Jay McInerney - Bright, Precious Days

“Our house specialty is actually a Bloody Bull with house-made beef stock that’s rendered here daily.”

“Okay, I’ll try that. With Belvedere. Make it a double.”

“I should tell you we have one special today.”

They waited as the waitress looked around the restaurant before leaning in and resting her palm on the table. She seemed to be judging the advisability of sharing this information.

“We’re all ears,” Russell said.

“Chef calls them ‘crispy bollocks.’ ”

“You’re shitting me,” Russell said.

Astrid, clearly, was unfamiliar with the term, but she leaned forward, an eager student.

“Testicles,” Russell said. “Deep-fried bull’s balls, I’m imagining.”

“Well—”

“Known here in America as prairie oysters.”

Astrid had been game for the house-made beef stock, but this was clearly a step too far. She directed a look at the waitress that seemed to implore her to contradict Russell’s description.

But the waitress, sticking to the party line, merely shrugged her shoulders.

“Really?” She was not a girl who lacked self-confidence, or an adventurous spirit, or the will to appear more sophisticated than she knew herself to be, but neither had she left Middletown, Connecticut, this morning expecting that she’d be invited to eat the balls of a bull, fried or otherwise.

“I think we’ll get two burgers,” Russell said. “Medium rare.”

“Sorry,” Astrid said after the waitress had receded.

“That’s okay. It seems a little surreal even to me, and I’ve lived here for twenty-five years. So you’re at Wesleyan?”

“And you all went to Brown? You and Jeff and Corrine?”

“Class of ’79.”

“Well, I’ve never really done this before, so let’s just start at the beginning. How did you meet Jeff?”

“People were always telling us how we’d love each other. We were both writers, English jocks. So of course I hated him. We didn’t officially meet until sophomore year.”

“You got into a fistfight over a girl?”

“Now you’re extrapolating from the novel.”

“So that didn’t happen?”

“Not exactly. It’s actually hard for me sometimes to separate the fact from the fiction. Jeff’s version can be very compelling. He was a good writer. A very good writer. So at this point it isn’t always easy to remember what really happened as opposed to his reinvention of it. There was a punch thrown, I know that much. We were at a party and he flicked a cigarette in my beer cup. And I jumped up and tried to hit him, but I think he ducked away. That night’s shrouded in an alcoholic haze. And the next thing I remember we were lending each other books and talking late into the night over Gauloises and Jack Daniel’s about the Frankfurt School and Exile on Main Street and narrative modalities in Ulysses. ”

“Like, what books were you lending?”

He thought about it. “Céline, Nathanael West, Paul Bowles, Hunter Thompson, Raymond Carver. Carver’s first collection of stories was huge for both of us.”

“And when did you meet Corrine?”

“That I remember very clearly. I first saw her at a party my freshman year. She was standing at the top of a staircase in a frat house. That was my first glimpse, looking up at her, a beautiful blonde, smoking a cigarette. I don’t know if I would’ve worked up the courage to talk to her or not, but as I watched her boyfriend came up from behind and she turned to look at him as he reached out to touch her cheek. I had no idea at the time they were going out, but I knew who he was. On the basketball team — a big man on campus. They were up there on Mount Olympus and I was downstairs with the geeks and the drunks. The next semester she was in my Romantic poetry class. I showed off big-time in class. Jeff was in that class, too, but I never talked to him. Hated him. We were competing for dominance.”

“For Corrine’s attention?”

“For everybody’s attention, though I suppose I was especially trying to impress Corrine. And the professor, of course.”

The waitress arrived with Astrid’s drink, sweating in a heavy glass, with a celery stick sprouting from the ice cubes.

“You know what, get me one, too,” he said.

“Belvedere bullshot?”

“Why the hell not?”

“Go for it,” Astrid said.

“I am,” he said, “although I seriously doubt that either one of us can tell the difference between a supposedly top-shelf vodka and the pour from the well. In fact, I know we can’t. The well, just in case you should want to know, is the place underneath the bar where they keep the cheap generic shit; I know this because I was a bartender in Providence when I was making my way through Brown, and the idea that you could possibly taste the difference between Belvedere and the industrial stuff that alkies drink when it’s mixed with tomato juice and Tabasco and horseradish is ludicrous. In fact, I doubt you could taste the difference straight up. The whole point of vodka is that it has no taste. It’s alcohol and water. Period. End of story. The cult of these premium brands is ludicrous, a marketing scam that started when I came of age. We used to think we were so fucking cool specifying Absolut. Me and Jeff, back in 1981, at the Surf Club. Yeah, we were such connoisseurs. Now it’s Ketel One or Belvedere or Grey Goose, but it’s not what’s in the bottle; it’s pure marketing, and whether or not a fucking celebrity gets spotted ordering one or the other.”

“So why’d you order the Belvedere?”

“Because I didn’t want to look cheap.”

“Have I said something to make you angry?”

“No, of course not. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to go off on a rant.”

“You seem to have some major issues with Jeff.”

“Oh, please, don’t give me that shit. You probably weren’t even born when he died, and I’ve had decades to think about this. The only issue I have with Jeff is that he fucking died. That and his being a junkie.”

“Well, those are big issues.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to get all worked up.” At which point the waitress arrived like an angel of mercy with his drink. “God that’s good,” he said after swallowing a third of it. “So where were we?”

“Complaining about vodka.”

“I just realized where I got that riff.”

“What riff?”

“That whole vodka rant. That was actually Jeff’s thing. He used to mock me for specifying Absolut. He’d make a point of ordering Smirnoff or whatever was cheapest. After he died, I stopped drinking premium vodka for years in tribute to Jeff.”

“Oh, wow. That’s kind of cool.”

“You mean it’s cool now that you know Jeff said it.”

“Well, I am writing about him.”

“And I’m grateful, really. A few years ago it made me sad to think that no one was reading him, that there were only a few of us who remembered him.”

“Still, it must be a little weird, the fact that he was — I know not exactly, but still — writing about you. You and him and Corrine.”

“Kind of strange, sure.”

“So I guess what everyone wants to know is about how you edited Youth and Beauty. ”

“The same way I edit every book. Sentence by sentence, reading closely, asking questions.”

“But Jeff wasn’t there to answer them.”

“So I answered them the way I thought he would have.”

“I mean, did you edit the book in a way that made you look…better? You and Corrine. I guess the question is — sorry, but you know, it’s out there on the Web and everything — did you leave out unflattering material?”

“That’s a loaded question.”

“Well, it must’ve been tempting. Didn’t you ever think about turning the manuscript over to someone else? How could you possibly be objective?”