Brightness Falls (2 page)

"We used to talk like this about drugs," Corrine said, to clear away the slight whiff of self-satisfied epicureanism.

"We still do," said Jeff, on her right, flashing one of his wistfully roguish smiles. Built like a fillet knife, he sported his usual ripped jeans and washed-out untucked Brooks Brothers button-down shirt, over which he wore his coat of many press clips. Jeff had published a successful book two years before, a collection of stories about an eccentric New England clan that, not so remarkably, closely resembled his own. Everyone listened to him just a little more intently these days, as he listened less attentively to everyone else.

"I used to hate mushrooms so much when I was a kid," squeaked Dawn, Jeff's nineteen-year-old date, who looked like a model with breasts—who in fact
was
a model with breasts. "When we wanted to think of something really bad, like a punishment or something, we'd say, 'You have to eat a whole plateful of mushrooms.' " The Second Law of Social Dynamics, Corrine figured: The single women get younger every year. But what was the first?

"Now we just send you to bed without supper," Jeff said. Then, to Corrine, with the air of someone diverting attention: "How's Mr. Jones?" By which he meant, Corrine knew, the Dow, and the market in general, though it occurred to her that in an earlier era it might have been a reference to the Dylan song.

"The last time you were here," Corrine said, taking a sip of her wine, "somebody asked you what you were working on. And you said, 'Don't ask a writer what he's working on. It's like asking someone with cancer about the progress of his disease.' "

She decided she was unhappy with him for bringing this child to dinner and, having done so, putting the girl down.

"Did I say that? I must have been drunk. I hope you immediately plunged a steak knife into my kidney, or a kidney knife into my steak."

"I should have. But instead I insist that you observe the rules. Rule number one: No boring questions. I don't allow them at my table."

Zac Solomon asked, "Are there any other rules here. I'm not real familiar with eastern etiquette. In California we don't usually even wear clothes."

"It shows," Jeff said. "You definitely haven't got the hang of wearing them yet."

"If you weren't my writer, guy, I'd be forced to take grievous offense at that remark."

"Hollywood producers are not allowed to take offense," Jeff said. "They're expected to give it."

"Just to show you what a self-deprecating character I am," Zac said, "I'll tell you all the latest joke. There's this producer driving really fast down Santa Monica talking on the phone, and he has this accident, flips his car over, gets thrown out, and somehow his arm is severed in the process, goes flying."

"Is Santa Monica Boulevard a significant detail," Jeff asked, helping himself to more wine.

"... So anyway, another car stops, the driver gets out and rushes over to the producer, who's lying in the street, and he says, 'Are you all right, guy?' And the producer's looking at the wreck of his car, wailing, 'My Porsche, my Porsche, my Porsche!' So the other guy looks at the stump of his arm, then points at the other half of it lying across the street and says, 'But what about your arm?' And the producer looks across the street and says, 'Oh my God—my Rolex, my Rolex, my Rolex!' '

"We approve of self-deprecation," announced Corrine, who before tonight had never met Solomon. Cute, a little beefy, lingering baby fat or premature business-dinner paunch. Late twenties, according to Russell, and he'd already made millions. He played to the stereotype, tongue in cheek, in a way that made it seem almost okay. Not that you'd necessarily have wanted your daughter to marry one. It was business, sort of, Russell said, and anyway, he was an amusing character. The latter being the only valid point for Corrine, who had an old-fashioned notion that business should be confined to offices.

"Does that mean I can stay," Zac asked.

"Only if you pronounce her name right," Jeff said. "Rhymes with Maureen, a homophone for
chorine
—that's chorus girl to you."

"And only if you're extremely attentive to the single women," said Nancy Tanner, animating her long blond locks with a trademark toss of her head. Russell once suggested the gesture was intended to mimic the effects of a wind machine. She was the ungrounded wire of their extended circle, the single female.

"Last time I heard that joke," Jeff said, "it was about agents. The problem is it could also be about most of our friends."

Colin Becker, who was not a member of one of the agented professions, was talking to Jeff's date now about architecture, while Russell considerately entertained Anne, who was a corporate lawyer and thankfully never talked about it. Corrine suddenly remembered they owed the Beckers a wedding present.

Abruptly, Washington Lee arrived, saying, "Guess who's come to din- ner," as he inevitably did. His eyes like crazy marbles, all shiny and bright—Corrine had a feeling this was going be a late one. "Sorry," he announced. "Got caught in a crossfire on Broadway. Bank-robber dudes trying to escape over the rooftops, they had the cops pinned down, traffic stopped cold, spraying the street with automatic fire." Either because they made allowances for Washington's hyperbole or because they were inured to the violence of the city, none of them chose to challenge the statement or ask for elaboration.

Reverting to a primitive male condition, Jeff and Russell hooted at the sight of their buddy, slapping hands and backs.

"It's the Righteous Brothers," said Washington.

"Now that you're here," Jeff said, "we're the Temptations."

"We resist anything
but,"
Washington responded.

Corrine sat Washington between Jeff's girlfriend and Casey Reynes, her freshman roommate, whose husband was out of town. Washington immediately put his arms around both of them, to the obvious annoyance of Casey, who flexed her beautiful-rich-girl hauteur.

"So what's the buzz?"

"How come we never talk about politics," asked Nancy, tossing her hair and reaching across the table to put her hand on Washington's arm. "I'll bet
you
have some interesting views," she added, in a tone of voice generally reserved for lewd propositions. Corrine suddenly wondered if they'd ever slept together.

"Shucks, ma'am, I just minds my own business and leaves politics to the white folks."

"Don't get Russell started," Corrine said quickly, knowing how Washington liked to exploit these moments. "We'll be up all night. Russell's greatest regret is that he basically missed the sixties. He's been trying to make up for it ever since."

"I didn't miss the sixties," Russell countered. "I watched them on television."

"Russell's for Gary Hart," Washington sneered.

"Hart
and
sole?" Jeff sighed, pushing his plate away. "Other topics?
Please?"

"Who else
is
there?"

"Gary Hart and his
new ideas,"
said Washington. "What
new
ideas? Tell the dude to read Ecclesiastes."

Soon they were arguing about Nicaragua. As he was publishing a book about the covert war against the Sandinistas, Russell was armed with facts and dates. A Republican, Zac relied on epigrams and lighthearted xenophobia. Parnassian Jeff disdained politics. Washington, who probably knew more than anybody, preferred to play dumb, strategically letting others betray themselves with earnestness. Jeff's girlfriend looked increasingly bewildered—and it wasn't a strategy—almost frightened by this excursion into foreign terrain. It wasn't her fault she was in over her head, Corrine realized. The breasts and the big pouty lips weren't her fault, either. At least she didn't think they were. Corrine was just enough of a prodigy herself to know that this was like inheriting a pile of money at puberty without a trust officer in sight, like climbing behind the wheel of a Ferrari for your first driving lesson. Some generations the little boys got sent to the jungle or the trenches with nothing but a gun, and that was the only way they'd ever begin to have a fucking clue about what it was like to grow up a pretty girl with big tits. If you were lucky you didn't get to New York or Los Angeles until you'd made the tutelary mistakes.

Not that she'd ever had breasts like that. Jesus, Jeff. Were they real? These days, hard to say. Reminded her of a girl at prep school who was voted best couple in the yearbook. Without stopping to think, Corrine said, aloud, "I heard a story that if you have breast implants and you take the Concorde they can explode." Was it her imagination, or did Jeff's date look worried?

"Party tits," said Washington.

Over at the stereo, Russell cued up Roxy Music's
Avalon
and looked over his shoulder to see if Corrine had noticed. She blew him a kiss. "Soundtrack album of our first year of matrimonial bliss," she explained.

Jeff's girlfriend turned to Washington. "Are you married?"

Washington looked at her as if she were insane; Jeff coughed red wine onto the tablecloth.

"They haven't invented the right kind of marriage for me yet," Washington said calmly. "See, I don't understand why there's got to be just one kind of marriage. When you need a place to live it's like you can get a floor of a brownstone, or a loft, or a few rooms in a big shiny tower with a health club, depending on how you want to live, but when it comes to marriage there's just this one basic variety. You're supposed to live together monogamously. You see what I'm saying? One size fits all? No way. Why can't we have different brands of marriage. Color-coded... the red kind of marriage, say, where you spend four nights a week together and cruise the other nights, or the green marriage, where you have kids together and lend them out to your impotent relatives and—"

"What color do you want," asked Casey, whose own marriage was, like ancient currencies, based on the gold standard. She was half British and half Du Pont, her husband a venture capitalist from the same registered social circle in Wilmington, Delaware. Russell thought they were snobs, and referred to Mrs. Reynes as "Her Majesty"; Corrine's loyalty had more to do with memories of the leveling storm of adolescence than to current compatibility.

"Please, don't tell us, Wash," Corrine said. "We've just eaten."

"Marriages need a certain amount of slack. A lot of fond-making absence," said Casey, whose husband traveled incessantly on business.

Nancy said, "All men need just four things. Food, shelter, pussy... and strange pussy."

"I can't vouch for the first two," Washington confessed. The other men around the table looked embarrassed, it seemed to Corrine—as if they'd just been caught out.

In a sudden panic, she glanced across the table at Russell. Looking flustered, he shrugged sheepishly.

Jeff helped clear the dishes. In the kitchen Corrine said to him, "I don't think she's quite your type."

"Is that understatement?"

"Diplomacy, Jeff."

He put his arms around her. They were old friends from similar worlds, Jeff the late spawn of a dusty Yankee family whose capital, like the soil of his native Massachusetts, was largely depleted. There was an air of unfinished business between them. She'd always thought him attractive, six-three and bone-thin, slightly hunched with the self-consciousness of those sensitive tall people who prefer not to tower.

"What you mean," Jeff suggested, "is that you're sorry to report that she's exactly my type and that I am therefore demonstrably a scumbag."

She looked into his eyes, as though she might read the health of his soul there. The kind of eyes that might belong to a villager in the Middle East, someone encountered on the banks of the Tigris or the Euphrates, the dark eyes of an old soul. Russell had boyish wide blue eyes and was born the day before yesterday.

Dodging her gaze, he said, "The trouble with girls who are my type is that I don't find them attractive."

Corrine laughed. "What?" All at once she realized she was buzzed. Felt good. "I thought you found all women attractive."

"Or else I find them attractive but they're married."

"Sometimes they're attractive
because
they're married."

That, she thought, was a good, sensible response. Deflecting trouble, like a good wife and hostess. Where did she find that? "Are you working? I don't want to know
what
you're working on, just
if you
are."

"Writing a screenplay for Zac, but I'd hardly call that work."

"Then why are you doing it?"

"You're a stockbroker, Corrine. Why do I have to be pure?"

Corrine twisted away, feeling dizzy for a moment, almost losing her balance as he let go of her. She moved to the sink and turned on the water. It was true, she sold stocks, bonds, annuities. But in her actual heart she was someone entirely different. A lover and a student of life. God, she couldn't believe she was thirty-one. What had happened to the last ten years?

Filling up the coffeepot with water, she felt Jeff still standing behind her. "Some of us had to become regular people so you could have readers." She turned. "You arrogant shit," she said, doused him with the contents of the pot, and then—she didn't know why—sank to the floor in convulsions of hilarity.

"I was
just about
to ask for some water," he said, his scraggly hair and long, untucked shirttails dripping.

She laughed harder. Until finally she coughed, then paused to say, '"Just once I think it would be good for you to be at a loss for words."

"Happens all the time," he said. "Whenever I sit down in front of my word processor." Patting himself down with a wad of paper towels, he added, "by the way, I haven't wished you a happy birthday."

"Damn you, that's a secret."

"Thirty-one,
n'est ce pas?"

"If you say anything I'll kill you."

"What did Russell give you?"

"Head," she answered, laughing uproariously at her improvisation. I
must,
she thought, be drunk. "About time," Jeff said.

"Believe it or not," she said, standing up and brushing her dress off with exaggerated strokes of her fingers, "other men are more than capable of making women happy. Some of them are so good they just take our little breaths away."