Bright, Precious Days

by Jay McInerney

  A black-and-white cat appears and rubs itself fervently against Jeff’s leg. She remembers this about him—animals always like him. “That’s Kurt Weill,” Jeff says as the cat slides away.

  “I might have known,” she says.

  He offers her a Marlboro, and lights it, and then his own, with a Zippo. It gives them something to do together, and something to do with their hands. They all smoke, all the time, everywhere—at home and in bars and restaurants, in movie theaters and on airplanes.

  “Why do you always have the collars of your button-downs unbuttoned?” she asks. “Have you ever thought of getting the regular kind of collars, without buttons? It seems like it would be easier. I mean, if you’re not going to button them anyway.”

  “Not really. I like having the option.”

  She’s just making conversation, knowing this is one of his signatures, like his grandfather’s old gold Longines, which he wears with the face on the inside of his wrist. Not that he would ever tell you himself; he does his best to distance himself from his heritage, but Jeff comes from one of those old New England families that view the Pilgrims as arrivistes. They wear threadbare blazers with Wellingtons and drive shit brown Oldsmobiles. Some have lots of money, others only the memory of it. Even those who’ve escaped the gravity of Boston tend in the summers to cluster in rambling shingled houses on the rocky Protestant coast of Maine, occasionally traversing the pebbly beaches to dunk themselves in the frigid waters of the Atlantic, more often sailing the surface in wooden boats. But Jeff has come to downtown Manhattan to reinvent himself from scratch, or so he likes to believe, though he’s likewise determined to remain true, in some sense, to his roots, to be at once authentic and unique. His grandfather’s watch might seem to complicate the self-invention narrative; on the other hand, it distinguishes the wearer from the aspiring bohemian herd. Just as William Burroughs, the famous junkie and wife killer, dresses in three-piece suits.

  “So,” she says, inhaling a lungful of smoke. “What does one do downtown?”

  “Drugs,” he says.

  “Very funny.”

  “You asked.”

  His demeanor is a blend of boyish and smug, and she sees that he is actually serious. Serious, but also amused at his own cleverness, his knowingness. He wants to shock her, even as he wants to invite her into the circle of forbidden knowledge. She’s smoked pot with him before, so she knows it isn’t that.

  “What, cocaine?”

  He beams. “Ever tried it?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Want to?”

  Of course she doesn’t want to seem like a—what, a wimp, a prude, uncool? But still…cocaine? She knew some kids at Brown did it, city kids who went back to Manhattan on weekends and hung at Studio 54 and Xenon, then bragged about it back in Providence. But Corrine isn’t that kind of girl, is she?

  “No pressure,” he says.

  “What are you saying?” she says. “That we would, like, do it…now?” She seems unable even to name the drug, and knows that she is stalling for time, trying to decide what she feels about this totally unexpected proposition.

  “Well, yeah.”

  She trusts Jeff and doesn’t think he’d lure her into anything really dangerous. On the other hand, that’s the whole thing about Jeff; he is more reckless than the rest of their crowd at Brown, the guy who wrapped an Austin-Healey around a telephone pole outside of Providence and walked away unscathed. That’s one of the reasons they’re all attracted to him.

  “You have some?”

  “I wouldn’t offer you any if I didn’t have it.”

  “Will I like it?”

  “I personally guarantee it.”

  She shrugs. “Okay.” This is definitely one way to cut through the awkwardness of the moment. “I don’t even know how you do it,” she says.

  She follows him over to the makeshift desk; he clears books and papers away and picks up a framed picture, an almost-familiar sepia-toned image of a beautiful boy with flyaway hair and sleepy eyes, in disheveled Edwardian garb. Suddenly, it comes to her. “Rimbaud?”

  He nods and lays the frame flat, unfolding a rectangle of shiny paper on the glass, as if creating some sort of origami.

  After tipping the contents of the unfurled packet onto the glass, he chops it up with a one-edged razor blade and lays out eight identical lines of white powder.

  She can’t help giggling when he hands her a short plastic straw. “Are we really going to do this? I’m not sure I know how. Why don’t I watch you do it first?”

  He takes the straw and leans over the glass, neatly inhaling one of the white lines and then, moving the straw to his left nostril, another.

  “Wow, you’re good at that.”

  “It’s like anything else. Like how you get to Carnegie Hall.”

  “What?”

  “Practice.”

  “Oh, right, sorry.” Why is she suddenly feeling so slow-witted?

  “Your turn.”

  She takes the straw and bends down over the desk. As she leans forward, Jeff gathers the hair around her neck and holds it, which seems very sexy to her and also makes the thing she is about to do seem less dangerous.

  She can only manage to inhale half of a line the first time. It’s a very weird sensation, a not entirely unpleasant burning in her nasal passages, and then, a few minutes later, a bittersweet drip at the back of her throat. After several tries, she consumes two of the lines and feels very pleased with herself. Having been a little afraid and uncertain, she now congratulates herself on being brave and going for it. Nothing scary here. She feels almost normal, except better than normal.

  “I think I’m feeling it, but I’m not sure,” she says. “I feel good but not, like, stoned. You know, I’ve never really liked pot, to tell you the truth, that feeling of not being myself, of being kind of slowed down and dumbed down. That dopey feeling. No wonder they call it dope, right? But now I feel like myself. But sort of, I don’t know, a really upbeat version of myself. Is that the cocaine? Because actually I feel pretty great. I feel like, I don’t know, like doing something.”

  Jeff smiles and nods.

  “Say something.”

  “Something.”

  “You’re teasing me. Am I talking too much? I’m talking too much, aren’t I? Is that the cocaine? Is that what it does?”

  “It comes with the territory.”

  “But why aren’t you talking as much as I am?”

  “Be careful what you wish for.”

  Jeff leans down and snorts another line, then kneels down to riffle through a stack of LPs on the floor beside the stereo, selecting a record and placing it on the turntable.

  “I like that,” Corrine says of the wailing guitars and whining, world-weary vocals.

  “It’s Television,” Jeff says.

  She looks back down at the stereo, wondering if that was a joke. She often feels this way in Jeff’s company, as though she is missing out on some inside reference. Maybe the drug is messing with her perception, although, in fact, she feels incredibly clearheaded and sharp at the moment.

  “It’s a stereo,” she says.

  “Television’s the name of the band. Unfortunately, no longer with us. I saw them in ’78 at CBGB.”

  “Oh, right,” she says. The singer’s voice is very nasal and adenoidal—maybe he did cocaine? What is he singing? She listens for the next chorus. “I fell right into the arms of Venus de Milo.” It takes her a minute. And then, she says, “Very clever. I get it. Better late than never, I guess. You must think I’m very uncool, basically.”

  “I’ve never thought that. I think you’re amazing.”

  “I don’t know the new music, or even the new art. I mean, I’m good up to Jasper Johns and Rauschenberg, the Stones and Led Zeppelin, but after that…” She shrugs. “I feel like rock and roll kind of petered out a few years ago, but that’s probably just me. Is Led Zeppelin still cool? How do you find these things out? I mean, is there some committee that dec
ides? A bunch of cool kids in leather jackets, smoking bidis, who sit around and pronounce on these issues? Whoever they are, they don’t have my telephone number. And my taste in literature is pretty conventional. I tried, but I couldn’t get past the first twenty pages of Naked Lunch. And that book you gave me last month, Finnegan’s Stew?”

  “Mulligan Stew, by Gilbert Sorrentino. Finnegan was Joyce. Finnegans Wake. Although curiously enough a character from Finnegans Wake turns up in Mulligan Stew.”

  “That’s what I mean—a novel within a novel within a novel, all that postmodern self-consciousness. A writer writing a book about a writer writing a book. Jesus, I’m sorry, I just get lost. I like Edith Wharton and Anthony Powell and Graham Greene. I’m just not hip enough. I live on East 71st Street and I belong to the Colony Club and the Daughters of the American Revolution. You grew up in the same world I did, but you’ve sort of rejected all that.”

  “That doesn’t define you. You’re so much more than that. I don’t believe in types, I believe in individuals. I believe in you. You’re like no one else. I don’t know anyone else at all like you. You don’t judge. You’re the least judgmental, least prejudiced person I know. You take everyone at his own worth. You look at a picture and see things nobody else does. You’re smart. You’re funny. You don’t accept conventional wisdom. You’re beautiful.”

  “You really believe all that?” Corrine is amazed. She always imagined that Jeff was judging her and finding her wanting. She thought that each of what she considered to be her secret flaws were glaringly obvious to Russell’s smart, cynical, good-looking best friend. More than she’s ever been willing to admit, she craves his approval, even his admiration. Actually, she wants him to love her, she realizes. That doesn’t necessarily mean that she loves him, but she wants him to want her, and she certainly wants him, never more so than right this minute. He seems to divine this sentiment, stepping toward her and touching her cheek, cradling her face in his hand and guiding her toward his lips, kissing her avidly, almost violently, pressing his lips against hers and probing between them with his tongue, Corrine returning the ardor as she puts her arms around his shoulders and pulls him closer.

  It feels as if there’s no time to spare, that after so long a wait they need to seize the moment immediately. He lifts her in his arms and carries her to the bed without taking his lips from hers. They struggle out of their clothes as if they are on fire, she tugging his belt open as he scrabbles at the hook of her bra. She finds herself undoing her belt, unzipping her jeans and stepping out of them. His jeans are still wrapped around his ankles when, twisted on top of her, he pushes himself inside of her. Some sort of animal sound escapes her and then she thrusts her hips upward, finding a rhythm as she races toward her goal. She’s never felt so driven, so desperate, and even the inevitable thought of Russell fails to quell—seems even to fan—her desire. She has never before come so quickly, just a little ahead of him, and it occurs to her as she returns to her body and her senses to wonder about the drug’s influence, although she has imagined this experience more than once—she’s been wildly infatuated with Jeff since they met—and she finds it hard to believe that she will ever regret it. Later, however, she will question the postcoital conviction that she was somehow bringing herself closer to Russell by fucking his best friend.

  That just might have been the drugs talking.

  6

  JACK DIDN’T QUITE KNOW what to expect from a Manhattan dinner party, but so far he felt like a rube—which actually was pretty much what he’d expected. He felt like he was watching a movie, an updated version of one of those Depression-era New York flicks in which all the characters were ridiculously good-looking and witty. He wouldn’t have been totally surprised if one of his publisher’s friends had suddenly started belting out “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” although the stage itself was a little shabby, a little more After Hours than Dinner at Eight.

  “We didn’t know it was the eighties at the time,” Washington was saying. “It was just the present. Does anyone ever have a feeling of living in a particular decade? I mean, do you feel right now, right this minute, like you’re living in the aughts? Is that what we call them? Are we somehow acting out the zeitgeist here and now? Are we exhibiting aughtness? I sure as hell don’t remember being aware it was the eighties back then.”

  “I’m not sure Russell and Corrine ever knew it was the eighties,” Nancy said. “They were like these elegant throwbacks to the twenties, having these chic little parties. The rest of us were living in hovels, illegal sublets in the East Village and shared railroad flats in Hell’s Kitchen, eating pizza and lo mein out of boxes while they were serving cocktails and canapés on the Upper East Side. Poster children for the good life, the perfect couple—while everybody else was single and searching and scruffy. Russell even had a velvet smoking jacket. It was all very Scott and Zelda, Nick and Nora.”

  “Now you’re mixing your periods,” Washington said.

  “I’ll have you know,” Russell said, “I published a book by Keith Haring.”

  “You are so fucking hip,” Washington said. To the others: “Russell went to the Mudd Club one night in a blue blazer and chinos. I shit you not. Everybody thought he was being ironic.”

  “It was authentic,” Russell said. “I yam what I yam.”

  “Before anyone romanticizes the eighties any further,” Nancy said, “I have two words: Milli Vanilli.”

  “Talk about authentic.”

  Jack decided not to ask what the fuck Milli Vanilli was.

  —

  Eventually, when they were all finally seated at the dinner table, Russell stood up and raised his glass. “I’d like to toast old friends and new, and in particular to welcome Jack Carson to our fair city.” Even as he shrank away from this unexpected beam of attention, this turning of all eyes in the room on him, the rube among the sophisticates, dressed like a bum, with the manners to match, Jack thought, defensively, Nobody says our fair city anymore, do they? He was relieved to hear his famous Manhattan editor sounding so dorky.

  “Two years ago,” Russell was saying, “my assistant urged me to look at some unpublished stories posted on Myspace, and I couldn’t have been more skeptical. In fact, I wasn’t even sure what Myspace was.”

  Washington said, “He still thinks the Internet is a passing fad.”

  “But I eventually read the stories and I was blown away. It was like Raymond Carver and Breece D’J Pancake had had a love child—”

  “That is so gross,” Nancy interjected.

  “Breece D’ what?” Hilary asked.

  “And at the same time, it was unlike anything I’d ever read before. So please raise a glass to our new friend and his masterful book, which I’m more than honored to be publishing.”

  Jack didn’t know what the hell he was supposed to do or where to look. He’d never been the object of a toast before. For that matter, he wasn’t sure he’d ever been to an actual dinner party before, unless you counted the odd Thanksgiving or barbecues at his uncle Walt’s. This was all very…civilized, Russell and Corrine like two glamorous parents presiding over some kind of salon. If his stepfather could see him now, he’d say, What, you think you’re fucking special?

  After disappearing for a few minutes, Washington returned to the table, clinked his fork against his wineglass repeatedly until he mostly had their attention. “Ladies and germs, it appears Eliot Spitzer is our new governor.”

  “Big surprise,” Dan said. “But just remember, New York isn’t America.”

  “Thank God for that,” Nancy said. “Isn’t that why we all came here in the first place?”

  “Better be careful comin’ to my part of America with that attitude,” Jack said before he could check himself. He hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but in his nervousness he’d already guzzled two vodkas and two glasses of wine.

  “Darn tootin’,” Hilary slurred.

  “Honey,” Corrine said, “tell us about the wine.” Apparently, this was a play
she’d called more than once. And sure enough, old Russell got up and yammered on about the wine, which apparently came from Spain. Washington threw a piece of bread at him. Jack couldn’t help laughing, finally recognizing at least one dinner ritual.

  After Russell sat down, Corrine turned to Jack and said, “I don’t know when I’ve seen Russell as excited about a book as he is about yours.”

  “Shitfire, ma’am, pardon my French, but I grew up readin’ the books he published,” he said, obligingly pouring on the backwoods accent for her benefit. “Gettin’ published by Russell, it’s like signin’ with the fuckin’ Yankees. Coming from where I come from, the idea that I’d ever publish a book at all was just pie in the sky.”

  It was becoming impossible to ignore Hilary, directly across the table, who seemed to have consumed a hell of a lot of Russell’s wine, judging by the volume of her voice. “You fucking liberals are so predictable,” she said, toppling her wineglass with a dismissive wave of her arm, spattering Spanish red all over the table.

  “You right wingers are so fucking violent,” Washington said, brushing a few drops from the sleeve of his jacket.

  “That was an accident.”

  “Yeah, and so was the Tuskegee experiment.”

  “Hey,” said Russell, mopping up the spill with his dinner napkin.

  “What the hell is that?” demanded Hilary.

  “U.S. Public Health Service used six hundred Negroes as guinea pigs to study the effects of untreated syphilis.”

  “Oh, right.”