by Amor Towles
And, at long last, I told her about the late night call that I’d received after Eve disappeared and how with my overnight bag in hand I’d skipped to Penn Station like a schoolgirl so that I could catch the Montrealer and take it to a hoot owl and a hearthstone and a can of pork and beans.
Bitsy emptied her glass.
—That’s a Grand Canyon of a tale, she said. A mile deep and two miles wide.
The metaphor was apt. A million years of social behavior had worn away this chasm and now you had to pack a mule to get to the bottom of it.
I suppose I suspected that some display of sororal sympathy was in order; or if not that, then outrage. But Bitsy exhibited neither. Like a seasoned lecturer, she seemed satisfied that we had covered the necessary ground for the day. She signaled the waiter and paid the bill.
When we were outside, parting ways, I couldn’t resist but ask:
—So . . . ?
—So, what?
—So, what do you think I should do?
She looked a little surprised.
—Do? Why, keep it up!
When I got back to my place it was after five. In the apartment next door, I could hear the Zimmers sharpening their sarcasm. Over an early dinner, they chipped away at each other like little Michelangelos, placing every stroke of the mallet with care and devotion.
I kicked my shoes at the icebox, poured a glass of gin, and dropped into a chair. The rehash with Bitsy had helped me regain some perspective, even more than the crack I’d taken at Tinker. It had left me in a scientific mood, a mood of morbid fascination—the way a pathologist must feel when looking at a viral rupture on the surface of his own skin.
There’s an old parlor game called On the Road to Kent in which someone describes a walk he has taken on the road to Kent and all of the things that he witnessed along the way: the various tradesmen; the wagons and carriages; the heath and heather; the whip-poor-will; the windmill; and the gold sovereign dropped by the abbot in the ditch. When the traveler finishes, he describes the journey a second time, leaving out some items, adding others, rearranging a few, and the game is to identify as many of the changes as possible. Sitting there in my apartment, I found myself playing a version of this game in which the road was the one that I had traveled with Tinker from New Year’s Eve to the present.
This is a game that is won through powers of visualization more than memory. The best player puts herself in the traveler’s shoes as the journey unfolds, using her mind’s eye to see exactly what the traveler has seen, so that when she walks the route a second time the differences will draw attention to themselves. So as I took a second pass at 1938, setting out from The Hotspot and proceeding through the pageant that is day-by-day Manhattan, I immersed myself in the landscape and reobserved the little details, the offhand remarks, the actions on the periphery—all through the new lens of Tinker’s relationship with Anne. And many fascinating changes did I discover there. . . .
I remembered the night that Tinker called me to the Beresford—and how he had come home from the office after midnight with his hair combed and his twice-shaven cheeks and his crisp Windsor knot. But, of course, he hadn’t been to the office at all. Once he had poured me that warm martini and backed apologetically out the door, he had taken a taxi to the Plaza Hotel—where after exertions of one form or another, he had freshened up in Anne’s convenient little bath.
And the night at the Irish bar on Seventh Street—when I ran into Hank and he referred to that manipulative cunt—he wasn’t referring to Eve. He probably didn’t even know Eve. He was referring to Anne, the hidden hand that made all things Tinker come to life.
And you better believe I remembered how subtle a partner Tinker had been in the Adirondacks—how clever; how inventive; how he had surprised me; how he had folded me; reversed me; explored me. Sweet Jesus. I wasn’t even close to being born yesterday, but not for one minute had I let myself dwell on the obvious—that he had learned all of that from someone else; someone a little more bold, a little more experienced, a little less subject to shame.
And all the time, the outward appearance so artfully maintained was that of a gentleman: well mannered, well spoken, well dressed—well honed.
I got up and went to my purse. I pulled out the little volume of Washingtonia that fate had dropped in my lap. I opened it and began skimming through young George’s aspirations:
Suddenly, I could see this for what it was too. For Tinker Grey, this little book wasn’t a series of moral aspirations—it was a primer on social advancement. A do-it-yourself charm school. A sort of How to Win Friends and Influence People 150 years ahead of its time.
I shook my head like a midwestern grandma.
What a rube Katherine Kontent had been.
Teddy to Tinker, Eve to Evelyn, Katya to Kate: In New York City, these sorts of alterations come free of charge—or so I had thought to myself as the year began. But what circumstances should have brought to mind were the two versions of The Thief of Baghdad.
In the original version, an impoverished Douglas Fairbanks, enamored of the caliph’s daughter, disguises himself as a prince to gain access to the palace. While in the Technicolor remake, the lead played a prince who, bored by the pomp of the throne, disguises himself as a peasant so that he can sample the splendors of the bazaar.
Masquerades such as these don’t require much imagination to initiate or comprehend; they happen every day. But to assume that they will enhance one’s chances at a happy ending, this requires the one suspension of disbelief that the two versions of The Thief of Baghdad share: that carpets can fly.
The telephone rang.
—Yeah?
—Katey.
I had to laugh.
—Guess what I have in front of me?
—Katey.
—Go ahead and guess. You’ll never believe it.
. . .
—The Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour! Remember those? Wait. Let me find one.
I fumbled with the phone.
—Here we go! Mock not nor Jest at any thing of Importance. That’s a good one. Or how about this? Number Sixty-six: Be not forward but friendly and Courteous. Why, that’s you in spades!
—Katey.
I hung up. I sat back down and began reading Mr. Washington’s list a little more closely. You had to give that precocious colonial kid credit. Some of them made a lot of sense.
The phone began ringing again. It rang and rang and rang and then fell silent.
As an adolescent, I had mixed feelings about my long legs. Like the legs on a newborn foal they seemed engineered for collapse. Billy Bogadoni, who lived around the corner with his eight siblings, used to call me Cricket, and he didn’t mean it in the complimentary sense. But as it goes with such things, I eventually grew into my legs and ultimately prized them. I found I liked being taller than the other girls. By seventeen, I was taller than Billy Bogadoni. When I first moved into Mrs. Martingale’s she used to say in her saccharine manner that I really shouldn’t wear heels because boys didn’t like to dance with girls who were taller than them. Perhaps because of those very remarks, my heels were half an inch higher when I left Mrs. Martingale’s than when I’d arrived.
Well, here was another advantage of being long-legged. I could lean back in my father’s easy chair, extend my foot with my toes pointed forward, and tip my new coffee table so that the telephone slid overboard like a deck chair on the Titanic.
I read on without interruption. As I have mentioned before, there were 110, which might have led you to believe the list was a little overdone. But Mr. Washington had saved the best for last:
Obviously, Tinker had read many of the Rules on Mr. Washington’s list quite closely. Maybe he had just never gotten this far.
On Tuesday morning, I woke early and walked all the way to work at a Bitsy Houghton pace. The sky was autumn blue and the streets bustled with honest men on their way to earn an honest wage. The Fifth Avenue high-rises shimmered to the envy of the outer boroughs.
On the corner of Forty-second Street I gave the whistling newsie two bits for the Times (keep the change, kid) and then the Condé Nast elevator whisked me up twenty-five floors faster than it would have taken to fall them.
As I walked across the bullpen with my paper under my arm (and the newsie’s whistle on my lips), I noticed out of the corner of my eye that singing-telegrammed Fesindorf stood when I passed. Then Cabot and Spindler did the same. Across the room I could see Alley at her desk typing at full clip. She caught my eye with a hint of caution. Through the glass walls of his office, I could see Mason Tate dipping his chocolate into his coffee.
At my desk, in place of my chair, I found a wheelchair with a red cross emblazoned on the back.
SEPTEMBER 30
As he crossed First Avenue, he made eye contact with two Caribbean girls in the light of a street lamp. They stopped talking so that they could smile at him professionally. By way of response, he shook his head. He looked farther along Twenty-second Street and quickened his pace. They picked up where they’d left off.
It started to rain again.
He took off his hat and tucked it under his jacket, counting the numbers of the tenement houses. No. 242. No. 244. No. 246.
When he had spoken to his brother on the telephone, his brother had been unwilling to meet uptown, to meet in a restaurant, to meet at a reasonable hour. He had insisted they meet in the Gashouse district at eleven o’clock where he had some business to attend to. He found him sitting on the stoop of No. 254 smoking a cigarette, looking as pale as a miner.
—Hey Hank.
—Hello Teddy.
—How are you?
Hank didn’t bother to answer or get up or ask him how he was. Hank had stopped asking how he was a long time ago.
—What have you got there? Hank said, nodding his head at the lump under his jacket. The head of John the Baptist?
He took out the hat.
—It’s a Panama hat.
Hank nodded with a wry smile.
—Panama!
—It shrinks in the rain, he explained.
—Of course it does.
—How’s the work going? he asked Hank, changing the subject.
—Everything I imagined and more.
—Are you still working on the marquee paintings?
—Didn’t you hear? I sold the lot of them to the Museum of Modern Art. Just in time to stave off eviction.
—Actually, that’s one of the reasons I wanted to see you. I just got a bit of a windfall. And I don’t know when I’ll get another. You could put some of it toward the rent. . . .
He took the envelope out of his jacket pocket.
Hank’s expression soured at the sight of it.
A car pulled up in front of the stoop. It was a police car. Before turning fully around, he put the envelope back in his pocket.
The officer in the passenger seat rolled down his window. He had dark eyebrows and olive skin.
—Everything all right? the patrolman asked helpfully.
—Yes, officer. Thanks for stopping.
—Okay, he said. But watch out for yourselves. This is a nigger block.
—Sure thing, officer, Hank called over his shoulder. And you watch out on Mott Street. That’s a wop block.
Both officers got out of the car. The driver already had his baton in hand. Hank stood up, ready to meet them at the curb.
He had to step in between his brother and the officers. He put both hands up in front of his chest and spoke in a quiet, apologetic voice.
—He didn’t mean it, officers. He’s been drinking. He’s my brother. I’m taking him home right now.
The officers studied him. They studied his suit and his haircut.
—All right, the passenger-seat cop said. But don’t let us find him here later.
—Or ever, the driver-seat cop said.
They got back in the car and drove away.
He turned to Hank shaking his head.
—What were you thinking?
—What was I thinking? I was thinking, why don’t you mind your own fucking business?
It was all going wrong. He reached into his pocket and took out the envelope again anyway. They were standing face-to-face now.
—Here, he said with his best conciliatory tone. Take it. Then let’s get out of here. We can go get a drink.
Hank didn’t look at the money.
—I don’t want it.
—Take it Hank.
—You earned it. You keep it.
—Come on, Hank. I earned it for the both of us.
As soon as he said it, he knew he shouldn’t have.
Here it comes, he thought. He watched Hank’s torso rotate and his arm extending from the shoulder. It knocked him off his feet.
It began to rain more heavily.
Hank always had a good cross, he thought to himself, tasting the iron on his lips.
Hank leaned over him, but it wasn’t to give him a hand. It was to tell him off.
—Don’t you put that money on me. I didn’t tell you to make it. I’m not living on Central Park. That’s your business, brother.
He sat upright and wiped the blood from his lips.
Hank stepped away and bent over to pick something up. He assumed it was the money, which had spilled from the envelope. But it wasn’t the money. It was the hat.
Hank walked away, leaving him on Twenty-second Street, sitting on the cement in the pouring rain with the Panama hat shrinking on his head.
FALL
CHAPTER TWENTY
Hell Hath No Fury
I read a lot of Agatha Christies that fall of 1938—maybe all of them. The Hercule Poirots, the Miss Marples. Death on the Nile. The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Murders . . . on the Links, . . . at the Vicarage, and, ... on the Orient Express. I read them on the subway, at the deli, and in my bed alone.
You can make what claims you will about the psychological nuance of Proust or the narrative scope of Tolstoy, but you can’t argue that Mrs. Christie fails to please. Her books are tremendously satisfying.
Yes, they’re formulaic. But that’s one of the reasons they are so satisfying. With every character, every room, every murder weapon feeling at once newly crafted and familiar as rote (the role of the postimperialist uncle from India here being played by the spinster from South Wales, and the mismatched bookends standing in for the jar of fox poison on the upper shelf of the gardener’s shed), Mrs. Christie doles out her little surprises at the carefully calibrated pace of a nanny dispensing sweets to the children in her care.
But I think there is another reason they please—a reason that is at least as important, if not more so—and that is that in Agatha Christie’s universe everyone eventually gets what they deserve.
Inheritance or penury, love or loss, a blow to the head or the hangman’s noose, in the pages of Agatha Christie’s books men and women, whatever their ages, whatever their caste, are ultimately brought face-to-face with a destiny that suits them. Poirot and Marple are not really central characters in the traditional sense. They are simply the agencies of an intricate moral equilibrium that was established by the Primary Mover at the dawn of time.
For the most part, in the course of our daily lives we abide the abundant evidence that no such universal justice exists. Like a cart horse, we plod along the cobblestones dragging our masters’ wares with our heads down and our blinders in place, waiting patiently for the next cube of sugar. But there are certain times when chance suddenly provides the justice that Agatha Christies promise. We look around at the characters cast in our own lives—our heiresses and gardeners, our vicars and nannies, our late-arriving guests who are not exactly what they seem—and discover that before the end of the weekend all assembled will get their just deserts.
But when we do so, we rarely remember to count ourselves among their company.
That Tuesday morning in September, when Mason Tate showed his concerns for my health, I didn’t bother trying to apologize. I certainly didn’t b
other trying to explain. I just sat down in my wheelchair and started typing. Because I could tell exactly where I stood—about three feet from the trapdoor in the floorboards.
In Mason Tate’s world, there was no room for extenuating circumstances or divided loyalties; so, there wasn’t going to be much patience with displays of jauntiness or wit or other signals of the self-assured. I was just going to have to shoulder the yoke and accept whatever additional humiliations the boss had in store for me, until I had earned my way back into his good graces.
So that’s what I did. I arrived a little earlier. I avoided the watercooler. I listened to Mr. Tate’s critiques of others without a smirk. And Friday evening when Alley went to the automat, like any good penitent from the Middle Ages I went home and copied out rules of grammar and usage:
• When you are reluctant to do something, you are loath to do it, not loathe.
• Of toward and towards, the former is preferred in America, the latter in the UK.
• With possessives, the apostrophe s is used in all proper names ending in s other than Moses and Jesus.
• Use colons and the impersonal passive sparingly.
As if on cue: There was a knock at my door.
It was three succinct raps, too precious to be Detective Tilson or the Western Union boy. I opened the door to find Anne Grandyn’s secretary standing in the hall. He was wearing a three-piece suit, every button buttoned.
—Good evening, Miss Kontent.
—Kontent.
—Yes. Of course. Kontent.
Though as disciplined as a Prussian soldier, Bryce couldn’t resist eyeing my apartment over my shoulder. The sum of what little he saw lent a hint of satisfaction to his terse little smile.
—Yes? I prompted.
—I apologize for bothering you at home . . .
He added a sort of grave inflection to the word home to indicate his sympathies.
