“Thank you, Carlo.” Hilary dipped her head, a minibow.
“I’m sorry,” Jim said, “what I meant to say was, What was the justification for your not being topless?”
How in the hell, Corrine wondered, had she never noticed it before? It was all about tits. Ever since she was thirteen, Hilary had been bigger than Corrine—but when had she become such a C?
“You’re an actress?” Judy asked, looking sourly at Hilary.
“Not really. I just have a lot of friends in the business.”
“You got me babe,” Cody offered.
“Because if you’re thinking my husband can put you in a movie, think again. He’s in Chapter Eleven.”
“Hilary works in a gallery,” Corrine said, piercing the silence that followed this remark. “Dade-Grenfeld, on Doheny. It’s actually one of the top galleries in L.A.” She suddenly felt protective of her little sister, eager to make her sound like something other than a blond-bimbo party girl, starlet, amateur hooker….
“I did until recently,” Hilary added cheerfully. “Actually, I’m kind of taking some time off at the moment. I’m working on a novel.”
Russell was rolling his eyes, but Corrine thought, Why not? It sounded about as plausible as any of Hilary’s other ambitions. She realized that she not only hadn’t caught up on her sister’s recent movements; she was afraid to ask, fearful that she would be called upon to be her sister’s keeper, a thought shot through with guilt as she reckoned how much she owed Hilary. The children, in fact. How could you ever repay anybody for that?
“I have no doubt you’ll find someone to give you half a million for it,” Washington said. “First novels, especially first novels by chicks, are the book equivalent of Internet stocks, untainted by sales histories, unwritten first novels being the purest form of speculative, faith-based publishing. If you had a publishing track record, now that would work against you. But having none, you’ll find arms and doors open. We just paid over four hundred grand for a chick who published her first story in The New Yorker’s summer fiction issue.”
“Well,” Hilary said, “first I have to finish it.”
“No, no, don’t do that. Once it’s finished, the limitless promise of the hypothetical novel will be circumscribed by your execution, and then later by its sales history.”
“You know,” Russell said, “one of my authors—a well-known, critically acclaimed novelist—he plays golf every weekend with a bunch of doctors. One Saturday, this brain surgeon, top of his class at Johns Hopkins, he turns to him between holes and says, ‘Hey, I’m thinking about writing a novel in my spare time. Maybe you could give me a few pointers.’ My guy stops the cart and says, ‘You know, that’s a hell of a coincidence. Because I’ve always wanted to see what brain surgery is really like. Maybe you could show me the basics, help me get started.’”
“I feel the same way,” Carlo said, “when some fucking editor asks me how to make pesto.”
“I’m not trying to, like, write Anna Karamazov,” Hilary said. “It’s more commercial… kind of Valley of the Dolls, a girl in Hollywood kind of story.”
“Just stick to the West Coast,” said Nancy. “I don’t need any competition.”
“And don’t let her fuck the writer,” Jim said. “Unless she’s Polish.”
“So, are you in New York for a while?” Carlo asked, leering theatrically into Hilary’s cleavage.
“That remains to be seen,” she said.
Corrine exchanged a worried look with her husband.
Judy said, “It must be so hard, starting from scratch at your age.”
“Actually, I have lots of friends here,” Hilary said, casting a glance at Jim, who suddenly looked nervous and skittish.
Helping Russell clear the plates, Corrine suddenly realized how desperately she needed to pee, at which point she also knew she was probably a little buzzed; certainly she’d had more than usual. The bathroom door was locked, so she took the opportunity to check on the kids, who were sleeping soundly, Jeremy as still as death beneath the covers, Storey pinwheeled across her bed, having thrown off all of hers. The bathroom door was still closed, and she looked down the hall, taking inventory of the guests; she had just concluded that Hilary and Cody were missing, when they emerged from the bathroom, bright and innocent and slightly amused by something, possibly themselves.
When she returned from the bathroom, Jim was advancing a new theme: children as the new social accessory. “So we’re sitting on Gibson Beach, chatting away with Davis, who has his kid, Dalton, for the weekend. When who comes churning up the beach, all breathless, but Victoria.”
“Victoria is Davis’s ex,” Corrine said, annotating for Hilary and Carlo.
“Who cheated once too often on Davis,” Jim said, “who finally threw in the towel and divorced her, the mother of his child. The child who sees said mother only on those rare occasions when she’s stopping off at home to change between parties, ’cause otherwise she’s trolling the social ponds of Manhattan and Palm Beach and Southampton for eligible men.”
“That’s the point of this shtory,” said Judy slurringly. “The bad mother.”
Looking over at Judy, Corrine realized that she was drunk, her face the color of a boiled lobster.
“No,” Jim said wearily, “the point is a larger sociological lesson about the culture. About the way we live now, if you will. So there’s Davis on the beach with his son, exercising his weekly custodial rights, when his ex races up the beach as if she’d just gotten advance notice of the Second Coming and wants to share the news with everyone on the beach.”
“Oh, please,” said Judy. “I call that overwriting. Jim can’t just tell a story. He has to overtell it.”
Jim assumed the air of Job and continued. “So anyway—beach, child, two ex-spouses. ‘Davis, quick, I need Dalton,’ she gasps. ‘What do you mean, you need Dalton?’ asks Davis. ‘Caroline Kennedy’s having a party,’ she says. To which Davis responds, understandably, ‘So? What does that have to do with Dalton?’ ‘It’s a party for kids,’ says Victoria.”
“I don’t have to listen to this,” Judy said, rising to her feet, swaying and nearly capsizing before she gripped the back of her chair.
“Darling, it’s just a story. A funny story about two—”
“I think we all know what it’s about.”
“It does sound like Victoria,” Russell said, rising in concert with Jim.
“Don’t roll your eyes at me,” Judy shouted, supporting herself on the back of the chair. “Our kids happened to enjoy that party. You think I don’t know you’ve been telling people I’m a bad mother? Well, maybe you think Hilary’d be better at it. Helen fucking Keller could see what’s going on here. The little looks. The little footsie. Was she the one you fucked in L.A. last year? Maybe you ought to have kids with her. We know she’s fertile, though she doesn’t seem all that damn interested in her biological offspring, does she? Kind of a masculine idea, donating your genetic material and moving on? Is that the kind of mother you want? You think Russell and Corrine are such perfect parents, the golden couple, the ideal goddamn family, Corrine the perfect mother—well, at least my children are mine. I didn’t need to borrow eggs from my slutty sister. They’re my children—mine—and you’ll never take them away from me, not in a million bazillion years….”
Eyelids drooping, shoulders slumped, she appeared to be on the verge of passing out; but instead, she suddenly launched herself in the direction of the elevator, as fleet and agile as a gazelle, dodging Jeremy’s tricycle and disappearing from view.
“I’m so sorry,” Jim croaked. “Let me see if I can…” He hesitated and peered toward the entryway, where they could hear the sound of the elevator door clattering open.
“Let me,” said Russell.
Corrine was stunned. She did not understand how she figured in the equation of the Crespis’ marriage, or why her convoluted reproductive history had suddenly become the focus of Judy’s tirade.
“N
o, please.” Jim touched Russell’s shoulder and then turned to the table. “Please excuse us. My wife’s not herself.”
They sat in silence as he followed, albeit more slowly, his wife’s exit, no one saying a word until they heard the elevator door close for the second time.
“Did I miss something?” Carlo asked.
“Two affairs,” Washington said, “one miscarriage, and ten years of deepening domestic misery.”
“Sounds pretty standard,” Cody said.
“Well, I’m suddenly feeling a lot better about my marriage,” Carlo confided.
“I’m feeling a lot better about being single,” Nancy added.
Russell said, “At least we didn’t have to sing Happy fucking Birthday.”
“So who’s going to the fashion shows this week?” Nancy asked.
Later, from her reclining vantage on the couch, Corrine counted thirteen wine bottles and three water bottles on the table, looming over the bloody wineglasses, the overflowing ashtrays, the remains of the panna cotta, and the wreckage of the cheese plate with its oozing Camembert and pocked Stilton. Still life with heartburn.
Suddenly, she wondered if Judy and Jim were fucking each other’s brains out at this very moment, if strife was the corollary of great passion, an elaborately theatrical form of foreplay, if the relative tranquillity of her marital life wasn’t really a joke.
She was still amazed, and somewhat saddened, by Judy’s assertion that she and Russell were such a model couple to their friends, even though Judy had only floated the idea in order to shoot it down. Because they once, actually, had been a kind of ideal, the golden girl and boy. She wouldn’t have put it that way herself, but she heard it over and over again from their friends—all about the college sweethearts who’d sailed off into the world together. For many years, they were the example that everyone pointed to, the haven of domesticity for their single friends and later a harbor of solace and inspiration to which they returned when their first marriages foundered.
“You people have got to update your taste in music,” Hilary said. “Is Russell even aware that Jimmy Carter is no longer president? I think they ought to print an expiration date on CDs. I mean, sure, Blood on the Tracks is great—”
“It’s the music we played in college,” Corrine said, suddenly indignant, “the sound track of falling in love.” At that moment, they were listening to Squeeze’s “Black Coffee in Bed,” which had come a little later, the early years in New York. “Elvis Costello is still hip, isn’t he?”
“You got to hear the Strokes.” Hilary was sprawled beside her sister, holding her wineglass up to the light. Russell was in the bedroom, making a phone call to Australia, trying to catch up with one of his authors.
“Just out of curiosity,” Corrine said, “did you ever fuck Jim?”
“That still doesn’t justify the way she acted tonight.”
Corrine laughed. “I like the idea of an immoral act gaining legitimacy in light of subsequent events.”
“I kept thinking that after you left college, you’d stop talking like that. It’s been—what, twenty years?”
“I keep waiting…” Corrine was about to say something about her sister’s rampant promiscuity but decided to let it pass.
“For what?”
Corrine lifted herself up out of her deep slump in order to facilitate a serious discussion. “I don’t know. It’s not like I have it all figured out.”
“I know you think I’m like a total flake and a slut and—”
“No, I don’t think that.”
“Well, anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to do with my life. And for one thing, I’d like to be closer to the kids. More involved, you know?”
This declaration chilled Corrine to the bone.
“I mean, after all, I’m their biological mother. I want to see them more and I want them to get to know me. And frankly, I’m tired of L.A. and that whole phony scene. New York is so much more real, you know?”
“I think there’s just as much phoniness here,” Corrine said, unable to express her fear and therefore focusing on the peripheral issue. It was as if, in the course of being attacked by a slavering wild dog, she’d started to speculate about the possible danger of fleabites. “If you really get down to it. It’s just not as formulaic.”
“They’ve become real little people,” Hilary said. “With, like, these real personalities and all. Do you know that Jeremy was correcting my grammar earlier? And Storey, she reminds me of how I was at that age.”
It was all Corrine could do to restrain herself from screaming at this point; late as it was, she was grateful when the phone rang, the more so when it proved to be Jim, urging her to come out and meet him and Cody, who wanted to talk about her screenplay.
4
Surveying the glossy humans encircling the seal pool, Luke felt excluded, an old lion exiled from the pride to which his daughter now belonged, and it was probably too late to do anything about it. How had he let that happen? The last he remembered, she was seven. They had their own language back then, which was more or less the native tongue of Princess Land—where she claimed to have lived before descending to earth, a place populated entirely by girls, all of them princesses.
He spotted Guillermo Rezzori in a huddle of tuxedoed bankers over by the penguin house. Guillermo waved him over, but Luke waited until he’d extracted himself from the group.
“What’s the matter,” he asked, embracing Luke, and kissing his cheek—a gesture Luke was never quite able to take for granted, although he admired its insouciant Latin stylishness. “You look terrible.”
“Thanks.”
“We need to talk about the Shooting Gallery. Meet me for breakfast?”
“I don’t do breakfast anymore. One of the benefits of retirement.”
“You don’t have to eat. We’ll have coffee. Windows on the World at eight.”
“All right.” In fact, Luke had already planned to meet his accountant next door, at the World Financial Center, at nine.
“So, where’s Sasha?”
“Off flirting.”
“With whom?”
Luke shrugged.
Guillermo nodded gravely. “I happened to notice.” He’d always presented himself as a great cynic, and relished tales of heterosexual folly, especially when they involved his closest friends. “Come downtown with me after this, tell me all about it. We’ll make a strategy. There’s a new club I need to check out.”
“I fail to see how watching you cruise young boys is likely to make me feel any better.”
Guillermo frowned, looked around to see who might be within earshot. He touched a finger to his lips. “Please,” he whispered. “We’re uptown now.”
Guillermo lived a double life, believing that his sexual identity could only hinder his career in the financial world. He maintained two distinct groups of friends, Luke being one of the few who straddled lists. Luke had been his mentor at First Boston, where he’d arrived, fresh out of Harvard Business School, ambitious and scared and barely conversant in English. His foreign accent and manners had helped preserve his disguise on Wall Street: His stylishness and obsessive privacy could be attributed to his Colombian birth and upbringing by his colleagues, who viewed the world beyond Manhattan primarily in terms of investment and vacation opportunities. As far as they were concerned, he’d arrived at Harvard from nowhere—impossibly distant from the grid of prep schools, colleges, and prosperous suburbs with which they were familiar. He’d taken a brief stab at marriage with a Harvard classmate who was fully apprised of his past, and although the marriage didn’t take, it remained a convenient point of reference for Guillermo—a MacGuffin to divert suspicion from the real story. While Luke had come to admire his talent and drive, it was only after he’d left the firm that they had become intimate friends, Guillermo pursuing his friendship with the same tenacity he applied to making deals and cruising bars—eager to reveal himself in all his tortured complexity. For all the energy h
e spent in concealing himself, he desperately needed someone on the other side to appreciate the arduous, artful ingenuity of his performance, and while many of Luke’s college and Wall Street friendships were already fading, he and Guillermo had become, it would seem, the best of friends.
“I’ve got to find my date,” he said.
“Who’s the lucky girl?”
“Very pretty. Currency trader. I actually find her attractive.”
“See you at the table,” Luke said.
He experienced a bittersweet stirring of middle-aged desire while staring at a clutch of gangly young women—a grove of tawny, whippety limbs, bronzed over the long summer in the Hamptons, before suddenly recognizing his daughter among them. In makeup, tottering on spike heels, she looked almost old enough to be here. In the past six months, she had suddenly, frighteningly, blossomed, shooting up and shedding the extra pounds that had crazed Sasha with the specter of a chubby daughter—hence the yoga lessons, the personal trainer, the dietary supplements. He tried to compose himself as he made his way over. On a sudden impulse, he stopped short, half-concealed from the girls behind another group.
“They think they’re so goddamn smart at Chapin.”
“Can you believe she’s hooking up with him? I mean, he goes to Hewitt. I mean, really.”
“Who’d go out with a Hewitt guy?”
“Everybody’s father’s some supermogul and not smart—”
“Yeah, like when he graduates he’ll be living on his parents’ ranch in Aspen as a caretaker.”
“If he graduates.”
Luke finally interrupted this symposium. “Hi, sweetie.”
“Hey, Dads,” she said, looking down at the ground. She had recently reached the age at which having parents was an embarrassment. “You know Bethany and Amber.”
“Of course.” In fact, he had known Bethany’s mother, Mitsy, quite well shortly before he got engaged to Sasha, and much as he’d enjoyed it at the time, he was horrified when his very own daughter had started running with hers. Tonight, Bethany looked like an expensive hooker with her raccoon eyes and her tiny leopard-print dress. And Amber—a jewel with a prehistoric bug inside. He was nothing if not morbid tonight.