The Good Life

by Jay McInerney

  “Which topic, Westchester or strange pussy?”

  “Connecticut, actually. Range Rovers, golden retrievers, Barbour jackets. That’s me on the back nine in white golf shoes. A Connecticut Negro on the clay court. Veronica’s made an appointment with a Realtor in New Canaan for next weekend. Since the morning of the twelfth, the Realtors be busy up there, baby.”

  Whether or not to leave had become a mainstay of Manhattan discourse in the last week. He and Corrine had discussed it, of course, and while they hadn’t come to any conclusions, it seemed their positions in this debate had reversed. For years, she’d brought it up routinely, whereas his stock answer had always been that John Cheever might still be alive and well if he’d just stayed put in Manhattan. But these past few days, she’d surprised him by expressing a desire to cast her lot with the city, even as she acknowledged that they had to think of the kids—she who had never seemed quite comfortable calling New York home, who could never stop using the word house when she really meant apartment.

  “It makes sense,” Washington said, sounding like a man trying hard to persuade himself to come to terms with a fait accompli. “We’d save forty K on tuition alone.”

  “You’ll pay twenty-five or thirty in property taxes,” Russell said, although he was conscious of the fact that he was advocating a position in which he was losing faith, his opposition largely rhetorical, his ostensible defense of staying in the city no more spirited than Washington’s case for leaving. Middle age and parenthood had long ago begun to erode his sense of invulnerability. Recent events had accelerated that process.

  “Come on,” Washington said. “I can’t be all alone out there in the land of plaid pants.”

  “I might take the number of that Realtor.”

  “Time was, I used to say I’d rather die in Alphabet City than survive in Mount Kisco. But I can’t think that way anymore. As parents, we don’t really have the luxury of cynical bravado. I think Veronica’s right. The party’s over. Time to leave.”

  “Didn’t we say that in ’87? That the party was over?”

  “Hey, we had a good run.”

  For all of Washington’s moral relativism, for all of his failings as a husband and his gleeful misanthropy, in fatherhood he had discovered his one true faith. His devotion to their kids was acknowledged even by his detractors, and was a source of wonder to Russell. Russell wanted to be swept up in that rapture, to be the kind of man who would make any sacrifice for his children. He hoped it wasn’t too late. Somehow, he’d sensed a shift of power in the direction of his wife. She seemed to have been invigorated by the disaster, whereas he felt paralyzed.

  Washington ordered a second martini and the conversation drifted to business, Russell bemoaning the sales figures of a first novel for which he’d entertained great hopes. Washington had an even bigger nightmare; the author of their lead nonfiction title for the spring, an inspirational business memoir, had been indicted in a false-accounting scheme. And the books on their fall list, regardless of merit, were almost certainly doomed. They both remembered how the Gulf War had killed book sales in ’91. It would be nearly impossible to get TV and radio coverage for months to come; this past spring, hardcover sales had already gone down almost 40 percent in the wake of the unending presidential election and the stock market slump.

  “We gots to get in the nine/eleven business,” Washington said. “You see that woman on the news this morning? Wife of the guy who tried to take on the hijackers over Pennsylvania.”

  “Todd Beamer,” Russell said.

  “Articulate. Pregnant. Widow of an American hero. Sounds like a book to me.” It was just the kind of topical, commercial, exploitative concept that they both normally sneered at.

  “Not exactly our kind of publishing,” Russell said. “More a Simon and Schuster, HarperCollins instant-book thing.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe it should be. I’ve got some feelers out.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s agented up already.”

  When Washington waved for his third martini, Russell said, “If Veronica’s on the warpath, I don’t think you want to be diving headfirst into the martini shaker.” He had a long history as Washington’s caretaker—carrying him out of bars, pouring him into cabs, covering for him with Veronica and their bosses. Then, three years ago, Washington had quit drinking, without benefit of counsel or institutional support—an impressive display of willpower.

  “Just one for the road, chief.”

  Russell didn’t want to be his best friend’s keeper. At moments like these, he just wanted to be twenty-five again, when heedlessness and reckless abandon constituted an aesthetic program. Much as he knew Washington shouldn’t be drinking at all, it was just so fucking uncool to be the one to say so.

  After a truncated afternoon at the office, he took the express to Canal. At the barricades, he showed his driver’s license and his lease. The cop, who wore a New York State trooper’s uniform, was unfamiliar with the map of downtown, unconvinced by the Hudson Street address.

  “Where’s this supposed to be?”

  “Five blocks south,” Russell said. “Across the street from Nobu.”

  “What the hell’s a Nobu?”

  “It’s a restaurant.”

  “Any good?”

  “If you like raw fish.”

  The cop looked him over before handing back his documents.

  “Once a year’s plenty for me,” he said, turning to his partner and winking. “On the wife’s birthday.”

  Preoccupied as he was, saddled with gloom, Russell was two blocks away before he registered the joke.

  Storey raced across the loft to greet him, while Jeremy remained on the floor between the couches, hypnotized by his Game Boy. Corrine was on the phone, pacing outside the kitchen.

  “Daddy, Daddy,” Storey said, climbing into his arms. “I got a hundred percent in spelling.”

  “I should hope so,” Russell said.

  “Hey, Dad?” Jeremy called out, looking up from his game. “I’ve got a really good joke.”

  He carried Storey over to the kitchen.

  “Russell’s home. I’ll talk to you later.” She put down the phone and pecked at his cheek. “Everything okay?”

  “We had a bomb scare at the office.”

  She scowled and put a belated finger to her lips.

  “Jeremy, come quick,” Storey shouted, seeking, as always, to draw her brother into the social circle. “Daddy had a bomb at his office.”

  “Not a bomb,” Russell said. “A bomb scare. It’s a false alarm. They thought there might be a bomb, but there wasn’t.”

  Jeremy frowned. “Why did they think that?”

  “Somebody made a phone call saying there was.”

  “Why?”

  Rolling her eyes, Corrine lifted Jeremy into her arms. “It’s just some silly people playing a trick,” she said.

  “That’s a mean trick,” Storey said.

  “Why did they play a trick?” Jeremy asked.

  “Tell Dad your joke, Jeremy,” Corrine said.

  “Oh, yeah. Dad, what does it mean if a husband is unfaithful?”

  Russell tried to maintain a neutral demeanor as he glanced at Corrine, who looked smug.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “What does it mean?”

  “Well, if he goes to the store and he takes a label that says ‘low-fat’ off something and sticks it on the real ice cream, the fat kind, and takes it home for his wife to eat. That’s what it means.”

  Russell puzzled over this, relaxing slightly, wondering what it could possibly signify.

  “What would be the point of that?” he finally said. “Then he’d have a fat wife.”

  “Yeah,” Jeremy said, chuckling. “Pretty good trick, huh?”

  He risked another look at Corrine, whose face reflected his own bemused puzzlement. Perhaps the joke didn’t mean anything.

  “I’ve got the kids’ dinner ready,” Corrine said. “I walked all the way to the Gris
tedes in the Village and back with the groceries. The market’s still closed. They’re not letting any trucks in.”

  When the phone rang at 1:30 that morning, Russell was in bed, alone, his wife out smearing peanut butter on the wounds of the city.

  “Russell, I’m really sorry to call so late. It’s Veronica.” She paused, as if to extend the interval of hope before asking the inevitable question. “You haven’t seen Washington, have you?”

  “It’s all right,” he said. “I wasn’t really asleep.” For just a moment, in the dark, he could imagine himself transported back through the years to a brighter moment—for him, if not Veronica—when these calls were a regular feature of life, when Washington had invoked his name as a dinner companion without warning him, or when he’d actually been at Washington’s side, chasing through the night in their quest for the elusive heart of the city, which throbbed like a bass guitar line, just audible somewhere around the next corner, behind the next door, just ahead, down the next set of stairs….

  12

  Corrine was working with Svetlana, a tiny, nervous creature with large spherical breasts and a wide, worried face, showing her how to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Svetlana was dubious. “It looks gross,” she said.

  “You’ve never eaten one?”

  She shook her head. “We had no such thing. We had caviar, not peanut butter. My father was a colonel in the army.”

  The good old days—when Corrine had nightmares about nuclear holocaust.

  Svetlana dutifully donned the plastic gloves, handling the peanut butter as if it were a toxic substance. An exotic dancer who worked at the same club as Jerry’s girlfriend, Tatiana, she was taking time off while recovering from her latest boob job. She hoped to double her income when she returned to work.

  “Do you enjoy it… the dancing?” Corrine asked. Of course, what she really wanted to know was whether she slept with the customers.

  Svetlana seemed to find the question nave. “It’s job,” she said. “Until I get my green card.” After successfully constructing two sandwiches, she seemed to gain confidence and decided to elaborate. “It’s very simple when you dance. You have the power. Men are very simple. Like children. They want candy. You have candy. You understand? I don’t think I have to explain this to you.”

  “I understand,” Corrine said. A thought that had been nagging her suddenly came into focus: Was Russell having an affair? She realized she’d been trying to suppress the suspicion for months, but it would explain a great deal—certain absences, physical and otherwise, inappropriate outbursts of cheerfulness, a certain severing of the links between emotional stimulus and response, his failure to initiate sex. She stepped out into the open air to consider this possibility; she didn’t really notice the police car pulling up, until Hilary stepped out of the door on the passenger’s side, wearing a tube top and a little black bolero jacket.

  After waving good-bye to her driver, she turned to survey the scene and spotted Corrine. “Hey, sis.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Doing my part.”

  Corrine felt acutely that her terrain was being trespassed upon, and she distrusted her sister’s motives, though it would seem petulant to say so. “Well, it’s not like you can just… I mean, we’re pretty fully staffed right now.”

  “I’m sure I can find some way to help out.” She peered into the open-fronted tent, empty except for the volunteers—half a dozen young women who appeared to be trying to make themselves look busy. Jerry had disappeared for the moment. “So this is it?” Hearing a note of disappointment in her sister’s voice, Corrine felt obliged to justify their mission.

  “It’s a little slow at the moment,” Corrine said. “You just missed the midnight rush.” Although she resented her sister’s appearance, she nevertheless wanted the place to seem like a vital and bustling part of the relief effort.

  “Where’s the, you know, the Ground Zero?”

  “It’s a few blocks that way,” Corrine said, pointing.

  “I sort of imagined you’d be right on top of it.”

  “We take food to the site.” In fact, Corrine had not yet gone in herself, imagining that as a privilege to be earned, not taken for granted, as much as she wanted to see what it really looked like. “We provide a little oasis where they can get away a little bit. And we feed the cops and the National Guard.”

  “Not the firemen?”

  “They kind of keep to themselves,” Corrine said, suddenly seeing the operation through her sister’s eyes, and finding it somewhat marginal and inessential, removed from the terrible center of things.

  But then Hilary found something to engage her interest. “Who’s that?” she said, nodding toward Luke as he climbed out of the Pathfinder.

  “He’s one of the volunteers,” Corrine said, trying to keep her voice neutral.

  “Maybe I’ll stick around.”

  Although she hardly knew the man, Corrine didn’t want her predatory sister glomming on to him. Besides, she’d been hoping to talk to Luke tonight, hoping to get a little more of his story.

  “Hi, I’m Hilary,” she said as he approached with a bag of ice in either hand and a confused look on his face.

  “Luke,” he said.

  “This is so wonderful what you’re doing down here. I really admire your… I think it’s really, you know… great.”

  This barely articulate accolade flummoxed its recipient.

  As if, Corrine thought, Hilary’s vocabulary did not include terms to cover the impulses of charity and altruism, immediately recognizing her own lack of charity toward her sister. Why was it always like this?

  Corrine showed her sister the basic routine, but Hilary kept asking when they were going to Ground Zero, drifting off to talk to Luke and Jerry. A short while later, Corrine looked up from the warming trays, to see her climbing into a cop car, presumably the one in which she’d arrived.

  Captain Davies, who’d been examining the dinner selections, was also watching. “Your sister seems to have made a friend.”

  “She always does,” Corrine said, “although she usually goes for the bad guys. Seems like all my life I’ve been watching her jump into fast cars with fast boys. Cops didn’t usually enter the picture until later, in the wee hours, after the wreck, or the busted party. Then we’d go pick her up at the police station. I don’t know why I still worry about her after all these years. Was that one of your guys?”

  Davies shook his head. “O’Connor, Brooklyn North.”

  “Well, I’m sure they’ll find lots to talk about.”

  “Oh, yeah. He probably wants to tell her all about his new baby girl.”

  Around three o’clock, a wave of Guardsmen descended and Corrine got caught up in the rush, making sandwiches, putting the drinks on ice, chatting with everyone as they came through. When the tent finally emptied, she stepped out into the moonlight and stretched, wondering if the wind had shifted or if she had simply become inured to the acrid stench of the ubiquitous smoke.

  Luke joined her on the cobblestones, holding out a pack of Marlboro Lights. She took one, which he then lit for her.

  “Guillermo smoked,” he said.

  “Your missing friend?”

  He nodded.

  “Are you still blaming yourself? About him?”

  “How could I not?”

  She couldn’t think of anything to say that might assuage his guilt.

  “What’s really fucked up is that I think I blame my wife and daughter, too. Although in a sense, they saved my life.”

  “Was he your best friend?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose so.” He took a long drag on his cigarette. “You lost somebody, didn’t you?”

  “My husband’s friend, really.” She said this in order to put her claim on the collective reservoir of grief in perspective—she hated exaggeration and self-dramatization—and also because she felt the need to bring Russell into the conversation. “I mean, he was my friend, too, but he w
as one of Russell’s closest friends.”

  He nodded, blew out a perfect smoke ring. “How is he? Your husband, I mean.”

  “Well, of course he’s devastated.”

  Luke nodded sympathetically.

  “Actually,” she said, “it’s kind of hard to tell how he is. I mean, I can imagine how he must be feeling. I know him, and I know he loved Jim. And I know how I feel and even how I’d feel if I were him. But I can’t really tell. I can’t get him to talk about it.”

  “Give him time.”

  “Has this…” She nodded in the direction of Ground Zero. “Hasn’t this made you feel closer to your wife? Isn’t that the natural impulse—to cling together?”

  He consumed an inch of cigarette, the ember casting an eerie glow on his somber face, as he considered this. He dropped his cigarette and ground it into the cobblestones. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”

  13

  The presence of the dead was most palpable in the hours after midnight, their spirits hovering in the canyons. It was better, feeling them around you, than seeing them in your sleep uptown. There was something demoralizing about the sunrise—the daylight inappropriately cheerful and mundane. Darkness, with its enfolding intimacy and its mortal intimations, was more suited to the time and the place, more conducive to mourning, to rumors, to shared confidences and bravado. The nights had turned crisp, an improvement on the balminess of the first two weeks.

  He was smoking in front of the tent when Captain Davies walked over from the trailer after checking in for his shift at midnight.

  “Haven’t smoked in twelve years,” he said, “but I’d take one now.”

  Luke shook out a Marlboro and lit it with his Bic.

  “I was thinking about my friend Danny O’Callaghan. Fireman. Chain-smoker. Almost killed him. Finally gave it up last year. I heard he was missing and looked for his name when I checked the list at the precinct ten days ago. There were some other friends on the list, but no Danny. I go back to my desk, feeling like at least he fucking made it. Few minutes later, I realize I’d been looking under the C’s. I went back downstairs and checked the O’s, and there he is. I was just thinking I should have a smoke for Danny boy.”