FICTION
EVEN DECADES AFTER THEIR ARRIVAL, CORRINE AND RUSSELL CALLOWAY STILL FEEL AS IF THEY’RE LIVING THE DREAM THAT DREW THEM TO NEW YORK CITY IN THE FIRST PLACE: BOOK PARTIES OR ART OPENINGS ONE NIGHT AND HIGH- SOCIETY EVENTS THE NEXT; JOBS THEY CARE ABOUT (AND IN FACT LOVE); TWIN CHILDREN WHOSE BIRTH WAS TRULY MIRACULOUS; A LOFT IN TRIBECA AND SUMMERS IN THE HAMPTONS. BUT ALL OF THIS COMES AT A FIENDISH COST. RUSSELL, AN INDEPENDENT PUBLISHER, HAS SUPERB CULTURAL CREDENTIALS YET MINIMAL CASH FLOW; AS HE NAVIGATES A BUSINESS THAT REQUIRES, BEYOND ASTUTE LITERARY JUDGMENT, CONSTANT FINANCIAL IMPROVISATION, HE ENCOUNTERS AN AUDACIOUS, POTENTIALLY GAME-CHANGING—OR RUINOUS—OPPORTUNITY. MEANWHILE, INSTEAD OF CHASING PERSONAL GAIN IN THIS INCREDIBLY WEALTHY CITY, CORRINE DEVOTES HERSELF TO HELPING FEED ITS HUNGRY POOR, AND SHE AND HER HUSBAND SOON DISCOVER THEY’RE BEING PRICED OUT OF THE NEWLY FASHIONABLE NEIGHBORHOOD THEY’VE CALLED HOME FOR MOST OF THEIR ADULT LIVES, WITH THEIR SON AND DAUGHTER CAUGHT IN THE BALANCE.
BRIGHT, PRECIOUS DAYS BY JAY MCINERNEY
THE BEST MARRIAGES, like the best boats, are the ones that ride out the storms. They take on water; they shudder and list, very nearly capsize, then right themselves and sail onward toward the horizon. The whole premise, after all, was for better or for worse. Their marriage was seaworthy, if not exactly buoyant. Better off, surely, than the republic, bulging at the waist and spiritually enervated, fighting two wars and a midterm election, all of which seemed endless. Or maybe not. At least they’d had sex last night, the first time in God knows how long. She wished they didn’t have to go out tonight, but they had a gala benefit: the third this month. How had she let herself get talked into this one? Her friend Casey had insisted, and it had seemed harmlessly distant a month ago, plus she owed Casey for buying a table for the Nourish New York benefit. That was how the system worked. She couldn’t remember what tonight’s worthy cause was. Something to do with South Africa? Russell was leaving from the office, where he kept his tux, because these benefits were almost always uptown, in the traditionally patrician district, despite the fact that money continued to migrate down the island; happily this one was nearby, at the Puck Building in SoHo. She sat at her vanity, which doubled as her desk, applying eyeliner with a sense of fatalism, knowing full well that at some point in the evening it would end up on her upper lids, which had sagged over the years. Would an eye lift be a total betrayal of her principles? If she could even afford it. It kind of sucked, being nearly fifty, discovering a new laugh line that you’d at first imagined to be a crack in the mirror. She was getting more than a little sick of black-tie benefits. Even though they usually attended as guests, rather than ticket buyers, she didn’t have the wardrobe to do full formal all that often. The Upper East Siders, like Casey, her girlhood friend and prep school roommate, went to two or three a week and never repeated a dress. The younger society girls borrowed from the designers and the jewelers, but their mothers spent the equivalent of a Range Rover on dresses every month. Associating with the rich was inevitably expensive, even when they were ostensibly paying. You paid one way or another. Corrine was going to have to wear one of the two long
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