Jay McInerney - Bright, Precious Days

The intercom went silent, and after what seemed like an eternity he was about to turn away, when he was startled by the harsh metallic jangle. He reached for the door handle and pulled it open.

“I don’t believe it,” she said after letting him in. She was wearing a faded black T-shirt and white panties. There was a blue bruise with yellow highlights on her left thigh and her legs had a faint dusting of black stubble. It was the smell that was most familiar at first, a potent alloy of pot, dry rot, decaying food, dirty laundry and Japanese incense, which failed to mask the other smells. Behind her, on the floor next to the bed, was a pile of unwashed clothing; in the little kitchen, a half-eaten egg roll sat on plate beside a tangle of sesame noodles.

He stood in the doorway while she slouched against the door frame of the kitchen, just a few feet away.

“After all these years you just barge in here like nothing’s changed.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Are you at least going to come in?”

He stepped just inside the apartment and closed the door behind him.

“Why did you want to see me?”

“Because I’m in trouble and I need your help.”

“I think you wanted to see me because you wanted me to suck your cock. Isn’t that why you wanted to see me?”

“Don’t say that.”

“Why shouldn’t I say it? It’s not true?”

“That’s not why I came.” He suddenly realized that telling her the real purpose of his visit — that he hadn’t come for her at all, but merely for information that she might, by virtue of her employment, possess — seemed worse than saying he’d come for sex.

“Are you sure? Because that used to be why you came. You couldn’t stay away, could you? Do you remember how you’d come here in the middle of the night and ring my buzzer because you just knew that no matter what time it was I’d suck your cock for you?”

“Yes, I remember,” he said, his voice quavering.

“Would you like me to suck your cock now?”

She moved toward him, approaching within inches, the top of her head coming just up to his chin, and cupped her hand on his crotch. “I bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“That’s not why I came. I need to know if The New Yorker has canceled the Phillip Kohout piece.”

She grabbed at his crotch. Pushing her away, he almost knocked her over.

He turned, wrenched the door open and ran down the stairs. Halfway up the block, he heard footsteps, turned to see her loping after him, her panties showing beneath a quilted parka.

Before he could quite decide what to do, he found himself running; it was absurd, running from a hundred-pound girl. It was a reflex, an instinctive response; he’d just started running; he wanted to be rid of her, to put this entire sordid portion of his life out of mind forever, and she seemed determined not to let him escape. But he was risking his life in these new loafers and it soon became clear she could keep up with him.

He stopped at the corner of Spring and Thompson and turned to confront her.

“This is ridiculous,” he said, trying to read her expression as she stood a few feet away, panting. “What do you want?”

“What do you want? You were the one who came to my door.”

“Look, I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. It was a bad idea. Can we just say I made a stupid mistake and I’m sorry?”

“You think you can just make me disappear? That’s what you always thought, wasn’t it? That I just ceased to exist when you weren’t using me.”

“If I made you feel that way, then I’m truly sorry.”

A festive couple reeled toward them, their laughter chiming in the empty canyon of Spring Street, then dying as they approached Russell and Trish. Russell looked at the girl, with her messy straw curls, wrapped in a flowing black and white kaffiyeh, rolling his eyes in the hope of communicating the fact that he had no connection to this wild waif on the street, that he had nothing to do with the bruise on her thigh, trying to communicate his status as a hostage to the seminaked woman in Uggs and a parka, but the young woman showed no flicker of sympathy, turning up her pierced nose, mildly suspicious, disdainful of the tableau and its players, leaning into her boyfriend’s argyle sweater to mutter “Freak show” as they rolled past, laughing as they receded to the west.

“What do you want?” Russell demanded.

“What do you want?”

“I just want to go home, okay?”

“Home to your perfect wife, Corrine.”

“Just home.”

“How do you think Corrine would react if she knew you’d come round to see me tonight?”

“Come on, Trish.”

“Oh, what, I’m just supposed to melt when you say my name?”

“I’m going now — okay?”

He turned and stepped down from the curb, crossing Spring, heading downtown. When he looked back over his shoulder, he saw that she was following some ten paces behind. He turned and faced her again.

“What are you going to do, follow me home?”

“That sounds like an interesting plan.”

He turned again and broke into a run, but he was hampered by the slickness of his soles, which gave him minimal traction and kept him perpetually struggling for balance. When he turned to look back, she was in pursuit, half a block behind him.

He spotted a cab heading west on Broome Street and waved it down, nearly slamming into it as he slid on the street, jumping in and slamming the door just as Trish reached the curb.

“Just get me out of here,” he said to the cabbie, a Sikh. “And lock the doors.”

She was yanking on the handle of his door, but he held it shut until the man had activated the locks.

“Go, please.”

While the cabbie seemed to be assessing the situation, Trish walked to the front of the cab and threw herself across the windshield. The driver leaned on his horn, with no effect. She remained sprawled on the windshield, her white panties pressed against the glass in front of the driver’s face, looking in at Russell with an expression that was uncanny and serene, which seemed to say, You see what I’m capable of?

“Hey, I do not need this shit. Go. Get out of my cab.”

“She’s crazy,” Russell said.

“Get out!”

“Come on, man.”

“I call the cops.”

“Okay, call the cops.”

He disappeared below the seat back and reappeared brandishing a large curved knife — a kirpan. The name popped into his head, something he’d read; all baptized Sikhs were required to carry one.

“Okay, okay.”

He threw open the door and launched himself toward the Hudson, getting a good lead on her this time, dodging south on Sixth Avenue. He couldn’t believe he was fleeing this wisp of a girl, and yet he couldn’t see any alternative, as he was afraid she would follow him all the way to his loft. A girl who would throw herself on the windshield of a cab wasn’t going to stand on ceremony. He considered the subway station as he approached Canal Street but thought better of it.

She was still close behind him when he got to Canal Street, dodging through the late-night tunnel traffic.

Once he took off his shoes, he was able to put some distance between them, but he realized that he had to stop leading her to his home. Did she know his address? He veered east on Lispenard and ran all the way to Broadway before turning back downtown; looking back from the corner of Walker Street, he didn’t see her behind him, and he thought he might finally have ditched her, though he continued to move obliquely, down Church and east again on Walker, only gradually slowing his pace and registering the numbness of his feet.

He approached his building from downtown, via Chambers Street, scanning the street, which was, thankfully, deserted.