Jay McInerney - Bright, Precious Days

“All right, I’m sorry, I looked.”

“No, you’re right. It’s a problem. I’m easily distracted. Sometimes, I have the attention span of a gnat. I’m surprised it took you this long to complain.” He reached over and put his hand on hers. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

—

Snow was falling again as they drove back up the valley to the house.

Their desire and their attempts to sate it reached a kind of crescendo pitch that night; they woke in the middle of the night to try it again, and then once more just before dawn. They rose afterward to watch the sky turn silver and pink across the meadow, which had a fresh layer of snow. After breakfast they strapped on cross-country skis and explored the countryside for an hour, briefly staving off the regret of imminent departure, though Corrine became increasingly melancholy as the sun rose higher in the sky, wondering if this might be the last time she would be alone with Luke like this, realizing that her real life lay elsewhere.

“I hate Sundays,” Luke said as he helped her unbuckle her bindings, as if reading her thoughts.

“Me, too,” she said, brushing the snow from her jeans as he unlaced his boots.

“Why don’t we stay an extra day?”

“I can’t,” she said.

“Why don’t we just stay, period?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean let’s be together,” he said, stepping out of his jeans and dumping them in the foyer.

“That’s crazy.”

“Why? What’s crazy is that I let you get away once, and I don’t want to make the same mistake again.”

“I love that you feel that way, but trust me, it will pass.”

“It’s been six years and the feeling hasn’t passed yet.”

“That’s because you didn’t have me. If you had, you would have gotten sick of me years ago.” And yet, even though she believed this, she found herself marveling that he actually wanted her still.

“You know, I’m used to getting what I want,” he said.

“Does that arrogant rich-guy line work on other girls?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Sometimes I forget you’re not like anyone else.”

“ That might work,” she said, stepping out of her jeans.

—

They landed smoothly at Teterboro, Luke emerging from the cockpit after the plane braked to a stop. As they walked across the tarmac to the terminal, she took his hand and held it. Inside, she was trying to steel herself for their parting, when they were accosted by Kip Taylor, sitting in the waiting area, who rose to greet them. “Corrine, Luke, what a…”

He seemed unable to finish the sentence, his surprise spawning confusion.

“Kip, I’ve been meaning to call you,” Luke said. “Got a company you might be interested in.”

Kip nodded skeptically. Corrine, too, was at a loss for words.

Luke said, “Headed someplace glamorous, I hope?”

“A little bonefishing down in the islands,” Kip said.

“Russell still talks about that trip with you last winter,” Corrine said, her voice sounding off-key, even slightly hysterical.

Before she could cobble together some plausible explanation, Kip said, “Give him my best,” then turned away and walked over to the counter, leaving her to wonder if it was only her own guilt that made this sound so much like a reproach.

“Oh my God,” she said as they walked to the front door. “What must he be thinking?”

“He’s going to think what he’s going to think,” Luke said tautologically. “But he has no reason to say anything.”

Even if this were true, she felt the weekend had been tarnished, if not ruined, with this abrupt reminder of her obligations and her place in an intricate web of social and familial and even commercial relations. Whatever had made her think she could just run away?

THE CITY GREW TALLER TO THE NORTH, the lowlands of SoHo and Greenwich Village giving way to the towers of midtown. In the foreground: Chessie Steyl, the actress, in a shiny purple dress with a plunging neckline, whom Russell was complimenting on her performance, hating himself a little for the inevitable clichés, the obsequiousness of the fan, even as he felt warmed by her proximity, and her acknowledgment of his existence. Their acquaintance, casual though it might be, was based on a few encounters at gatherings like this, a party following the screening of her latest film in the penthouse of the Soho Grand Hotel. Close up, he felt she had as much iconic presence as the Empire State or the Chrysler buildings glittering behind her. Russell occasionally sent her books he thought she would like, and she would inevitably send him a thank-you note, an actual handwritten missive on a monogrammed Crane notecard — she was a product of Greenwich, Connecticut, after all — and sometimes mention these titles in her interviews. Knowing Russell gave her a little shot of lit cred, helped her feel she was smarter than she looked, which, in fact, she was. For his part, he’d been thinking for a while that she might be perfect for the lead in the film adaptation of Jeff’s novel. She looked to him quite a bit like the younger Corrine Calloway. It would be an elegant sublimation of his desire for this sexy young actress to see her play the fictional version of his wife.

“I just got the galleys for Toni Morrison’s new novel,” she said, offering him a cigarette from her pack of American Spirits, which he accepted, although he hadn’t smoked in years. She produced a Zippo from her purse.

“May I?” he said, taking the lighter. He cupped his hand around the flame as she leaned over, offering a thrilling view of her breasts.

“What else should I be reading?”

It was flattering that she seemed to be devoting all of her attention to him, putting her hand on his arm and drawing him into a conspiracy that excluded all of the noisy and populous party in her honor. “Have I sent you Jack Carson’s short stories? No? Really amazing. He’s like a latter-day Raymond Carver, a smart hillbilly Hemingway. Incredibly powerful stuff. And I’m just publishing this memoir by Phillip Kohout — you know, the guy who got captured by the Taliban? He was going to come with me tonight, but he has a stomach thing. I don’t know if you got the invitation, but we’re having a launch party next week.”

“I can’t wait,” she said, letting go of his arm to attend to the publicist who was whispering in her ear, the spell broken as she nodded and turned back to Russell, flicking her cigarette away and kissing his cheek in parting.

Russell watched her waft away, her serene self-containment unpunctured by the spiky anxiety of her handler, and Russell found himself alone on the terrace, which seemed terribly cold now, high above the icy, sparkling city. The metropolis was uncharacteristically silent against the din of the gathering inside the penthouse, a ridiculous circus from this vantage: the babble, the postures and gestures, the ambition and striving and yearning coiled therein…the way the energy in the room shifted and realigned as the actress entered from the terrace. For a moment, he recognized how artificial it all was, but he, too, was part of it.

Back inside, he was heading for the bar when he was accosted by Steve Sanders, a cultural reporter for the Times. Decent guy, bit of a nerd, he somehow managed to get everything just slightly wrong when he wrote about publishing. Not malicious, just slightly clueless and humorless. Russell hadn’t seen him since the Labor Day party, when he’d brought that fat-ass hit man Toby Barnes along.

“I called your office earlier,” he said, “but you’d already left.”

“And here I am in the flesh.”

“I also tried Phillip Kohout several times.”