Bright, Precious Days (20 page)

“I'm working on a pilot for a TV show—kind of a
Sex and the City,
but grittier,” Hilary said after Veronica broached the subject of employment. “And I had a part in
Law & Order
last month.”

“Is that still shooting?” Veronica asked.

“I love
Law & Order,
” Nancy said.

“And that pays the rent?” Corrine asked skeptically.

Nancy gave her a look.

“I'm actually staying at a friend's place on 57th right now. It's pretty nice. You should come see it.”

Ah yes, a friend.

The denuded Cobbs arrived, large white bowls of naked lettuce, along with a bottle of Pinot Grigio. Everything was either white or green.

“Maybe I could get you a part in my movie,” Nancy said.

“Is it happening?”

“We start shooting this summer in New York.”

“That's great.”

“Well, it's ninety percent,” Nancy said. The adaptation of her second novel had been on the verge of getting made for the last five or six years, not actually that long, when you considered the history of
Youth and Beauty.

“Who's playing you?”

“Well, it's not really me,” Nancy said. “I mean, it
is
fiction.”

“Of course,” Veronica said. “The plucky blond protagonist bears no resemblance to her creator.”

“I think Jennifer Aniston would be perfect,” Hilary said.

“Too goody-goody,” Nancy said. This subject of who should play Nancy's alter ego had been a recurring theme for years. So far as Corrine knew, no one had ever proposed an actress whom Nancy hadn't found fault with.

“What about
your
movie?” Hilary asked. “The one based on Jeff's book.”

“I'm not holding my breath. I haven't heard anything since I turned in the last draft in September.”

“I saw a kid reading the novel on the subway last week,” Veronica said.

Corrine nodded. “Russell says the sales are rising steadily. It's become a bit of a cult novel on campuses.”

Nancy said, “Did I mention I'm speaking at Vassar next month?”

After lunch, Corrine went to the office, where she regretted that glass of Pinot Grigio when she started to doze off in front of her computer. She needed to make sure there were enough volunteers for this week's Greenmarket food rescue; right now, she was three short. Four days a week, their volunteers scoured the Union Square Greenmarket at closing time for unsold produce. She should have hit up her lunch partners, the salad strippers; she was still irritated at being ambushed like that, but the idea of Hilary or Nancy volunteering was laughable. Yet she'd been moved, in spite of herself, to see her sister, although she didn't want to do it too often, and she still didn't think she was a great influence on the kids.

At five-fifteen she left to pick up Jeremy at his karate class. He'd resisted most of their attempts to interest him in athletics, but Russell had watched a few samurai movies with him, and most of the weird cartoons and video games he liked seemed to be inspired by Japanese martial arts; karate had dovetailed neatly with the aesthetic of Pokémon and Digimon and Dragon Ball Z. As it turned out, the Japanese hadn't conquered the United States, as it was feared they might in the mid-eighties when they bought Sony and Rockefeller Center; back then, every best-selling business book was, more or less, some
Way of the Samurai
knockoff. But they'd definitely achieved a lock on the fantasy life of young American boys.

“The sensei gave me an excellent for my Heian Nidan kata,” he told her, emerging from the dojo with his backpack.

“That sounds very good.”

“It has twenty-six moves and it's really difficult to master.”

“Way to go, Jeremy.”

“Probably, if somebody tried to mug us on the street, I could take him.”

“Well that's good to know, but I don't think there are that many muggers out there.” It used to be a rite of passage; all of her friends had been mugged in the eighties and she'd had a purse snatched on the number 6 train in '81; Russell had outrun a pair of thugs in the West Village not long after, or so he claimed, but lately you didn't hear about these things happening in Manhattan.

“Dylan Lefkowitz's sister got mugged last week,” he said. “Some Hispanic dudes stole her cell phone.”

“Well, I hope you're not planning on using karate on the street.”

When they arrived home, Storey and Jean were just returning from French club. “Did Russell say anything about dinner tonight?” Corrine asked Jean.

“He say the kids get takeout from Bubby's. It's Monday.”

“Oh, damn.” Corrine had forgotten it was date night, a tradition they observed as frequently as they could. She so didn't feel like it, having already had a big lunch; plus, all of a sudden she felt as if she was finally going to get her period any minute now—having gotten strangely irregular lately after years of twenty-eight-day cycles. She wondered if the girls were right about her being perimenopausal. It's not that she would miss her period, God knows, but she was afraid of losing some vital aspect of femininity.

After feeding the kids and supervising homework, she and Russell had walked up the street to Odeon, which had been around as long as they had, surviving relentless new trends in cuisine and restaurant design, its retro neon diner facade resembling some lost Edward Hopper painting from the forties, though in fact it had opened its doors in the Reagan era. For Russell, it had the melancholy patina of several fondly remembered meals in the company of Jeff Pierce; there wasn't that much left of the New York he'd inhabited. For Corrine, who hadn't been present on most of those boys' night out occasions, it had the virtues of being a block from their loft and serving a classic chèvre and frisée salad.

There was also the bonus, for him, of being greeted by name by the young woman at the front podium, and escorted to their regular table. Russell was no different from any other denizen of the city in his need to be recognized and coddled in his own corner of the metropolis.

While he and the hostess chatted, her mind drifted to Luke, at his faraway winery. Or maybe he was at the game farm? He'd called a few days ago to say he was coming to town next week. They hadn't made specific plans, but he'd made it clear he wanted to see her. And while she hadn't been quite as explicit, she wanted to see him, too, though she couldn't really justify this sentiment.

Suddenly the hostess was gone and Russell said, “Please don't tell me Hilary is back in our life.”

“Well, I didn't make any dates, obviously. And just so you know, I had no idea she was going to be there.”

“Dare I ask what she's been doing?”

“I told you she broke up with Dan six or seven months ago and now she claims she's writing a TV pilot.”

“Jesus, that'll be must-see TV. What, exactly, are her qualifications?”

“Don't forget, she appeared on two episodes of
Law & Order.
”

“So has everybody else we know.”

Desperate to change the subject, she said, “Kohout was quite the conquering hero at Declan's. He must've enjoyed that.”

“Well, why not. He's earned his moment in the spotlight, I'd say.”

“And he's soaking it up big-time.”

“What have you got against him, anyway?”

“I don't know, I've always thought he's very full of himself. I just don't think he's a good guy. Plus, I don't like the idea of your risking all this money on his book.”

“You've got to risk it to make it.”

“Your whole business model is based on finding books that the big publishers aren't chasing. You're niche, remember?”

“So maybe I want to broaden the niche.”

“What's that, a paradox? A niche is by definition—”

“Yes, Corrine, I'm aware of the definition.

“Shall we hear the specials?” he asked, turning to beam at the waitress, who'd appeared beside the table.

Corrine excused herself, feeling her period arrive all at once, and walked gingerly to the ladies' room. For better, and worse, she was still in the game, despite her dear friends' eagerness to perform last rites on her womanhood.

“
ONE DAY I WAS A TEACHING ASSISTANT
in Iowa City,” Phillip said, “and then suddenly my picture was in the
Times Book Review
and I'm on the
Today
show.”

They were at KGB, an East Village bar known for its literary readings and authentically rude, Russian-style service. Russell had invited him to hear Jack Carson read, and afterward, as the rising star disappeared into the throng of admirers, Phillip was garrulously apologizing to Russell for his long-ago breach of contract while revisiting the days when he, too, had been a celebrated new fiction writer.

“As soon as the semester ended, I moved to Manhattan, flew to Hollywood on a first-class ticket and hung out with River Phoenix at the Viper Room three nights before he croaked out on the sidewalk. On the one hand, it all seemed perfectly natural, my just deserts, a slightly belated recognition of my innate talent and hard work. Of course, I'd always believed I was an unappreciated genius. On the other hand, I felt like a complete fraud, overpraised and unprepared for the role I'd been thrust into: a wunderkind, the voice of a new generation. And I wondered why it wasn't me who'd OD'd outside the Viper Room, given the amount of coke I'd snorted that night. I'd dabbled in coke before, but now that I had money and a modicum of celebrity, I was hitting it way hard. The first time I ever did coke, I knew I'd found my drug, my own best self. I felt
normal,
like I could walk into a room and imagine that I belonged among other humans without any degree of self-consciousness. So it seemed in the beginning, and for years to come. Eventually you figure out it makes you more self-conscious and cleaves you entirely from the great majority of your fellow humans, who are not doing coke all the time, and forces you to lie reflexively and incessantly, calling your agent at ten in the morning to cancel a lunchtime reading in Philadelphia because, you claim, you have a sudden attack of diverticulitis, not because you've been awake all night doing blow with a waitress from Bar Tabac. Eventually you're lying before the fact, bailing on any event that isn't likely to involve coke, and lying after the fact, apologizing for the missed dinner, the missed birthday, the missed deadline.”

Russell could see a group of young women registering Kohout's presence; they were too cool to fuss about it, though he could sense they were annotating the sighting among themselves.

“Still, I was maintaining, in a way. You tell your agent and your putative editor the second book's going great. Pages soon, any day now, really good stuff. It's amazing how many people are willing to be lied to. It takes a village, right? It almost makes you believe in the innate goodness of humanity, experiencing the credulity of the species. The more famous you are, the more your mendacity will be indulged. Women—you hate to say it; it sounds sexist, but fuck it—seem to be particularly afflicted with the will to believe, with the capacity for gratuitous hope, particularly with regard to promises of reform.”

Glancing over at the other side of the room, beneath the Soviet-era posters, Russell could see a ripple of hilarity passing through the scrum of bodies around Jack.

“Meantime, the screenplay's gone through three drafts and a dozen script conferences and your Hollywood agent is taking longer and longer to return your calls. Eventually, of course, there's the intervention. You remember that, I guess?”

Russell nodded. How could he forget? Ambushing Phillip at ten in the morning at his apartment. For Russell, it was an eerie and unwelcome reminder of his first such operation, though the paraphernalia was different, rolled-up bills and razor blades instead of needles and spoons, heroin having been Jeff's poison. In the end they'd failed to save Jeff, but only because he was already infected with HIV, and the thought that he could have acted earlier tormented Russell through the years, which was one of the reasons he consented to take part when Phillip's brother had called him. Russell, Marty Briskin, Phillip's former girlfriend, Amy, who had the key to let them in, the brother and his roommate from Amherst, plus the drug counselor, an earnest bearded empath in Birkenstocks and hemp trousers. Russell could imagine the horror, through Phillip's eyes, of being awakened after just a few hours of ragged sleep, to find this jury of his peers ensconced in the wreckage of his apartment, which still reeked of cigarettes and spilled vodka, the coffee table cloudy and streaked with coke residue. A waking nightmare for sure. The brother was the point man, shaking him awake, first gently and then more vigorously. When he realized that they weren't going away, he staggered into the bathroom and spent fifteen minutes in the shower. The Hollywood agent weighed in for precisely nine minutes on speakerphone, talking about doing coke with various movie stars before clicking off to get on a call with another movie star. Phillip denied everything, of course. He didn't have a problem. A little recreational use. The assembled company shared terrible stories of perfidy and malfeasance; carrots and sticks were deployed, and eventually he agreed to the two-month stay at Silver Meadows.

“It was actually a relief,” Phillip said, “when it all came crashing down, and all my undeserved success had been punished. Once I detoxed, I saw the experience as the subject of my next book. And even though you had the right of first refusal, we all knew I could get more money elsewhere, and honestly, I knew you were too much of a gentleman to hold me to my contract.”

“Is that supposed to be flattering?”

“I'm just trying to explain—no, I'm trying to
apologize.
In the end, you were lucky you didn't have to publish that piece of shit, although I have no doubt you would've made it a better book. As it was, my so-called editor at HarperCollins didn't edit at all. The problem was, I didn't believe in the redemption I was selling. My commitment to sobriety was more tactical than spiritual. And I'd failed to notice the rise of the memoir as the preeminent literary form of the nineties.”

“If you'd called it a memoir,” Russell said, “it might have done better.”

“It would have. Look at James Frey. People wanted to think the degradation was real, never mind that memory's totally unreliable—an addict's memory most of all—that addicts are liars first and foremost, the fact that most novels are memoirs and most memoirs are actually novels.”

A young woman crashed into their table, spilling most of her drink on Phillip. She gaped at him and said, “I know who you are.”

“If only I could say the same,” he said.

Jack Carson sat down at the table, having divested himself of his fans, and after a few minutes, Phillip got up and disappeared with the young woman.

“Be right back,” he said.

“That guy's so full of shit,” Jack said.

Russell was beginning to fear that this was indeed the case. There was no sign of Kohout when he bailed twenty minutes later.