Jay McInerney: Bright, Precious Days

Russell shrugged. He didn’t seem to remember one of the pivotal moments of Corrine’s life, had no idea that the complex emotional transaction of that encounter had preserved his marriage. Russell’s obtuseness had been a blessing in the event; he’d never suspected anything, so far as she could tell, never noticed how thoroughly she’d withdrawn from him back then, how close she’d come to leaving.

The lights were pulsing, summoning them to the main event. “We’d better find our table,” he said. She felt the familiar pressure of Russell’s hand on her elbow, guiding her forward into the throng, the radiant, bejeweled women with their taut faces stretched back over their ears, and their sinking cleavage, the men in their bespoke tuxedos with faraway stares, thinking about share prices in Hong Kong and mistresses in condos in the East Sixties.

Seeing Casey, their hostess, standing at the table, Corrine wondered if this had been some kind of setup. How could she not have mentioned, when she invited Corrine, that this was Luke’s charity? But what was the point, exactly? Luke was married, as was she. So maybe it was a coincidence.

“Corrine, you know Kip, of course,” Casey said, indicating Russell’s business partner. “And this is Carl Fontaine, who works with Tom,” she added, directing her attention toward a burly young man with thinning hair and a florid complexion.

“A pleasure,” he said. “I can see I’m very well seated tonight.”

She wished she could say the same, but at least his enthusiasm seemed genuine. She walked around to double-kiss Tom, who was fiddling with his BlackBerry, and Kip’s wife, Vanessa; they agreed unanimously that their children were doing very well, indeed, thank you.

The tables were extravagantly decorated in a safari motif — herds of toy elephants, rhinos and hippos wandering over the zebra-print tablecloths, a tropical jungle sprouting from a sisal bowl in the center. “I’m actually dying to hear all about the charity,” Corrine announced, taking up the glossy magazine-size brochure on her plate that featured a picture of Luke standing amid a sea of African schoolchildren.

“Well,” Kip said, “McGavock was a founding partner in the Riverhead Group, one of the top private equity firms. Big player. He retired a few years back, bought a winery in South Africa and planned to sit and watch the Cabernet Sauvignon ripen, but you know, guys like us, you can’t just sit on your ass no matter how much capital you’ve piled up, and sure enough he finds a project.”

“I don’t know if I’d call her a project,” said the man next to Vanessa. “More like a trophy.”

“Tony, you’re terrible,” said Vanessa, who, Corrine knew, had once been a trophy herself, and seemed genuinely amused by this remark.

“A little young,” Kip said.

“No, it’s actually age-appropriate for the second wife,” Tony said. “The formula’s half your age plus six years.”

Carl Fontaine picked up the Luke narrative: “Of course, vineyards are pretty labor-intensive, and he started getting involved with his workers. Adopted the village. Built a school and a clinic, and now he’s encouraging his old friends to do the same.”

Proud of Luke, Corrine wondered how much it cost to adopt a village. He really was a good man, a generous soul. She’d always known that about him. But how could he have gotten remarried without telling her?

“What’s with the scar?” Tony asked.

“Car crash,” Fontaine said. “Luke spent, like, three months in the hospital.”

Corrine tried to conceal her distress by waving over the waiter. Perhaps the girl had been at his bedside and he’d married her out of gratitude. She held out her wineglass for a refill of Sauvignon blanc, which Kip informed her was from Luke’s winery.

“It’s actually surprisingly good,” Russell said. “And I don’t normally go for New World wines.”

Did South Africa qualify as New World? she wondered. Wasn’t it the birthplace of the species? The home of Lucy and all those other hominid fossils? Didn’t get much older than that. She brooded through the first course, imagining Luke’s suffering, listening to Tom and the older man to his left comparing notes on game camps in Africa, arguing the virtues of Kenya versus South Africa.

“Singita Boulder’s incredible. Amazing chef.”

“We were at Masai Mara last year. Top of the line. Saw the big five.”

“What exactly are the big five?” Corrine asked.

“Five toughest game animals: lion, elephant, Cape buffalo, leopard, rhinoceros.”

Vanessa said, “I thought the big five were cats — lion, tiger, leopard, cheetah and…panther?”

“No, no,” Russell chimed in from the other side of the table. “The tiger doesn’t live in Africa, and the panther’s actually just a melanistic variant of the leopard.” He’d never been to Africa, but he’d read all of Hemingway.

Setting aside her notion of Giselle as nurse, Corrine imagined her as a predator, stalking Luke. He’d been alone in a strange land; she was a native, on familiar terrain, hunting him down. As smart and successful as he was, he was, like most men, emotionally naïve. His ex-wife, Sasha, had played him for years.

Someone onstage was talking about what a terrific guy he was, although the din from the tables made it hard to hear. At their table, Carl Fontaine was giving his own little speech about Luke: “Let’s hope he sticks with it. These private equity guys have a pretty short attention span, they’re used to the two-year turnaround — buy, slash, fix, sell. I wonder if we’ll even be here in three years.”

Corrine was indignant that no one was listening or paying attention. Did these people think paying $25,000 for a table absolved them of any semblance of courtesy?

The introduction was punctuated by scattered applause as Luke took the stage; she was relieved to notice that the chatter subsided. Standing silently on the podium, he waited until the room was almost quiet. “Ladies and gentlemen, friends, and former colleagues, and philanthropists. I was lucky enough to discover South Africa almost by accident. It’s a country of extraordinary diversity and beauty. I went there to manage a winery but ended up discovering a people….”

She tried to listen but instead found herself thinking about the first night they’d been together, at the little studio he kept in a dilapidated town house on 71st, his body stippled with stripes of streetlight filtering through the venetian blinds, the musky scent of him tinged with the residue of the acrid smoke from Ground Zero….

Fully clothed on the podium, Luke was saying, “For thirty-five thousand, less than the base price of a Lexus, you can build a double-room schoolhouse with a capacity for up to a hundred children. For the same price you can build accommodations for the teachers. Kitchens are very important, so the school can get government food grants and apply to the World Food Program. Ecofriendly, hygienic bathrooms cost about seven thousand. And water-catchment systems, gutters that trap and store rainwater in so-called JoJo tanks, these are a few thousand dollars. Less than some of us spend on a suit — I’m looking at you, Ron Tashman. Is that an Anderson & Sheppard tuxedo?”

This provoked a few ripples of laughter.

“Finally we have three clinics ready to build, each providing health care for an entire village or a township, for between a hundred and two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. You can find the details in your program. Put your name on one of those. On the screen to my right you are going to see some phone numbers next to particular projects. Text us your pledge and your name will appear on the screen on my left, along with your project. Unless, of course, you want to remain anonymous, in which case just put Ron’s name down, since he’s always happy to take credit. Let’s start out with the water-catchment systems, at a mere three grand. Come on, Chuck Coffey, that’s less than your weekly cigar budget….”