How It Ended: New and Collected Stories - By Jay McInerney Page 0,95
coming from Cuba. Of course, the feds know the real story—they've been monitoring this for the better part of a year. Out of the fucking frittata pan—”
“The sartén, actually,” Jean said, correcting him impishly.
“Yeah, yeah.” He stuck his tongue out at her, then resumed. “I thought I was going to lose it right there on the runway. After almost seven months in a cell without a window, thinking I was free, and then—”
“God,” Cameron blurted, “you must have been—”
“I was. So now the FBI contacts Havana to ask for the evidence that led to our acquittal as spies so that they can use it to bust us for a smuggling rap.”
I heard the sounds of a thousand insects and the lapping of water as he paused and smiled.
“And the Cubans say, basically, Fuck you, Yankee pigs. And we all walk. And Lord, it was sweet.”
To my amazement, Cameron began to applaud. She was, I now realized, thoroughly drunk.
“We still haven't heard about Jean,” I noted, as if I suspected, and was about to prove, Your Honor, that in point of fact they had never actually met at all.
Jean shared with her husband a conspiratorial smile that deflated me. Turning to me, she said, “My name is Jean Baxter Van Heusen.”
I'm not a complete idiot. “Carson Baxter's daughter,” I said, and she nodded.
Cameron broke out laughing. “That's just great. I love it.”
“How did your father feel about it?” I asked, sensing a weak point.
Jean's smile disappeared. She picked up a handful of sand and let it slip through her fingers. “Not too good. Apparently, it's one thing to defend a drug dealer, prove his innocence and take his money. But it's quite another thing when he falls in love with your precious daughter.”
“Jeannie used to go to my trial to watch her father perform. And that, to answer your question, finally, is how we met. In court. Exchanging steamy looks, then steamy notes, across a stuffy courtroom.” Pulling her close against his shoulder, he added, “God, you looked good.”
“Right,” she said. “Anything without a Y chromosome would've looked good to you after three months in custody.”
“After I was acquitted, we started seeing each other secretly. Carson didn't know when he flew to Cuba. He didn't have a clue until we walked out of the courthouse in Miami and Jean threw her arms around me. And except for a few scream-and-threat fests, he hasn't really spoken to us since that day.” He paused. “He did send me a bill, though.”
“The really funny thing,” Jean said, “is that Jack was so impressed with my dad that he decided to go to law school.”
Cameron laughed again. At least one of us found this funny. My response took me a long time to sort out. As a student of the law, you learn to separate emotion from facts, but in this case I suffered a purely emotional reaction I cannot justify in rational terms. Unfairly, perhaps, I felt disillusioned with the great Carson Baxter. And I felt personally diminished, robbed of the pride I'd felt in discussing my noble profession with an acolyte only a few hours before, and cheated out of the righteous condescension I had felt only minutes before.
“What a great story,” Cameron said.
“So what about you guys?” said Jean, sitting on the moonlit sand with her arm around her husband. “What's your wildly romantic story? Tell us about how you two met.”
Cameron turned to me eagerly, smiling with anticipation. “Tell them, Don.”
I stared out into the bay at a light on the yacht we'd all admired earlier. Then I turned back to my wife, who was grinning beside me in the cold sand. “You tell them,” I said.
1993
Philomena
The name of the party is the Party You Have Been to Six Hundred Times Already. Everybody is here. “All your friends,” my girlfriend Philomena states in what can only be described as a tart, positively citric, manner. It seems to me that they are her friends, that is the reason we are part of this fabulous gala, which takes place in the waiting room of Grand Central, evicting dozens of homeless people for the night. We're supposedly on hand for the benefit of a disease, but we were comped, and so was everyone else we know. “I'm sick of all this pointless glamour,” my glamorous girlfriend says. “I want the simple life.” This has become a theme. Weariness with metropolitan life in all its colonoscopic intricacy. I wonder if her ennui is somehow related