Bright Lights, Big City

by Jay McInerney

  When the elevator begins to ascend, shrill, birdlike noises issue from the bag. The sound of the animal’s distress gives you pause. This is probably a bad idea. You’re not particularly worried about Clara, but you feel sorry for Fred the Ferret in his role of unwitting accomplice.

  “Pas de sweat,” Tad says. “This is almost too easy. Maybe we should have tried for the wolf cub.” Initially Tad wanted to get hold of a bat, but when you mentioned the ferret his eyebrows climbed his forehead in delight.

  The door opens on the twenty-ninth floor. You both stand inside the elevator, listening. It’s quiet. Tad looks at you inquisitively. You nod and step out into the reception area. Tad follows. The whoosh of the elevator doors sounds like a passing freight train. There is a hollow echo of cables and gears, and then it’s quiet again. Tad leans over and whispers in your ear, “Take no prisoners.”

  You lead the way down the hall, carrying the suitcase. Up to the corner all the offices are dark, but you remain anxious. The Druid is known for his insane hours and you briefly picture yourself turning the corner and facing him. You would die of mortification. Still, the challenge of the caper has got your adrenaline going. No thrills without chills. The forty-five-degree mirror at the corner shows no lights on farther up.

  Clara’s door is locked, but that’s no problem. You have a key to the Department office, and a key to her office is hidden behind-what else?-volume K of the Encyclopaedia. Britannica. It’s the work of a moment.

  You let yourselves into Clara’s office and close the door. “They entered the lair of the dragon,” Tad whispers. You turn on the light. “You call this an office?” he says. “It looks like an uppity maid’s room.”

  Now that you’re here, you’re not quite sure what to do. The ferret is scratching wildly inside the suitcase.

  “Where’s the leash,” you ask.

  “I don’t have it.”

  “I gave it to you.”

  “We don’t need the leash. It’ll be a better surprise to have the sucker pop out from a desk drawer.”

  Tad lays the suitcase on the floor and flips the latches, then stands back. “Let him out,” he says. You lift the top. Things happen quickly after that. The animal sinks its teeth into your hand. You jerk your arm away. There’s a foot of ferret still attached. The pain is terrific. You shake your arm savagely, flinging the thing toward Tad. Fred tears a swath out of Tad’s pants leg before landing on the floor, careening around the room, upsetting boxes and finally holing up in the bookshelf behind a row of bound volumes of Scientific American.

  Your hand is on fire. It is connected by red-hot wires to your brain, which is throbbing inside your skull. You shake your arm, spattering little red droplets on the walls. Tad’s face is white. He leans down and gingerly examines the tear in his pants just below the crotch.

  “Good Christ! One more inch… “

  He is interrupted by a thump on the door.

  “Oh, Jesus!”

  There is another thump and then a hoarse voice: “Open up! I know you’re in there.”

  You recognize the voice-it could be worse-and put a finger to your lips. Taking a pencil and pad from Clara’s desk, you clumsily write, with your uninjured left hand, Is the door locked?

  Tad gives you a search-me look.

  There is a steady wheezing outside the door and another knock. The doorknob turns one way and then the other. Allagash is poking your arm and mouthing frantic interrogatives. The latch clicks and the door swings open. Alex Hardy stands in the doorway. He nods his head gravely as if you were the very two people he expected to find in Clara’s office at midnight. You are trying to devise a quick story that will wash. Tad is brandishing a yardstick that he found behind the door.

  “You gave us a scare, Alex. I couldn’t imagine who would be wandering around here at this time of night. I was just looking for my wallet. I was in here this morning… “

  “Pygmies,” Alex says.

  Tad looks at you inquisitively. You shrug.

  “I am surrounded by pygmies.”

  You now see that Alex is stupendously drunk. You wonder if he recognizes you.

  “I knew the giants,” he says. “I worked with the giants. The guys whose words went out into the world and kicked ass. Okay, girls too. Women, whatever. I’m talking about ambition. I’m talking about talent. Not like these precious turds around here. These goddamned pygmies.” Alex thumps his fist on the wall. The ferret leaps out from hiding and bolts for the door. It snakes its way between Alex’s legs. Alex tries to get out of the way. The ferret’s claws scrabble on the linoleum. Alex struggles for equilibrium, grabbing first at the door frame, then, as he starts to fall, at the coat-rack, and finally at a bookshelf which goes down with him. The top hooks of the falling coat-rack narrowly miss Tad’s face. Alex is sprawled on the floor in a heap of books. You’re not sure how hard he hit.

  “Let’s get out before he comes to,” Tad says.

  “I can’t leave him like this.” You crouch down and check him out. He’s breathing; already the office smells like liquor.

  “Come on. Do you want to explain what we’re doing here? Let’s go.”

  You clear some of the books from Alex’s chest and stretch his legs out. Down the hall a phone starts ringing.

  “He’s fine, for Christ’s sake. We’re dead meat if we get caught in here.”

  “Get the suitcase,” you say. You take the cushion from Clara’s chair and put it under Alex’s head. His feet are sticking out the door so you can’t close it. The elevator takes days to arrive and makes a racket like an All Points Bulletin.

  In the lobby, the watchman is still absorbed in his magazine. You keep your hand in your jacket pocket while he unlocks the door to the street. Outside, you both break into a sprint.

  Neither of you speaks a word until you’re in the cab. At Tad’s place you wash and examine the wound while he changes his pants. At first you’re concerned. You’re trying to remember the last time you had a tetanus shot when suddenly you think of rabies. The signature of the teeth is clearly visible between your thumb and index finger. The punctures are deep but not wide. Tad assures you that stitches aren’t necessary. He says that if the animal was rabid, it would not have been so friendly before you put it in the suitcase. He pours a glass of vodka over the wound. You’re eager to be reassured. You don’t want to go to the hospital. You hate hospitals and doctors. The smell of denatured alcohol nauseates you. Then you think of Alex. Maybe he suffered a concussion. Only the Post could make this funny: FAULKNER FRIEND FALLS AFOUL OF FURRY FIEND.

  “He’s just sleeping off his drunk,” Tad says.

  “Let’s hope.”

  “Love to be there in the morning when the gang starts coming in for work.”

  Tad gets some cotton pads and adhesive tape from the medicine cabinet and then cuts some lines on the table while you fuss with the first aid.

  With the application of anesthetics, the pain and guilt recede and the episode becomes a source of hilarity. “Giants,” Tad says. “Fucking giants. I’m thinking, Who is this dwarf calling me a goddamned pygmy. Then—boom. Fred the Ferret to the rescue. De casibus virorum illustrium, as we used to say in Latin class.”

  “Say what?”

  “Something about the fall of famous men.”

  Tad suggests taking the show on the road. He says it’s early yet. You say it’s not that early, and he points out that it’s not as if you had a job to wake up for in the morning. This is a convincing point. You agree to one drink at Heartbreak.

  In the cab on the way downtown, Tad says, “Thanks for taking Vicky off my hands. Inge is eternally grateful.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “Really? Got lucky, did you?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Are you serious?” He leans over and looks into your face. “You are serious. Well, well. To each his own.”

  The cabby swerves between lanes, muttering in a Middle Eastern language.

  “Any
way, it’s nice to see you getting over this Amanda deal. I mean, she wasn’t hard to look at. God knows. But I don’t see why you felt like you had to marry her.”

  “I’ve been wondering that myself.”

  “Weren’t you suspicious when you saw the sign on her forehead?”

  “Which sign was that?”

  “The one that said, Space to Let. Long and Short Term Leasing.”

  “We met in a bar. It was too dark to read.”

  “Not so dark that she couldn’t see you were her ticket out of Trailer Park Land. Bright lights, big city. If you really wanted to do the happy couple thing you shouldn’t have let her model. A week on Seventh Avenue would warp a nun. Where skin-deep is the mode, your traditional domestic values are not going to take root and flourish. Amanda was trying to get as far from red dirt and four-wheel drive as she could. She figured out she could trade on her looks farther than she got with you.”

  For Tad, Amanda’s departure was not only not surprising but inevitable. It confirmed his world view. Your heartbreak is just another version of the same old story.

  Toward dawn you are riding around in a limo with a guy named Bernie and his two assistants. The assistants are named Maria and Crystal. Crystal is in the back seat with one arm around you and the other around Allagash. Bernie and Maria are facing you from the jump seats. Bernie runs his hand up and down Maria’s leg. You’re not sure if Tad knew these people before tonight or if they are new friends. Tad seems to think he knows of a party somewhere. Maria says she wants to go to New Chursey. Bernie puts a hand on your knee.

  “This is my office,” he says. “So what do you think?”

  You’re not sure you want to know what line of work Bernie is in.

  “You got an office like this?”

  You shake your head.

  “Of course you don’t. You got Ivy League written all over you. But I could buy you and your old man and his country club. I use guys like you in your button-down shirts to fetch my coffee.”

  You nod. You wonder if he’s hiring this week and how much it pays.

  “You’re wondering where the rest of my operation is, right?”

  “Not really,” you say.

  Tad is disappearing inside Crystal’s dress.

  “You’d like to know, wouldn’t you?” Bernie says. “You know what? I’m going to tell you. It’s down on the Lower East Side, Avenue D and the Twilight Zone. Not too far from where my old Bubbie and Zadie ruined their health in a sweatshop so their kids could move out to Scarsdale and Metuchen. It’s spies and junkies now. I’ll show you. I’ll even tell you how we move the product. You want to know?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Smart. You’re a smart boy. I don’t blame you for not wanting to know. You know what happens to people who know too much?”

  “What’s that?”

  “They become dog chow. Fucking Purina Dog Chow.”

  Tad looks up. “We handle that account at the agency.”

  You ask yourself: How did I get here? The hand that Fred bit throbs painfully. You wonder if it’s rabies. You wonder if Alex is all right.

  “Used to be,” Bernie says, “this was your basic greaseball sector of the economy. You’re dealing with your South American spies and your New Jersey dago element. It was an up-and-down scene-all these Latin types with long knives and short tempers-but there was a lot of room for the entrepreneurial spirit. Now we’re seeing a different kind of money moving into the neighborhood. I’m talking to three-piece bankers with P.O. boxes in Switzerland. That’s one of the things that’s happening to this business. But these guys I can deal with. All they want is a good return on their money. Simple. What I’m scared of is my brother Jews-the Hasidim. They’re moving in in a big way, crowding out the independent. It’s more lucrative than diamonds-hey, they’re not stupid. They know an opportunity when they see one. They’re all set up for something like this. Liquid capital, world-wide organization, secrecy and trust. How can they lose? I’m telling you, most of the blow in the country already has a Yiddish accent.”

  “You mean the guys with the black hats and funky sideburns?” Tad says.

  “Believe me,” Bernie says, “it ain’t like they can’t afford a haircut. So what do you think of the Yankees this year?”

  “Looking good for a pennant,” Tad says.

  You bail out at the next red light, claiming car sickness. You are halfway up the block when Bernie calls out—“Hey, you! Don’t forget. Dog Chow.”

  O COUTURE!

  Your interest in clothing doesn’t normally take you beyond Brooks Brothers and J. Press-and at the moment there seems to be a little credit trouble at both establishments. But this morning you are waiting to enter the ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria, where a fashion designer is showing his fall line. You copped an invitation from your friend at Vogue. He owes you for the time he took your Austin Healey out to Westchester and plowed it into a ten-point buck. You know people who have been hunting for twenty years and have never seen ten points on one deer. The car ended up in a junkyard outside of Pleasantville. You don’t know what happened to the deer, and it’s hard to say what happened to the insurance money except that it was gone in two weeks.

  At the door, a tall woman with silver hair scrutinizes your invitation. On either side of the door, two large black men in turbans stand with their arms folded across their chests. They are supposed to be Nubian slaves or something. Only an Italian fashion designer could get away with this. The woman seems to be an ethnic group unto herself. She has no eyebrows or eyelashes and her hairline is extremely high, not far from the top of her skull. Was she in an accident, or is she just chic? She is staring at your homemade bandage, which this season is gray and spotted.

  “Mister… “

  “Allagash,” you say, pulling yourself up into military posture. It’s the first name that comes to mind. You’re not about to use your own.

  “From Vogue?” she says.

  “Since last week.”

  She nods and returns your invitation. She narrows her eyes and wrinkles her nose as if to say she will feed you to the giant Nubians if you’re lying.

  You spot the bar and it appears to be open. The veteran department-store buyers are huddled in the vicinity, clutching glasses. They look like they would rather be in Florida. It could be a mistake to start in at the bar right away; indeed, by any reasonable standard of conduct it is a mistake to be here at all, using someone else’s name, with a vague notion of disrupting the proceedings.

  You excuse your way up to the bar and order vodka. “With ice,” you say, when the bartender asks how you want it. “And one for my date,” you add.

  With your two drinks in your hands, you move away from the bar and strike a determined pose in the middle of the crowd, looking around the room with furrowed brow as if you were searching for your very good friend The Revlon Girl. You don’t want to be too conspicuous. There is a slim chance that one of Amanda’s friends will recognize you and sic the giant Nubians on you before you have had a chance to do whatever it is you are here to do. This, you realize, is how the terrorist feels as he waits in the crowd with the bomb in his briefcase, believing that everyone can look through a window in his head and see murder on his mind. Your knees are shaky. You drink one of your two drinks. Alas, you would not make a very good terrorist. Then you remember seeing a briefcase standing beside the bar and a small flash of cognition, coincident with the first tingle of alcohol, flickers in your brain.

  You walk back to the bar. The briefcase is still there. The owner appears to be the balding man with the Bain de Soleil complexion talking to two Oriental girls. His back is turned to the briefcase. You lean against the bar on your elbows, looking bored.

  “Can I get you something?” the bartender inquires. He frowns when you say no, and you think there is a trace of suspicion in the way he looks you over before turning away.

  “I don’t know how to sail the damn thing,” the balding man says. “I p
ay some Greeks to do that.” The girls consult, putting their heads together, and then they laugh. Apparently they took a vote. He is telling them about islands when you slip away with the briefcase. Pas de sweat.

  You take a seat on the near side of the runway, in the middle of a middle row, thinking that once the show gets underway you want to be as inaccessible as possible. You stash the briefcase under the seat and cover it with your jacket. Your plan is beginning to congeal.

  An eddy in the crowd ripples out from the door, a sense of waters being parted. Flashbulbs ignite. Finally you see the cause of the excitement: a face that brings to mind a line of cosmetics, a Cola and recent shocking revelations in supermarket tabloids. It’s the famous actress/model on a busman’s holiday. She’s wearing faded jeans, a sweatshirt and a yachting cap, as if to say: “I can look terrific with both hands tied behind my back.” You know for a fact, or at least you have it on good authority from Amanda, who once did location work with her, that she is a martyr to the search for the perfect nose. She has had no less than seven reconstructive operations and she’s still not happy. She refuses to be photographed in profile. You can think of better ways to traumatize the nasal cartilage. From this distance, the nose looks unexceptional and the rest strikes you as bland. You judge her to be about five-five, not tall enough for runway work. She’s got too much chest for couture.

  Amanda is, or was, a perfect eight: hips thirty-four, waist twenty-three, bust thirty-three. You also know her shoe, glove and ring sizes. Clara would be proud. You have all the numbers. Factoring in the cheekbones, which a photographer once described as “neo-classical,” they add up to a hundred and fifty dollars an hour.

  People are taking their seats. A woman in a pink gown comes out onto the runway, apparently the mistress of ceremonies. She smiles and nods, mouthing little greetings, and walks out to the lectern at the runway’s edge. Your hands are beginning to shake and you decide on a booster shot. You buck the flow of the crowd and race for the bar. People are looking at you and you are afraid they know four every thought. You brace yourself with the fact that you looked at Amanda every day for almost three years and you don’t have the ghost of a clue what was going on «her mind. She showed all the vital signs and made all the right noises. She said she loved you.