The Bonfire of the Vanities Read Free

solar plexus.
    Guliaggi reaches the door and opens it. The Mayor follows. He feels the other detectives pushing him through from behind. He sprawls against Guliaggi’s back. The guy’s a piece of stone!
    They’re going down a stairway. They’re clattering on some metal strips. He’s in one piece. The mob isn’t even on his heels. He’s safe—his heart sinks. They’re not even trying to follow him. They never really tried to touch him. And in that moment…he knows . He knows even before his mind can put it all together.
    “I did the wrong thing. I gave in to that little smile. I panicked. I’ve lost it all.”

1. The Master of the Universe
    At that very moment, in the very sort of Park Avenue co-op apartment that so obsessed the Mayor…twelve-foot ceilings…two wings, one for the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants who own the place and one for the help…Sherman McCoy was kneeling in his front hall trying to put a leash on a dachshund. The floor was a deep green marble, and it went on and on. It led to a five-foot-wide walnut staircase that swept up in a sumptuous curve to the floor above. It was the sort of apartment the mere thought of which ignites flames of greed and covetousness under people all over New York and, for that matter, all over the world. But Sherman burned only with the urge to get out of this fabulous spread of his for thirty minutes.
    So here he was, down on both knees, struggling with a dog. The dachshund, he figured, was his exit visa.
    Looking at Sherman McCoy, hunched over like that and dressed the way he was, in his checked shirt, khaki pants, and leather boating moccasins, you would have never guessed what an imposing figure he usually cut. Still young…thirty-eight years old…tall…almost six-one…terrific posture…terrific to the point of imperious…as imperious as his daddy, the Lion of Dunning Sponget…a full head of sandy-brown hair…a long nose…a prominent chin…He was proud of his chin. The McCoy chin; the Lion had it, too. It was a manly chin, a big round chin such as Yale men used to have in those drawings by Gibson and Leyendecker, an aristocratic chin, if you want to know what Sherman thought. He was a Yale man himself.
    But at this moment his entire appearance was supposed to say: “I’m only going out to walk the dog.”
    The dachshund seemed to know what was ahead. He kept ducking away from the leash. The beast’s stunted legs were deceiving. If you tried to lay hands on him, he turned into a two-foot tube packed with muscle. In grappling with him, Sherman had to lunge. And when he lunged, his kneecap hit the marble floor, and the pain made him angry.
    “C’mon, Marshall,” he kept muttering. “Hold still, damn it.”
    The beast ducked again, and he hurt his knee again, and now he resented not only the beast but his wife, too. It was his wife’s delusions of a career as an interior decorator that had led to this ostentatious spread of marble in the first place. The tiny black grosgrain cap on the toe of a woman’s shoe—
    —she was standing there.
    “You’re having a time, Sherman. What on earth are you doing?”
    Without looking up: “I’m taking Marshall for a wa-a-a-a-a-alk.”
    Walk came out as a groan, because the dachshund attempted a fishtail maneuver and Sherman had to wrap his arm around the dog’s midsection.
    “Did you know it was raining?”
    Still not looking up: “Yes, I know.” Finally he managed to snap the leash on the animal’s collar.
    “You’re certainly being nice to Marshall all of a sudden.”
    Wait a minute . Was this irony? Did she suspect something? He looked up.
    But the smile on her face was obviously genuine, altogether pleasant…a lovely smile, in fact …Still a very good-looking woman, my wife… with her fine thin features, her big clear blue eyes, her rich brown hair …But she’s forty years old!… No getting around it…Today good-looking… Tomorrow they’ll be talking about what a handsome woman she