Story of My Life

by Jay McInerney

  The hand stops moving. Thursday night? he goes.

  Thursday night, I say.

  Was that the night I had a business dinner? he goes.

  And I go, I don’t know. Was it? You tell me.

  I’m not sure, he goes.

  And I’m like, maybe we should call Cassie Hane and ask her.

  He lets out a big sigh.

  Coming back to you now? I go.

  He nods real slow and dramatic, as if he’s a man who’s been carrying this huge secret around with him for many long years through the rain and the snow and had bamboo shoots stuck up his fingernails by people trying to get this information from him but he didn’t crack—and now that it’s finally out there’s nothing he can do about it so he’s kind of glad to be relieved of the burden. I’m beginning to think it’s Dean who should be the actor.

  I say, why did you lie to me?

  He’s like, I don’t know. I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.

  They’re hurt now, I go.

  I just . . . I made this date before I met you, he goes. I didn’t want to blow her off.

  You’re a real sweet guy, I say, not wanting to hurt anybody’s feelings. You’re a real saint, aren’t you?

  I’m sorry, he goes. I guess I should’ve told you.

  You shouldn’t have lied about it, I go. I told you that’s the one thing I can’t stand. I’ll be out the door so fast your head will spin. If you want to go out with other girls, fine. If you want to screw them, fine. But don’t ever lie to me. Okay?

  Okay, he says.

  And wear a goddamn rubber, I say. I don’t want to die from anything that comes via Cassie Hane.

  We lie quietly on the bed, both on our backs looking up at the ceiling. It’s the loneliest sight in the world.

  Did you fuck her? I say. This time I turn and look into his eyes.

  No, he says. He doesn’t blink.

  I don’t believe you, I say.

  It’s true, he says.

  I go, I’m not going to get mad at you. Believe me. I just want you to tell me the truth.

  I just told you, he says.

  You’re lying again, I go.

  No I’m not, he says.

  Why didn’t you fuck her? I say. Didn’t she want to?

  I didn’t want to, he goes. I was thinking of you.

  Well, you can forget about me for tonight, I say. Getting lied to turns me off.

  I’m sorry, he mumbles.

  I go, sorry for doing it or sorry for lying?

  Both, he says.

  So we do this manic depressive routine side by side in bed, both of us lying there like dummies for a while until we both start tossing and turning and yanking the sheets away from each other. Part of my problem is that I’m actually kind of horny. He got to my nipples before I let loose with the stuff about Cassie Hane. Finally I reach over and rub his hip, then feel for his cock, which gets hard in about three seconds, so I climb on top of him, slip it inside me. I hate to admit this but it feels good.

  This isn’t for you, I go, this is just for me. I’m still mad. I’m just horny.

  He’s not complaining. Dean may be a liar but he’s not stupid.

  7

  Just Contact

  Amazing, I wake up before Dean, drag ass into the kitchen and find some oranges in the fridge, an electric squeezer on the counter. Back in the bedroom I climb up and sit on Dean’s chest. I take a big drink of OJ, then lean over and dribble a little on his face. His eyes flutter open. This boy looks scared. Guilty conscience, I’d say.

  Did you fuck Cassie Hane? I go.

  He’s freaked. He turns his head both ways, then tries to sit up, but I’ve got him pinned.

  I want the truth, I say. Did you fuck Cassie Hane?

  Alison, he pleads. I guess he finally recognizes me. Was it the face or the tits, I wonder.

  Did you? I go.

  Yes, he says, I did. He looks away.

  Thank you, I say, climbing down off him. Thank you for finally telling the truth.

  I go in the bathroom and take a shower. The shithead has all the latest shampoos and conditioners, I’m beginning to think dickface is a little teensy bit vain. I went out with this male model once, the guy had more Chanel makeup than I did, that was creepy. Most guys’ bathrooms are strange, though, even when they’re disgusting they have a sort of impersonal, unlived-in feeling.

  Some kind of weird black soap that stings my vagina, which is a little bit sore to begin with, granted. That will have to go. I’m an Ivory girl. If I ever decide to come back he better have my soap, plus a refrigerator stocked with my favorite beverages—Diet Coke, Amstel, Cristal. Flowers. I think Dean the liar is going to have to pay for this little adventure. Hey, don’t ask me how I know, I just have this feeling.

  When there’s finally no hot water left I turn off the shower and use all the towels. Out in the kitchen, Dean’s dressed and making coffee. He looks like the boy whose dad just got home from work to hand out the spankings.

  He’s got his table set with place mats and everything, a plate of bagels and Danish in the middle, little jars of English jam that he stole from some hotel, probably, the Times and the Post.

  I went out while you were in the shower, he goes.

  Well, isn’t that special, I say, checking out Page Six real quick. I give it a lot of spin, a big shot of sarcasm.

  But at least he knows who’s on top around here.

  I gotta go to class, I say. I’ll see you around.

  Will you call me? he goes.

  I don’t say anything, I just shrug like, if it occurs to me in the course of my incredibly busy social whirl and my active and fulfilling sex life, maybe, possibly, if I’m near a phone at the time and there’s nothing good on TV.

  The thing about acting is, if you’re good you should be able to get all of that into a shrug. I think I did.

  He’s like, I’ll call you.

  If you want, I say.

  So I go to class and knock everybody dead, I feel really great about my work, I do this scene from Crimes of the Heart with this girl in my class. I’m the Jessica Lange character, Meg. Rob tells me to work on my breathing and wants us to do it again next week, but he says it felt like I was inside the role. That’s high praise from Rob. Then Carol—she’s like a housewife from the suburbs or something—gets up and does a monologue from Broadway Bound, the one where the mom is talking about the history of her dining-room table. She’s droning on and Rob’s watching from the back of the room.

  After a while Rob shouts, she’s in the attic.

  Carol stops midsentence, she looks like she’s been slapped. She says, do you want me to go on?

  Rob is like, you’re not inhabiting your role.

  So I’m not shy, I go, who’s in the attic?

  Haven’t I told you that story? Rob says, even though he knows he’s never told us, it’s like this big mystery. So while Carol is standing up there in front of the class with tears forming in her eyes, Rob finally tells this story about how this actress—really talented, right?—married a rich guy who wanted to make her a big star so he was basically buying her the starring roles in these plays, like he would put up the money for the plays if the director would let her play the lead. So one of the roles he buys for her is Anne in The Diary of Anne Frank. Well, this bimbo was so bad that by the time the Gestapo came knocking on the door to take her away the one guy who was left in the theater shouts—she’s in the attic!

  After class I stop off to tan. Work on that golden brown look that makes the boys so hungry. Get home feeling great, pick up the mail, June Vogue plus postcard from an old flame who’s in California now, wants me to move out there. “Remember that bench in Riverside Park? Love, Trip.” Trip’s all right. I don’t know, some girls get love letters, me, I get lust postcards.

  In the bedroom I flip on Live at Five to check out the news. There’s an update on the garbage cruise story—this barge full of putrid gunk from Long Island that’s been sailing all aroun
d the western hemisphere looking for a place to dump and big surprise, nobody wants the shit. Now it’s just been turned away from New Orleans or something.

  I check the messages—a worried one from Dean saying he’s really sorry, he wants to see me tonight and he’ll call later. I try dialing Francesca but I’m getting this weird signal, then a computer-girl voice comes on and says, we’re sorry, your service has been temporarily interrupted for nonpayment and I’m like, shit, not this again, fucking Jeannie. I don’t know, this happens every other month, just about, and suddenly I’m cut off from all my friends and delivery service from the deli. Trauma city. Last time it happened we moved into a room at the Plaza for a couple of days and charged it to Jeannie’s dad while we waited for the check to clear, but after he got that bill he called the hotel and told them basically to shoot us on sight, or at least not let us charge to his corporate account. Between phone calls and room service I guess we did do some serious damage. Rebecca was in Paris for some reason, some guy, and we had the line open to France for most of the afternoon one time, taking turns with Becca while the other one went down to Trader Vic’s for refills and all these fat out-of-town businessmen thinking we were hookers. . . .

  That’s part of the problem now since Jeannie’s dad is really fed up and he’s closed the vault. But it’s like, these goddamned fathers, they give us everything for a while and then suddenly they change the rules. Like, we grow up thinking we’re princesses and suddenly they’re amazed that we aren’t happy to live like peasants? With me it happened a while ago, Dad suddenly cut me off when I dropped out of college to come to New York, he’d been cutting down for a long time anyway, bouncing checks on me and shit like that, but Jeannie’s dad just suddenly started cracking the whip a couple months ago and it’s really cramping our style. Our first year in New York it was great, there were always guys around to pick up the tabs, and I’d just sold my Alfa for cash when I moved from Virginia, plus Jeannie had all the major credit cards. I admit we abused them a little. Jeannie’s AmEx card was practically transparent it had been run through the little machine so many times. That was our idea of exercise, the gold-card press. Back and forth. So then her old man canceled all the plastic and cut her down to fifteen hundred a month, which is, like, what does he want her to do, start selling her body?

  On top of everything else I’ve been thinking of tormenting Dean a little more, but suddenly the thought that I can’t reach him makes me a little panicked. I mean, he can still get me, we’re still getting incoming, right? But after fifteen minutes without a single call I’m thinking, shit, maybe they shut off all our service, the pricks. Dean might be trying to call now. What if it’s an emergency? I could be dying of a heart attack up here or something with no way to get help.

  The phone rings and I practically swallow it whole. It’s Rebecca. She sounds halfway sane at the moment, she’s over at the Stanhope with this guy Everett. And she’s like, can you believe it, he’s saying we’ve got to move to a cheaper hotel or something, turns out he’s not so rich after all and he’s spent his life’s savings on me in the last three weeks. I guess it’s sort of touching, but anyway, he’s proposing marriage and he wants to have my children blah blah blah.

  Story of Rebecca’s life. What is it about men, you take a guy who’s scared to death of commitment, who never makes a date more than two days in advance, you throw him in a room with Rebecca, who’s probably the most unfit candidate for matrimony and motherhood on the whole eastern seaboard, I guarantee you in five minutes he’ll be begging her to have his children. She’s babbling on, saying, and then there’s Manuel. . . .

  I go, that little drug dealer that looks like Prince?

  She goes, yeah, he’s practically camped out in the lobby, it’s really embarrassing, the doorman has to keep throwing him out and he waits for me on the sidewalk and begs me to marry him, he’s quit drugs for me—can you imagine anybody quitting drugs for me, of all people? And he’s quit dealing supposedly, which was the only thing he had going for him in my book and now he’s enrolled in some job-training program. All this so he can make a respectable woman out of me, buy a little house in Queens or something with a white picket fence. I mean, please. I told him that like ridding the planet of nuclear weapons would be a more realistic kind of goal, you know? Maybe start with that and work up. What is it with marriage this week, guys are proposing left and right, have you got the Post there, I should check my horoscope. Hold on, it’s room service.

  When she finally comes back I go, Rebecca, what do you do to them?

  Who? she says, her mouth full of something.

  Men, I say.

  Treat them like shit, she says. Everett’s sitting here pouting at this very moment. . . .

  Listen, I go, I really need money, have you got any?

  Not really, she says, and she whistles when she hears how much.

  I know she’s lying, I went through her purse one night looking for cigarettes and came up with three Swiss bankbooks and two more from the Cayman Islands each with like five or six thousand in her name. I don’t know where she gets it—guys, I guess—but she squirrels it all away in these banks all over the place and she’s always crying poor.

  What about Gran’s pearls, she goes. You could sell them.

  I don’t want to do that, I go.

  I’ll buy them, she says.

  I thought you were broke.

  I mean I’ll get somebody else to buy them, she goes. I have a friend who’s in the jewelry business.

  I go, which end of the business, stealing or stealing?

  Gran’s pearls are like this issue, I got them because I was her favorite and Becca has never forgiven me. She was furious. Since Gran died she’s been sucking up to Pops so she can be in his will, but it’s like she has this thing about the pearls, she wants them just because I’ve got them and Gran died before Rebecca could win her over.

  Jeannie comes home and I tell Rebecca I gotta go and she tells me to think about the pearls, it’s a triple strand of flawless twelve-millimeter pearls with a handworked platinum clasp. I’m like, yeah, I’ll think about it. Thanks so much for the help.

  When I hang up I tell Jeannie the phone’s about to be cut off again and she goes, I know, we owe thirteen hundred bucks, and I’m like, shit, that’s high even for us, were you and Frank having phone sex all month? and she’s like, no, we were having phone fights all month. Then her eyes get all teary and I remember this is a touchy subject. I’m supposed to be sympathetic now that Jeannie’s heart is broken.

  Why me? that’s what I want to know.

  Alison, what are we going to do? Jeannie says.

  You’ve got to call your father, I go.

  What about your grandfather? Jeannie goes. He’s loaded.

  She already knows I’d never ask Pops for money. One of my principles is not to suck up to him, I don’t know, he’s like one of the few totally decent people in my life. The whole family is all screwed up but Pops has always been good to me and I feel like I’d spoil that if I started using him as a cash machine. Sometimes he sends me a check but I never ask and I probably don’t write or visit as much as I should. Unlike Rebecca, who didn’t have much time for Pops back when she was a kid, before she entered the economy in a big way as a major consumer. It’s weird the way our childhood affected me and Rebecca—I find it really hard to tell a lie, it makes me nauseous, and she finds it almost impossible to tell the truth. Like everybody else in my family. But my baby sister Carol’s practically normal, don’t ask me how. So far. Sometimes I used to have this fantasy where I’d have Carol kidnapped by Australian bushmen or something and raised by them before she turned out like the rest of us.

  Anyway, Jeannie knows I won’t hit Pops up no matter what and I remind her.

  You could always get another abortion, says Jeannie. Call Skip.

  I don’t know why, this really cracks us up, we both go into hysterics. I’m laughing so hard I’m practically crying.

  Tell him the
rates have gone up, Jeannie goes. Tell him it costs six thousand now.

  We’re like rolling on the floor.

  I love Jeannie.

  Why don’t you get an abortion? I go.

  But Jeannie says she hasn’t slept with anybody but Frank and she never wants to speak to him again and anyway he wants to have kids, he’d just try again to convince her to marry him.

  I’m like, Dean’s feeling really guilty right now. He’d probably finance an abortion and throw in a free trip to Bermuda.

  I fill Jeannie in on the whole Cassie Hane episode and she’s like, fucking men, and I go, really. But after a minute I feel kind of guilty talking that way even though Dean’s a liar and a wimp and a totally worthless shit, I really like him anyway. Jesus, I must be getting soppy in my old age or something. Next thing you know I’ll be making goo-goo sounds and saying, it’s so precious whenever a baby comes on TV. But don’t hold your breath.

  What are you doing tonight? Jeannie says.

  And I’m like, I was thinking about letting Dean be my sex slave.

  And she says, has he gone down on you yet?

  And I go, that’ll be my one of my first commands.

  Let’s make a list, Jeannie says.

  And I’m like, whatever happened to my vibrator kit, anyway?

  Suddenly the phone rings and we both dive for it and Jeannie gets it first but I pull it away from her and she’s screaming in my ear.

  So how’s my little postmodern girl? Dean goes. That’s what he calls me sometimes. I love it. Hearing his voice makes me real happy for about two seconds but then I feel a little pissed, right? because, you know, it’s the same voice that lied to me. I’m being a little frosty during the chit-chat, so he gets down to important business, which is basically that Didi’s cousin Phil has been looking into the whole Didi situation, I don’t know how, and finally figured out that I wasn’t bullshitting when I said she had a problem. Anyway, Phil already made an appointment for her with this specialist who’s like the best in the world or something, but he needs our help. One thing he can’t understand is where she’s getting the money, he’s talked to Didi’s mother and father and they have no idea how she could be financing this big a habit—it’s not like she has a job—and Phil wants to know if she’s getting heavily in debt or fucking some dealer or what?