by Amor Towles
—Those are some earrings, I said.
She appreciated herself in the mirror.
—Aren’t they, though.
—Tinker’s treating you right.
She lit her own cigarette and tossed the match over her shoulder. Then she leaned against the wall, took a drag and smiled.
—He didn’t give them to me.
—Then who?
—I found them in the bedside table.
—Gadzooks.
She took a drag and nodded with her eyebrows raised.
—Those have got to be worth over ten thousand dollars, I said.
—And then some.
—What were they doing there?
—No good to anyone.
I spread my legs and dropped my cigarette in the bowl.
—But here’s the best part, she said. I’ve worn them every day since we got back from Palm Beach and he hasn’t uttered the peep of a sheep.
I laughed. It was a great old Evey-sort-of-thing to say.
—Well, I guess they’re yours now.
She tamped out her cigarette in the basin of her sink.
—You better believe it, Sis.
Two more bottles of burgundy were poured with the main course. They may as well have been poured over our heads. I don’t think anyone tasted the tenderloin, or the lamb, or whatever it was.
Bucky, good and drunk, launched into a yarn for my benefit about how the five of them had gone to a casino in Tampa-Saint Pete. After they’d spent fifteen minutes around a roulette table, it became pretty clear that none of the boys intended to place a bet. (Presumably, they were afraid to lose the money that wasn’t theirs in the first place.) So to teach them a lesson, Eve borrowed a hundred dollars from each and scattered chips across even, black, and her birthday. When nine red came up, she paid back the principal right there on the spot and stuffed the winnings in her brassiere.
When it comes to gambling, some feel nauseated when they win and others feel nauseated when they lose. Eve had a good stomach for both.
—Bucky dear, his wife warned, you’re slurring your words.
—Slurring is the cursive of speech, I observed.
—Eckshactly, he said, elbowing me in the ribs.
Coffee in the living room was announced just in time.
Keeping an earlier promise, Eve took Wisteria on a tour of the apartment while Bucky cornered Wallace to secure a hunting invitation for the fall. So Tinker and I ended up in the living room alone. He sat down on one of the couches and I sat beside him. He put his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands. He looked back at the dining room as if he was hoping that a seventh guest would miraculously appear. He took his lighter from his pocket. He snapped the lid open and shut and then put it away again.
—It’s good of you to come, he said at last.
—It’s a dinner party, Tinker. Not a crisis.
—She looks better. Doesn’t she?
—She looks great. I told you she’d be fine.
He smiled and nodded. Then he looked me in the eye, maybe for the first time all evening.
—The thing of it is, Katey—Eve and I are sort of making a go of it.
—I know, Tinker.
—I don’t think we really set out—
—I think it’s great.
—Really?
—Absolutely.
A neutral observer would probably have raised an eyebrow at my answer. There wasn’t much jingle in my delivery, and one-word responses just have that way of not sounding very convincing. But the thing of it is, I meant it. Every one word of it.
For starters, you could hardly blame them. Balmy breezes, turquoise seas, Caribbean rum, these are well-established aphrodisiacs. But so too are proximity and necessity and the threat of despair. If, as was painfully apparent in March, Tinker and Eve had both lost something essential of themselves in that car crash, in Florida they had helped each other gain a bit of it back.
One of Newton’s laws of physics is something about how bodies in motion will hew to their trajectory unless they meet an external force. I suppose, given the nature of the world, it was perfectly likely that some such force could present itself to set Tinker and Eve off their current course; but there was no way it was going to be me.
Bucky came stumbling into the room and collapsed in a chair. Even I was relieved to see him. Tinker took the opportunity to go over to the bar. When he came back with drinks that no one needed, he took a seat on the other couch. Bucky took a grateful swig and then vaulted back into the topic of railroad shares.
—So, you think it’s in the realm, Tink? That we could get a piece of this Ashville Rail business.
—I don’t see why not, Tink conceded. If it’s the right thing for your clients.
—How about I come down to Forty Wall and we hash it out over lunch?
—Sure.
—This week?
—Oh, leave him alone, Bucky.
Wisteria had just come back with Eve.
—Don’t be such a boor, she said.
—Come on, Wyss. He doesn’t mind mixing a little business with pleasure. Do you, Tink?
—Of course not, said Tink politely.
—You see? Besides. He’s got the whole concession. The world has no choice but to beat a path to his door.
Wyss glowered.
—Evelyn, Wallace interrupted adeptly, dinner was . . . delicious.
—Hear hear, was the chorus.
For the next few minutes, there was a thorough rehashing of the courses (That meat was delicious. The sauce was perfect. And ooh that chocolate mousse.) This was a social nicety that seemed more prevalent the higher you climbed the social ladder and the less your hostess cooked. Eve accepted the compliments with appropriate panache and a dismissive wave of the hand.
When the clock struck one we were all in the foyer. Eve and Tinker had their fingers intertwined, as much to shore each other up as to show affection.
—Lovely evening.
—Terrific time.
—Must do it again.
Even Wyss was encouraging an encore, God knows why.
When the elevator came it was the same man who had taken me up earlier.
—Ground floor, he announced once he’d pulled the caging shut, as if he had formerly worked in a department store.
—That’s quite an apartment, Wyss remarked to Bucky.
—Like a phoenix from the ashes, he replied.
—How much do you think it cost?
No one answered her. Wallace was either too well raised or too disinterested. Bucky was too busy trying to bump his shoulder into mine unintentionally. I was too busy wondering when I received the invitation to the reprise, what reason I could give for not being able to attend.
And yet . . .
When I was lying in bed later that night alone and alert, with the corridors of my walk-up unusually quiet, the person foremost on my mind was Eve.
For in the years preceding, if I had chanced onto the guest list of a dinner party like this one with all its temperate discord, and stayed out much too late for a school night, my one consolation would have been finding Eve, propped on her pillows, waiting to hear every last detail.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Abandon Every Hope
One night in mid-May, as I was crossing Seventh Street on my way home, a woman my age came around the corner and knocked me off my heels.
—Watch where you’re going, she said.
Then she leaned over me to get a closer look.
—Bust my bosoms. Is that you, Kontent?
It was Fran Pacelli, the plum-chested City College dropout from down the hall at Mrs. Martingale’s. I didn’t know Fran that well, but she seemed a good enough sort. She liked to unsettle the prim at the boardinghouse by wandering the halls without a shirt on and asking loudly if they had any extra booze. One night I’d caught her climbing through a second-story window wearing nothing but high-heel shoes and a Dodgers uniform. Her father was in trucking, which in those
days usually meant that he had run liquor in the twenties. From Fran’s vocabulary, you might have suspected that she’d run a little liquor in the twenties too.
—What a lucky break! she said, pulling me to my feet. Bumping into you like this. You look great.
—Thanks, I said brushing off my skirt.
Fran looked around the street as if she was thinking something through.
—Uhm. . . . Where you headed? How about a drink? You look like you could use one.
—I thought you said I looked great.
—Sure.
She pointed back up Seventh Street.
—I know a cute little place right up here. I’ll buy you a beer. We’ll catch up. It’ll be a gas.
The cute little place turned out to be an old Irish bar. Over the front door a sign read: GOOD ALE, RAW ONIONS, NO LADIES.
—I think that means us.
—Cmon, Fran said. Don’t be such a Patsy.
Inside, the air was loud and smelled of spilled beer. Along the bar, the front lines of the Easter uprising sat shoulder to shoulder eating hard-boiled eggs and drinking stout. The floor was covered with sawdust and the tin ceiling was stained with the gaslight smoke of decades past. Most of the customers ignored us. The bartender gave us a sour look but didn’t throw us out.
Fran took in the crowd with a glance. There were a few tables in the front that were empty but she shoved her way through the drinkers with a couple of excuse-me-mates. In the back, there was a cluttered little room hung with grainy photos of the Tammany crews—the boys who rounded up votes with billy clubs and cash. Without a word, Fran began moving toward the opposite corner. At the table nearest the coal stove three young men sat huddled over their beer. One of them, a tall, thin redhead, was wearing a jumpsuit with the words Pacelli Trucking stitched on the breast in a perversely feminine script. I was beginning to get the picture.
As we approached you could hear the three of them arguing above the din; or rather, you could hear one of them—the belligerent one with his back to us.
—Second of all, he was saying to the redhead, he’s a fucking hack.
—A hack?
The redhead smiled, enjoying the tussle.
—That’s right. He’s got stamina. But he’s got no finesse. No discipline.
The small man in between the combatants shifted in his seat uneasily. You could tell he was congenitally unsettled by confrontation. But he looked back and forth as if he couldn’t afford to miss a word.
—Third of all, the belligerent one continued, he’s more overrated than Joe Louis.
—Right, Hank.
—Fourth of all, fuck you.
—Fuck me? the redhead asked. In what orifice?
As Hank started to clarify, the redhead noticed us and gave a toothy grin.
—Peaches! What are you doin here?
—Grubb?! Fran exclaimed in disbelief. Well, I’ll be damned! My friend Katey and I were in the neighborhood and just stopped in for a beer!
—What are the chances! said Grubb.
What are the chances? How about one hundred percent.
—Why don’t you join us, he said. This is Hank. This is Johnny. Grubb pulled a chair up at his side and hapless Johnny pulled up another. Hank didn’t budge. He looked more inclined to throw us out than the bartender had.
—Fran, I said. I think I’ll mosey along.
—Oh cmon, Katey. Have a beer. Then we’ll mosey together.
She didn’t wait for an answer. She went over to Grubb leaving me the seat next to Hank. Grubb poured beer from a pitcher into two glasses that looked like they’d already been used.
—Do you live around here? Fran asked Grubb.
—Do you mind? Hank said to Fran. We’re in the middle of something.
—Oh, come on, Hank. Let it go.
—Let it go where?
—Hank. I get you think he’s a hack. But he’s the fucking precursor to cubism.
—Who says?
—Picasso says.
—I’m sorry, I said. Are you guys arguing about Cézanne?
Hank looked at me sourly.
—Who the fuck do you think we’re arguing about?
—I thought you were arguing about boxing.
—That was an analogy, Hank said dismissively.
—Hank and Grubb are painters, Johnny said.
Fran squirmed with pleasure and gave me a wink.
—But Hank, Johnny ventured cautiously. Don’t you think those landscapes are nice? I mean the green and brown ones?
—No, he said.
—There’s no accounting for taste, I said to Johnny.
Hank looked at me again, but more carefully. I couldn’t tell if he was getting ready to contradict or hit me. Maybe he wasn’t sure either. Before we found out, Grubb called to a man in the doorway.
—Hey Mark.
—Hey Grubb.
—You know these guys, right? Johnny Jerkins. Hank Grey.
The men nodded to each other soberly. No one bothered introducing us girls.
Mark sat down at a nearby table and Grubb joined him. I barely noticed when Fran followed, leaving me to fend for myself. I was too busy looking at Hank Grey. Unwavering Henry Grey. Older, shorter, he looked just like Tinker after two weeks without food, and a lifetime without manners.
—Have you seen his paintings? Johnny said, gesturing surreptitiously toward Mark. Grubb says they’re a mess.
—He’s wrong about that too, Hank said mournfully.
—What do you paint? I asked.
He considered me for a moment, trying to decide whether I deserved a reply.
—Real things, he said finally. Things of beauty.
—Still lifes?
—I don’t paint bowls of oranges, if that’s what you mean.
—Can’t bowls of oranges be things of beauty?
—Not anymore they can’t.
He reached across the table and picked up the box of Lucky Strikes that was sitting in front of Johnny.
—This is a thing of beauty, he said. The boat-hull red and howitzer green. The concentric circles. These are colors with purpose. Shapes with purpose.
He took one of the cigarettes from Johnny’s pack without saying please.
—Hank painted that, Johnny said, pointing toward a canvas that was leaning against the coal scuttle.
You could tell from Johnny’s voice that he admired Hank and not just as an artist. He seemed impressed with the whole program—as if Hank was carving out an important new persona for the American male.
But it wasn’t hard to see where Hank was coming from. There was a new generation of painters trying to take Hemingway’s ethos of the bullring and apply it to canvas; or if not to canvas, then at least to innocent bystanders. They were gloomy, arrogant, brutish, and most importantly, they were unafraid of death—whatever that means for a guy who spends his days in front of an easel. I doubt Johnny had any idea how fashionable Hank’s attitude was becoming; or what sort of Brahmin bank account was propping up the rough indifference.
The painting, which was obviously by the same person who had painted the assembly of longshoremen in Tinker’s apartment, showed the loading dock of a butchery. In the foreground were trucks parked in a row and in the background loomed a large neon sign in the shape of a steer that read VITELLI’S. While figurative, the colors and lines of the painting had been simplified in the style of Stuart Davis.
Very much in the style of Stuart Davis.
—Gansevoort Street? I asked.
—That’s right, said Hank, a little impressed.
—Why did you decide to paint Vitelli’s?
—Because he lives there, said Johnny.
—Because I couldn’t get it out of my mind, corrected Hank. Neon signs are like sirens. You’ve got to tie yourself to the mast if you’re gonna paint em. You know what I mean?
—Not really.
I looked at the picture.
—But I like it, I said.
He winced.
—Cézanne painted the world.
—All those fruits and ewers and drowsy dames. That wasn’t the world. That was a bunch of guys wishing they were painters to the king.
—I’m sorry, but I’m pretty sure the painters who curried favor did history paintings and portraits. Still lifes were a more personal form.
Hank stared at me for a moment.
—Who sent you here?
—What?
—Were you the president of your debating society or something? All that may have been true a hundred years ago, or whatever, but after being soaked in admiration, one generation’s genius is another’s VD. Have you ever worked in a kitchen?
—Sure.
—Really? At summer camp? The dorm dining hall? Listen. In the army, if you draw KP, you might chop a hundred onions in half an hour. The oil gets so deep in your fingertips, for weeks you can smell it every time you take a shower. That’s what Cézanne’s oranges are now, and his landscapes too. The stink of onion in your fingertips. Okay?
—Okay.
—Yeah, okay.
I looked over at Fran thinking maybe it was time to go, but she had moved on to Grubb’s lap.
Like most belligerent people, Hank was getting tiresome fast, so I had good reason to call it a night. But I couldn’t stop wondering about Tinker’s instincts. I mean, how should I take it that he thought Hank and I would hit it off? I decided to take it badly.
—So, I gather you’re Tinker’s brother.
I definitely knocked him off the rails with that one. You could tell it was a sensation he hadn’t much experience with and didn’t much like.
—How do you know Tinker?
—We’re friends.
—Really?
—Is that surprising?
—Well, he was never much for this sort of back and forth.
—Maybe he’s got better things to do.
—Oh, he’s got better things to do, all right. And maybe he’d get around to doing them—if it weren’t for that manipulative cunt.
—She’s a friend of mine too.
—No accounting for taste. Right?