Free Bright, Precious Days by Jay McInerney Page B

threadbare blazers with Wellingtons and drive shit brown Oldsmobiles. Some have lots of money, others only the memory of it. Even those who’ve escaped the gravity of Boston tend in the summers to cluster in rambling shingled houses on the rocky Protestant coast of Maine, occasionally traversing the pebbly beaches to dunk themselves in the frigid waters of the Atlantic, more often sailing the surface in wooden boats. But Jeff has come to downtown Manhattan to reinvent himself from scratch, or so he likes to believe, though he’s likewise determined to remain true, in some sense, to his roots, to be at once authentic and unique. His grandfather’s watch might seem to complicate the self-invention narrative; on the other hand, it distinguishes the wearer from the aspiring bohemian herd. Just as William Burroughs, the famous junkie and wife killer, dresses in three-piece suits.
    “So,” she says, inhaling a lungful of smoke. “What does one do downtown?”
    “Drugs,” he says.
    “Very funny.”
    “You asked.”
    His demeanor is a blend of boyish and smug, and she sees that he is actually serious. Serious, but also amused at his own cleverness, his knowingness. He wants to shock her, even as he wants to invite her into the circle of forbidden knowledge. She’s smoked pot with him before, so she knows it isn’t that.
    “What, cocaine?”
    He beams. “Ever tried it?”
    She shakes her head.
    “Want to?”
    Of course she doesn’t want to seem like a—what, a wimp, a prude, uncool? But still…
cocaine
? She knew some kids at Brown did it, city kids who went back to Manhattan on weekends and hung at Studio 54 and Xenon, then bragged about it back in Providence. But Corrine isn’t that kind of girl, is she?
    “No pressure,” he says.
    “What are you saying?” she says. “That we would, like, do it…now?” She seems unable even to name the drug, and knows that she is stalling for time, trying to decide what she feels about this totally unexpected proposition.
    “Well, yeah.”
    She trusts Jeff and doesn’t think he’d lure her into anything really dangerous. On the other hand, that’s the whole thing about Jeff; he
is
more reckless than the rest of their crowd at Brown, the guy who wrapped an Austin-Healey around a telephone pole outside of Providence and walked away unscathed. That’s one of the reasons they’re all attracted to him.
    “You have some?”
    “I wouldn’t offer you any if I didn’t have it.”
    “Will I like it?”
    “I personally guarantee it.”
    She shrugs. “Okay.” This is definitely one way to cut through the awkwardness of the moment. “I don’t even know how you do it,” she says.
    She follows him over to the makeshift desk; he clears books and papers away and picks up a framed picture, an almost-familiar sepia-toned image of a beautiful boy with flyaway hair and sleepy eyes, in disheveled Edwardian garb. Suddenly, it comes to her. “Rimbaud?”
    He nods and lays the frame flat, unfolding a rectangle of shiny paper on the glass, as if creating some sort of origami.
    After tipping the contents of the unfurled packet onto the glass, he chops it up with a one-edged razor blade and lays out eight identical lines of white powder.
    She can’t help giggling when he hands her a short plastic straw. “Are we really going to do this? I’m not sure I know how. Why don’t I watch you do it first?”
    He takes the straw and leans over the glass, neatly inhaling one of the white lines and then, moving the straw to his left nostril, another.
    “Wow, you’re good at that.”
    “It’s like anything else. Like how you get to Carnegie Hall.”
    “What?”
    “Practice.”
    “Oh, right, sorry.” Why is she suddenly feeling so slow-witted?
    “Your turn.”
    She takes the straw and bends down over the desk. As she leans forward, Jeff gathers the hair around her neck and holds it, which seems very sexy to her and also makes the thing she is about to do seem less dangerous.
    She can