Bright, Precious Days

42

RUSSELL TOOK A SORT OF perverse satisfaction from the economic crisis, feeling that his own personal misfortunes mirrored those of the nation, glancing at the banner headline of The Wall Street Journal: CRISIS ON WALL STREET AS LEHMAN TOTTERS, MERRILL IS SOLD, AIG SEEKS TO RAISE CASH. And flipping through the Post, a headline closer to home: DRIVE FAST, DIE YOUNG: BAD BOY ARTIST & AUTHOR IN FIERY CRASH. The night before, after Corrine had left with her suitcase, weeping, and the kids, whom Washington had brought back home, had gone to sleep, Russell sprawled on the couch, watching the controlled hysteria of the commentators on CNBC. He raised a tumbler of Maker’s Mark to the screen and toasted: “Let it all come down, baby.”

In the morning, he woke up on the couch with a dry mouth and a piercing, almost unbearable awareness of Corrine’s betrayal. He lay there, paralyzed with self-pity, until Jeremy came out to roust him and interrogate him about his mother’s absence.

“Will she come home tonight?”

“We’ll see. Now get dressed, or we’ll be late for school.” Russell wasn’t emotionally prepared to discuss the situation this morning.

After taking the kids uptown to school in a taxi, he took the subway back down to the office. He didn’t expect to accomplish much, but neither could he bear the thought of being alone in the loft all day. His staff, sensing his misery, attributed it to Jack’s death, and after expressing their sympathy, they gave him a wide berth. He tried to imagine what he was supposed to do. He wanted to call Corrine and berate her, demand that she explain herself. He also wanted to punish her with silence, to make her suffer the agonies of wondering what he was thinking. In the meantime, the company’s accountant called to tell him he needed cash by the end of the month, that their line of credit was tapped out. His best and perhaps only hope was Tom Reynes, with whom he had a meeting that afternoon.

As he hung up, Jonathan Tashjian appeared in the doorway. “Is this a bad time?” he asked, prompting Russell to laugh mirthlessly.

“Yes, it is,” he said, “but come in anyway.”

“I’m sorry about Jack.”

“Not like we couldn’t see it coming.”

“You’ve got a lot of requests for comments and interviews.”

“I’m really not in the mood today. Tell them to call Knopf. They’re the official publisher now.”

“We’re the publisher of his first and so far only book and you’re the guy who discovered him. Not to mention the fact we got more than three thousand orders this morning.”

The effect of Jack’s death on sales hadn’t occurred to Russell until this moment. The inevitable spike might, if nothing else, buy the company some time. And talking to the press could raise McCane, Slade’s profile and bolster the illusion that it was solvent, and relevant.

“Let’s go through the requests,” he said as Gita buzzed and announced that Phillip Kohout was on the line.

Jonathan’s expression reflected his own feelings: distaste and disbelief. He hadn’t spoken to Kohout once since the day the Times broke the story, though there had been many conversations with his agent, and his lawyers.

“Tell him to fuck off,” Russell said.

—

He kept thinking Corrine would call at some point, but at the end of the day he was still waiting. Not that, if he were in her position, he’d know what to say. But it was her role to try, to beg for understanding and forgiveness.

A beautiful woman on the sidewalk, her shapeliness nicely defined by tight-fitting black yoga togs and a tank top in honor of Indian summer, turned out to be Hilary, lying in wait for him as he left the office. Russell paused in mid-step, mouth agape, unable to mask his surprise.

“You haven’t returned my calls.”

“I’ve got a lot going on, Hilary, in case you haven’t heard.”

“Yes, I’m sure you do.”

“And I’m about to be late for an appointment.”

“We need to talk.”

“I think I said everything I wanted to say the last time we talked. I thought we agreed that it was a one-off. I gave you a month’s rent. I thought you were going to get a job.”

“I’ve been trying. That’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about. I’m applying for a job in PR at HBO and I need a recommendation. I know you know people there.”

“I suppose I could do that.”

“But I really need a loan in the meantime.”

“Is that what you call it — a loan?”

“I’m desperate,” she said, catching his wrist. “I’m going to be evicted.”

“I’m desperate, too,” he said. “You have no idea, Hilary. I’m at the end of my fucking rope. My friend Jack Carson just died and my wife’s been fucking another guy for I don’t know how long. I kicked her out of the loft, and the kids are a mess. My business is about to go under. And in case you’ve had your head up your ass and haven’t heard, the whole global economy’s headed into a meltdown.”

The pedestrians were giving them a wide berth, glancing briefly at the shouting, gesticulating man in the blue blazer before veering away.

“Oh my God. Corrine’s having an affair?”

“You didn’t know?”

“I had no idea.”

“So I don’t really care if you tell her about my little peccadillo or not.”

“Please. I’m just asking for a little help to see me through.”

Russell reached for his wallet and removed two one-hundred-dollar bills, leaving only a twenty and some ones. “Here, that’s it. That’s most of my remaining net worth. Now piss off. I’ve had enough of the Makepeace girls to last a lifetime.”

She seemed genuinely hurt, and as she turned away, he felt a twinge of guilt. Even now, as he watched her walk away, he was astonished, and mortified, that he still found her alluring. He’d always been attracted to her, but the fact that he could feel anything resembling lust in the wake of his crushing humiliation was practically miraculous, if not perverse.

—

Russell took the subway to 51st Street, just a short walk from the venerable Brook Club, on 54th between Park and Lex. He’d been there only a few times — very blue-blood, old New York. George Plimpton had taken him there for lunch a few years ago, when they’d been working on an anthology of travel writing together that was unlikely to break even, much less cover the $35,000 advance. But it was an affordable gamble that he felt brought honor to his imprint as well as an opportunity to collaborate with one of the last American men of letters. When Plimpton failed to wake up one morning not long afterward, Russell was almost envious of the grace with which he’d departed, out with friends to a couple of cocktail parties, followed by dinner at Elaine’s, slipping away in his sleep like a guest ducking out of the party without bothering anyone. A gentleman to the end, not wanting to make a fuss, or put anyone out, though several thousand souls took time out of their workday to attend his memorial at Saint John the Divine. And how many would come for me? Russell wondered. What Raymond Carver said in that poem of his—to be beloved. “And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.”

Russell did not feel beloved on the earth.

Inside the lobby of the Brook, he presented himself to the liveried gent at the front desk, who told him that Mr. Reynes would meet him on the third floor. He took the circular staircase, noting an air of geriatric decorum — or was it gloom? — among the members on the second floor. On the third floor, making his way to the front parlor, he detected a distinct undercurrent of melancholy in the murmuring convocation, several groups of two and three scattered around the room, sunken deeply into the sofas and club chairs, a faint honking akin to a flock of geese in the distance across a cornfield, the unmistakable whine of privileged white men with the blues. Russell suspected that most of them had lost a lot of money today, and that few of them were going to vote for Obama in November. Tom waved to him from a small table in the corner.

“Thanks for coming,” he said. “Hell of a day. I’m going right back to the office after this, but I figured I needed a break. The fallout from this Lehman situation is brutal. Dow’s down five hundred plus. Would you like a drink?” He looked tired, though by no means dispirited; indeed, he seemed cheery, as if invigorated by crisis.

He waved to the ancient server framed in the doorway.

“Hell of a weekend all round. All the big swinging dicks of banking huddled down at the Fed all weekend, trying to save Lehman and themselves. I lived through the crash of ’87 and the dot-com bust, but I’ve never seen anything like this. Gonna get much much worse before it gets better.”

The waiter hovered. Tom ordered a Bloody Mary and Russell decided it was probably a mistake to order a Negroni here. “I’ll have a bullshot,” he said — a manly, Waspy club drink to steel the nerves in the face of this onrushing bear market.

“I’m sorry about your, uh, situation,” Tom said. “I ran into Corrine when I was picking up Amber. It seems she’s staying with Casey.”

“I asked her to leave,” Russell said.

Tom leaned forward, nodding, uncharacteristically sympathetic and engaged. Or perhaps he was just curious to know what had happened.

“She’s been having an affair. I just found out about it.”

“God, I’m sorry.”

Russell felt a sudden welling of emotion, a tightening of his facial muscles.

“What are you going to do?” Tom asked.

Russell shook his head. “Don’t know yet. So what about you? Are you still getting divorced?”

Tom nodded. “Trying like hell to. It was a long time coming. But in the end, it just happened. Boom! Walk out a door straight into your future. You know as well as anyone that I wasn’t so well behaved. But the really weird thing, the thing I wasn’t expecting, I actually fell in love. It didn’t even occur to me it was possible. And I can’t tell you how great it feels. It was a huge relief, really, to find out Casey had been cheating on me. I mean, we have a lot of history together, and kids, and she’s not a bad person, really, but I don’t think anyone would accuse her of being deeply sentimental. That was part of the problem. I felt like our marriage was a business arrangement. Our parents grew up going to the same schools and belonging to the same clubs; we didn’t have to bother to get to know each other, because we already did. I’m not sure I ever felt for Casey what I feel for Laura. In fact, I’m pretty sure I was never in love. Who knew you could discover love in your forties? Well, fifty-two, whatever.”

Russell raised his glass, which the waiter had just placed in front of him. “Cheers, then. I’m happy for you.”

“Thanks. She’s an amazing woman. You should meet her sometime.”

“Is it possible we already met? Or rather, that I saw her across a room?”

“It’s possible,” he said. “Though if you had, I trust I could count on your discretion not to say anything.”

“Absolutely.”

So Tom had fallen in love with a hooker.

“The thing is, this divorce could get messy, since we don’t have a prenup. Can you believe it? Very old-fashioned. Or dumb. But Casey has money of her own and I’m hoping I can get her to be reasonable, though I have a feeling she’s not going to make it easy. Anyway, long story short, my assets are pretty much frozen for the foreseeable future, not to mention the fact the economy has just turned to shit. Lehman’s just the start of it. Money is going to get incredibly tight after this long binge of credit. The hangover is going to be heinous. I guess you see where I’m going with this. Sorry to say I can’t make any kind of personal investments at this point. Anyway, I wish you every success and I wish I could be along for the ride.”

Up until the last couple of sentences, his monologue had been surprisingly heartfelt and revealing. Only at the end, as the subject turned from love to money, had it become cliché-ridden and stilted. Along for the ride? Until a few moments ago, the collapse of a major investment bank had seemed somewhat remote, but now he felt a sinking, sickening feeling in his gut as he understood that he was collateral damage. He’d often told himself that he inhabited a world apart, that the machinations and fluctuations of the financial markets had nothing to do with him, and he was shocked to realize that he was deeply entangled in the current crisis. He’d always been a little scornful of that other world, the world of suits and money, but it turned out that devoting your career to letters didn’t give you immunity.

“I always liked Corrine,” Tom said before draining his drink and setting the glass down on the table. “I used to wonder how she put up with Casey.”

“Now she’s got no choice,” Russell said bitterly.

As he was walking back to the subway Corrine called, her name on the screen of the cell phone surprising him, as if it were unfamiliar. He debated whether to answer.

“Yeah,” he barked.

“It’s me.”

“I know. No surprises anymore.” Did he have to explain mobile phone technology to her?

After a long pause, she said, “I just wanted to arrange to see the kids.”

“When?”

“Maybe I could get them from school tomorrow, take them out for a bite.”

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll tell Jean.”

He thought about hanging up then, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to do so.

“Russell?” she said, finally.

“Yeah?”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Me too,” he said, before closing his phone.

—

“I don’t understand why Mom’s staying with Casey,” Jeremy said, brandishing a nubbly golden chicken finger. Russell had cooked his favorite childhood meal in the vague hope of normalizing a painfully abnormal domestic situation.

“They’re having issues,” Storey said.

“What issues?”

“We just decided that we needed to spend some time apart while we worked on some aspects of our relationship.” God, that was stilted, he realized.

“Are you guys getting divorced?”

“No, we’re not. We’re just taking a breather.”

Jeremy chewed moodily. “How come Storey seems to know what’s going on?”

“I’m a girl. I notice things. I observe the people around me. You’re a guy. You don’t.”

“Do we get to see Mom, at least?”

“Tomorrow afternoon,” Russell said, “she’s picking you up from school and taking you out.”

“Out where?”

“I’m not sure; that’s up to her.”

“Why is everything happening at once?”

“What do you mean?”

“A bunch of kids’ dads lost their jobs and everyone seems freaked-out about everything.”

“It’s a pretty scary time, son.”

“Could you lose your job?”

“Well, publishing doesn’t have that much to do with what happens on Wall Street,” Russell said, wishing that this were actually the case. If the credit markets froze up, as seemed likely, his chances of survival were negligible. He had a strong premonition that everyone was going to get soaked and battered in the coming storm.

After saying good night to the kids, he lay down on the bed to watch the Giants play the Cowboys and fell asleep almost immediately, waking in the middle of the eleven o’clock news — just as a photo of a young Tony Duplex with his arm around Andy Warhol flashed on the screen, and then, to his astonishment, a shot of Jack Carson, looking uncomfortable in a tuxedo, standing next to Russell, that had been taken at the PEN/Faulkner Awards in D.C. the year before; this was soon replaced by scenes of anxious Lehman Brothers employees entering and exiting their midtown office building.

—

He slept intermittently that night, and woke up exhausted, enervated at the prospect of the day ahead and all the days beyond. The children, picking up on his mood, were frightened and solicitous.

He called Washington from the office and asked if he could meet for lunch. He arrived at the Fatted Calf half an hour early and ordered a Bloody Mary. He was halfway through his second when his friend arrived.

“You look like shit,” Washington said, taking a seat across from Russell.

“That’s good, because I feel like shit,” Russell said.

“I guess you’re entitled.”

“How’s Veronica?”

“Shell-shocked. Clearing out her office as we speak. Any word from Corrine?”

He shook his head. “We talked briefly about child-care logistics. She told me she was sorry.” He shook his head derisively.

“She probably doesn’t know what to say.”

“It’s hopeless,” Russell said. “I don’t even want to talk about it. Actually, I wanted to talk to you about something else.”

“Whatever you want, coach.”

“I want Corbin, Dern to buy McCane, Slade. I think it would be a win-win situation for both sides.”

“It might make sense,” Washington said after a long pause. “We’d have to look at the books. I promise to take it under advisement if you promise never to use the phrase win-win again.”

—

As he was walking back to the office, he took a call from Hilary.

“I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am.”

“Thanks. I’m sorry I was…unkind when I saw you yesterday.”

“No, I understand. Look, I just wanted to say, if you ever need me to babysit, or anything, just call, okay?”

“Okay, thanks. I will.”

“You promise?”

“Promise.”

“All right, then.”

“Thanks for calling.”