The Bonfire of the Vanities

by Tom Wolfe

  “Sherman!”

  He turned around, toward the Mercedes. Two figures!…Two young men—black—on the ramp, coming up behind him…Boston Celtics!…The one nearest him had on a silvery basketball warm-up jacket with CELTICS written across the chest…He was no more than four or five steps away…powerfully built…His jacket was open…a white T-shirt…tremendous chest muscles…a square face…wide jaws…a wide mouth…What was that look?…Hunter! Predator!…The youth stared Sherman right in the eye…walking slowly…The other one was tall but skinny, with a long neck, a narrow face…a delicate face…eyes wide open…startled…He looked terrified…He wore a big loose sweater…He was a step or two behind the big one…

  “Yo!” said the big one. “Need some help?”

  Sherman stood there, holding the tire and staring.

  “What happen, man? Need some help?”

  It was a neighborly voice. Setting me up! One hand inside his jacket pocket! But he sounds sincere. It’s a setup, you idiot! But suppose he merely wants to help? What are they doing on this ramp! Haven’t done anything—haven’t threatened. But they will! Just be nice. Are you insane? Do something! Act! A sound filled his skull, the sound of rushing steam. He held the tire up in front of his chest. Now! Bango—he charged at the big one and shoved the tire at him. It was coming right back at him! The tire was coming right back at him! He threw his arms up. It bounced off his arms. A sprawl—the brute fell over the tire. Silvery CELTICS jacket—on the pavement. Sherman’s own momentum carried him forward. He skidded on the New & Lingwood party shoes. He pivoted.

  “Sherman!”

  Maria was behind the wheel of the car. The engine was roaring. The door on the passenger side was open.

  “Get in!”

  The other one, the skinny one, was between him and the car…a terrified look on his mug…eyes wide open…Sherman was pure frenzy…Had to get to the car!…He ran for it. He lowered his head. He crashed into him. The boy went spinning back and hit the rear fender of the car but didn’t fall down.

  “Henry!”

  The big one was getting up. Sherman threw himself into the car.

  Maria’s ghastly stricken face: “Get in! Get in!”

  The roaring engine…the Panzer-head Mercedes dials…A blur outside the car…Sherman grabbed the door pull and with a tremendous adrenal burst banged it shut. Out of the corner of his eye, the big one—almost to the door on Maria’s side. Sherman hit the lock mechanism. Rap! He was yanking on the door handle—CELTICS inches from Maria’s head with only the glass in between. Maria shoved the Mercedes into first gear and squealed forward. The youth leaped to one side. The car was heading straight for the trash cans. Maria hit the brakes. Sherman was thrown against the dash. A vanity case landed on top of the gearshift. Sherman pulled it off. Now it was on his lap. Maria threw the car into reverse. It shot backward. He glanced to his right. The skinny one…The skinny boy was standing there staring at him…pure fear on his delicate face…Maria shoved it into first gear again…She was breathing in huge gulps, as if she were drowning…

  Sherman yelled, “Look out!”

  The big one was coming toward the car. He had the tire up over his head. Maria squealed the car forward, right at him. He lurched out of the way…a blur…a terrific jolt…The tire hit the windshield and bounced off, without breaking the glass…The Krauts!…Maria cut the wheel to the left, to keep from hitting the cans…The skinny one standing right there…The rear end fishtailed…thok!…The skinny boy was no longer standing…Maria fought the steering wheel…A clear shot between the guardrail and the trash cans…She floored it…A furious squeal…The Mercedes shot up the ramp…The road rose beneath him…Sherman hung on…The huge tongue of the expressway…Lights rocketing by…Maria braked the car…Sherman and the vanity case were thrown up against the dashboard…Hahhh hahhhhh hahhhhh hahhhhh…At first he thought she was laughing. She was only trying to get her breath.

  “You okay?”

  She gunned the car forward. The blare of a horn—

  “For Christ’s sake, Maria!”

  The blaring horn swerved and hurtled past, and they were out on the expressway.

  His eyes were stinging with perspiration. He took one hand off the vanity case to rub his eyes, but it started shaking so badly he put it back on the case. He could feel his heart beating in his throat. He was soaking wet. His jacket was coming apart. He could feel it. It was ripped in the back seams. His lungs were struggling for more oxygen.

  They were barreling along the expressway, much too fast.

  “Slow down, Maria! Jesus Christ!”

  “Where’s it go, Sherman? Where’s it go?”

  “Just follow the signs that say George Washington Bridge, and for Christ’s sake, slow down.”

  Maria took one hand off the steering wheel to push back her hair from her forehead. Her entire arm, as well as her hand, was shaking. Sherman wondered if she could control the car, but he didn’t want to break her concentration. His heart was racing along with hollow thuds, as if it had broken loose inside his rib cage.

  “Aw shit, my arms are shaking!” said Maria. Aw shit, muh uhms uh shakin’. He had never heard her use the word shit before.

  “Just take it easy,” said Sherman. “We’re okay now, we’re okay.”

  “But where’s it go!”

  “Just take it easy! Just follow the signs. George Washington Bridge.”

  “Aw shit, Sherman, that’s what we did before!”

  “Take it easy, for Christ’s sake. I’ll tell you where.”

  “Don’t fuck up this time, Sherman.”

  Sherman found his hands gripping the vanity case in his lap as if it were a second wheel. He tried to concentrate on the road ahead. Then he stared at a sign over the highway up ahead: CROSS BRONX GEO. WASH. BRIDGE.

  “Cross Bronx! What’s that?”

  “Just take it!”

  “Shit, Sherman!”

  “Stay on the highway. We’re okay.” The navigator.

  He stared at the white line on the roadbed. He stared so hard, they began separating on him…the lines…the signs…the taillights…He couldn’t figure out the pattern any longer…He was concentrating on…fragments!…molecules!…atoms!…Jesus Christ!…I’ve lost the power to reason!…His heart went into palpitations…and then a big…snap!…it went back into a regular rhythm…

  Then, overhead: MAJOR DEEGAN TRIBORO BRIDGE.

  “See that, Maria? Triborough Bridge! Take that!”

  “Jesus Christ, Sherman, George Washington Bridge!”

  “No! We want the Triborough, Maria! That’ll take us right back into Manhattan!”

  So they took that expressway. Presently, overhead: WILLIS AVE.

  “What’s Willis Avenue?”

  “I think it’s the Bronx,” said Sherman.

  “Shit!”

  “Just stay to your left! We’re okay!”

  “Shit, Sherman!”

  Over the highway a big sign: TRIBORO.

  “There it is, Maria! You see that!”

  “Yeah.”

  “Bear to your right up there. You exit to the right!” Now Sherman was gripping the vanity case and giving it the body English for a right turn. He was holding a vanity case and giving it body English. Maria had on an Avenue Foch royal-blue jacket with shoulder pads…out to here…a tense little animal writhing under royal-blue shoulder pads from Paris…the two of them in a $48,000 Mercedes with spiffy airplane dials…desperate to escape the Bronx…

  They reached the exit. He held on for dear life, as if a tornado were going to rise up at any moment and blow them out of the proper groove and—back to the Bronx!

  They made it. Now they were on the long incline that led to the bridge and to Manhattan.

  Hahhhhh hahhhhhh hahhhhhh hahhhhh. “Sherman!”

  He stared at her. She was sighing and taking in huge gulps of air.

  “It’s okay, sweetheart.”

  “Sherman, he threw it…right at me!”

&n
bsp; “Threw what?”

  “That…wheel, Sherman!”

  The tire had hit the windshield right in front of her eyes. But something else flashed into Sherman’s mind…thok!…the sound of the rear fender hitting something and the skinny boy disappearing from view…Maria let out a sob.

  “Get a grip on yourself! We’ve only got a little farther!”

  She snuffled back her tears. “God…”

  Sherman reached over and massaged the back of her neck with his left hand.

  “You’re okay, honey. You’re doing swell.”

  “Oh, Sherman.”

  The odd thing was—and it struck him as odd in that very moment—he wanted to smile. I saved her! I am her protector! He kept rubbing her neck.

  “It was only a tire,” said the protector, savoring the luxury of calming the weak. “Otherwise it would’ve broken the windshield.”

  “He threw it…right…at me.”

  “I know, I know. It’s okay. It’s all over.”

  But he could hear it again. The little thok. And the skinny boy was gone.

  “Maria, I think you—I think we hit one of them.”

  You—we—already a deep instinct was summoning up the clammy patriarch, blame.

  Maria didn’t say anything.

  “You know when we skidded. There was this kind of a…this kind of a…little sound, a little thok.”

  Maria remained silent. Sherman was staring at her. Finally she said, “Yeah—I—I don’t know. I don’t give a shit, Sherman. All I care is, we got outta there.”

  “Well, that’s the main thing, but—”

  “Oh, God, Sherman, like—the worst nightmare!” She started choking back sobs, all the while hunched forward and staring straight ahead, through the windshield, concentrating on the traffic.

  “It’s okay, sweetheart. We’re okay now.” He rubbed her neck some more. The skinny boy was standing there. Thok. He wasn’t standing there anymore.

  The traffic was getting heavier. The tide of red taillights ahead of them ran under an overpass and turned up an incline. They weren’t far from the bridge. Maria slowed down. In the darkness, the toll plaza was a great smear of concrete turned yellowish by the lights above. Out front, the red lights became a swarm closing in on the tollbooths. In the distance Sherman could see the dense black of Manhattan.

  Such gravity…so many lights…so many people…so many souls sharing this yellow smear of concrete with him…and all of them oblivious of what he had just been through!

  Sherman waited until they were rolling down the FDR Drive, along the East River, back in White Manhattan and Maria was calmer, before he brought the subject up again.

  “Well, what do you think, Maria? I guess we ought to report this to the police.”

  She didn’t say anything. He looked at her. She stared grimly at the roadway.

  “What do you think?”

  “What for?”

  “Well, I just think—”

  “Sherman, shut up.” She said it softly, gently. “Just let me drive this goddamn car.”

  The familiar 1920s Gothic palisades of New York Hospital were just up ahead. White Manhattan! They took the Seventy-first Street exit off the drive.

  Maria parked across the street from the town house and her fourth-floor hideaway. Sherman got out and immediately scrutinized the right rear fender. To his great relief—no dent; no sign of anything, at least not here in the dark. Since Maria had told her husband she wouldn’t be returning from Italy until the next day, she wanted to take the luggage up to the little apartment, too. Three times Sherman climbed up the creaking staircase, in the miserable gloaming of the Landlord’s Halos, hauling up the luggage.

  Maria took off her royal-blue jacket with the Paris shoulders and put it on the bed. Sherman took off his jacket. It was badly ripped in the back, in the side seams. Huntsman, Savile Row, London. Cost a goddamned fortune. He threw it on the bed. His shirt was wringing wet. Maria kicked off her shoes and sat down in one of the bentwood chairs by the oak pedestal table and put one elbow on the table and let her head keel over against her forearm. The old table sagged in its sad way. Then she straightened up and looked at Sherman.

  “I want a drink,” she said. “You want one?”

  “Yeah. You want me to fix them?”

  “Unh-hunh. I want a lot of vodka and a little orange juice and some ice. The vodka’s up in the cabinet.”

  He went in the mean little kitchen and turned on the light. A cockroach was sitting on the rim of a dirty frying pan on the stove. Well, the hell with it. He made Maria her vodka-and-orange juice and then poured himself an Old Fashioned glass full of scotch and put in some ice and a little water. He sat in one of the bentwood chairs across the table from her. He found that he wanted the drink very badly. He longed for each ice-cold burning jolt in his stomach. The car fishtailed. Thok. The tall delicate one wasn’t standing there any longer.

  Maria had already drunk half the big tumbler he had brought her. She closed her eyes and threw her head back and then looked at Sherman and smiled in a tired fashion. “I swear,” she said, “I thought that was gonna be…it.”

  “Well, what do we do now?” said Sherman.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I guess we oughta—I guess we oughta report it to the police.”

  “That’s what you said. Okay. Tell me what for.”

  “Well, they tried to rob us—and I think maybe you—I think it’s possible you hit one of them.”

  She just looked at him.

  “It was when you really gunned it, and we skidded.”

  “Well, you wanna know something? I hope I did. But if I did, I sure didn’t hit him very hard. I just barely heard something.”

  “It was just a little thok. And then he wasn’t standing there anymore.”

  Maria shrugged her shoulders.

  “Well—I’m just thinking out loud,” said Sherman. “I think we ought to report it. That way we protect ourselves.”

  Maria expelled air through her lips, the way you do when you’re at your wit’s end, and looked away.

  “Well, just suppose the guy is hurt.”

  She looked at him and laughed softly. “Frankly, I couldn’t care less.”

  “But just suppose—”

  “Look, we got outta there. How we did it doesn’t matter.”

  “But suppose—”

  “Suppose bullshit, Sherman. Where you gonna go to tell the police? What are you gonna say?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll just tell them what happened.”

  “Sherman, I’m gonna tell you what happened. I’m from South Carolina, and I’m gonna tell you in plain English. Two niggers tried to kill us, and we got away. Two niggers tried to kill us in the jungle, and we got outta the jungle, and we’re still breathing, and that’s that.”

  “Yeah, but suppose—”

  “You suppose! Suppose you go to the police. What are you gonna say? What are you gonna say we were doing in the Bronx? You say you’re just gonna tell them what happened. Well, you tell me, Sherman. What happened?”

  So that was what she was actually saying. Do you tell the police that Mrs. Arthur Ruskin of Fifth Avenue and Mr. Sherman McCoy of Park Avenue happened to be having a nocturnal tête-à-tête when they missed the Manhattan off-ramp from the Triborough Bridge and got into a little scrape in the Bronx? He ran that through his mind. Well, he could just tell Judy—no, there was no way he could just tell Judy about a little ride with a woman named Maria. But if they—if Maria had hit the boy, then it was better to grit his teeth and just tell what happened. Which was what? Well…two boys had tried to rob them. They blocked the roadway. They approached him. They said…A little shock went through his solar plexus. Yo! You need some help? That was all the big one had said. He hadn’t produced a weapon. Neither of them had made a threatening gesture until after he had thrown the tire. Could it be—now, wait a minute. That’s crazy. What else were they doing out on a ramp to an expressway beside a blockade
, in the dark—except to—Maria would back up his interpretation—interpretation!—a frisky wild animal—all of a sudden he realized that he barely knew her.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe you’re right. Let’s think about it. I’m only thinking out loud.”

  “I don’t have to think about it, Sherman. Some things I understand better than you do. Not many things, but some things. They’d love to get their hands on you and me.”

  “Who would?”

  “The police. And what good would it do, anyway? They’ll never catch those boys.”

  “What do you mean, get their hands on us?”

  “Please, forget the police.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You, for a start. You’re a socialite.”

  “I am not a socialite.” Masters of the Universe existed on a plateau far above socialites.

  “Oh no? Your apartment was in Architectural Digest. Your picture’s been in W. Your father was—is—well, whatever he is. You know.”

  “My wife put the apartment in the magazine!”

  “Well, you can explain that to the police, Sherman. I’m sure they’ll appreciate the distinction.”

  Sherman was speechless. It was a hateful thought.

  “And they won’t half mind getting holda me, either, as far as that goes. I’m just a little girl from South Carolina, but my husband has a hundred million dollars and an apartment on Fifth Avenue.”

  “All right, I’m just trying to figure out the sequence, the things that might come up, that’s all. What if you did hit the boy—what if he’s injured?”

  “Did you see him get hit?”

  “No.”

  “Neither did I. As far as I’m concerned, I didn’t hit anybody. I hope to God I did, but as far as I’m concerned, and as far as you’re concerned, I didn’t hit anybody. Okay?”