Jay McInerney: Bright, Precious Days

The waitress arrived with the burgers, giving Russell an interlude to refine and, eventually, mute his indignation.

“Can I bring you anything else? Mustard, ketchup?”

“Ketchup,” Russell said.

“And I’ll have another bullshot.”

Russell considered the options. “What the hell, bring me a glass of the Rafanelli Zinfandel.”

“I’ll have one, too.”

“You want the bullshot and the Zinfandel?” the waitress asked.

“Why not? It’s almost the weekend.”

Russell was sort of impressed. “One of the things I love about this place,” he said, “is that unlike almost every other New York restaurant that doesn’t call itself a diner, they’ll actually bring a bottle of ketchup to the table.”

“Would it be correct to put ketchup on bull’s balls?” she asked, then giggled fetchingly.

“I think it would be almost mandatory. It certainly couldn’t hurt.”

After the waitress delivered the ketchup, they set about the business of preparing their burgers, Russell putting a careful dollop of ketchup on each side of the bun and, on the top of the patty, a smattering of sautéed onions. Astrid was equally absorbed in her own rituals.

The waitress returned with the drinks, then left.

“We’re about to achieve a new level of intimacy,” Russell said when he had reassembled the dish.

“Really? Right here at the table?”

“To consume a hamburger in front of another person is to shed several layers of formality and dignity.”

“Especially if you lick the other person’s fingers.”

“I can’t say I’ve ever even thought of that.”

“You should try it,” she said, and raised her index finger, shiny with grease, to his lips.

Simultaneously appalled and gratified that she was so blatantly flirting with him, Russell felt it would be unchivalrous to embarrass her and reject what was, after all, a relatively cute and harmless gesture. He leaned forward, opened his mouth and closed his lips around her digit.

“How was it?”

“Needs a little salt,” he said. Was she really coming on to him, or just teasing him?

The conversation died for a time, both taking refuge in eating.

“So, there’s a school of thought that says you censored Jeff’s book.”

“ ‘A school of thought’? Jesus, what are we talking about here? Has Harold Bloom weighed in on this subject, or are we talking about some Red Bull — fueled trolls surfing the Web in the wee hours?”

“It’s just been the subject of a lot of threads.”

“Threads?”

“You know, like online conversations about a particular subject on a site or a board. I’m not, like, saying you did anything wrong. I just want to set the record straight. Plus, I’m curious, what it felt like editing a book that’s partly based on you and your experience. Weren’t you at least tempted to rewrite a little? Clean it up?”

“Of course I was. And sometimes I was angry with Jeff, and sometimes hurt. But he was my friend and he was a very good writer, potentially maybe even a great one, and my first and only duty was to him and his book.”

He remembered wishing he could have changed the past as easily as he might have changed the nuances and even the facts in Jeff’s novel. He always told himself it was fiction, even when bitterly aware how heavily indebted it was to actual events. But he was proud of the fact that he’d improved the novel, though he wasn’t about to brag about that.

“But you must’ve changed certain things.”

“Far fewer than I would have if he’d been alive. I bent over backward not to do what you’re suggesting. It’s one of the lightest edits I’ve ever done, and nothing affected the tone or the story line. You’ve read it — obviously. It’s not as if the Russell-like character comes off as anything like a saint. He’s kind of comically full of himself at times, and clueless at others. And”—he paused, but what the hell—“he gets cuckolded.”

“That’s exactly what I’ve been saying.”

Somehow this didn’t quite track, given her line of inquiry, but he said, “Thank you.”

“What happened to the manuscript?”

“I have it somewhere.” Actually he knew precisely where it was, locked in a file cabinet at home.

“Would you ever consider…I don’t know, showing it to somebody?”

“Do you have anyone in mind?”

“Well, obviously, I’d love to see it. I mean, someday.”

Another interlude of silence set in as they concentrated again on their meals, a trance of caloric surfeit, warmed by the sunlight that bathed their table and spilled halfway across the floor of the room.

“Would you object to my seeing it?”

“I’d consider that a betrayal of trust,” he said. “The editor’s hand should be invisible.”

“The wine is really good,” she said.

“The perfect hamburger wine.”

“Would you think I was really decadent if I asked for another?”

“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 orgasm…