Jay McInerney - Bright, Precious Days

Russell did not feel beloved on the earth.

Inside the lobby of the Brook, he presented himself to the liveried gent at the front desk, who told him that Mr. Reynes would meet him on the third floor. He took the circular staircase, noting an air of geriatric decorum — or was it gloom? — among the members on the second floor. On the third floor, making his way to the front parlor, he detected a distinct undercurrent of melancholy in the murmuring convocation, several groups of two and three scattered around the room, sunken deeply into the sofas and club chairs, a faint honking akin to a flock of geese in the distance across a cornfield, the unmistakable whine of privileged white men with the blues. Russell suspected that most of them had lost a lot of money today, and that few of them were going to vote for Obama in November. Tom waved to him from a small table in the corner.

“Thanks for coming,” he said. “Hell of a day. I’m going right back to the office after this, but I figured I needed a break. The fallout from this Lehman situation is brutal. Dow’s down five hundred plus. Would you like a drink?” He looked tired, though by no means dispirited; indeed, he seemed cheery, as if invigorated by crisis.

He waved to the ancient server framed in the doorway.

“Hell of a weekend all round. All the big swinging dicks of banking huddled down at the Fed all weekend, trying to save Lehman and themselves. I lived through the crash of ’87 and the dot-com bust, but I’ve never seen anything like this. Gonna get much much worse before it gets better.”

The waiter hovered. Tom ordered a Bloody Mary and Russell decided it was probably a mistake to order a Negroni here. “I’ll have a bullshot,” he said — a manly, Waspy club drink to steel the nerves in the face of this onrushing bear market.

“I’m sorry about your, uh, situation,” Tom said. “I ran into Corrine when I was picking up Amber. It seems she’s staying with Casey.”

“I asked her to leave,” Russell said.

Tom leaned forward, nodding, uncharacteristically sympathetic and engaged. Or perhaps he was just curious to know what had happened.

“She’s been having an affair. I just found out about it.”

“God, I’m sorry.”

Russell felt a sudden welling of emotion, a tightening of his facial muscles.

“What are you going to do?” Tom asked.

Russell shook his head. “Don’t know yet. So what about you? Are you still getting divorced?”

Tom nodded. “Trying like hell to. It was a long time coming. But in the end, it just happened. Boom! Walk out a door straight into your future. You know as well as anyone that I wasn’t so well behaved. But the really weird thing, the thing I wasn’t expecting, I actually fell in love. It didn’t even occur to me it was possible. And I can’t tell you how great it feels. It was a huge relief, really, to find out Casey had been cheating on me. I mean, we have a lot of history together, and kids, and she’s not a bad person, really, but I don’t think anyone would accuse her of being deeply sentimental. That was part of the problem. I felt like our marriage was a business arrangement. Our parents grew up going to the same schools and belonging to the same clubs; we didn’t have to bother to get to know each other, because we already did. I’m not sure I ever felt for Casey what I feel for Laura. In fact, I’m pretty sure I was never in love. Who knew you could discover love in your forties? Well, fifty-two, whatever.”

Russell raised his glass, which the waiter had just placed in front of him. “Cheers, then. I’m happy for you.”

“Thanks. She’s an amazing woman. You should meet her sometime.”

“Is it possible we already met? Or rather, that I saw her across a room?”

“It’s possible,” he said. “Though if you had, I trust I could count on your discretion not to say anything.”

“Absolutely.”

So Tom had fallen in love with a hooker.

“The thing is, this divorce could get messy, since we don’t have a prenup. Can you believe it? Very old-fashioned. Or dumb. But Casey has money of her own and I’m hoping I can get her to be reasonable, though I have a feeling she’s not going to make it easy. Anyway, long story short, my assets are pretty much frozen for the foreseeable future, not to mention the fact the economy has just turned to shit. Lehman’s just the start of it. Money is going to get incredibly tight after this long binge of credit. The hangover is going to be heinous. I guess you see where I’m going with this. Sorry to say I can’t make any kind of personal investments at this point. Anyway, I wish you every success and I wish I could be along for the ride.”

Up until the last couple of sentences, his monologue had been surprisingly heartfelt and revealing. Only at the end, as the subject turned from love to money, had it become cliché-ridden and stilted. Along for the ride? Until a few moments ago, the collapse of a major investment bank had seemed somewhat remote, but now he felt a sinking, sickening feeling in his gut as he understood that he was collateral damage. He’d often told himself that he inhabited a world apart, that the machinations and fluctuations of the financial markets had nothing to do with him, and he was shocked to realize that he was deeply entangled in the current crisis. He’d always been a little scornful of that other world, the world of suits and money, but it turned out that devoting your career to letters didn’t give you immunity.

“I always liked Corrine,” Tom said before draining his drink and setting the glass down on the table. “I used to wonder how she put up with Casey.”

“Now she’s got no choice,” Russell said bitterly.

As he was walking back to the subway Corrine called, her name on the screen of the cell phone surprising him, as if it were unfamiliar. He debated whether to answer.

“Yeah,” he barked.

“It’s me.”

“I know. No surprises anymore.” Did he have to explain mobile phone technology to her?

After a long pause, she said, “I just wanted to arrange to see the kids.”

“When?”

“Maybe I could get them from school tomorrow, take them out for a bite.”

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll tell Jean.”

He thought about hanging up then, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to do so.

“Russell?” she said, finally.

“Yeah?”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Me too,” he said, before closing his phone.

—

“I don’t understand why Mom’s staying with Casey,” Jeremy said, brandishing a nubbly golden chicken finger. Russell had cooked his favorite childhood meal in the vague hope of normalizing a painfully abnormal domestic situation.

“They’re having issues,” Storey said.

“What issues?”

“We just decided that we needed to spend some time apart while we worked on some aspects of our relationship.” God, that was stilted, he realized.

“Are you guys getting divorced?”

“No, we’re not. We’re just taking a breather.”

Jeremy chewed moodily. “How come Storey seems to know what’s going on?”

“I’m a girl. I notice things. I observe the people around me. You’re a guy. You don’t.”

“Do we get to see Mom, at least?”

“Tomorrow afternoon,” Russell said, “she’s picking you up from school and taking you out.”

“Out where?”

“I’m not sure; that’s up to her.”

“Why is everything happening at once?”

“What do you mean?”

“A bunch of kids’ dads lost their jobs and everyone seems freaked-out about everything.”

“It’s a pretty scary time, son.”

“Could you lose your job?”

“Well, publishing doesn’t have that much to do with what happens on Wall Street,” Russell said, wishing that this were actually the case. If the credit markets froze up, as seemed likely, his chances of survival were negligible. He had a strong premonition that everyone was going to get soaked and battered in the coming storm.