How It Ended: New and Collected Stories - By Jay McInerney Page 0,106

the time my name is called, Brooke is waiting for me by the front desk at the Eighteenth Precinct. So is a reporter from the Post. A sallow man, ancient by newspaper standards—easily forty—he pushes back the bill of his cap, which bears the logo New York—It Ain't Over, and flips open his steno pad.

“Why'd you do it?” he asks as I finish signing at the desk.

“I didn't like his acting choices.”

“Is it true you've been stalking Chip Ralston for months?”

Brooke takes my arm as we bolt for the door. Outside, we are ambushed by three photographers.

“Collin, look here.”

“Is that your girlfriend?”

“How about the two of you kissing for a picture?”

They follow us down the street, yipping and snapping. So this is what it's like, I think.

Finally we are alone and anonymous again on the sidewalk. The next day the Post will run a photo of me and Brooke, who is identified, half correctly, as my girlfriend.

“So,” Brooke says. “What do you want to do? Go to Rockefeller Center and watch the skaters?” For some reason I find this hilarious. “Then maybe check out the windows at Saks.” She's laughing now.

“Catch the Christmas show at Radio City,” I suggest.

“I don't know if they let felons in to see the Rockettes.” Brooke's demeanor turns earnest. “Maybe if we act like we just got off the bus and it's our first day ever in the city, and we've come from really far away to see the lights on Fifth Avenue and the tree …” She shrugs, takes my hand and begins to lead me east on Fiftieth.

And, walking through the slanting secondhand light toward Rockefeller Center and Fifth Avenue, I remember that the city used to seem to me like a giant advent calendar with a thousand doors. Prowling the streets at night, you felt that every luminous tower was a glittering enigma that might secretly bear your name. I remember the joy, not so very long ago, of waking up newly arrived in the city, believing that everything I wanted in the world was waiting outside the door of my apartment, right down the street. Just around the next corner, or the one after.

1995

I Love You, Honey

1.

The first time it happened, Liam blamed the terrorists. He assumed that his wife, like all the other sentient residents of the city, was traumatized by the events of that September day. Deciding that this was no world into which to bring another child was a perfectly rational response, though he knew many people who'd had the exact opposite response. This, too, was understandable: affirming life in the face of so much death. He could name several children who were born nine months later, and he assumed there were hundreds, maybe thousands, more around the city—in fact, he'd read something to that effect. But Lora's was the opposite response. He didn't really begin to suspect until much later that her motives might have been more complex, less cosmic and more personal, than he had imagined.

2.

Her friend LuAnne had called to say something had happened, and she'd started surfing channels with the remote in one hand and the phone in the other, seeing the same image on all the stations. She called Liam at work and his assistant said he had a meeting scheduled out of the office. Lora then tried his cell, but the call went directly to voice mail. She kept punching the redial button every few minutes. After the second plane hit, she called the office again to ask where, exactly, the meeting was, frantic with worry, trying to remember if Liam had ever mentioned any business in the World Trade Center, but now she got the assistant's recorded message. In fact, Liam's office was in TriBeCa, only seven or eight blocks from the towers, and after the first one collapsed, she could imagine any number of scenarios that might have put him in harm's way. After the second tower fell, she was convinced he was dead. And then he called, his greeting incongruously blithe.

“Hey, babe, it's me.”

“Liam. Oh my God. Where are you?”

“At the office. Just out of a meeting. What's up?”

“Thank God,” she said.

“What's wrong?”

“I thought you were dead.”

“Why would I be dead?”

“Jesus, God, Liam, haven't you heard? Turn on the TV. Look out the window, for God's sake.”

3.

Liam arrived at their apartment on Waverly Place ten minutes later—less time than it would have taken him to walk from TriBeCa, but he didn't realize until later that the subway service was