Brightness Falls (17 page)

Like the city around her, Corrine was wide awake. Turning off the VCR, she heard a siren on Second, car horns, voices and music. She went to the window and looked out at the lights, like stars, each one a different world. If, down the avenue, someone in that big new tower were looking north and saw this light, what would they think? They wouldn't think anything. She felt a slow ooze of panic, uncertain whether she had a place in this frozen galaxy, whether she even existed at this moment.

"Russ, wake up," she said, shaking his arm. He yawned, shook his head and stood up.

"What?" he said. "What is it?"

She felt foolish now, but a moment before, she had felt that she was about to disappear. "Nothing," she said, squeezing his hand, looking for herself in his eyes.

11

"So how's the weather," Zac Solomon asked, with morbid relish, phoning Russell in Manhattan to renew his offer of a job.

Producers, agents, lawyers, managers, promoters and account executives in California, when calling their counterparts, clients, lovers and victims in New York in wintertime, would inevitably work around to this question of weather, which they imagined to be a long, arduous struggle against hostile, arctic elements—as if they'd never heard of central heating or woolen clothing, picturing their poor northeastern cousins shivering around fires in smoky caves, gnawing frozen bones for marrow. All statistics confirmed that the ranks of those living at this elemental level of survival were indeed swelling, but for Russell and Corrine and their tribe the New York seasons were somewhat abstract, having more to do with the cycle of holidays, fiscal year and fashion than with nature.

Still, there came a moment in February when the gray sky seemed to drop so low it brushed the top of one's hair, while the slush reached over the tops of shoes and the dry skin on one's face felt as if it were being stretched on a rack and cured for glove leather. Love itself seemed old and worn-out, like the shoes bleached white and brittle from the salt. This was the day that newcomers to the city called a travel agent, the old hands already holding tickets to warm islands.

Russell and Corrine had their own favorite island, where they rented a house for a week. Corrine's grandfather once had a villa there, and though he'd sold it years before, Russell and Corrine had returned every year since their honeymoon. For most of its history the island was a casual secret: inhabited first by Swedes and then by Bretons, refuge of pirates, smugglers and sail bums, a soccer field serving as landing strip for infrequent charter planes. They liked the fact that there were few Americans, that the French colonists and visitors were not too French, the rock stars not
too
numerous, that there were no big hotels and no casino. For their honeymoon they had rented a one-bedroom cottage. Later they started bringing their friends and renting bigger places; the year before, it had begun to feel way too much like New York for Corrine, with nine of them and a big bag of mushrooms in what had suddenly become the high season, and she made Russell promise they would go alone this year.

Toward the middle of March—and not a moment too soon, for either of them, they boarded a 747 at Kennedy, wearing light clothing under winter coats. While passing a cargo terminal they observed two police cars racing after a red van that sideswiped a forklift and fishtailed out of sight behind a hangar—or rather, Corrine observed it, for Russell was, as usual, reading; the van had disappeared before she got him to look up. A few hours later they were in St. Maarten, where the heat and sunlight as they stepped onto the runway seemed to burn off the filmy residue of anxiety they'd carried from New York. They boarded a small twin-engine plane, holding hands as they looked out the window at the blue-green water mottled with dark green patches of reef, Corrine watching as the smaller island came into view, a jagged green dinosaur back poking up out of the blue water. Below the shuddering wing a huge vanilla yacht was anchored outside the harbor, the scale provided by the smaller sailboats tacking respectfully around it. A satellite dish cupped skyward from the topmost deck, which bristled with electronic antennae. "Look at that," she said to Russell, but suddenly the plane dove precipitously like a gaming falcon for the short runway painted on a patch of sand between a sharp, rocky ridge and the ocean.

Everything was unchanged, including the comical little jeeps, which were the principal transportation; they rented one at the airport and drove out to the house in which they'd spent their honeymoon—three rooms and a terrace cantilevered out from a steep hillside overlooking a shallow bay and the Caribbean beyond.

"I'd forgotten how steep the hills are," Corrine said.

"It's a volcanic island," Russell explained, as they wound around the last hairpin bend toward the driveway. She liked the fact that he knew things like that. "Why can't we live here," she asked that night as they sat in a familiar restaurant in town. Their waiter was an American about their own age who had first arrived as crew on a motor sailer and had married a Frenchwoman he met in a dockside bar. Although once a New Yorker, he now manifested a bronzed, tropical serenity.

"Because neither one of us was born rich," Russell said, very happy with his second pina colada, feeling a little naked being in a restaurant in a short-sleeve shirt without a jacket. Not a natural man of leisure, he made an obscure principle out of the idea that dining out at night called for a sports coat if not necessarily a tie, and it was a victory for Corrine that he had come out tonight without one. "At least J wasn't born rich, and your damn grandfather gave all the money away. I still don't understand why he had to give it
all
away." They had passed the old Makepeace compound earlier and Russell was feeling the loss as if it were fresh.

"I told you—he was mad at my dad for marrying my mom. And he hated his southern in-laws. When George Wallace tried to keep that black guy out of the University of Alabama, he decided to give it all to this black college which just happened to be a mile away from Grand-mom's ancestral home."

Despite Corrine's preference for this colorful version, which made her grandfather sound merely cranky, Russell knew that Corrine's family, on her father's side, had a tradition of patrician philanthropy, and he was vicariously proud of it. Still, he didn't see why Gramps couldn't have just hung on to the vacation house on the mountainside.

"We could get jobs here," Corrine said. "New York seems so awful when I think about it right now."

"Bored out of our minds inside a month."

Even if her notion was impractical, she didn't see why he had to be so brutally realistic. Why wouldn't her company be enough for him to thrive on forever? But Russell seemed to miss the buzz of New York, the friends and shoptalk; it had been her idea to come alone this year, without Jeff and Washington, et al.

Corrine asked the waiter about the big yacht anchored outside the harbor.

"That's J. P. Haddad's two-hundred-six-foot Feadship. Been anchored out there for two weeks. Never comes ashore."

"J. P. who," asked Russell. "You've heard of him," Corrine said. "He only owns about half the world."

"Hasn't touched dry land in three years," the waiter insisted. "Just cruises between the islands buying and selling companies over the radiophone. One of his men was in here a few nights ago, says he never leaves his cabin, ever. Got a crew of nineteen, not one of them's ever laid eyes on him. Weighs about eighty pounds, they say, and white as a corpse."

Over the following week they would hear more about Mr. J. P. Haddad, little of it probable or verifiable. The only thing that was certain about Haddad was what he owned—great chunks of corporate America. Corrine remembered hearing that his nautical seclusion had been reinforced by the arrest of Ivan Boesky, and that the feds had a warrant for him if he ever set foot in the States. On the island, it was said that he stole ashore at night in disguise. They heard that a very famous female movie star lived on board with him. A young gay couple they met on the beach one afternoon assured them that a very close male friend of theirs was his lover and that they had seen him in a gay bar in the port. Corrine nodded credulously, overearnestly, as one of these two naked strangers, a sort of perfect male android whom she recognized as a model, described Haddad as tall, muscular, sailorly. There was very little to worry about on the island, and the presence of J. P. Haddad's yacht provided a conversational theme with which to hail naked strangers.

Their first morning they awoke early to the dissonant music of testosterone-crazed roosters, with which the island was infested. They breakfasted on their terrace in the warm turquoise light, looking down on the sea, the salt air laced with floral essences. Lizards stirred the dry leaves in the garden, reminding Corrine of their honeymoon, when they'd found one in the bed. She had cried the first morning after the wedding, without really knowing why, poor Russell baffled and chagrined, asking what was wrong.

After breakfast they drove out to the beach. Corrine insisted that Russell not bring any manuscripts along, at least for the first day. Neither would she approve the two novels he'd brought along—both serious,
New York Review of Books
-approved—or a dense exposé of CIA malfeasance, in galleys. "This is vacation," she said. "You should read something really trashy." They combed through the musty-smelling, swollen paperbacks and Reader's Digest Condensed novels on the living room shelves, the discards of a thousand vacations, compromising on a James M. Cain thriller for him and for her a fat best-seller that had been on all the beaches a few summers back, a tale of sisters screwing and clawing their way to great heights of power and glamour while secretly yearning for Mr. Right.

"You slut," Russell said, holding the book at a distance.

"I'll read you the wet parts."

"My wife reads S-and-F novels," he said mournfully.

She looked at him quizzically.

"Shopping and fucking," he explained.

Almost alone when they arrived at the crescent-shaped beach, they set out their towels and arranged their lotions, bottles of sunscreen numbered according to degree of protection, a tube of sunblock for nose and lips. Corrine, particularly fair and thin-skinned, spent ten minutes on her preparations for sun worship, calling for Russell's assistance on her back.

"Should I leave my top on," she asked.

Russell shrugged inconclusively; at times he seemed possessive on this score and at other times he seemed almost to want to show her off—as when he encouraged her to wear sleazy low-cut dresses in the city. Now she wondered if he was indifferent. Had he ceased to see her as a sexual creature? Maybe she hadn't been at her sexiest recently... She removed her top...

"Let's make it a really romantic vacation," she said.

Russell grunted, turning a page of his book.

She whispered in his ear: "I'm going to give you the blow job of your life when we get back to the house."

He looked up, appearing confused, and nodded sheepishly, then returned to his book, already absorbed. Replenishing her sunscreen, she examined her body against the evidence of those passing by. Sometimes she thought he used reading as an escape from her and her attentions.

"Do you think our being gone from New York has a tangible effect?" she said abruptly, in a tone Russell recognized as being devoted to loopy metaphysical speculation. "I mean, I was just thinking that the city's a huge system of infinitely complex relationships, even if it's too complex for us to figure out. Our not being there is part of the equation of what happens. For instance, if I
were
in New York right now, and if I happened to be standing on a sidewalk on my way to lunch, waiting for the light to change, and if a car happened to jump the curb, I might be struck dead. By not being there, I may have freed that space on the sidewalk for someone else who might be standing there and get run over. And in that event you might say that I'm partially responsible for that death. In a weak sense I'd be responsible at the end of a long causal chain. We're all linked by these causal chains to everyone around us. But especially in the city." She tried to visualize tangled skeins of fate and conspiracy raveling together and diverging like the network of pipes and tunnels and wires under the city, invisible yet linking them all.

"Pretty soon," Russell said, "we'll all be linked by AIDS."

"Not us," Corrine said quickly, feeling fortunate to be insulated inside the walls of marriage at the same time that she felt guilty for feeling safe while the plague raged outside. But maybe she wasn't safe at all; suddenly she wondered what had been behind Russell's remark. "Will we?"

"Maybe not." He continued to read, as he had throughout this exchange, and all at once the other women on the beach seemed potentially menacing.

Corrine searched in vain for a flaw in the shape of the bronzed body crossing in front of them. Suddenly, the body stopped and the blond head swiveled in their direction.

"'Allo."

"Uh, hi."

Corrine turned to look at her husband, wondering if the catch in his throat was guilt, and if so what kind.

"This is Corrine," Russell gurgled.

"I am Simone," the body said helpfully. "Did you just arrive," she asked, in what seemed to Corrine a condescending reference to her paleness.

Russell nodded. "Where are you staying?"

"With friends," she said. "Maybe I'll see you around."

The banality of this exchange seemed to Corrine indicative of acute sexual tension. She lifted her husband's sunglasses from his face.

"Just someone I met somewhere. She had an idea for a book."

"A
book?
You expect me to believe that?"

"Corrine, I barely know her."

"She seems very comfortable being naked around you."

"Corrine."
He reached over to touch her as if to ground the negative charge building within her. She recoiled at his touch, jumped up and stormed off down the beach. Men were not to be trusted, not even Russell; her father had proved that. She would move into her own apartment, a little studio somewhere, with sad plants, sprung wicker furniture. She would have to give up her dream of children, but at least she wouldn't have to wonder anymore when he stayed out late, when he traveled on business. What she had seen in Russell's eyes was that, at the very least, he
wanted
that body. Some night after three margaritas he would betray her, and she didn't think she could stand it.