Brightness Falls

by Jay McInerney

  26

  Sasha Melman and her social secretary were attending to the place cards when Bernie arrived home. He crept up from behind and stood on his toes like a ballerina to kiss his wife's long, cool neck.

  "Who is this Washington Lee," she asked, stooping to offer her cheek.

  For a moment he was baffled. "Who?"

  "That's what I want to know. He's on the guest list, and I certainly didn't put him there."

  "He's our extra man," said the social secretary, a corpulent blonde in a caftan. "Mr. Melman suggested him after Cappie Raymond canceled."

  "Oh, him. He's an editor."

  "Why are we having him?"

  "It's business."

  "Well, who should I put him next to? Is he old, young?"

  "Actually, he's black."

  "Really? How interesting," she said, in a bemused tone that seemed to suggest she had more social experience with Tibetans.

  "Yes, I thought it might be," Melman said, rather pleased with himself now. And it was just a small dinner party, anyway, not a major event.

  "What if I put him next to Minky," she suggested to the secretary. "She's the youngest single girl we've got, and I'm not sure I trust her next to the ambassador after that stunt she pulled in Southampton..."

  Greeted at the front door by a tuxedoed attendant, Washington was admitted to a vast entry hall, marble underfoot and ormolu overhead, where he surrendered his umbrella under the suspicious gaze of two security thugs. One did not need to interview them to understand they did not quite approve, securitywise, of young black male guests. A more accommodating attendant bowed him toward the staircase and seemed prepared to carry him up the stairs, if required. Washington managed the ascent under his own power, eventually attaining level ground in what looked very much like a museum—ancient mummies standing at attention with champagne flutes in hand; high walls encrusted with paintings in elaborate gilt frames, each bearing a lozenge or plaque inscribed with artist, title and date. While the paintings in Melman's office were stridently modernist, the domestic collection, like the furnishings, was from earlier centuries—a full-length Sargent portrait of a stern female Bostonian being the painting nearest to the present day.

  His hostess disengaged herself from a group of sleek, brightly plumed women, all of whom seemed to have medium-length domes of blond hair. She greeted Washington as if they were old friends. He recognized her from her pictures in W; she recognized him by his color. "How nice to see you. Let me introduce you."

  She took his elbow, her hand surprisingly large. A legendary beauty, close up Sasha Melman looked, to Washington, rather like something fashioned from a new synthetic, a permanent-press version of the human epidermis. As if she were meant to be seen not in person but in photographs.

  Washington had heard of many of the guests, rich and accomplished people who were perfectly willing to deposit a certain amount of credit to his general account simply because he was here among them. The Melmans didn't have just anybody. Mainly, it seemed to Washington, they had tall, thin women with cleavage and short, pudgy men with leverage. He moved cautiously around the room, which seemed over-furnished with gilt and upholstered antiques, trying not to upend anything, and made a point of drinking far less than he wanted to, lest he find himself engaging in some faux pas. He would have been much happier if he'd known someone. Finally Minky Rijstaefel appeared, breathlessly kissing everyone in the room, in Washington's case actually making contact, and on the lips no less, providing a goal for the evening. He'd had his eye on her for a while. If he could just survive this fucking dinner, then he would invite her out later for some live fun.

  He listened politely while a knot of New York plutocrats made fun of rich Texans: "So Joe Bob says, 'What do you want for Christmas, Sally Sue?' and Sally Sue says, 'Actually, I was thinking this Christmas I'd like a divorce.' And after a long pause Joe Bob says, 'Actually, darling, I wasn't planning on spending that much.' " Washington considered telling them the joke about the black Mother Hubbard whose kids all have the same first names, but then Melman took him aside and led him into a book-lined den. On inspection the books proved to be leather-bound collected-works editions of nineteenth-century authors; Washington would not have been surprised if Bernie, who seemed, for a moment, to be examining the collection of titles fondly, had pulled one from its shelf to say, "See, real books," to distinguish himself from those home decorators who bought false spines to order.

  "Just wanted to tell you I'm glad to have you aboard, right?" he said, but in fact, he also wanted to ask Washington to work as a go-between, one black fellow to another, and find out what it would take to make Donald Parker happy. "Everybody's going to make out on this deal, and we like to start out with goodwill. You know what I'm saying?"

  Washington was powerfully inclined to tell Melman to go fuck himself, but he found himself unexpectedly docile here in Melman's own house, in the presence of the artwork and the servants and the Frankenstein wife. Melman himself seemed perfectly at ease with his surroundings while not seeming to belong to them at all. Imagining him as an accountant in New Rochelle made it possible, for a moment, for Washington to be direct: "I can tell you right now, sending me to carry messages is going to piss him right off. "

  "What, you two don't get along?"

  "That's not the problem. I just think that sending your only, uh, black employee would smack of, how you say in English—"

  "What is he, prejudiced? Fucking guy screams racism whenever anybody in Harlem catches a fucking cold, and you're telling me he doesn't want to talk to you because you're black? This is bullshit." Bernie rested a hand on Washington's shoulder, winked at him and whispered, as if the preceding tirade had been delivered for hidden microphones of dubious quality. "Look, I know what you're saying. All I'm saying is, set up a meeting. Tell Parker I'm a real asshole. Really run me down, say whatever you can think of. Then see if he opens up at all, see if you can find out anything for me in advance, okay."

  "I'll see what I can do," Washington said doubtfully, acutely aware of his own capacity for avoiding unpleasant duties but eager to show some goodwill. Meantime, Bernie's arm, draped on his shoulder, required him to stoop as they paced around the room.

  At dinner Washington sat at one of four tables, between Minky Rijst-aefel and a fat woman whose husband was on the board of the Met. Normally, Minky whispered, really fat people wouldn't be invited to dine at the Melmans', but Bernie was dying to get on the board of the museum. "He's dangling ten million, which was basically what the last seat cost you know who, but what with the bull market he might have to come up with a couple more..."

  Having indulged liberally of the Taittinger and the Pétrus, Washington needed to relieve himself; he'd been reluctant to do so when dinner was announced, and now his need had increased, but he couldn't very well leap up from the table between courses. He stayed away from his wine and water glasses and pretended to be interested in the fat lady's discussion of Jean Michel Basquiat and other Afro-American artists. Finally, after he'd eaten the two thin wafers of veal that constituted his main course, he could stand it no longer.

  "Are you holding?" Minky whispered in his ear, when he asked to be excused for a moment. Though he wasn't, he suddenly worried that this was precisely what his host and hostess would think, seeing him race to the bathroom before dessert. The wild-eyed Negro drug addict. But he didn't suppose pissing on the Persian carpet would make him outlandishly popular, either.

  He shook his head, negative on possession, but Minky gave him a look which, if he was any reader of the feminine countenance, combined skepticism and lust.

  Walking stiffly out of the dining room he encountered a tall, bald retainer standing at attention, Jeeves-like, just outside the door.

  "Men's room?" he inquired succinctly.

  "There is a rest room just around the corner, to your left, sir." Carrying a hint of accent, his voice conveyed a firm core of delegated aut
hority, as if he were the majordomo rather than just another flunky.

  "Just wanted to steal the fixtures, man."

  Rounding the corner, he collided with a body, painfully jarring his bladder and knocking the body, that of a teenaged girl, to the floor.

  "I'm sorry," he said, reaching down to take the girl's hand. She was worse than deadweight, giggling and thrashing as he attempted to right her before anyone could witness this. She was, he saw, very drunk.

  "Who are you?" she demanded, as he held her shoulders and pinned her upright against the wall.

  "A guest."

  "A. Guest. Nice name. What's the A stand for?" She found this a marvelous joke; he had to hold her as she went limp with laughter.

  "Who are you?"

  "C. Melman. The C stands for 'Caroline.' Or..." The thought was so hilarious that she was unable to complete it. Something slipped off her wrist; she reached down and picked up her watch, rocking back on her heels and nearly tipping over backward as she righted herself. She held up the watch, a Cartier Panther, the clasp of which had broken in their collision. "Ten-thirty curfew. Three minutes to spare."

  "Congratulations. Now, if you'll excuse me," he explained, "I've got to, uh, go to the restroom."

  "Me too."

  "Not with me. "

  "Can go by yourself s'long's you promise come back."

  They were alone in the hallway, but it seemed likely that at any moment one of the slaves would march into view and witness this sordid scene, in which he was implicated.

  In the bathroom, he took his time, hoping she would stumble off down one of the endless corridors. There was much to occupy his attention; a set of Jasper Johns prints, gold-plated fixtures, toilet paper neatly folded at the end to point, hotel style. He yanked on the roll gratuitously, vowing to come back later and check up on the housekeeping.

  The girl was still leaning against the wall where he had left her. "I'm, like, a little dizzy," she admitted. "I think I better lie down for a little while, I'm feeling a little... Will you walk me to my room?"

  "I better get back to the grown-ups." Watching her, he began to feel dizzy himself.

  "I want to show you something," she said archly.

  He waved and started to leave, but she leaped across the hall and seized his arm.

  "Okay, I'll come with you," she proposed. "Say night-night to Dad and dear old Stepmother." Washington wasn't about to reenter the dining room with his host's drunken daughter draped all over him. Innocence was no longer the issue.

  Giggling, she raised her eyebrows luridly, an operation that seemed to disorient her. She collapsed into his arms, dropping her watch on the floor. "Let's go see Dad and the dyke," she suggested dreamily.

  He bent down to retrieve the brilliant timepiece, known in certain circles as the mistress watch, lowering himself slowly while supporting her weight on his shoulder. "Have you got a pocket?" She shook her head many more times than was necessary.

  "You hold for me. Hold me."

  "Why don't you just go upstairs to your room," he suggested desperately, stashing the watch for the moment in his jacket pocket.

  "Take me."

  Suddenly another Jeeves impersonator appeared from around the corner. "Is everything all right?" '

  "I think Ms. Melman needs to go to her room," Washington said innocently.

  "You promised a bedtime story," Caroline whined, as Washington attempted to hand her off to the butler.

  "Thanks very much," he said to Jeeves, who viewed him coldly, after they had broken Caroline Melman's grip on Washington's neck and transferred her to the butler's arms.

  Washington's instincts, as opposed to his reason, dictated flight. Though he hadn't done anything wrong, the ancient wisdom of his race told him that he'd be blamed, and perhaps in anticipation, he felt guilty. He didn't think he could deal with the fallout, the explanations, the stiffs back there in the dining room.

  Rapidly descending a staircase intended for grand, cinematic entrances and exits rather than tawdry escapes, he attained the marble entry hall, and thought he was home free, until he saw the two bodyguards huddled in consultation with the majordomo who had first steered him, so disastrously, toward the bathroom. All three of them turned to regard him as he descended. He tried to suppress the feeling of guilty terror that spread from his brain to his face, to convince himself he was guilty of nothing worse than a breach of manners in leaving without a formal farewell—etiquette not being an area in which the domestic staff had my enforceable authority. Attempting to summon a little hauteur for these underlings—My umbrella, man, the hundred-and-fifty-dollar stick from Sulka with the burled malacca crook, thank you so much. Under the evil eyes of the bodyguards, Washington felt the righteous indignation of the holy innocent: How dare you even think of harassing one of Mr. Melman's guests, in violation of the most fundamental precepts of hospitality? Patting down his pockets, reflexively, to demonstrate that he had not in fact unscrewed and pocketed the eighteen-carat-gold bathroom fixtures, he felt a suspicious lump in his jacket and realized with maximum horror that he was in possession of his host's daughter's ten-thousand-dollar gold watch. His hands and knees began to shake as he approached the vigilant triumvirate stationed between him and the front door.

  Lurching like a drunk in his terror, he nearly collapsed on the pale peach runner stretched between door and stairs. To minimize the potential for further indignity, he scooped the watch from his pocket and handed it to the bald man, muttered something about finding it on the carpet and fled into the welcoming night.

  27

  By show time the house was nearly, if heterogeneously, full: students in blue jeans and practical cottons surreptitiously studied the downtown aesthetes in black leather, who were unhappy to find themselves among so many suits, those hip real estate lawyers and media execs who hadn't had time to change after work, including one young free-lance social critic in blue pinstripes who stood in the ticket line and complained, "This place is full of yuppies." There were also widows who lived on Sutton Place and in Bar Harbor who came to all of the readings and contributed generously to the support of poetry magazines and experimental theaters; gaunt twenty-two-year-olds who worked at bookstores and publishing houses and ad agencies when not laboring on their first novels. Harold Stone was here—with one of the young literature students—as were the chiefs of half a dozen publishing houses and magazines. The press was present to verify the reality of the occasion. Juan Baptiste, happily settled into his uptown gossip column in one of the tabloids; a stringer from the Cleveland Plain Dealer; a feature writer from the Times.

  Defying the summer heat, a man in a giant hooded green parka was camped out amidst a sprawl of books, papers and bags in the front row. A correspondent of Victor Propp's, he possessed a complete collection of the author's periodical publications and many related and marginal materials, stacked in cardboard boxes inside his tiny walk-up apartment in Jamaica, Queens. Others with a similarly hungry if less proprietorial air loitered in the aisles—those wild-eyed men and women who haunt literary events hoping to receive some impossible, healing message from the laureate, the wise man in whose words they have discovered the unique private significance, or whose words they may not have read yet but fully intend to, in the meantime seeking a sign—a word, a blessing, the telephone number of a good agent. Bernie Melman arrived late, with Sasha towering blondly at his side, along with two of his bodyguards, and took his reserved seat in the front row beside the man with the green parka, who defensively rearranged his own empire of paper.

  Russell had primed the pump by inducing a friendly journalist to write a short piece titled "Who the Hell Is Victor Propp?" for the front section of New York magazine. Bernie Melman's wife had planned a "little supper" at their home after the reading, which the Post's society column had that morning declared the "hottest invite in town."

  Russell and Corrine were waiting backstage with Victor and
his companion, Camille Donner, a celebrated lover of litterateurs. A thirtyish beauty with famous red hair, she had lived with two other novelists before moving in with Propp. In addition to her amuletic function, she attended to the quotidian details of life, which Victor found impossible, serving as housekeeper, secretary and treasurer—though it was difficult for most observers to envision Camille with a mop in her hands. She, too, was said to be writing a novel. Harold Stone had introduced her to Russell years before at a publication party; as she looked through him, his body at that time having the low-density, transparent quality common to editorial assistants and others of negligible position, she had nevertheless taken the time to ask him who he thought was the best novelist in America. When, partly out of a young man's desire to purvey unconventional opinions, Russell had proposed dark horse Victor Propp, she'd been surprised enough to focus her green eyes on her interlocutor for a moment and size up his conviction. "Who," she'd asked, scribbling a mental note to double-check this seemingly eccentric opinion with higher authorities. Pleased to have captured her attention, Russell had ardently described the work of his cultishly obscure hero while trying to cope with waves of mind-scrambling lust—a conversation that he doubted she would wish to be reminded of, and that he had never mentioned to Victor. Now she stood beside the great man, her lover, serene with the conviction of the beautiful woman who has no need to make strident claims on the notice of any gathering.

  Victor was pacing the floor of the hospitality room, increasingly ner- vous. Only slightly less agitated was Mathilde Fortenbrau, the benevolently schoolmarmish representative of the Y, who began tugging on her steel-gray pigtails at seven forty-five. "Perhaps we should call him again," she murmured over and over. Russell had planned to meet Jeff for a drink downtown first, but when he called to confirm a woman with a Spanish accent had answered and announced he was busy and would come directly to the reading instead.