Bright, Precious Days by Jay McInerney

only manage to inhale half of a line the first time. It’s a very weird sensation, a not entirely unpleasant burning in her nasal passages, and then, a few minutes later, a bittersweet drip at the back of her throat. After several tries, she consumes two of the lines and feels very pleased with herself. Having been a little afraid and uncertain, she now congratulates herself on being brave and going for it. Nothing scary here. She feels almost normal, except better than normal.
    “I think I’m feeling it, but I’m not sure,” she says. “I feel good but not, like, stoned. You know, I’ve never really liked pot, to tell you the truth, that feeling of not being myself, of being kind of slowed down and dumbed down. That
dopey
feeling. No wonder they call it dope, right? But now I feel like myself. But sort of, I don’t know, a really upbeat version of myself. Is that the cocaine? Because actually I feel pretty great. I feel like, I don’t know, like
doing
something.”
    Jeff smiles and nods.
    “Say something.”
    “
Something.
”
    “You’re teasing me. Am I talking too much? I’m talking too much, aren’t I? Is that the cocaine? Is that what it does?”
    “It comes with the territory.”
    “But why aren’t you talking as much as I am?”
    “Be careful what you wish for.”
    Jeff leans down and snorts another line, then kneels down to riffle through a stack of LPs on the floor beside the stereo, selecting a record and placing it on the turntable.
    “I like that,” Corrine says of the wailing guitars and whining, world-weary vocals.
    “It’s Television,” Jeff says.
    She looks back down at the stereo, wondering if that was a joke. She often feels this way in Jeff’s company, as though she is missing out on some inside reference. Maybe the drug is messing with her perception, although, in fact, she feels incredibly clearheaded and sharp at the moment.
    “It’s a stereo,” she says.
    “Television’s the name of the band. Unfortunately, no longer with us. I saw them in ’78 at CBGB.”
    “Oh, right,” she says. The singer’s voice is very nasal and adenoidal—maybe he did cocaine? What
is
he singing? She listens for the next chorus. “I fell right into the arms of Venus de Milo.” It takes her a minute. And then, she says, “Very clever. I get it. Better late than never, I guess. You must think I’m very uncool, basically.”
    “I’ve never thought that. I think you’re amazing.”
    “I don’t know the new music, or even the new art. I mean, I’m good up to Jasper Johns and Rauschenberg, the Stones and Led Zeppelin, but after that…” She shrugs. “I feel like rock and roll kind of petered out a few years ago, but that’s probably just me. Is Led Zeppelin still cool? How do you find these things out? I mean, is there some committee that decides? A bunch of cool kids in leather jackets, smoking bidis, who sit around and pronounce on these issues? Whoever they are, they don’t have my telephone number. And my taste in literature is pretty conventional. I tried, but I couldn’t get past the first twenty pages of
Naked Lunch.
And that book you gave me last month,
Finnegan’s Stew
?”
    “
Mulligan Stew,
by Gilbert Sorrentino. Finnegan was Joyce.
Finnegans Wake.
Although curiously enough a character from
Finnegans Wake
turns up in
Mulligan Stew.
”
    “That’s what I mean—a novel within a novel within a novel, all that postmodern self-consciousness. A writer writing a book about a writer writing a book. Jesus, I’m sorry, I just get lost. I like Edith Wharton and Anthony Powell and Graham Greene. I’m just not hip enough. I live on East 71st Street and I belong to the Colony Club and the Daughters of the American Revolution. You grew up in the same world I did, but you’ve sort of rejected all that.”
    “That doesn’t define you. You’re so much more than that. I don’t believe in types, I believe in individuals. I believe in
you.
You’re like no one else. I don’t know