although the din from the tables made it hard to hear. At their table, Carl Fontaine was giving his own little speech about Luke: “Let’s hope he sticks with it. These private equity guys have a pretty short attention span, they’re used to the two-year turnaround—buy, slash, fix, sell. I wonder if we’ll even be here in three years.” Corrine was indignant that no one was listening or paying attention. Did these people think paying $25,000 for a table absolved them of any semblance of courtesy? The introduction was punctuated by scattered applause as Luke took the stage; she was relieved to notice that the chatter subsided. Standing silently on the podium, he waited until the room was almost quiet. “Ladies and gentlemen, friends, and former colleagues, and philanthropists. I was lucky enough to discover South Africa almost by accident. It’s a country of extraordinary diversity and beauty. I went there to manage a winery but ended up discovering a people. . . .” She tried to listen but instead found herself thinking about the first night they’d been together, at the little studio he kept in a dilapidated town house on 71st, his body stippled with stripes of streetlight filtering through the venetian blinds, the musky scent of him tinged with the residue of the acrid smoke from Ground Zero. . . . Fully clothed on the podium, Luke was saying, “For thirty- five thousand, less than the base price of a Lexus, you can build a double-room schoolhouse with a capacity for up to a hundred children. For the same price you can build accommodations for the teachers. Kitchens are very important, so the school can get government food grants and apply to the World Food Program. Ecofriendly, hygienic bathrooms cost about seven thousand. And water-catchment systems, gutters that trap and store rainwater in so-called JoJo tanks, these are a few thousand dollars. Less than SHE TRIED TO LISTEN BUT INSTEAD FOUND HERSELF THINKING ABOUT THE FIRST NIGHT THEY’D BEEN TOGETHER, AT THE LITTLE STUDIO HE KEPT IN A DILAPIDATED TOWN HOUSE ON 71ST, HIS BODY STIPPLED WITH STRIPES OF STREETLIGHT FILTERING THROUGH THE VENETIAN BLINDS, THE MUSKY SCENT OF HIM TINGED WITH THE RESIDUE OF THE ACRID SMOKE FROM GROUND ZERO. . . .
some of us spend on a suit—I’m looking at you, Ron Tashman. Is that an Anderson & Sheppard tuxedo?” This provoked a few ripples of laughter. “Finally we have three clinics ready to build, each providing health care for an entire village or a township, for between a hundred and two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. You can find the details in your program. Put your name on one of those. On the screen to my right you are going to see some phone numbers next to particular projects. Text us your pledge and your name will appear on the screen on my left, along with your project. Unless, of course, you want to remain anonymous, in which case just put Ron’s name down, since he’s always happy to take credit. Let’s start out with the water-catchment systems, at amere three grand. Come on, Chuck Coffey, that’s less than your weekly cigar budget. . . .” Corrine opened her grandmother’s purse, pulled out her Razr and tapped in the number. She’d never encountered this bidding technology before and she didn’t entirely believe it would work, or so she told herself as she typed in the code and then the message Happy H2O. She glanced over at Russell, who was deep in conversation with Kip Taylor’s wife. Would including his name make it better or worse? Should she just stop now? She typed Corrine and Russell Calloway and pressed SEND. “We have our first pledge,” Luke said from the stage. He seemed to miss a beat, pause just a moment before announcing, “Corrine and Russell Calloway have just bought clean drinking water for a school in the Transvaal. Thank you, Corrine and Russell.” Russell looked more puzzled than angry as he accepted congratulations from his tablemates before directing a quizzical gaze at Corrine. She shrugged, put on her most winsome smile. There would, of course, be an interrogation, reminders about bills and tuition, admonitions about charity beginning at home. It was going to wreck their budget for the next few months, probably. They gave, when they could, five hundred to Brown, their alma mater, five hundred to Oxfam and Meals on Wheels and the Henry Street Settlement, two fifty to PEN and the ASPCA. And they gave every day, in a sense, to Nourish New York, since as an executive director of that organization, Corrine was paid about half of what she would have been paid in a private-sector job; plus, they wrote a check every year for the gala. But they’d never given this much to any single charity. She hardly knew why she’d done it—on an impulse, as a kind of ontological squeal, a cry of “I’m here” directed at her former lover? But on reflection she was glad, and she thought she could justify it, smooth it over at home. She had a strong suspicion that Russell was going to get lucky tonight. For him that was the good news; the bad was that she was afraid she’d be thinking of someone else. --- From the book BRIGHT, PRECIOUS DAYS by Jay McInerney. Copyright © 2016 by Jay McInerney. Published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Jay McInerney is the author of seven previous novels, a collection of short stories and three collections of essays on wine. He lives in New York City and Bridgehampton, New York. jaymcinerney.com *
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