How It Ended

by Jay McInerney

  No family loomed larger in Chattanooga than the Keirsteads. They had made their original fortune in land and later compounded it with an interest in a soft-drink empire based in Atlanta. In the past half century their holdings had spread from the Southeast throughout the country and around the globe. A.G. had gone to school with Burton Keirstead III, aka Trip, whose father had taken a benign interest in A.G.'s career, even writing him a letter of recommendation to Harvard. They had stayed in touch after A.G. moved to New York, occasionally dining together when Keirstead was in the city, and the old man sometimes steered some business his way. As a young investment banker, it certainly didn't hurt to be acquainted with Burton Keirstead, Jr. Trip, meanwhile, married a girl from Savannah, built a house on Lookout Mountain and took an office downtown, next door to his father's, which he visited when he wasn't following the salmon from Nova Scotia to Russia, or the birds from Georgia to Argentina. Their friend Cal Bustert, to nearly no one's surprise, burned through his trust fund, bouncing between fashionable resorts and rehab facilities; marrying, spawning and divorcing; wrecking cars and discharging firearms at inappropriate targets, including, finally, himself. A.G. had flown south for the funeral, a somber yet lavish affair that lasted for three days.

  Most of their former classmates, after forays into the North, settled within a few miles of their parents and married girls they'd known for years. A.G. always returned for the weddings—five of them the year he turned thirty—and always brought a different date, and in time he returned to stand as godfather to the children. He visited his parents on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Only rarely did he bring a girl along for these family holidays, and when he did, she was inevitably from what he called, without self-consciousness, “a good family.” But his parents learned in time not to get too attached to any of them.

  Despite his increasing success in New York, he maintained a deep loyalty to his hometown. Chattanooga, Tennessee, the South—this was part of him, and distinguished him from the mass of rootless Yankees with whom he associated in Manhattan. He always told his drinking buddies in both cities that he would return one day, although as the years passed it became harder and harder for his friends in either place to take this threat seriously.

  Within a few years he was making more money than his father, although he did not announce this fact—except to his mother—and continued to seek his father's advice on matters large and small, although they did not discuss A.G.'s love life.

  Ginny was reading in the living room of the little cottage in Sagaponack she rented every August, half-conscious of the wistful susurration of the waves from the beach. The yard, which had once enjoyed unobstructed views of the potato fields, had over the years been hemmed in by houses, first by Lego-like boxes and later by vast shingled mansions that mimicked the old cottages of Southampton, but at night she could still imagine herself as a lonely beachcomber. Emma Wodehouse was just realizing how badly she had misjudged both Mr. Knightley and her own heart, when the phone rang, startling her. She was hardly less startled by the identity of the caller.

  “A.G.?”

  “Sorry to call so late. But I know you've always been a night owl.”

  “If you're looking for my niece, she's gone off to sleep over at a friend's house.”

  “No, actually I was looking for you. Wanna get a drink?”

  “Now? Tonight?” Her watch said 1:45.

  “We're not getting any younger.”

  “Don't you have a big day tomorrow?”

  “That's probably exactly why I want to drop by.”

  She paused. She knew, of course, that she was going to say yes, but it irritated her that she was so pleased at the prospect of his coming over. Naturally, he was drunk and probably high. She'd been the recipient of many such late-night phone calls back in the day. She couldn't help feeling an illicit satisfaction in the fact that she was, after all these years, getting another, and on this of all nights. He was probably just feeling sentimental in his cups, but whatever his motivation, she had unfinished business with A. G. Jackson, and this might well be her last chance to close the account.

  He was flushed, and his speech, always slower and more elided than that of his northern peers, was just a little slurrier than usual. But for all the nights they'd partied till dawn, she'd never really seen him lose control of his faculties.

  He hugged her just a little longer and harder than he might have in a public encounter. “Hey, little darlin'. I can't tell you how glad I am to see you.” She pointed him toward the living room couch. He set up camp on the couch and proceeded to lay out a pile of coke on the coffee table. “You don't mind, do you? I just need to settle my nerves.”

  “Oh, that should definitely do the trick,” she said. “You're so mellow on coke.”

  “Well, you know. Old habits die hard.”

  Though it had been years since she'd done blow herself, it seemed perfectly normal to watch him chopping lines, since that's what they'd always done. Being transported back a decade wasn't such a bad thing for a girl. Plus, she was morbidly fascinated with his recklessness on the eve of his wedding. She couldn't help wondering just how far he would push it.

  “Is that how you'd describe me?‘An old habit’?”

  “I'd describe you as an old … a close friend.” He laid out four identical lines with his Soho House membership card. He always prided himself on this little skill.

  She sat down beside him and accepted the rolled-up twenty. Always the gentleman, letting her go first. She felt a thrill of recognition as he held her hair back while she leaned over the table. And then the other familiar thrill, the chilly tingle in her sinuses that turned warm as it spread out toward the follicles of her scalp.

  “Feels like old times,” he said.

  “Not exactly,” she said.

  “I can't believe it's been … God, how long has it been?”

  “Seven years.”

  “No way.”

  “Yup.”

  “Well, it's not like we haven't seen each other around town.”

  “No, though you probably would have preferred me to just disappear into thin air.”

  “Oh, come on, darlin'. Don't be ridiculous. I'm always happy to see you.” He leaned over and snorted his two lines.

  “You weren't so happy to see me today at the beach.”

  “Well, not my best moment.”

  “So you admit you were hitting on my niece.”

  “It's a reflex. What can I say? She's a very pretty girl.”

  “I understand that. What I don't understand is tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, well. I'm not so sure I do, either.”

  “Don't you think you'd better figure it out?”

  “I hardly think there's time for that,” he said.

  “Are you in love with her?”

  “I suppose so. I'm not sure.”

  “Have you ever been in love?”

  He nodded his head and looked off through the bay window, out across the invisible ocean, his eyes turning glassy. She realized with a start that he was on the verge of tears. When she slid across the couch and embraced him, he virtually collapsed in her arms. “Once,” he said.

  At Harvard, A.G. had fallen in love with Eve Garrigue, who was a class ahead of him and who, by the time they met, had already published several poems in The Paris Review. He was aware of her legend—brainy, beautiful and hard-drinking—even before he arrived on campus, and he already knew her family, from New Orleans, in the way that all southerners know one another. A.G. had discarded his virginity at fifteen and never looked back. At first she found his boundless self-confidence absurd—a freshman wooing the most popular woman in the sophomore class—but eventually it won her over. He was precocious intellectually as well as sexually, and he was also a willing student. He wrote her a sonnet cycle, twelve strictly constructed love poems modeled on Wyatt's and Shakespeare's. And there was the tribal connection—they had a common set of cultural references and a common enemy in the subtle prejudice of
all those who assumed that a southern accent was a sign of slow-wittedness.

  Under Eve's influence, A.G. began to write poetry in the runic, oracular manner of Merwin and Strand; her own was high-pitched and baroque, reminding some of late Plath. Eventually he gave up verse, after realizing that he was a better critic than a poet, and a lesser poet than his girlfriend. He would provide the intellectual framework for her creation. In fact, he would've done almost anything for her. Accustomed to being intel lectually and emotionally dominant, he happily acceded to her whims and opinions. He started smoking Gauloises and briefly abandoned the preppy wardrobe of his youth in favor of colorful long-collared shirts and flared pants. Eve, who had a breathtaking figure to show off, hid it beneath drapey vintage dresses and scarves. His devotion was extreme; he couldn't believe his luck in finding, so early in life, all the answers to his desires in one woman. They shared a destiny. While they gathered around them a group of friends and admirers, they were often criticized for being a universe of two.

  They spent their second summer together backpacking in Europe; her family had offered to pay for a deluxe version of the grand tour, but Eve refused their money on principle. They bought Europasses and stayed in youth hostels, dined on bread and cheese and vin du pays and screwed like minks. By day they retraced the lives of the poets and sought out ancient churches. One afternoon in the cool, musty interior of a Romanesque church near Saint Paul de Vence, Eve knelt down on the stone floor and gave him a blow job. It was the most shocking thing that had happened to him in his life, though he didn't say anything, more fearful that she'd think him prudish and stop before she finished than he was of discovery or blasphemy.

  They worried about what to do after graduation, which would come a year earlier for Eve. Marriage was discussed, but they agreed—or rather, Eve assured him—that they didn't believe in it. Finally she decided to go to Columbia for her master's. She'd take the four-hour train ride to see him every weekend, and in the meantime she could scout out Manhattan, a territory they planned to conquer together. Her senior year, Eve was invited to be a Fellow at Bread Loaf. A.G., interning in Chattanooga at a law firm, couldn't understand the diminishing volume and ardor of her letters and phone calls. She herself was almost impossible to reach. Frantic, he drove one Friday night from Chattanooga to Vermont, arriving at the mountain outpost of literature sixteen hours later, just in time to find a tousled Eve walking to breakfast, hand in hand with a middle-aged poet A.G. recognized from dust-jacket photos. Her surprise turned almost immediately to defiance. A.G. punched the poet, knocking him down. Eve jumped on his back and scratched his face as a small crowd of aspiring writers looked on.

  In his young man's heart he believed he could never forgive her, but she astonished him by refusing to ask him to. Back in Chattanooga, he waited for the letter or the call, in his mind conducting the dialogue she refused to initiate. How could she? After all that time, after all they'd been through together. For all his intelligence and eloquence, the sentiments and even the words were the same as those of all spurned lovers. He spent hours engaged in this furious debate, but his side amounted to the repetition of a simple question: “How could you stop loving me?” This was his first experience of rejection. He had never been in love before, and some of his friends wondered if he ever would be again.

  At his father's insistence, A.G. had taken half a dozen economics classes already, and having finished most of his course work in English, he decided to do a double major in literature and economics. He took up with a new set of friends, avoiding most of those he and Eve had known. He had no idea what he wanted to do. After graduation he went to China to teach English, which he envisioned as a kind of romantic exile. The following year he enrolled in business school, and then, after a grueling year as an analyst at an investment bank, he found his calling as a closer—the guy who entertained the clients and held their hands as they signed the checks.

  “So she broke your heart and drove you to banking?”

  “I don't suppose it was quite that simple. I've probably simplified it in retrospect. Mythologized it in my mind.”

  “So how does this lead us to the present? To your imminent nuptials?”

  He shook his head and chopped up more coke. “I don't know. I guess it just seemed like time.” He folded the coke and chopped it again.

  “That's it? It ‘seemed like time’?”

  He shrugged. “She's a nice girl, from a good family. You know, we have a lot in common. So, what about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Have you ever been in love?” He was rubbing his face as if to wash off a spot—a tic that was terribly familiar to her.

  “Once,” she said, taking a cigarette from his pack and holding it to her lips while he lit it.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “You know most of the story,” Ginny said. “You were there.”

  “I was there?” He seemed determined to be obtuse.

  “You were the one.”

  “Jesus. Are you—”

  “Yes, I am serious. All those years, all those nights. I couldn't help it. I knew it was supposed to be fun, but I fell in love with you.”

  “I didn't know.”

  “You don't remember the last night we spent together?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “You asked me to marry you.”

  “I did?” He looked horrified.

  “You did. You asked me to marry you and you told me you wanted me to have your babies. We stayed up all night planning our future. We were going to spend our summers in Provence. And the next day you said you'd come to my parents' house for Thanksgiving. But later that same day you said you had a late meeting on Wednesday and you would take the train up to Bedford Thursday morning. And that was the last I ever heard from you.”

  He slumped back on the couch. “That was terrible, really the worst— I know. I just didn't know what to say to you.” He leaned forward and snorted another line. “I was going to go up to Bedford. Except I went out for a drink that night. And I met a girl. And one drink led to another. And the next thing I knew, it was noon the next day and we were finishing the last of the coke. I couldn't very well face your family in that condition. And, you know, letting you down like that … I knew I needed to call and apologize, but somehow I couldn't.”

  Well, at least now she knew what had happened. She bent over the coffee table and snorted another couple of lines. “It used to kill me to see you at parties,” she said finally, “and you acting so casual, as if nothing had happened. With some babe on your arm. For a long time I hated you.”

  “I guess I can't really blame you,” he said. “I wish there was some way—”

  “Make love to me,” Ginny said. In her own mind, she wasn't being sentimental so much as practical. She felt he owed her that much at least. Either it would be as good as she remembered it or it wouldn't, and she would've gotten it out of her system.

  Up in the bedroom, he was smart enough, or considerate enough, to kiss her long and hard before he began removing her clothes. In the middle, for all his skill, and all her desire to be transported, she began to come back to herself and feel awkward and sad. And after what seemed like a very long time, she just wanted him to finish. She realized now that what she'd really wanted was to believe that he still wanted her and that he cared enough for her to betray his future wife.

  Afterward, she wrapped herself in the bedspread and walked out to the deck. The sky had turned gray in the east and the dark surface of the ocean was stippled with silver sunlight. The coke was wearing off, and her eyeballs felt as if they were being pricked with tiny needles. She hated herself.

  Eventually, A.G., in his paisley boxer shorts, holding a cigarette, joined her on the deck.

  “What are you going to do?” she said.

  “I don't know.” He took a drag. “Probably the correct thing.”

  “What's the correct thing?”

  “It's what we do when we don't know what the
right thing is.”

  He put his arm around her and held his cigarette to her lips. She inhaled greedily, as if she believed the smoke could save her, the ember blazing and crackling between A.G.'s fingers before it faded and dimmed within a cocoon of gray ash and he tossed it away, the last sparks dying on the dewy lawn below.

  2008

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  The author of seven novels and two collections of essays on wine, Jay McInerney is a regular contributor to New York, The New York Times Book Review, The Independent and Corriere della Sera. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, Playboy and Granta. In 2006, Time cited his 1984 debut, Bright Lights, Big City, as one of nine generation-defining novels of the twentieth century. He was the recipient of the 2006 James Beard Foundation's M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award, and his novel The Good Life received the Grand Prix Littéraire de Deauville in 2007. He lives in Manhattan and in Bridgehampton, New York.

  A NOTE ON THE TYPE

  The text of this book was set in Simoncini Garamond, a modern version by Francesco Simoncini of the type attributed to the famous Parisian type cutter Claude Garamond (ca. 1480-1561). Garamond was a pupil of Geoffroy Tory and is believed to have based his letters on the Venetian models, although he introduced a number of important differences, and it is to him we owe the letter that we know as old style. He gave to his letters a certain elegance and a feeling of movement that won for their creator an immediate reputation and the patronage of Francis I of France.