Rules of Civility - Amor Towles [124]
Time has a way of playing tricks on the mind. Looking back, a series of concurrent events can seem to stretch across a year while whole seasons can collapse into a single night.
Maybe time has played such tricks on me. But the way I remember it, I was sitting there thinking about Hank’s riot when the telephone rang. It was Bitsy in a halting voice. She was calling with the news that Wallace Wolcott had been killed. Apparently, he’d been shot near Santa Teresa, where a band of Republicans were defending some little hillside town.
By the time I received the call, he was already three weeks gone. In those days, I guess it took a while for the bodies to be recovered and identified and for the news to travel home.
I thanked her for calling and lay the receiver in its cradle before she’d finished talking.
My glass was empty and I needed a drink, but I couldn’t bring myself to pour one. Instead, I turned out the lights and sat on the floor with my back against the door.
St. Patrick’s on Fifth Avenue and Fiftieth Street is a pretty powerful example of early nineteenth-century American Gothic. Made of white marble quarried from upstate New York, the walls must be four feet thick. The stained-glass windows were made by craftsmen from Chartres. Tiffany designed two of the altars and a Medici designed the third. And the Pietà in the southeast corner is twice the size of Michelangelo’s. In fact, the whole place is so well made that as the Good Lord sees about His daily business, He can pass right over St. Patrick’s, confident that those inside will take pretty good care of themselves.
On this, the fifteenth of December at 3:00 P.M., it was warm and ascendant. For three nights, I’d been working with Mason on “The Secrets of Central Park West” until two or three in the morning, cabbing home for a few hours sleep, showering, changing, and then heading right back into the office without a moment for reflection—a pace which was suiting me just fine. But today, when he insisted I head home early, I found myself wandering down Fifth Avenue and up the cathedral’s steps.
At that time of day, there were 400 pews and 396 of them were empty. I took a seat and tried to let my mind wander; but it wouldn’t.
Eve, Hank, Wallace.
Suddenly, all the people of valor were gone. One by one, they had glittered and disappeared, leaving behind those who couldn’t free themselves from their wants: like Anne and Tinker and me.
—May I, someone asked genteelly.
I looked up a little annoyed that with all that space someone felt the need to crowd my pew. But it was Dicky.
—What are you doing here? I whispered.
—Repenting?
He slid in beside me and automatically put his hands on his knees like someone who had been well trained as a fidgety child.
—How did you find me? I asked.
He leaned to his right without taking his eyes off the altar.
—I stopped by your office so that I could run into you by chance. When your absence spoiled my plan, a rather tough cookie with cat’s-eye glasses suggested I might happen into one of the neighborhood churches instead. She said you occasionally visit them on your coffee break.
You had to give Alley credit. I had never told her that I liked to visit churches and she had never made reference to knowing. But giving Dicky that tip may well have been the first concrete sign that she and I were going to be friends for a long, long time.
—How did you know which church I was in? I asked.
—It stood to reason. Because you weren’t in the last three.
I gave Dicky’s hand a squeeze and said nothing.
Having studied the sanctuary, Dicky was now looking up into the recesses of the church’s ceiling.
—Are you familiar with Galileo? he asked.
—He discovered the world was round.
Dicky looked at me surprised.