in his dreams."

  Melman smiled. "Only in his dreams, right. I like that."

  "Russell is happily married. His wife's a stockbroker. And my intelligence says neither one of them screws around."

  "Either they belong in a museum or something's wrong with your information." Leaning forward, Melman tapped and shaped his cigar ash on the edge of the coffee cup. "Fidelity—this day and age, Fidelity's just the name of a discount brokerage house."

  Trina was aware that her skirt slid up her thigh each time she shifted, and was nearly convinced that the chair was designed especially for this purpose. "You don't believe there's such a thing as a happy marriage?"

  "Sure, I believe in happy marriages. I have one, right? Carl here has one—" Carl issued a grunt of what might have been protest at this description of his own marriage. "I just don't believe there's such a thing as fidelity. What do you think?"

  "I wouldn't know, I'm not married."

  Nodding glibly, he tried to stare her down but she held his gaze with bemused concentration. "How tall are you?" he said.

  "Pardon me?"

  "How tall are you? You know, your height?"

  "Five-seven."

  "You're not five-seven."

  "Last time I checked."

  "Stand up."

  Trina hesitated.

  "Go on, I want to see how tall you are."

  Seizing the opportunity to fix her skirt before it disappeared up around her waist, she stood up, not without difficulty. The chair was like a swamp.

  Melman came out from behind his desk. "Carl, you measure."

  They kicked off their shoes and stood back to back. Trina could feel Melman raising himself up on the balls of his feet. He was at least two inches shorter.

  "Carl, what do you say?"

  The lame man l
imped over wearily. "I call it a draw," he said. "And now, Bernie, I've got to call London. Morning, miss."

  Melman winked at Trina as Linder pulled the door closed behind him. "I try to use every advantage I've got. Like owning the judge." He slipped on his loafers and sat on his desk.

  "I can be short if I need to be," Trina said.

  "I kid Carl, but without him I couldn't—" Suddenly he grimaced and reached for his hip. Groaning loudly he moved his head slowly from side to side, his expression gradually relaxing. "You know anything about back pain?"

  "Only where it's located."

  "I got a bitch of a lower back." He eased himself from the desktop and hobbled slowly back to the orthopedic chair behind the desk. Reluctantly Trina resumed her seat. "Backs are this mysterious thing, right? I've had the best chiropractors in the country working on me and they can't do shit. But that's my problem. So, what about this protest I've been reading about? This Parker character?"

  "One, it's driven the price of the stock down. Two, old management's stuck with this, not us. New-broom kind of deal, we pay Mr. Parker a few out of goodwill." She paused. "Particularly since I know you are quietly involved in some substantial charities serving the black community."

  Melman smiled appreciatively, hunched up his shoulders and spread his hands. Inserting a pen in the corner of his mouth he said, "And Calloway? I should meet him. Smart guy?"

  "He's good. Maybe one of the best editors in New York, and I think he's got the CFO on his team, which gives us managerial talent. With guidance he could handle the core division. We'll sell off the rest immediately."

  "Ambitious?"

  She nodded.

  "But not too smart and ambitious, I hope. Right? Do you know what I'm saying?"

  "I think I'm picking up your signal, captain. He's manageable."

  "And if he doesn't work out?"

  "That would be up to whoever put up the money."

  "So, what about you? You're smart, ambitious, pretty. What do you want out of life?"

  "Set up my own firm, do deals."

  "You like doing deals?"

  "I love doing deals."

  "I mean, do you really like doing deals. You better, okay? You better like it more than anything. Some of you yuppie kids with MBAs, you want to get rich. You want to buy shit, right? Your BMWs and your fucking houses in the Hamptons. Sure, everybody wants to be rich, but you gotta love the deal, you gotta love winning. Money's just the way you keep score."

  Trina's skirt was sliding up her thighs again. On top of the lecture it was really pissing her off. She fought her way up out of the chair. "This trick peekaboo chair is bullshit, Bernie. You want to see my stuff? Be a man about it. You want to see it?" Trina lifted her skirt up over her hips. Holding the skirt up above her waist with one hand and tugging her panty hose down to thigh level with the other, she twirled like a model, displaying the view in the round. Bernie found himself unable to look away or speak.

  After a suitably indecent interval she tugged up her hose and dropped her skirt. "Now could you please get me a real fucking chair, please?"

  Bernie recovered from his trance, flashing a big toothy smile. "You're gutsy," he said, as if she'd passed a test of his conscious devising. "Maybe I can help you do some business."

  He came out from behind his desk rolling his own chair, holding it for her. "Try this, most comfortable chair in the world, custom-made for me in Milan."

  17

  "Bernard Melman?" Corrine said. "Are you kidding? The guy's a pirate." She was trying to find her other pearl stud in the chaos of her jewelry box. They were running late for a dinner party, and the only pairs of earrings she could find were old hippie things from junior high. Sterling hoops and hammered copper disks. If they ever really needed money she could always pawn her jewels for twenty or thirty bucks.

  "For my purposes he's an angel of mercy. Christ, does this tie look all right?"

  "Wear the burgundy with the little fleurs-de-lis."

  "What does he want with a seventy-million-dollar publishing house? That's petty cash for him."

  "He probably wants the cachet. Think of it as money-laundering."

  This term, with its associations of gangsters and drug dealers, rang true in Corrine's secret estimation. Disloyally, she hoped that this scheme of Russell's would die of its own accord. She had been so busy lately she hadn't had the energy really to challenge him.

  "Can we please stay home tomorrow night?"

  "God, yes. I don't know. Check the datebook."

  "I hate this dress," she shouted. "I look huge. I'm like the queen of the cholesterol festival. I can't go looking like this." She walked to her closet and flung back the door, then thumbed through the rows of fabric shoulders, past the sensible business suits and colorful prints from Laura Ashley to her inadequate selection of evening and cocktail dresses in black and red and green and black again. "Corrine, if you were any skinnier the dress would fall right off. Besides, we're late."

  "Don't sigh like that."

  "Like what?"

  "In that condescending way you have like you're dealing with a child or a household pet."

  "Sorry," Russell said, holding his breath. With Corrine, dressing for a party could be a traumatic event. She became violently critical of her own appearance and her wardrobe. The process could end in tears and threats of violence.

  "You're still doing it."

  "Doing what?"

  "Looking at me that way." She took a deep breath. "Okay, I'll go like this. If you want you can tell people I'm your fat, ugly cousin from out of town."

  "I've been doing that for years."

  When they were in the cab she said, "Are you going to meet with Melman?"

  "I'm seeing him tomorrow."

  "You wanted to publish more poetry and political books. Now you're meeting with Bernie Melman, the man who gave greed a bad name. Do you see anything ironic about this?"

  But Russell was perfectly able, at this juncture, to suppress his sense of irony.

  Early the next afternoon Bernard Melman pointed a fork at Russell's sternum as he ventilated some of his ideas about money. With his balding pink head, fierce eyes and well-cut black suit he put Russell in mind of a turkey vulture (Falconiformes Cathartidae, Audubon, plate 87).

  "J. P. Morgan used to say the only thing he considered when he was loaning money was the character of the applicant."

  Russell Calloway considered this notion. "Would he have backed St. Francis of Assisi on a chain of animal hospitals?"

  The reference either escaped Melman or failed to engage him. "The vet my wife takes her spaniels to over on Lex, the guy grosses three or four million a year. I'd lend this guy money whatever his name is. So what are you, Catholic?"

  "Lapsed."

  "How tall are you?"

  "Six-one."

  "Get outta here. You know what the average height is for men in this country? The average height is five-six. You thought it was more, didn't you? But that's average. Five-six. If you factor in the rest of the world it's much shorter. In some countries I could play professional hoop. So you're sticking to this six-one story, huh? Okay, fine. I gotta tell you, though, it's my experience that tall guys generally have smaller dicks, bigger the guy, smaller the tool, it's kind of an inverse-ratio sort of thing, don't you think?"

  "I haven't made a real study of it, myself."

  "Ouch, I think I just got zinged," Melman said. "Carl, did I just get zinged, or what. I think this ex-altar boy is calling me a homo."

  Carl Linder grunted incoherently.

  "Forgive Carl, he's kind of distracted. Waiting on a phone call from the Queen of England announcing his fucking knighthood. Sir Carl. Sounds nice, doesn't it?" Melman summoned the maître d' and explained that if the Queen of England called she was to be told that Carl was busy eating shepherd's pie and couldn't come to the phone.

  "So d
on't worry," he told Russell after Carl had failed to fight back. "I don't hold a man's height against him. But I tell a lot about him from the way he walks. Just watching you walk over from the office, I said, Here's a guy who's awfully sure of himself. You've got this wide-open, confident stride, and you don't carry yourself defensively, like a guy expecting a shot from an unexpected corner, or for the ground to open up at his feet and swallow him. You've obviously never been kicked in the balls, am I right? You can see it even in the way you're sitting."

  Melman's own posture, it seemed to Russell, reflected a precarious triumph of stasis; he seemed ready to spring into the air at any moment.

  "I've been going over your list," Melman said. "You've published some great books."

  "I publish what I like," Russell answered coolly, determined not to kiss Melman's ass.

  "You've got taste. I admire taste," Melman enthused, as though he were far too successful on the only scale that truly mattered to deny other men their particular virtues.

  They were dining at '21,' the world's most expensive former speakeasy. The man whose job it was to welcome people at the door had greeted Melman in an ecstatic manner and led him to another greeter, who in turn escorted the party into the dining room, where they were handed off to the maître d', who lubricated the last few steps of their progress into the banquette immediately inside the front door of the saloon. The two bodyguards were given a place at the bar.

  The restaurant kept an orthopedically customized chair standing by for Melman's use, fitted with a coccyx-level pad to support the lower back. Another corporate raider whose weight fluctuated between four hundred and five hundred pounds had a double-wide model waiting for him—Bernie dubbed it a self-love seat—whenever he flew in from Los Angeles. Hanging from the rafters of the first-floor saloon was a collection of toys, models and pennants suggestive of a prosperous thirteen-year-old boy's bedroom, each signifying the ascent of a regular to a top corporate position—a football for the customer who bought himself an NFL team, an airplane for the patron named chairman of an airline. Melman pointed out his own trophies, including a pennant inscribed with the name of his fashion empire and a plastic butcher knife signifying his capture of a meat-packing concern.