How It Ended: New and Collected Stories - By Jay McInerney Page 0,10

ate in front of the television. On a rerun of M*A*S*H, Hawkeye was wooing a recalcitrant nurse.

“Have you noticed that on television hardly anyone smokes?” Russell asked.

Corrine nodded. “Moratorium on French movies.”

“Absolutely.”

“And it wouldn't hurt us to cut down on our drinking.”

Russell agreed in principle, even as the ice shrank in his third drink of the evening. After ten hours of not smoking he had arrived home feeling like he'd been beaten up, and had reached immediately for the vodka.

Russell said, “The old soup-and-sandwich theorem.”

“The thing we've got to realize,” Corrine said, “is that you can't have ‘just one cigarette.’ If you break down once, you'll do it more easily the next time.”

“Right.” Russell was trying to watch M*A*S*H. Corrine had absolutely no television etiquette. She would talk through the first twenty-five minutes of a show and then ask Russell to explain what was going on. Her questions were a little maddening at the best of times. Tonight he was ready to hurl her out the window. Either that or grab the pack of smokes he'd left in his blazer in the closet.

“Russell?”

“Yeah?”

“Please listen just for one minute. This is important.”

He looked at her. She was wearing her earnest, small-girl-wanting-to-know-why-the-sky-is-blue expression. He normally found this look devastating.

“Did you ever,” she said, “when you were a kid, pretend that something really bad would happen to you if you did or didn't do something? You know, like if you didn't stay underwater till the far end of the pool, then somebody would die?”

“All the time,” Russell said. “Thousands died.”

“I'm serious. Let's pretend, like that, that something really bad will happen to us if we start smoking again.”

“Okay,” Russell said, turning back to the TV.

The next day, Corrine screamed at Russell for leaving his dirty socks in the bathroom sink. He got mad at her when he went to the kitchen and found the cupboards bare: How was he supposed to quit smoking if he couldn't have some toast or cereal to keep his mouth busy? She said the shopping wasn't her responsibility—she certainly brought home her share of the grocery money. Corrine stormed out of the house without saying good-bye, forgetting her briefcase. At the office, Russell bummed a cigarette from Tracey and almost smoked it out of spite, as a way of getting back at Corrine. He finally broke it in half and threw it in the wastebasket.

That night, when Corrine got home, their fight was not mentioned; they were both shy and solicitous, as if helping each other through a tropical illness. They cranked up the air conditioning and collapsed into bed at ten. Russell woke up at seven with a keen sensation of guilt. Corrine was not in bed; he heard the shower running in the bathroom. Gradually he began to recall a dream: He'd been at a party, and Nancy Tanner was beckoning to him from the door of an igloo. The purpose of the invitation was unclear. Russell walked toward the open door. It was surprisingly distant, and with each step he told himself he should turn around and run. When he finally reached her, she held out a cigarette and smiled lewdly.

Corrine came into the bedroom wearing a towel twisted around her head and another secured beneath her arms.

“We've got to do something about this water pressure,” she said, sitting down at the vanity. Lying in bed, Russell could see her face in the mirror as she began to apply her makeup. She caught his eye and smiled. “What are you so serious about?”

“Nothing.”

“I had the weirdest dream last night,” she said.

“What else is new?” he said, glad that she was accustomed to his not remembering his own dreams.

“I dreamed about cigarettes. Sneaking a smoke, like when I was a kid.”

Applying a tool shaped like a miniature toothbrush to her eyebrow, she said, “Have you dreamed about it?” Her eyes zoomed in on his for just a moment, and reflexively he answered, “No.”

“I guess I'm just perverse.”

The next night, Corrine dreamed that she was standing on the sidewalk, waiting for someone. The street was entirely deserted, though it was Park Avenue. Not another soul on the sidewalk, not a car on the street. A black limousine appeared several blocks down, cruising toward her slowly, finally pulling up and stopping by the curb in front of her. The glass was smoked; she couldn't see inside the car. The back window slipped down; a man's hand emerged from the open window, holding out a pack of cigarettes. She