How It Ended: New and Collected Stories by Jay McInerney

Author:Jay McInerney
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Literary, Short Stories (single author), General, Fiction - General, Jay - Prose & Criticism, Fiction, Short stories, Mcinerney
ISBN: 9780307387950
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2010-09-15T10:54:19.834000+00:00

1989

Summary Judgment

Everyone imagines it's all about blow jobs, or esoteric skills practiced in the more exclusive brothels of Europe and Asia. But other arts can be just as important to an ambitious woman who is determined to be the wife of a wealthy and powerful man. No one seems to consider how difficult it is to hold the interest of these demanding, distractable males, particularly after one has passed the first blush of youth.

Alysha de Sante was smitten with Billy Laube long before they met; she had already researched his family and his fortune in the days before Mary Trotter's dinner party, and after sitting beside him all evening she was fairly certain that she'd ignited a flame within his barrel chest. Knowing of his fondness for blood sport, she told him how much she loved shooting, and while she hated to brag, she was considered a very good shot indeed. Everyone said so. She had dropped the names of mutual acquaintances and other grandees and had also managed to convince him that it was his idea to invite her to his midtown corporate headquarters to see the art collection, which she had already researched quite thoroughly. She just adored Remington, she told him, so vigorous and masculine, naming qualities that, she hinted, she also appreciated in a tycoon. Remington was just so American—something that, as a European, she found terribly romantic. She had spoken knowledgeably as well about his business, while implying that she herself was burdened with the responsibility of tending to a significant family fortune.

Mary Trotter owed Alysha, who had gotten the Trotters invited to Blenheim the previous summer, and had been happy to seat her next to the recently divorced timber heir. After insisting that Mary recite the guest list, Alysha had decided against asking her to remember to use the title “Contessa” on her place card, after discovering that two European couples, including Lord and Lady Beecroft, had been invited. She had learned to be cautious in this regard; although she had two separate claims to the title, neither was quite beyond reproach. Alysha's mother had once been married to an Italian count and, furthermore, her second-to-last husband, Frederick de Sante, had also been a count, although, in fact, the elderly de Sante, it turned out, was still married to his second wife when Alysha called a priest to his sickbed to perform the wedding service. The prior wench had ended up with most of the count's estate, after an ugly legal battle; having lost three houses and two apartments, Alysha was damned if she'd give up the name, as well. She had continued to use it during her next marriage, to Sam Grossman, heir to an Atlanta-based retail empire. Sam himself had been perfectly comfortable with her decision to keep the name, even if certain third parties had chosen to be malicious. Everyone knew her as Alysha de Sante, and it would have been confusing were she to have changed her name. The fact that Sam was Jewish had nothing to do with it.

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