He was looking at her fondly, as if she were a familiar, harmless lunatic.
“When did you get back?” she asked.
“A few days ago. I thought maybe we could have lunch after we finish up here.”
“It’s possible. Let’s see how the morning goes.”
“Well, you know where to find me,” he said, jogging off to his station.
For once, their supplies held out till the end and the morning passed without incident. Corrine was painfully aware of Luke’s presence, even as she tried to pretend she wasn’t; if anything, she visited the carrot tent less often than the others. Luke seemed to be performing his duties cheerfully and efficiently, getting along well with the women working alongside him, at least one of whom was annoyingly attractive.
“So, I assume you have a car?” she asked him after she’d finished her duties.
He shook his head.
“You took the subway?”
“No, but I let the car go. It seemed sort of, I don’t know, it just didn’t seem quite right having a Town Car standing by for three or four hours while I handed out carrots at a housing project.”
On the one hand, she gave him credit for his decency; on the other, she’d been looking forward to a ride downtown. She was getting a little weary of trying to live within her means. “I guess we’re taking the subway. It’s a kind of underground train.”
“Genius idea.”
They could, of course, have had lunch in Manhattan, but wanting to see how he reacted, she took him instead to a Salvadoran restaurant on 149th that Doreen, one of the clients, had introduced her to last year.
“You come here often?” he asked after she led him to a Formica table for two.
“Occasionally,” she said.
“I’m not sure I buy that,” he said, taking a seat across from her. “What do you order?”
“They do a chicken dish I like,” she said. At least that’s what Doreen ordered, although for the life of her she couldn’t remember what it might be called.
“You’re sure you want to eat here?”
“Absolutely,” she said, despite having second thoughts about the venue and not feeling particularly hungry. Only two other tables were occupied—a Hispanic couple with a toddler and a pretty, solitary young African-American woman in light blue medical scrubs, reading Us magazine.
An obese waitress waddled over and tossed two plastic-coated menus between them, sending Luke’s empty water glass spinning like a top toward the edge of the table, but he grabbed it and prevented it from sailing to the floor. The waitress’s lack of concern, before she turned and swayed back toward the counter, seemed to indicate this sequence of events was strictly routine.
“Kind of ironic, those poor girls I was working with today from the Bear Stearns back office team—they’ll be needing handouts themselves.”
“How so?”
“Bear Stearns went under last month. The shorts were in a feeding frenzy and the New York Fed reneged on a line of credit. They were out of business in days.”
She’d read something about it; for a moment she thought of Veronica, but, no, she was at Lehman Brothers. “Should the rest of us be worried?” she asked.
“I am. The subprime mortgage market’s melting down,” he said. “I’m basically bearish.”
“Have you told your friend Obama about this?”
“He’s got more immediate problems right now—this Reverend Wright thing is dogging him.”
Before Corrine could respond to this, the waitress heaved back up and leaned over to fill the water glasses, overfilling Corrine’s, water flowing over the Formica and soaking her napkin. “You ready to order?” she asked.
“What do you recommend?” Luke asked.
She shrugged. “For your skinny ass, maybe chicharrón de pollo con tostones.”
“Sounds delicious. Shall we get two of those?”
“Just a café con leche for me,” Corrine said.
The waitress rolled her eyes.
“One café con leche and one chicharrón de pollo.”
After she walked off, Luke said, “If you have doubts about the food, please warn me now.”
“No, it’s not that. I’m just not hungry.”
“I find it a little odd that someone with—how to put this delicately?—an ambivalent attitude toward food would become involved in feeding the masses.”
“You’re not the first person to say that. But you should know better than anyone that it all started when we were working at the soup kitchen. The cops and the rescue workers weren’t starving, but it was still gratifying to feed them, and I started thinking about how many people in the city actually had trouble feeding themselves and their families. And I also saw how badly those people were eating, the kind of crap that they were putting in their bodies. And the more I looked into it, the more I learned about how difficult it is for lower-income people to get basic nutritional information, not to mention access to fresh, healthy food.”
“I didn’t mean to sound critical, Corrine.”
“And besides, I resent that remark about food issues. I have issues with gluttony and gourmandism. It’s like chefs have become gods and restaurants have become the new nightclubs. Our friends talk about truffles the way they used to talk about cocaine. My daughter watches the Food Network, for Christ’s sake. That there is a Food Network is a little hard for me to fathom. When did that happen? Foodie culture has become the newest cult of conspicuous consumption, and I find it annoying as hell. The pursuit of bottarga is just as superficial as the pursuit of the latest Kelly bag. Neither one fills a basic need.”
She paused, realizing she needed to get hold of herself. “Sorry, I’m ranting.”
“Maybe you’re just avoiding the other subject.”
“What other subject?”
“Us.”
“Are we a subject?”
“Imagine if instead of just handing out vegetables you could be handing out millions of dollars.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We could have our own foundation. You could really make a difference in the world.”
“Are you proposing to me?”
“I just want you to think about what life could be like.”
“You already have a foundation.” It seemed like a peculiar objection, but she was flummoxed.
“We’d subsume it under the umbrella of the Corrine and Luke McGavock Foundation.”
“Wow,” she said, stunned. “I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a statement that so thoroughly intermixed noble and selfish intentions.”
“They’re always intermixed, Corrine.”
“I don’t believe that. What about the hopes we have for our kids?”
“An interesting example, that. You could say that in caring for our kids we’re promoting our own genes. But if you really care about the welfare of your children—and I know you do—maybe you should consider what I could provide for them. The opportunities they don’t have now.”
“That’s so not fair,” she said, although she’d sometimes allowed herself to wonder what it would be like—not to run a foundation or to indulge fantasies of wild consumption, but to be freed from the hard choices of allocating scarce resources. Even if money couldn’t buy happiness, it could redeem a great many sources of unhappiness. She saw now that for a long time she’d underestimated the importance of financial security and that in doing so she had circumscribed her prospects and those of her children. And yet she still subscribed to the values on which she’d based her life, still believed that the acquisitive instinct was one of the lower impulses on the scale of human values. Was it just some residual cultural snobbery that made her feel that Mammon worship was boorish? And would her children thank her when she explained that she’d left Russell in order to improve their material well-being?
All at once she spotted a flaw in his argument. “I thought the big reason you split up with Giselle was that you didn’t want children.”
“
I didn’t want to start a new family with her.”
“But I don’t understand why you want to take on a broken family with me. What the hell’s wrong with you?”
“You’re right,” he said, just before his lunch was slapped in front of him, chicken parts drowning in an orange swamp beside a mesa of yellow rice. “It doesn’t make sense. It must be love, I guess.”
31
JACK LANDED AT LA GUARDIA a few minutes early and called the dealer from the cab on the way into the city. By the time he arrived at the Chelsea, a little after 6:00 p.m., Kyle was waiting in the lobby. “I was having breakfast down the street,” he explained. He was wearing the full Williamsburg: Peterbilt trucker’s cap, red flannel shirt over a Pabst Blue Ribbon T-shirt.
They went up to the room, where Kyle unloaded his backpack and laid out his wares—coke, smack, Xanax and several grades of weed. “How’s the H?” Jack asked.
“Better than last time. Really clean. Try it.”
Jack pulled a framed hunting scene from the wall and laid it on the coffee table, ripped open a bindle and laid out a third of it in a thin line, then rolled up a twenty and hoovered the smack. It burned a little before it began to warm him from the inside out. Very soon he felt as if the world around him were slowing to a manageable speed. Everything was going to be all right.
“Ummm,” he said. In a moment he’d summon the energy to buy more of this before he forgot.
“Good, huh?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Seventy for a bundle. Ten bindles.”
Jack nodded. “Uh-huh.”
“How much do you want?”
“Better make it two.”
“Okay, just take it slow. This shit’s strong.”
“Long as I don’t shoot it, I figure I’m fine.”
“How about the coke?”
“Show me.” It was possible he was pausing a long time before answering; he wasn’t sure.
“I’ve got the regular. And then I’ve got the Bolivian blue.”
“Blue flake?”
“Like the scales of a bluefish, baby.”
“Oh, man. Let me see that.” The mythical blue flake. It was like the white whale. You heard about it, but he’d never actually seen it.
After what seemed like a long time, Kyle pulled a folded packet from his backpack and opened it up, nudging the layered fragments with an X-Acto knife, moving them back and forth to catch the light. “See the blue?”
“I think so.” Jack was pretty sure he did. It was a beautiful flake, for sure, like shards of white mica with blue-gray highlights.
“How much?”
“Two fifty.”
“Holy shit.”
“That’s because I don’t cut it and my supplier doesn’t, either. If you want the regular, it’s a hundred—fine with me.”
“No. I want this,” Jack said. “Do me a favor and chop me a line.”
It hit his sinuses clean, without the acidic bite of a bad wash or a bad cut, and when it dripped down the back of his throat, he felt the prickly tingle in his scalp and knew he’d made the right choice.
In the end he bought two grams of the blue and two bundles of the H with cash he’d withdrawn over the last two days in Nashville.
He was supposed to go to Russell and Corrine’s for dinner, which was kind of the last thing he felt like doing. It was six-forty-five and dinner was supposedly at eight. He did two more lines of the smack and suddenly it was eight-fucking-twenty. At some point he’d set up his iPod dock, and the Black Keys were playing.
He thought about blowing off the dinner but instead did two lines of coke, which set him right up, put some fuel in his tank. His current outfit of jeans and a black Kid Rock T-shirt would have to do. If he even thought about changing, he’d never make it.
Downstairs, he hailed a cab and made it to their door a few minutes before nine. Corrine was sweet and welcoming; as uptight as she could sometimes be, she seemed to have this almost maternal affection for him and to forgive him his sins, but Russell was a little pissy, messing around with the pots on the stove. It was a mystery to Jack how any dude could give a shit about cooking. But then, he wasn’t that much into eating, either.
“Glad you could make it,” Russell said, sounding more peevish than glad.
“Sorry. That flight always gets delayed.”
He retreated as Russell hacked away at some greenery splayed on the cutting board.
Given Russell’s mood, he was especially happy to see Washington. Here was a guy who didn’t judge lest he be judged, always good for some laughs. Sharp as hell tonight in a trim black suit and a white shirt that looked as crisp as a potato chip, his skull shaved clean and shiny, like it was buffed. They bumped fists and hugged.
“Whaddup, cracker?”
“Just soakin’ up the sights in the big city, blood.”
“New York, New York, just like you pitchered it.”
“Skyscrapers and everything.”
“Maybe I can show you some other sights later on, after the grown-ups have gone to bed.”
“Sounds cool, man. I’m in the mood. Where’s the missus?”
“She’s taking a little time off from the matrimonial state. I’m in the penalty box.”
“Damn, sorry about that. But I guess you’re used to it by now.”
Washington shrugged, as if to suggest that it was a force majeure kind of deal.
“You know Nancy Tanner?” he asked.
“Yeah, for sure,” Jack said as she leaned toward him—at first he was baffled, but then he realized he was supposed to kiss her cheek.
“We’re old pals,” Nancy said. He’d met her the first time he’d come here, maybe, and they’d gone out together to some glitzy lounge. She wrote chick lit or something. She was pretty hot, actually, for somebody who had to be pushing fifty, looking very fine in a tight little gold minidress. She had a mole on the left side of her face, above her lip, like Cindy Crawford.
Russell came over with a vodka for Jack, having regained his perfect hostly demeanor, and introduced him to a middle-aged painter named Rob and his much younger boyfriend, Tab.
“Tab? As in acid?” Jack asked.
“As in Hunter,” the kid said. “The actor. It’s my stage name. Tab Granger.”
The painter looked pained by this revelation. Jack could tell from the way he held himself, how he shook hands—like it was a distasteful obligation—that he was a very big deal, at least in his own mind, like Jack was supposed to recognize his name and be pissing his pants to meet him. Another fucking famous New Yorker. Everyone in New York was sort of famous. Every time you went into a restaurant, some dude was arguing with the hostess, doing some version of the “Don’t You Know Who I Am?” dance. The painter’s hands and fingernails were all crusted with paint, which seemed sort of like an affectation.
“Rob’s got a retrospective at the Whitney,” Russell said.
“Second-youngest painter ever to get one,” Tab chipped in.
“And who exactly is Whitney?” Jack said. He knew he shouldn’t, but he couldn’t help himself.
“Very funny,” Russell said.
The other two looked confused.
As late as he was, Jack wasn’t as late as the actress they were setting him up with; at least that was the impression he got when Russell told him that Madison Dall wanted to meet him. Madison was some indie film darling who behaved badly enough to make the tabloids on a regular basis, or so he was told. And apparently a great fan of Jack’s, especially now that the screenplay loosely based on his book was making the rounds. Madison came from some hollow in Kentucky and supposedly felt like she knew all the characters in Jack’s book. She arrived a few minutes after he did, wearing a tiny red dress with spaghetti straps, and immediately started taking up a lot of space. Skinny but with fairly major tits, and while he couldn’t be certain, they moved as if they were real.
“Wow, I’m, like, so incredibly honored to meet you,” she said, a little bit of Kentucky co
ming through on her vowels. Honored to might you.
“Great to meet you, too,” he said.
“I’d say I’m a big fan of your work, except that’s like fucking saying ‘Hello’ in Hollywood speak; it’s what you automatically say whenever you meet an actor or director. It activates my gag reflex. And I never want to say it when I actually mean it, if you see my point.”
“Let’s just say you think I’m a genius.”
“Yeah, that’s better.” Milky complexion, lightly dusted with freckles, and a wild mane of unruly copper hair. She was looking at him with a directness that seemed to charge the night with possibility. If this were an acting class and she’d been told to look seductive and available, then she’d definitely be getting an A plus right now. She was going to be trouble, in a good way.
The two Calloway children appeared, Jeremy and Storey, politely introducing themselves and shaking hands. Old beyond their years, these New York City kids. Taller than he remembered. The girl was shorter but looked older, thirteen going on thirty.
“You remember Mr. Carson,” Corrine said, her arm around Jeremy’s shoulder.
“My dad’s looking forward to reading your new book,” Jeremy said.
“How old are you now?” Nancy asked. She enunciated as if she were speaking to an idiot or a deaf person, obviously not too used to kids.
“Twelve and a half,” Jeremy said.
“Wow, that’s amazing,” Nancy said.
“Well, it’s not like an accomplishment or anything,” Storey said.
“Dinner is served,” Russell announced from the kitchen. Corrine instructed them to find their place cards at the table and bring their plates over to the counter, where the food was laid out. At some point, Russell had changed into a burgundy velvet smoking jacket, which looked a little ridiculous by Jack’s lights, though he couldn’t help being impressed yet again with the scene; he’d never encountered this kind of sophisticated domesticity until his first dinner party at the Calloways’ on his first trip to New York. His mother had never entertained, and holiday dinners with his relatives had been dutiful and depressing, generally concluding with tears and fisticuffs. He couldn’t then have imagined a world where children with military posture politely retired to their rooms while artists and writers got elegantly shit-faced on fine wine, talking politics instead of sports, talking shit about other artists and writers.