by Amor Towles
—But Mrs. Grandyn wanted you to have this as soon as possible.
He flicked two fingers forward revealing a small envelope. I plucked it free and weighed it in the air.
—Too important to trust to the post office?
—Mrs. Grandyn was hoping for an immediate response.
—She couldn’t phone?
—On the contrary. We tried telephoning. Many times. But it seems . . . Bryce gestured to where the unhooked phone still sat on the floor.
—Ah.
I opened the envelope. Inside was a handwritten note. Please come and see me tomorrow at four. I think it’s important that we speak. She signed it, Respectfully, A. Grandyn, and concluded with the postscript: I’ve ordered olives.
—Can I tell Mrs. Grandyn to expect you? Bryce asked.
—I’m afraid that I shall have to think on it.
—If I may be so bold, Miss Kontent, how long might that take?
—Overnight. But you are welcome to wait.
Naturally, I should have thrown Anne’s summons in the trash. Almost all summons merit an ignominious end. As Anne was a woman of intelligence and will, a summons from her should have been looked upon with particular distrust. And on top of all that was her presumption that I should go to see her! The gall, as they say in all places other than New York.
I tore the letter into a thousand pieces and hurled them at the spot on the wall where a fireplace should have been. Then I carefully considered what I should wear.
For what was the point of standing on ceremony now? Hadn’t we sailed a few hundred nautical miles beyond grandstanding? Hercule Poirot certainly wouldn’t have turned her down. He would have been hoping for such a summons—practically counting on one—as the unforeseen development that would speed the plow of justice.
Besides, I could never resist the sign-off Respectfully; or those who remembered my cocktail preferences with such exactitude.
The bell at suite 1801 was answered at 4:15 by Bryce with a smarmy grin.
—Hello Bryce, I said, holding the sibilant just long enough, so that it would hiss.
—Miss Kon-tent, he said punching back. We’ve been ex-pect-ing you.
He gestured toward the foyer. I walked past him into the living room.
Anne was sitting at her desk. She was wearing glasses, the half-frame sort that prudish women wear—a nice touch. She looked up from her correspondence and raised an eyebrow to acknowledge that I had dispensed with the normal formalities. To even the score she gestured toward her couch and continued writing. I walked past her desk to one of the windows.
Along Central Park West, the taller apartment buildings jutted over the trees in solitary fashion like commuters on a railroad platform in the hours before the morning rush. The sky was Tiepolo blue. After a week of sudden cold, the leaves had turned, creating a bright orange canopy that stretched all the way to Harlem. It was almost as if the park was a jewel box and the sky was the lid. You had to give Olmstead credit: He was perfectly right to have bulldozed the poor to make way for it.
Behind me, I could hear Anne folding the letter, sealing the envelope, scratching the address with the nib of her pen. Another summons, no doubt.
—Thank you, Bryce, she said handing him the letter. That will be all.
I turned around as Bryce left the room. Anne offered me a benign smile. She looked opulent, unabashed, as arresting as ever.
—Your secretary’s a bit of a prig, I observed, taking a seat on the couch.
—Who, Bryce? I suppose so. But he’s quite capable, and really more of a protégé.
—A protégé. Wow. In what? Faustian bargains?
Anne raised an ironic eyebrow and moved to the bar.
—You’re rather well read for a working-class girl, she said with her back to me.
—Really? I’ve found that all my well-read friends are from the working classes.
—Oh my. Why do you think that is? The purity of poverty?
—No. It’s just that reading is the cheapest form of entertainment.
—Sex is the cheapest form of entertainment.
—Not in this house.
Anne laughed like a sailor and turned around with two martinis. She sat in the chair catty-corner to me and plunked the drinks down. In the center of the table was a bowl of fruits so well-to-do that half of them I’d never seen before. There was a small green furry sphere. A yellow succulent that looked like a miniature football. To get to Anne’s table, they must have traveled farther than I had traveled in my entire life.
Laying in wait beside the fruit bowl was the dish of promised olives. She picked up the dish and poured half of them into my glass. They were piled so high that they broke the surface of the gin like a volcanic island.
—Kate, she said. Let’s dispense with the catfight. I know it’s a temptation, and a sweet one. But it’s beneath us.
She raised her glass and extended it toward me.
—Truce?
—Sure, I said.
I clinked her glass and we drank.
—So. Why don’t you just tell me why you asked me here.
—That’s the spirit, she said.
She reached forward and plucked the olive off the apex of my island. She put it in her mouth and chewed thoughtfully. Then she shook her head with a laugh.
—You’ll find this funny; but I hadn’t the slightest suspicion about you and Tinker. So when you stormed out of Chinoiserie, for a second I actually thought that you were scandalized. The older woman and the younger man, or what have you. It was only when I saw Tinker’s expression that I put it together.
—Life is full of misleading signals.
She smiled conspiratorially.
—Yes. Rebuses and labyrinths. We rarely know exactly where we stand in relation to someone else, and we never know where two confederates stand in relation to each other. But the sum of the angles of a triangle is always 180 degrees—isn’t it.
—Well, I think I understand a little better how you and Tinker stand in relation to one another.
—I’m glad of that, Katey. Why shouldn’t you? I had my little game for a while. But our relationship isn’t really a secret. And it’s not that complicated. It’s nowhere near as complicated as your relationship with him or my relationship with you. Between Tinker and me the understanding is as straight as the line in a ledger.
Anne put her thumb and finger together and drew an imaginary pencil across the air to emphasize the linear perfection of the accountant’s underscore.
—There’s a pretty clear difference between physical and emotional needs, she continued. Women like you and I understand this. Most women don’t. Or they’re unwilling to admit it. When it comes to love, most women insist that the emotional and physical aspects of a relationship be inextricably intertwined. To suggest to them otherwise is like trying to convince them that their children might not love them one day. Their very survival depends upon believing otherwise, no matter what history suggests to the contrary. Of course, there are plenty of women who turn a blind eye to their husbands’ indiscretions, but most of them are miserable about it. They perceive it as a tear in the fabric of their lives. But if one of those women were to look coolly into herself, when her husband comes into a restaurant a half an hour late smelling of Chanel No. 5, she’s probably more angry about being kept waiting than about the perfume on his collar. But as I say—I think we see eye to eye on all this. And that’s why I asked you here instead of Tinker. I think that you and I may come to an understanding that serves Tinker well. An understanding in which we all get what we want.
To emphasize the spirit of cooperation, Anne leaned forward and took another olive off of my stack. I put three fingers in my drink, scooped out half the olives, and dumped them in her glass.
—I’m not sure that I’m as good as you are at using people, I said.
—Is that what you think I’m doing?
Anne took an apple from the fruit bowl and held it up as if it were a crystal ba
ll.
—You see this apple? Sweet. Crisp. Ruby red. It wasn’t always like that, you know. The first apples in America were mottled and too bitter to eat. But after generations of grafting, now they’re all like this one. Most people think this is man’s victory over nature. But it’s not. In evolutionary terms, it’s the apple’s victory.
She gestured disdainfully toward the exotics in the bowl.
—It’s the apple’s victory over hundreds of other species competing for the same resources—the same sunlight, water and soil. By appealing to the senses and physical needs of humans—we beasts who happen to have the axes and oxen—the apple has been spreading across the globe at what in evolutionary terms is a breakneck pace.
Anne leaned forward to put the apple back.
—I’m not using Tinker, Katherine. Tinker is the apple. He has ensured his survival while others have languished by learning how to appeal to the likes of you and me. And probably to some who went before us.
Some people called me Katey, some Kate, some Katherine. Anne cycled between the options as if she was comfortable with all my incarnations. She sat back in her chair adopting an almost academic pose.
—I’m not saying this to Tinker’s discredit, you understand. Tinker is an extraordinary person. Perhaps more than you know. And I’m not angry with him either. I assume that the two of you have slept together and that you might well be in love. But that doesn’t instill in me jealousy or spite. I don’t view you as a rival. I knew from the beginning that he would eventually find someone. I don’t mean a firefly like your friend. I mean someone as sharp and urbane as me but a little more contemporary . So, the two of you should know that with me it is nowhere near all or nothing. It’s quite happily some or something. All I ask is that he be on time.
As Anne was elaborating, I finally got it—the reason that I had been summoned: She thought Tinker was with me. He must have walked out on her, and she had leapt to the conclusion that I had him stashed away. For a brief moment, I considered playing along just to spoil her afternoon.
—I don’t know where he is, I said. If Tinker’s stopped answering to your whistle, it’s got nothing to do with me.
Anne eyed me cautiously.
—I see, she said.
Buying time, she walked casually to the bar and poured gin into the shaker. Unlike Bryce, she didn’t bother with the silver tongs. She put her hand in the bucket, took up a fistful of ice, and dumped it in the booze. Rattling the shaker lightly in one hand, she came back and sat at the edge of her seat. She seemed immersed in thought, weighing possibilities, recalibrating—uncharacteristically unsure of herself.
—Would you like another? she asked.
—I’m fine.
She began filling her own glass but stopped halfway. She looked disappointed with the gin, as if it weren’t translucent enough.
—Every time I drink before five, she said, I remember why I don’t.
I stood up.
—Thanks for the drink, Anne.
She didn’t protest. She followed me to the door. But when she shook my hand at the threshold, she held it for a moment longer than is normally polite.
—Keep in mind what I’ve said, Katey. About the understanding that we could reach.
—Anne . . .
—I know. You don’t know where he is. But something tells me you’re going to hear from him before I do.
She let go and I turned toward the elevator. Its doors were open and the elevator boy briefly met my eye. It was the same friendly young man who had elevated me and the unnewlyweds back in June.
—Kate.
—Yes? I asked, turning back.
—Most people have more needs than wants. That’s why they live the lives they do. But the world is run by those whose wants outstrip their needs.
I mulled this over for a moment. It led me to one conclusion:
—You’re very good with the closing remark, Anne.
—Yes, she said. It’s one of my specialties.
Then she softly shut the door.
When I left the Plaza, again the doorman nodded to me without signaling a cab. Conceding the point, I began walking down Sixth Avenue. In no mood to go home, I slipped into a Marlene Dietrich picture at the Ambassador. The picture was an hour under way, so I watched the second half and then stayed for the first. Like most movies, things looked dire at the midpoint and were happily resolved at the end. Watching it my way made it seem a little truer to life.
Outside the theater I hailed a cab in order to teach the doorman a lesson, retroactively. As we drove downtown, I debated what I should get drunk on once I was home. Red wine? White wine? Whiskey? Gin? Like people in the world of Mason Tate, they each had their virtues and vices. Maybe I’d leave it to chance. Maybe I’d blindfold myself, spin around, and pin the tail on the bottle. Just the thought of such a game lifted my spirits. But when I got out of the cab at Eleventh Street, who should appear but Theodore Grey. He emerged from a doorway like a fugitive. Except that he was wearing a clean white shirt and a peacoat that had never set eyes on the sea.
As a quick aside, let me observe that in moments of high emotion—whether they’re triggered by anger or envy, humiliation or resentment—if the next thing you’re going to say makes you feel better, then it’s probably the wrong thing to say. This is one of the finer maxims that I’ve discovered in life. And you can have it, since it’s been of no use to me.
—Hello, Teddy.
—Katey, I need to talk to you.
—I’m late for a date.
He winced.
—Can’t you give me five minutes?
—All right. Shoot.
He looked around the street.
—Isn’t there a place where we can sit down?
I took him to the coffee shop on the corner of Twelfth and Second. The place was one hundred feet long and ten feet wide. A cop at the counter was building the Empire State Building out of sugar cubes and two Italian boys sat at the back eating steak and eggs. We took the booth near the front. When the waitress asked if we were ready to order, Tinker looked up as if he didn’t understand the question.
—Why don’t you bring us coffee, I said.
The waitress rolled her eyes.
Tinker watched her walk away. Then he dragged his gaze back to me as if it took an act of will. He had a satisfying grayness to the skin and rings under the eyes as if he hadn’t been sleeping or eating well. It made his clothes look borrowed, which in a way, I suppose they were.
—I want to explain, he said.
—What’s to explain?
—You’ve got every reason to be angry.
—I’m not angry.
—But I didn’t seek out my situation with Anne.
First Anne wants to explain her situation with Tinker. Now Tinker wants to explain his situation with Anne. I guess there are two sides to every story. And, as usual, they were both excuses.
—I’ve got a great little anecdote for you, I said, interrupting him. You’ll think it’s a hoot. But before I get to that, let me ask you a few things.
He looked up with grim resignation.
—Was Anne actually an old friend of your mother’s?
. . .
—No. I was at Providence Trust when we met. The head of the bank invited me to a party in Newport. . . .
—And this exclusive arrangement you have—this concession to sell the shares of a railroad—those are her holdings?
. . .
—Yes.
—Were you her banker before or after your situation?
. . .
—I don’t know. When we met, I told her I wanted to move to New York. She offered to introduce me to some people. To help me get on my feet.
I whistled.
—Wow.
I shook my head in appreciation.
—The apartment?
. . .
—It’s hers.
—Nice coat by the way. Where do you keep them all? Now what was I about to tell y
ou? Oh yeah. I think you’ll find this funny. A few nights after Eve bounced you, she threw herself such a celebration that she passed out in an alley. The cops found my name in her pocket and they picked me up to identify her. But before they let us go, a nice detective sat me down with a cup of coffee and tried to get us to change our ways. Because he thought we were prostitutes. Given Evey’s scars, he assumed she’d been roughed up on the job.
I raised my eyebrows and toasted Tinker with my coffee cup.
—Now, how ironic is that!
—That’s unfair.
—Is it?
I took a sip of coffee. He didn’t bother to defend himself, so I barreled ahead.
—Did Eve know? About you and Anne, I mean.
He shook his head wanly. The very definition of wanly. The apotheosis of wanly.
—I think she suspected there might be another woman. But I doubt she realized it was Anne.
I looked out the window. A fire truck rolled to a stop at the traffic light with all the firemen standing on the runners, hanging from the hooks and ladders, dressed for a fire. A boy on the corner holding his mother’s hand waved and all the firemen waved back—God bless them.
—Please, Katey. It’s over between Anne and me. I came back from Wallace’s to tell her. That’s why we were having lunch.
I turned back to Tinker thinking out loud.
—I wonder if Wallace knew?
Tinker winced again. He just couldn’t shake that wounded look. It was suddenly inconceivable that he had seemed so attractive. In retrospect, he was so obviously a fiction—with his monogrammed this and his monogrammed that. Like that silver flask in its leather sheath, which he must have topped off in his spotless kitchen with a tiny little funnel—despite the fact that on every other street corner in Manhattan you can buy whiskey in a bottle that’s sized for your pocket.
When you thought of Wallace in his simple gray suit giving quiet counsel to the silver-haired friends of his father, Tinker seemed a vaudeville performer by comparison. I suppose we don’t rely on comparison enough to tell us whom it is that we are talking to. We give people the liberty of fashioning themselves in the moment—a span of time that is so much more manageable, stageable, controllable than is a lifetime.
