by Amor Towles
Hank reached over for another one of Johnny’s cigarettes.
Where did this hack get off running down Evelyn Ross, I thought to myself. Let’s throw him through a windshield and see how he holds up.
I couldn’t resist observing:
—Didn’t Stuart Davis paint a pack of Lucky Strikes?
—I don’t know. Did he?
—Sure he did. Come to think of it, your paintings remind me a lot of his—what with the urban commercial imagery and primary colors and simplified lines.
—Nice. You should dissect frogs for a living.
—I’ve done that too. Doesn’t your brother have some Stuart Davises in his apartment?
—Do you think Teddy knows the least thing about Stuart Davis? Fuck. He would have bought a tin drum if I told him to.
—Your brother doesn’t seem to think so poorly of you.
—Yeah? Maybe he should.
—I bet you drew a lot of KP.
Hank laughed until he coughed. He picked up his glass and tilted it at me with his first smile of the evening.
—You got that right, sister.
When we all stood to go, it was Hank who covered the check. He took some wadded bills out of his pocket and tossed them on the table like they were candy wrappers. What about their colors and shapes? I wanted to ask. Didn’t they have purpose? Weren’t they things of beauty?
If only his trust officer could see him now.
After the drink at that Irish bar, I figured I’d seen the last of Fran. But she got hold of my number and called one rainy Saturday. She apologized for having ditched me and said she wanted to make it up by treating me to the movies. She took me to a string of bars instead and we had a gay old time. When I got around to asking why she had bothered to track me down, she said it was because we were so simpatico.
We were about the same height with the same chestnut coloring and we were both raised in two-room apartments across a river from Manhattan. I guess on a rainy Saturday afternoon, that was simpatico enough. So we trooped around a bit and then one night in early June, she called to see if I wanted to go to the runarounds at Belmont.
My father abhorred wagering of any kind. He thought it the surest route to relying on the kindness of strangers. So I had never played penny-a-point canasta or bet a stick of gum on who could throw the first rock through the principal’s window. I certainly had never been to a racetrack. I didn’t know what she was talking about.
—The runarounds?
Apparently, on the Wednesday before the Belmont Stakes, the track was opened to the horses on the card so that the jockeys could give them a feel for the course. Fran said it was much more exciting than the race itself—a claim so unlikely that the runarounds seemed certain to be a bore.
—Sorry, I said. On Wednesdays I happen to work.
—That’s the beauty of it. They open the track at daybreak so each of the horses can get a run in before it gets hot. We zip out on the train, watch a few ponies, and still punch the clock by nine. Trust me. I’ve done it a million times.
When Fran said that they opened the track at daybreak, I imagined this was a figure of speech and we would be heading out to Long Island some time after six. But it was no figure of speech. And this being early June, daybreak was closer to five. So she came knocking at 4:30 with her hair coiled in a tower on the top of her head.
We had to wait fifteen minutes for a train. It rattled into the station like it was coming from another century. The interior lights cast a halfhearted glow over the nocturnal flotsam in its care: the janitors, drunkards and dance-hall girls.
When we got to Belmont, the sun was just beginning to heft its way over the horizon as if it needed to defy gravity to do so. Fran was defying gravity too. She was perky, bright, annoying.
—Cmon, Patsy, she said. Hustle your bustle!
The sprawling race day parking lot was empty. As we crossed it, I could see Fran carefully scrutinizing the edifice of the track.
—Over here, she said without much confidence, heading toward the service gates.
I pointed toward the sign that said ENTRANCE.
—How about over here?
—Sure!
—Wait a second, Fran. Let me ask you something. Have you ever been here before? I mean ever once?
—Sure. Hundreds of times.
—Let me ask you something else. When you’re speaking, are you ever not lying?
—Was that a double negative? I’m not too good with those. Now let me ask you something.
She pointed at her blouse.
—Does this look good on me?
Before I could answer, she tugged on her neckline to expose a little more cleavage.
At the main gate we passed the unmanned ticket booths, pushed through the turnstiles and headed up a narrow ramp into the open air. The stadium was eerie and still. A green mist hung over the track like you’d expect to see over the surface of a pond in New England. Scattered across the empty stands, the other early risers were huddled in groups of two to four.
It seemed unseasonably cold for June. A few feet from us a man in a quilted jacket was holding a cup of coffee.
—You didn’t tell me it was going to be so cold, I said.
—You know what June is like.
—Not at 5:00 A.M. I don’t. Everybody else has coffee, I added.
She slugged me in the shoulder.
—What a whiner you are.
Fran was scrutinizing again, this time the people in the middle of the stands. Off to our right a tall, thin man in a plaid shirt stood and waved. It was Grubb in the company of hapless Johnny.
When we got to Grubb’s seat, he put his arm around Fran and looked at me.
—It’s Katherine, right?
I was vaguely impressed that he knew my name.
—She’s cold, Fran said. And mad she doesn’t have coffee.
Grubb grinned. From inside a knapsack he produced a lap blanket that he tossed to me, a Thermos that he handed to Fran, and then like a hack magician he felt elaborately around the bag until he brought out a cinnamon donut perched upright on his fingertips. Which, as it turns out, is all it takes to secure a place in my affections.
Fran poured me a cup of coffee. I hunched over it with the blanket on my shoulders like a Civil War soldier.
Having come to the track with his parents when he was in shorts, the whole excursion to the runarounds was like a return to summer camp for Grubb, full of sweet nostalgia and youthful fun. He quickly gave us a lay of the land—the size of the track, the qualifying horses, the importance of Belmont versus Saratoga—then, lowering his voice he pointed toward the paddock.
—Here comes the first horse.
On cue the motley assembly rose.
The jockey wasn’t wearing one of those brightly colored checkered outfits that helps the track pretend it’s festive. He was wearing a brown jumpsuit like a diminutive garage mechanic. As he walked the horse from the paddock out onto the track, steam rose from the horse’s nostrils. In the stillness, you could hear it whinny from five hundred feet. The jockey talked briefly to a man with a pipe (presumably the trainer) and then swung onto the horse’s back. He cantered a little so that the horse could take in its surroundings, circled and positioned for a start. A hush fell. Without the shot of a gun, horse and rider took off.
The sound of the horse’s hooves drifted up into the stands in muffled rhythm as clods of turf were kicked in the air. The jockey seemed to take the first lengths at an easy pace, holding his head about a foot above the horse’s. But at the second turn he urged the animal on. He drew his elbows inward and squeezed his thighs around the horse’s barrel. He tucked the side of his face against its neck so that he could whisper encouragements. The horse responded. Though it was getting farther away, you could tell it was running faster, thrusting its muzzle forward and drumming the ground with rhythmic precision. It turned the far corner and the beat of its hooves grew closer, louder, faster. Until it bolted through the imaginary
finish line.
—That’s Pasteurized, Grubb said. The favorite.
I looked around the stands. There were no cheers. No applause. The onlookers, most of them men, offered the favorite silent recognition. They reviewed the time on their stopwatches and quietly conferred. A few shook their heads in appreciation or disappointment. I couldn’t tell which.
And then Pasteurized was cantered off the track to make way for Cravat.
By the third horse, I was getting a feel for the runarounds. I could see why Grubb thought them more exciting than the Stakes. Though the stands were occupied by only a few hundred people (instead of fifty thousand), to a man they were aficionados.
Huddled at the rail—the innermost circle of the stadium—were the gamblers with unkempt hair who in refining their “systems” had lost it all: their savings, their homes, their families. With fevered eyes and rumpled jackets, looking like they’d slept under the stands, these inveterates leaned on the rail and watched the horses with an occasional licking of the lips.
In the lower stands sat the men and women raised on racing as a great entertainment. They were the same sort that you’d find in the bleachers at Dodger Stadium: the sort who knew the names of the players and all the relevant statistics. They were men and women who, like Grubb, had been brought to the track as children and who one day would bring their children, with a sense of loyalty to an idea that they might only otherwise display in a time of war. They had picnic baskets and racing sheets and formed fast friendships with whomever they happened to sit.
In the boxes above them sat the owners in the company of young women and other hangers-on. All of the owners were rich, of course, but the ones who came to the runarounds weren’t the blue bloods or the dilettantes; they were the men who had earned every penny. One silver-haired magnate in a perfectly tailored suit leaned against the rail with both arms like an admiral at the helm. You could just tell that for him racing horses was no idle matter. It wasn’t money in search of a distraction. It required all the discipline, commitment, and attention of running a railroad.
And above them all, above the gamblers and the fans and the millionaires, high in the thinner air of the upper stands, were the aged trainers—the ones past their prime. They sat watching the horses with the naked eye, without binoculars or stopwatches, having no need for either. They were measuring not just the speed of the horses, not just their start or their endurance, but their courage and carelessness too—knowing as precisely as one can what was going to happen come Saturday, without it ever occurring to them to place a bet and improve their meager lot.
The one thing for certain at Belmont was that on Wednesday at 5:00 A.M. there was no place for the common man. This was like the circles of Dante’s Inferno—populated with men of varied sins, but also with the shrewdness and devotion of the damned. It was a living reminder of why no one bothers to read Paradiso. My father hated wagering, but he would have loved the runarounds.
—Come on, Peaches, Grubb said taking her arm. I see some old friends.
Grinning with outsized pride, Peaches handed me her binoculars. As they walked away, Johnny looked up hopefully. I ditched him, saying I wanted a closer look at the paddock.
When I got there, I turned Fran’s binoculars back on the silver-haired admiral. There were two women in his box gossiping and drinking from aluminum cups. The absence of steam suggested that the cups were filled with liquor. One of them offered him a sip; he didn’t deign a reply. He turned instead to confer with a young man who held a stopwatch and clipboard.
—You’ve got good taste.
I turned to find Tinker’s godmother at my side. I was surprised that she had recognized me. Maybe a little flattered.
—That’s Jake de Roscher, she said. He’s worth about fifty million dollars, and self-made. I can introduce you, if you’d like.
I laughed.
—I think I’d be a little out of my depth.
—Probably, she conceded.
She was dressed in tan pants and a white shirt. Her sleeves were rolled up to the elbows. She obviously wasn’t cold. It made me feel self-conscious about having the blanket over my shoulders. I tried to shed it casually.
—Do you have a horse in the race? I asked.
—No. But an old friend of mine owns Pasteurized.
(Naturally.)
—That’s exciting, I said.
—Actually, the favorite rarely is. It’s the long shots that are exciting.
—But I suppose it can’t hurt your bank account if you own the favorite.
—Perhaps. But in general, investments that need their own food and shelter don’t amount to much.
Tinker had implied at some point that Mrs. Grandyn’s money had originally come from coal mines. Somehow that added up. She had a self-possession that could only be secured by the more immutable assets like land and oil and gold.
The next horse was on the track.
—Who’s that? I asked.
—May I?
She held her hand out for my binoculars. Her hair was barretted back so there was no need to clear it from her face. She lifted the binoculars to her eyes like a hunter—turning the lenses directly on the horse, having no problem finding her mark.
—It’s Jolly Tar, the Witherings’ horse. Barry owns the paper in Louisville.
She lowered the binoculars but didn’t hand them back. She looked at me for a moment and hesitated, the way some will when about to ask a sensitive question. Instead, she made a statement.
—I gather that Tinker and your friend are getting along. How long have they been living together? Is it eight months now?
—Closer to five.
—Ah.
—Do you disapprove?
—Certainly not in the Victorian sense. I have no illusions about the liberties of our times. In fact, if pressed, I would celebrate most of them.
—You said you didn’t disapprove in the Victorian sense. Does that mean you disapprove in a different sense?
She smiled.
—I need to remind myself that you work at a law firm, Katherine. How did she know that? I wondered.
—If I disapprove, she continued after weighing the question, it’s actually on your friend’s behalf. I don’t see any advantage to her living with Tinker. In my day, a girl’s opportunities were rather limited, so the sooner she secured an eligible husband the better. But today . . .
She gestured toward de Roscher’s box.
—You see that thirty-year-old blonde next to Jake? That’s his fiancée, Carrie Clapboard. Carrie moved all manner of heaven and earth to get into that chair. And soon she will happily oversee scullery maids and table settings and the reupholstering of antique chairs at three different houses; which is all well and good. But if I were your age, I wouldn’t be trying to figure out how to get into Carrie’s shoes—I’d be trying to figure out how to get into Jake’s.
As Jolly Tar rounded the far turn, the next horse was ushered from the stables. We both looked down at the paddock. Anne didn’t bother lifting the binoculars.
—Gentle Savage at fifty to one, she said. Now, there’s your excitement.
CHAPTER NINE
The Scimitar, the Sifter & the Wooden Leg
When I came out of work on June 9, there was a brown Bentley parked at the curb.
No matter how much you think of yourself, no matter how long you’ve lived in Hollywood or Hyde Park, a brown Bentley is going to catch your eye. There couldn’t be more than a few hundred of them in the world and every aspect is designed with envy in mind. The fenders rise over the wheels and drop to the running boards in the wide, lazy curve of an odalisque at rest, while the white walls of the tires look as improbably spotless as the spats on Fred Astaire. You can just tell that whoever is sitting in the backseat has the wherewithal to grant your wishes in threes.
This particular brown Bentley was the model in which the chauffeur rides in the open air. He looked like an Irish cop turned manservant. He was staring straight ah
ead and holding the wheel with big mitts stuffed into little gray gloves. The windows of the passenger compartment were tinted so that you couldn’t see who was inside. As I watched the reflection of the masses drifting by, the window rolled down.
—Shiver me timbers, I said.
—Hey, Sis. Where you headed?
—I was just thinking of going down to the Battery to throw myself off the pier.
—Can it wait?
The chauffeur was suddenly at my side. He opened the rear door with surprising grace and adopted the posture of a midshipman at the head of a gangplank. Eve skooched across the seat. I saluted and climbed aboard.
The air in the car was sweet with the smell of leather and the hint of a new perfume. There was so much legroom that I almost slipped off the seat onto the floor.
—What does this rig turn into at midnight? I asked.
—An artichoke.
—I hate artichokes.
—I used to too. But they grow on you.
Eve leaned forward to push an ivory button on a chrome panel.
—Michael.
The chauffeur didn’t turn his head. His voice crackled through the speaker as if he were a hundred miles at sea.
—Yes, Miss Ross.
—Could you take us to the Explorers Club.
—Of course, Miss Ross.
Evey sat back and I took her in. It was the first that we’d seen each other since the dinner party at the Beresford. She was wearing a silky blue dress with full-length sleeves and a low neckline. Her hair was as straight as if she’d ironed it. She pulled it behind her ears giving full visibility to the scar on her cheek. A thin white line suggestive of experiences that parlor girls only dream of, it had begun to look glamorous.
We both smiled.
—Happy birthday, Hotstuff, I said.
—Do I deserve it?
—Do you ever.
Here was the setup: For her birthday Tinker said she could rent out a ballroom. She told him that she didn’t want a party. She didn’t even want presents. All she wanted was to buy a new dress and have dinner for two at the Rainbow Room.
