The Bonfire of the Vanities Read Free Page B

I’m—going—out—to—walk—the—dog …Okay ?”
    Halfway through it, he knew it was totally out of proportion to…to…but he couldn’t hold back. That, after all, was the secret of the McCoy temper…on Wall Street…wherever…the imperious excess.
    Judy’s lips tightened. She shook her head.
    “Please do what you want,” she said tonelessly. Then she turned away and walked across the marble hall and ascended the sumptuous stairs.
    Still on his knees, he looked at her, but she didn’t look back. Please do what you want . He had run right over her. Nothing to it. But it was a hollow victory.
    Another spasm of guilt—
    The Master of the Universe stood up and managed to hold on to the leash and struggle into his raincoat. It was a worn but formidable rubberized British riding mac, full of flaps, straps, and buckles. He had bought it at Knoud on Madison Avenue. Once, he had considered its aged look as just the thing, after the fashion of the Boston Cracked Shoe look. Now he wondered. He yanked the dachshund along on the leash and went from the entry gallery out into the elevator vestibule and pushed the button.
     
    Rather than continue to pay around-the-clock shifts of Irishmen from Queens and Puerto Ricans from the Bronx $200,000 a year to run the elevators, the apartment owners had decided two years ago to convert the elevators to automatic. Tonight that suited Sherman fine. In this outfit, with this squirming dog in tow, he didn’t feel like standing in an elevator with an elevator man dressed up like an 1870 Austrian army colonel. The elevator descended—and came to a stop two floors below. Browning . The door opened, and the smooth-jowled bulk of Pollard Browning stepped on. Browning looked Sherman and his country outfit and the dog up and down and said, without a trace of a smile, “Hello, Sherman.”
    “Hello, Sherman” was on the end of a ten-foot pole and in a mere four syllables conveyed the message: “You and your clothes and your animal are letting down our new mahogany-paneled elevator.”
    Sherman was furious but nevertheless found himself leaning over and picking the dog up off the floor. Browning was the president of the building’s co-op board. He was a New York boy who had emerged from his mother’s loins as a fifty-year-old partner in Davis Polk and president of the Downtown Association. He was only forty but had looked fifty for the past twenty years. His hair was combed back smoothly over his round skull. He wore an immaculate navy suit, a white shirt, a shepherd’s check necktie, and no raincoat. He faced the elevator door, then turned his head, took another look at Sherman, said nothing, and turned back.
    Sherman had known him ever since they were boys at the Buckley School. Browning had been a fat, hearty, overbearing junior snob who at the age of nine knew how to get across the astonishing news that McCoy was a hick name (and a hick family), as in Hatfields and McCoys, whereas he, Browning, was a true Knickerbocker. He used to call Sherman “Sherman McCoy the Mountain Boy.”
    When they reached the ground floor, Browning said, “You know it’s raining, don’t you?”
    “Yes.”
    Browning looked at the dachshund and shook his head. “Sherman McCoy. Friend to man’s best friend.”
    Sherman felt his face getting hot again. He said, “That’s it?”
    “What’s it?”
    “You had from the eighth floor to here to think up something bright, and that’s it?” It was supposed to sound like amiable sarcasm, but he knew his anger had slipped out around the edges.
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Browning, and he walked on ahead. The doorman smiled and nodded and held the door open for him. Browning walked out under the awning to his car. His chauffeur held the car door open for him. Not a drop of rain touched his glossy form, and he was off, smoothly, immaculately, into the swarm of red taillights heading down Park Avenue. No ratty riding mac encumbered