I’m not as far into Jay McInerney’s short story collection How It Ended: New and Collected Stories as I would usually be by this time of the week. However, I think that taking it slow with McInerney is ideal because, at least eight stories into it, many of the stories cover very similar territory. The stories are short, sharp observations of the rich, usually involving copious amounts of substance abuse. From what I know of Bright Lights, Big City, this plutography seems to be his stock in trade. Fittingly enough, Jay McInerney made a cameo appearance in the second series of Gossip Girl. This week’s Soiree is going to be spending a little time with “Third Party”, a story set in one night in Paris.
Paris, the city of lights, the city of romance and love. For Alex, Paris is where he retreats to lament his most recent failed relationship with a woman named Lydia, and to take up smoking, more for the image he wishes to project rather than any inherent desire for tobacco:
Alex started smoking again whenever he lost a woman. When he fell in love again, he would quit. And when love died, he’d light up again. Partly it was a physical reaction to stress; partly metaphorical–the substitution of one addiction for another. And no small part of this reflex was mythological–indulging a romantic image of himself as a lone figure standing on a bridge in a foreign city, cigarette cupped in his hand, his leather jacket open to the elements.
As he sits down for dinner at a hotel, a young attractive couple intrude on his table and join him as if that is what they were there for. Alex thinks they have mistaken him for someone else, but goes along with them anyway. Frédéric and Tasha discuss New York and their hatred of Paris, drinking and getting to know each other through the false pretence. Alex becomes increasingly intrigued by the attractive, provocative Tasha who casually reveals that she and Frédéric are ex-lovers. The threesome decide to hit the Parisian nightclubs together afterwards, Tasha and Alex becoming more and more physically intimate.
Alex hadn’t been clubbing in several years. After he and Lydia moved in together, the clubs lost their appeal. Now he felt the return of the old thrill, the anticipation of the hunt–the sense that the night held secrets bound to be unveiled before it was over.
After Frédéric has an argument with a bartender, he and Tasha decide to leave, leaving Alex alone. He walks out onto the street, only to meet up with the pair again. They drive around and Alex further considers the loss of Lydia and gets sexually entangled with Tasha on the backseat. The previous suggestion of violence – Tasha biting Alex’s tongue until it bleeds, Alex ripping the wound open – builds up to the climax: Frédéric crashes the car and in the resulting wreckage Alex confronts them about who they think he is, only be verbally eviscerated by Frédéric. Alex gets carried away with this vision of himself through others eyes, from the cigarettes to going along with the mysterious Tasha and Frédéric. He is all illusion and pretence and doesn’t really have much of substance. The tension builds and is released in a cataclysm of violence and decimates Alex’s relentless image of self-importance.
In a fury, Alex kicked him in the ribs, “Who the hell do you think I am?”
Frédéric smiled and looked up at him. “You’re just a guy,” he said. “You’re nobody.”
It may not be mindblowingly amazing writing, but it features the common tropes of McInerney’s stories so far: sex, drugs, rich people with no real concept of anything beyond themselves. And, I kind of like it, because most of these characters are so shallow, their stories are so neatly wrapped up within a few pages. I’m looking forward to reading the rest.