Brightness Falls (35 page)

Russell was explaining the gospel of the LBO to Jessie as though he were reciting the Declaration of Independence. "And you do this all on borrowed money?" Jessie said with guileless admiration, getting right to the heart of the matter.

Russell winked. "That's the beauty of it. Buy now, pay later."

"You know, I wanted to ask you—now that the house is mine, I've been thinking of taking out a second mortgage."

"There are definite advantages."

Wait a minute, Corrine wanted to scream, who is it that actually
works
in the financial sector in this household? She also wanted to bum a cigarette, two years later. Instead she asked, "Have you talked to Dad since... recently."

"We talk through lawyers," Jessie said. "It's more hygienic. Why, has Mr. Second Youth been in touch with you? I didn't think so. Man's got the paternal instincts of a reptile. You know that two hours after you were born he played a round of golf? Did I ever tell you that story, Russell?"

"You look like you could use another drink before we head out," said Russell, who was now aware of the precariousness of Corrine's mood.

"And when I asked him—sure, if we've got time I'd
love
another—I asked him what we should name Corrine, he said, 'It's up to you.' Can you believe that? The proud father. Up to me. Thanks very much."

Corrine stood up and stalked into the bedroom. Just before the door slammed shut behind her she heard her mother ask, "What'd I say."

She knew her father was a neglectful bastard who seemed incapable of love, but she didn't necessarily want to hear it said aloud. It wasn't as if Jessie had been Mother of the Year. Sometimes her childhood seemed to Corrine like one long wound, the recent divorce a knife that had laid the scar wide open again.

She lay facedown on the bed, too angry to realize that she was crying. A few minutes later she heard the door open and felt Russell sit on the bed.

"She doesn't mean to—"

"That's the trouble, she's so goddamn insensitive."

He stroked her hair. "We've got to get going, Corrine."

"You go."

"I don't want to go without you."

"You two, you'll have a great time. She'd rather be with you anyway."

"Corrine..." He said this in the adult way that was supposed to recall her to her senses and remind her of her responsibilities. "I don't want to see
Cats
again." He ran his finger behind her ear. "I'm a
dog
person." He was trying to get her to laugh now. "Here I lower my snotty aesthetic standards because your mom wants to go see this furry Muzak-al spectacle, and you won't even come along to ease the burden. What if someone I know sees me going into the theater?"

"Tell them you're thinking of buying it. That won't surprise anyone who knows you."

"Come on, we're going to be late." Impatient now.

"I'm not going."

He exhaled violently, in exasperation. A minute later he rose from the bed. The bedroom door opened and closed, and then a few minutes later :he outer door. She heard faint laughter in the hall, the shudder and squeak of cable and pulleys from the adjacent elevator shaft, and then she was alone.

"Always had that temper," Jessie said in the elevator. "When she was good, she was very, very good, but when she was bad she was awful. She'd fall into these black moods for days and then she'd suddenly be so happy you'd want to strangle her. What's with this teetotaler bit, anyway?"

"I don't know, she sure didn't get it from me." Then, feeling disloyal, Russell said, "I think the divorce has been tough on her."

"Hey, tell me about it," Jessie said, taking his arm as they walked past the doorman into the street. "Love your building, but don't you think you kids need a bigger place? Now that you practically own a company."

"Actually, we're just starting to look," Russell said.

"You kids are so lucky. Got the world by the tail, haven't you?"

"Maybe just a little piece of it," Russell said, though he didn't think she was half wrong. If Corrine would just cheer up and get with the program. She was in one of her troughs—her inner barometer down and dropping, like her weight—just when he felt he'd reached the Memorial Day weekend of his own life's calendar. But she just got that way sometimes; her mother was right about that. A year after they moved to New York she'd had a bad spell, and quit law school abruptly. A crisis of conscience or confidence which she'd never been able to articulate. She stayed home watching old movies, sleeping half the day, reading Kier- kegaard, eating chocolate ice cream and potato chips, somehow losing weight. The turnaround was gradual, its trigger as inexplicable to Russell as the cause of her depression. One evening when he arrived home she ' announced, "You know, I've been trying to decide why we need to be physical entities. I mean, why do we have to be in these bodies that half the time don't really feel like they belong to us, anyway, and I finally decided—well, how else am I going to be able to wear all my clothes?" She did not go back to law school; though she had excelled, she hadn't enjoyed it, and Russell encouraged her to do something less stressful, the job at Sotheby's being a sort of educational convalescence.

Corrine kept listening for his return. Surely he would not be able to sit through a play, knowing how insensitive and cruel he'd been, knowing she was back here all alone, as she had always feared she would be ever since the first time her mother in an incomprehensible rage had driven off into the trackless night. For weeks on end Jessie would pack the lunches and read bedtime stories; then suddenly one night she would appear in the bedroom to rip the pictures off the walls and tell Corrine she was a terrible, awful girl, before driving away. The morning after, her father was silent behind the newspaper as she and her sister ate their cereal.

Not only did Russell sit through the play—he took Jessie out for a drink afterward. By the time they returned, Corrine was miserably asleep.

The next morning Russell announced that they were going shopping, with the air of a despot declaring a national holiday. Corrine needed a sexy new bathing suit for the Hamptons, he suggested, and maybe a new summer dress. "And I think I need me an ole Big Daddy white linen suit on account of it being so hot and me being impo'tant, and maybe some nice crocodile loafers, and Jessie will surely find something she just can't live without."

A guest at the breakfast table would have found a mother and daughter almost excessively chummy and affectionate. Russell, who had some experience in this area, was still a little amazed at the way Corrine started in, giving her mother an impromptu neck rub while they exchanged gossip about friends and neighbors back in Stockbridge, clearly more accomplished than Russell at this kind of willful amnesia. The acute critic might have detected some overacting, three people projecting to the last row in the house.

For her part, Corrine woke up repentant, determined to harmonize with her mother and her husband, and in this spirit was able almost immediately to suppress her skepticism about Russell's plan of therapeutic shopping, and about the larger program of which this was a part. She wanted to lighten up; she really did. She had decided to try to be enthusiastic about the Corbin, Dern takeover, and the summer house and everything else, if only on the principle that if her husband was marching over a cliff she didn't particularly want to be left standing alone on a smug precipice.

So they went shopping, strolling over to Madison, beginning at the new Ralph Lauren store, which looked, Russell said, like the world according to Whitney Corbin III, a fantasyland for would-be Anglo-Saxons of all ages, races and creeds. But Russell proved no more immune to the fantasy than dozens of other Saturday shoppers competing for sale items and the attention of clerks, even as he remarked knowingly that everything in the place was plagiarized from Brooks Brothers and Savile Row. With less hesitation than he usually brought to a purchase, as if warming up for bigger things to come, Russell bought the desired loafers with the encouragement of the two women, smart crocodile mocs that looked so expensively casual.

Then they perilously navigated the siren straits of expensive Italian-dressed windows—Pratesi, Valentino, Armani and Versace—Russell yielding again to the tug of desire at Sherry-Lehmann, a habit he had acquired from Harold Stone, purchasing a bottle of Les Amoureuses and a bottle of champagne, which exercise seemed to give him a buzz and sharpen his acquisitive instincts.

The last stop was Bergdorf Goodman, where they immediately—and in Russell's view, predictably—ran into Casey Reynes, who was
thrilled
to see Mrs. Makepeace again and who told them all about the new baby, spreading the pictures out on the perfume counter. From the detailed descriptions of its amazing habits and foibles, Russell thought, one might imagine that it was the first infantus
Homo sapiens.

"He's quite pale," Russell said, smiling at Casey. "I would've thought he'd have a little more color."

For a moment Casey looked baffled, then went slightly pale herself, scrutinizing Russell's face; but she recovered quickly. "I'm refurbishing my wardrobe after all those months of maternity dressing," she told the women. "Tom told me just to get absolutely whatever I want after what I went through, the sweetie. He's in Minneapolis on a deal."

Russell detected here an implied comparison of husbands and credit limits. "Casey still can't quite believe you can't just pay somebody to carry your child," he sneered after she'd buzzed off to the Chanel boutique to look for a pair of those divine velvet stretch pants.

"She's not so bad," Jessie said.

"What was that about the baby's complexion," Corrine asked.

Corrine bought a couple of Diptyque candles; Russell bought them both perfume, Shalimar for Jessie, and Joy for Corrine. While they were downstairs Corrine thought she might need stockings, and the new Donna Karan black hose had those 1940s seams up the back; but she also needed nude, and Russell said get both. Then Russell insisted that Corrine buy a little black dress by Azzedine Alaia, though she thought it was just a little too clingy and a lot too expensive for about a half a yard of fabric. Russell said, "Every good girl deserves LBDs," explaining to Jessie, who looked puzzled, that it meant little black dresses, and Jessie said she thought it had something to do with LBOs, and Russell said, not really, but in this case maybe. Corrine dutifully reminded him she hadn't exactly been a
good
girl lately, but once she tried it on she liked it, and as she walked around she began to love it even though it was racier and more
fashiony
than she usually preferred, which was probably what made it exciting, like the Tina Turner wig, like a costume that turned her into a different person, someone sexier than Corrine Calloway.

In the dressing room, she was just unzipping the back when the door opened and Russell slipped in. He ran his finger from her bared shoulder all the way down her arm to her wrist, then lifted up her hand and kissed the wrist and nipped at it with his teeth. When he sucked two of her fingers into his mouth, the inside of her thighs began to tingle and her knees to tremble. She asked where Jessie was and Russell said she'd gone off to look for the ladies' room. "But what about the salesclerk?" she whispered. Then she didn't really care, as Russell pulled the dress away from her shoulders, looking at her with his glassy, dilating blue eyes before he ran his tongue up along her underarm, his legs shaking as she reached for his zipper; she didn't know how he could stand up. In the next booth two women conferred nasally about a skirt, one saying she thought it was too big. It certainly
was
big, Corrine thought, stifling a laugh as he forced her back against the wall... and fucked her till she had to bite his shoulder so she wouldn't cry out, although by that time the salesclerk had already inquired twice if anybody was in there, in a tone that made it quite clear she already knew the answer, and the voices in the next dressing room had dropped to scandalized whispers.

29

Summer had come to the city like a youth gang appearing suddenly on the corner: sullen, physical, odorous and exciting, charged up with ungrounded electricity. Anything could happen. There were mirages, heat devils of rumor, an increased susceptibility to soft entertainment and murder.

Escape was on the minds of most residents, but there was a certain caustic pleasure to be had in the melting streets. The viscous air seemed to superconduct sexual currents among a million steaming pedestrians, the blunt glances of languorously interested parties, like the days, lasting longer than in other seasons. Despite signs of plague, the thick reek of renegade lust was in the air; at night married couples and the might-as-well-be-marrieds lay on damp sheets as if precariously balanced, trying not to fall out of love.

By day, business was conducted inside the air-conditioned towers. After they had been locked out of their offices at Corbin, Dern, the Calloway-Whitlock-Lee triumvirate had taken an office on the West Side in the Brill Building. This was called headquarters. The language had become distinctly martial, even as life became more expansive and luxurious. Trina Cox's new firm occupied a suite in Rockefeller Center. Their midtown canteen was '21.' Here, under Trina's supervision, Russell and Whitlock wooed bankers and brokers and shareholders in their new tropical-weight suits. The man whose job it was to stand and welcome customers as they walked in the door greeted them by name now. The bills were charged to the shell company that Bernie had set up to swallow Corbin, Dern. Russell, who had always been careful with his expense account, relished the new prodigality. Authors were courted downtown at The White Room with Washington, an activity of almost equal importance, since agents were exploiting the situation and neither Russell nor Harold wanted to see writers defecting to the other side. It did not occur to anyone that the men in gray suits might have been happy with the novelty of what they imagined to be the stylishly raffish downtown restaurant or that authors, who as a class are envious of and dependent on the expense accounts of others, might prefer to dine at the more venerable and expensive establishment. Harold Stone, Jerry Kleinfeld and the old management were conducting their own campaign at The Four Seasons, a few blocks east of '21' on 52nd Street. Board members who broke bread with Russell and Whit on Monday frequently dined with Harold and Jerry on Tuesday. Harold abhorred this politicking, but he took some enjoyment from the campaign by making a serious run on the oldest and best bottles in the wine cellar at The Four Seasons. Those authors who were not currently in AA tended to be thrilled when a twenty-year-old bottle of Petrus or Romanée-Conti arrived at the table, and grateful later. And Harold reasoned that if, in spite of this hospitality, he lost the fight for control of the company, the new owners would have to pick up the tab.