Jay McInerney - Bright, Precious Days

“Hey, Jack, whassup?”

“Same old.”

“You wouldn’t be holding, would you?”

“Barely. I was thinkin’ about calling my man Kyle.”

“That’d be cool.”

“You got a place we could meet him?” To score the drugs and do them here, he decided, was just too fucking complicated.

“Send him to my loft.”

“Cool.”

—

Twenty minutes later, they were at Tony’s so-called loft, an entire building on West 27th, where he lived and worked. A bleary-eyed assistant opened the door for them, clad in a paint-stained chef’s coat. Several unfinished paintings hung on the wall, dozens more stacked in racks. Another assistant was sleeping on a futon in a corner, curled under a dirty quilted duvet. A yellow Lamborghini Gallardo was parked in the middle of the space.

“Used to be a truck depot,” Tony said.

“I should bring my truck here,” Jack said.

“You got a truck?”

“Back in Tennessee. Black Chevy Silverado 1500 Double Cab.”

“You can park it here anytime.”

A metal staircase led up to the living area, a kind of a mezzanine loft within the loft, furnished with antiques, Chinese porcelain and Persian carpets, except for the kitchen area, which was stridently industrial. Jack had called the dealer from the Beatrice, and while they waited for him, they snorted the last of his stash. Jack laid out the lines while Tony put New Order’s Substance in the CD player.

Tony found a bottle of Ketel One and filled two faceted crystal goblets with vodka. “You ever mainlined?”

“A guy’s got to have some boundaries,” Jack said. “I figure you’re safe as long as you just snort. You?”

How does it feel to treat me like you do.

“A little. Just chipping. Rock was my downfall. I discovered freebasing round about ’85 and that was my heaven and my hell. Me and Richard Pryor. Did it with him, too. The ritual of making it was part of the cult — it was a fucking ceremony. Dissolving the coke in water, adding the ammonia, stirring, precipitating out the impurities and finally the coke itself. That was the real deal. Nothing like it. Then crack came along, which was a kind of mass-market knockoff, an inexpensive shortcut, the Kmart version. But it was easy, it was cheap, it was insanely addictive. Making freebase became a lost art, like affresco painting.”

“Whatever the fuck that is.”

“It’s like wet plaster fresco painting. Giotto perfected it. Freebase — that’s like his Cappella degli Scrovegni.”

“Whatever.”

“Then crack came along and fucked everything up.”

Jack checked his phone for texts and messages. “Maybe I should call him again.”

“Good idea.”

But the call went straight to voice mail. “Waitin’ on the man, part five hundred.”

“I hate dealers,” Tony said.

“Scum of the earth.”

“Are you sure this guy’s coming?”

“He said he was.”

“How long did he say?”

“He said twenty minutes. But that was thirty minutes ago.”

“Dealer time. It’s like dog years.”

“Don’t I fuckin’ know it.”

“Did he say where he was?”

“He said he was uptown.”

“Shit, that could be anywhere. Did he say where uptown? Like Harlem uptown?”

“Just said he was on his way downtown.”

“You can’t believe any fucking thing a dealer says.”

“Yeah, but what choice do we have, really?”

“We could just say no to drugs. You’re probably too young to remember that whole fucking campaign. That was Nancy Reagan’s big slogan in the eighties. ‘Just say no.’ ”

“How’d that work out?”

“The drugs wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“Maybe I should call him again.”

“Definitely.”

Jack dialed again, listened to the voice-mail prompt. “Fucker won’t pick up.”

“I know a guy,” Tony said. “But he’s up in Harlem, and we have to go to him.”

“Man, that’s a logistical nightmare.”

Tony pointed to the car on the main floor. “This time of night, it’s ten minutes in the Lambo up the West Side Highway, tops.”

This sounded like a bad idea, but Jack was getting desperate, and he’d never let the fact of being impaired keep him from going somewhere to get more impaired.

Tony’s assistant tried to stop them, but Tony insisted he was fine to drive and told him to crank the garage door open. Jack folded himself into the snug embrace of the cockpit as the engine roared to life.

STOREY HAD BEEN BEHAVING strangely all morning; she seemed agitated, on edge. Russell had roused Corrine, flexing that sense of superiority that accrued to the partner who’d gone to bed early, and requested her presence at the table, though he knew she didn’t eat in the morning. Storey was rude to her mother at breakfast, which seemed to be the norm of late. She was feeling kind of insecure about the new school, granted, but this had been going on for months. Russell had called her on it. “Don’t talk to your mother that way,” he said, prompting her to flee the table in tears.

Later, after Corrine went out for a run, Storey marched out to the kitchen, where Russell was finishing the dishes, her lips drawn into a frown.

“What’s up, honey?”

“It’s about Mom.”

“Yeah?”

“She’s having an affair.”

“What? That’s crazy.” Yet, somehow, he suddenly felt sick to his stomach.

“I found an e-mail.”

“What were you doing in your mom’s e-mail?”

“I was looking for a scrunchie for my hair. Her laptop was open on her desk. I’ll show you.”

Feeling light-headed, he followed her to the master bedroom. Corrine’s AOL window was open, and the most recent e-mail, sent twenty minutes ago, was from someone called Luke, with the subject line Last night was amazing.

“I knew she wasn’t going to see Sandy. And I’ve heard them talking on the phone.” Her lower lip quivered with the effort she was making to contain her emotions, but finally she started sobbing violently.

He took her in his arms, trying not to cry himself.

“What are you going to do?” she eventually managed to say.

“It’s going to be all right,” Russell said with paternal insincerity. He had no idea what he was going to do. “You say you’ve heard her talking on the phone to this…guy.”

She nodded. “Luke.”

He didn’t think he knew any Lukes. Stupid name. Was it better that it was a stranger? “When did you hear them talking?”

“A couple times.”

“Starting when?”

“Maybe, like, six months ago.”

“Have you ever seen him?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You really shouldn’t be spying on your mother.”

He could see immediately that he’d disappointed her, but he was still living in a prelapsarian universe in which the old rules applied.

Jeremy barreled in to announce that Washington and his kids had arrived. “What’s wrong?” he asked, picking up on the gloom.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Russell told him. “Did you buzz them up?”

“Uh-huh. I better go out and wait for them,” he said, running out of the room.

“Let’s just keep this to ourselves for now,” Russell said, giving Storey a hug.

“Okay.”

“Go wash your face and then come join us.”

As long as Storey had been in the room, he’d been able to treat this new knowledge as theoretical, but now it became physical. Finding it difficult to breathe, feeling nauseous, he sat down on the bed, hyperventilating. She’d betrayed him with a man named Luke. Was she really capable of treating him this way? Sleeping beside him while fucking a man named Luke. Lying to Russell, lying beneath a man named Luke. It was intolerable. Luke who — Skywalker? The apostle? Bastard. He didn’t think he could bear it. He looked at the e-mail again: Last night was amazing. Just four words had changed the course of his life, cast doubt on his most fundamental beliefs.