by Amor Towles
—Friends, Casper observed, are the envy of the angels.
Before any of us noticed that the silver shaker was gone, Casper had produced a small scaffold topped with a plate of oysters.
—Compliments of the house, he said, and disappeared.
Eve clinked her water glass with a fork as if she was about to make a toast to the whole restaurant.
—A confession, she said.
Tinker and I looked up in anticipation.
—I was jealous today.
—Eve . . .
She put her hand up to silence me.
—Let me finish. When I learned that the two of you had your little coffee, cream & sugar—I admit it—I was green. And not a little bit peeved. In fact, I fully intended to spoil the evening to teach you both a lesson. But Casper is perfectly right: Friendship is the mostest.
She held up her drink and squinted.
—To getting out of ruts.
Within minutes, Eve was her perfect self: relaxed, buoyant, bright; inexplicable.
The couples at the tables around us were engaged in conversations they’d been having for years—about their jobs and their children and their summer houses—conversations that may have been rote but that reinforced their sense of shared expectations and experience. Shrewdly, Tinker swept that aside and launched a conversation more suitable to our situation—one grounded in the hypothetical.
What were you afraid of when you were a kid? he asked.
I said cats.
Tinker said heights.
Eve: Old age.
And just like that, we were off. In a way, it became a chummy sort of competition in which each of us tried to land the perfect answers—those that were surprising, diverting, revealing, but true. And Eve, ever under-estimateable, proved the runaway champ.
What did you always want that your parents never gave you?
Me: Spending money.
Tinker: A tree house.
Eve: A good licking.
If you could be anyone for a day, who would you be?
Me: Mata Hari.
Tinker: Natty Bumppo.
Eve: Darryl Zanuck.
If you could relive one year in your life, which one would it be?
Me: When I was eight and we lived above a bakery.
Tinker: When I was thirteen and my brother and I hiked the Adirondacks.
Eve: The upcoming one.
The oysters were consumed and the shells whisked away. Casper appeared with another round of martinis and then poured an extra one for the table.
—What shall we drink to this time? I asked.
—To being less shy, Tinker said.
Eve and I echoed the toast and raised the liquor to our lips.
—To being less shy? someone queried.
Standing with a hand on the back of my chair was a tall, elegant woman in her early fifties.
—That seems a nice ambition, she said. But better that one should aspire to returning one’s phone calls first.
—I’m sorry, Tinker said a little embarrassed. I meant to call this afternoon.
She smiled winningly and waved a forgiving hand.
—Come on, Teddy. I’m only teasing. I can see that you’ve had the best of distractions.
She held her hand out to me.
—I’m Anne Grandyn—Tinker’s godmother.
Tinker stood. He gestured to the two of us.
—This is Katherine Kontent and—
But Eve was already on her feet.
—Evelyn Ross, she said. It’s so nice to meet you.
Mrs. Grandyn worked her way around the table to shake Eve’s hand, insisting that she sit, and then continued on to Tinker. Barely marked by age, she had short blond hair and the refined features of a ballerina who had grown too tall for the ballet. She was wearing a black sleeveless dress that celebrated the slenderness of her arms. She wasn’t wearing a choker of pearls, but she was wearing earrings—emerald studs the size of gumdrops. The stones were uncontestably glorious and happened to match the color of her eyes. From the way she carried herself, you could just tell that she swam with them. Coming out of the water, she would pick up a towel and dry her hair, not wondering for a moment whether the stones were in her ears or at the bottom of the sea.
Reaching Tinker, she offered her cheek and he gave her an awkward peck. When he sat down again she put a maternal hand on his shoulder.
—Katherine, Evelyn, mark my words. It’s the same with godsons and nephews. When they first come to New York, you see them plenty. Like when the hamper’s full or the pantry’s bare. But once they get on their feet, if you want to invite them for tea, you have to hire a Pinkerton.
Eve and I laughed. Tinker mustered a sheepish grin. The appearance of his godmother was making him look sixteen.
—What a wonderful coincidence running into you here, Evelyn said.
—It is a small world, Mrs. Grandyn replied, a little wryly.
No doubt, she had taken Tinker here in the first place.
—Would you like to join us for a drink? Tinker asked.
—Thank you, dear, but I couldn’t. I’m with Gertrude. She’s trying to drag me onto the board of the museum. I’m going to need all my wits about me.
She turned to the two of us.
—If I leave it to Teddy, I’m sure that I will never see you again. So, accept my invitation for lunch someday—with or without him. I promise I won’t bore you with too many stories of his youth.
—We wouldn’t be bored, Mrs. Grandyn, Eve assured.
—Please, Mrs. Grandyn said, making the word a sentence just as the maitre d’ had. Call me Anne.
As Mrs. Grandyn gave a graceful wave and returned to her table, Eve was aglow. But if Mrs. Grandyn’s little visit had lit the candles on Eve’s cake, for Tinker it had blown them out. Her unexpected appearance had changed the whole tenor of the outing. In the blink of an eye the caption had gone from Man of means takes two girls to swanky spot to Young peacock shows off feathers in family’s backyard.
Eve was so rosy she couldn’t see that the evening was on the verge of being spoiled.
—What a wonderful woman. Is she a friend of your mother’s?
—What’s that? Tinker asked. Oh. Yes. They grew up together.
He picked up his fork and turned it in his hands.
—Perhaps we should go ahead and order, Eve suggested.
—Do you want to get out of here? I asked Tinker.
—Could we?
—Absolutely.
Eve was plainly disappointed. She gave me that quick irritated glance. She opened her mouth ready to suggest we just have an appetizer. But Tinker’s face was all lit up again.
—Right, she said, dumping her napkin on her plate. Let’s beat it.
When we stood up from the table we were all feeling the good graces of the second martini. At the door, Tinker thanked the maitre d’ and apologized in German for our having to rush. In a show of forgiveness, Eve accepted my flapper’s jacket from the coat-check girl, leaving me to don her fur-collared twenty-first birthday present.
Outside, the drizzle had stopped, the sky had cleared and the air was bracing. After a quick conference, we decided to head back to Chernoff’s to see the second show.
—We may miss curfew, I noted, as I climbed in back.
—If we do, Eve asked turning to Tinker, can we bunk at your place?
—Of course.
Though the evening had started a little roughly, in the end our camaraderie had served us another good turn. Sitting in front, Eve reached back and placed a hand on my knee. Tinker dialed the radio to a swing tune. No one said anything as we turned onto Park Avenue and headed downtown.
At Fifty-first Street we passed Saint Bartholomew’s, the great domed church built by the Vanderbilts. Conveniently, they had dropped it on a spot where every Sunday morning they could see Grand Central Station over the pastor’s shoulder as they complimented his sermon. Like other royals of the gilded age, the Vanderbilts’ roo
ts reached back three generations to an indentured servant. Hailing from the town of De Bilt, he had sailed from Holland to New York in steerage, and when he stepped off the boat he was known simply as Jan from De Bilt—until Cornelius built his fortune and classed up the moniker.
But you don’t have to own a railroad to shorten or lengthen your name.
Teddy to Tinker.
Eve to Evelyn.
Katya to Kate.
In New York City, these sorts of alterations come free of charge.
As the car crossed Forty-ninth Street, we could all feel the wheels slip a little beneath us. The road ahead shimmered with what looked like puddles but which, with the cessation of rain, had frozen into patches of ice. Tinker downshifted and regained control. He slowed to turn, thinking perhaps that Third Avenue would be better. And that’s when the milk truck hit us. We never even saw it. It was coming down Park Avenue at fifty miles an hour loaded for deliveries. When we decelerated, it tried to stop, hit the ice and smashed us squarely from behind. The coupé launched like a rocket and vaulted across Forty-seventh Street into a cast-iron lamppost on the median.
When I came to, I found myself upside down, pinned between the gearshift and the dash. The air was cold. The driver-side door was thrown open and I could see Tinker lying by the curb. The passenger door was closed; but Eve was gone.
I untangled myself and crawled from the car. It hurt when I inhaled, as if I’d broken a rib. Tinker was standing now, stumbling toward Eve. Shot through the windshield, she was huddled on the ground.
Out of nowhere an ambulance appeared and there were two young men in white jackets with a stretcher, looking like something out of a newsreel on the Spanish civil war.
—She’s alive, one said to the other.
They hoisted her onto the stretcher.
Her face was as raw as a cut of meat.
I couldn’t help myself. I turned away.
Tinker couldn’t help himself either. He fixed his eyes on Eve and wouldn’t avert them until the doors of the surgery swung shut.
JANUARY 8
When he came out of the hospital, a line of taxis waited at the curb as if it was a hotel. He was surprised to find it already dark. He wondered what time it was.
The driver in the front cab nodded in his direction. He shook his head.
A woman in a fur coat came out of the hospital and jumped in the back of the taxi that he hadn’t taken. As she closed the door she leaned forward to rattle off an address. The woman’s cab pulled away and the other cabs advanced. For a moment, her urgency struck him as out of place. But then, just because we have good reasons to rush to a hospital doesn’t mean we don’t have good reasons to rush away again.
How many times had he jumped in the back of a cab and rattled off an address? Hundreds? Thousands?
—Would you like one?
A man had emerged from the hospital and taken up a position a few feet to his right. It was one of the surgeons—the chief specialist who had performed the reconstructive surgery. Poised and friendly, he couldn’t have been more than forty-five years old. He must have been in between procedures because his smock was spotless. In his hand was a cigarette.
—Thanks, he said, accepting the offer for the first time in years.
An acquaintance had once remarked that if he ever quit smoking, he’d remember the last one better than all the rest. And it was true. It was on the platform of Providence Station, a few minutes before he’d boarded the train to New York. That was almost four years ago.
He put the cigarette to his lips and a hand in his pocket for his lighter, but the surgeon had beat him to it.
—Thanks, he said again, leaning toward the flame.
One of the nurses had mentioned to him that the surgeon had served in the war. He had been a young internist stationed near the front lines in France. You could tell. It was in his bearing. He looked like a man who had gained confidence through exposure to a hostile environment; like one who no longer owed anything to anyone.
The surgeon eyed him thoughtfully.
—When was the last time you went home?
When was the last time I went home, he thought to himself.
The surgeon didn’t wait for an answer.
—She may not come to for another three days. But when she does, she’ll need you at your best. You should go home and get some sleep; have a good meal; pour yourself a drink. And don’t worry. Your wife is in excellent hands.
—Thank you, he said.
A new taxi pulled up and took its place at the back of the line.
On Madison, there would be a line of taxis just like this one idling in front of the Carlyle. On Fifth Avenue, there would be another line in front of the Stanhope. In what city in the world were more taxis at your disposal? At every corner, at every awning they waited so that without a change of clothes or a second thought, without a word to anyone, you could be skirted away to Harlem or Cape Horn.
—. . . Though she’s not my wife.
The surgeon took his cigarette from his mouth.
—Oh. I’m sorry. A nurse led me to believe . . .
—We’re just friends.
—Why yes. Of course.
—We were in the accident together.
—I see.
—I was driving.
The surgeon said nothing.
A cab pulled away and the line of cabs advanced.
Oh—I’m sorry—Why yes—Of course—I see.
SPRINGTIME
CHAPTER FIVE
To Have & to Haven’t
It was an evening in late March.
My new apartment was a studio in a six-story walk-up on Eleventh Street between First and Second avenues. It looked out into a narrow court where the laundry lines were pulleyed between the windowsills. Despite the season, gray sheets floated five stories above the frozen ground like drab, unimaginative ghosts.
Across the court an old man in his underwear wandered back and forth in front of his window with a skillet. He must have been a janitor or a watchman because he was always frying meat fully dressed in the mornings and eggs in his skivvies at night. I poured myself a taste of gin and turned my undivided attention to a worn pack of cards.
On something of a whim, I had spent fifteen cents on a primer for contract bridge and it had quickly earned its keep. Any given Saturday, I could play from reveille to taps. I would deal out the deck at my little kitchen table and move from chair to chair so that I could play each of the four positions in turn. I invented a partner in the north seat—an aristocratic Brit whose reckless bidding complemented my cautious inexperience. Nothing pleased him more than to raise my bid injudiciously, forcing me to play a doubled game in a minor suit.
As if in response, the personalities of East and West began to assert themselves: On my left sat an old rabbi who remembered every card and on my right a retired Chicago mobster who remembered little, sized up well, and occasionally slammed through sheer force of will.
—Two hearts? I opened tentatively, having counted my points with care.
—Two spades, said the rabbi with a hint of admonition.
—Six hearts! shouted my partner, still arranging his cards.
—Pass.
—Pass.
When the telephone rang, we all looked up in surprise.
—I’ll get it, I said.
The phone was teetering on a stack of Tolstoy’s novels.
I assumed the caller was the young accountant who’d tried so hard to make me laugh at Fanelli’s. Against my better judgment, I had let him write down my number—GRamercy 1-0923, the first private line that I had ever had. But when I picked up the receiver, it was Tinker Grey.
—Hi Katey.
—Hello Tinker.
I hadn’t heard from Tinker or Eve in almost two months.
—What are you up to? he asked.
Under the circumstances, it was a cowardly sort of question.
—Two games short of a rubber. What are you up to?
> He didn’t answer. For a moment, he didn’t say anything.
—Do you think you could come by tonight?
—Tinker . . .
—Katey, I don’t know what’s going on between you and Eve. But the last few weeks have been a tough run. The doctors said it was going to get worse before it got better; I don’t think I really believed them, but it has. I need to go to the office tonight and I don’t think she should be alone.
Outside, it began to sleet. I could see gray splotches forming on the sheets. Someone should have reeled them in while they still had the chance.
—Sure, I said. I can come.
—Thanks, Katey.
—You don’t need to thank me.
—All right.
I looked at my watch. At this hour the Broadway train ran intermittently.
—I’ll be there in forty minutes.
—Why don’t you take a cab? I’ll leave the fare with the doorman.
I dropped the receiver in its cradle.
—Double, sighed the rabbi.
Pass.
Pass.
Pass.
Those first few days after the crash, while Eve was still unconscious, Tinker led the vigil. A few of the girls from the boardinghouse took turns reading magazines in the waiting room, but Tinker rarely left her side. He had the doorman in his building deliver fresh clothes and he showered in the surgeon’s locker.
On the third day, Eve’s father arrived from Indiana. When he was at her bedside, you could tell that he was at a loss. Neither weeping nor praying came very naturally to him. He would have been better off if they had. Instead, he stared at his little girl’s ravaged face and shook his head a few thousand times.
She came to on the fifth day. By the eighth she was more or less herself—or rather, a steely version of herself. She listened to the doctors with cold unaverting eyes. She adopted whatever technical language they used like fracture and suture and ligature, and she encouraged them to adopt her more descriptive terms like hobbled and disfigured. When she was nearly ready to leave the hospital, her father announced that he was taking her home to Indiana. She refused to go. Mr. Ross tried to reason with her; then he tried to plead. He said that she would regain her strength so much quicker at home; he pointed out that given the condition of her leg she wouldn’t be able to climb the boardinghouse stairs; besides, her mother was expecting her. But Eve wasn’t swayed; not by a word of it.
