Brightness Falls

by Jay McInerney

  "It was a long time ago," Corrine said, eyeing her mother's cigarettes longingly. "Corrine, there's no statute of limitations on sleeping with a man's best friend. Men are about forty percent testosterone and the rest is all pride, and you really kicked him right in the old pride when you slept with Jeff."

  "I know."

  "Boy, you really did it!"

  "Thanks for that confirmation, Mom."

  At least now, Corrine had the satisfaction of knowing that her mother couldn't say that it was just like what had happened to her, or that men were all alike.

  "So how is Jeff," Jessie asked.

  "I wish you wouldn't ask like that."

  "Like what?"

  "As if you're secretly enjoying the soap opera."

  "Corrine, I was only asking how he was. You know I'm crazy about Jeff."

  "He's still in the hospital. They let him out in another week. I don't know, I don't imagine these are the best times of his life."

  "I don't understand," Jessie said. "Jeff had everything going for him. How does somebody like that get hooked on drugs?"

  If Corrine hadn't solved this mystery, it was not for lack of trying. At different moments she believed that Jeff's unhappiness stemmed from guilt about his success, such as it was, guilt about his feelings for her, sadness about his breakup with Caitlin. And yet she'd sensed there was something doomed about Jeff when she'd first met him. Like hers, his family history was not reassuring; for all of their diluted class entitlement they recognized that sense of loss in each other. But Jeff's adolescent unhappiness, more acute than her own, seemed to her to have some grand, universal component. Life was insupportably sad, and gazing at Jessie's scotch glass sweating on the windowsill she could almost understand Jeff's search for oblivion, if that's what it was.

  "I remember Jeff saying once," she said, "that what really separates us from the other animals is an instinct for self-destruction."

  "You know, you're always quoting Jeff." Jessie sucked hard on the last half-inch of her cigarette and stubbed it out in a corner of the overflowing ashtray. "So are you in love with him?"

  "I've always been a little," Corrine said. "Maybe a lot."

  "Why do we all like the bad boys, I wonder?"

  "Not so much bad as wounded. Russell's so open and strong, Jeff's sort of dark and tortured." Russell had been in England and Jeff seemed to need her; there was a brief moment when she'd almost convinced herself to believe that loving Jeff was another way of loving Russell. It happened more than once, though not for long. "But now it's over."

  "Then go back to Russell."

  "I don't know if he'll have me. I don't even know what I want."

  "Why don't you stay here for a while?" Jessie said.

  "I don't know."

  "I was thinking we could open a business together. Antiques, maybe."

  "I've applied for a job with the District Attorney's Office. There's an internship on the task force investigating insider trading."

  "You only have one year of law school, honey," her mother said, putting her drink down. "Isn't that a problem?"

  "They've got plenty of lawyers, but they need people who know securities."

  "Muckraking, huh? Your father's father would be pleased, the old bleeding heart." Though she could have used a slice of the family money that this old gentleman had given away, Jessie had a soft spot for the man who had disliked his son, her ex-husband, enough to deprive him of an inheritance.

  Over the weekend Corrine had raked leaves and read Franny and Zooey for about the seventeenth time. She thought about the day she'd unwittingly had lunch with an older man she met in the stacks at the Dartmouth library. She was a freshman at Brown, visiting a boy whose name she could no longer remember, who'd been completely drunk and obnoxious from the moment she arrived Friday night. Saturday morning, after sleeping on his couch, she retreated to the library, and this nice old guy named Jerome had started to talk to her about the book she was reading—D. T. Suzuki on Zen—and then invited her to lunch, and for some reason she had trusted him. They drove out to the country to his house, which had a high chain-link fence around it. They lunched on grains and beans and vegetables, and all he talked about was vitamins and herbs and macrobiotics. He said he'd been working on a book about diet and spiritual health for years. After lunch he showed her the cinder-block bunker where he did his writing, and only then did she realize it was Salinger. He dropped her back at the library and never once mentioned fiction. Jeff and Russell had often tried to wring more out of her, but that was it. A man obsessed with vitamins.

  Corrine was raking leaves again on Monday when her mother came out on the back porch with a mug of coffee and a cigarette.

  "You picked a good time to leave your job. I was just listening to the news—the stock market's going completely down the drain."

  Corrine rushed inside and turned on the TV in the family room. Flipping among channels she learned that the market was down three to four hundred points, no one knew for certain; the tape was running at least an hour behind the market because of the huge number of transactions.

  She called Russell at his office.

  "I know, I know," he said. "I've been trying to get Duane on the phone to see what I can sell, but the lines are jammed. I can't find out what's happening on NASDAQ. It's total fucking chaos."

  "How much do you have in?" she demanded.

  "You don't want to know."

  "Did you sell that block you bought with your credit card?"

  "I was going to. This week, in fact."

  "Jesus, Russell. You could end up owing more money than we have."

  "I'm acutely aware of this, Corrine. Anyway, Corbin, Dern should hold its value. The tender offer's in place."

  "If the market collapses, the deal goes right along with it. Your financing will evaporate. You don't get this stuff at all, do you?"

  Then Corrine tried to reach Duane, but without success. Eventually there was nothing to do except watch the news and count the bodies. It felt absurd, after more than two years on the Street, to be watching this apocalypse on television in the family room in Stockbridge. Two hours or so after the market closed, the damage was finally tallied. It was 1929, no matter what channel you turned to. One of the broadcasts was live outside a crowded Harry's bar, brokers shaking their heads and acting stricken for the cameras. Feeling left out, Corrine watched eagerly for familiar faces. The satisfaction she might have been entitled to, having anticipated disaster, was diluted by the sense that she'd been cheated of a ringside seat on a historical event, and by guilt about having left her former colleagues holding the bag.

  "I hope your father lost his goddamn shirt," said Jessie, stirring the fresh ice in her glass of scotch with her pinkie. "My lawyers couldn't find it, but I know he had a big trading account somewhere."

  Corrine thought about her conversation with Russell and suddenly wondered if he wasn't positioning himself for the future. She really had no idea what kind of money he'd been playing around with in recent months. Maybe he'd already sold that stock. For all she knew, he might have a bank account offshore. It didn't seem like Russell—secrecy being alien to his nature—but neither did it seem like Russell to check into a hotel with another woman. And Trina Cox would be more than capable of hiding money, she might have seen the crash coming—the two of them planning all along for an eventual divorce. Corrine had always trusted Russell in everything; now that trust was fractured and she didn't know if she could believe anything. It suddenly seemed that even the stock market crash was part of the intricate conspiracy against her happiness, and the feeling was confirmed when Nancy Tanner called later that night from New York. She didn't mean to butt in, Nancy said, and it really wasn't any of her business, but she thought Corrine ought to know that she had seen Russell and Trina Cox having dinner a few nights before.

  "It was really embarrassing, she was like, all over him. I mean, I
didn't know what to do, I think you guys are such a great couple and all, I feel terrible, but I just thought you deserved to know."

  "That's really nice of you, Nancy. I've always admired your desire to share information."

  "I just thought ..."

  "Think again, Nancy. Next time you have this impulse to pick up the phone, don't. Okay?"

  Though she did not give Nancy the satisfaction of seeing it, her worst fears were now confirmed. Finally it was all over. She had specifically forbidden him to see Trina. The fact that he'd immediately returned to her, and done it so flagrantly, demonstrated that Trina was more than just a fling, that they had planned everything, that Corrine was a complete fool.

  Later that night she talked to Casey, who had just gotten back to the city from her house in Millbrook. "Tom is absolutely frantic about the market, he says we've probably lost half a million." Casey's tone indicated that, in fact, this sum was hardly worth a giant fuss.

  "Did you see the Post? Russell is such a pig," said Casey, who had never liked him, feeling that Corrine deserved someone rather better and correctly suspecting that Russell despised her. With very little prompting she read Corrine the gossip-column sighting of Russell in the company of an unidentified blonde at a low-rent nightclub.

  44

  On Tuesday, October 20, 1987, a gray stretch Mercedes rolled slowly down Fifth Avenue, sliding past the mist-shrouded foliage of the park, followed by a smaller version of itself. The cars turned left, away from the park, and stopped in front of a limestone townhouse. Men in dark suits leaped out to reconnoiter the street. Two of them took up stations on either side of the front steps, their vigil slightly more tense than usual, both wondering if their jobs were secure. Although none of the men was intimate with the financial markets, it was nearly impossible not to be aware of the previous day's catastrophe. Half a trillion dollars had allegedly vanished in a day, leaving behind neither smoke nor rubble. So far as one could see, the buildings of the metropolis were still standing, and as the sun moved westward one imagined that the postmen would find the factories and farms outside the city in their usual locations, about to resume business. And yet this morning's headlines were funereal. The mysterious event was referred to as a "meltdown," a term evoking in many viewers disturbing associations of nuclear disaster.

  As if in anticipation, Bernard Melman had become increasingly glum and testy through the early part of the fall, a phenomenon that longer-tenured members of his staff had seen before; he had retreated to Southampton for several weeks with doctors in tow, and had remained in his room while his security force lingered on the porches. Just a few days before now, Melman had returned to Manhattan, more subdued than usual.

  At precisely six-thirty, the heavy front door of the townhouse opened and Melman appeared. He walked out to the edge of the steps wearing a severe frown above his customary double-breasted suit.

  "Well, boys..." Pausing for effect, he suddenly produced a stagy smile, with the air of an amateur magician pulling a dove out of a hat. "Let's go to the office."

  The men laughed with relief, and not only because they were paid to do so.

  "Are we walking or riding," he asked no one in particular, cocking his head in a broad imitation of a quizzical pose. "I think we'll walk."

  The bodyguards nodded eagerly, imbibing the boss's good humor. Apparently the world hadn't ended.

  Halfway up the street he stopped abruptly. "Boys," he said. "I want you to be extra vigilant today." He pointed up to the sky. "Watch out for falling stockbrokers."

  As they strolled down Madison, Bernie Melman's step was sprightly, his pace aerobic. Like a sports fan who is happiest when players try to kill one another with hockey sticks or when stock cars kiss the wall and burst into flames, he seemed invigorated by catastrophe. He believed he had the common touch, which indeed he had with everyone in his employ, and when he was in an especially good mood he liked to share his views on life.

  "This is a great day for shopping," he announced, halting to look in the window of Sherry-Lehmann, the wine merchants. "The smart shoppers wait for prices to fall. America's having a fire sale today. Whoa, let 'em pass," he said, gesturing for his men to make way for an elderly couple tottering up the avenue.

  "What some people fail to realize," he resumed, back on the march, "is that wherever there are losers there are also winners, right?" He slowed his pace dramatically, nearly bringing the procession to a halt. "The trick," he concluded, "is to be among the fucking winners."

  As expected, Carl Linder did not quite share his employer's optimism. Melman sometimes thought he kept Linder around only because his basset-hound mien always made him feel happier by contrast. "Why the long face, Carl," he asked when Linder limped into his office for their breakfast conference, though his expression was no gloomier than usual. "I'm fine," he muttered.

  "You're not worried, are you?"

  "Not especially, but I do think we should be careful. The economy's staggering. People are worried. Even if you came out okay yesterday, you don't operate outside of that context. We've got to be worried about the long-term prices of all those bonds you're holding."

  This said, Linder was still happy to see that Melman had risen out of his colossal psychochemical funk. He was also pleased that Melman, in his depression, had anticipated every form of doom and disaster for himself and the planet and had ordered a big selloff of assets.

  "This isn't 'twenty-nine," Bernie said. "Everybody's bank accounts are guaranteed by the FDIC, basic indicators are sound. This should scare some sense into those boneheads in Washington about the fucking deficit. And we shorted the market two weeks ago. So smile."

  "What about Corbin, Dern?"

  "I'm about to take care of that." He asked his secretary to get the banker responsible for the bridge loan on the phone.

  The credit officer sounded extremely nervous and harassed. "Jesus, Bernie, this is one hell of a mess. How do you stand?"

  "Not a care in the world, pal. You sound a little frantic, though."

  "I'm about to go into a meeting," the banker said, adding significantly, "We're going to have to reevaluate some of our loan commitments in light of what's happened. "

  "That's exactly what I wanted to talk to you about."

  "I'm afraid we may have to reconsider the Corbin, Dern."

  "I agree one hundred percent."

  "You do?"

  "I want you to withdraw the financing."

  "You do?"

  "No, I'm joking, what do you think? Of course I do, and I want a letter from you to that effect this afternoon."

  "Sure. You got it," the banker said happily. "Can I ask why?"

  "Just get me that letter. And I'm sure you can understand why we never actually had this conversation."

  "Let's just say I want to renegotiate," Bernie explained to Linder after he'd hung up. "The tender offer is subject to financing. No financing, no deal." He had decided to submit a new, bargain-basement offer once the bank pulled out of the old deal, then presell the textbook and children's divisions, trim half of the staff away and possibly tap Harold Stone to run the new, leaner operation.

  "Very brassy," Linder observed.

  "Just reacting to the new business conditions, Carl."

  Pacing her office in Rockefeller Center, Trina Cox was not nearly so sanguine. She hadn't been hit directly—working in M&A, she had scrupulously shunned the market in order to avoid conflicts of interest—but it was the aftershocks she was worried about. Whether the market recovered or continued to plunge, it was a hell of a time to be opening a business. And she also worried about her new rabbi, Bernie Melman, who suddenly had become unavailable to take her calls. Up to this moment, her timing had been impeccable. If she'd remained at Silverman she would at least have been a little less exposed. On the other hand, if Bernie stayed behind her she was as secure as anyone on the street.

  Trina's secretary arrived
at seven with coffee and doughnuts looking hung over and frightened. "Do I still get paid to be your slave," he asked.

  She shrugged.

  He scooped up the phone as it rang. "Bernie Melman calling for Trina Cox," he squawked, deftly imitating the accent of Melman's secretary.

  "You'll know in a few minutes," she said, taking the phone.

  "The thing is, Trina, whenever there are losers there are also winners. I backed you because you strike me as a fucking winner."

  After the chitchat Trina sensed they were coming to the point.

  "I like to think I'm a winner, Bernie."

  "I want us to continue our business relationship. Let me just lay out a hypothetical situation for you. Given the stock market situation, I think it's quite possible that our lenders may not want to back the current offer for Corbin, Dern. They may not think the company is worth what we offered for it, and they may be right. Which could give us a clean slate to go in and make a lower bid."

  "Sounds good."

  Bernie cleared his throat. "When I say clean slate, I mean clean, right? I'm afraid I've lost confidence in our management team. Calloway's a bright kid, but I don't need a fucking literary Eagle Scout to run this company. We need a fucking grown-up. Do you have a problem with that?"

  With a slight, quickly suppressed pang, Trina said, "Nope."

  On Wednesday, Russell took three calls before attending the memorial service for Victor Propp—whose official cause of death, he'd learned the day before, was "massive coronary." The first was from Trina Cox, who informed him that the financing on the Corbin, Dern deal had fallen through in light of Monday's events and that therefore, effectively, the deal was off, although it was possible that certain parties might make another offer, subject to the new financial conditions and possibly with new personnel arrangements.

  "Any possibility I'd be part of the new deal," he asked.

  "Just between you and me, Russell, not a fucking chance."

  "It was fun," he said, trying for a conclusion.

  "Could've been a lot more fun, if you'd really gone with it."