The Bonfire of the Vanities

At the same moment as the mayor is being led off the stage, Sherman McCoy is struggling to leash his pet dachshund in his opulent Park Avenue apartment. Sherman is 38, handsome, Yale-educated, and a bond salesperson at a prestigious Wall Street firm. He is particularly proud of his white Anglo-Saxon protestant (WASP) heritage and his jutting chin, which he dubs the “Yale chin.” He is married to Judy, a daughter of professors, who now works as an interior decorator for the wealthy. Judy has decorated their apartment and had it featured in Architectural Digest. Judy walks in and offers to walk the dog so Sherman can put their six-year-old daughter, Campbell, to bed. Because of his busy job, Sherman hardly spends time with Campbell. Sherman refuses because the walk is a cover for him to meet Maria Ruskin, with whom he is having an affair. Sherman leaves, thinking that perhaps it was a mistake to marry Judy, who is two years older than him. Sherman feels Judy, although beautiful, will soon start looking middle-aged. Sherman would consider a divorce, but he cannot bear to be separated from Campbell. Sherman often thinks of himself as a Master of the Universe, after the set of toy superheroes with which Campbell plays.

Meaning to call Maria to tell her of his visit, Sherman accidentally calls his home, refers to Judy as Maria, and hangs up. He knows he has made a major faux pas. On his way to Maria’s, Sherman spots a young Black man headed toward him and tenses reflexively, although the man intends him no harm. Maria sublets a rent-controlled apartment from her friend, Germaine, so that she can meet Sherman in secret. Maria, who is in her twenties, is married to Arthur Ruskin, a 71-year-old tycoon. At Maria’s sublet, she dismisses Sherman’s anxiety about Judy discovering their affair. Sherman and Maria make love. When Sherman gets back home, Judy asks him about Maria. She calls out Sherman for having an affair, but Sherman denies the accusation. Heartbroken, Judy calls Sherman “a rotten liar” (25). Later, a contrite Sherman reflects that Judy is right.

Lawrence Kramer, a 32-year-old assistant district attorney (ADA) at the Homicide Bureau of the Bronx, lives in a three-and-half-room apartment on the Upper West Side with his British-born wife, Rhoda, and their newborn son. Though the apartment is small, it is expensive, despite being rent-controlled, owing to the fashionable location. Kramer feels cramped in the apartment, especially since the British nanny, Glenda, moved in. Kramer is repelled by the weight Rhoda has put on during the pregnancy and childbirth and dreams about a mysterious girl wearing brown lipstick.

On the way to work, Kramer spots Andy Heller, a former classmate from Columbia Law School, and turns away. Andy is wearing an expensive suit, which signals to Kramer that Andy, who works in private practice, is making much more money than him. Once, Kramer was proud of working for the government and not selling out, but the low pay makes him sometimes regret his choice. Kramer gets on the train, carrying his brown dress shoes in a paper bag for fear of being robbed. When three Black teenagers pass down the aisle, Kramer tenses up, but the young men don’t do anything. Kramer heads to the Bronx courthouse, which he refers to as Gibraltar. A corrections van is parked outside, holding people who are detained or convicted of crimes. The mostly Black and Latino people in the van begin shouting antisemitic abuse at Lawrence. When Judge Myron “Mike” Kovitsky, who is Jewish like Lawrence, walks up, the people in the van swear at him as well. Kovitsky spits at the van, which temporarily halts the abuse. Kramer is impressed by the judge’s courage but feels the judge is unhappy with Kramer’s cowardice. Kramer decides that he will abandon passivity and change his life. His thoughts return to the girl in the brown lipstick.

Walking Campbell to her school bus—as he does most weekday mornings—Sherman feels he and Campbell make an adorable father-daughter pair. He is aware of envying eyes on Campbell’s golden hair and his expensive business suit. As Campbell’s bus leaves, Sherman notices one of her schoolmate’s mothers. He finds the blond woman extraordinarily attractive. Sherman reflects that monogamy is extremely hard because the world is filled with beautiful women and sensual images. He resents Judy, his wife, for grudging a vital, handsome man like him his appetites. Sherman hails a cab to Wall Street, where his firm, Pierce & Pierce, is located. Although his father, John Campbell McCoy, the ex-CEO of the law firm Dunning Sponget & Leach, saves money by still taking the subway to work, Sherman’s generation is different. To survive New York, Sherman believes he must “insulate” himself from non-wealthy people.

At the 50th-floor office of Pierce & Pierce, the big task of the day is to sell a little-known French gold bond called the Giscard. Sherman, the top bond salesperson at his office, has convinced his boss, Gene Lopwitz, to buy the Giscard for $600 million. If he manages to sell the Giscard for a profit today, Sherman will be able to make enough commission to pay off the $1.8 million loan he has taken for his apartment. Sherman admires the rich and amoral Lopwitz, now wedded to his fourth wife, a much younger woman. Lopwitz encourages the traders to go big and try to aggressively sell the Giscard. At the end of the day’s trade, the salesmen have managed to sell 40% of the Giscard for a profit of 12.5 cents per $100, making $3 million. Sherman feels an adrenaline rush. His thoughts return to Judy. His wife might have given him grief over a single phone call, but Sherman feels unstoppable, a Master of the Universe.

Sherman is at the airport to pick up Maria, who is arriving from Italy, where she went to look for a villa for the summer. Sherman feels nervous about leaving his $48,000 black Mercedes parked at the curb as he goes inside the airport. He forgets his worries when he spots Maria in an expensive blue suit, looking better than all the other people in the airport. Sherman and Maria drive off. Maria tells Sherman that a British filmmaker seated next to her on the plane made her feel bad for not knowing the 16-century playwright Christopher Marlow. Although Sherman secretly feels Maria is not well-read, he pretends otherwise. Just then, Maria notes that they have missed the exit to Manhattan. Sherman keeps driving, unable to find a turn in the bumper-to-bumper traffic. He feels unnerved as he enters the Bronx and sees many Black and Latinx people on the road.

To Sherman, the Bronx seems an unkempt, dangerous world. He and Maria drive in circles, lost. In a badly lit ramp next to an exit, the Mercedes stalls against a tire left on the road. Sherman gets out to remove the tire. Two young Black men approach the car, offering help. Sherman interprets this as a ploy for the men to rob him and throws the tire at them. Maria gets behind the wheel and shouts for Sherman to hurry inside. Sherman gets into the passenger’s seat, ripping his jacket in the process. The more muscular of the two men throws the tire at the car’s windshield. Maria reverses the car and drives away as the man looks on. As they make it onto the exit, Sherman remembers the “thok” sound the car made when Maria reversed it, as if it had hit a person. He also recalls that he could only see the more muscular of the two men after the sound; the lanky young man was nowhere to be seen.

At Maria’s apartment, Sherman worries that they may have run over the lanky young man. He wonders if they should report the incident to the police, but Maria dissuades him as that would reveal their affair. Sherman agrees and they decide to assume nothing terrible happened. Sherman begins to feel euphoric that he survived a trip to the dangerous “jungle,” and he and Maria make love. One part of Sherman also feels less culpable because it was Maria who was at the wheel when the youth was possibly hit. Later, when Sherman is parking the Mercedes in his underground garage, the parking attendant, Dan, points out that Sherman’s suit jacket is ripped. Sherman dismisses Dan with the usual disdain he reserves for people he deems socially inferior.

When Larry Kramer walks into the office he shares with the other assistant district attorneys of the Homicide division, he notes the shabbiness of his workspace as compared to the plush office of Abe Weiss, the District Attorney (DA). Ray Andruitti and Jimmy Caughey, the other ADAs, make fun of Kramer’s Jewish heritage. Kramer draws some consolation by telling himself that Caughey and Andruitti, Irish and Italian in origin, are less intelligent than him. Unlike Kramer, who went to Columbia Law School, Caughey and Andruitti went to state law colleges. The men discuss their current cases, largely comprising Black and Latino defendants. They joke that Weiss badly wants a white defendant to prosecute to show that his office is not prejudiced against people of color. Despite their crude jokes, Kramer feels a sense of solidarity with the other two ADAs. He feels they are not inherently bad but jaded by the demands of working in the criminal justice system. Andruitti gets a call about an 18-year-old Black man who may have been the victim of a hit-and-run and is now at Lincoln Hospital. Andruitti doesn’t take the case too seriously.

Kramer heads to court, where they have several cases to process. He reflects that the judicial system is so overburdened that the DAs, jurors, and judges have to work very hard to try to settle cases as fast as possible. One of the current trials is that of Herbert 92X, a liquor truck driver accused of murder. Herbert 92X is his Muslim name, but Kramer believes the man is not really a Muslim, as liquor is prohibited in Islam. Herbert 92X has refused a plea bargain as he insists the murder was not planned; he accidentally shot one of the men who had kidnapped him and stolen his truck. Kramer’s real interest in Herbert 92X’s trial is Shelly Thomas, one of the jurors, the beautiful young woman who always wears brown lipstick.

During lunch break, Kramer gets a call from Detective Martin, who is stationed at the Lincoln Hospital, telling him that the hit-and-run victim, Henry Lamb, has been classified as likely to die. Initially, Henry thought he just had a broken wrist and did not report that he had been hit by a car. However, when it became clear he had suffered a concussion, Lamb was admitted into the ICU, where he told his mother he was hit by a Mercedes. Lamb partially remembered the plate number. Kramer thinks the case is a “typical Bronx case. Another piece of shit” (142).

Worried about having hit someone, Sherman is unable to concentrate at work. He tries to make himself believe that the sound he heard was the car hitting an object, rather than a person. He is petrified his career will be over if there was an actual hit-and-run. Life would be impossible without his pay since Sherman lives beyond his means and has a huge home loan to pay.

Meanwhile, in Harlem, the Episcopal diocese sends two white young men to recover $350,000 from Reverend Bacon, the influential Black leader mentioned in the Prologue. Edward Fiske III and Moody, a lawyer, tell Bacon that the proposed Little Shepherd Daycare Center in Harlem, for which the diocese had given the money, has been rejected as Bacon has listed felons among the daycare’s board of directors. Bacon counters that the board includes felons as Black people from Harlem are often prosecuted for trivial reasons. He wants the daycare to be staffed with people from the district, many of whom have records because of the unfairly skewed justice system. Fiske and Moody say the diocese wants the money back regardless, but Bacon tells them he has already paid the money to local businesses to build the daycare. Bacon lets it drop that he may have invested the money in Urban Guaranty Investments, his securities firm, which is in business with Pierce & Pierce. Bacon says the diocese gave Harlem money not to help the district but because it wants to quell “the steam,” the righteous anger of people arising in response to centuries of racial discrimination. The conversation stalls when Bacon gets a call from his former employee, Annie Lamb, Henry’s mother, that Henry is in a coma. Annie has information about the car that hit him but is afraid to go to the police as she has unpaid parking tickets. Bacon promises Annie swift action.