How It Ended: New and Collected Stories - By Jay McInerney Page 0,93
over the edge, and then it's too late. You're smoking reefer in high school and then doing lines and all of a sudden you're buying AK-47's and bringing hundred-kilo loads into Boston Harbor.”
I wasn't about to point out that some of us never even thought of dealing drugs, let alone buying firearms. I refilled his wineglass, nicely concealing my skepticism, secretly pleased to hear this golden boy revealing his baser metal. But I have to say I was intrigued.
“This goes on for two, three years. I wish I could say it wasn't fun, but it was. The danger, the secrecy, the money …” He pulled on his cigar and looked out over the water. “So anyway, we set up one of our biggest deals ever, and our buyer's been turned. Facing fifteen to life on his own, so he delivers us up on a platter. A very exciting moment. We're in a warehouse in Back Bay and suddenly twenty narcs are pointing thirty-eights at us.”
“And one of them was Jean,” Cameron proposed.
I shot her a look, but she was gazing expectantly at her counterpart.
“For the sake of our new friends here,” Jean said, “I wish I had been.” She looked at her husband and touched his wrist, and at that moment I found her extraordinarily desirable. “I think you're boring these nice people.”
“Not at all,” I protested, directing my reassurance at the storyteller's wife. I was genuinely sorry for her sake that she was party to this sordid tale. She turned and smiled at me, as I'd hoped she would, and for a moment I forgot about the story altogether as I conjured up a sudden vision: slipping from the cabana for a walk later that night, unable to sleep … and encountering her out at the edge of the beach, talking, both claiming insomnia, then confessing that we'd been thinking of each other, a long kiss and a slow recline to the soft sand.…
“You must think—” She smiled helplessly. “Well, I don't know what you must think. Jack's never really told anyone about all of this before. You're probably shocked.”
“Please go on,” said Cameron. “We're dying to hear the rest. Aren't we, Don?”
I nodded, a little annoyed at this aggressive use of the marital pronoun. Her voice seemed loud and grating, and the gaudy print blouse I'd always hated seemed all the more garish beside Jeannie's elegant but sexy navy halter.
“Long story short,” said Jack, “I hire Carson Baxter to defend me. And piece by piece he gets virtually every shred of evidence thrown out. Makes it disappear right before the jury's eyes. Then he sneers at the rest. I mean, the man's the greatest performer I've ever seen—”
“He's brilliant,” I murmured. Baxter was one of the finest defense attorneys in the country. Although I didn't always share his political views, I admired his adherence to his principles and his legal scholarship. Actually, he was kind of a hero to me. I don't know why, but I was surprised to hear his name in this context.
“So I walked,” Jack concluded.
“You were acquitted?” I asked.
“Absolutely.” He puffed contentedly on his cigar. “Of course, you'd think that would be the end of the story and the end of my illicit but highly profitable career. Alas, unfortunately not. Naturally, I told myself and everyone else I was going straight. But after six months, the memory of prison and the bust had faded, and a golden opportunity practically fell into my lap, a chance for one last big score. The retirement run. The one you should never make. Always a mistake, these farewell gigs.” He laughed.
“That waiter's asleep on his feet,” Jean said. “Like the waiter in that Hemingway story. He's silently jinxing you, Jack Van Heusen, with a special voodoo curse for long-winded white boys, because he wants to reset the table and go back to the cute little turquoise-and-pink staff quarters and make love to his wife, the chubby laundress who is waiting for him all naked on her fresh white linen.”
“I wonder how the waiter and the laundress met,” Jack said cheerfully, standing up and stretching. “That's probably the best story.”
My beloved wife said, “Probably they met after Don yelled at her about a stain on his linen shirt and the waiter comforted her.”
Jack looked at his watch. “Good God, ten-thirty already, way past official Virgin Islands bedtime.”
“But you can't go to bed yet,” Cameron said. “You haven't even met your wife.”