Rules of Civility (39 page)

We turned onto Central Park West, and having passed the doormen of the Dakota and the San Remo, we came to a stop at Seventy-ninth Street in front of the Museum of Natural History. From there I could see the canopy of the Beresford where Pete was opening the back door of a cab. He offered his hand to the rider, much as he had offered it to me in the past—like the night in March when Tinker had needed to go to the “office,” or the night in June when I had cadged a ride from the Dorans in my misbegotten dots.

And a thought occurred to me.

My better judgment told me to keep my mouth shut. This probably isn't the place, she said, and it certainly isn't the time. He's
persona furiosa
and you are
non grata
. But on the marble pedestal towering over the museum's steps, Teddy Roosevelt reared on his bronze horse and shouted,
Charge!

—Mr. Tate.

—Yes? (
annoyed
)

—You know the piece you've been trying to find for the premier issue?

—Yes, yes? (
impatient
)

—What if instead of the doyennes, you were to interview the doormen?

—What's that?

—None of them have the upbringing, as it were, most have the intelligence, and they see
everything
.

Mason Tate stared straight ahead for a moment. Then he rolled down his window and threw his coffee out into traffic. He turned to me for the first time in fifteen blocks.

—Why would they talk to us? If we printed something they told us, it would come back to bite them in a day.

—What if we spoke to ex-employees—the ones who have quit or been fired?

—How would we find them?

—We could run an ad in the papers offering high pay for doormen and elevator boys with at least one year's experience at five of the most exclusive apartment buildings in the city.

Mason Tate looked out his window. He produced a chocolate bar from his jacket pocket. He broke off two squares and began chewing slowly, methodically, as if his goal was to grind the flavor out of them.

—If I let you place this ad, you really think you would find something of interest?

—I'd stake a month's pay on it, I said coolly.

He nodded his head.

—Make it your career and you've got a deal.

On Friday, I walked to work a little early.

The advertisement had run for three days in the
New York Times
, the
Daily News
, and the
Post Dispatch
instructing applicants to come to the Condé Nast building today at 9:00 A.M. Word of my “wager” with Tate had circulated quickly, and a few of the boys in the bullpen had taken to whistling taps whenever I passed. Under the circumstances, you could hardly blame them.

At the time, the buildings along Fifth Avenue still looked like they had sprung from the ground overnight—disappearing into the clouds like beanstalks.

In 1936, the great French architect Le Corbusier published a little book called
When the Cathedrals Were White
detailing his first trip to New York. In it, he describes the thrill of seeing the city for the first time. Like Walt Whitman he sings of the humanity and the tempo, but he also sings of skyscrapers and elevators and air-conditioning, of polished steel and reflective glass.
New York has such courage and enthusiasm
, he writes,
that everything can be begun again, sent back to the building yard and made into something still greater
....

After reading that book, when you walked along Fifth Avenue and you looked up at those towers, you felt like any one of them might lead you to the hen that laid the golden eggs.

But earlier that summer, another visitor who came to the city had a slightly different take. He was a young man named John William Warde. Around 11:30 in the morning, he climbed out on a ledge of the seventeenth floor of the Gotham Hotel. He was promptly observed and a sizable crowd assembled below. Men paused, hanging their coats over their shoulders on the hook of their fingers. Women fanned themselves with their hats. Newspaper reporters gathered quotations and the police kept the sidewalk clear, sensing that at any moment . . .

But Warde just stood there on the ledge trying the patience of the reporters, the police, and the populous alike, prompting skeptics in the crowd to say that he neither had the courage to live with nor end his misery. At least, that's what they said until he jumped at 10:38 P.M.

So I guess the New York City skyline inspires a little of that too.

 

The Condé Nast lobby was still empty, promising a quick and anonymous ascent. But as I crossed to the elevator bank, Tony at the security desk waved me over.

—Hey Tony. What's up?

He gestured with his head to the side of the lobby. On a chrome-and-leather bench sat two ragged men, hats in hand. Unshaven and downcast, they looked like the god-forgotten sorts who listen to sermons in the Bowery missions just to get the soup. They looked like they wouldn't know skinny if it was wrapped in cellophane and sold at the five-and-dime. What sort of groveling
,
I wondered, would I have to do to convince Miss Markham to take me back?

—They were waiting outside when we opened up, Tony said, adding out of the side of his mouth: The one on the left there sort of smells.

—Thanks Tony. I'll take them up with me.

—Okay, Miss K. Sure thing. But what do you want me to do with the rest?

—The rest?

Tony stepped from around his desk and opened the stairwell door. It was crowded with men of every size and shape. Some, like the two on the bench, looked like they had ridden into Manhattan on the back of a freight car, but there were others who looked more like British man-servants in retirement. There were Irish, Italians, and Negroes looking sly or sophisticated, brutish or aim-to-please. They sat on the stairs winding two by two up to the turn at the second floor and out of sight.

Upon seeing me, a tall, well-dressed man on the first step stood to attention like I was a commanding officer entering a barracks. A moment later, every man on the stair was on his feet.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Neverland

It was a Saturday night in mid-November. Dicky, Susie, Wellie, and I had come to the Village to meet the others at a jazz club called The Lean-To. Dicky had heard through the grapevine that downtown musicians gathered there late at night to play impromptu sets, and he figured if the musicians were going, it was a reliable sign that the place had yet to be spoiled by blue bloods. The truth of the matter was that the owner was an old Jew with a thick heart and a thin skin who lent money to musicians without interest. They would have gathered at The Lean-To if it swallowed the
Social Register
whole. But the end result was the same: If you stayed late enough, you got to hear something that was fresh and unfiltered.

The club was a little fancier than when Eve and I had frequented it. There was a coat-check girl now and little red-shaded lamps on the tables. But then, I was getting a little fancier too. I was wearing a choker with a one-carat diamond that Dicky had wheedled off his mother in honor of our three-week anniversary. I don't think Dicky's mother particularly liked me, but for his entire life Dicky had been carefully fashioning a persona that was surprisingly hard to say no to. In general, he was fun loving and free of spite, but when you replied yes to even the smallest of his requests (
Do you want to go for a walk? Do you want to get an ice-cream cone? Can I sit next to you?
), for a moment he would light up like a bingo winner. I doubt Mrs. Vanderwhile had said the word
no
to him more than three times in his life. I wasn't finding it so easy to say myself.

The eight of us were gathered around two four-tops that Dicky had pushed together with the help of the hostess. As we waited for another round, Dicky conducted the conversation with an olive spear filched from my martini. The topic: hidden talents.

As if to bail him out, the drummer wrapped up a Krupa-like solo with six booms on the kettle and then the whole band was swinging. It was like the drummer had jimmied open the door and the others were stealing everything in the house. Dicky was the one who was ecstatic now. When the vibraphonist began playing in triple time, Dicky swung around in his chair and his feet ran in place. His head did a few quick rotations, as if he couldn't decide whether he should be shaking or nodding it. Then he goosed me.

Some people are born with the ability to appreciate serene and formally structured music like Bach and Handel. They can sense the abstract beauty of the music's mathematical relationships, its symmetries and motifs. But Dicky wasn't one of them.

Two weeks before, to impress me, he had taken me to Carnegie Hall to hear some Mozart piano concertos. The first was a pastoral designed to let the spirit flower in a nocturnal breeze. Dicky fidgeted like a sophomore in summer school. At the end of the second, when the crowd began applauding and the old couple in front of us stood, Dicky practically leapt from his seat. He clapped with wild enthusiasm and then grabbed his coat. When I told him it was just the intermission, he looked so crestfallen that I had to take him immediately to Third Avenue for a burger and a beer. It was a little place I knew where the owner played jazz piano accompanied by a stand-up bass and a high school snare.

This low-rent introduction to small group jazz was a revelation for Dicky. The improvisational nature of it was grasped by him instinctively. Unplanned, disorderly, unself-conscious, it was practically an extension of his personality. It was everything he liked about the world: You could smoke to it, drink to it, chatter to it. And it didn't make you feel guilty for not giving it your full attention. In the nights that followed, Dicky had a gay old time in the company of small group jazz and he gave me credit for it—not always in public, but when it mattered, and often.

—Will we ever go to the moon? he asked, as the vibraphonist acknowledged applause with a tilt of the head. It would be so marvelous to set foot on another planet.

—Isn't the moon a satellite? asked Helen with her innately unsure erudition.

—I should like to go, Dicky confirmed to no one in particular.

He sat on his hands and reflected on the possibility. Then he leaned sideways and kissed me on the cheek.

—. . . And I should like you to come.

 

At some point, Dicky shifted to the other side of the table to talk with TJ and Helen. It was a sweet display of self-confidence, as he no longer felt the need to entertain me or to advertise his claim on my attentions. It goes to show that even a man who craves constant approval can attain self-assurance through a little hanky-panky.

As I returned one of Dicky's winks, I saw a ragtag crowd of WPA types collecting around the table behind him. In their company was Henry Grey. It took a moment for me to recognize him because he was ill shaven and had lost some weight. But he didn't have trouble recognizing me. He came right over and leaned on the back of Dicky's empty chair.

—You're Teddy's friend. Right? The one with the opinions.

—That's right. Katey. How's the pursuit of beauty coming?