Jay McInerney - Bright, Precious Days

“Not really. Apparently, he’s agreed to marry her again after the divorce.”

When she’d worked at Sotheby’s and lived on Beekman Place, Corrine used to think of downtown as the province for all kinds of bohemian kinkiness, but lately she’d decided that Casey’s coterie of uptown socialites was far more debauched and jaded.

“One time we saw her at ‘21,’ pushing lettuce leaves around her plate, and Tom had a burger sent over to the table. It was hilarious. He made the waiter promise not to say where it came from, but the whole room was buzzing.”

Corrine looked over at the skeletal Mrs. Ricard with a certain fascination, not entirely disapproving. She was not immune to the dream of leaving behind the heavy cloak of flesh. And in fact, Carol Ricard was only marginally thinner than her dining companions — or Casey and Corrine, for that matter.

“She has to shave her arms and chest,” Casey said. “When your body approaches true starvation, it grows fur as a protective reaction to try to keep you warm.”

“That’s gross.” Apparently it was possible to be too thin. Who knew? At least, Corrine thought, she’d never gotten to that point.

Casey lifted her by-no-means-chubby arm, decorated with several bands of gold and a Bulgari snake watch, and summoned a waiter who was hovering in the corner. “I’d like another iced tea,” she told him, “and my friend will have another cranberry and soda with lime.”

Corrine had been waiting for an opening. “I got a call from Luke today.”

“Is he here?”

She nodded, surprised that Casey didn’t seem to be.

Casey clapped her hand on top of Corrine’s and beamed. “So, will you see him? And more to the point, are you going to sleep with him?”

Corrine looked around, mortified, but no one was conspicuously eavesdropping.

“He invited me out to Sagaponack for the weekend.”

“This is huge,” Casey said, leaning forward. “What about the wife?”

“Ten thousand miles away.”

“Well, what are you waiting for?”

“I’m waiting for my conscience to have a stroke. I mean, why am I even contemplating this?”

“You’re contemplating it because he’s rich and handsome and he loves you.”

“How can you possibly know that? He clearly cares about me and he seems to want to sleep with me, which is, I must say, a big point in his favor. He’s actually been sending me these very romantic e-mails.”

“He’s crazy about you. Do you think it was a coincidence that you were at my table for his benefit? He asked me to invite you.”

“That was a setup?”

“He really wanted to see you,” Casey said, “and I suspect he wanted you to see him in his moment of glory. He must’ve heard that Tom bought a table, so he called me out of the blue and practically begged me to take you.”

“And you’re just telling me now?”

“He swore me to secrecy, Corrine.”

“I’m your best friend.”

“And as my best friend, you should realize I have your best interests at heart.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Only that I approve of you and Luke.”

“There is no me and Luke. We’re both married.”

“I think Luke is over his marriage.”

“That’s ridiculous. You saw that girl.”

“Yes, I did. And she looked a lot like you. What does that tell you?”

“That he has a type.”

“Are you having sex with Russell?”

“I can’t remember. Last fall we had a brief renaissance, and then once in Saint Barth’s.”

“I don’t even want to sleep with Tom anymore; that’s the sad part. I give him a blow job on his birthday and we call it good for another year.”

Corrine would never get used to her friend’s sexual candor, but she was probably the perfect adviser in the present situation; certainly Corrine couldn’t imagine confiding in anyone else. “What should I do? And what the hell would I say to Russell?”

“Tell him you’re going out to Southampton with me for the weekend — a little time away from the family.”

“Why are you saying this?”

“Because I don’t think you’re really over him. And I don’t think he’s over you.”

—

Corrine refused Luke’s offer of a ride — a small and perhaps absurd point of honor, given that she’d agreed to spend two days and nights alone with him — opting instead for the jitney. The principal bus service between New York City and the Hamptons used this obscure term for a public conveyance because the kind of people who could afford to live in both places either didn’t ride buses or, if forced to, would never identify them as such. A neologism was called for. Even those with drivers and multiple German automobiles sometimes found it convenient, and there was little stigma attached to riding the bus by another name. Corrine, considering it more sensible and ecologically sound, would have insisted on this mode of transport even if the purpose of her journey had been beyond reproach. Casey, as it turned out, was going out to the island only for twenty-four hours on Saturday, and they would drive back together Sunday.

She took the kids to school that morning and watched them disappear inside with a rising sense of panic and dread, as if it were possible she might never see them again. She was about to venture beyond the pale — and what if she couldn’t return? What if something terrible happened out there? On the walk back to the apartment, she resolved to call the whole thing off. The night before, after several glasses of Sancerre, she had been certain that seeing Luke was, if not the right thing, at least what she wanted, even craved. She just needed to get this out of her system. Her yearning was palpable, and she’d gone to bed reviewing and savoring the memories of the episodes of lovemaking that had constituted their brief romance. This morning all she could think about was everything she was putting at risk, without any compensatory prospect of reward except that of possessing him and being possessed one or two or three more times, of fulfilling a desire that continued to plague her, although it had almost gone dormant until she saw him again last fall.

She was slightly ashamed and baffled by this. She’d always had a healthy appreciation of sex, and never quite stopped enjoying it with Russell, but she’d never felt this kind of compulsive desire, unless perhaps back when they’d first started dating at Brown. Part of her had rationalized it retroactively; she and Luke had come together in the days after September 11, and such cataclysmic events were aphrodisiac, conducive to compulsive and reckless behavior. But the truth was, she was still drawn to him.

Stopping at the corner of Broadway and Reade, she hit number three on her autodial. “I can’t do it,” she said when Casey picked up.

“You owe it to yourself to follow through. You need resolution. Otherwise, you’re always going to wonder.”

“What kind of resolution can I possibly find? Even if we make mad, passionate love, he will have scratched that itch and then will probably remember he’s got a younger, sexier blonde back home.”

“Never discount the value of mad passion. I’d give my left breast for a good night of it.”

“I know, that’s the terrible thing. I really do want him.”

—

Thankfully, there were no familiar faces on the jitney when she boarded at 40th Street, the last stop before the tunnel to Long Island. In July or August, it would be jammed after running down the East Side, but today only five passengers were scattered down the aisle: an elderly couple, a weary middle-aged Hispanic woman, and a pretty young mother in a Barbour jacket and jodhpurs with her preschool daughter. Corrine had borrowed a galley of The Savage Detectives from Russell’s pile in the bedroom, and now she opened it again, determined to distract herself.