The Last of the Savages

by Jay McInerney

  “You want some of this,” asked the little guy, pausing in midkick to glance back at me.

  “You want a five-million-dollar civil suit?” I said. “I’m his attorney.”

  A braver man might have thrown himself into the fray, but my remark had the intended effect. The big officer pulled Will to his feet and read him his rights while the little one handcuffed him and glared at me in my lawyerly pinstripes.

  I was unable to make bail till the next morning. In addition to resisting arrest Will was charged with possession of marijuana, an ounce or so having been found in his pocket. He was subdued until we got in the car, at which point he began punching the seat in front of him, vowing to wreak havoc on the ruling order.

  I was irritable with hangover. “You can’t call a police officer a pig and expect to get a medal.”

  “No? You ever hear of the First Amendment?”

  “Not my specialty.”

  “I can see that.”

  “We’re not in Memphis anymore,” I said, a little smugly—the adoptive New Yorker.

  Not being a criminal attorney, I referred Will to a Yale classmate who’d studied at Fordham and served in the D.A.’s office. After his arraignment Will was allowed to return to Memphis; his lawyer informed me he hoped to plead down to misdemeanor possession, drawing a fine and six months’ probation. But prison remained a possibility. He postponed the trial twice. And eventually, quite by accident, I found a way to make Will’s legal problems disappear.

  XIX

  It was one of those tropical, malodorous August evenings in the city when I ran into Aaron Greeley for the first time in ten years. I was sitting at the bar of the Yale Club waiting for a client when a hand pressed my cooling, sweat-soaked shirt to my back. He looked much as I remembered him from freshman year—a preppie prince who just happened to be darker complected than most Yalies. He greeted me warmly, and I was happy to pretend that we had parted on the best of terms.

  Aaron was now an assistant district attorney; after Yale he spent a year working with Alabama sharecroppers before going to Columbia Law. I wondered what happened to the rage and dogma of ’70, when he and his compatriots had busted up our senate meeting. But then, the same might be asked about the country at large. It all seemed as far away as Gettysburg and Shiloh. Will was the only person I knew who hadn’t changed—still charging the hill, waving the colors.

  “What’s happened with your poetry,” Aaron asked.

  “Now I write briefs.” I paused. “And you were quoting Huey the last I remember.”

  “Yeah, well …” He shrugged. “Working within the system these days. Can I buy a fellow sellout a drink?”

  We were still checking each other out, reading the signs. My suit was standard issue J. Press. But Aaron’s double-breasted blue-suit-and-spread-collar-shirt combo seemed very racy to me at the time—too European to pass muster in my office—but he looked better in it than anybody I’d ever seen outside the pages of a magazine. This difference in style might have been imperceptible to most observers, but I wondered if after his walk on the wild side he had become comfortable enough to modify the hard won uniform of the preppie. Or maybe he suspected that within a few years, the tribal dress by which members of the eastern ruling class had recognized its members for decades would be mass marketed to the rest of America, would become just another style to pick off the rack.

  “Married,” Aaron asked.

  “Not yet. You?”

  “Having way too much fun, man.”

  Aaron said he was late for an appointment uptown, but insisted I come to a dinner party at his apartment the following week. “Just a few friends for spaghetti, no big deal.” This must have been just before spaghetti became pasta. “Bring a date.”

  As it happened, both Aaron and Taleesha lived in the same thicket of postwar apartment towers around Lincoln Center.

  Twenty minutes early as I staggered up out of the purgatorial subway tunnel at Columbus Circle, I dawdled up Broadway. Waiting at the light two blocks north, I noticed a kid I’d seen on the subway. Actually he might have been my age, but he wore tight jeans and cowboy boots, a T-shirt with a pack of Marlboros rolled up in the sleeve. He was regarding me with what seemed to be hostile intent, and my first thought, the instinct of a New Yorker, was to reach down to feel my wallet.

  Then he smiled and held up a cigarette. “Got a light?”

  I shook my head. He was a curious combination of thuggish and fastidious; his white shirt was immaculate, and his short hair looked like it had just been cut.

  “How about a drink?”

  I patted my pockets reflexively, not quite sure what I was doing, as if I might indeed have a drink stashed away on my person. Then I realized this was an invitation. “No thanks,” I said, blushing. “I’ve got a date.”

  “Lucky guy,” he said.

  Stepping out into the street, I was nearly hit by a cab speeding up to make the light. The cabbie slammed on his brakes and hammered his horn. “You stupid shit,” he screamed. I shrugged and jogged to the far corner, feeling incredibly foolish—like a tourist. When I looked back, the T-shirt waved. Suddenly I was struck by the ambiguity of the phrase “lucky guy.” Indignant and shaken, I hurried up Broadway to Taleesha’s building.

  “He’s really smart,” I told Taleesha as we descended in the elevator from her apartment. “I think you’ll really—”

  “Is he by any chance black,” she said. “Is that what you’re really telling me, Patrick?” She took my chin in her fingers. “What kind of number are you running here?”

  “No number,” I said sheepishly. “I needed a date for dinner with my old roommate. I called you when Lollie Baker said she was busy.”

  Taleesha was on to me, but she laughed and agreed to go along for the ride. As an escort, she was eminently suitable, though I had to stand rigidly erect in order to be almost as tall as she was in her heels. A black man sauntering down Broadway turned as we passed and called: “Hey, baby, looking fine.” And indeed she was—regal and unperturbed in a cream linen sundress, despite the wilting heat.

  The dinner party consisted of five couples, several jugs of wine, disco music and spaghetti bolognese. At one point I saw Taleesha register a Marvin Gaye tune I happened to know Will had produced. “I love this song,” said one of the women at the table, and I wondered if Taleesha would announce her marital connection. When she did not, I became suddenly proprietary.

  “A friend of mine produced—”

  But Taleesha cut me off. “You really shouldn’t be serving this Gallo wine,” she said to Aaron. “Haven’t you ever heard of the United Farm Workers?” She seemed to have taken an immediate dislike to him.

  “You’re absolutely right.” He stared at her with a barely perceptible smile. “However, it was brought by one of my guests, and I thought it would be rude to pour it down the sink.”

  “I’m sorry.” Stacey Colchester, a pretty young intern from Aaron’s office, hadn’t said a word until that moment, and now she looked as if she were ready to cry. “I just completely forgot about the boycott.”

  “I always forget that stuff,” I volunteered. “What I’m supposed to buy and not buy.”

  Taleesha looked at me and rolled her eyes; she might as well have said, You’re a wimp, Patrick. But I couldn’t help feeling solicitous of Stacey Colchester, the youngest and most demure member of the party, and wondering if she was Aaron’s date, or just a friend. When she started to clear the dishes after dinner, I jumped up to help her. She was shy, but under cross-examination she revealed that she was from Marblehead, Massachusetts, that she had just graduated from Holyoke, that her father was indeed Judge Colchester of the Circuit Appeals Court, a jurist I had admired since law school. She didn’t know Aaron very well but thought he was “like, a terrific guy.”

  “Like one, or is one?” This seemed clever until I said it, when it sounded merely mean-spirited.

  “Oh, God, I sound like an idiot. It’s just that I feel so much younge
r than everyone else and Aaron’s my boss. Are you two good friends?”

  “We met in New Haven,” I said, employing the falsely modest euphemism for Yale. “He was my roommate.”

  “Doesn’t he just think he’s God’s gift,” said Taleesha later, when I was walking her back to her apartment. “Thinks he could walk from here to New Jersey without using the bridge.”

  First thing Monday morning Aaron called me at my office. “Listen,” he said, “Taleesha isn’t—I mean, you two aren’t going out, are you? I mean, you’re just friends, right?”

  I laughed. “I didn’t think you two exactly hit it off.”

  “She’s definitely feisty,” he said. “I don’t normally go for black chicks.”

  “What about Stacey,” I asked.

  “Man, she’s just an intern here. My date fell through, so I invited her at the last minute. Stacey’s a good kid, but she’s straight as a fucking arrow.”

  “Actually Taleesha’s married to my friend Will Savage.” I could hear resounding silence on the other end. After a sadistic pause, I added, “They’re separated,” then said I had to run to a meeting. I was uncomfortable with the whole situation, but I told him I would call Taleesha and feel her out.

  She wasn’t nearly as dismissive as I expected, when I reached her later. “Hell, give him my number if he really wants it.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m a big girl, Patrick.”

  Feeling belatedly guilty and protective of Will, I decided I would not call Aaron, but he called me again within the week. “So how does it look?” he said.

  After I had given him the number he asked me about Will, and I found myself explaining Will’s pending case—resisting arrest, possession. Although I had not intended to ask his advice, and certainly wished to avoid the appearance of a quid pro quo, I suddenly realized that Aaron might be able to help. “Do you think you could look into this for me, see what you can find out?” I had never really stepped into the back alleys behind the paneled chambers of the legal system before. But I was willing to risk offending Aaron if there was the slightest chance of keeping Will out of jail.

  “I’ll check around,” he said tentatively.

  Three weeks later Will’s lawyer informed me the charges had been dropped. He vaguely attributed this victory to his own connections. But I heard the bravado of doubt in his voice. After hanging up I thought about calling Aaron, but I was uncertain whether it was appropriate to thank him or not. Over the next several days I found myself experiencing an overpowering sense of unreality as I sat through meetings, the world I inhabited suddenly seeming less solid and lawful than I had previously imagined. I would feel the same way years later when I heard about Felson’s murder.

  When I finally called Aaron it was ostensibly to ask for his intern’s phone number. I didn’t mention the other matter.

  “Stacey? Sure. Hey, if that’s your thing, be my guest.”

  Actually, I thought it might be my thing. Having learned from Aaron that she liked the opera, I called and invited her to Il Trovatore at the New York City Opera. By happy coincidence, it turned out to be one of her favorites.

  “My father took us to see it when I was six,” she said with sudden animation. “I loved the ‘anvil’ chorus. And I was so terrified about the gypsy witch who gets burned—I grew up a few miles from Salem, so witch burning was kind of a recurring theme in my childhood.”

  “So you’ll join me?”

  “That would be nice,” she said, almost inaudibly.

  Not counting Taleesha and Lollie Baker, this was to be my first real date in more than three years.

  Lollie was in the city in those years—one of those florid southerners who seem to transplant so well to the pavement of the Upper East Side. She’d left Bennington in her junior year, and by the time I arrived she appeared to know everyone in Manhattan. She wrote famously scathing book and movie reviews and had spent years working on her first play. We would meet once a month or so. She took me to Gino’s and Elaine’s and El Morocco and half-a-dozen places I would never have seen the inside of otherwise. Occasionally I had to carry her back to her apartment—two soaring, frescoed rooms in a converted mansion between Madison and Fifth. I slept on her couch more than once. On those occasions when she served as my escort for business-related social functions—fund-raisers or dinner at a partner’s apartment—she conscientiously restrained her exuberance. Until I met Stacey, I didn’t seem to have time for romance, and for some reason Lollie remained fond of me. Perhaps it was nothing more than the fact that people like Lollie need an audience, a role to which I seem all too perfectly suited.

  One Saturday night I was settling into bed with a novel when she called from Elaine’s, which was in my neighborhood. Though it was past midnight she insisted that I come meet her immediately. I demurred, or rather, I tried to demur; but Lollie was a world-class bully and she was also drunk. “I’m with a bunch of dead people. I mean, honey, we’re talking literally. Corpses. They’re starting to stink and rot. I absolutely insist that you come down here and rescue me.” And with that she hung up.

  When I arrived, she was sitting at the bar clutching a snifter of brandy. She insisted that I accompany her to a sex club downtown, a place so notorious that even I had heard of it.

  “Why would you want to go there?” It wasn’t that I was devoid of curiosity; quite the opposite. My carnal desires were as vivid as anyone’s—I daresay more vivid—but I was unwilling to pay the price of their fulfillment. Better to suffer one’s fantasies than to risk their grotesque translation into reality.

  Lollie squinted as if to get a clearer view of the moron she had mistakenly called for assistance. “Why would I want to go? Because it’s there. Because it should be amusing. Because life is fucking short, sugar, and I want to see as much of it as possible.”

  “Isn’t it a gay place,” I asked.

  “That’s why I need you,” she said.

  “No way,” I said. “That’s not in my job description.”

  “Come on, Patrick. It’ll be a hoot.”

  “For you, maybe.”

  “I was thinking you might like it.”

  I felt as if I’d been slapped, but I maintained my composure. “What would possibly lead you to that conclusion?”

  “Well, I don’t see any of us girls catching your eye. It’s like you and Will—”

  “What about me and Will?” Now I was furious.

  “He can’t get it up for white girls and you can’t get it up for any girls.”

  When she was drinking Lollie sometimes turned nasty, but this was more than I could tolerate. I stood up. “I’ll see you later,” I said, trying to sound less upset than I felt. I was hardly aware of leaving the restaurant. Before I knew it, I was striding down Second Avenue, a fine snow falling around me. Within moments, I heard Lollie running after me.

  “Patrick, wait.”

  I kept walking, propelled by my anger.

  When Lollie finally caught up, she took me by the arm and turned my face toward hers. “Patrick, I’m sorry.” I could see she was near tears. “I didn’t mean it.”

  “What part didn’t you mean?”

  “I’m just so damn drunk and lonely is all.”

  I was still angry—as only the guilty can be angry—but I wasn’t about to leave her there on the street. I flagged down a cab and gave the driver her address after we got in. Lollie was still clinging to my arm, sniffling, but neither of us said anything as we rode crosstown to Fifth. I stared out the window at the snow falling like mist on Central Park.

  At her building, I declined her invitation to come up for a drink, waiting until she was inside before I paid the cab and sent it off. Walking east, I watched the snowflakes fall in the lighted canyons between the dark apartment buildings, disappearing on the pavement at my feet. Passing cabs slowed down and then accelerated away from me, tires hissing on the wet street. In the uncharacteristic silence I was deeply conscious of the lives suspended in slumber
behind the brick and brownstone, thousands of my fellow creatures stacked in rows like books on a shelf. Or rather—because I imagined them all in pairs—like matched objects: creamer and sugar bowl, salt and pepper shakers, all locked away snug and safe for the night in their conjugal cabinets, together. And I was filled with self-pity because I could only imagine myself alone, an unmatched cup in a discontinued pattern.

  Chilled with loneliness, I turned and walked back to Lollie’s place.

  “It’s me,” I said into the intercom.

  She greeted me at the door in a wildly festive kimono. I was grateful that she didn’t question my reappearance, but merely held out her arms and enfolded me in her cushiony embrace.

  “Sometimes,” I said, “I can’t stand myself.”

  “Well, I love you, if it helps.”

  “Do you think I could stay tonight?”

  “Sure,” she said. She gestured toward the bedroom.

  I shed down to my boxers and crawled beneath the quilt on Lollie’s bed. Suddenly I was exhausted. Lollie dropped her kimono and crawled in beside me. She stroked my head, and I pulled her closer. When she kissed me, I realized that I loved her too, though I did not desire her, much as I might have liked to pretend that I did. My most fervid cravings pointed in another direction. And yet, admitting that I didn’t desire her and knowing that she accepted me as I was freed me of the fear of her carnality, and her judgment. And oddly, that freedom allowed me to want her. I found myself kissing her back and finally, with no discernible transition, making love to her.

  It’s a familiar trope that you can’t sleep with a friend without ruining the friendship, but we disproved it that night and on several other occasions. Some nights I needed her, and on others she likewise turned to me for comfort. If sometimes we stopped short or faltered in the middle, it didn’t matter. With Lollie I was somehow able to disregard the terrible awkwardness of physical contact between foreign bodies. And I was able to advise her without extreme prejudice about the other men who jumped in and out of her bed. Our own soothing interludes aside, she told me she liked it rough. And that Will, at least in her sole encounter with him, was surprisingly passive. And gradually I told her my own closely guarded secrets, which, lurid as they might be, were largely speculative. To my relief, Lollie was less shocked at my depravity than I was myself.