Jay McInerney - Bright, Precious Days

Corrine looked pained, and Jack almost felt bad. Clearly she hadn’t read the stories yet.

“The French were right about the Iraq War,” Russell was saying. “Back when all these jerkoffs were boycotting French wine and cheese and calling french fries ‘freedom fries,’ I was calling cheeseburgers fromage burgers and boycotting California wines.”

“Big fucking sacrifice,” Washington said. “You haven’t drunk a wine from California in years.”

“Wait,” Nancy said. “I thought Spain was the new France.”

“The point is,” Russell said, “if you’re going to boycott the products of a country based on disagreeing with their foreign policy, then those of us who think the Iraq debacle was the most ill-advised and unjustified shoot-’em-up since Vietnam should be boycotting American products.”

“That’s easy,” Washington said. “America hardly makes anything anymore.”

“What about Harley-Davidsons?” Jack said.

“And Levi’s.”

“Nope, sorry. Made in China.”

“We do make cruise missiles and stealth bombers.”

“Weapons of mass destruction.”

“We’ve met the enemy and he is us.”

“Fiction,” Russell said. “We still do fiction really well. American literature’s alive and well. When I first got into publishing, everyone said the novel was dead, that our generation wasn’t reading. Since then we’ve seen, like, two or three generations of American novelists come of age.”

“Tell it to the Nobel Prize committee,” Washington said.

Hilary was regaling Veronica about the TV pilot she and Dan were trying to pitch, based on his career as a cop in Brooklyn. “This is, like, totally authentic, not like those bullshit cop shows. Dan was on the force for twenty years. He knows where the bodies are buried.” This Hilary is kind of hot, Jack thought, if not exceptionally smart — a not atypical combo — and he was fascinated by Corrine’s barely concealed contempt for her.

“As a cop,” Russell said, “wasn’t he supposed to tell somebody where the bodies were buried before now?”

—

Jack went back to trying to entertain his hostess with tales of crystal meth in the land of moonshine. “The meth business, it’s all in the family,” he said. “You got three generations cookin’ crystal in the kitchen. Course, there ain’t a big age gap between the generations. Momma’s thirty-three and Gran’s forty-five. And they’re all losin’ their teeth thanks to the crystal and the co’cola. Toothless in Fairview. That could be the title of my book.”

“Shit, round here meth’s strictly a gay thing,” Washington said. “Wealthy decorators and film producers trolling the bathhouses wired to the gills.”

“I can’t believe you said decorators,” Corrine said. “That’s such a stereotype.”

“A gay thing?” Jack was appalled. “Meth? Fuck me. Who woulda thought? Seemed to me like us rednecks owned that shit.”

Corrine said, “Didn’t the bathhouses shut down in the eighties?”

Washington shook his head and poured another glass of wine, so Jack held his out for a refill.

“They’re back,” Washington said. “These guys start on a Friday night, do meth and Viagra and go at it all weekend.”

“It’s true,” Russell said.

“And we know this how?” Corrine asked.

“I know a guy, Juan Baptiste. He’s into the scene.”

“The Voice columnist.”

“Does the Voice still exist?”

“It’s a giveaway now.”

Jack was struggling to keep up. He had to stop drinking before he totally lost his grip in front of these people and said or did something stupid. “What voice?” he said.

“ The Village Voice, ” Corrine said. “It was the hipster alternative weekly when we first came to New York.”

“Norman Mailer started it. We all used to read it to figure out what our politics should be and what music to listen to.”

“Mailer’s cool,” Jack said, latching onto a familiar bearing. “Specially Advertisements for Myself. ”

“I once played pool with him,” Russell said.

“But then it got pretty gay,” Nancy said.

“What, Mailer?” Jack asked, confused.

“No, the Voice. ”

“God, we’re dating ourselves here,” Corrine said. “Let’s turn on CNN and find out about the midterms.”

Russell protested, complaining that they hadn’t served the cheese yet.

“I hate this cheese thing,” Corrine muttered to Jack.

“Cheese?” Jack wondered if that was code for something else.

“Another thing we borrowed from the French. It became fashionable in Manhattan about ten years ago. You finish a giant meal and then gorge on semirancid dairy.”

“Yeah, I don’t actually see the point of that,” Jack said. “Where I come from, we got something called dessert.”

“That comes after the cheese,” she said.

Despite her age, he was surprised to find Russell’s wife sexy — in a refined, untouchable kind of way. To his mind she looked as he imagined the temptress suburban housewives in Updike would look. They would be so cool and collected right up to the minute they grabbed your crotch behind the pool house while their husbands were playing croquet on the lawn a few yards away. He couldn’t help imagining how sexy, because unexpected, the grunts and groans of passion emerging from such an elegant creature would be. He felt totally weird fantasizing about fucking his editor’s wife, so he tried thinking about Nancy, right across the table and also pretty hot for a chick her age.

Eventually, after he reminded himself that these people were from another planet and might have totally different genitals, the group moved away from the table and Corrine switched on the television so they could all check on the elections. It looked as if the Democrats would take the House and the Senate. Russell sat on the back of the couch behind Corrine, running his hand through her hair. Jack found it kind of sweet. He’d never seen a married couple touch like that.

Wolf Blitzer announced that CNN was predicting that Nancy Pelosi would be the first female Speaker of the House in history.

“California knee-jerk liberals,” Hilary shouted. She was pretty wasted. Her lips seemed to be congealing around her words.

“She ought to know,” Corrine said to Russell. “She slept with half of Hollywood.” She’d probably intended the remark for his ears only, but by chance it pierced a brief moment of silence in what up to then had been relentless clamor.

Hilary spun in Corrine’s direction and fixed her with a blurry look of hurt reproach before storming off in the direction of the bathroom.

“Oh shit,” Corrine said. “That was supposed to be sub rosa.”

“Wait, check this out,” Russell said, pointing at the TV screen, which showed a photograph of a middle-aged dude. Blitzer was saying, “ We’ve received word that American journalist Phillip Kohout has been found alive in Lahore, Pakistan, after allegedly escaping captivity at the hands of terrorists associated with the Taliban. Kohout disappeared almost three months ago while researching a story about terrorism in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. He reportedly made his way to the American consulate in Lahore after escaping from a compound in the nearby suburbs. More on this story as it develops. ”

“I didn’t know he’d been kidnapped,” Corrine said.

“I heard something about it a couple months ago,” Russell said.

“Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving fellow,” Corrine said.

“That’s a little harsh,” Russell said. He turned to Jack. “An author I published. His first novel was a big success.”