by Amor Towles
—Who is this we you keep mentioning, Mr. Benton? Is there someone hiding with you back there—behind all those stacks of paper?
—No, Marcus said with a smile. By we, I generally refer to the studio. But more specifically, I’m referring to Mr. Selznick, our chief; and Jack Warner over at Warner Brothers, where Miss de Havilland is still under contract. They both have a keen interest in Miss de Havilland’s welfare.
—Ah, said Miss Ross. And exactly what sorts of missteps are they imagining? Surely they’re not afraid of another broken shoulder strap?
—Of course not, said Marcus with a light laugh (followed by a thoughtful pause). Through no fault of her own, a young woman in Miss de Havilland’s position is exposed to a variety of hazards. Over the course of time, there are bound to be . . . unfortunate encounters . . . awkward entanglements . . . ill-advised alliances . . .
Miss Ross exhibited an expression of mild surprise.
—Encounters, entanglements, and alliances! Mr. Benton, that doesn’t sound like a favor. That sounds like a job . . .
Having let their minds wander in the heat of the afternoon, the disparate souls of the jury looked up in unison. For whether they had spent their years of Christian toil on the floor of a mill or behind a plow—a day’s wage for a day’s work was something they well understood.
Mr. Benton opened his mouth.
Miss Ross raised her eyebrows.
But it was an impatient voice in the waiting room that broke the silence.
They both looked back at the replicated oaken door, which flew open to admit a man in his late thirties with rolled up sleeves and wire-rimmed glasses.
—Is this her?
—David . . .
He turned to look at Miss Ross.
—What does she say?
—We were just finishing up. I’ll come and find you on the set as soon as we’re done.
Ignoring Marcus, David pushed back the stacks of paper and sat on the edge of the desk.
—Miss Ross, isn’t it? I’m David O. Selznick, the head of the studio.
David paused to make sure the full measure of this declaration could be taken. When Miss Ross acted suitably impressed, he continued:
—At this moment, we are in the midst of making what could well be the greatest motion picture of all time. And I have left the set for one reason: to tell you the most closely guarded secret of Hollywood.
Miss Ross cast a quick glance at Marcus, then sat up with an expression of scholastic enthusiasm. While for his part, David barreled ahead—speaking with his trademark urgency, attention to detail, and utter disregard for whether what he was saying was furthering or confounding his purpose.
—Without a doubt, there are Titanic personalities at the helm of Hollywood. And to those who read the papers, it must seem that we alone deserve the credit or condemnation for what reaches the screen. But making a movie is a contingent art, Miss Ross. Yes, a great producer starts with a vision and personally assembles its elements. After an extensive search, he chooses the Mona Lisa as his model. He selects a dress that will drape across her shoulders just so. He arranges her hair. He locates the perfect landscape as a backdrop. He makes her comfortable, unself-conscious. Then patiently, he waits for her to express her innermost humanity through a smile so that he can capture it on canvas. But at that very moment, the studio doors fling open to admit an onslaught of actors and extras, stuntmen and cameramen, foley artists, fitters, gaffers, best boys—every one of whom brandishes a brush.
David spoke of his employees with a grimace, as if their arrival signaled civilization’s second descent into the Dark Ages.
—What I am telling you, Miss Ross, is that every single one of the two hundred men and women I have enlisted to help make my picture can ruin it.
He began ticking off potential setbacks:
—A poorly scripted line of dialogue. A hapless delivery. A garish gown. Unflattering lighting. Maudlin music. Any of these bumbled details can turn a carefully crafted romance into claptrap or a heart-wrenching tragedy into a vaudeville farce. And to this list of pitfalls, I add the public reputations of my stars.
David stood and rolled his sleeves a little tighter, his standard cue that he was about to sum up.
—A movie is not a fancy, Miss Ross. It is not an entertainment or a midsummer night’s dream. It is not even a mirage. It is something more tenuous, essential, and rare. And it is my job to ensure that it reaches its audience in an utterly uncompromised condition.
He thrust his hand forward and Miss Ross took it.
—We’re glad to have you on board, he said.
Then he strode out of the office, yanking the door so soundly behind him that Marcus’s suit coat swung on its hanger like a lantern in the wind.
Miss Ross rose from her chair. She didn’t rise like David to signal that she’d be summing up. She rose to put Marcus’s piles of paper in their proper spots, taking the time to delicately true the edges of each stack with the palms of her hand.
How did it come to this? Marcus found himself wondering. As a young attorney, he spent a day in court for every day behind his desk. From season to season, in the upper gallery the fans would be waved or the sneezes stifled as he rose deliberately from his chair and walked toward the jury box to face the twelve of his fellow men who had been summoned to sit in judgment—each one fashioned in the Lord’s image, yet no two alike. It was for that very moment that he had become a lawyer: that moment when the citizenry, intent on voicing its innermost concerns and meting out the full measure of its vengeance or mercy, was still prepared to listen.
And yet, Marcus had not entered a courtroom in more than three years.
In fact, half the very documents that were stacked upon his desk had been drafted to avert an appearance in court: stays; requests for summary judgment; terms of settlement. On top of the stack that Miss Ross was straightening at that very moment was a motion to dismiss—which had presumably begun its journey as a tree. Solitary and majestic, that tree had provided shade to some little patch of America: in a churchyard, perhaps, or a pasture, or along a bend in the river where Whistling Billy McGuire had cast his line. And then, after half a century of providing relief from the sun so reliably, this tree had been unceremoniously felled—so that a middle-aged man without a wife or children sitting in an office a thousand miles away could string his carefully qualified arguments together end-to-end.
Through words and clauses.
Paragraphs and pages.
Quires.
Reams.
Bales.
In just three years, Marcus must have caused the clearing of ten thousand acres of virgin growth—single handedly stripping the likes of the Ozarks as bare as might five generations of shipbuilders.
How it would have confounded his father to see it—his father, who for more than thirty-eight years served four hundred families six days a week, providing all manner of seed and feedstock by the pound and the bushel and the peck, and who left behind an unlocked iron box with a marriage license, a birth certificate, a balanced bank account, a cancelled mortgage, two pages of outstanding receipts, and a handwritten last will and testament—for a grand total of ten pieces of paper.
A ray of sunlight graced the paper-laden desk. Marcus followed its diagonal trajectory back though the louvered shades, out into the dusk of the whippoorwill’s call, beyond Buildings Five and Six, beyond Stages Ten, Eleven, and Twelve to the farthest reaches of the lot where that well-stocked tributary of the Mississippi River flowed without effort or interruption.
Miss Ross politely cleared her throat.
She had resumed her place in her chair and was smiling. It wasn’t a smug smile or a cruel one. It was knowing and sympathetic. It was the way his grandmother used to smile whenever he placed her gin card on top of the discard pile.
—Now, where were we . . . ? Marcus ve
ntured a little half-heartedly.
—I believe we were talking about favors and jobs.
—Yes. So we were, Miss Ross. So we were. And what exactly did you have in mind . . .?
—I didn’t have anything in mind, Mr. Benton. But as long as you’re asking, I suppose I should take some time to think about it.
She stood and proffered her hand.
—It was a pleasure meeting you, she said and she seemed like she meant it.
Then she walked to the bookcase to collect her things. But as she was reaching for her hat, she paused to study the head of Caesar. She picked it up and tossed it lightly in one hand. She looked back at Marcus with the same knowing and sympathetic smile. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t need to. For the question was implicit: How much does this weigh, Mr. Benton?
She returned the bust to its place with unnecessary care and picked up the rod and hat.
—Mr. Selznick on the line for you, said the electronic voice.
Miss Ross joined Marcus in looking at the intercom. Then rather than heading for the door, she came back toward him. She leaned the rod against his desk and dropped the hat on top of his motion to dismiss.
—I think you need these more than I do, she said.
And when she walked out, she didn’t yank the door shut behind her. She closed it softly enough that Marcus’s jacket swung at the pace of a pendulum.
Eve
AS FAR AS EVE was concerned, Chester’s should have ushered in a brand-new era of city planning. Plunked on a small paved lot on the corner of Pico and Sepulveda, Chester’s was a coffee shop in the shape of a giant coffee pot—complete with a ribbon of steam that twisted from its spout twenty four hours a day. Other than a bench bolted to the ground by the Sepulveda curb, there was no place to sit, and there was nothing for sale other than a twelve ounce cup of coffee brewed in cream. As the sign over the cash register made clear, the three ways you could get your coffee at Chester’s were sweetened, unsweetened, and somewhere else.
A chatty panhandler once reported to Eve that Chester had come to California as a prospector in the 1880s. This was malarkey, of course, but Eve liked to believe there was some truth to the tale. She could just picture the old goat sitting by his campfire on the banks of a crooked crick, tinkering with the roasting of his beans, the granularity of his grind, the rapidity of his boil—until his brew was without flaw. So when he finally hit pay dirt, rather than recline in a claw-footed tub, he bought this corner, built this pot, and set about doing the only thing the Good Lord had ever intended him to do.
And what the Good Lord intended for others was their own goddamn business.
•
SURE, AT FIRST GLANCE Chester’s style of commerce seemed a little crackers—Eve would give you that. But all you had to do was spend three bucks in an Automat to see that he was onto something. Because when all was said and done, no slinger of hash was going to master the subtleties of a lemon meringue pie and a tuna fish sandwich.
But on the corner of Pico and Sepulveda? There was no hint of the half-assed. Not in Chester’s paper cup. With its caramel color and smoky aroma, his coffee was incontestably good. Indisputably good. Unassailably, incontrovertibly, indismissably good.
Come to think of it—you could make a similar claim about the donuts at that donut shop in the shape of a donut over on La Cienega!
In fact, if the Mayor of Los Angeles had any sense, he would immediately establish a new ordinance requiring that every purveyor in the city limits sell no more than one item and that he sell it from a shop in the shape of his merchandise. Like orange juice from a great orange orb, or whiskey from a bottle as tall as the Eiffel Tower. With that simple reform in place, thousands of Chesters from across the country would hear the call. They’d pull up stakes, load their wagons, and head west to this city, which not only approved of but applauded their cranky, intolerant artistry.
—One, please, Eve said to the girl in the window. Unsweetened.
—That’ll be ten cents.
—Keep the change.
With coffee in hand and a few minutes to spare, Eve crossed the lot to take up residence on the solitary bench by the curb.
Whenever Eve came to Chester’s in the morning or early afternoon, the bench was empty—like those benches you’d see out on the Hoosier highways, covered in dust and dreaming of Greyhound buses. But whenever she came at 5:30 p.m., rain or shine Chester’s bench was occupied by a silver-haired banker in a Brooks Brothers suit. Seeing the old banker there on the corner of Pico and Sepulveda had always struck Eve as a little incongruous, even mystifying. But the minute she sat down, she could see why after a hard day’s work he chose to come to this spot for one last cup of coffee before heading home: It was a privileged position from which to witness the motley splendor of the commonwealth. For as narrow as the menu was at Chester’s, the clientele was just as broad.
Why, at that very moment, a pair of sleeveless Oklahomans fresh off an oil rig were sipping their coffees beside a posse of Mexicali grape pickers. And chatting up the girl at the window was a matinee idol-in-the-making even as the storefront preacher in the secondhand suit standing right behind him waited to place his order with the patience of Job. Denizens and drifters. The fabulous and the fallen. It simply livened the spirits to see so many different kinds of people dedicating a few unspoken-for minutes to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Eve leaned back against the bench and took a sip of her coffee thinking that she was certainly going to miss Chester’s when she left L.A. And just as her thoughts were shifting to trunks and tickets and the other practicalities of intercontinental travel, as if on cue a dusty black Ford with a stack of luggage strapped to its roof pulled into a parking space a few feet away. Eve watched with interest as the doors flung open and a roly-poly pair of pensioners emerged. Before he could even stretch his back, the husband put his hands on his hips and took in the giant coffee pot from its wide blue base to the tippity top where its wisp of steam trailed toward the heavens unceasingly.
—Now, I’ve seen everything, he said.
Eve took another sip of her coffee and smiled at sudden thoughts of her great Aunt Polly. Clad in black from head to toe, her needlepoint never far from reach, proper Aunt Polly from Bloomington, Indiana, also liked to let people know when she had seen everything. What was it about that phrase, mused Eve, that made it so popular with those who had no business using it?
•
IT WAS IN THE Fire-cracking month of July that Aunt Polly and Uncle Jake would pay their yearly visit. And while they stayed, no matter how hellacious the heat, afternoon tea would be served in the sitting room without fail. For Aunt Polly loved afternoon tea as much as she loved Jesus Christ—and it was through constancy that she intended to prove her devotion to both. So, the day before Aunt Polly arrived, Eve’s mother would take the fine china from the back of the closet (where it belonged), so that Maisy could sweep the dead flies from the cups. And every afternoon at 2:00, the ladies would convene around the teapot as Eve and her sister were shooed out the kitchen door.
At least until 1928, when Evelyn turned fifteen.
That fateful summer, Aunt Polly announced that henceforth the privilege of tea would be hers. (Naturally, this privilege came with a floral dress, barrettes, and the manners befitting a lady.) Since Alice was only twelve, she was allowed to wear pigtails and overalls and stick out her tongue as she zipped out the door in search of bullfrogs and the rest of her kin. While Evelyn, hands on her knees, was left to return the stare of the grandfather clock.
Aunt Polly recognized the infallibility of her Deity in all respects but one: He had made summer days too long. So to complete the perfection of His plan, Aunt Polly was intent upon fending off their influence.
How does one fend off the influence of a summer day? You start by serving tea at two in the afternoon. Then, having thanked the Good L
ord for His bounty and passed the biscuits, you talk about relatives long since dead. You make sure to dredge up some story that you’ve dredged up before (having come to the comforting conclusion that the world will welcome as many dredgings as you can muster.) And when the chitchat flags, rather than adjourn like hummingbirds into the waning wonder of the vernal afternoon, you pick up a magazine.
For Aunt Polly, this was preferably a Saturday Evening Post that she had read before. Turning through the pages, she would occasionally stop at a photograph—say, of a short-haired Amelia Earhart preparing to cross the Atlantic by plane—in order to remark with a mix of indignation, wisdom, and finality:
—Now, I’ve seen everything.
•
FOR GREAT UNCLE JAKE (a harmless old broker of crop insurance who once shook the hand of Herbert Hoover) the headshaking phrase of choice was If I had a nickel fer. As in, If I had nickel fer every time the papers called for rain.
So enamored with this phrase was Uncle Jake that an If I had a nickel fer might well be the only sentence he uttered over the course of a family meal. Which was all the more striking when you considered that his solitary statement would linger forever unfinished.
For, whatever the recurring circumstance that was to conclude in this unprecedented rain of nickels upon Uncle Jake’s head, he just couldn’t seem to pin down how he’d put his windfall to use: Invest in a new pair of suspenders? Spring for a night on the town? Make a solo flight across the Atlantic, or as far from Aunt Polly as earthly geography would allow? Who could say?
Maybe Herbert Hoover, but not Uncle Jake.
One Sunday supper (after an exceptionally languorous tea), when Uncle Jake happened to observe: If I had a nickel fer every time I heard Roozyvelt on the radio, Eve simply couldn’t stand it. She couldn’t abide it. Not in good Christian conscience.
—What, Uncle Jake? she implored (after dropping her knife and fork on her plate). What is it exactly that you would do, once you had all those goddamn nickels?