Bright, Precious Days (9 page)

So impressed was she with Russell's performance that night, and the night before, that she felt an upwelling of the love and desire she sometimes feared had gone extinct, and that had lately been eclipsed by Luke's reappearance. But tonight she felt a rekindling of the belief that this was her soul mate, the one person on the planet made especially for her, her Platonic twin. She hadn't felt so close to him in years; when they were finally settled in bed, she kissed his neck and worked her way down his chest, eager to express her gratitude. Russell seemed surprised at first, moaning and arching his back, quickly becoming hard, and she realized it had been months since she'd done this, and when she felt him on the verge, she slid up his chest and slipped him inside and didn't mind that he came almost immediately—took it as compliment, basically—and she fell asleep feeling as happy and fulfilled as she could remember being in a very long time.

ONCE AGAIN IT WAS THE HOLIDAY SEASON,
that ceaseless cocktail party between Thanksgiving and New Year's, when the city dressed itself in Christmas colors and flaunted its commercial soul, when the compulsive acquisitiveness of the citizenry, directed outward into ritual gift giving, was transmuted into a virtue and moderation into a vice. Mendicant sidewalk Santas rang bells beside buckets dangling from chains on tripods. Doormen were suddenly eager to perform their jobs, opening taxi doors and carrying shopping bags, which were abundant, and maîtres d'hôtel greeted their regulars with extra obsequiousness. As the end of the tax year approached, the philanthropic impulse became more acute. The directors of great museums and charitable foundations awaited the mail as eagerly as did the bankers and analysts and brokers of Wall Street, whose bonuses would soon flood the streets with gold. Fantastical landscapes materialized in the windows of Saks and Bergdorf and Lord & Taylor, and legions of actors and dancers answered the call to service, signing up with the catering companies that orchestrated and provisioned the great corporate and private holiday fetes. The children became manic, fueled by sugary treats and the anticipation of gifts; the lions on guard outside the New York Public Library donned spiky wreaths. Redolent of mothballs, furs and tweeds were liberated from storage. Furtive blondes draped in sable and mink emerged from the backseats of black Mercedes and Escalades, darting across the open tundra of the sidewalk into the refuge of Madison Avenue boutiques. The once-verdant island called Mannahatta was reforested, coniferous thickets springing up on sidewalks and in vacant lots—dense stands of Scotch pine, blue spruce and balsam fir tended by upstaters wrapped in layers of down and fleece.

Russell loved this time of year more than any other, loved the city most when it was imbued with the familiar rituals of his youth, amplified or distorted as they might be, loved sharing it all with the children. For six weeks every year he nearly suspended judgment, choosing not to be offended by the blatant commercialism and the clichés, by the mercenary undercurrent of the bonhomie. He perused the
Times
food section for the latest wisdom on preparing the traditional Thanksgiving bird, varying from Pierre Franey and Craig Claiborne's roast young turkey with giblet gravy to R. W. Apple's brine-cured roast turkey and Mark Bittman's improbable, and not entirely successful, forty-five-minute turkey. The question of whether or not to stuff the bird was a perennial stickler. This year he decided to brine and slow-cook the turkey, a heritage breed ordered two months in advance from a farm near Woodstock, and to cook his mother's traditional pecan stuffing on the side. The cast in their loft included, in addition to the Lee and Reynes families, both Washington's mother and Veronica's. Much to everyone's relief, Corrine's mother had chosen to invite Hilary and Dan to her house in Stockbridge for Thanksgiving after her arguments for a reconciliation fell on deaf ears, thus sparing the Calloways the inevitable vodka-fueled domestic drama.

Then, with increasing frequency, a series of outings:
The Nutcracker
at Lincoln Center; family lunch at ‘21' with the Salvation Army singing carols; Russell's and Corrine's respective office parties; the Reyneses' Christmas cocktail party at Doubles. And then the selection of the tree—a ritual that engaged all of Russell's aestheticism and sense of ceremony, even as it delighted the kids. He'd inherited this fixation from his own father, who had sometimes visited three or four purveyors in suburban Detroit before finding the ideal evergreen. They walked the three blocks over to the tree sellers on the corner of Chambers and Duane. The notion of a portable forest inspired Russell to tell the children an abbreviated version of
Macbeth,
and about how the thane's demise was ordained when the prophecy of Birnam Wood moving to Dunsinane was confirmed.

“But how did the witches know?” Jeremy asked.

“That's their job,” Russell said.

“There must have been an awful lot of soldiers to chop down a whole forest and move it.”

“Well, I'm not sure they actually moved the whole forest. They probably just chopped off some branches to camouflage themselves.”

“That sounds kind of improbable,” Storey said.

“Hey, who's the editor in this family, anyway?” Russell said. “Let's have a little suspension of disbelief here. And let's pick a great tree.” He surveyed the offerings with a critical eye. A stickler for symmetry, he rejected Jeremy's first choice, a sort of droopy Scotch pine, as being obviously lopsided. Storey's first choice was crooked and lamentably sparse on one side. Eventually they started picking obvious rejects just to torment him, bursting into laughter even before he had a chance to unleash scornful commentary. Despite these provocations, he eventually found the perfect tree, a seven-foot blue spruce, which he lugged, bound in twine, back to the loft. He spent the rest of the day washing off the fragrant sap.

The evening was devoted to decoration, Russell first stringing the lights and then setting the kids loose with tinsel and finally hanging glass balls and assorted handmade ornaments, including some monstrosities they'd crafted at school over the years.

On Christmas Eve, the Calloways rented a car and drove north to Stockbridge and Corrine's mother's, the residue of dread from previous visits alleviated by the sudden appearance of snowflakes dancing in the headlights on the Taconic Parkway. And that night, after the kids had opened one present each, he read from “A Child's Christmas in Wales” as they sprawled on either side of Corrine, alternately comatose and twitchy.

And then the unaccustomed benediction of a week at Tom and Casey's house in Saint Barth's, sunbathing among plutocrats and pop stars, drinking Provençal rosé the color of onion skin, eating insanely expensive lunches of lentil salad and grilled langoustines that lasted until dusk. At one of these endless feasts at a beachside restaurant, Russell was startled to see Phillip Kohout holding court at the head table, the center of a large and boisterous group that included a Hollywood actor and a Paris-based fashion designer. Later, retreating to the men's room, he collided with the writer, who was coming out of a stall, bumping him hard enough to dislodge something he was holding in his hand, which clattered to the floor—a small glass vial filled with white powder.

“Russell,” he said, bending down to retrieve his stash. “This is so amazing, man. How long has it been?”

“How are you, Phillip?”

“Let me tell you, I've been a whole lot worse.”

“So I heard.”

“I mean, Waziristan was pretty bad, but the debriefing in D.C.—now that was a fucking nightmare.”

“Looks like you're making up for lost time.” Russell hadn't meant to sound pissy, but realized he did.

“Well, carpe diem, you know? That's one thing I learned wearing a hood for two months.”

“No, yeah, definitely,” Russell said, unintentionally covering all the bases.

“We should hook up back in the city,” Phillip said.

“That would be great.”

“Yeah, definitely.”

Phillip took a step toward the door, then turned to wrap Russell in a bear hug. “Look, I'm really sorry about that business with the second book. It was a crazy time.”

“Long forgotten,” Russell said.

“We'll catch up for sure in Madhattan.”

And all too soon they were back in the city, returning tanned, dulled and sated, awakened from the dream by a brisk slap of cold air on the jet bridge at JFK.

Then, a snowstorm on Valentine's Day: It had been coming down heavily since they woke; school had been canceled, much to the chagrin of Storey, who was apparently expecting some pledge of troth from her classmate Rafe Horowitz. That night they left the kids with Jean and trudged, heavily bundled, to Bouley, their traditional Valentine's destination, a temple of haute cuisine that was, conveniently, a short walk from the loft. Corrine held Russell's arm with one hand and an umbrella with the other as they negotiated the heavy snow on the sidewalk, admixed with hail, which had a granular texture, like wet beach sand. Corrine had made it clear she would have been happy to stay in tonight, but Russell had insisted that the holiday be observed with a romantic meal.

He discussed the wine list with the sommelier while Corrine visited the kitchen to pay her respects to the chef, who was on the board of her organization. He had just settled the debate over the merits of Chablis versus Chasselas when she returned. He stood up as she approached; his father had drilled him in the forms of chivalry.

A few minutes later when he looked up from his menu, he saw that Corrine was crying.

He reached over and put his hand on hers. “Sweetheart, what's the matter?”

“Oh, Russell, is this it? Roses once a year and maybe an obligatory drunken fuck? We're fifty years old. Where's the romance? Whatever happened to the romance?”

Russell had no idea where this was coming from—having thought things were relatively good between them—but this kind of outburst was by no means unprecedented. And while he believed, after all these years, that he knew her better than he knew anyone on earth, he sometimes suspected there were parts of her psyche that were inaccessible to him, vast regions beyond the beacon of his understanding.

“
IS THERE ANYTHING BETTER THAN BONEFISHING
?” Kip asked as they sprawled on lawn chairs on the deck outside camp, looking out over the flats, silvery pink in the reflected sunset. Owl-eyed from a day on the water, white sunglass-shaped ovals on his sunburned face, he was wearing a multipocketed turquoise shirt and a Lehman Brothers cap.

After a nearly perfect day on the water, Russell felt there was indeed much to be said in favor of fly-fishing in the Bahamas with Kip Taylor, his chief investor, who was picking up the tab.

“It's damn good, but I don't know that I'd put it right at the very top of the list,” Russell said. His hands were still fragrant from the nine bonefish he'd caught and released, one of them a probable ten-pounder, his personal best.

“Russell, don't be so predictable, for Christ's sake. Are you actually going to try to tell me, at our age, that the most important thing in life is sex?”

Russell couldn't quite decide if Kip was being refreshingly honest or simply trying to be original. “Not necessarily the most important, but certainly the most pleasurable.”

“So why are you here instead of at home poking your wife? I think that's just what you think you're supposed to say.”

“If I could only have one or the other, I don't think I'd pick fishing.”

“After twenty-five years of marriage you still find it exciting?”

For purposes of this discussion, Russell had been thinking about sex in general, or in some earlier incarnation of his marriage, not necessarily conjugal relations in the present tense, though they'd enjoyed a bit of a revival in that department recently. “It comes and goes,” he said.

“How often?” Kip demanded. “
Honestly.
”

Russell sometimes felt that Kip believed his wealth entitled him to the truth, as if it were a commodity like any other. His questions often took this form, an interrogative followed by the imperative
honestly.
“Maybe once a week,” he said. This was, in fact, a wildly optimistic estimate. Twice a month, maybe.

“I'm on my third marriage and I've come to the conclusion that on average sexual infatuation lasts about five years.”

“Good thing you have fishing, then.”

“Honestly, I get a bigger hard-on closing a serious deal than fucking my wife. And you'd probably rather find the next Hemingway than fuck yours. Hell, I'd rather
read
the next Hemingway, if the truth be told. Or reread
A River Runs Through It.
You ever hear the one about the three stages of marriage? When you first get married, you're having chandelier sex, swinging from the light fixtures. Next you have bedroom sex, once a week, in the bed. Then finally you have hallway sex. Know what that is?”

“What's that?”

“You pass each other in the hallway and say ‘Fuck you.' ”

Russell issued a perfunctory snort.

“So, good-looking woman is in a department store,” Kip said, now on a roll. “She's with her two kids, and she's yelling at them, ‘Stop touching this, stop fooling around,' basically cussing them out, and eventually she's at the cash register, still yelling at them, when the guy behind her says, ‘Those are fine-looking young boys. Are they twins?' And she looks at him and says, ‘No, they're not twins, they're nine and eleven, you idiot. What are you, stupid? Anybody can see they aren't twins.' And the guy says to her, ‘It's just that I can't imagine anybody fucking you twice.' ”

After a self-appreciative pause, Kip said, “Ah, yes, kids. That youthful sex drive is nature's reproductive imperative. But once the kids come along, they destroy it. It's amazing anyone has more than one; the little buggers seem to be programmed to behave in such a way as to discourage parents from ever doing it again.”

Russell nodded, suddenly feeling guilty that he hadn't thought about his own children all day.

“But you need distractions, of course; you need your visceral pleasures. God knows I do, being semiretired. Fly-fishing and single-malt scotch,” he said, hoisting his glass and sniffing it appreciatively. “It's either that or you start screwing your masseuse.”

“I turned down a proposition,” Russell said, “from a hot college girl a few months back.”

Kip looked intrigued. “On what grounds?”

“I'm still trying to decide,” he said.

“There're only three,” Kip said. “Fidelity. Fear of getting caught. Or lack of interest.” Kip was fond of categorical pronouncements.

“One and two, I guess,” Russell said, although he had to admit that while Astrid Kladstrup had certainly stirred his loins—and in a perfect world he would have liked nothing better than to have exercised them—at this point in his life he just didn't think it was worth the trouble.

“But I'm not sure you can parse out the reasons that neatly,” he added. “Guilt and fear of getting caught can erode your interest—your carnal enthusiasm. It wasn't lack of interest so much as lack of the kind of overwhelming drive required to surmount the guilt and the fear of getting caught.”

“That's what I was saying earlier,” Kip said. “Sex no longer rules your life. There was a time you would've been all over that. God knows I was. Secretaries and waitresses were my big hobbies then. Why do you think I got divorced twice?”

Russell had, in fact, been unfaithful to Corrine in the past, not often, but more than once. He wasn't proud of it now, and he just didn't want to feel that way again. He wasn't certain whether this meant he was getting wiser, or merely older.

“So who was this?” Kip asked. “Some girl at the office?”

“No, although I've made that mistake before.”

Kip looked surprised, and Russell realized that this was the first time he'd ever admitted to any kind of extramarital activity in front of his business partner. Their friendship was relatively new. They'd been acquainted at Brown but had fallen out of touch in the years after both moved to New York. They started socializing five years ago, after a chance encounter at an uptown dinner party, where they discovered that Kip's son was the same age as Russell's twins.

They'd both been English majors, but after a year in Paris, failing to write a novel, Kip had joined the training program at First Boston, and later started a hedge fund while maintaining his subscriptions to
The New York Review of Books
and
The Times Literary Supplement.
He kept up with contemporary fiction, and Russell was flattered to learn he'd followed his career. Kip confessed he'd always wondered what it would be like if he'd pursued a literary career, and had always watched the alumni review for notes on Russell's progress. “You know, the road not taken.” Kip's son hit it off with Jeremy, and Russell shared Kip's passion for fly-fishing, though he'd never been able to practice it much farther from home than upstate New York before Kip started taking him along on his trips. It had been on the North Platte River in Wyoming that their business partnership had been conceived, though it took them several months to find the appropriate vehicle.

Russell was chafing in his old job, working for a philistine at a once-illustrious publishing house that had been purchased by a French conglomerate. He'd been increasingly unhappy since the change in ownership, and after the events of September 11, he felt the need to make his mark in the world while there was still time, and to do more than other publishers were for the writers he believed in. He'd seen too many talented authors sent naked into the world as the big houses lavished all their hopes and energy on a few flashy titles for which they'd overpaid after ruinous bidding wars. He'd recently attended the funeral of a friend who'd published four serious, well-reviewed novels, whose fifth Russell had been unable to convince his employers to take on, given the disappointing sales of its predecessors. Though it turned out the writer had been treated for depression, Russell never forgave his boss, or himself, when the man committed suicide a year later. And of course there was Jeff….When McCane, Slade went up for sale after old man Slade suffered a stroke, they'd pounced. It had a venerable name and a solid backlist that threw off over a million a year. Kip assembled a small group of investors, putting up half of the money himself, giving Russell 20 percent of the company, with additional equity contingent on performance. And, in 2004, after just two years, they'd turned a small profit. Score one for the Art and Love team.

They were summoned to dinner by Matthew Soames, an Englishman in his mid-thirties whose fifth-great-grandfather had been given title to this Bahamian island by King George III. Various agricultural schemes had been tried and abandoned over the generations, until Matthew, after getting kicked out of Oxford, had finally hit on the idea of building a fishing camp on the otherwise-uninhabited island. After his first two visits, and his very first tarpon on a fly rod, Kip had invested in the camp. The accommodations were more spartan than Kip was accustomed to, but the fishing more than compensated, and Matthew's girlfriend was an excellent cook.

Tonight, Cora started them with stone crab claws. The main course was a very tasty Nassau grouper in a green curry sauce. They talked about fishing and, with an earnestness unique to fishermen and seafarers, about the weather, until Kip sent Matthew to fetch a second bottle of wine.

“So what's your thinking on this Kohout book?” Kip said.

“An important title, no doubt about it.”

“Well, getting captured by the Taliban or whoever the fuck they are doesn't seem like such a brilliant achievement in and of itself.”

“No, but Phillip managed to escape, which wasn't all that easy, and in the meantime he seems to have picked up some interesting intelligence. He claims that bin Laden is in Pakistan.”

“That's hardly a novel theory.”

“But beyond that it's a story of triumphing over adversity. What'll make this different is that he's a very good writer, and a real writer can make a trip to Food Emporium fascinating.” Russell decided not to mention the recent encounter in Saint Barth's; if he begrudged his authors' drug habits and narcissistic behavior, he wouldn't have much of a list. “I've worked with Kohout before—I basically discovered him, so I think that gives me an edge. Plus, a book like this puts us right in the middle of the cultural dialogue.”

“It seems to me our business model is still sound. We cultivate new talent, mostly fiction, buy low, sell foreign rights, leave expensive wannabe blockbusters to the big houses.”

Easy for Kip to say—he had a five-bedroom apartment on Park Avenue. Russell could have said he wanted to be able to send his kids to private school, or buy an apartment, or take the occasional trip to Europe, but instead he said, “Well, yes, but sometimes we might need to be flexible, be willing to assume some risk for a worthwhile project with a big upside.” He realized that he sounded a little stilted trying to speak Kip's language. “Obviously, if the book goes for three or four million, we're out, end of story, but maybe we could make a preemptive offer, let's say seven fifty, and see if we can't make a deal. I think it's an important book that could put us in a different league.”

This was not a jaw-dropping number to a man like Kip. For him, McCane, Slade—the repository of Russell's life's ambitions—was more or less a hobby, not that he wanted to lose money on it, any more than Russell did. Still, if Russell ever hoped to own a house or leave money to his kids, this was his shot, and that was no small part of what attracted him to the Kohout deal. For most of his life he'd worked for large corporations, in whose profitability he'd had only an indirect share. He'd acquired a few best-sellers over the years, without ever participating in the profits they generated. This had, he realized now, allowed him the luxury of choosing books according to his own tastes and interests, confident that in the long run they'd make money in the aggregate and keep him employed. His books often won prizes and garnered positive reviews, and his employers understood that these bolstered the value of their brands. But now his compensation was tied directly to his performance. After years of collecting a paycheck, he found himself an entrepreneur.

“Well, if you think we can get it for seven fifty. What kind of rights are we talking about?”

“Well, we'd try for foreign and first serial.”

“Let me look at the proposal one more time.”

When Matthew returned with a second bottle of white Burgundy, Russell told him, “Kip thinks sex is overrated as a human motivation. What do you think?”

“I'm English,” he replied. “Of course I have to agree.”

“You misrepresent me,” Kip said. “I proposed that at a certain age it ceases to be the predominant, overarching drive.”

Matthew bobbed his head, his weathered face glowing red in the candlelight. “Can't possibly argue with that.”

“So what's your secret?” Kip asked.

“My secret?”

“To happiness.”

“Who says I'm happy?” Matthew said.

“You seem to have it all figured out.”

“In terms of men and women, if that's what you mean, my secret is not to get married. We've been together eleven years, Cora and I, and I'm convinced that if we tied the knot, it would spoil things between us.”

“How does she feel about that?”

“She's still here. And she still has the figure she had when she was twenty.”

Matthew elaborated on this theme the next day when he took Russell out on the flats. “Security and excitement are opposites, what? You can't have both.”

They'd chosen the inside of the island, working the maze of creeks and swamps inshore, while Kip and his guide worked the outside. It was a primeval landscape, more liquid than solid, the border between the two blurred by the red mangroves, their dark green leaves hiding the sand, and their roots reaching out into the murk, a universe of prey and predators concealed within these underwater forests. Just an hour past low tide the backcountry was ripe with the tidal-pool stench of decay and regeneration, the effluvia of billions of microorganisms having sex and dying.