Rules of Civility (8 page)

When we came before the coat-check girl, ever so slightly Eve turned her shoulders toward Tinker. Without missing a trick, he swung the coat off her back like a matador swinging his cape.

Eve was the youngest person in the restaurant not bussing a tray, and she was ready to make the most of it. Her last-minute dress was a red silk number with a scooped neckline, and she had apparently traded up to her best support bra—because the tops of her breasts could be seen from fifty feet in a fog. She had been careful not to spoil the impression with jewelry. In a small red lacquered box, she kept a pair of graduation-day diamonds. On her ears, the studs provided a nice little sparkle that complemented her dimples when she smiled. But she knew better than to wear them into a place like this—where one had nothing to gain from formality and everything to lose by comparison.

The maitre d', an Austrian who had plenty of reason to be harried and wasn't, welcomed Tinker by name.

—Mr. Grey. We've been expecting you. Please. Right this way.

He said the word
Please
as if it was a sentence unto itself.

He led us to a table on the main floor. It was the only empty one in the room and it was set for three. As if he could read minds, the maitre d' pulled the middle chair out and motioned for Eve to have a seat.

—Please, he said again.

Once we were seated, he held a hand in the air and three menus materialized like giant playing cards in the hands of a magician. He delivered them with ceremony.

—Enjoy.

The menu was the largest I had ever seen. It was almost a foot and a half high. I opened it expecting a cavalcade of choices, but there were only ten. Lobster tail. Beef Wellington. Prime rib. The items were handwritten in the generous script of a wedding invitation. There were no prices, at least not on my menu. I peeked at Eve, but she wouldn't peek back. She scanned her menu coolly and then laid it down.

—Let's have a round of martinis, she said.

—Capital! said Tinker.

He raised a hand and a white-jacketed waiter appeared where the maitre d' had been. He had all the fast-talking charm of a country club con artist.

—Good evening, Mr. Grey. Good evening, ladies. If I may be so bold, you're the best-looking table in the place. Surely, you're not ready to order? The weather is horrendous. May I bring an aperitif?

—Actually, Casper, we were just talking about having some martinis.

—Of course you were. Let me take these out of your way.

Casper tucked the menus under an elbow and within minutes, the drinks arrived.

Or rather, three empty glasses arrived. Each had a trio of olives skewered on a pin that was propped on the rim of the glass like an oar on the hull of a rowboat. Casper placed a napkin on top of a silver shaker and rattled it good. Then he carefully began to pour. First, he filled my glass to the brim. The liquor was so cold and pure it gave the impression of being more translucent than water. Next he filled Eve's glass. When he began filling Tinker's, the flow of alcohol from the shaker slowed noticeably. And then trickled. For a moment it seemed as if there wasn't going to be enough. But the gin kept trickling and the surface kept rising until with the very last drop Tinker's martini reached the brim. It was the sort of precision that gave one confidence.

—Friends, Casper observed, are the envy of the angels.

Before any of us noticed that the silver shaker was gone, Casper had produced a small scaffold topped with a plate of oysters.

—Compliments of the house, he said, and disappeared.

Eve clinked her water glass with a fork as if she was about to make a toast to the whole restaurant.

—A confession, she said.

Tinker and I looked up in anticipation.

—I was jealous today.

—Eve . . .

She put her hand up to silence me.

—Let me finish. When I learned that the two of you had your little coffee, cream & sugar—I admit it—I was green. And not a little bit peeved. In fact, I fully intended to spoil the evening to teach you both a lesson. But Casper is perfectly right: Friendship is the mostest.

She held up her drink and squinted.

—To getting out of ruts.

Within minutes, Eve was her perfect self: relaxed, buoyant, bright; inexplicable.

The couples at the tables around us were engaged in conversations they'd been having for years—about their jobs and their children and their summer houses—conversations that may have been rote but that reinforced their sense of shared expectations and experience. Shrewdly, Tinker swept that aside and launched a conversation more suitable to our situation—one grounded in the hypothetical.

What were you afraid of when you were a kid?
he asked.

I said cats.

Tinker said heights.

Eve: Old age.

 

And just like that, we were off. In a way, it became a chummy sort of competition in which each of us tried to land the perfect answers—those that were surprising, diverting, revealing, but true. And Eve, ever under-estimateable, proved the runaway champ.

 

Me: Spending money.

Tinker: A tree house.

Eve: A good licking.

 

Me: Mata Hari.

Tinker: Natty Bumppo.

Eve: Darryl Zanuck.

 

Me: When I was eight and we lived above a bakery.

Tinker: When I was thirteen and my brother and I hiked the Adirondacks.

Eve: The upcoming one.

 

The oysters were consumed and the shells whisked away. Casper appeared with another round of martinis and then poured an extra one for the table.

—What shall we drink to this time? I asked.

—To being less shy, Tinker said.

Eve and I echoed the toast and raised the liquor to our lips.

—To being less shy? someone queried.

Standing with a hand on the back of my chair was a tall, elegant woman in her early fifties.

—That seems a nice ambition, she said. But better that one should aspire to returning one's phone calls first.

—I'm sorry, Tinker said a little embarrassed. I meant to call this afternoon.

She smiled winningly and waved a forgiving hand.

—Come on, Teddy. I'm only teasing. I can see that you've had the best of distractions.

She held her hand out to me.

—I'm Anne Grandyn—Tinker's godmother.

Tinker stood. He gestured to the two of us.

—This is Katherine Kontent and—

But Eve was already on her feet.

—Evelyn Ross, she said. It's so nice to meet you.

Mrs. Grandyn worked her way around the table to shake Eve's hand, insisting that she sit, and then continued on to Tinker. Barely marked by age, she had short blond hair and the refined features of a ballerina who had grown too tall for the ballet. She was wearing a black sleeveless dress that celebrated the slenderness of her arms. She wasn't wearing a choker of pearls, but she was wearing earrings—emerald studs the size of gumdrops. The stones were uncontestably glorious and happened to match the color of her eyes. From the way she carried herself, you could just tell that she swam with them. Coming out of the water, she would pick up a towel and dry her hair, not wondering for a moment whether the stones were in her ears or at the bottom of the sea.

Reaching Tinker, she offered her cheek and he gave her an awkward peck. When he sat down again she put a maternal hand on his shoulder.

—Katherine, Evelyn, mark my words. It's the same with godsons and nephews. When they first come to New York, you see them plenty. Like when the hamper's full or the pantry's bare. But once they get on their feet, if you want to invite them for tea, you have to hire a Pinkerton.

Eve and I laughed. Tinker mustered a sheepish grin. The appearance of his godmother was making him look sixteen.

—What a wonderful coincidence running into you here, Evelyn said.

—It is a small world, Mrs. Grandyn replied, a little wryly.

No doubt, she had taken Tinker here in the first place.

—Would you like to join us for a drink? Tinker asked.

—Thank you, dear, but I couldn't. I'm with Gertrude. She's trying to drag me onto the board of the museum. I'm going to need all my wits about me.

She turned to the two of us.

—If I leave it to Teddy, I'm sure that I will never see you again. So, accept my invitation for lunch someday—with or without him. I promise I won't bore you with too many stories of his youth.

—We wouldn't be bored, Mrs. Grandyn, Eve assured.

—Please, Mrs. Grandyn said, making the word a sentence just as the maitre d' had. Call me Anne.

As Mrs. Grandyn gave a graceful wave and returned to her table, Eve was aglow. But if Mrs. Grandyn's little visit had lit the candles on Eve's cake, for Tinker it had blown them out. Her unexpected appearance had changed the whole tenor of the outing. In the blink of an eye the caption had gone from
Man of means takes two girls to swanky spot
to
Young peacock shows off feathers in family's backyard
.

Eve was so rosy she couldn't see that the evening was on the verge of being spoiled.

—What a wonderful woman. Is she a friend of your mother's?

—What's that? Tinker asked. Oh. Yes. They grew up together.

He picked up his fork and turned it in his hands.

—Perhaps we should go ahead and order, Eve suggested.

—Do you want to get out of here? I asked Tinker.

—Could we?

—Absolutely.

Eve was plainly disappointed. She gave me that quick irritated glance. She opened her mouth ready to suggest we just have an appetizer. But Tinker's face was all lit up again.

—Right, she said, dumping her napkin on her plate. Let's beat it.

 

When we stood up from the table we were all feeling the good graces of the second martini. At the door, Tinker thanked the maitre d' and apologized in German for our having to rush. In a show of forgiveness, Eve accepted my flapper's jacket from the coat-check girl, leaving me to don her fur-collared twenty-first birthday present.

Outside, the drizzle had stopped, the sky had cleared and the air was bracing. After a quick conference, we decided to head back to Chernoff's to see the second show.

—We may miss curfew, I noted, as I climbed in back.

—If we do, Eve asked turning to Tinker, can we bunk at your place?

—Of course.

Though the evening had started a little roughly, in the end our camaraderie had served us another good turn. Sitting in front, Eve reached back and placed a hand on my knee. Tinker dialed the radio to a swing tune. No one said anything as we turned onto Park Avenue and headed downtown.

At Fifty-first Street we passed Saint Bartholomew's, the great domed church built by the Vanderbilts. Conveniently, they had dropped it on a spot where every Sunday morning they could see Grand Central Station over the pastor's shoulder as they complimented his sermon. Like other royals of the gilded age, the Vanderbilts' roots reached back three generations to an indentured servant. Hailing from the town of De Bilt, he had sailed from Holland to New York in steerage, and when he stepped off the boat he was known simply as Jan from De Bilt—until Cornelius built his fortune and classed up the moniker.

But you don't have to own a railroad to shorten or lengthen your name.

Teddy to Tinker.

Eve to Evelyn.

Katya to Kate.

In New York City, these sorts of alterations come free of charge.

As the car crossed Forty-ninth Street, we could all feel the wheels slip a little beneath us. The road ahead shimmered with what looked like puddles but which, with the cessation of rain, had frozen into patches of ice. Tinker downshifted and regained control. He slowed to turn, thinking perhaps that Third Avenue would be better. And that's when the milk truck hit us. We never even saw it. It was coming down Park Avenue at fifty miles an hour loaded for deliveries. When we decelerated, it tried to stop, hit the ice and smashed us squarely from behind. The coupé launched like a rocket and vaulted across Forty-seventh Street into a cast-iron lamppost on the median.

When I came to, I found myself upside down, pinned between the gearshift and the dash. The air was cold. The driver-side door was thrown open and I could see Tinker lying by the curb. The passenger door was closed; but Eve was gone.

I untangled myself and crawled from the car. It hurt when I inhaled, as if I'd broken a rib. Tinker was standing now, stumbling toward Eve. Shot through the windshield, she was huddled on the ground.

Out of nowhere an ambulance appeared and there were two young men in white jackets with a stretcher, looking like something out of a newsreel on the Spanish civil war.

—She's alive, one said to the other.

They hoisted her onto the stretcher.

Her face was as raw as a cut of meat.

I couldn't help myself. I turned away.

Tinker couldn't help himself either. He fixed his eyes on Eve and wouldn't avert them until the doors of the surgery swung shut.