Bright, Precious Days by Jay McInerney Page B

couple—while everybody else was single and searching and scruffy. Russell even had a velvet smoking jacket. It was all very Scott and Zelda, Nick and Nora.”
    “Now you’re mixing your periods,” Washington said.
    “I’ll have you know,” Russell said, “I published a book by Keith Haring.”
    “You are so fucking hip,” Washington said. To the others: “Russell went to the Mudd Club one night in a blue blazer and chinos. I shit you not. Everybody thought he was being ironic.”
    “It was authentic,” Russell said. “I yam what I yam.”
    “Before anyone romanticizes the eighties any further,” Nancy said, “I have two words: Milli Vanilli.”
    “Talk about authentic.”
    Jack decided not to ask what the fuck Milli Vanilli was.
    —
    Eventually, when they were all finally seated at the dinner table, Russell stood up and raised his glass. “I’d like to toast old friends and new, and in particular to welcome Jack Carson to our fair city.” Even as he shrank away from this unexpected beam of attention, this turning of all eyes in the room on him, the rube among the sophisticates, dressed like a bum, with the manners to match, Jack thought, defensively, Nobody says
our fair city
anymore, do they? He was relieved to hear his famous Manhattan editor sounding so dorky.
    “Two years ago,” Russell was saying, “my assistant urged me to look at some unpublished stories posted on Myspace, and I couldn’t have been more skeptical. In fact, I wasn’t even sure what Myspace was.”
    Washington said, “He still thinks the Internet is a passing fad.”
    “But I eventually read the stories and I was
blown away.
It was like Raymond Carver and Breece D’J Pancake had had a love child—”
    “That is so gross,” Nancy interjected.
    “Breece D’ what?” Hilary asked.
    “And at the same time, it was unlike anything I’d ever read before. So please raise a glass to our new friend and his masterful book, which I’m more than honored to be publishing.”
    Jack didn’t know what the hell he was supposed to do or where to look. He’d never been the object of a toast before. For that matter, he wasn’t sure he’d ever been to an actual dinner party before, unless you counted the odd Thanksgiving or barbecues at his uncle Walt’s. This was all very…
civilized,
Russell and Corrine like two glamorous parents presiding over some kind of
salon.
If his stepfather could see him now, he’d say,
What, you think you’re fucking special
?
    After disappearing for a few minutes, Washington returned to the table, clinked his fork against his wineglass repeatedly until he mostly had their attention. “Ladies and germs, it appears Eliot Spitzer is our new governor.”
    “Big surprise,” Dan said. “But just remember, New York isn’t America.”
    “Thank God for that,” Nancy said. “Isn’t that why we all came here in the first place?”
    “Better be careful comin’ to my part of America with that attitude,” Jack said before he could check himself. He hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but in his nervousness he’d already guzzled two vodkas and two glasses of wine.
    “Darn tootin’,” Hilary slurred.
    “Honey,” Corrine said, “tell us about the wine.” Apparently, this was a play she’d called more than once. And sure enough, old Russell got up and yammered on about the wine, which apparently came from Spain. Washington threw a piece of bread at him. Jack couldn’t help laughing, finally recognizing at least one dinner ritual.
    After Russell sat down, Corrine turned to Jack and said, “I don’t know when I’ve seen Russell as excited about a book as he is about yours.”
    “Shitfire, ma’am, pardon my French, but I grew up readin’ the books he published,” he said, obligingly pouring on the backwoods accent for her benefit. “Gettin’ published by Russell, it’s like signin’ with the fuckin’ Yankees. Coming from where I come from, the idea that I’d ever publish a book at all was