Rules of Civility - Amor Towles [108]
Along Central Park West, the taller apartment buildings jutted over the trees in solitary fashion like commuters on a railroad platform in the hours before the morning rush. The sky was Tiepolo blue. After a week of sudden cold, the leaves had turned, creating a bright orange canopy that stretched all the way to Harlem. It was almost as if the park was a jewel box and the sky was the lid. You had to give Olmstead credit: He was perfectly right to have bulldozed the poor to make way for it.
Behind me, I could hear Anne folding the letter, sealing the envelope, scratching the address with the nib of her pen. Another summons, no doubt.
—Thank you, Bryce, she said handing him the letter. That will be all.
I turned around as Bryce left the room. Anne offered me a benign smile. She looked opulent, unabashed, as arresting as ever.
—Your secretary’s a bit of a prig, I observed, taking a seat on the couch.
—Who, Bryce? I suppose so. But he’s quite capable, and really more of a protégé.
—A protégé. Wow. In what? Faustian bargains?
Anne raised an ironic eyebrow and moved to the bar.
—You’re rather well read for a working-class girl, she said with her back to me.
—Really? I’ve found that all my well-read friends are from the working classes.
—Oh my. Why do you think that is? The purity of poverty?
—No. It’s just that reading is the cheapest form of entertainment.
—Sex is the cheapest form of entertainment.
—Not in this house.
Anne laughed like a sailor and turned around with two martinis. She sat in the chair catty-corner to me and plunked the drinks down. In the center of the table was a bowl of fruits so well-to-do that half of them I’d never seen before. There was a small green furry sphere. A yellow succulent that looked like a miniature football. To get to Anne’s table, they must have traveled farther than I had traveled in my entire life.
Laying in wait beside the fruit bowl was the dish of promised olives. She picked up the dish and poured half of them into my glass. They were piled so high that they broke the surface of the gin like a volcanic island.
—Kate, she said. Let’s dispense with the catfight. I know it’s a temptation, and a sweet one. But it’s beneath us.
She raised her glass and extended it toward me.
—Truce?
—Sure, I said.
I clinked her glass and we drank.
—So. Why don’t you just tell me why you asked me here.
—That’s the spirit, she said.
She reached forward and plucked the olive off the apex of my island. She put it in her mouth and chewed thoughtfully. Then she shook her head with a laugh.
—You’ll find this funny; but I hadn’t the slightest suspicion about you and Tinker. So when you stormed out of Chinoiserie, for a second I actually thought that you were scandalized. The older woman and the younger man, or what have you. It was only when I saw Tinker’s expression that I put it together.
—Life is full of misleading signals.
She smiled conspiratorially.
—Yes. Rebuses and labyrinths. We rarely know exactly where we stand in relation to someone else, and we never know where two confederates stand in relation to each other. But the sum of the angles of a triangle is always 180 degrees—isn’t it.
—Well, I think I understand a little better how you and Tinker stand in relation to one another.
—I’m glad of that, Katey. Why shouldn’t you? I had my little game for a while. But our relationship isn’t really a secret. And it’s not that complicated. It’s nowhere near as complicated as your relationship with him or my relationship with you. Between Tinker and me the understanding is as straight as the line in a ledger.
Anne put her thumb and finger together and drew an imaginary pencil across the air to emphasize the linear perfection of the accountant’s underscore.
—There’s a pretty clear difference between physical and emotional needs, she continued. Women like you and I understand this. Most women don’t. Or they’re unwilling