Free Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney

have to drink anything, although one wouldn’t kill you. One pop would cut neatly through this headache. You’ll just tell him you’ve got a big piece going to press. He’ll understand. You could use a friendly presence. You might even confide in him. Tell him some of your problems. Alex is a man familiar with trouble.
    “Have you ever considered getting an MBA?” he asks. He has taken you to a steakhouse off Seventh Avenue, a smoky place favored by Times reporters and other heavy drinkers. He is dropping ashes on his steak, which lies cold and untouched. Already he has informed you that it is impossible to get a good steak anymore. Beef isn’t what it used to be; they force-feed the cattle and inject them with hormones. He is on his third vodka martini. You are trying to stretch your second.
    “I’m not saying necessarily go into business. But write about it. That’s the subject now. The guys who understand business are going to write the new literature. Wally Stevens said money is a kind of poetry, but he didn’t follow his own advice.” He tells you there was the golden age of Papa and Fitzgerald and Faulkner, then a silver age in which he played a modest role. He thinks we’re now in a bronze age, and that fiction has nowhere to go. It can run but it can’t hide. The new writing will be about technology, the global economy, the electronic ebb and flow of wealth. “You’re a smart boy,” he says. “Don’t be seduced by all that crap about garrets and art.”
    He flags down two more martinis, even though your second has yet to run dry.
    “I envy you,” he says. “What are you—twenty-one?”
    “Twenty-four.”
    “Twenty-four. Your whole life ahead of you. You’re single, right?”
    First you say no, and then yes. “Yes. Single.”
    “You’ve got it made,” he says, although he has just informed you that the world you are going to inherit will have neither good beef nor good writing. “My liver’s shot,” he adds. “My liver’s gone to hell and I’ve got emphysema.”
    The waiter comes with the drinks and asks about Alex’s steak, if there is anything wrong, if he would prefer something else. Alex says there’s nothing particularly wrong with it and tells him to take it away.
    “You know why there’s so much homosexuality now?” he says after the waiter is gone.
    You shake your head.
    “It’s because of all the goddamned hormones they inject into the beef. An entire generation’s grown up on it.” He nods and looks you straight in the eye. You assume a thoughtful, manly expression. “So, who are you reading these days,” he asks. “Tell me who the young hotshots are, the up-and-comers.”
    You mention a couple of your recent enthusiasms, but presently his attention drifts away and his eyelids flutter. You revive him by asking about Faulkner, with whom he shared an office in Hollywood for a couple of months in the forties. He tells you about a high-speed three-day carouse soaked with bourbon and studded with bons mots.
    Alex hardly notices when you say goodbye to him on the sidewalk. His nose is pointed in the direction of the office, his eyes glazed with alcohol and memories. You are a little glazed yourself and a walk is absolutely necessary by way of clearing the head. It’s early. There is still time. You are standing at the corner of Walk and Don’t Walk—staring at Mary O’Brien McCann, the Missing Person poster girl—when somebody taps you on the shoulder.
    “Hey, man, wanna buy a ferret?”
    The guy is about your age, acne scars, skittish eyes. He is holding a leash attached to an animal that looks not unlike a dachshund in a fur coat.
    “That’s a ferret?”
    “Guaranteed.”
    “What does he do?”
    “Makes a great conversation piece. You’ll meet a lot of chicks, I’m telling you. You got any rats in your apartment, he’ll take care of that. His name’s Fred.”
    Fred is an elegant-looking animal, apparently well behaved, though you have been known to be