Brightness Falls (3 page)

"That's more or less what Caitlin said before she split," he said.

Dave Whitlock, a colleague of Russell's, turned up with a blonde Brazilian named Elsa who worked as a scout for Mondadori. At least Corrine thought that's what she said; it was curious that a Portuguese-speaker would screen books in English for an Italian publisher. Others arrived, people they'd invited for after dinner. The evening broke up into smaller pieces, a mosaic of shiny and oddly shaped fragments grouted with alcohol. Or so it seemed to Corrine the next day. A party is like a marriage, she decided: making itself up while seeming to follow precedent, running on steel rails into uncharted wilderness while the promises shiver and wobble on the armrests like crystal stemware.

House phone to his ear, Russell asked, "Do you know somebody named Ace? The doorman says
he
says you know him."

"It's okay, send him up," Corrine said, blushing. Ace was a homeless man she knew from the soup kitchen where she was a volunteer; buying mixers for the party at Food Emporium in the afternoon, she'd met him redeeming cans and bottles from a noisy garbage bag, the assistant manager looking weary and pissed off as he helped count them into a cardboard box; Ace explained his appearance in her neighborhood by saying that he liked to spread his business around. "Having a party," Ace asked, seeing her purchases. On a sudden guilty inspiration she asked him if he wanted a job helping with the cleanup. And here he was. She was pleased with herself and with Ace for taking her at her word, but Russell made fun of what he called her Mother Teresa complex. In this case he didn't particularly notice or remark on Ace's arrival, though he was hardly inconspicuous—an unwashed black man in a Mets cap and unlaced Nike high-tops, asking the guests if they were finished with their beer bottles. Corrine saw him drink off the residue of a bottle he had liberated from Jeff.

"Used to be," Russell was declaiming, "you'd read a good short story somewhere, call up the author in his hovel, you'd offer him a couple thou' for a collection and a novel, and he'd dedicate his books to you, offer you his mistress, Eskimo style, promise you his firstborn. Now you've got to transfer a six-figure advance to a numbered Swiss bank account just to get a first look at some creative writing student's senior thesis. And his agent's still all over your back."

"Used to be," said Jeff, "only dweebs, dorks and geeks went into publishing. Second sons and Sarah Lawrence grads. I'm sorry to report that this is still the case."

Each with glass in hand, they clenched in an ambiguous bear hug. Corrine watched as the two friends drifted southward across the carpet, this migrating arc finally intersecting the sideboard, Russell's butt glancing it, unbalancing and toppling a blue-and-white Oriental vase, which fell to the floor, narrowly missing the edge of the rug, and shattered on the parquet floor.

Russell's face betrayed his knowledge of this object's dynastic label and long association with Corrine's family—a wedding present. But Corrine rushed in to say it was nothing, she'd get the dustpan, watch out for the pieces.

"Crash Calloway," Jeff said, using the nickname Russell had borne almost since he could walk, fall or knock things over.

At the time of night when guests become disk jockeys, sifting through the library of records and tapes, the stereo becomes a time machine, stuck in reverse. Neil Young's "After the Gold Rush" blasted abruptly from the speakers. Washington was dancing with Jeff's date, and Ace swayed on his feet like a sailor in a six-foot sea, his hand on Zac Solomon's reluctant shoulder, talking about his plans to cut a rap demo.

Casey Reynes drew Corrine aside on her way out and announced she was pregnant. "It's a secret, Tom doesn't want me telling anyone yet."

Corrine embraced her. "I'm so happy for you," she said, though her happiness was tinged unexpectedly with envy.

Elsa, the Brazilian with the Italian connection, was tugging at Corrine's sleeve. Had she seen David Whitlock, her date?

"How far can he get?" Russell called over. "There's only three rooms."

"I'll call you tomorrow," Corrine said to Casey.

Jeff's date was also missing, according to the insistent Elsa.

"He's probably feeding the dog," Russell said.

"What dog," Elsa asked.

"Check the bathroom," said Jeff. "Until recently, the bathroom was always the center of any good party, as the homely kitchen had been in earlier cultures."

Soon Elsa was pounding on the locked door of the bathroom. When she hurled her glass against it, Russell wobbled over to calm her.

"Broom and dustpan are right inside the closet," Corrine called out to Russell, thinking of Casey, the same age as she.

A few minutes later Jeff was passed out on the couch. Strange, Corrine thought. He usually drank everybody under the table. Then she giggled aloud, remembering what Russell had said about under the table. She was recumbent in an armchair, gathering her strength, when the doorman rang. Wearily she picked up the house phone.

"Black guy down here's trying to carry a VCR out the door. Says he's going to repair it. You want me to call the cops?"

"That must be Ace," Corrine said. "Just ask him to leave it with you, Roger. Tell him we changed our minds about the repair." Then she realized she hadn't paid him and asked the doorman to give him a twenty and not to mention anything to Russell.

What's-her-name, Jeff's date, breasts in tow, emerged from the bathroom, a trifle sheepish, and a moment later so did Washington. Uh-oh. Guilty
of something.
Elsa, who watched as Russell cleared up the broken glass, said, "Where's David?" then began pounding the bedroom door, which had gotten closed and locked somehow. Finally Nancy Tanner popped out of the room. Elsa started screaming at Whitlock. It sounded like a real scuffle in there. "London Calling," high volume, made Corrine think briefly about the financial markets; also, fleetingly, about the neighbors. But no, she didn't care to think about the markets right now, thank you very much, and the neighbors would have to speak for themselves. How can you like the Clash, punk-socialist band, and sell corporate equity at the same time? That was the inexplicable mystery of being Corrine Calloway at the age of thirty-one.

Russell wandered over and put his arm around her. "Another successful party," he said.

* * *

"Where's the jelly," Russell asked, groping in the drawer of the nightstand.

"Hell with the jelly," Corrine said, rolling him onto his back. "Don't you think it's kind of a sexy idea, doing it without protection? Wouldn't it be sort of incredibly sexy to make me pregnant?"

He stopped moving. "No."

"No, really."

"Yes, really. Are you nuts?"

"Nuts?" She rose to her knees and looked down on him.
"Nuts?
What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means crazy. As in, not in your right mind. Not in your sane self."

"How dare you," she said, punching the side of his head with a half-clenched fist, hurting her knuckles. She stood up, tore the quilt off the bed and retreated to the living room.

"Corrine, I'm too tired to argue," he called after her.

"Good," he heard faintly.

He meant to go out and get her, but woke a few hours later, at seven, with a bad case of cottonmouth and a vast headache, feeling more or less like a porcupine turned inside out. When he turned to look for Corrine, she wasn't there. It took him several minutes to remember it was a weekend, and to figure out where his wife was. Walking out to the living room, he couldn't remember what they'd fought about, but there she was, on the couch amid the debris of her secret birthday party, pictures askew, dead soldiers standing at attention. Corrine curled into a ball under a corner of the quilt. It was not often Russell saw his wife in repose. Usually still talking when he fell asleep, and awake at some hour, like this one, which he preferred not to hear about.

He picked her up and carried her back to bed. "Where were you?" she murmured, as he bumped down the hall with her. "I was lost in this crowd, a big party, and I kept calling you and you weren't there. It was so real. It started out this wonderful party, all our friends and all these interesting new people, and then we lost our friends and I lost you and the party became ugly and sad."

"I'm here," he said, laying her down in bed, where she immediately returned to sleep.

2

"You don't think it's news that the administration's been running drugs? What do
you
call news over there?"

"We just think there's nothing real new in the story, Russ. These allegations have surfaced before."

"Don't tell me about allegations. I'm talking evidence, documentation, smoking guns out the wazoo. This book's got assassination, dope-dealing, money-laundering, and all of it leading straight to the front door of the White House. Nixon got chased out for less. So what does it take with you guys, a game-show angle?"

"I have a meeting, Russell."

"Can you promise me a review, at least?"

"I'll see what I can find out from the books people."

"Loved the cover story on Michael Jackson, by the way. Hard-hitting stuff."

"Jesus, Russell. I said I'll try."

Russell detached the receiver from his ear and lifted it overhead, then made the sound of an airplane falling out of the sky as the instrument traced a series of descending loops ending with a loud crash on his desktop.

From outside his office a nasal female voice called out: "Any survivors?"

"That's a negative."

After six years of Reagan and almost as many in publishing, Russell thought of himself—though he was alone in this perception—as a fairly jaded character. But when this manuscript came across his desk he knew it was one of the books he'd been waiting to publish. It seemed to him a shameful characteristic of the era that the liberal press lacked all con- viction while the yahoos were full of passionate insensitivity. For two years the author had followed the story of the secret war in Nicaragua from El Salvador to Israel to Cuba to Washington to Managua to Little Havana. He'd talked to gunrunners and drug runners, contras and Sandinistas, slept in jungles and had his life threatened, and Russell seemed to be the only one who was terribly interested. For weeks he'd been trying to get the big papers and magazines to pick up some of the more sensational revelations. He'd sent galleys to national-affairs editors, followed up with phone calls, and lunched every contact he had, this last one an alleged friend, an editor at a so-called newsweekly.

Righting his tilted chair, he fired off three darts at the opposite wall, missing Elliott Abrams, three points, assistant secretary of state, but catching Oliver North right on the chin, for five points, with the third dart. Various politicians, book reviewers and indignitaries served time on the dartboard when their behavior earned Russell's disapproval.

On the facing wall were photographs of friends, family and heroes: snapshots of Corrine, his mother and father; a framed, already yellowing page from the Sunday
New York Times,
the review of Jeff's book; a poster of the Karsh portrait of Hemingway circa
The Old Man and the Sea;
a photograph of bearded, bleary John Berryman, chin and cigarette in hand; another of Keith Richards, onstage with tongue out, dripping toxic sweat; a publicity still of Jack Nicholson, signed "To Russ, who gives good book—Jack," souvenir of a movie tie-in edition; as well as the usual author photos and book posters.

The phone trilled—neither a ring nor a buzz but a kind of exotic birdcall.

"Incoming," Donna called out. "Victor Propp."

Russell glanced wistfully at the First World War German infantry helmet on his desk, a trophy his grandfather had picked up in the Argonne Forest in 1918, shortly before losing half of his eyesight to mustard gas.

Punching in the speaker phone, he said, "Victor, how goes life and literature?"

"Life is short and brutish, Russell. Full of S and F, et cetera. Literature—truly endless."

Russell took the latter to mean that the book wasn't finished, hardly a surprise. Victor had been working on it for about twenty years, the deadline for delivery receding gradually into a semi-mythical future. In this unfinished condition it, and its author, had become a local literary legend, the locale in this case being a literary/academic republic encompassing patches of Cambridge, New Haven and Manhattan's Upper West Side.

"Did you see that piece on Roth in the
TransAtlantic?
A very snide reference to me—'unlike those rococo goldsmiths who worry the surfaces of their bibelot sentences...

Russell decided he just might need the helmet. "Victor, I don't necessarily read that as a reference to you."

"Russell, my dear boy, every literary intellectual in America scans that sentence and says, 'For "rococo goldsmiths," read "Victor Propp."

"Not to worry, Victor. There are only three or four literary intellectuals left in the whole goddamn country." It wasn't that Victor didn't have his detractors; just that he nicely illustrated Delmore Schwartz's maxim that even paranoids have enemies.

"Despite your considerable intelligence, Russell, you are remarkably naive. Do you suppose it has anything to do with coming from the Midwest? Not that it's an unattractive quality. It's very American. The thing about real Americans ..."

Russell looked at his watch as Victor started sermonizing about the land of the freaks and home of the slaves. Eleven-forty. He wet his finger with saliva and polished the crystal. Scanning a report on his desk, he was pleased to discover that
Scavengers and Birds of Prey,
a selected edition of the Audubon plates, was going into another printing. He had guessed correctly that the fiercer birds would be popular in the current climate. He tuned in on a rising interrogatory note in the great man's voice, though Victor's questions were usually rhetorical.

"... doesn't he? That is to say, Jeff has this very granitic, Yankee quality in his prose which I quite like, the natural thing that Salinger had to work at so obsessively, being a Jew—believe me, I know. But I wonder how to account for all the press on his book?"