Free Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney Page A

deceived by first appearances—witness the Austin Healey you bought with a junkyard under the hood and the genuine Cartier watch. Or the time you picked out a wife. It occurs to you that this would be the perfect mascot for the Department—a real live ferret for the fact finders. You don’t really need a pet, you can’t even take care of yourself, but perhaps Fred would be the ideal companion for Clara. A parting gift; a token of your affection.
    “How much?”
    “A hundred.”
    “Fifty.”
    “All right, eighty-five. My lowest.”
    You tell him you’ll have to shop around. He gives you a business card with the name of an adult magazine shop. “Ask for Jimmy,” he says. “I got boas and monkeys, too. My prices can’t be beat. I’m insane.”
    You walk across town, east on Forty-seventh, past the windows of the discount jewelry stores. A hawker with an armful of leaflets drones in front of a shop door: “Gold and silver, buy and sell, gold and silver, buy and sell.” No questions asked on the buying end, you presume. Chain-snatchers welcome. You stop to admire an emerald tiara, the perfect gift for your next queen for a day. Fantasy shopping. Of course, when you have money you will not stop here. You’re not going to wow your dream girl with a jewelry box that reads Gem-O-Rama. You’ll head straight for Tiffany or Cartier. Sit in a chair in the president’s office and have them fetch the merchandise for your inspection.
    Hasidim hurry up and down the street, holding their hats, stopping to confer with one another, taking care not to eyeball the women in miniskirts. You examine the wares in the window of the Gotham Book Mart, and take note of the sign: WISE MEN FISH HERE .
    At Fifth Avenue you cross and walk up to Saks. You stop in front of a window. Inside the window is a mannequin which is a replica of Amanda—your wife, the model. To form the cast for the mannequin, Amanda lay face down in a vat of latex batter for ninety minutes, breathing through a straw. You haven’t seen her in the flesh since she left for the last trip to Paris, a few days after she did the cast. You stand in front of the window and try to remember if this was how she really looked.

LES JEUX SONT FAITS
    You met her in Kansas City, where you had gone to work as a reporter after college. You had lived on both coasts and abroad; the heartland was until then a large blank. You felt that some kind of truth and American virtue lurked thereabouts, and as a writer you wanted to tap into it.
    Amanda grew up smack in the heart of the heartland. You met her in a bar and couldn’t believe your luck. You never would have worked up the hair to hit on her, but she came right up and started talking to you. As you talked you thought: She looks like a goddamned model and she doesn’t even know it . You thought of this ingenuousness as being typical of the heartland. You pictured her backlit by a sunset, knee-deep in amber waves of grain. Her lanky, awkward grace put you in mind of a newborn foal. Her hair was the color of wheat, or so you imagined; after two months in Kansas you had yet to see any wheat. You spent most of your time at zoning-board meetings duly reporting on variances for shopping malls and perc tests for new housing developments. At night, because your apartment was too quiet, you went to bars with a book.
    She seemed to think you came from Manhattan. Everyone in Kansas thought you came from New York City, whether you said Massachusetts, New England, or just East Coast. She asked about Fifth Avenue, The Carlyle, Studio 54. Obviously, from her magazine reading she knew more about these places than you did. She had visions of the Northeast as a country club rolling out from the glass and steel towers of Manhattan. She asked about the Ivy League, as if it were some kind of formal organization, and later that night she introduced you to her roommate as a member of it.
    Within a week she moved in with you. She was working for a florist,