Bright, Precious Days

29

RUSSELL ARRIVED TEN MINUTES EARLY and took a seat at the bar. He’d read about the restaurant, Bacchus — the two-hundred-dollar prix fixe; the hundred-thousand-bottle cellar; the four Lehman bankers who’d run up a $72,000 tab, which got the senior partner at the table fired after an exposé in the New York Post—but hadn’t ventured inside until Tom Reynes suggested meeting there. The cocktail lounge was all shiny lacquered wood and tender matte leather, the bar itself a single piece of luminous patinated Cuban mahogany, which had once, so the bartender informed him, graced the original, long-vanished Waldorf-Astoria on lower Fifth Avenue.

In the interest of starting slowly, Russell ordered a Pellegrino and, out of curiosity, asked to see the wine list, only to be informed that there were two, one for the reds and one for the whites. Ah, yes, he’d read about that. He asked to see both and was presented with matching brown leather volumes, each weighing several pounds, which thoroughly engrossed him until Tom arrived, fifteen minutes late, greeting the bartender with a hearty handshake before turning to Russell.

“Sorry, meeting ran late,” he said. “Shall we go to the table?” The maître d’, a slender African-American in a tight black suit, had appeared beside him, and bowed them into the dining room.

On the way to the table, Tom paused to exchange greetings with diners and staff. Impeccable in a blue-gray birdseye suit, he bantered with the waiter and requested the sommelier, an improbably young man with an elfin face and a tattoo of grapes on his neck.

“Good evening, Mr. Reynes,” he intoned.

“Evening, Don. Let’s crack a bottle of white. How’s the ’89 Ramonet Montrachet showing?”

“Sick juice. You’ll love it. I just opened a bottle for Mr. Trousdale last night.”

“Trousdale, that fucking poseur. He wouldn’t know a good wine if he licked it from Scarlett Johansson’s coochie.” He turned to Russell. “You know Larry Trousdale? Dumb-ass, but he made a big score shorting the telecoms back in the day.”

Russell shrugged. “I’ve heard the name.”

As they glanced at the menus, Tom said, “So, you’ve really got your tit in the wringer.”

Russell nodded. “That’s one way to describe the situation.”

“At least you’ve been smart enough to stay off the airwaves. I saw that so-called author of yours on CNN the other day when I was at the gym. He just dug himself a deeper hole. We’re supposed to feel sorry for him because his novels didn’t sell and he was addled on drugs? Fucking idiot. I mean, what was he thinking when he decided to write this book? For that matter, what were you thinking when you decided to publish it?”

Russell was relieved when the sommelier showed up with the bottle of white, depositing two large gossamer-thin glasses in front of each of them, opening the bottle, and pouring a dollop for Tom, who swirled the glass, sniffed it, swirled again and finally tilted it toward his lips.

Russell realized he was holding his breath while awaiting the verdict. Tom smacked his lips as he lowered the glass back to the table and nodded curtly.

The sommelier poured half an inch into Russell’s glass and returned to give Tom a few more milliliters. It tasted like honey, except that it wasn’t actually sweet. “Wowsah!”

“Yeah,” said Tom. He took another sip before leaning back in his chair and cracking his knuckles. “So tell me, weren’t you even a little bit suspicious about that son of a bitch’s story? I mean, the name alone’s a red flag. Like, who’s he in cahoots with?”

“Eventually, yes, I became suspicious. But I have to say he was very convincing, and I was hardly the only one drawn in. The New Yorker was within a day or two of publishing an excerpt, and all the networks were fighting for an interview.”

Tom shook his head and swallowed the rest of the wine. “Don’t you have some kind of due-diligence process? You didn’t ever ask yourself, ‘How come the big corporate publishers aren’t outbidding me on this?’ ”

Again, Russell shrugged. “There was plenty of interest.”

“But not bids?”

“I preempted.”

Tom sighed.

Even before the appetizers, Russell was going to have to eat some humble pie. He was on Tom’s turf, in the role of supplicant, hoping that Corrine’s best friend’s husband could help him out of the financial sinkhole into which he was being sucked. Already struggling before the Kohout debacle, he was now desperate. Kip Taylor, citing liquidity issues, refused to invest another nickel in McCane, Slade. Right now, Russell had about three weeks’ worth of cash on hand.

Much as he wanted to despise Tom’s easy air of privilege, Russell always felt a little beta in Tom’s distinctly alpha presence, as he had at Brown with the New York and Boston preppies, the boys with BMWs and ancestral summer homes in Nantucket, the Vineyard or the Hamptons. Tom had gone to Princeton, but it was the same hierarchy. Guys like him set the tone at the Ivy League campuses, arriving with hereditary knowledge that the midwesterners and the scholarship students like Russell yearned to acquire. They had the worn, faded rugby shirts, the Bean boots, the Barbour jackets and the phone numbers of girls at Smith and Holyoke. They knew which professors and which courses to avoid, knowledge passed down by their siblings and upperclassmen at Andover or St. Paul’s. Even though you wanted to hate them, you couldn’t help envying their careless ease, their sense of belonging and dominance. Corrine had been one of them, sort of, which was part of her appeal, but she’d been more than that, too; she’d had a kind of nerdy earnestness, which made her more approachable than the others, especially for someone like Russell, who’d been supremely confident in his intellect, if not in his wardrobe.

Born on Park Avenue, schooled at St. Bernard’s and Groton, Tom had pulled himself up by his grandfather’s suspenders. That august gentleman had been a cofounder of the investment bank Reynes, McCabe and Simms, and Tom was the beneficiary of the income of one-third of his fortune, held in trust, which would have allowed him the leisure to do nothing at all, but Tom had gone to work for a rival firm and added many millions more to the ancestral bounty. An übermensch in a bespoke suit, he was current court tennis champion at the Racquet Club, four-time doubles grass-court tennis champion at the Meadow Club in Southampton and three-time club champion at Shinnecock Hills.

A waiter approached, holding a bulbous wineglass with a long, delicate stem — wherein a shallow pool of crimson shimmered — reverently setting it on the table in front of Tom. “Your friends wanted you to taste this,” he said, nodding toward a table at the other side of the room where four suits hoisted their goblets in salute.

Tom lifted the glass and swirled it, the ruby liquid surging up the sides of the bowl, sniffed and then tilted the huge bowl toward his lips, inhaling a sip and seeming to chew on it before setting the glass back down. “You guys are a bunch of pedophiles,” he called out. “This wine’s a baby.”

Howls of indignation rose from the other table. “No way, man. This wine has tits,” one of them shouted.

“T and A in liquid form!” another testified

“I didn’t say I didn’t like it,” Tom bellowed. “I just said it was barely legal.”

“It’s a ’94 Harlan,” the tit man shouted.

“I rest my case — an eighth grader!” Tom raised his glass toward the group before resuming his study of the wine list. “Fucking guys, they’re from Goldman. They do some trading for us. They’re young, and still into the Napa cult Cabernets; it’s the gateway drug. They’re players, though, I’ll give them that. That bottle is like twenty-eight hundred dollars on the list.”

“Jesus Christ,” Russell said.

“Lacryma Christi, indeed,” Tom said. “Taste it. It’s actually pretty damn good, but I can’t tell them that.”

Russell raised the glass gingerly and took a small sip. Maybe it was just the power of suggestion, but he was inclined to agree with the guy who said the wine had tits. It was mouth-filling and round, like a breast that was too big for your mouth but nevertheless inspired you to try to inhale it.

Although there were several couples spread around the room, it had the air of a men’s club; instead of squash, the sport here was competitive oenophilia.

Tom waved impatiently at the sommelier. “Don, bring those guys a taste of the Montrachet and let’s start thinking about a red wine. How do we feel about the ’82 Cheval Blanc?”

“Tasted it last week, in fact, and it was singing.”

“Yes, but what the fuck was it singing, exactly?”

“I’d say it was singing Kanye’s ‘Good Life.’ ”

“Well, let’s crack it open, and give those Goldman boys a little taste.”

“Right away, Mr. Reynes.”

“That’s a serious bottle of wine,” Russell said, as the sommelier hurried away.

“Life’s too short to drink badly,” Tom said. “I mean, I don’t even touch the wine at those benefits the girls are always dragging us to. They always have top-shelf vodka and bat-piss wine. You’re a bit of a buff, aren’t you?”

“I’m an enthusiast. But I can’t honestly say I often get to drink First Growth Bordeaux.” Russell stated this fact as a disclaimer, partly in the hope of absolving himself of responsibility for the bill.

“Well, brace yourself. Because here comes a fucking brilliant example.”

As the sommelier cut the foil on the bottle, Tom said, “So what’s your number, Russell?”

Although they’d known each other for more than twenty years, this was only the second time they’d dined à deux. Russell had initiated this meeting more or less out of desperation.

“Honestly, I need five hundred K to make it through the year. Of course I’d give you some of my equity. But in the long run, I’d like to buy out my partner.”

“I take it the feeling is mutual.”

“Well, I think he’s lost some of his enthusiasm for literary publishing.”

“I bet. Although literature isn’t exactly what got you into this predicament. Your specialty is fiction, right?”

“I suppose so. That’s what we’re known for.”

“You’re an expert in that field — in that market.”

“Well, I don’t know that I’d say that. I do trust my judgment about what literature is, and my ability to recognize it, and we’ve got two editors I trust, as well, but I doubt anybody can predict with certainty what’s going to work with the public.” As soon as he said this, he wanted to retract it, not because it wasn’t true, but because he was asking Tom for money.

“But you know better than most.”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“That makes you a market specialist. My point is, stick to the market you know.”

Like a dutiful student, Russell nodded.

Satisfied that his lesson had been absorbed, or else bored with the topic, Tom said, “I’ll send my guy over to look at the books tomorrow. Meantime, let’s order something to soak up the wine.”

The sommelier was still standing by, waiting for a judgment.

After tasting it, Tom pronounced the wine sound, if not quite as good as the last bottle he’d had from his own cellar, and asked that four glasses be sent to the Goldman table. “Show them how it’s done in Bordeaux,” Tom said.

“So how’s Corrine?” he asked after they’d ordered. Russell had found the menu a polyglot document that blithely mixed French, Italian and Asian terms under the banner of New American cuisine. The raw seafood was listed under the banner of “crudo” rather than sashimi, drizzled in olive oil rather than ponzu or soy sauce, whereas a fried seafood medley was billed as “tempura” rather than fritto misto; and at least half of the main courses were cooked sous-vide, a high-tech method of slow boiling in plastic bags pioneered by the Troisgros brothers in Roanne, France, which all the ambitious New York chefs had recently adopted for their own purposes.

“Corrine’s fine,” he said. “I don’t know. Busy. Distracted.”

“Busy and distracted can be good,” Tom said.

“Not necessarily.” He paused, uncertain of how honest he wanted to be. Russell was generally reluctant to discuss his marriage with anyone; with Washington and his other friends, he always felt the need to put on a good front, to live up to the notion that he and Corrine were an iconic couple. Somehow it meant a great deal to him to imagine that people still believed that. But his guilty knowledge of Tom’s marital difficulties made him more comfortable about opening up.

“I can’t remember the last time we had sex.” Disloyal as he felt saying this, it was a relief, and strangely exhilarating.

“Well, of course you can’t. You’ve been married, what, twenty-five years? Your wedding was a few months before ours, right? Hell, I was there. I remember doing lines in Corrine’s bedroom with your friend Jeff. I mean, fuck, we all just celebrated our twenty-fifth anniversary. What do you expect?”

“I expect to get laid once in a while,” Russell said.

“Well, of course you do, but what does that have to do with your wife?”

“Don’t you and Casey—”

“Sure we do. At least three times a year. Valentine’s Day, her birthday and on my birthday, I get a blow job.”

The somm reappeared, bearing yet another glass, which he placed atop a cocktail napkin in front of Tom. “From the gentlemen at the other table,” he said.

After swirling, sniffing and sipping, Tom offered Russell a taste.

“It’s amazing,” he said.

“It is,” Tom said, lifting the cocktail napkin from the table and dabbing his lips with it.

One of the Goldman boys detached himself from the group and sauntered over to the table, glass in hand. Tom made the introductions and then they sorted out the weekend’s golf plans.

“So what do you think it is?” the man asked, nodding toward Tom’s glass.

“I was almost tempted to say Masseto,” Tom said, teasing out the conclusion, “but on second thought I think it’s ’82 Pétrus.”

The other man was crestfallen. “Shit, you saw the bottle.”

“Not easily done, that, when you had Don wrap a napkin around it.” Indeed, Russell observed that the bottle on the table across the way was swathed in white linen.

“Impressive, Reynes.”

“How did you guess?” Russell asked after the banker rejoined his friends.

“I know these guys. After my wine, I knew they’d have to try to top me. They don’t know Burgundy, so that means a First Growth Bordeaux from a great year. There are eight first growths, if you count the unofficial three on the Right Bank, and Pétrus is the only one that’s a hundred percent Merlot.”

“Still, I’m impressed.”

“As a matter of fact, I probably would’ve nailed it,” Tom said. “But I didn’t leave it to chance.” After glancing over at the Goldman table, he lifted up the cocktail napkin that the sommelier had placed under his glass, on which 82 Pet was scribbled. “I tip him much better than they do. Plus, I’m an investor in this place.” He seemed very pleased with himself. “In life, in business, you need an edge. Information is power, Russell. You try not to leave anything to chance. I never make a trade unless I think I know more than the other guy does. That’s what I was saying to you earlier.”

“I’m not sure whom I could bribe to find the next best-seller.”

“If you’re confident in your ability to spot literary talent, if you have an edge in that area, then use it.”

Over the course of the next two hours, the exigencies of his professional life faded away as they progressed through a seven-course tasting menu and several bottles of exceptional wine, his anxieties anesthetized until, near the end of dinner, he wondered whether he’d be expected to split the bill, which undoubtedly would be larger than any he’d ever seen in his life.

Men in blue and gray suits stopped by the table from time to time to chat with Tom, to inquire after his golf game and his wife, to share their wine. It was a nice club to belong to, if only for the night. They were all brothers in the big-ticket buzz. Expensive winos. Wait, Russell thought, what was that from? It came to him: Keith Richards’s side project.

After yet another of these well-tailored acolytes of Mammon and Bacchus returned to his table, Russell asked, “So where do you go for sex, if not home?”

“Usually to a town house on East 73rd.”

“You have a girlfriend there?”

“I do. In fact, I was just thinking I might stop by tonight. You should join me.”

“We’re talking about…a whorehouse?”

“Well, that’s a rather inelegant term. I prefer to think of it as a gentlemen’s club.”

Russell realized that he was serious, and couldn’t help being fascinated by the idea of such places. Of course he knew they existed — every year or two you read about another busted bordello in the Post—but he’d never known anyone with firsthand experience, or at least he didn’t think he had, until now.

“Seriously, you should try it.”

“Even if I put aside all other considerations, I’m sure I couldn’t afford it.”

“Tonight’s on me. Dinner and a hooker. If we’re going into business together, we need to trust each other.”

Russell couldn’t imagine himself crossing that line, paying for sex, which was precisely what made the prospect so intriguing. It wasn’t as if he’d never been unfaithful to Corrine, and the ongoing sexual drought at home seemed like an ameliorating circumstance. Under the influence of at least a liter of insanely expensive wine, the prospect seemed not entirely unappealing — even without the suggestion that Tom’s investment in his company was contingent on his participation.

“Russell, you’re killing me here. Don’t tell me you’ve been perfectly behaved all these years?”

He shook his head.

“This is a guilt-free zone, dude. An exchange of cash for services. On the emotional level, you remain entirely faithful, which is what women really care about.”

The notion that Tom imagined he knew what women really wanted was so comical that Russell couldn’t help snickering, choking on his water in a fit of intoxicated hilarity.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” Russell said. He didn’t want to offend his host and couldn’t help wondering if it wouldn’t be ungrateful, not to mention impolitic, to turn down Tom’s generous offer. And wouldn’t he be cheating himself, in a sense, out of an archetypal adventure? What man hasn’t fantasized about that experience, even those, like Russell, who’d grown up in the era of feminism and considered themselves fellow travelers — which made the potential guilt metaphysical as well as personal.

The more he thought about it, the more he found the prospect frightening, and thrilling.

Reappearing after a short absence, Tom said, “It’s all arranged.” He reached across the table and put a yellow pill down in front of Russell.

“What’s this?”

“Cialis,” he said. “Let’s face it, we’ve had a lot to drink and we’re not twenty anymore.”

Even as he swallowed the pill, Russell wasn’t certain if he could go through with this.

When the bill arrived, Tom waved off his tentative hand and slapped down his black American Express Centurion card, the one reserved for cardholders who spent more than a million a year, which clanked like real currency against the silver metal tray cradling the innocent-looking slip of paper that itemized the staggering tab.

A black Lincoln Town Car was waiting for them outside. Tom gave the driver an address on East 73rd. Russell couldn’t quite believe he was doing this. He kept thinking that he should ask the driver to stop, tell Tom that he’d changed his mind. It was crazy. He couldn’t do this. But the car wafted uptown on Madison, and Tom kept talking about how hot the girls were.

“Don’t you worry about the place getting busted?”

“The madam’s married to a cop in the Tenth precinct and she has everybody paid off all the way up the line.”

They pulled to the curb in front of a somewhat drab brownstone in the middle of the block. Two Town Cars, identical to their own, were idling there already. And it occurred to Russell that just as he’d begun to question his own faith in the inexhaustible mystery of the city, he was being initiated into a new corner of it. For as long as he’d lived here, apparently there were parts of it he still wasn’t aware of — unknown universes behind closed doors, new republics around the corner and up the block, all awaiting discovery.

They ascended the steps and Tom rang the buzzer, which was presently answered by a slim middle-aged blonde in a maroon kaftan, whom he introduced to Russell. Gretchen had the lined, leathery face of a heavy smoker and looked very much like the chatelaine of an Upper East Side town house, accepting a kiss on the cheek from Tom and leading them into a front parlor that was redolent of cigarette and cigar smoke, which failed to mask the tang of mildew. It was furnished haphazardly with sofas and chairs upholstered in disparate fabrics, like the living room of a second-rate sorority house. Framed etchings of scenes from mythology hung on either side of the fireplace, the busiest of which appeared to depict the rape of the Sabine women, but most of the walls were bare, showing veins of cracked plaster and peeling paint. Russell had been expecting something more tasteful and expensive, or far tackier, whereas this was merely drab.

A slender redheaded beauty appeared in the doorway, draped in a blue silk robe. Tom lit up as she glided across the room and embraced him; obviously they were well acquainted.

“I’m afraid I don’t know anything about your friend’s tastes,” Gretchen said as she turned from Tom to Russell, who felt his heart pounding in his chest, “But I think you’ll be very pleased with your date,” she said, taking his right hand and rubbing it between her palms. “In fact, here’s Tanya now.”

Russell turned and saw, framed in the arched doorway, wearing a leopard print robe, his sister-in-law, Hilary.