How It Ended

by Jay McInerney

2008

  How It Ended

  I like to ask married couples how they met. It's always interesting to hear how two lives became intertwined, how of the nearly infinite number of possible conjunctions this or that one came into being, to hear the first chapter of a story in progress. As a matrimonial lawyer, I deal extensively in endings, so it's a relief, a sort of holiday, to visit the realm of beginnings. And I ask because I've always enjoyed telling my own story—our story, I should say—which I've always felt was unique.

  My name is Donald Prout, rhymes with trout. My wife, Cameron, and I were on vacation in the Virgin Islands when we met Jack and Jean Van Heusen. At our tiny expensive resort we would see them in the dining room and on the beach. Etiquette dictated respect for privacy, but there was a quiet, countervailing camaraderie born of the feeling that one's fellow guests shared a level of good taste and financial standing. And the Van Heusens stood out as the only other young couple.

  I'd just won a difficult case, sticking it to a rich husband and coming out with a nice settlement despite considerable evidence that my client had been cheating on him with everything in pants for years. Of course I sympathized with the guy, but he had his own counsel, had many inherited millions left over, and it's my job, after all, to give whoever hires me the best counsel possible. Now I was taking what I thought of as, for lack of a better cliché, a well-earned rest. I'd never done much resting, going straight from Amherst—where I'd worked part-time for my tuition—to Columbia Law to a big midtown firm, where I'd knocked myself out as an associate for six years.

  It's a sad fact that the ability to savor long hours of leisure is a gift some of us have lost, or else never acquired. The first morning, within an hour of waking in paradise, I was restless, watching stalk-eyed land crabs skitter sideways across the sand, unwilling or unable to concentrate on the Updike I'd started on the plane. Lying on the beach in front of our cabana, I noticed the attractive young couple emerging from the water, splashing each other. She was a tall brunette with the boyish body of a runway model. Sandy-haired and lanky, he looked like a boy who'd taken a semester off from prep school to go sailing. Over the next few days I couldn't help noticing them. They were very affectionate, which seemed to indicate a relatively new marriage (both wore wedding bands). And they had an aura of entitlement, of being very much at home and at ease on this very pricey patch of white sand, so I assumed they came from money. Also, they seemed indifferent to the rest of us, unlike those couples who, after a few days of sun and sand in the company of the beloved, invite their neighbors for a daiquiri on the balcony to grope for mutual acquaintances and interests—anything to be spared the frightening monotony of each other.

  In fact, I was feeling a little dissatisfied after several days, my wife and I having, more rapidly than I would have thought, exhausted our meager store of observations about the monotonously glorious weather and the subjects that we imagined we never had enough time to discuss at home, what with business and the social schedule. And after a relatively satisfying first night, our lovemaking was not as inspired as I had hoped it was going to be. I wanted to leave all the bullshit at home, rejuvenate our marriage and our sex life, tell Cameron my fantasies, pathetically simple as they were. Yet I found myself unable to broach this topic, stuck as I was in a four-year rut of communicating less and less directly, reluctant for some reason to execute the romantic flourishes—candlelight and flower petals in the bathwater and such—she considered so inspiring. And seeing her in her two-piece, I honestly felt that Cameron needed to do a bit of toning and cut back on the sweets.

  But the example of the Van Heusens was invigorating. After all, I reasoned, we were also an attractive young couple—an extra pound or two notwithstanding. I thought more highly of us for our ostensible resemblance to them, and when I overheard him tell an old gent that he'd recently passed the bar, I felt a rush of kinship and self-esteem, since I'd recently made partner at one of the most distinguished firms in New York.

  On the evening of our fifth day, we struck up a conversation at the pool-side bar. I heard them speculating about a yacht out in the bay and told them whom it belonged to, having been told myself when I'd seen it in Tortola a few days earlier. I half expected him to recognize the name, to claim friendship with the owners, but he only said, “Oh, really? Nice boat.”

  The sun was melting into the ocean, dyeing the water red and pink and gold. We all sat, hushed, watching the spectacle. I reluctantly broke the silence to remind the waiter that I had specified a piña colada on the rocks, not frozen, my teeth being sensitive to crushed ice. Within minutes the sun had slipped out of sight, sending up a last flare, and then we began to chat. Eventually they told us they lived in one of those eminently respectable communities on the North Shore of Boston.

  They asked if we had kids, and we said no, not yet. When I said, “You?” Jean blushed and referred the question to her husband.

  After a silent exchange, he turned to us and said, “Jeannie's pregnant.”

  “We haven't really told anyone yet,” she added.

  Cameron beamed at Jean and smiled encouragingly in my direction. We had been discussing this very topic lately. She was ready; I didn't feel quite so certain myself. Still, I think we both were pleased to be the recipients of this confidence, even though it was a function of our very lack of real intimacy, and of the place and time, for we learned, somewhat sadly, that this was their last night.

  When I mentioned my profession, Jack solicited my advice; he would start applying to firms when they returned home. I was curious, of course, how he had come to the law so relatively late—he had just referred in passing to his recent thirtieth-birthday celebration—and what he'd done with his twenties, but thought it would be indiscreet to ask.

  We ordered a second round of drinks and talked until it was fully dark. “Why don't you join us for dinner?” he said as we all stood on the veranda, hesitant about going our separate ways. And so we did. I was grateful for the company, and Cameron seemed to be enlivened by the break in routine. I found Jean increasingly attractive—confident and funny—while her husband was wry and self-deprecating in a manner that suited a young man who was probably a little too rich and happy for anyone else's good. He seemed to be keeping his lights on dim.

  As the dinner plates were cleared away, I said, “So tell me, how did you two meet?”

  Cameron laughed at the introduction of my favorite parlor game. Jack and Jean exchanged a long look, seeming to consult about whether to reveal their great secret. He laughed through his nose, and then she began to laugh; within moments they were both in a state of high hilarity. To be sure, we'd had several drinks and two bottles of wine with dinner, and excepting Jean, none of us was legally sober. Cameron, in fact, seemed to me to be getting a little sloppy, particularly in contrast to the abstinent Jean; when she reached again for the wine bottle, I tried to catch her eye, but she was bestowing her bright, blurred attention on our companions.

  “How we met,” Jack said to his wife. “God. You want to tackle this one?”

  She shook her head. “I think you'd better.”

  “Cigar?” he asked, producing two metal tubes from his pocket. Though I've resisted the cigar fetish indulged in by so many of my colleagues, I occasionally smoke one with a client or an associate, and I took one then.

  He handed me a cutter and lit us up, then leaned back and stroked his sandy bangs away from his eyes and released a spume of smoke. “Maybe it's not such an unusual story,” he proposed.

  Jean laughed skeptically.

  “You sure you don't mind, honey?” he asked.

  She considered, shrugged her shoulders, then shook her head. “It's up to you.”

  “Well, I think this story begins when I got thrown out of Bowdoin,” he said. “Not to put too fine a point on it, I was dealing pot. Well, pot and a little coke, actually.” He stopped to check our reaction.

  I, for one, tried to keep an open, inviting demeanor, eager for him to continue. I
won't say I was shocked, though I was certainly surprised.

  “I got caught.” He smiled. “By agreeing to pack up my old kit bag and go away forever, I escaped prosecution. My parents were none too pleased about the whole thing, but unfortunately for them, virtually that week I'd come into a little bit of Gramps's filthy lucre and there wasn't much they could do about it. I was tired of school anyway. It's funny—I enjoyed it when I finally went back a few years ago to get my B.A. and then law degree, but at the time, it was wasted on me. Or I was wasted on it. Wasted in general. I'd wake up in the morning and fire up the old bong and then huff up a few lines to get through geology seminar.”

  He pulled on his stogie, shaking his head ruefully at the memory of his youthful excess. He didn't seem particularly ashamed as much as bemused, as if he were describing the behavior of an incorrigible cousin.

  “Well, I went sailing for about a year—spent some time in these waters, actually, some of the best sailing waters in the world—and then drifted back to Boston. I'd run through most of my capital, but I didn't feel ready to hit the books again, and somehow I just kind of naturally got back in touch with my suppliers from Bowdoin days. I still had a boat, a little thirty-six-footer. And I got back in the trade. It was different then—this was ten years ago, before the Colombians really moved in. Everything was more relaxed. We were gentlemen outlaws, adrenaline junkies, freaks with an entrepreneurial streak.”

  He frowned slightly, as if hearing the faint note of self-justification, of self-delusion, of sheer datedness. I'd largely avoided the drug culture of the seventies, but even I could remember when drugs were viewed as the sacraments of a vague liberation theology or, later, as a slightly risky form of recreation. But in this era the romance of drug dealing was a hard sell, and Jack seemed to realize it.

  “Well, that's how we saw it then,” he amended. “Let's just say that we were less ruthless and less financially motivated than the people who eventually took over the business.”

  Wanting to discourage his sudden attack of scruples, I waved to the waiter for another bottle of wine.

  “Make sure it's not too chilled,” Cameron shouted at the retreating waiter. “My husband has very sensitive teeth.” I suppose she thought this was quite funny.

  “Anyway, I did quite well,” Jack continued. “Initially I was very hands-on, rendezvousing with mother ships out in the water beyond Nantucket, hauling small loads in a hollow keel. Eventually my partner and I moved up the food chain. We were making money so fast, we had a hard time thinking of ways to launder it. I mean, you can't just keep hiding it under your mattress. First we were buying cars and boats in cash and then we bought a bar in Cambridge to run some of the profits through. We were actually paying taxes on drug money just so we could show some legitimate income. We always used to say we'd get out before it got too crazy, once we'd really put aside a big stash, but there was so much more cash to be made, and craziness is like anything else: You get into it one step at a time and no single step really feels like it's taking you over the cliff—until you go right over the edge, and then it's too late. You're smoking reefer in high school and then doing lines and all of a sudden you're buying AK-47's and bringing hundred-kilo loads into Boston Harbor.”

  I wasn't about to point out that some of us never even thought of dealing drugs, let alone buying firearms. I refilled his wineglass, nicely concealing my skepticism, secretly pleased to hear this golden boy revealing his baser metal. But I have to say I was intrigued.

  “This goes on for two, three years. I wish I could say it wasn't fun, but it was. The danger, the secrecy, the money …” He pulled on his cigar and looked out over the water. “So anyway, we set up one of our biggest deals ever, and our buyer's been turned. Facing fifteen to life on his own, so he delivers us up on a platter. A very exciting moment. We're in a warehouse in Back Bay and suddenly twenty narcs are pointing thirty-eights at us.”

  “And one of them was Jean,” Cameron proposed.

  I shot her a look, but she was gazing expectantly at her counterpart.

  “For the sake of our new friends here,” Jean said, “I wish I had been.” She looked at her husband and touched his wrist, and at that moment I found her extraordinarily desirable. “I think you're boring these nice people.”

  “Not at all,” I protested, directing my reassurance at the storyteller's wife. I was genuinely sorry for her sake that she was party to this sordid tale. She turned and smiled at me, as I'd hoped she would, and for a moment I forgot about the story altogether as I conjured up a sudden vision: slipping from the cabana for a walk later that night, unable to sleep … and encountering her out at the edge of the beach, talking, both claiming insomnia, then confessing that we'd been thinking of each other, a long kiss and a slow recline to the soft sand.…

  “You must think—” She smiled helplessly. “Well, I don't know what you must think. Jack's never really told anyone about all of this before. You're probably shocked.”

  “Please go on,” said Cameron. “We're dying to hear the rest. Aren't we, Don?”

  I nodded, a little annoyed at this aggressive use of the marital pronoun. Her voice seemed loud and grating, and the gaudy print blouse I'd always hated seemed all the more garish beside Jeannie's elegant but sexy navy halter.

  “Long story short,” said Jack, “I hire Carson Baxter to defend me. And piece by piece he gets virtually every shred of evidence thrown out. Makes it disappear right before the jury's eyes. Then he sneers at the rest. I mean, the man's the greatest performer I've ever seen—”

  “He's brilliant,” I murmured. Baxter was one of the finest defense attorneys in the country. Although I didn't always share his political views, I admired his adherence to his principles and his legal scholarship. Actually, he was kind of a hero to me. I don't know why, but I was surprised to hear his name in this context.

  “So I walked,” Jack concluded.

  “You were acquitted?” I asked.

  “Absolutely.” He puffed contentedly on his cigar. “Of course, you'd think that would be the end of the story and the end of my illicit but highly profitable career. Alas, unfortunately not. Naturally, I told myself and everyone else I was going straight. But after six months, the memory of prison and the bust had faded, and a golden opportunity practically fell into my lap, a chance for one last big score. The retirement run. The one you should never make. Always a mistake, these farewell gigs.” He laughed.

  “That waiter's asleep on his feet,” Jean said. “Like the waiter in that Hemingway story. He's silently jinxing you, Jack Van Heusen, with a special voodoo curse for long-winded white boys, because he wants to reset the table and go back to the cute little turquoise-and-pink staff quarters and make love to his wife, the chubby laundress who is waiting for him all naked on her fresh white linen.”

  “I wonder how the waiter and the laundress met,” Jack said cheerfully, standing up and stretching. “That's probably the best story.”

  My beloved wife said, “Probably they met after Don yelled at her about a stain on his linen shirt and the waiter comforted her.”

  Jack looked at his watch. “Good God, ten-thirty already, way past official Virgin Islands bedtime.”

  “But you can't go to bed yet,” Cameron said. “You haven't even met your wife.”

  “Oh, right. So anyway, a while later I met Jean and we fell in love and got married and lived happily ever after.”

  “No fair,” Cameron shrieked.

  “I'd be curious to hear your observations about Baxter,” I said quietly.

  “The hell with Baxter,” Cameron said. When she was drinking, her voice took on a more pronounced nasal quality as it rose in volume. “I want to hear the love story.”

  “Let's at least take a walk on the beach,” Jean suggested, standing up.

  So we rolled out to the sand and dawdled along the water's edge as Jack resumed the tale.

  “Well, my partner and I went down to the Keys and picked up a boat, a Hatteras sixty-tw
o with a false bottom. Had a kid in the Coast Guard on our payroll and another in customs, and they were going to talk us through the coastal net on our return. For show we load up the boat with a lot of big-game fishing gear, these huge Shimano rods and reels. And we stow the real payload—the automatic weapons with nightscopes and the cash. The guns were part of the deal, thirty of them, enough for a small army. The Colombians were always looking for armament, and we picked these up cheap from an Israeli who had to leave Miami real quick. It was a night like this, a warm, starry winter Caribbean night, when the rudder broke about a hundred miles off Cuba. We started to drift, and by morning we got reeled in by a Cuban naval vessel. Well, you can imagine how they reacted when they found the guns and the cash. I mean, think about it, an American boat loaded with guns and cash and high-grade electronics. We tried to explain that we were just drug dealers, but they weren't buying it.”

  We had come to the edge of the beach; farther on, a rocky ledge rose up from the gently lapping water of the cove. Jack knelt down and scooped up a handful of fine silvery sand. Cameron sat down beside him. I remained standing, looking up at the powdery spray of stars above us, feeling in my intoxicated state that I was exercising some important measure of autonomy by refusing to sit just because Jack was sitting. By this time I simply did not approve of Jack Van Heusen or of the fact that this self-confessed drug runner was about to enter the practice of law. And I suppose I didn't sanction his happiness, either—with his obvious wealth, whether inherited or illicit, and his beautiful and charming wife.

  “That was the worst time of my life,” he said softly, the jauntiness receding. Jean, who had been standing beside him, knelt down and put a hand on his shoulder. Suddenly he smiled and patted her arm. “But hey—at least I learned Spanish, right?”

  Cameron chuckled appreciatively.

  “After six months in a Cuban prison, my partner, the captain and I were sentenced to death as American spies. They'd kept us apart the whole time, hoping to break us. And they would've, except that we couldn't tell them what they wanted to hear, because we were just a couple of dumb drug runners and not CIA.”