The Good Life

by Jay McInerney

  By contrast, Corrine seemed unselfish and morally taut, which Luke had imagined, when he first met her, might protect him from being fatally attracted to her. For some time now, he’d reassured himself that she was not a particularly sexual creature. But the first kiss cleared away his doubt, even as it promised to complicate his life. It was a ridiculous time to fall in love, inappropriate, somehow; certainly inconvenient, given the fact that they both were married. But he couldn’t stop exploring her mouth—almost shocked at the intricate figures and tropes performed by her importunate tongue. Without conscious effort, he followed her lead, feeling himself engaged in a rhythmic lingual waltz. The juiciness of her mouth and the gentle pressure of her hand on the back of his head—this is sex, he thought, his left hand cupping her shoulder until she drew it downward and placed it on her breast.

  He sensed they were embarked on a course that would entail secrecy and deception; meanwhile, if only for the moment, he was pleased to indulge his pleasure.

  Corrine eased herself out of his embrace by degrees, pulling away with a gasp and then coming back in to chew and peck at his lips, dodging away again as he tried to reciprocate, suddenly straightening herself on the bench and folding her hands primly on her lap.

  “It’s too late now,” he said, seizing her arm. “Now I know you’re not a prude.”

  “Is that what you thought?”

  He shrugged, dipping down and nipping her lips.

  “I was beginning to think so, too. I mean, that’s how I was beginning to think about myself for the last few years.”

  He laid his head in her lap. “I don’t want to go home.”

  “Where shall we go?” She stroked his hair. It occurred to him that such casual ease was almost as intimate as the kiss. There was something almost postcoital in the pose. “Somewhere, you know, far away.”

  “Zanzibar.”

  “Or Mandalay.”

  “Do you think about leaving the city?”

  “At first. But now I think I want to stay.”

  “Are you cold?”

  “Not at all. Are you?”

  She shook her head, looking down at him as she raked her fingers through his hair, which suddenly seemed, to him, terribly coarse. “Do you sleep together?”

  “Not in a long time.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Usually, I sleep in the daybed in the library, or in my studio.”

  “I’d love to see your studio. Your little in-town pied--terre.”

  “Come now.”

  She seemed to weigh the request. “Don’t think I’m not tempted,” she said finally. “But I think—”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “You didn’t?”

  “I’m not sure what I meant, really. I just don’t want to leave you.”

  He wasn’t sure what he wanted. If he was ready to be unfaithful. Ample justification doesn’t in itself recalibrate one’s sensibilities. After more than fifteen years of marriage, it might take time.

  18

  He took the bag from the man in front of him on the line, cradling it in his arms. The zipper split open and he found himself staring at a woman with no face, only a charred, featureless black mask. Then the bag started to move in his arms. Looking down again, he saw Guillermo’s face looking up at him.

  Luke bolted up from a deep chasm of sleep and found himself in his studio. He felt drugged, weighted and tied to the sofa, trussed, like Gulliver, by a thousand tiny threads. A brilliant panel of sunlight showed beneath the drawn shade over the unoccupied bed, dispelling the grim spell of his dream. He was fully dressed, his clothing rank with the downtown smell of smoke and ash. Lately, he had favored the sofa, in an effort to outwit his insomnia and his general dread. If he lay down here, he could pretend to be merely resting, temporarily dallying, rather than actually courting sleep, and often, in this surreptitious manner, he was able to lose consciousness.

  Three-thirty by his watch. When had he fallen asleep? What day was it? As the most recent instance of the recurrent nightmare began to fade, it was gradually replaced by a sense of well-being as he recalled his hour on the park bench with Corrine that morning.

  Resisting the urge to sink back into sleep, he raised himself up, straining against the weights and ropes of the long week, his limbs and joints stiff and sore. This, he supposed, was what age felt like.

  The answering service picked up when he phoned home. It had been—what?—almost two days since he’d spoken to Sasha. He’d planned on surprising Ashley after school, but it was too late now. The prospect of checking his E-mail seemed even more depressing than that of facing his family; besides, he didn’t have to check to know what his investments were doing. On a whim, he called his mother.

  “I’m having nightmares,” he told her.

  “You always did.”

  “Now I have a reason,” he said testily. Why did he always get so irritated with her?

  “I don’t know why you don’t come home and spend some time on the farm,” she said. Fresh air, she believed, was a universal panacea, and, in fact, she’d made a calling out of her belief in the curative power of horseback riding.

  “How are your patients?”

  “You know we don’t call them patients.”

  “It must seem very far away to you there.”

  “We feel it,” she said. “But not the way you do. Is there any news of your friend Guillermo?”

  “No news, Mom. Just guilt and nightmares.”

  When he hung up, he decided to walk over to the apartment and face the girls, taking a loopy diversion through the park. He ambled over to the Great Lawn, where couples lay on blankets in the green expanse and where, as if to prove that life went on, a softball game was in progress. On the path to the reservoir, spandexed runners with pillowy white feet dodged around him and made for the cinder track. A beaky merganser surfaced out of the murk, blinking, swiveling his head back and forth like a tourist emerging from the subway. The afternoon sun poured a slick of rippled silver across the gray water. Rising to the east, the rectilinear fortresses of Fifth Avenue; to the west, the fanciful towers and battlements of Central Park West. The city up here untouched and seemingly untroubled.

  Entering the apartment, he paused to look at the family photographs in Tiffany frames in the front hall, which seemed almost unfamiliar to him, all of the frames shivering from the monotonous bass line emanating from Ashley’s room: a head shot from Sasha’s modeling days; the three of them in ski clothes at Aspen, and again at his parents’ a few Christmases ago; one of Sasha with Sting; another of Sasha with Bill Blass, as if they were part of the family.

  He strolled down the hallway to Ashley’s room, encouraged that he recognized the tune, “Gin and Juice,” a hip-hop favorite among private school gang bangers. He knocked and, after waiting what he judged a respectful interval, opened the door.

  He would be haunted by the image, unable to erase it, though in the first moments he had trouble composing and interpreting the elements of the tableau. A boy standing, a girl sitting on the bed amid fuzzy stuffed animals in pastel shades. The boy’s head tilted back, his hands cradling the blond head at his waist. He didn’t recognize the boy, his sandy hair slicked back, the grooved trails of the comb distinctly visible. The girl was his daughter, her head rocking back and forth in a contrapuntal rhythm to the beat of the song. He wasn’t sure how long he stood there.

  The boy finally sensed a presence and turned, panicking as he saw Luke, his hands flying to adjust and conceal himself, a flash of pink flesh as he spun away and struggled with his jeans, Ashley looking up, annoyed, then turning to see her father in the doorway.

  Later, he would picture her expression as she looked at him then, her wide eyes and swollen lips, hoping to analyze it in such a way that he could finally put the image to rest, to separate out the purely abstract surprise that modulated to fear, as well as the reflex of guilt from the specific sadness, so he imagined, of knowing that she would never look the same to h
im again.

  “Oh my God,” she said, burying her face in her hands.

  Luke looked at his daughter—and registered, if perhaps in its last moments, the only love he’d ever believed was indestructible, the one untainted by lust or self-interest, the love that he believed would finally restore his own innocence and redeem his gray and shriveled soul.

  The boy stood with his hands in front of his crotch, frozen in terror. He was taller than Luke, with the broad chest of an athlete, but they both knew that at that moment it would be no contest. Feeling the violence rising within him, Luke realized he had to leave the room. He turned to his daughter, who was hunched on the bed with her arms wrapped around her knees.

  Later, he will wonder if he uttered the words you slut or merely heard them in his head as he turned on his heel, walking down the hallway and out the door without a destination in mind but with a clear and purifying image of himself as a solitary wanderer, a tortured figure at large in the streets of the mournful city.

  19

  I’m worried about Ashley. She hasn’t said so in so many words, but I think she’s really shaken. She’s been… I don’t know, strange. Fragile. I’m going to take her out to Sagaponack for the weekend. I think she really needs to get out of the city.”

  They were sitting in the library—his turf, insofar as any part of the house was. Complete with defensive weaponry, shotguns and sword, should he be required to defend his castle.

  He’d been waiting when she returned from her committee meeting. She was dressed with her usual casual grace, black leather jeans and a black cashmere pullover, her hair brushing her shoulders with a hint of terminal flip, which she accentuated in the evening. Trimmed once a week at Frederic Fekkai—with the kind of precise edge that looked as if it could cut flesh. An awkward formality prevailed between them. He hadn’t yet told her about what he’d seen in Ashley’s bedroom the previous day, and wasn’t sure he would. He was holding it in reserve—he wanted to assess the domestic situation first.

  “Am I invited?”

  “Of course you’re invited,” she said. “I wasn’t sure if you were done saving the world yet.”

  “I’m not saving anything. If anything, I’m giving you a little space. And myself some time to think. Although it’s nice to do something that feels vaguely useful.”

  “You have an MBA, for Christ’s sake. You practically restructured the debt of Argentina.”

  “They’re about to default again, actually.”

  “You’re a financial genius. Anybody could make sandwiches for the firemen.”

  “Is this a plea to come home?”

  “Of course I want you to come home. I want us both to get on with our lives. I don’t know what you think, but—”

  “It’s not just what I think. Everybody we know thinks the same thing. Especially after your little display of dirty dancing at the zoo.”

  She pinkened at this. He’d left the apartment before she rose that morning, and in the days and weeks that followed, it had been easy to avoid the subject of Bernie Melman, public events having eclipsed the private realm.

  “I admit I may have had one too many glasses of wine that night.”

  “An example your daughter was emulating. It makes me wonder what happens when you have two or three too many. Or a couple lines.”

  She rolled her eyes, intending to imply that the charge was ridiculous, an old canard. “Well, that’s all in the past.”

  “Have you seen him since?”

  For a moment, it was clear she was going to play dumb and ask whom he meant, but she changed her mind. “No, I have not.”

  He believed her, somewhow confident he could still tell when she was lying.

  “Look, we’ve all been traumatized,” she said. “I think this is a good time to make a fresh start. I’ve been thinking a lot about us.”

  “Come to any conclusions?”

  “Just that we should try to be good to each other. That’s all. And build on that.”

  “Does that mean you’re keeping your options open?” So far, he hadn’t pressed her; he hadn’t asked the hard question. He wasn’t entirely certain what was holding him back, whether it was a fear of hearing the truth, or of forcing her to lie—or a sense of resignation verging on indifference.

  When her cell phone chirped from her purse, she couldn’t quite disguise her relief. “Let me just see who this is. It might be Trudy about the benefit. Given… you know, everything that’s happened, we’re probably going to postpone.” She pirouetted, walked into the living room. “Hey, I was just telling Luke it would be you.”

  He wasn’t even sure if he loved her anymore or if, except for a daughter, they had anything in common.

  “Trudy just had a brilliant idea,” she said, returning to the library, all cheery and bright and practical. “She asked about you, so I told her about your charitable work, and bing! Genius idea! We could do a joint benefit for the ballet and your soup kitchen. You’d probably want to incorporate as a five oh one c three, but Judy could take care of the paperwork.”

  “Why the sudden interest in the soup kitchen? You’ve got that oversized smile, the one you use for small children, lame dinner partners, and gossip columnists.”

  The smile disappeared. “My, my,” she said, sinking into the side chair across from him. “That’s a little harsh. Let’s try to remember that charity begins at home.”

  “As does fidelity. It’s the centrifugal force that holds domestic life together.” Realizing, as he said this, that he himself was under the influence of the centripetal pull of illegitimate desire.

  “Look, the charities are scrambling madly. All the fall benefits are up in the air. Yasmin has just postponed the Alzheimer’s. No one wants to seem insensitive, but people have a hard time thinking about the ballet or the opera when five thousand people are missing, however many it is. So the chairs are desperate to link up with some kind of nine/eleven–related charity.”

  “For Christ’s sake, it’s just a couple of tents with some warming trays and a coffee urn.”

  “Well then, it sounds like you could use funds to expand your operation.”

  “I don’t even know if we’ll still be there next week. They could shut us down at any minute.”

  “Then call the mayor. This is what I mean: With your talent and your connections, you could be doing something bigger than passing out sandwiches. It’s not as if I’m asking for myself.”

  “I don’t know. I’ll talk to Jerry.”

  “Who’s Jerry?”

  “Jerry started the soup kitchen. He’s that carpenter I told you about. It’s his call.”

  “What if I talk to him?”

  “Be my guest. I’ll give you his cell number.”

  “The other thing—Trudy was wondering if you could get her a pass or something down to Ground Zero.”

  “A pass?”

  “Don’t act so self-righteous. People are curious. They want to see it. The Portmans got a tour yesterday—you know he’s a big Republican donor—and they said it was very moving. I said I’d ask, that’s all,” she said, suddenly backing off. She stood up, walked over, and put her hands on his shoulders. “I’m supposed to meet the Traynors at Swifty’s for a bite,” she said. “Will you join us? Just the four of us.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I can’t bear for you to hate me.”

  “I don’t hate you, Sasha.”

  “Can we try to be good to each other?”

  “I’ve been trying all along.”

  She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Where’s Ashley?”

  She looked at her watch. “She’s with the tutor; then she’s going to Amber’s for dinner. I told her to be home by eight. Maybe you could take her down to your little soup kitchen, Ashley and some of the girls. It might be good for them.”

  “Was that her idea?”

  “I suggested it. I’m sure she’d be happy if you asked.” She paused, tugging at a st
rand of hair. “What did you two talk about yesterday?”

  “We didn’t really talk at all.”

  “She said she’d seen you. She seemed a little, I don’t know, nervous. When I asked her how you were. I told her she should be proud of you, that you’d been down in the middle of it all, helping out, that you were probably a little shell-shocked. That you’d seen some terrible things.”

  Terrible things indeed. “I can’t recall you asking me what I’d seen.”

  “Well, I can imagine.”

  “I’m not so sure about that.”

  “Oh, stop being a martyr. Has it ever occurred to you that after doing everything in your power to avoid being like your father, you’re finally reverting to type? I mean, that was the first thing that occurred to me when you said you were quitting your job. Next thing I know, you’ll be enrolling in divinity school. Or maybe you can be like your great-great-whatever grandmother and write letters to the relatives of all the victims.”

  This was an allusion to his father’s great-grandmother, who after the Battle of Franklin had buried hundreds of Confederate dead in the family graveyard and then spent years writing letters of condolence to their families.

  “I remember the day I first told you that story,” he said, “you had tears in your eyes.”