Read Bright, Precious Days Online
Authors: Jay McInerney
“As a gentleman, I would probably have to join you so as not to make you feel self-conscious.”
He asked her about school, about her classes and her reading. She asked him about New York, publishing and the eighties. He couldn't help liking her, a beautiful young girl interested in him and the things he loved, full of wine and vodka and admiration for his accomplishments, his worldliness, to the point that she actually seemed to find him sexually attractive. Outside the restaurant, she took his arm and said, “Let's get a room at the Chelsea Hotel.”
He looked at her, stunned; her impish expression read to him like a challenge, a dare.
He considered it for a moment. The temptation was almost overwhelming. “I can't tell you how much it means to me that you suggested that,” Russell said. “Even though I know you didn't really mean it.”
“I did, actually,” she said, leaning over and kissing him on the lips.
“I'll live on that for the rest of the year.”
“Let me know about the manuscript,” she said.
Later, walking back to the office after putting her in a cab, he felt amazed that he'd been so sensible, proud of himself but also a little sad to think that he might never again experience the incomparable thrill of exploring a foreign body.
This sense of erotic possibility stayed with him throughout the day, and that night, when he got into bed after consuming most of a bottle of Pinot Noir over dinner, the feeling drew him closer to his wife. As she read beside him, he began to kiss her neck and fondle her breasts. At first she ignored him but gradually succumbed.
He couldn't even remember the last time they'd made love, but now, for the first time in months, he found himself aroused, and worked himself on top of her. “Wait,” she said, reaching into the drawer of the bedside table, fussing with some kind of lubricant that she applied even as he felt himself deflating, reaching for him, guiding him inside. They found their rhythm and he found himself succumbing to this slow, mounting pleasure. As good as it felt, it kept getting better and more insistent. Apparently he'd had just the right amount of wine to loosen his inhibitions and his quotidian anxiety without quite physically disabling him. They had slipped into a mutually satisfactory rhythm that gradually accelerated.
All at once he felt a shortness of breath that became more acute, until he was afraid that he might pass out at any moment, or worse. Even as he gasped for air he continued to thrust his hips; the term
death throes
came to mind. He was going to die in the saddle, like Nelson Rockefeller.
He thought he was coming, but he was going.
With a racing heart and a rising sense of despair, he struggled to fill his lungs. He was filled with the dread of his own eventual demise. This is how it would feel as he lost his grip on the world, this breathless dread. Even if he managed to pull back this time, it would come for him again. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, cheated of the final glory at least of an orgasmâ¦
He tried to tell Corrine that he was in distress, but he was unable to speak, unable to bid farewell to the love of his life; and then, just when he was convinced he would die on top of her, he began to recover his breath and his panic gradually subsided. He faked an orgasm with several violent hip thrusts accompanied by a series of moans before rolling off of her, his anxiety subsiding to an almost manageable level, leaving him with a residue of dread, his relief tempered with a hopeless sense that he had just caught a glimpse of oblivion.
THE BEST MARRIAGES,
like the best boats, are the ones that ride out the storms. They take on water; they shudder and list, very nearly capsize, then right themselves and sail onward toward the horizon. The whole premise, after all, was for better or for worse. Their marriage was seaworthy, if not exactly
buoyant.
Better off, surely, than the republic, bulging at the waist and spiritually enervated, fighting two wars and a midterm election, all of which seemed endless.
Or maybe not.
At least they'd had sex last night, the first time in God knows how long. She wished they didn't have to go out tonight, but they had a gala benefit: the third this month. How had she let herself get talked into this one? Her friend Casey had insisted, and it had seemed harmlessly distant a month ago, plus she owed Casey for buying a table for the Nourish New York benefit. That was how the system worked. She couldn't remember what tonight's worthy cause was. Something to do with South Africa? Russell was leaving from the office, where he kept his tux, because these benefits were almost always uptown, in the traditionally patrician district, despite the fact that money continued to migrate down the island; happily this one was nearby, at the Puck Building in SoHo.
She sat at her vanity, which doubled as her desk, applying eyeliner with a sense of fatalism, knowing full well that at some point in the evening it would end up on her upper lids, which had sagged over the years. Would an eye lift be a total betrayal of her principles? If she could even afford it. It kind of sucked, being nearly fifty, discovering a new laugh line that you'd at first imagined to be a crack in the mirror.
She was getting more than a little sick of black-tie benefits. Even though they usually attended as guests, rather than ticket buyers, she didn't have the wardrobe to do full formal all that often. The Upper East Siders, like Casey, her girlhood friend and prep school roommate, went to two or three a week and never repeated a dress. The younger society girls borrowed from the designers and the jewelers, but their mothers spent the equivalent of a Range Rover on dresses every month. Associating with the rich was inevitably expensive, even when they were ostensibly paying. You paid one way or another. Corrine was going to have to wear one of the two long dresses in her closet, the Ralph Lauren probably, the one she'd bought for less than half retail at the sample sale, the same thing she'd worn to the Authors Guild benefit, and hope that no one remembered it. But then, why would they? It wasn't as if the party photographers immortalized her fashion choices. And she didn't feel like she was getting all that much masculine attention, either. She examined the satin bodice in the mirror. Was it tight? Tighter than a month ago? And what about shoes and a bag? More things she wished she could afford to indulge in. She settled on the silver Miu Miu pumps to sort of go with her grandmother's silver mesh clutch.
Corrine tottered out of the bedroom, taking care with her heels on the undulant antique oak floor of the loft, with its treacherous gaps. God, she was
so
over loft livingâthat was one of the things they fought about, her desire to move; the fact that the kids could get a better education outside Manhattan, since it didn't look like they could afford private school tuition for both next year, after the kids graduated from PS 234. They'd be positively well-off if they lived almost anywhere outside this wealthy, skinny island. It was always about money, somehowâexcept when it was about sex. Young idealists, Ivy League sweethearts, they'd followed their best instincts and based their lives on the premise that money couldn't buy happiness, learning only gradually the many varieties of unhappiness it might have staved off. Russell liked, especially after a few drinks, to divide humanity into two opposing teams: Art and Love versus Power and Money. It was kind of corny, but she was proud that he believed it, and of his loyalty to his team. For better and for worse, it was her team, too.
The kids were on the couch, watching the new
Shrek
video. Jean, the nanny, meanwhile oblivious, distraught, pacing in the corner, fighting with her girlfriend on the phone. Apparently living with a woman was also difficult.
“Bye-bye, my little honey bunches. Love you tons.”
“Where are you going?” Jeremy asked.
Corrine waited for Storey to comment on her outfit, but she remained absorbed in the video.
“I'm going out to save the world.”
“How does going out save the world?”
“People buy tickets to fancy parties,” Storey explained, “and then the money goes to, like, people with diseases and abused animals and stuff. It's called a benefit.”
“Exactly.”
“Why don't you just give the money and stay home?”
“Because adults like parties,” Storey said.
Corrine saw that her motives didn't really bear scrutiny. She wasn't actually giving money and she wasn't even looking forward to this event. She was a fraud, a pretender, a hypocrite. But then, the kids seemed fine. Just a year or two ago they used to get distraught, try to argue her out of going out, weep and gnash their teeth, but now they seemed perfectly content to let her go. She wasn't sure this development was entirely welcome.
The elevator rattled as if in its death throes. She found a cab on Church Street, which also rattled and lurched. What was that band that Storey liked, Death Cab for Cutie?
A cluster of yellow cabs and black Lincoln Town Cars debouched sleek New Yorkers two by two into Lafayette Street at the entrance to the hulking red edifice, where they elbowed and kissed one another, funneling between the gray pillars, beneath the gilded statue of Puck, who disregarded them as he admired himself in a hand mirror. If only, Corrine thought, he might bring a little mischief to what promised to be a thoroughly boring evening.
She checked her coat, picked up her table number at reception, followed the throng into the ballroom, where, failing to spot her husband, she scanned the silent-auction items: the handbags and jewelry, the photo sessions with prominent lensmen, the tripsâgolf in Scotland, salmon fishing in Iceland, wine tasting in Napa, game watching in Kenya, river rafting in Zambia. Looking up, she spotted Casey Reynes at the bar. They'd remained close despite the divergences of their postâMiss Porter's lives; Casey had married an investment banker and lived in a town house on East 67th; this was Casey's native environmentâthe charity ball circuit. She was wearing a sea foam blue empire-waist gown accessorized with tasteful diamonds. Very few women could have pulled it off, but somehow Casey looked as if she'd been born in a ballroom.
“Corrine, oh my God, I was just thinking about you.”
They exchanged kisses on each cheek, Casey dipping in for a third, as was the latest practice in her circle. Sometimes Corrine had to struggle to see her friend underneath the facade of tribal costume and customs.
“I appreciate your coming out for this.”
“What's the cause?”
Casey smiled enigmatically, her forehead serene and undisturbed, but at either edge of this chemically frozen expanse a series of tiny lines, like stitches, betrayed some sort of emotion, though Corrine couldn't quite interpret which.
“It's
Luke's
charity.”
“Luke? You meanâ”
She leaned forward conspiratorially and hissed into Corrine's ear: “I mean
your
Luke.”
As if summoned by the incantation of his name, the man himself appeared out of the crowd a few steps away, his reconnaissance of the room snapping into focus at the sight of Corrine. He seemed to recover his composure more quickly than she felt she did, striding over to greet her, taking her hand in his own and kissing her cheek, only one cheek, in the American fashion, surprising her with the familiarity, the singularity of his scent, which seemed, even more than the sight of him, to elicit a chemical response, a tingling in her scalp, at the back of her neck, even as she tried to adjust to the changes in his appearance, notably the raised pink scar that started just above his chin and trailed down his neck.
“What a lovely surprise,” he said.
“I didn't expect to⦔
“I was wondering if I might see you.”
“I don't know if you've met my friend Casey Reynes. Casey, this is Luke McGavock.” Corrine was all befuddled and couldn't remember whether they'd met or whether she and Casey had just talked about him, but then she realized they'd traveled in the same circles for years.
“We're old friends,” Luke said, gallantly overstating the case. He looked in some ways the same and yet older, less robust, not only because of the scar. It had been, what, more than three years since she'd seen him? He seemed to have accumulated more years than that in the interval; his dark hair now several shades closer to silver, two crescents furrowing either side of his face from nose to lips. And yet, still, she felt a visceral thrill in his presence.
“Nice to see you again,” Casey said. “Congratulations on this wonderful organization. The fact that all these jaded New Yorkers have chosen to come out for yet another benefit is undoubtedly a tribute to you.”
“I'm hardly the only one behind this thing, and besides, I'd prefer to think it was a tribute to the cause.” He bobbed his head up and down as he spoke, as if he were agreeing with himself, a nervous tic she remembered fondly.
“It's a wonderful cause,” Casey said.
What cause? Corrine wanted to scream, but she was loath to admit her ignorance at this stage in the game. “The last I heard, you were in South Africa,” she said.
“About half the year. I invested in a winery and I got more and more involved. I'm back here for a few weeks, for the benefit, taking care of business, visiting Ashley. She's up at Vassar.”
“Oh my God, she's in college!”
“Well, it was sort of the logical next step after high school.”
Jesus,
Corrine thought, was there any limit to her insipidity? She hated it when people marveled at the fact that other people's kids aged instead of magically remaining the same as when the interlocutor had last seen or thought of them. But she was nervous and uncomfortable on several levels.
“How are the twins?” he asked.
“Good. Fine.”
“They're how old?”
She had to think a moment. “They're eleven.”
If only Casey were to make a dignified exit, they might be able to get beyond this twaddle. Was there anything worse than small talk between two people who'd once exchanged bodily fluids? Her confusion was compounded by the fact that one of his eyes seemed not to be looking at her. What was that about? He'd always had a somewhat manic aspect, a darting field of attention, but this was different.
“I think I'll find my husband, and get him to bid on some jewelry,” Casey said. “So nice to see you again, Luke.”
And suddenly, confusingly, they were alone in the midst of the burbling crowd.
“You haven't changed,” he said. “You look beautiful.”
“Now I'm unlikely to believe anything else you say.”
“You never did accept a compliment lying down.”
“Women get suspicious of compliments when they discover the purpose is to
get
them to lie down. And then when they get older, they become so unaccustomed to hearing them that they don't know what to do with them. I just spent twenty minutes in front of a mirror, and no one knows better than I how much I've changed since we last met.”
“Now I recall that your lack of vanity was one of the things I loved most about you.”
“I like to think of myself as a realist.”
“I prefer to think of you as a romantic,” Luke said.
“Once, perhaps, when I was young. Have you noticedâromantics are like fat people? You don't meet many old ones.”
“You're still young in my eyes,” he said. “After all, you're quite a bit younger than I, and I insist on seeing myself as youthful.”
Despite the strangeness of his off-center gaze, she was recalling how much she loved their banter, when a blonde in a lavender gown suddenly appeared at Luke's side.
And even before he said “
There
you are,” there was something in the ease of her comportment, in the serenity of the smile directed at Luke, and in Luke's sudden discomfort, that provoked a sinking feeling of nausea in Corrine.
“Giselle, this is Corrine Calloway. A very dear friend.”
Oh, thanks for that, she thought.
Dear.
Friend.
“Corrine, this is myâ¦wife, Giselle.”
“How nice to meet you,” Corrine managed to say, although it was all she could do to remain standing, feeling suddenly light-headed and faint.
“Likewise,” she said. “It's lovely to meet so many of Luke's old friends. I'm afraid we got married in such a terrible hurry, I feel I've a great deal of catching up to do.” She was very pale, with white blond hair, although an athletic physique and an air of boisterous vitality undermined the impression of Pre-Raphaelite delicacy. Likewise her accent, which seemed like a muscular, rusticated version of upper-crust English.
Corrine caught sight of Russell and waved frantically.
“Were you two school chums?” Giselle inquired politely.
“We met doing some volunteer work together,” Luke said quickly, as if he were afraid of what she might say.
“After September eleventh.”
“Ah, yes. At the soup kitchen. Luke told me about that. It must have been a terrible time.”
“Best of times, worst of times,” she said, regretting it as soon as it was out of her mouth. “I mean, as terrible as it was, it brought out the best in a lot of people.” God, what an idiot she was being tonight. She realized how clichéd this sounded, which was only slightly better than glib.
To his credit, Luke was looking slightly pained. She was improbably grateful to Russell as he bumped into her and splashed some of his drink on her arm. He had this kind of overflowing physicality, a puppyish lack of coordination, a sort of comical deficit of grace that had earned him the nickname “Crash.”