Brightness Falls (14 page)

Look at
johnny moniker,
six months ago the guy was working in a pizza joint, a year ago he was living in the
Midwest.
How about
bernie melman,
you think he was born a billionaire? And
madonna
started life in Detroit with some unpronounceable name. Even yours truly,
juan Baptiste,
could tell you a thing or two about humble origins. And also about the surgery, the perjury, the forgery and the orgiery behind the big names.

As for instance when I crashed a black-tie dinner at the
temple of dendur
in the Met, where my slumlord was receiving an award for his services to humanity and the advancement of culture. I cabbed all the
way uptown to ask him how come there's no hot water in my building. His wife the movie star in her
christian lacroix
bubble-assed gown rises to lead the applause
—
listen, flap flap flap, it's the sound of modern prayer, the gesture of inverted envy, hands pressed together in hero worship. And while she's standing there, look at my landlord's famous wife, take a good look, small-town girl who rose from her knees to become a great star—remember, boys and girls, Juan says that nothing succeeds like sucking seed. And my slumlord's best friend in the whole world, billionaire Bernie Melman, is up at the microphone saying that my slumlord is probably, without exaggeration, the greatest human being that ever lived...

...
Can you imagine if the walls of the Temple of Dendur had ears, this ancient thing that was standing around the desert of Egypt for a few thousand years listening in on all the pharaoh dish before it was scooped up stone by numbered stone and reassembled inside its own wing of the Met?... Were they telling the same kind of lies back then? I don't know, I like to think the lies we tell here in the new, improved capital of the entire late-twentieth-century world are the biggest, baddest, most shameless lies of all time...

Everybody was at the party, although somehow they neglected to invite yours truly... an oversight, no doubt...

Earlier I'd been to a screening
of Fatal Attraction,
starring
MICHAEL Douglas
and
glenn close,
a movie about what happens to you and your bunny rabbit if you screw around on your wife... Juan says two stars for good elevator sex and bad bathtub ring. This town is brutal on monogamy. Then, speaking of marriage
—
and finding myself uncharacteristically on the Upper East Side
—
I stumbled up to Russell and Corrine Calloway's Saturday-night
salon.
He's an editor at Corbin, Dern and she's the Waspy beauty who reminds us just a wee bit of the young
Katharine Hepburn,
or of that recent
ALEX KATZ
painting
Alba in Black
at the
Marlborough gallery.
My downtown companions
tony duplex, leticia corbin
(coincidentally of the Corbin, Dern Corbins) and Johnny Moniker mixed with the people who ask "What do you do?" when they meet you. Remember, boys and girls, Juan Baptiste says it's not what you do
—
it's who you do...

Flash! Juan's fashion tips of the week: For men
—
I predict a vogue for codpieces.
... As
for you girls
—
don't forget that party tits, aka silicone
breast implants, tend to explode on the Concorde... something about the sound barrier...

Part of Russell's morning mail, this essay was at the top of a stack of tearsheets from a downtown magazine called
Down Under,
with a letter from Juan Baptiste, presumably the author, reminding him of their meeting, pointing out "the plug" and proposing that his columns might make an interesting book, a chronicle of the nightlife of the city.

Russell's assistant, Donna, had attached a yellow Post-it note to the submission: "Didn't know you knew Juan—this seems like kind of a cool idea to me."

He called out to Donna, who appeared in the doorway wearing a "Die Yuppie Scum" T-shirt.

"You interested in this?"

"Sure. I think it would be excellent if we could just for once maybe publish something interesting for a change."

"Sorry the list has been such a disappointment to you, Donna. Look, how about if you look hard at this and give me a report when I get back from vacation?"

She nodded, cracked her gum. Clearly overwhelmed with gratitude, he thought.

Near the bottom of his mail pile was a letter from a credit card company.
Congratulations, you have been pre-approved for a gold card.
This was a surprise. So far as he knew, he was overdrawn and overdue on all the others. He was about to chuck the letter, when he saw that, because of his excellent professional standing, he'd also been
pre-approved for a credit line of fifty thousand dollars.
All he had to do was sign the form and return it in thirty days. There had to be some mistake, and yet there was his name on the card and again on the cardholder's agreement. He quickly signed the agreement, sealed the envelope and dropped it in his out box. He couldn't wait to tell Corrine.

On his way out the door, he took a call from Tim Calhoun, who sounded drunk. Tim said he was nearly finished with the new book and invited Russell to come fishing down in Georgia to celebrate. Russell begged off—"Vacation with the wife, good buddy." But he was happier about this call than the last, when Tim was in urgent need of bail money. On his way to lunch, Russell encountered Harold in the men's room. "Hi, Harold," he said as he swung up to the urinal. Standing at the next urinal, Harold glanced at him and made an indistinguishable sound.

"I'll take it," Russell said. Donna had Zac Solomon on the phone from Los Angeles. Russell hadn't spoken to him since the party more than a month before.

"Mr. Calloway? Please hold for Mr. Solomon."

"Fine. " Thinking, God, I hate that "hold for" shit. Russell supposed he could have Donna do it, "Hold for Mr. Calloway." Plenty of the assholes around the office did.

"
Russ-
ell.
That you, guy? Do I hear a little Russell in the bushes? A rustle of
leaves,
possibly." Then, in falsetto, "Oh God, look at that over there, in the woods, that naked couple—they're
russell
ing
the leaves, they're forni... fornic... God, I can't say it."

This was probably funnier when it was someone else's name. But maybe I'm just tired, Russell thought. When it was over he said, "What is it you're auditioning for, Zachary?"

"The question is, what are
you
auditioning for, guy? In fact I'll tell you what you're auditioning for. I want to talk to you about a job."

"Why me? I don't know anything about movies."

"Neither does anybody else. That's the beauty of this business. Three years ago I was crunching numbers for Manny Hanny. Then I helped put together a finance package for United Artists. Two years ago I get a stupid idea for a movie, come out and set up my own production company. Now I get all my phone calls returned yesterday, I've got more money than I know what to do with, and I'm fucking a different actress every night of the week. God, I love this country."

"Why share the booty with me?"

"Say I'm feeling generous. I need some help here, guy. I need some brains. I also need product. You know the book world, you could help me get a jump on print material coming out of New York. You know how to spell your own fucking name, which puts you way out ahead of the pack, L. A.-wise. You could help me work with Jeff, who's a genius but also a total pain in the ass if you know what I mean. Can I just between you and me ask since we're on this subject—and needless to say, this is absolutely in strictest confidence—if maybe he doesn't have a, you know, bit of a substance abuse problem."

"No," said Russell, "he doesn't." Jeff might get fucked up more than was good for him, get a little wired up sometimes, but that was part of who he was. These people out in L.A., Russell thought, were all temperance freaks after that snowstorm blew through a few years before. But even if Jeff had been a stone junkie, Russell wasn't about to tell Zac Solomon, or any other relative stranger. As he understood the concept of friendship, that's what it entailed.

"Yeah, well, whatever," Zac said. "Still, you might look into it. People out here are a little jumpy these days, I mean even a rumor can stop a career dead in its tracks. What I'm mainly saying is, you're hot—Jeff's book and that novel by what's-his-name you did last year. We got heat, we got fit, we've got synergy."

"Seriously, Zac."

"Why should I be serious? Look where I live. I don't get paid to be serious."

Dave Whitlock drifted into the office, sat down on the arm of Russell's couch and picked up a magazine from the end table. Russell held up a single finger.

"Fly you out here, put you up. Hey, you can come out with Jeff on Thursday. Or else I can meet you in New York next month."

"Zac, I like movies enough to know I don't understand how they're made. Books is what I know."

"What are you making, seventy-five, a hundred?"

Out of embarrassment, Russell remained silent. He wished.

"Whatever it is, I can double it, guy."

Whitlock stood up to leave but Russell signaled him to wait. He wanted him to hear this.

"I'm pretty happy where I am, Zac. Plus I'm about to go into a meeting. Let me think about it, all right?"

"We'll get you sooner or later," Zac said. "There's money falling out of the fucking palm trees out here.
Sayonara."

"Job offer," Whitlock asked, after Russell hung up.

"I'm in demand," Russell said. "Let them know that upstairs."

"I'll try to remember," he said gloomily, dropping the magazine back on the table as if it, too, had failed to yield answers to the meaning of life or higher corporate profits. "This Rappaport book of yours is going to lose us a shitload of money."

"It's not going to lose a shitload of money," Russell said irritably. "It may not hit the list..."

Whitlock snorted derisively. "Nobody wants to know about Nicaragua and nobody wants to know bad things about the nice old man in the White House."

"If Harold would get behind the fucker, it would do fine."

"What'd you do to piss him off," Whit asked.

"I turned thirty. I changed offices. I don't know." Hearing Whitlock ask about his disfavor as if it were a confirmed fact rattled him, especially on top of the call from Solomon, which reminded him of how little money he was making.

As Whit waved a morose good-bye, Russell recalled his father's rules to live by, imparted the day before he drove off to college: Never endanger a woman's reputation, never climb on another man's back, never talk about what you make or what things cost. Amidst the rakes, bags of weed killer and turf builder in the garage in Michigan, packing the car with stereo, books and clothes, his dad suddenly turned patriarchal; this phenomenon always left both of them embarrassed, as when the old man had explained sex to him many years before. Russell stood awkwardly, a box of records in his arms, as his father recited the golden rules. Later, he repeated these maxims for the amusement of friends, but he was stuck with them. He tried to savor a feeling of condescension toward Zac, but he felt more keenly ashamed of his salary, and depressed that the Zacs of this world were getting rich.

If he was going to make any money, Russell decided, it was probably going to be in the market. He needed to start playing Duane's instruments—futures and options. If only he had some capital... and then he remembered the brand-new credit line—fifty big ones. He could invest it in short-term instruments. Why not?

Donna steamed in, blackly. "Do I have to listen to that preppy bitch Carlton? I mean, I thought
you
were my boss. If she's supposed to be my boss, too, then I quit."

"What," he said, "are you talking about?"

A high degree of color burned through her white makeup. She paced back and forth, two steps in each direction as she spoke. "She told me to get rid of this—" Pointing to her "Eat the Rich" button. "She said you knew about it. What is this, fucking
high school
or something? Did you know about this?" Stopping directly in front of him, defiantly crossing her arms.

Russell nodded. "I was asked to tell you to lose the button."

"By that blonde cunt?"

"Please. By Harold, actually."

"So?"

"So, obviously I ignored the request."

"So, who's my boss is what I want to know."

"I am for the moment. And as your boss I order you to continue wearing the button."

10

"Now I'm really going to quit drinking," Corrine announced.

Russell was fooling with the radio knob with one hand while he clutched the wheel of the rental car in the other, dialing through static as he strained to see into the white cone of the headlights.

"I think there's a good station out of Manchester," he said. "Hey, maybe while we're in the general neighborhood we should visit your old friend Salinger."

"Russell, did you hear me? I said I'm going to quit drinking."

"I heard you." Tacking in on a series of harsh chords, he said, "What do you mean?"

"I mean what I said."

"You mean you're going to quit drinking? As in
stop?"

"Why won't you acknowledge what I'm saying here?"

"I didn't think you were serious." He looked over at her for the first time since her announcement, squinting quizzically.

"Why wouldn't I be serious?"

"You always say that."

"Well, I mean it this time."

"Okay."

Sunday night, driving back to the city from Vermont. After a weekend of skiing she felt less healthy than ever. The night before, a big dinner with friends who lived near Middlebury, a couple they knew from school. Both worked for the state government in Burlington, Jeannie as an environmental biologist and Chip as a consumer advocate. They were trying to adopt a kid. On weekends they went rock climbing, whitewater rafting, cross-country skiing.

"What is this music?" Corrine said. "Sounds like something Jeff would like."

"The Cure," Russell answered.