How It Ended: New and Collected Stories - By Jay McInerney Page 0,123

right. God, I can't believe that son of a bitch is collecting art,” he said, again not noticing that she was blushing. He was stroking her knee, moving in the direction of her thigh, pursuing his own secret agenda. If she hadn't been so flustered, she would already have realized he'd come into the bedroom in search of nookie. She could have two jugglers and three elephants in the room and he wouldn't notice when he was in this particular state of anticipation. It was so simple—sweet, really. All she needed to do was administer a quick blow job. Sometimes it was so much easier than the full production. And she'd never heard him complain.

She reached down, unbuttoned his jeans, and slipped her hands inside his boxers. He moaned and lay back on the duvet. Spontaneous sex—one of the perks of the freelance life.

Sabrina worked at a desk in the bedroom. Kyle taught writing at NYU and had an office there. On Tuesdays and Thursdays he had classes and office hours, but most other days he liked to work at home at the kitchen table. Sabrina had been his student a couple years ago and now was writing articles to help pay the bills while intermittently working on her first novel. She loved that they shared a sacred vocation—literature, he liked to say, was their religion—and one that allowed them to spend so much time together.

When she was working, she'd hear him pacing around on the uneven old wooden floors. Sometimes she could hear him humming, or even singing, when concentrating deeply, and she loved the idea that he was working on some short story that might appear in The Paris Review or The New Yorker. And while he must have been able to hear her on the phone, he didn't seem to mind. They'd check up on each other, intermittently, in one room or the other, and if she didn't hear him for a few minutes, she would go out to see what he was doing. Sometimes, irrationally, she was afraid that he wouldn't be there. He often came into the bedroom with that earnest, hungry look on his face, and if she wasn't too busy, they'd fall into bed and devour each other. This routine had seemed wonderful until she needed a little privacy. Was it her imagination, or was he more housebound than usual this week? She kept waiting for him to leave so she could make her calls. Though she knew it wasn't fair, she grew increasingly irritated as he failed to do so.

“How do people who live in lofts have affairs?” she asked her friends one night over drinks at the Odeon.

“They have offices,” Daisy said.

Kyle's office, she recalled, was the first place they'd ever had sex.

The next day she told Kyle she had to go out to conduct an interview, hoping she sounded casual enough to be convincing. He was sprawled on the sofa, reading a manuscript. “Have fun,” he said.

In the elevator she wondered, somewhat peevishly, if he ever even thought about her whereabouts. She could be on her way to some assignation, though in fact she was going to check out the restaurant for his party.

The owner, Brom Kendall, had offered to show her around. She recognized him from his picture in New York magazine, where he'd been included in a feature on hot restaurateurs. He was wearing a black leather jacket over a white T-shirt, and his cleft chin and a slightly crooked nose just barely saved him from being too handsome. For some reason, she felt awkward. She had a notion that he would be conceited, although in fact he seemed a little shy as he shook her hand.

“How about a drink?” he said after they'd completed their short tour of the restaurant, which, in broad daylight, without its glittering clientele, seemed to her interchangeable with a dozen others in the neighborhood. Kind of an Armani palette: taupe walls, black wood trim, gray leather upholstery and moody vintage black-and-white photos of scantily clad women.

Not wanting to seem unfriendly or uptight, she said she'd have a Ketel One and tonic. He went behind the bar to mix the drinks while she took a seat on the other side.

He told her that for years he'd been an actor but that then one day he'd realized it was never going to happen. Besides, he liked people; he liked food.…

It wasn't a terribly original story—she was glad she didn't have to write it—but his