Then they perilously navigated the siren straits of expensive Italian-dressed windows—Pratesi, Valentino, Armani and Versace—Russell yielding again to the tug of desire at Sherry-Lehmann, a habit he had acquired from Harold Stone, purchasing a bottle of Les Amoureuses and a bottle of champagne, which exercise seemed to give him a buzz and sharpen his acquisitive instincts.
The last stop was Bergdorf Goodman, where they immediately—and in Russell's view, predictably—ran into Casey Reynes, who was thrilled to see Mrs. Makepeace again and who told them all about the new baby, spreading the pictures out on the perfume counter. From the detailed descriptions of its amazing habits and foibles, Russell thought, one might imagine that it was the first infantus Homo sapiens.
"He's quite pale," Russell said, smiling at Casey. "I would've thought he'd have a little more color."
For a moment Casey looked baffled, then went slightly pale herself, scrutinizing Russell's face; but she recovered quickly. "I'm refurbishing my wardrobe after all those months of maternity dressing," she told the women. "Tom told me just to get absolutely whatever I want after what I went through, the sweetie. He's in Minneapolis on a deal."
Russell detected here an implied comparison of husbands and credit limits. "Casey still can't quite believe you can't just pay somebody to carry your child," he sneered after she'd buzzed off to the Chanel boutique to look for a pair of those divine velvet stretch pants.
"She's not so bad," Jessie said.
"What was that about the baby's complexion," Corrine asked.
Corrine bought a couple of Diptyque candles; Russell bought them both perfume, Shalimar for Jessie, and Joy for Corrine. While they were downstairs Corrine thought she might need stockings, and the new Donna Karan black hose had those 1940s seams up the back; but she also needed nude, and Russell said get both. Then Russell insisted that Corrine buy a little black dress by Azzedine Alaia, though she thought it was just a little too clingy and a lot too expensive for about a half a yard of fabric. Russell said, "Every good girl deserves LBDs," explaining to Jessie, who looked puzzled, that it meant little black dresses, and Jessie said she thought it had something to do with LBOs, and Russell said, not really, but in this case maybe. Corrine dutifully reminded him she hadn't exactly been a good girl lately, but once she tried it on she liked it, and as she walked around she began to love it even though it was racier and more fashiony than she usually preferred, which was probably what made it exciting, like the Tina Turner wig, like a costume that turned her into a different person, someone sexier than Corrine Calloway.
In the dressing room, she was just unzipping the back when the door opened and Russell slipped in. He ran his finger from her bared shoulder all the way down her arm to her wrist, then lifted up her hand and kissed the wrist and nipped at it with his teeth. When he sucked two of her fingers into his mouth, the inside of her thighs began to tingle and her knees to tremble. She asked where Jessie was and Russell said she'd gone off to look for the ladies' room. "But what about the salesclerk?" she whispered. Then she didn't really care, as Russell pulled the dress away from her shoulders, looking at her with his glassy, dilating blue eyes before he ran his tongue up along her underarm, his legs shaking as she reached for his zipper; she didn't know how he could stand up. In the next booth two women conferred nasally about a skirt, one saying she thought it was too big. It certainly was big, Corrine thought, stifling a laugh as he forced her back against the wall... and fucked her till she had to bite his shoulder so she wouldn't cry out, although by that time the salesclerk had already inquired twice if anybody was in there, in a tone that made it quite clear she already knew the answer, and the voices in the next dressing room had dropped to scandalized whispers.
29
Summer had come to the city like a youth gang appearing suddenly on the corner: sullen, physical, odorous and exciting, charged up with ungrounded electricity. Anything could happen. There were mirages, heat devils of rumor, an increased susceptibility to soft entertainment and murder.
Escape was on the minds of most residents, but there was a certain caustic pleasure to be had in the melting streets. The viscous air seemed to superconduct sexual currents among a million steaming pedestrians, the blunt glances of languorously interested parties, like the days, lasting longer than in other seasons. Despite signs of plague, the thick reek of renegade lust was in the air; at night married couples and the might-as-well-be-marrieds lay on damp sheets as if precariously balanced, trying not to fall out of love.
By day, business was conducted inside the air-conditioned towers. After they had been locked out of their offices at Corbin, Dern, the Calloway-Whitlock-Lee triumvirate had taken an office on the West Side in the Brill Building. This was called headquarters. The language had become distinctly martial, even as life became more expansive and luxurious. Trina Cox's new firm occupied a suite in Rockefeller Center. Their midtown canteen was '21.' Here, under Trina's supervision, Russell and Whitlock wooed bankers and brokers and shareholders in their new tropical-weight suits. The man whose job it was to stand and welcome customers as they walked in the door greeted them by name now. The bills were charged to the shell company that Bernie had set up to swallow Corbin, Dern. Russell, who had always been careful with his expense account, relished the new prodigality. Authors were courted downtown at The White Room with Washington, an activity of almost equal importance, since agents were exploiting the situation and neither Russell nor Harold wanted to see writers defecting to the other side. It did not occur to anyone that the men in gray suits might have been happy with the novelty of what they imagined to be the stylishly raffish downtown restaurant or that authors, who as a class are envious of and dependent on the expense accounts of others, might prefer to dine at the more venerable and expensive establishment. Harold Stone, Jerry Kleinfeld and the old management were conducting their own campaign at The Four Seasons, a few blocks east of '21' on 52nd Street. Board members who broke bread with Russell and Whit on Monday frequently dined with Harold and Jerry on Tuesday. Harold abhorred this politicking, but he took some enjoyment from the campaign by making a serious run on the oldest and best bottles in the wine cellar at The Four Seasons. Those authors who were not currently in AA tended to be thrilled when a twenty-year-old bottle of Petrus or Romanée-Conti arrived at the table, and grateful later. And Harold reasoned that if, in spite of this hospitality, he lost the fight for control of the company, the new owners would have to pick up the tab.
Victor Propp, still working on his second book, was among the prizes being contested. He was critically sniffing a honey-colored glass of Mon-trachet at The Four Seasons one afternoon when Harold Stone said, "I assume we can count on you, Victor. We've had our differences, but I can't believe you... Let's face it—Russell's relatively unproven and Bernie Melman is a ruthless philistine, for all his Post-Impressionists."
"He does own a Cézanne I'd dearly love to see."
"How's the book," Harold asked curtly.
"It develops new layers almost seasonally," Victor confessed, sucking through his teeth to aerate the wine. "I've come to think of it as a palimpsest, but not without linear narrative. I even dare to think it could be a contribution to our literature. Of course, I'd like to think that my publisher, whoever that might be, shares my guarded optimism."
"We do. We always have. That's why we have a contract with you, Victor."
Propp cited the case of a literary rival who had recently extracted a seven-figure advance from another publisher, which amount struck Victor as an authentic vote of confidence.
"Be realistic, Victor."
"The times have outstripped realism, Harold. Try to cultivate a touch of absurdity. It might help you to catch up. Do you think the Montrachet is a bit acidic?"
Two days later Victor lunched with Russell, Trina and Washington at The White Room.
"Is that a rock-and-roller," he asked about a greasy-haired diner at the next table.
"
Hair model," said Washington.
"What's Harold's pitch," Russell asked.
"He gave me a nice lunch."
"What did he offer," Trina asked.
"It was my understanding that he would give me a million to stay with him." Victor put his hand on Trina's thigh in token of something or other. Whatever the attractions of the other side, he clearly liked Russell's investment banker.
"We'll give you a million and a quarter," Trina proposed. "Half cash, half paper."
"Nice high-yield, low-calorie paper," observed Washington.
"Junk bonds? I hardly think so, ladies and gentlemen. I'm a writer, after all, and I daresay I know all about worthless paper."
"It's called risk," Trina said. "Like we're taking with you and your invisible novel."
"I want equity."
"The guy's meshugge," Trina said, turning to Russell. "Where'd you find him?"
Late into the warm weekday nights, Trina, Chip Rockaby and Dave Whitlock huddled in her new office suite in Rockefeller Center, consulting green figures under Russell's anxious gaze, seeking to justify a higher tender offer, in case their first was rejected by the board. Melman checked in by phone, as did Victor Propp, who had no formal role in the takeover but couldn't bear to be left out or, apparently, to face the blank screen of his word processor. Fascinated by the financial arcana, Russell wanted to observe everything, although when Corrine complained about his hours he conveyed—without quite intending to deceive—the sober air of a man weary and burdened by new responsibilities. For the number crunchers, a spirit of necessary optimism prevailed in calculating future earnings, and the value of the individual divisions on the auction block. The more bullish the projections, the higher the price they could offer. It was essential to look on the bright side, which suited Russell's temperament as well as the times. Prices had been going up for years; what looked expensive today would be cheap by next week. Whit-lock was something of a drag in this regard. He kept objecting to rosy prognostications, pointing out the cyclical nature of the business, but Russell was impressed with the manner in which Trina coaxed him along.
It was ten o'clock one summer night when they finally quit. Sustaining energy had become such a habit that Russell knew he wouldn't wind down for hours. He suggested dinner. The lawyers had already gone home. Outside on the sidewalk, Chip decided he was too exhausted to go anywhere. He collapsed into a taxi. Which left the, to Russell's mind, somewhat ungainly troika of Whitlock, Trina and himself.
"Where do you want to go," Trina asked.
"The White Room?"
"It's such a production," Trina said.
Whitlock followed the exchange with interest, sweating eagerly in the heat radiating up from the sidewalk, while Russell groped for a channel of communication to which he wouldn't be tuned.
"I'm pretty beat, anyway," said Trina, glancing ruefully at Russell, who nodded.
"Come on, you guys," Whitlock urged. "Let's grab a bite."
"I should get home," said Russell.
Over Whitlock's protests he flagged a cab for Trina, and kissed her cheek, reading a friendly challenge in her raised eyebrows.
Climbing into another cab, Russell gave his own address. A clouded bulletproof Lexan barrier separated him from the driver, and also from the life-giving air conditioning, which leaked feebly through the tiny holes theoretically allowing him to communicate with the driver—if indeed he spoke English. The presence of the barrier was justified by a perfect circle of logic; steaming in the malodorous backseat, Russell certainly felt the urge to strangle the chilled and insulated cabbie.
He felt himself in the grip of one of those extreme moods that come upon city dwellers, his spirit hemmed in by walls as it was agitated with the static charge of the desperate social and mercenary activity around him. He needed to expel this nervous energy from his body, talk it out or shake it out on, say, a loud, crowded dance floor.
Corrine would be worn-out from her day, perhaps already asleep. Full of schemes, he wanted to talk about the deal that had absorbed all of his attention for weeks. But she was tired of hearing about it. He didn't suppose he blamed her, but she shouldn't blame him. He would settle down again soon enough, but at the moment he wanted to stake a claim on the attention of the larger world, beyond the private realm of his family and friends. If he were to die at this moment, in this miserable steaming coffin of a cab, he would leave nothing behind: he'd published some books, on the sufferance of Harold Stone, most of which would have been published anyway, marginally improving them with his blue pencil. The thought that only his friends, his father and Corrine would miss him made him angry. He had great faith in his own abilities, but he did not have the power to exercise them.
Sometimes he wondered if he had blunted his ambition in marrying so early. Corrine accepted and loved him as he was. By not demanding more of him, perhaps she'd held him back. He had never developed that predatory, competitive edge. Sexual appetite suddenly seemed like a corollary of the will to power and creation; he pictured himself as a house-broken creature, lulled into slippered complacency. Why should he go home, goddamnit, when he didn't feel like it?
Two blocks away from his house, he leaned forward and barked a change of address at the ventilated plexiglass; a few minutes later he was deposited in front of Trina's building, a new luxury tower on Second Avenue. He had dropped her off here a few weeks before. Now he followed a red carpet through a green grove of potted foliage and announced himself to the doorman, who asked, "Is she expecting you."
This routine question discomfited him, implying a certain level of conspiracy in Russell's ostensibly whimsical decision to stop by: the ethical dimension threatening to assert itself.
"Quite possibly," he said.
"I'm so glad you came over," Trina said southernly. "I just couldn't quite handle old Whitlock tonight, but I'm definitely not ready to crash. God, excuse the mess..." Although the apartment was by no means neat, it was essentially empty. The living room was devoid of furniture except for a single director's chair, a stationary bicycle, and an old Vuitton trunk stacked with magazines, newspapers, annual reports and empty food cartons. A collection of Perrier and Diet Coke bottles nested in a corner outside the open kitchen area. Russell walked over to the picture window, which looked out over the East River to the semiurban sprawl of Queens.
"How long have you lived here?"
"I don't know. A year? Maybe two, actually. I know, I know—I've got to get some furniture. You want to go out somewhere?"
"Sure."
"Or we can have a drink here."
"Okay."
"I think I've got a bottle of Dom some client gave me."
She retrieved the bottle and then looked around for a suitable place to drink it. "The bed's the only real furniture. You don't mind, do you? We can sit in there and be comfortable."
Russell thought it would be priggish to object, two colleagues having a drink. So what if it was the bedroom? The limited decor was gender-neutral—a pair of skis leaning against the wall, a framed poster from the van Gogh show at the Met. They sprawled out on the bed, Russell asking about the financing, the soft-money options of a higher bid.
"So the beta factor," Trina explained, "is the risk factor of a given investment. It's the multiple, beyond the T-bill rate, that you use to calculate the required return on equity. Is this incredibly boring?"
"No, absolutely not."
"I know—I'm like the investment banker from hell. Shut up, Trina, for Christ's sake."
"No, really."
"Well, anyway, a beta of one is the market rate. Oops, little spillage, here." Licking her wet wrist, she said, "A high beta, like two, indicates high risk and a higher required rate of return. See?"
Russell nodded earnestly, grasping a small portion of the concept. A bottle of Möet appeared suddenly on the bedside table. Trina was easy to talk to, and it seemed to him she talked like a man,
relating war stories from her days at Silverman, sketching grotesque portraits of her colleagues. He felt more and more relaxed. That Corrine could object to this—sitting around shooting the shit, hanging out, like the guys—was absurd, though he should call her soon. Christ, it was already eleven-thirty. But they were just sitting here, side by side on a piece of furniture that just happened to be a bed.
Even when she twisted over on top of Russell to pour him another glass and kissed him instead, as if merely because she chanced to be in the immediate vicinity—this was harmless enough. Why should anybody object to this pressing together of lips, which felt so good, after all? Why should pleasure be a zero-sum commodity, when the store of it could be so easily expanded, the wealth increased by sharing?
Everything seemed perfectly natural up to a certain point, but eventually, at about the moment that his hand almost inadvertently discovered a breast, his conscience began to awaken from its champagne daze.
"I've got to go," he said, pulling himself free and rolling to the far edge of the queen-sized bed. This attempt at an assertion had a quavering, experimental ring to it; if she'd attacked him at that very moment he might have surrendered.
But instead she simply said, "Are you sure?"
In another half-minute he was sure, or at least sufficiently convinced to stand up and say good night.
"Don't tell me you've been faithful to Corrine all these years," she asked, as he was leaving.
Actually, he had, but this confession would sound unbelievable, and slightly shameful, so he merely winked as he waved good-bye. Maybe he was a low-beta kind of guy, after all. In the elevator, plummeting downward, he felt a flutter of guilt. But once he was out of the building in the warm night air, he decided that the salient and final point was that he hadn't done anything, and he strode briskly along the avenue toward home.
Brightness Falls Page 28
