Jay McInerney - Bright, Precious Days

He tried to tell Corrine that he was in distress, but he was unable to speak, unable to bid farewell to the love of his life; and then, just when he was convinced he would die on top of her, he began to recover his breath and his panic gradually subsided. He faked an orgasm with several violent hip thrusts accompanied by a series of moans before rolling off of her, his anxiety subsiding to an almost manageable level, leaving him with a residue of dread, his relief tempered with a hopeless sense that he had just caught a glimpse of oblivion.

THE BEST MARRIAGES, like the best boats, are the ones that ride out the storms. They take on water; they shudder and list, very nearly capsize, then right themselves and sail onward toward the horizon. The whole premise, after all, was for better or for worse. Their marriage was seaworthy, if not exactly buoyant. Better off, surely, than the republic, bulging at the waist and spiritually enervated, fighting two wars and a midterm election, all of which seemed endless.

Or maybe not.

At least they’d had sex last night, the first time in God knows how long. She wished they didn’t have to go out tonight, but they had a gala benefit: the third this month. How had she let herself get talked into this one? Her friend Casey had insisted, and it had seemed harmlessly distant a month ago, plus she owed Casey for buying a table for the Nourish New York benefit. That was how the system worked. She couldn’t remember what tonight’s worthy cause was. Something to do with South Africa? Russell was leaving from the office, where he kept his tux, because these benefits were almost always uptown, in the traditionally patrician district, despite the fact that money continued to migrate down the island; happily this one was nearby, at the Puck Building in SoHo.

She sat at her vanity, which doubled as her desk, applying eyeliner with a sense of fatalism, knowing full well that at some point in the evening it would end up on her upper lids, which had sagged over the years. Would an eye lift be a total betrayal of her principles? If she could even afford it. It kind of sucked, being nearly fifty, discovering a new laugh line that you’d at first imagined to be a crack in the mirror.

She was getting more than a little sick of black-tie benefits. Even though they usually attended as guests, rather than ticket buyers, she didn’t have the wardrobe to do full formal all that often. The Upper East Siders, like Casey, her girlhood friend and prep school roommate, went to two or three a week and never repeated a dress. The younger society girls borrowed from the designers and the jewelers, but their mothers spent the equivalent of a Range Rover on dresses every month. Associating with the rich was inevitably expensive, even when they were ostensibly paying. You paid one way or another. Corrine was going to have to wear one of the two long dresses in her closet, the Ralph Lauren probably, the one she’d bought for less than half retail at the sample sale, the same thing she’d worn to the Authors Guild benefit, and hope that no one remembered it. But then, why would they? It wasn’t as if the party photographers immortalized her fashion choices. And she didn’t feel like she was getting all that much masculine attention, either. She examined the satin bodice in the mirror. Was it tight? Tighter than a month ago? And what about shoes and a bag? More things she wished she could afford to indulge in. She settled on the silver Miu Miu pumps to sort of go with her grandmother’s silver mesh clutch.

Corrine tottered out of the bedroom, taking care with her heels on the undulant antique oak floor of the loft, with its treacherous gaps. God, she was so over loft living — that was one of the things they fought about, her desire to move; the fact that the kids could get a better education outside Manhattan, since it didn’t look like they could afford private school tuition for both next year, after the kids graduated from PS 234. They’d be positively well-off if they lived almost anywhere outside this wealthy, skinny island. It was always about money, somehow — except when it was about sex. Young idealists, Ivy League sweethearts, they’d followed their best instincts and based their lives on the premise that money couldn’t buy happiness, learning only gradually the many varieties of unhappiness it might have staved off. Russell liked, especially after a few drinks, to divide humanity into two opposing teams: Art and Love versus Power and Money. It was kind of corny, but she was proud that he believed it, and of his loyalty to his team. For better and for worse, it was her team, too.

The kids were on the couch, watching the new Shrek video. Jean, the nanny, meanwhile oblivious, distraught, pacing in the corner, fighting with her girlfriend on the phone. Apparently living with a woman was also difficult.

“Bye-bye, my little honey bunches. Love you tons.”

“Where are you going?” Jeremy asked.

Corrine waited for Storey to comment on her outfit, but she remained absorbed in the video.

“I’m going out to save the world.”

“How does going out save the world?”

“People buy tickets to fancy parties,” Storey explained, “and then the money goes to, like, people with diseases and abused animals and stuff. It’s called a benefit.”

“Exactly.”

“Why don’t you just give the money and stay home?”

“Because adults like parties,” Storey said.

Corrine saw that her motives didn’t really bear scrutiny. She wasn’t actually giving money and she wasn’t even looking forward to this event. She was a fraud, a pretender, a hypocrite. But then, the kids seemed fine. Just a year or two ago they used to get distraught, try to argue her out of going out, weep and gnash their teeth, but now they seemed perfectly content to let her go. She wasn’t sure this development was entirely welcome.

The elevator rattled as if in its death throes. She found a cab on Church Street, which also rattled and lurched. What was that band that Storey liked, Death Cab for Cutie?

A cluster of yellow cabs and black Lincoln Town Cars debouched sleek New Yorkers two by two into Lafayette Street at the entrance to the hulking red edifice, where they elbowed and kissed one another, funneling between the gray pillars, beneath the gilded statue of Puck, who disregarded them as he admired himself in a hand mirror. If only, Corrine thought, he might bring a little mischief to what promised to be a thoroughly boring evening.

—

She checked her coat, picked up her table number at reception, followed the throng into the ballroom, where, failing to spot her husband, she scanned the silent-auction items: the handbags and jewelry, the photo sessions with prominent lensmen, the trips — golf in Scotland, salmon fishing in Iceland, wine tasting in Napa, game watching in Kenya, river rafting in Zambia. Looking up, she spotted Casey Reynes at the bar. They’d remained close despite the divergences of their post — Miss Porter’s lives; Casey had married an investment banker and lived in a town house on East 67th; this was Casey’s native environment — the charity ball circuit. She was wearing a sea foam blue empire-waist gown accessorized with tasteful diamonds. Very few women could have pulled it off, but somehow Casey looked as if she’d been born in a ballroom.

“Corrine, oh my God, I was just thinking about you.”

They exchanged kisses on each cheek, Casey dipping in for a third, as was the latest practice in her circle. Sometimes Corrine had to struggle to see her friend underneath the facade of tribal costume and customs.

“I appreciate your coming out for this.”

“What’s the cause?”

Casey smiled enigmatically, her forehead serene and undisturbed, but at either edge of this chemically frozen expanse a series of tiny lines, like stitches, betrayed some sort of emotion, though Corrine couldn’t quite interpret which.