Rules of Civility - Amor Towles [121]
—I remember the morning my mother brought me downtown. I was dropped in a carriage with a trunkful of clothes—half of which wouldn’t do me any good where I was headed. When we got to Fourteenth Street it was crowded with hawkers and saloons and trade wagons. Seeing how excited I was by all the commotion, my mother promised I would be crossing Fourteenth Street every week on my way to visit her. I didn’t cross it again for a year.
Anne raised her cup of tea to drink, but paused.
—Come to think of it, she said, I haven’t crossed it since.
She started laughing.
And after a moment, I joined in. For better or worse, there are few things so disarming as one who laughs well at her own expense.
—Actually, she continued, crossing Fourteenth Street isn’t the only thing I’ve revisited from my youth because of you.
—What’s the other?
—Dickens. Remember that day in June when you were spying on me at the Plaza? You had one of his novels in your bag and it triggered some fond memories. So I dug up an old copy of Great Expectations. I hadn’t opened the book in thirty years. I read it cover to cover in three days.
—What did you think?
—It was great fun, of course. The characters, the language, the turns of events. But I must admit that this time around, the book struck me as a little like Miss Havesham’s dining room: a festive chamber which has been sealed off from time. It’s as if Dickens’s world was left at the altar.
And so it went. Anne waxed poetically on her preference for the modern novel—for Hemingway and Woolf—and we had two cups of tea, and before she had overstayed her welcome, she rose to go. At my threshold, she took one last look around.
—You know, she said as if the thought had just occurred to her, my apartment at the Beresford is going to waste. Why don’t you take it?
—Oh, I couldn’t, Anne.
—Why not? Woolf was only half right when she wrote A Room of One’s Own. There are rooms, and there are rooms. Let me lend it to you for a year. It’ll be my way of settling the score.
—Thanks, Anne. But I’m happy where I am.
She reached into her purse and pulled out a key.
—Here.
Ever tasteful, the key was on a silver ring with a leather fob the color of summer skin. She put it on a stack of books just inside my door. Then she held up her hand to stay any protest.
—Just think about it. One day during lunch give it a walk-through. Try it on for size.
I swept up the key in my palm and followed her into the hall.
I had to laugh at the whole thing. Anne Grandyn was as sharp as a harpoon and twice as barbed: An apology followed by childhood memories of the Lower East Side; a tip of the hat to her philandering roots; I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d read the whole works of Dickens just to frost this little éclair.
—You’re something else, Anne, I said with a lilt.
She turned back to face me. Her expression was more serious.
—You’re the one who’s something else, Katherine. Ninety-nine of a hundred women born in your place would be up to their elbows in a washtub by now. I doubt you have the slightest idea of just how unusual you are.
Whatever I’d thought Anne was up to, I wasn’t ready for compliments. I found myself looking at the floor. As I looked up again, through the opening in her blouse I could see that the skin of her sternum was pale and smooth; and that she wasn’t wearing a bra. I didn’t have time to brace myself. When I met her gaze she kissed me. We were both wearing lipstick, so there was an unusual sensation of friction as the waxy surfaces met. She put her right arm around me and pulled me closer. Then she slowly stepped back.
—Come spy on me again sometime, she said.
As she turned to go, I reached for her elbow. I turned her back around and pulled her closer. In many ways, she was the most beautiful woman I had ever known. We were almost nose to nose. She parted her lips. I slipped my hand down her pants and deposited the key.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Thy Kingdom Come
It was the second Saturday in December and I was in a six-story walk-up