Jay McInerney - Bright Lights, Big City

After dark you return to the scene of your former crimes to gather up loose odds and ends. Since the magazine went to press this morning, you can assume everyone will have gone home. You feel strange walking into the building, an infidel penetrating the temple. Your hangover from the Waldorf doesn't help.

As you come out of the elevator on twenty-nine, the first person you see is the Ghost. The elevator doors close behind you.

He stands in the middle of the reception area, head tilted to one side like a robin listening for worms, and says hello.

You feel compelled to turn around and run. Your mere presence seems shameful, especially after last night. The longer you wait, the harder it becomes to speak. It's as if he's deaf and you're dumb.

"Evening," you say in a weird, flickering voice.

He nods his head. "I'm sorry to hear you're leaving us," he says. "If ever you need a good reference… "

"Thank you. Thanks very much."

"Goodbye." He turns and rolls off toward Collating. More than anything yet, this strange encounter makes you feel the sadness of leaving.

You check the mirror at the corner of the hall. Clara's door is closed and dark, as is the door which leads to the secret chambers of the Druid. There's a light on in Fact. You proceed cautiously.

Megan is at her desk. She looks up when you come in, goes back to her reading.

"Remember me?"

"I remember something about a lunch date." She keeps her eyes on her desk.

"Oh, no. I'm sorry."

She looks up. "You're always sorry."

"There was this thing I had to do."

"A sweet young thing?"

"An old thing gone sour."

"I have feelings, too, you know."

"Damn it, I'm sorry."

"I know you've had a lot on your mind lately," Megan says.

"How about dinner?"

"One more meal with you could be the death of me." She's smiling now.

"Just let me pack up my things here. Won't take a minute."

Once you open the drawers of your desk you realize it could take all night. There is a vast quantity of flotsam: files, notebooks, personal and business correspondence, galleys and proofs, review books, matchbooks, loose sheets with names and phone numbers, notes to yourself, first drafts of stories, sketches and poems. Here, for instance, is the first draft of "Birds of Manhattan." Also the "U.S. Government Abstract of Statistics on Agriculture, 1981," indispensable in researching the three-part article on the death of the family farm, and on the back of which you have written the name Laura Bowman and a telephone number. Who is Laura Bowman? You could dial the number and ask for her, ask her where she fits into your past. Tell her you are suffering from amnesia and looking for clues.

In the top drawer you discover two empty rectangular packets. Actually, one of them is not quite empty; inside the black paper is a fine dusting of white. You scrape it onto the desk with a credit card, using the edge of the card to rake up two clean lines. You look over at Megan. She's reading. You could quietly hoover the lines and she'd never know the difference. You extract a bill from your wallet and roll it into a tight cylinder between thumb and forefinger. One apiece isn't going to do much for either of you. On the other hand, two won't do much for you, either; one will make you want another, and another will only initiate a chain reaction of desperate longings. Is this self-knowledge? In any case, you want to do something nice for Megan. For her it might be a treat, something out of the ordinary.

"Meg. Come over here a minute." Now you are committed.

You hold out the bill. She raises her eyebrows.

"This will make you forget you didn't eat lunch."

"What is it?"

"The powder that made Bolivia famous."

She lifts the bill tentatively to her nose and bends over the desk.

"Do the other one, too," you say when she offers you the bill.

"Are you sure?"

"Sure." You just wish she would hurry up and finish it off.

Meg twists her nose like a rabbit and sniffles. "Thanks."

You shovel the contents of the top drawer onto the desk and wonder how, exactly, to deal with all this paper. Some of it may be significant. Most of it is junk. How do you tell the difference?

"We had some trouble here this morning," Megan says. She sits down on the edge of your desk. You resist the urge to jump out of the chair and run down the hall with your jacket pulled over your head. No comment. All day you have been stifling the memory of your drunken-commando raid on Clara's office. You want to explain to Megan that it was a joke, you were drunk, it was Tad's idea. It wasn't really you, just a clownish alter ego over whom you have no control. You don't do things like that. You're not that kind of guy at all. If Alex were seriously hurt, though, Meg probably would have said so already. You keep your eyes fixed on a pamphlet entitled "Manual of Factual Verification."

"What do you mean, trouble?"

"Well, when Rittenhouse came in this morning he found Alex Hardy passed out on the floor of Clara's office."

You find it difficult to talk. "Really? Is he all right?"

"I don't imagine he feels terrific. He'll be fine once his blood detoxifies. He's taking the cure up at McLean's. Famous Drinking Writers' Club."

"Didn't he hurt himself when he fell?"

"That's the strange thing. There was no sign of injury, but there was blood on the floor of Clara's office. And on the walls, too. Very peculiar."

"Did he say anything? I mean, about what happened?"

"Nothing coherent. He said something about being attacked by pygmies."

"They didn't call the, uh, police, did they?"

"Why would they?"

"Just wondering. Sounds to me like a weird deal all around." You start to relax. Alex is okay and the visions of cops at your door are fading.

"Another odd thing," Megan says. "There was a mink in the mailroom."

"A mink?"

"It was hiding in a mail bag full of rejected manuscripts. When the mail guy hoisted the bag this morning it started biting him. They had to call the ASPCA."

"Really strange." Poor Fred, you think.

"How are you coming?" she says, pointing at the desk.

"I think this calls for drastic measures." You stand up and collect all the wastebaskets in the room, lining them up beside the desk. You take a book from the desk and hand it to Megan. "Could you give this to Alex for me? Tell him it's one of the Young Turks." She takes the book. You pull open the drawers one by one and dump the contents, entire, into the steel buckets.

"That's done. Let's eat."

In the cab, you ask Megan where she wants to eat.

"How about my place?"

"You're going to cook?"

"You sound suspicious."

"It just seems like a radical idea."

"If you'd rather go out… "

"No. That sounds great."

You get out at Bleecker Street. Megan takes your hand and leads you into a delicatessen. She holds up a box for your approval. "Linguine," she says. You nod. "I'm going to teach you how to purchase and make a meal." In the next aisle she introduces you to two cans of clams. Ordinarily, she says, she would use fresh clams and fresh pasta, but she doesn't want to scare you on your first lesson.

From the deli you walk toward Sixth. Megan is telling you about the difference between fresh and dried pasta. Each step takes you closer to the old apartment on Cornelia Street, where you first lived with Amanda in New York. This was your neighborhood. These shops were your shops. You possessed these streets as securely as if you held title.

Now the vista is skewed slightly, someone has tilted the ground a few degrees, and everything is the same and not the same.

You pass Ottomanelli's Meats, where the corpses of small animals hang in the window: unskinned rabbits, hairless fetal pigs, plucked fowl with yellow feet. No ferrets. Amanda was always grossed out by this display. Already she was aspiring to the Upper East Side, where the butchers dress their wares in paper replicas of designer outfits.