Rules of Civility - Amor Towles [113]
Dicky ripped off his shirt. A mother-of-pearl stud skittered across the black-and-white tiles of the floor. He pulled off his right shoe with a tug, but he couldn’t get the left one off. He hopped up and down a few times and stumbled against the sink. His whiskey glass slipped from its perch and shattered against the drain. He held the shoe up in the air with a victorious expression.
I was naked now and about to climb in.
—Suds! he shouted.
He went to the shelf of Christmas gifts and studied it frenetically. He couldn’t decide which of the soaps he should choose. So he grabbed two jars, stepped to the rim of the tub, and dumped them both in. He stuck his hands in the water and whisked it into a froth. The rising steam gave off a heady smell of lavender and lemon.
I slipped in under the bubbles. He jumped in after me like a truant jumping in a watering hole. He was in such a rush that he didn’t realize he was still in his socks. He took them off and slung them against the wall with a splat. He reached behind his back and produced a brush.
—Shall we?
I took the brush and tossed it onto the bathroom floor. I slid my legs around his waist. I put my hands on the rim of the tub and lowered myself onto his lap.
—I’m next to godliness, I said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Tempest-Tost
On Monday morning, I was in the back of a limousine with Mason Tate on our way to interview a grande dame on the Upper West Side. He was in a foul mood. He still didn’t have a cover story for the premier issue, and every week that passed without one seemed to lower his threshold for dissatisfaction. Proceeding up Madison Avenue, his coffee had been too cold, the air too warm, the driver too slow. To make matters worse, as far as Tate was concerned this interview, set up by the publisher, was a colossal waste of time. The doyenne’s upbringing was too good, he said, her intelligence too dull and her eyesight too dim to promise any skinny of interest. So if being asked to accompany Mr. Tate on an interview was normally a compliment, today it was a form of punishment. I wasn’t out of the doghouse yet.
We turned onto Fifty-ninth Street in silence. On the steps of the Plaza stood the hotel’s officious captains dressed in long red coats with big brass buttons. Half a block away, the epauletted officers of the Essex House wore a sharply contrasting shade of blue. This would no doubt make things so much easier should the two hotels ever go to war.
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