Jay McInerney - Bright, Precious Days

“But you know better than most.”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“That makes you a market specialist. My point is, stick to the market you know.”

Like a dutiful student, Russell nodded.

Satisfied that his lesson had been absorbed, or else bored with the topic, Tom said, “I’ll send my guy over to look at the books tomorrow. Meantime, let’s order something to soak up the wine.”

The sommelier was still standing by, waiting for a judgment.

After tasting it, Tom pronounced the wine sound, if not quite as good as the last bottle he’d had from his own cellar, and asked that four glasses be sent to the Goldman table. “Show them how it’s done in Bordeaux,” Tom said.

“So how’s Corrine?” he asked after they’d ordered. Russell had found the menu a polyglot document that blithely mixed French, Italian and Asian terms under the banner of New American cuisine. The raw seafood was listed under the banner of “crudo” rather than sashimi, drizzled in olive oil rather than ponzu or soy sauce, whereas a fried seafood medley was billed as “tempura” rather than fritto misto; and at least half of the main courses were cooked sous-vide, a high-tech method of slow boiling in plastic bags pioneered by the Troisgros brothers in Roanne, France, which all the ambitious New York chefs had recently adopted for their own purposes.

“Corrine’s fine,” he said. “I don’t know. Busy. Distracted.”

“Busy and distracted can be good,” Tom said.

“Not necessarily.” He paused, uncertain of how honest he wanted to be. Russell was generally reluctant to discuss his marriage with anyone; with Washington and his other friends, he always felt the need to put on a good front, to live up to the notion that he and Corrine were an iconic couple. Somehow it meant a great deal to him to imagine that people still believed that. But his guilty knowledge of Tom’s marital difficulties made him more comfortable about opening up.

“I can’t remember the last time we had sex.” Disloyal as he felt saying this, it was a relief, and strangely exhilarating.

“Well, of course you can’t. You’ve been married, what, twenty-five years? Your wedding was a few months before ours, right? Hell, I was there. I remember doing lines in Corrine’s bedroom with your friend Jeff. I mean, fuck, we all just celebrated our twenty-fifth anniversary. What do you expect?”

“I expect to get laid once in a while,” Russell said.

“Well, of course you do, but what does that have to do with your wife?”

“Don’t you and Casey—”

“Sure we do. At least three times a year. Valentine’s Day, her birthday and on my birthday, I get a blow job.”

The somm reappeared, bearing yet another glass, which he placed atop a cocktail napkin in front of Tom. “From the gentlemen at the other table,” he said.

After swirling, sniffing and sipping, Tom offered Russell a taste.

“It’s amazing,” he said.

“It is,” Tom said, lifting the cocktail napkin from the table and dabbing his lips with it.

One of the Goldman boys detached himself from the group and sauntered over to the table, glass in hand. Tom made the introductions and then they sorted out the weekend’s golf plans.

“So what do you think it is?” the man asked, nodding toward Tom’s glass.

“I was almost tempted to say Masseto,” Tom said, teasing out the conclusion, “but on second thought I think it’s ’82 Pétrus.”

The other man was crestfallen. “Shit, you saw the bottle.”

“Not easily done, that, when you had Don wrap a napkin around it.” Indeed, Russell observed that the bottle on the table across the way was swathed in white linen.

“Impressive, Reynes.”

“How did you guess?” Russell asked after the banker rejoined his friends.

“I know these guys. After my wine, I knew they’d have to try to top me. They don’t know Burgundy, so that means a First Growth Bordeaux from a great year. There are eight first growths, if you count the unofficial three on the Right Bank, and Pétrus is the only one that’s a hundred percent Merlot.”

“Still, I’m impressed.”

“As a matter of fact, I probably would ’ve nailed it,” Tom said. “But I didn’t leave it to chance.” After glancing over at the Goldman table, he lifted up the cocktail napkin that the sommelier had placed under his glass, on which 82 Pet was scribbled. “I tip him much better than they do. Plus, I’m an investor in this place.” He seemed very pleased with himself. “In life, in business, you need an edge. Information is power, Russell. You try not to leave anything to chance. I never make a trade unless I think I know more than the other guy does. That’s what I was saying to you earlier.”

“I’m not sure whom I could bribe to find the next best-seller.”

“If you’re confident in your ability to spot literary talent, if you have an edge in that area, then use it.”

Over the course of the next two hours, the exigencies of his professional life faded away as they progressed through a seven-course tasting menu and several bottles of exceptional wine, his anxieties anesthetized until, near the end of dinner, he wondered whether he’d be expected to split the bill, which undoubtedly would be larger than any he’d ever seen in his life.

Men in blue and gray suits stopped by the table from time to time to chat with Tom, to inquire after his golf game and his wife, to share their wine. It was a nice club to belong to, if only for the night. They were all brothers in the big-ticket buzz. Expensive winos. Wait, Russell thought, what was that from? It came to him: Keith Richards’s side project.

After yet another of these well-tailored acolytes of Mammon and Bacchus returned to his table, Russell asked, “So where do you go for sex, if not home?”

“Usually to a town house on East 73rd.”

“You have a girlfriend there?”

“I do. In fact, I was just thinking I might stop by tonight. You should join me.”

“We’re talking about…a whorehouse?”

“Well, that’s a rather inelegant term. I prefer to think of it as a gentlemen’s club.”

Russell realized that he was serious, and couldn’t help being fascinated by the idea of such places. Of course he knew they existed — every year or two you read about another busted bordello in the Post —but he’d never known anyone with firsthand experience, or at least he didn’t think he had, until now.

“Seriously, you should try it.”

“Even if I put aside all other considerations, I’m sure I couldn’t afford it.”

“Tonight’s on me. Dinner and a hooker. If we’re going into business together, we need to trust each other.”

Russell couldn’t imagine himself crossing that line, paying for sex, which was precisely what made the prospect so intriguing. It wasn’t as if he’d never been unfaithful to Corrine, and the ongoing sexual drought at home seemed like an ameliorating circumstance. Under the influence of at least a liter of insanely expensive wine, the prospect seemed not entirely unappealing — even without the suggestion that Tom’s investment in his company was contingent on his participation.

“Russell, you’re killing me here. Don’t tell me you’ve been perfectly behaved all these years?”

He shook his head.

“This is a guilt-free zone, dude. An exchange of cash for services. On the emotional level, you remain entirely faithful, which is what women really care about.”

The notion that Tom imagined he knew what women really wanted was so comical that Russell couldn’t help snickering, choking on his water in a fit of intoxicated hilarity.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” Russell said. He didn’t want to offend his host and couldn’t help wondering if it wouldn’t be ungrateful, not to mention impolitic, to turn down Tom’s generous offer. And wouldn’t he be cheating himself, in a sense, out of an archetypal adventure? What man hasn’t fantasized about that experience, even those, like Russell, who’d grown up in the era of feminism and considered themselves fellow travelers — which made the potential guilt metaphysical as well as personal.