Bright, Precious Days

31

JACK LANDED AT LA GUARDIA a few minutes early and called the dealer from the cab on the way into the city. By the time he arrived at the Chelsea, a little after 6:00 p.m., Kyle was waiting in the lobby. “I was having breakfast down the street,” he explained. He was wearing the full Williamsburg: Peterbilt trucker’s cap, red flannel shirt over a Pabst Blue Ribbon T-shirt.

They went up to the room, where Kyle unloaded his backpack and laid out his wares — coke, smack, Xanax and several grades of weed. “How’s the H?” Jack asked.

“Better than last time. Really clean. Try it.”

Jack pulled a framed hunting scene from the wall and laid it on the coffee table, ripped open a bindle and laid out a third of it in a thin line, then rolled up a twenty and hoovered the smack. It burned a little before it began to warm him from the inside out. Very soon he felt as if the world around him were slowing to a manageable speed. Everything was going to be all right.

“Ummm,” he said. In a moment he’d summon the energy to buy more of this before he forgot.

“Good, huh?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Seventy for a bundle. Ten bindles.”

Jack nodded. “Uh-huh.”

“How much do you want?”

“Better make it two.”

“Okay, just take it slow. This shit’s strong.”

“Long as I don’t shoot it, I figure I’m fine.”

“How about the coke?”

“Show me.” It was possible he was pausing a long time before answering; he wasn’t sure.

“I’ve got the regular. And then I’ve got the Bolivian blue.”

“Blue flake?”

“Like the scales of a bluefish, baby.”

“Oh, man. Let me see that.” The mythical blue flake. It was like the white whale. You heard about it, but he’d never actually seen it.

After what seemed like a long time, Kyle pulled a folded packet from his backpack and opened it up, nudging the layered fragments with an X-Acto knife, moving them back and forth to catch the light. “See the blue?”

“I think so.” Jack was pretty sure he did. It was a beautiful flake, for sure, like shards of white mica with blue-gray highlights.

“How much?”

“Two fifty.”

“Holy shit.”

“That’s because I don’t cut it and my supplier doesn’t, either. If you want the regular, it’s a hundred — fine with me.”

“No. I want this,” Jack said. “Do me a favor and chop me a line.”

It hit his sinuses clean, without the acidic bite of a bad wash or a bad cut, and when it dripped down the back of his throat, he felt the prickly tingle in his scalp and knew he’d made the right choice.

In the end he bought two grams of the blue and two bundles of the H with cash he’d withdrawn over the last two days in Nashville.

He was supposed to go to Russell and Corrine’s for dinner, which was kind of the last thing he felt like doing. It was six-forty-five and dinner was supposedly at eight. He did two more lines of the smack and suddenly it was eight-fucking-twenty. At some point he’d set up his iPod dock, and the Black Keys were playing.

He thought about blowing off the dinner but instead did two lines of coke, which set him right up, put some fuel in his tank. His current outfit of jeans and a black Kid Rock T-shirt would have to do. If he even thought about changing, he’d never make it.

Downstairs, he hailed a cab and made it to their door a few minutes before nine. Corrine was sweet and welcoming; as uptight as she could sometimes be, she seemed to have this almost maternal affection for him and to forgive him his sins, but Russell was a little pissy, messing around with the pots on the stove. It was a mystery to Jack how any dude could give a shit about cooking. But then, he wasn’t that much into eating, either.

“Glad you could make it,” Russell said, sounding more peevish than glad.

“Sorry. That flight always gets delayed.”

He retreated as Russell hacked away at some greenery splayed on the cutting board.

Given Russell’s mood, he was especially happy to see Washington. Here was a guy who didn’t judge lest he be judged, always good for some laughs. Sharp as hell tonight in a trim black suit and a white shirt that looked as crisp as a potato chip, his skull shaved clean and shiny, like it was buffed. They bumped fists and hugged.

“Whaddup, cracker?”

“Just soakin’ up the sights in the big city, blood.”

“New York, New York, just like you pitchered it.”

“Skyscrapers and everything.”

“Maybe I can show you some other sights later on, after the grown-ups have gone to bed.”

“Sounds cool, man. I’m in the mood. Where’s the missus?”

“She’s taking a little time off from the matrimonial state. I’m in the penalty box.”

“Damn, sorry about that. But I guess you’re used to it by now.”

Washington shrugged, as if to suggest that it was a force majeure kind of deal.

“You know Nancy Tanner?” he asked.

“Yeah, for sure,” Jack said as she leaned toward him — at first he was baffled, but then he realized he was supposed to kiss her cheek.

“We’re old pals,” Nancy said. He’d met her the first time he’d come here, maybe, and they’d gone out together to some glitzy lounge. She wrote chick lit or something. She was pretty hot, actually, for somebody who had to be pushing fifty, looking very fine in a tight little gold minidress. She had a mole on the left side of her face, above her lip, like Cindy Crawford.

Russell came over with a vodka for Jack, having regained his perfect hostly demeanor, and introduced him to a middle-aged painter named Rob and his much younger boyfriend, Tab.

“Tab? As in acid?” Jack asked.

“As in Hunter,” the kid said. “The actor. It’s my stage name. Tab Granger.”

The painter looked pained by this revelation. Jack could tell from the way he held himself, how he shook hands — like it was a distasteful obligation — that he was a very big deal, at least in his own mind, like Jack was supposed to recognize his name and be pissing his pants to meet him. Another fucking famous New Yorker. Everyone in New York was sort of famous. Every time you went into a restaurant, some dude was arguing with the hostess, doing some version of the “Don’t You Know Who I Am?” dance. The painter’s hands and fingernails were all crusted with paint, which seemed sort of like an affectation.

“Rob’s got a retrospective at the Whitney,” Russell said.

“Second-youngest painter ever to get one,” Tab chipped in.

“And who exactly is Whitney?” Jack said. He knew he shouldn’t, but he couldn’t help himself.

“Very funny,” Russell said.

The other two looked confused.

As late as he was, Jack wasn’t as late as the actress they were setting him up with; at least that was the impression he got when Russell told him that Madison Dall wanted to meet him. Madison was some indie film darling who behaved badly enough to make the tabloids on a regular basis, or so he was told. And apparently a great fan of Jack’s, especially now that the screenplay loosely based on his book was making the rounds. Madison came from some hollow in Kentucky and supposedly felt like she knew all the characters in Jack’s book. She arrived a few minutes after he did, wearing a tiny red dress with spaghetti straps, and immediately started taking up a lot of space. Skinny but with fairly major tits, and while he couldn’t be certain, they moved as if they were real.

“Wow, I’m, like, so incredibly honored to meet you,” she said, a little bit of Kentucky coming through on her vowels. Honored to might you.

“Great to meet you, too,” he said.

“I’d say I’m a big fan of your work, except that’s like fucking saying ‘Hello’ in Hollywood speak; it’s what you automatically say whenever you meet an actor or director. It activates my gag reflex. And I never want to say it when I actually mean it, if you see my point.”

“Let’s just say you think I’m a genius.”

“Yeah, that’s better.” Milky complexion, lightly dusted with freckles, and a wild mane of unruly copper hair. She was looking at him with a directness that seemed to charge the night with possibility. If this were an acting class and she’d been told to look seductive and available, then she’d definitely be getting an A plus right now. She was going to be trouble, in a good way.

The two Calloway children appeared, Jeremy and Storey, politely introducing themselves and shaking hands. Old beyond their years, these New York City kids. Taller than he remembered. The girl was shorter but looked older, thirteen going on thirty.

“You remember Mr. Carson,” Corrine said, her arm around Jeremy’s shoulder.

“My dad’s looking forward to reading your new book,” Jeremy said.

“How old are you now?” Nancy asked. She enunciated as if she were speaking to an idiot or a deaf person, obviously not too used to kids.

“Twelve and a half,” Jeremy said.

“Wow, that’s amazing,” Nancy said.

“Well, it’s not like an accomplishment or anything,” Storey said.

“Dinner is served,” Russell announced from the kitchen. Corrine instructed them to find their place cards at the table and bring their plates over to the counter, where the food was laid out. At some point, Russell had changed into a burgundy velvet smoking jacket, which looked a little ridiculous by Jack’s lights, though he couldn’t help being impressed yet again with the scene; he’d never encountered this kind of sophisticated domesticity until his first dinner party at the Calloways’ on his first trip to New York. His mother had never entertained, and holiday dinners with his relatives had been dutiful and depressing, generally concluding with tears and fisticuffs. He couldn’t then have imagined a world where children with military posture politely retired to their rooms while artists and writers got elegantly shit-faced on fine wine, talking politics instead of sports, talking shit about other artists and writers.

Jack found himself seated next to Madison, who smelled really good and liked to emphasize her points by squeezing his knee.

She was now explaining how much she liked his story about the moonshining brothers. “What was that one called?” Every time she leaned forward, he was treated to a glimpse of her nipples.

“It’s called ‘Shine,’ ” Jack said.

“Oh God, of course. Duh!”

Russell overheard this and said, “That’s one of the greatest stories of the last quarter century. Although I did have to persuade Jack not to spell out what happens to the older brother in the end.”

“Yeah, I don’t know what I was thinking,” Jack said. “I’d be nothing without my editor. Everything I am today, I owe it all to Russell.”

“That was very tacky of you, Russell,” Corrine said.

“I didn’t mean to take credit for anything major,” Russell said, taken aback by the reaction to his remark. “I mean, I knew it was a great story the first time I read it.”

“Then that’s what you should’ve said the first time,” Corrine said.

“You’re lucky, Jack,” Nancy said. “My editor’s barely literate. Last week she told me my protagonist wasn’t likable enough and not to use so many big words.”

The conversation subdivided again. Madison told Jack about the first time she’d gotten drunk on shine when she was twelve, and then Nancy joined in from the other side, telling a story about her first drunk, when she’d vomited in her purse during a high school football game. Russell orbited the table, filling wineglasses, slapping Jack on the back as he passed.

“Hey, sorry, buddy. Didn’t mean to be a douche bag.”

“No big thing,” Jack said.

At the other end of the table, they were talking about September 11.

“It’s like it never happened,” Washington was saying. “We were all going to change our lives, and in the end we’re the same shallow, grasping hedonists we used to be.”

“Some people changed,” Corrine said, all of a sudden seeming very sad.

“Like the poor bastards who got sent to Iraq,” Russell said.

“I, like, barely remember it,” said the child actor.

“That’s because you were eight when it happened,” said the painter.

“Nuh-uh. I was…twelve.”

Corrine said, “I think for anyone who was here, it’s a wound that’s just barely scabbed over. When you hear a low-flying plane, you tense up in a way you never did before. And let’s not forget we lost a friend, Jim Crespi.”

“Poor fucking Jim,” Washington said.

“If you weren’t here, you have no idea,” the artist said. “But I don’t think anyone who was here then will ever get over it.”

“Give me a fucking break,” Washington said. “New Yorkers aren’t capable of dwelling on the past. When was the last time we talked about Jim? I can’t even remember what I did last night.”

Russell said, “Not everyone drinks as much as you do, Wash.”

“God, I just remembered the weirdest thing,” Nancy said. “I think I slept with two firemen that week. They’d been working at Ground Zero for like three days and they came up to Evelyn’s, all sooty and exhausted, and everyone was buying them drinks, and I ended up taking them home.”

“You slept with both of them at the same time?” Corrine asked.

“It was a weird time,” Nancy said. “We were all fucked-up.”

Jack didn’t have much to contribute to this, having been at home in Fairview. He’d been cranking the night before in a friend’s hunting cabin, then slept through the next day and hadn’t even heard about it till late that night. Since everybody at the table was still yammering about September 11, he decided to take the opportunity to go the bathroom and do some more drugs.

He wiped the top of the toilet tank to make sure it was dry and laid out a bag of the H, cutting and snorting two rails. He was planning to do the coke afterward, but he found his legs getting a little rubbery, so he sat down on the toilet seat, and when the door opened, he was afraid he’d been in there a long time.

Madison was in the doorway, and instead of retreating, she came in and closed the door behind her. “Got anything for me?” she said.

“I got some blow,” he said, not wanting to mention the other. “Just give me a minute to get my shit together here.”

If he could just focus a little and remember how to use his limbs, he’d be fine, but he needed the coke in order to get volitional. It was a vicious circle. Before he could make any progress, Madison got down on her knees and unzipped his jeans and took his cock in her mouth, which made focusing even more difficult. He closed his eyes and tried to enjoy it even as he worried about whether he could get hard or not, but it turned out he could.

When he heard what sounded like someone rattling the door handle, he opened his eyes again. Young Jeremy was standing there staring in wonder at the sight of Madison’s mane bouncing up and down in Jack’s crotch. It might have been five or fifteen seconds before he closed the door.

Jack knew he was in deep shit, but he felt the reckoning could wait; right now he just really wanted to finish what Madison had started.

He realized once he stepped into the hall that the bathroom door was visible from the dining table, where his own seat and Madison’s were conspicuously vacant. After cleaning himself off and giving her some of the coke, he’d suggested she wait for a few minutes after he returned to the table, though at this point he wasn’t sure why he’d bothered.

No one seemed to take any notice as he sat down, until Nancy looked at him and said, “Did you two have fun in there?”

Jack shrugged and filled his mouth with some of whatever it was Russell had cooked, some kind of fucking meat in a sauce. From her side of the table, Corrine looked resigned.

A few minutes later, after Madison had returned to her seat, twitching like a madwoman and chewing on her lower lip, Storey appeared and tugged on Corrine’s shoulder. “Jeremy saw two people having oral sex in the bathroom,” she announced.

Glaring at Jack, Corrine stood up and walked with her daughter back to the bedrooms, presumably to check up on her emotionally scarred son.

“Well,” Nancy said, “I guess now we know what you guys were doing.”

Russell didn’t seem to know how to react. He shook his head and poured half a bottle of red wine into his glass. Jack flashed what he hoped was a rueful grin, insofar as he was able to control the muscles of his own face.

Jack felt something rubbing against his ankle just before Madison screamed.

“Fuck — a rat!” She pushed her chair back from the table and jumped to her feet. Jack stomped the furry creature with the heel of his boot.

“That’s Ferdie,” Russell said, leaping to his feet and circling to their side of the table.

“That was Ferdie,” Nancy said.

“What the fuck’s a ferdie?” Madison said.

Whatever it had been, it was now a bloody mess on the floor.

“Jesus, Jack. Fuck! That was our fucking pet ferret,” Russell said, crouching down to examine the carnage. The creature gave one last quiver.

“I’m sorry, man, I thought it was a rat.”

“Rats don’t have furry tails,” Russell said, gingerly touching the thing with his finger. “Poor little Ferdie. Oh Jesus.” He sounded as if he were about to cry.

Corrine reappeared. Taking in the scene, she turned pale and asked, “What happened?”

“It’s Ferdie,” Russell said, still kneeling there.

Approaching closer, she put her hand to her mouth when she saw the squashed pet. “Oh my God, is he—”

“He’s dead,” Russell said, standing up and heading her off, throwing his arms around her shoulders.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Damn, I’m really sorry, you guys,” Jack said. “It was an accident.”

Storey, who had crept over to see, started howling.

“Oh my God,” Corrine said, looking at him with horror.

“I think you should go,” Russell said.

“Oh my…Jesus,” Corrine said, her voice breaking, barely audible over Storey’s wails. “You killed him? You killed Ferdie? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“He thought it was a rat,” Madison explained.

“You’re right, I’ll go,” Jack said, retreating to the elevator door and standing to wait as the car rattled upward from the first floor, listening to Corrine sobbing on Russell’s shoulder while the other guests sat helplessly at the table.

Madison glanced back and forth between the Calloways and Jack before joining him just as the elevator arrived.

“That party’s definitely over,” she said as the doors finally closed.

“I can’t believe I killed their ferret.”

“I can’t believe they had a ferret.”

“This is bad.”

“Well, you probably won’t get invited back for the Memorial Day party.”

“Jesus.”

“He’ll have to forgive you. You’re too good a writer.”

“You don’t understand. I was going to fire him.”

“What?”

“I was gonna tell him this week.”

“Why are you firing him?”

“Because he treats me like a baby. Because he thinks he knows how to write my stuff better than I do. Because he thinks he made me. You heard him tonight, talking about how he changed the ending of ‘Shine.’ ”

“So what’re you going to do?”

“The thing is, I like the guy. And I sure can’t fire him now.”

The elevator stopped at the ground floor.

“Where to?” she said.

“I don’t care. Anywhere — just so long as we can do more drugs. I don’t know if there are enough goddamn drugs in the world to make me forget that fucking dinner party, but I’m sure as shit gonna try.”