Rules of Civility (5 page)

I set the likelihood of his showing up at fifty percent. Eve set it at a hundred and ten. When he climbed out of the cab, we were waiting in trench coats in the shadows of the elevated. He was wearing a denim shirt and a shearling coat.

—Put em up, pardner, I said, and he did.

—How's it coming with those ruts? Eve prodded.

—Well, I woke at the usual hour. And after my usual squash match, I had my usual lunch. . . .

—Most people make a go of it until the second week of January.

—Maybe I'm a slow starter?

—Maybe you need help.

—Oh, I definitely need help.

 

Wetied a navy blue kerchief over his eyes and led him west. A good sport, he didn't put his hands out like the newly blind. He submitted to our control and we steered him through the crowds.

It began to snow again. They were those large individual flakes that drift slowly toward the ground and occasionally perch in your hair.

—Is it snowing? he asked.

—No questions.

We crossed Park Avenue, Madison, Fifth. Our fellow New Yorkers brushed past showing seasoned indifference. When we crossed Sixth Avenue, we could see the twenty-foot-high marquee of the Capitol Theatre shining over Thirty-fourth Street. It looked like the bow of an ocean liner had crashed through the building's façade. The crowd from the early show was filtering into the cold. They were mirthful and at ease, exhibiting something of that tired self-satisfaction that's typical of the first night of the year. He could hear their voices.

—Where are we going, girls?

—Quiet, we cautioned, turning up an alley.

Large gray rats fearful of the snow scurried among the tobacco tins. Overhead the fire escapes crawled up the sides of the buildings like spiders. The only light came from a small red lamp over the theater's emergency exit. We passed it and took up our position behind a garbage bin.

I untied Tinker's blindfold holding a finger to my lips.

Eve reached into her blouse and produced an old black brassiere. She smiled brightly and winked. Then she slinked back down the alley to where the drop steps of the fire escape hung in the air. On the tips of her toes she hooked the end of the bra onto the bottom rung.

She came back and we waited.

6:50.

7:00.

7:10.

The emergency exit opened with a creak.

A middle-aged usher in a red uniform stepped outside, taking refuge from the feature he'd already seen a thousand times. In the snow, he looked like a wooden soldier from the
Nutcracker
who'd lost his hat. While easing the door shut, he put a program in the crack so that it wouldn't close completely. The snow fell through the fire escapes and settled on his fake epaulettes. Leaning against the door, he took a cigarette from behind his ear, lit it, and exhaled smoke with the smile of a well-fed philosopher.

It took him three drags to notice the bra. For a moment or two, he studied it from a safe distance; then he flicked his cigarette against the alley wall. He crossed over and tilted his head as if he wanted to read the label. He looked to his left and his right. He gingerly freed the garment from its snag and held it draped over his hands. Then he pressed it to his face.

We slipped through the exit making sure that the program went back in the door.

As usual, we ducked and crossed below the screen. We headed up the opposite aisle with the newsreel flickering behind us: Roosevelt and Hitler taking turns waving from long black convertibles. We went out into the lobby, up the stairs, back through the balcony door. In the dark, we made our way to the highest row.

Tinker and I began to giggle.

—Shhhh, said Eve.

When we had come onto the balcony, Tinker held open the door and Eve charged ahead. So we ended up sitting Eve on the inside, me in the middle, and Tinker on the aisle. When our eyes met, Eve gave me an irritated smirk, as if I had planned it that way.

—Do you do this often? Tinker whispered.

—Whenever we get the chance, said Eve.

—Sh! said a stranger, more emphatically, as the screen went black. Throughout the theater, lighters flickered on and off like fireflies. Then the screen lit up and the feature began.

It was
A Day at the Races
. In typical Marx Brothers fashion, the stiff and sophisticated made early appearances, establishing a sense of decorum, which the audience politely abided. But at the entrance of Groucho, the crowd sat up in their seats and applauded—like he was a Shakespearean giant returning to the stage after a premature retirement.

As the first reel ran I produced a box of Jujubes and Eve brought out a pint of rye. When it was Tinker's turn to eat you had to shake the box to get his attention.

The pint made one circuit and then another. When it was empty, Tinker produced a contribution of his own: a silver flask in a leather sheath. When it was in my hands, I could feel the TGR embossed on the leather.

The three of us began to get drunk and we laughed as if it was the funniest movie we had ever seen. When Groucho gave the old lady a physical, Tinker had to wipe the tears from his eyes.

At some point, I needed to go so badly that I couldn't put it off. I nudged out into the aisle and skipped down the stair to the girls' room. I peed without sitting on the seat and stiffed the matron at the door. By the time I got back I hadn't missed more than a scene, but Tinker was sitting in the middle now. It wasn't hard to imagine how that had happened.

I plunked down in his seat thinking if I wasn't careful, I was going to find a truckload of manure on
my
front lawn.

But if young women are well practiced in the arts of marginal revenge, the universe has its own sense of tit for tat. For as Eve giggled in Tinker's ear, I found myself in the embrace of his shearling coat. Its lining was as thick as on the hide of a sheep and it was still warm with the heat of his body. Snow had melted on the upturned collar and the musky smell of wet wool intermingled with a hint of shaving soap.

When I had first seen Tinker in the coat, it struck me as a bit of a pose—a born and raised New Englander dressed like the hero in a John Ford film. But the smell of the snow-wet wool made it seem more authentic. Suddenly, I could picture Tinker on the back of a horse somewhere: at the edge of the treeline under a towering sky . . . at his college roommate's ranch, perhaps . . . where they hunted deer with antique rifles and with dogs that were better bred than me.

 

When the movie was over, we went through the front doors with all the solid citizens. Eve began doing the Lindy like the Negroes in the movie's big dance number. I took her hand and we did it together in perfect synchronization. Tinker was clearly wowed—though he shouldn't have been. Learning dance steps was the sorry Saturday night pursuit of every boardinghouse girl in America.

We took Tinker's hand and he faked a few steps. Then Eve broke rank and skipped into the street to hail a cab. We piled in behind her.

—Where to? Tinker asked.

Without missing a beat Eve said Essex and Delancey.

Why, of course. She was taking us to Chernoff's.

Though the driver had heard Eve, Tinker repeated the directions.

—Essex and Delancey, driver.

The driver put the cab in gear and Broadway began slipping by the windows like a string of lights being pulled off a Christmas tree.

Chernoff's was a former speakeasy run by a Ukrainian Jew who emigrated shortly before the Romanovs were shot in the snow. It was located under the kitchen of a kosher restaurant, and though it was popular with Russian gangsters it was also a gathering place for Russia's competing political émigrés. On any given night you could find the two factions encamped on either side of the club's insufficient dance floor. On the left were the goateed Trotskyites planning the downfall of capitalism and on the right were the sideburned tsarist distaff dwelling in dreams of the Hermitage. Like all the rest of the world's warring tribes, these two made their way to New York City and settled side by side. They dwelt in the same neighborhoods and the same narrow cafés, where they could keep a watchful eye on one another. In such close proximity, time slowly strengthened their sentiments while diluting their resolve.

We got out of the cab and headed up Essex on foot, walking past the well-lit window of the restaurant. Then we turned down the alley that led to the kitchen door.

—Another alley, Tinker said gamely.

We passed a garbage bin.

—Another bin!

At the end of the alley there were two bearded Jews in black mulling over modern times. They ignored us. Eve opened the door to the kitchen and we walked past two Chinamen at large sinks toiling in the steam. They ignored us too. Just past the boiling pots of winter cabbage, a set of narrow steps led down to a basement where there was a walk-in freezer. The brass latch on the heavy oaken door had been pulled so many times that it was a soft, luminescent gold, like the foot of a saint on a cathedral door. Eve pulled the latch and we stepped inside among the sawdust and ice blocks. At the back, a false door opened revealing a nightclub with a copper-topped bar and red leather banquettes.

As luck would have it, a party was just leaving and we were whisked into a small booth on the tsarist side of the dance floor. The waiters at Chernoff's never asked for your order. They just plopped down plates of pierogies and herring and tongue. In the middle of the table, they put shot glasses and an old wine bottle filled with vodka that, despite the repeal of the Twenty-first Amendment, was still distilled in a bathtub. Tinker poured three glasses.

—I swear I'm going to find me Jesus one of these days, Eve said, knocking hers back. Then she excused herself to the powder room.

On the stage a lone Cossack accompanied himself ably on the balalaika
.
It was an old song about a horse that returns from war without its rider. As it approaches the soldier's hometown, the horse recognizes the smell of the lindens, the brush of the daisies, the clang of the blacksmith's hammer. Though the lyrics were poorly translated, the Cossack performed with the sort of feeling that can only be captured by an expatriate. Even Tinker suddenly looked homesick—as if the song described a country that he too had been forced to leave behind.

When the song was over the crowd responded with heartfelt applause; but it was sober too, like the applause for a fine and unpretentious speech. The Cossack bowed once and retired from the stage.

After looking appreciatively around the room, Tinker observed that his brother would really love this place and that we should all come back together.

—You think we'd like him?

—I think you would especially. I bet you two would really hit it off.

Tinker became quiet, turning his empty shot glass in his hands. I wondered if he were lost in thoughts of his brother or still under the spell of the Cossack's song.

—You don't have any siblings, do you, he said setting his glass down.

The observation caught me off guard.

—Why? Do I seem spoiled?

—No! If anything the opposite. Maybe it's that you seem like you'd be comfortable being alone.

—Aren't you?

—Once I was, I think. But I've sort of lost the habit. Nowadays, if I'm in my apartment with nothing to do, I find myself wondering who's in town.

—Living in a henhouse, I've got the opposite problem. I've got to go out to be alone.

Tinker smiled and refilled my glass. For a moment, we were both quiet.

—Where do you go? he asked.

—Where do I go when?

—When you want to be alone.

At the side of the stage, a small orchestra had begun to assemble—taking their chairs and tuning their instruments, while having emerged from the back hall, Eve was working her way through the tables.

—Here she is, I said, standing up so that Eve could slip back into the banquette between us.

 

The food at Chernoff's was cold, the vodka medicinal and the service abrupt. But nobody came to Chernoff's for the food or the vodka or the service. They came for the show.

Shortly before ten, the orchestra began to play an intro with a distinctly Russian flavor. A spotlight shot through the smoke revealing a middle-aged couple stage right, she in the costume of a farm girl and he a new recruit. A cappella, the recruit turned to the farm girl and sang of how she should remember him: by his tender kisses and his footsteps in the night, by the autumn apples he had stolen from her grandfather's orchard. The recruit wore more rouge on his cheeks than the farm girl, and his jacket, which was missing a button, was a size too small.

No, she replied, I will not remember you by those things.