How It Ended: New and Collected Stories - By Jay McInerney Page 0,74
with his own brilliant blood. He dreams that he can see it glowing green beneath the skin like a radioactive isotope as it moves up the vein, warming everything in its path until it blossoms in his brain stem. Maybe, he thinks, I should go to a meeting.
“I'm going to call this morning,” Terri continues, “and have them check the gutters while they're at it.” She will, too. Her remarkable sense of economy and organization, which might have seemed comical or even obnoxious, is touching to McClarty, who sees it as a function of her recovering alcoholic's battle against chaos. He admires this. And he likes the fact that she knows how to get the oil in the cars changed or wangle free upgrades when they fly to Saint Thomas. Outside of the examining room, McClarty still feels bereft of competence and will.
She kisses his widow's peak on her way out and reminds him about dinner with the Clausens, whoever they might be. Perversely, McClarty actually likes this instant new life. Just subtract narcotics and vodka, and stir. He feels like a character actor who, given a cameo in a sitcom, finds himself written into the series as a regular. He moved to this southeastern city less than a year ago, after graduating from rehab in Atlanta, and lived in an apartment without furniture until he moved in with Terri.
McClarty met her at a Mexican restaurant and was charmed by her air of independence and unshakable self-assurance. She leaned across the bar and said, “Fresh jalapeños are a lot better. They have them, but you have to ask.” She waved her peach-colored nails at the bartender. “Carlos, bring the gentleman some fresh peppers.” Then she turned back to her conversation with a girlfriend, her mission apparently complete.
A few minutes later, sipping his Perrier, McClarty couldn't help overhearing her say to her girlfriend, “Ask before you go down on him, silly. Not after.”
McClarty admires Terri's ruthless efficiency. Basically she has it all wired. She owns a clothing store, drives an Acura, has breasts shaped like mangoes around an implanted core of saline. “Not silicone,” she announced virtuously the first night he touched them. If asked, she can review the merits of the top plastic surgeons in town. “Dr. Milton's really lost it,” she'll say. “Since he started fucking his secretary and going to Aspen, his brow lifts are getting scary. He cuts way too much and makes everybody look frightened or surprised.” At forty, with his own history of psychological reconstruction, McClarty doesn't hold a few nips and tucks against a girl—particularly when the results are so exceptionally pleasing to the eye.
“You're a doctor?” Instead of saying, “Yes, but just barely,” he nodded. Perched as she was on a stool that first night, her breasts seemed to rise on the swell of this information. Checking her out when he first sat down, Dr. Kevin McClarty thought she looked like someone who would be dating a pro athlete, or a guy with a new Ferrari who owned a chain of fitness centers. She is almost certainly a little too brassy and provocative to be the consort of a doctor, which is one of the things that excite Kevin about her; making love to her, he feels simultaneously that he is slumming and sleeping above his economic station. Best of all, she is in the program, too. When he heard her order a virgin margarita, he decided to go for it. A week after the jalapeños, he moved in with her.
The uniformed guard says, “Good morning, Dr. McClarty” as he drives out the gate on his way to work. Even after all these years, he gets a kick out of hearing the title attached to his own name. He grew up even more in awe of doctors than most mortals because his mother, a nurse, told him that his father was one, though she refused all further entreaties for information. Raised in the bottom half of a narrow, chilly duplex in Evanston, Illinois, he still doesn't quite believe in the reality of this new life—the sunshine, the walled and gated community, the smiling guard who calls him “Dr.” Perversely, he believes in the dream, which is far more realistic than all this blue sky and imperturbable siding. He doesn't tell Terri, though. He never tells her about the dreams.
Driving to his office, he thinks about Terri's breasts. They're splendid, of course. But he finds it curious that she will tell nearly anybody that