Authors: Jay McInerney
I don’t look, I stand right in the middle of the observation deck and throw up.
Thank God I never slept with Tom Walker. That makes at least one guy in the room.
We’re over at Tom’s place for his Kentucky Derby party and the past is coming back to haunt me. The gang’s all here. I mean, I can handle it, no problem, but the guys are all acting weird. I never said I was a virgin, did I? Somebody tell me if I’m wrong.
I come with Dean, and Chuck Harnist is here, and he’s jealous of Dean anyway, Chuck starts making these cracks like saying he’s redecorated his apartment and then going, Alison, you remember how ugly it used to be, don’t you? The ceiling, for instance? And Dean says something about redecorating Chuck’s face—for a smart guy Dean can act just like a dumb guy sometimes. But Dean’s got troubles, the bond market’s going to hell or something and he’s really worried.
So Chucky’s with some girl he must have met in Las Vegas, although actually she’s from Texas, even her lips look like they’ve got silicone implants. Her name’s Tina, but she tells me her friends call her Teeny, and she kind of looks at her
chest when she says this and she laughs and jiggles her tits and that pretty much tells you more than you’d ever want to know about her.
And I go, yeah? Chuck’s friends call him Teeny, too, but they’re not kidding.
And she goes, wow, really? What a coincidence! And Chuck turns a nice salmon color and gives me this lethal look.
And then who shows up but Skip Pendleton, just the guy I wanted to see, and amazingly he’s not with anybody. I mean, for Skip this is news, this is practically gossip, you know how some men wouldn’t think of going out of the house without a tie, well Skip wouldn’t think of showing up at a party without at least one vacuous bimbo on his arm. And he wears the girl for the same reason as the tie, for decoration. Maybe there’s somebody here he wants to nail. I don’t know, the only unattached women are Didi, Jeannie and Whitney and they’re all my friends and wouldn’t let him touch them with a ten-foot pole. Well, maybe with a
ten-foot
pole . . . I remember I read somewhere that outlaw guy John Dillinger had one that was about a foot and a half long and it’s preserved in the Smithsonian or someplace. Now that’s what I call the Washington Monument.
Skip is giving me these looks, which I do not appreciate at all, these fuck-me eyes. And he’s acting really strange with Dean, talking down to him like he’s a kid or something, lecturing him about horses and race track society, which is really bugging me. Jesus. My old boyfriend, Alex, he told me this
thing that guys say about girls—find ’em, fuck ’em, fight ’em, forget ’em. So if that’s what guys say, how come these guys— these so-called men—can’t fuck me and forget me? I mean why do they all have to act like crazy Latins afterwards, hot tempers and long memories.
Anyway, Jeannie and I are sort of friends again, but I’m still pissed off at her and unless I can come up with some money soon I’m screwed. The big news on Jeannie, though, is that she’s madly in love with Alex. I knew this would happen. Apparently they screwed twenty ways till Sunday—Alex and Jeannie—and Jeannie figured out what she’d been missing. So now she’s in lust with Alex, she thinks it’s this great romance but I hate to tell her, Alex has this problem with his attention span and I don’t think Jeannie’s going to be able to keep him interested past yesterday. Meanwhile we’ve still got this money problem. Francesca’s going to loan me a thousand, she’s the best, but I still need at least a thousand more. She’s at some celebrity derby party but she’s supposed to meet up with us later.
Didi’s boring the shit out of everybody talking about rehab. Cousin Phil actually managed to drag her in the other night. The way he did it was by keeping her up for two days, feeding her so much coke that she felt even worse than she normally does. Then he let her sleep for a few hours, then woke her up and wouldn’t let her go back to sleep till she promised to go in the next day and talk to the shrink. Phil says the preop cost him about a thousand bucks in blow and three days’ work, but Didi’s parents are going to pay him back. So now
she’s seeing this shrink in the afternoon and going to group therapy at night. It’s really great, I mean, here she is, more or less awake in the middle of the afternoon, and she’s talking about her drug problem and how she’s got to stop. She talks about it all night long, in between lines. It’s a start, I guess.
From my point of view the only thing good that’s come out of Didi’s rehab is that she doesn’t look quite so good as she used to, she doesn’t necessarily look like a sex goddess the last few days, even though she’s still doing drugs it’s like something crazy has gone out of her eyes, the tension’s gone from her body and it’s sort of defused her looks or something. I don’t know, maybe it’s my imagination, but the guys aren’t really flipping out over her today like they used to.
So Becca shows up at the last minute, right before post time. She’s already called about eighteen times just to let us know that she’s coming, finally she dances through the door in this micro lycra red dress—just a sheath really, perfect for that 3:00
A.M
. nightclub appearance, but like even I wouldn’t be caught dead walking around in this thing in the middle of the day. But the boys love it and it gets so quiet for a minute you can hear the sound of tongues dropping and saliva splashing on the floor.
Becca’s dragging some preppy guy in her wake, all neat and tidy in his blue blazer and bright green pants, but he seems a little dazed. This must be Everett, pigeon of the month, the poor son of a bitch. He looks like a harmless version of Skip. I hope to God for his sake he’s hanging on to his gold card
for dear life, has his stock certificates locked in the safety deposit box.
Hey y’all, Becca goes, doing her southern girl thing for the occasion. Who’s winning? she says. What quarter is it? I just love these sporting events. They’re so sweaty.
All the guys laugh. Am I like missing something, or is this funny?
The prep goes, hi, I’m Everett, but nobody gives a shit. Everybody’s colliding and tripping, trying to give Rebecca a seat and get her a drink. Becca’s obviously wired and it’s only like three in the afternoon or something. Really sick. I wonder how much she’s got.
We’re all sitting around Tombo’s loft drinking mint juleps in front of this big projection TV. Tom owns a gallery or something, I don’t know, he’s from Kentucky. Big ugly canvases on the wall, wacked-out Italian furniture, great bathrooms though, both with phones, I could easily live in the big one. Maybe he needs a roommate. Somebody young, blonde and beautiful to answer his phone. Two out of three, anyway—I used to be pretty good-looking, way back in the olden days before Becca walked in the room.
I don’t know, lately I’ve had this fantasy about moving in with Dean, you know, but I just couldn’t see giving up my independence like that, it would practically be like marriage and anyway he’s never asked.
Becca takes me aside and says, I can get you three thousand for the pearls.
And I’m like, not for sale.
Why not? she goes. You never wear them.
And I go, Gran was the only one in our whole family I ever liked. Gran and Pops.
Don’t be a bitch, Alison, she goes, I’m trying to help you here.
Who’s buying them? I say.
And she goes, just a friend.
I ask her if she has any blow and she says she just ran out but she’ll try to get some more.
Right.
Becca’s lie reminds me of this story I heard from a friend of mine who’s a musician. He’s working on an album with, let’s just say this Famous Blind Musician, right? My friend’s a session man, plays great guitar. So he’s been up half the night laying down tracks with the FBM and meanwhile every half hour or so the FBM walks over into the corner and snorts from a vial—doesn’t even bother to leave the room. Like, I don’t know, because he can’t see nobody else can? And after a couple times of this my friend goes up and says, hey man, can I have a blast? Because, you know, he’s tired and all and they’re working together all night. So the FBM says, blast of what? And my friend is like, a blast of that blow. And the FBM goes, I don’t do drugs. Even though he’s holding it right there in his hand. But I don’t know, he’s blind, so it’s not like my friend can point to it and say, there! Well, this happens two or three more times, and the FBM keeps saying
he doesn’t have any. So the next time this happens, my friend finally goes up and taps the spoon as the FBM’s putting it in his nose and says, if you don’t have any drugs what’s this? And the FBM goes—hey, you’re right, what can I say? So he offers my friend some and eventually my friend says, why did you say you didn’t have any? And the FBM goes, what can I say? This shit makes you lie.
Meanwhile, Skip’s asking Tom if he has Trivial Pursuit and Tom says he doesn’t and Skip goes, that’s too bad, and then Whitney jumps in and says, yeah, I love that game, and just because I know that Skip takes like this great pride in his Trivial Pursuit skills I go, Whitney is a really good player, and Skip says he’s the best—the macho asshole—and Whitney, she went to Yale or someplace like that, she says, someday we’ll see and Skip goes, I’d kill you. What a total jerk. I mean, as if we care, for one thing.
Shh, quiet everybody, Tom goes. We’re coming up on post time. This old boy takes his derby seriously. Or at least he pretends to. I don’t know, I think it’s just a way of having a little bit of identity, you know? Like wearing suspenders all the time or collecting art or something. I mean, it seems like everybody’s always doing something to impress everybody else. Anyway, he’s got all these complicated bets going with the other guys and they’re all acting very serious and involved, even Dean. The weird thing is, I don’t think he even knew the Kentucky Derby was happening until yesterday when I invited him to this party.
I’m not betting, but I know the horse I want. I want Demons Begone to win.
So we’ve got these seventeen three-year-olds at Churchill Downs and there’s some really good-looking horseflesh out there, all carrying a hundred and twenty-six pounds, I’d just barely make the weight myself now, but back in my riding days I was like, a hundred and two pounds, skinny as a whippet. And our horses were older and tougher, these three-year-olds have delicate legs, I hope to God they all make it okay, I can’t stand to see a horse get hurt.
The other thing I hate is the drugs. Our horses were so pumped up and tranked down and wacked out they make me and my friends look straight. It was really depressing, but we were just kids, we didn’t really understand. But we knew something was funny. We saw what they were doing and just learned to live with it. Drugs for pain and drugs for speed and drugs for when they’d passed their prime and they were heavily insured.
It’s taking them forever to get this thing going, I mean the race only lasts about three minutes and they’ve got to wring all the advertising bucks they can out of this thing, plus give everybody time to get to the betting window.
Demons Begone looks ready, he’s real feisty, dancing high on his feet. Skip’s like insisting he knows for a fact that they’ve been holding back this horse Alysheba who’s going to blow them all away. Trust Skip to have the inside dope. I hope his horse finishes last. Dean’s so cute, he’s picked this horse named
Capote, just because it’s named after a writer and he likes writers and wants to be one someday. What a dope. There’s also a horse named Leo Castelli, but Tom the hotshot gallery owner isn’t betting on him. Tom’s going on statistics. Dean’s a romantic, which is just another word for a flake, but I love it. I guess you could say we’ve made up, and then some. I just want to be with him all the time and I talk about him and think about him constantly.
I’m totally in lust again.
Finally they’re off already after about nine hundred commercials. Demons Begone takes an early lead and I’m like, all right. Capote’s on the inside and then Leo Castelli. Suddenly I’ve got to pee, must be all those beer commercials. I slide out of the huddle and Tom’s like, Alison! as if it’s sacrilege or something to go to the bathroom and I’m like, I’ll be right back. I slip inside this big marble bathroom, which is like the tomb of some ancient emperor or something and suddenly I feel real dizzy and nauseous, I put my head down on my bare knees and I listen to the shouting and talk from out there, it’s strange how you can be involved in something and then just step back out of it and it seems really distant and silly. I suddenly wonder how long it would take them to notice I was gone if I went out the fire escape or something. What if I just kept going, left New York entirely? I’m getting this really weird feeling like, I’m so involved in all this hysterical noise, which is supposedly my life but it doesn’t add up to
anything, if you step back far enough it’s just a dumb buzz like a swarm of mosquitoes. But everybody’s life is like that, right? It’s like, down there in Lexington, Kentucky, the derby’s the most important thing in the world to all these people, but what does it mean, really? It’s just a stupid horse race, right? From the planet Jupiter, none of it counts for shit.
I don’t know, I think I’m getting my period or something. Half the time I’m walking around feeling totally nauseous, and the other half I’m wasted, which probably has something to do with it.
When I go back everybody’s jumping up and down and the horses are coming to the wire. What’s with Demons Begone? I go to Dean and Dean goes, pulled from the race, talking like a telegram so he won’t miss the finish.
Pulled from the race? I go.
So Alysheba wins, followed by Bet Twice. I don’t know which bugs me more, the fact that my horse dropped out or the fact that Skip’s horse won. It just figures. Skip always has the inside dope. I’m like majorly depressed. In between shots of the winner’s circle they’re showing Demons Begone being led to an ambulance trailer, hobbling, fucked-up, dead tired.
Bleeding from the nose, his trainer says. Sounds familiar, right? Jesus. Pour me another julep.
I told you, Skip goes, coming up and putting his arm around me in this creepy possessive way. You should stick with me.