Bright Lights, Big City

On Monday morning, the narrator waits on the subway platform for the local train. When it arrives, he grabs a seat and begins reading the New York Post, which is full of tawdry articles about Elizabeth Taylor’s marriages and a serial story about Coma Baby. According to the paper, a pregnant woman who was recently in a car accident has been in a coma for a week, making it unclear if she will ever deliver her baby.

While he reads the paper, a homeless man taps on the narrator’s shoulder. When the narrator looks up, he notices that the man is rather well-dressed, as though he’s only recently ended up on the street. His eyes, though, have a faraway look. The man states that his birthday is on January 13 and that he’ll soon be 29 years old. When the narrator ignores him, the man walks down the subway car and sits on the lap of an old woman who struggles to get him off of her. The narrator marvels at how six men are standing nearby and do nothing. As he rises, the man stands up, smooths his coat, and walks to the end of the car. He wonders if the old woman is all right but thinks better of checking on her and sits back down.

It’s 10:50 a.m. when he arrives in Times Square. He passes an old man advertising a peep show. On a lamp post, he sees a missing person report: a brown-haired, blue-eyed NYU student who disappeared in Washington Square Park wearing a blue jumper and a white blouse. He suddenly feels sad. Before going to the office, he stops for a coffee and a doughnut. It’s 10:58 a.m. when he enters the lobby of the building. The narrator knows that he can no longer use the excuse of the subway breaking down. At the same time, he’s not sure that he should worry about being fired, given that no one has ever been fired from the Department of Factual Verification.

Lucio, the Sicilian-born elevator operator, takes him to the 29th floor where he works. When the narrator walks in, he greets Sally, the receptionist, who has a working-class accent, unlike the narrator’s Ivy League-educated coworkers. The writers work on the 30th floor and slip manuscripts under their doors at night to avoid the fact-checkers. The sales and advertising divisions are several floors below. On the 25th floor are the higher-ups who wear suits. No one in fact-checking is supposed to speak to them. The narrator greets his fellow fact-checkers when he enters his department and takes his seat at his desk. He and the others who occupy this room—Rittenhouse, Yasu Wade, and Megan—are responsible for any error that might slip into the magazine. Anyone who cannot catch a mistake for publication would likely be moved to the messenger room or assigned a role as typist.

The narrator asks Rittenhouse, who has been in the department for 14 years, if “the Clinger” has arrived. She has, he tells the narrator, and seemed quite bothered when he last saw her. Yasu Wade, who occupies a neighboring desk, is Clara’s favorite. His mother is Japanese and his father is an Air Force Captain from Houston. While the narrator continues to fret about Clara, Wade looks toward the door. Clara stands in the door frame, giving the narrator “a look that could break glass” (19) before stepping away. The narrator tries to distract himself with an article on the French elections. He knows that properly checking this would require him to make several calls to France, despite his lousy French and his aversion to calling Paris for personal reasons. He’s hoping that the writer got some of the facts straight. He wonders, too, why Clara hates him so much when she was the one who hired him.

Megan goes to the narrator’s desk and asks how he’s doing. He claims that he’s fine. In the midst of this conversation, Clara announces that the article on the French elections will move up one issue, meaning that she’ll need it on her desk by the end of the day. She demands that the narrator tell her if he needs help, but he claims that he can handle it. He wonders, though, if he should object to the change in scheduling, given the sloppy state of the proofs. Around noon, the narrator observes the Druid, walking softly on his way to lunch. At one o’clock in the afternoon, the narrator goes out for a pastrami-on-rye and an egg cream at the local deli. While waiting at a stoplight, a man tries to sell him a fake Cartier watch that he markets as genuine. The watch is $40; the narrator buys it for $30.

When he goes back to the office, the narrator has two messages waiting for him—one from a Frenchman at a department the narrator doesn’t recognize and another from his brother Michael. He doesn’t want to talk to either caller. He figures that he’ll fix what’s wrong with the article by consulting reference books and calling the French consulate. At 3:15 in the afternoon, his new watch dies and the winding knob falls into his hand. The article’s editor calls to ask how things are going with the piece and apologizes for the change in schedule; the Druid moved it up for some inexplicable reason. As for the writer, he hasn’t left Paris in 12 years and spends most of his time loafing in restaurants. He also never bothers to check his sources.

The narrator places two calls to the writer to ask about sources. During the first call, the narrator runs down a list of errors, and the writer concedes to each one. On the second call, the writer “is annoyed, as if the errors were of [the narrator’s] devising” (29). Later in the afternoon, a memo circulates from the Druid’s assistant. It mentions that a journalist named Richard Fox is writing an article about the magazine and that no employee should speak to him without being permitted to do so, due to the confidentiality of all magazine business. By seven o’clock in the evening, everyone but the narrator has left the office. Before departing, his colleagues offer him help, which he refuses. As Clara is leaving, she reminds the narrator to have the article on her desk that evening. Thirty minutes later, Tad calls and reminds him that they have plans to meet Natalie and Inge. Natalie has a chunk of cocaine waiting for them. The narrator tells Tad that he’ll call back in half an hour, though he’d really like to go to sleep.

Several minutes after 10 o’clock in the evening, the narrator puts the proofs on Clara’s desk, knowing that he hasn’t verified much of the article. He quietly hopes that she won’t read it, or that she’ll get drunk at her favorite bar, fall off of a stool, and fracture her skull. Another possibility is that she could “get picked up by a Sex Killer” (32), a common story in the Post. While leaving the building, the narrator feels a sense of nostalgia, remembering how he felt the first time he entered for his interview. He thought of all of the great people who had passed through those doors before him. When he was hired, the Druid sent a note of congratulations. 

The narrator lets himself into his building on West Twelfth Street and goes to the mailbox. He hopes for some news from Amanda, “begging forgiveness or asking [him] to send the rest of her stuff to her new address” (36). His current apartment is the second one in which he lived with Amanda—a place big enough to hold all of their wedding gifts. What she really wanted, though, was to live on the Upper East Side, next door to all of the other models. The narrator explained that he didn’t have the money for that. She suggested that he ask his father for a loan, despite the unlikelihood that his father would have that kind of money to lend. Even if he did, he was also unlikely to lend it. It was then that the narrator realized that Amanda believed that his family was rich. By the standards of her upbringing, he supposed they were.

When Amanda learned that the narrator had a family crest, she wanted to put it on their sterling silverware. A year after her prenuptial purchasing of flatware, china, and crystal, she left. Now, the narrator can’t afford the rent but puts off looking for a new place.

He looks for his slippers and peruses the books on his shelves. There are volumes by William Faulkner, Malcolm Lowry, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Martin Heidegger. He’s never opened some of these books, but he thinks that he could write a book; he’s always wanted to be a writer. The job at the magazine was his first step in the direction of literary celebrity. When he first started, he sent “urbane sketches infinitely superior to those appearing in the magazine every week” (39) up to Fiction, and they were politely declined. He imagined himself as a writer just biding time in the Department of Factual Verification. For a few weeks during his marriage, he awoke at six o’clock in the morning to write stories at the kitchen table. Then, he began going out at night and broke the habit. He convinced himself that partying with writers was a means of gathering material.

He decides to get his typewriter out of the closet and sets it up on the dining room table. He rolls a sheet into the typewriter and writes a few lines about a man expecting a woman to arrive from Paris. She calls to say that she’s leaving him and starting a new life. He tears out the sheet and inserts a new one. On this one, he imagines a woman named Karen from Oklahoma who likes to look at her mother’s fashion magazines and wishes that she, too, looked like the women in the photos. If she did, then, maybe, her father would return. The narrator deems the paragraph dreadful, tears it up, inserts another piece of paper, and begins to write a letter to Amanda.

Instead of typing “Dear Amanda,” he ends up with “Dead Amanda.” He gives up and figures that he’ll go over to Lion’s Head, thinking he might see someone he knows there. Just when he’s changing his shirt, the intercom buzzes: it’s Tad. When he comes up, he asks the narrator if he’s ready to go, though it’s not yet clear where they’re going. Tad asks if he has any drugs. When the narrator shakes his head, Tad asks if there’s a mirror he can lick. The narrator points to a mirror that he inherited from his grandmother—one that Amanda coveted for its mahogany-and-gilt frame. Tad goes over and licks the glass, which is covered in nothing but dust. He then observes the sheet of paper on which the narrator wrote “Dead Amanda.” Tad decides to call people who might have drugs, but none of them are home. By now, it’s 11:40 p.m. Before leaving, the narrator asks Tad if he’s ever experienced the “nearly overwhelming urge for a quiet night at home” (44). Tad says “no,” and they head out.

When they arrive at Odeon, the narrator spies a model from Amanda’s agency sitting at the bar. Tad walks over and kisses her. He introduces the model as Elaine. She’s with another woman whom he introduces as Theresa. Elaine asks if he’s Amanda’s boyfriend. The narrator corrects her and says that he was her husband. Elaine asks what Amanda is doing. The narrator says he doesn’t know but figures that she’s in Paris. Elaine then asks if the narrator is a writer. He again corrects her and says that he’s an editor. When he mentions the name of the magazine, Theresa gushes and asks about the writers and artists on staff. The narrator offers up a bit of gossip and hints that his work is taxing and important. Nevertheless, Elaine looks bored. Her eyes wander out beyond him. She waves at a woman who looks like she might be famous. Elaine points out that the woman got silicone implants in her cheeks.

It’s now just past midnight. The narrator thinks that he could use a good night’s sleep. Then again, he could also use a snort of cocaine. The foursome heads to a restroom downstairs. Once in a stall, Tad carves out thick lines on a toilet seat. Elaine and Theresa have theirs. Then, Tad hands the narrator the rolled up bill. They then make their way to Heartbreak. Inside of this club, there’s still room to move, which means, for Tad, that it’s too early to be there. Elaine and Theresa disappear for 15 minutes. Tad goes off to talk to some advertising people who have a table. The narrator goes off to buy a drink and keeps his eye out for women who look lonely.

At the bar, someone taps him on the shoulder. It’s Rich Vanier—a man from the narrator’s dining club at college. Rich is now in banking and has just returned from South America, where he saved a banana republic from economic collapse. The narrator tells a story about how he, too, had recently been in South America. He spins a yarn about having married “a beautiful activist” who was “the illegitimate daughter of Che Guevara” (49). During a visit to her mother, the narrator continues, she was captured and tortured by corrupt generals and, eventually, died in prison. When Rich asks if he’s kidding, the narrator feigns seriousness. Rich quickly moves away from him. The narrator walks back to Tad’s table but sees Theresa and Elaine heading off with Tad. They all end up back in the restroom, snorting more cocaine. Later, the narrator runs into a woman whom he once met but whose name he has forgotten. She tells him that she heard about his wife having leukemia and expresses her sympathies.

Soon thereafter, the narrator is dancing with Elaine, while Tad dances with Theresa. The narrator doesn’t find himself attracted to Elaine. Her look is too hard, and he thinks that she’s not a very nice person either. Between songs, Elaine says that she enjoyed Amanda and hopes to see her again. Meanwhile, Tad and Theresa have vanished. When Elaine excuses herself, the narrator suspects a conspiracy against him. He goes to the men’s room, then the ladies’. In the latter, he hears giggles emanating from one of the stalls. He looks down and sees Elaine’s heels and Theresa’s sandals. When he opens the door, he sees the two women “engaged in an unnatural act” (52). Elaine invites him to join, but the narrator leaves in embarrassment.