Rules of Civility - Amor Towles [13]
The pint made one circuit and then another. When it was empty, Tinker produced a contribution of his own: a silver flask in a leather sheath. When it was in my hands, I could feel the TGR embossed on the leather.
The three of us began to get drunk and we laughed as if it was the funniest movie we had ever seen. When Groucho gave the old lady a physical, Tinker had to wipe the tears from his eyes.
At some point, I needed to go so badly that I couldn’t put it off. I nudged out into the aisle and skipped down the stair to the girls’ room. I peed without sitting on the seat and stiffed the matron at the door. By the time I got back I hadn’t missed more than a scene, but Tinker was sitting in the middle now. It wasn’t hard to imagine how that had happened.
I plunked down in his seat thinking if I wasn’t careful, I was going to find a truckload of manure on my front lawn.
But if young women are well practiced in the arts of marginal revenge, the universe has its own sense of tit for tat. For as Eve giggled in Tinker’s ear, I found myself in the embrace of his shearling coat. Its lining was as thick as on the hide of a sheep and it was still warm with the heat of his body. Snow had melted on the upturned collar and the musky smell of wet wool intermingled with a hint of shaving soap.
When I had first seen Tinker in the coat, it struck me as a bit of a pose—a born and raised New Englander dressed like the hero in a John Ford film. But the smell of the snow-wet wool made it seem more authentic. Suddenly, I could picture Tinker on the back of a horse somewhere: at the edge of the treeline under a towering sky . . . at his college roommate’s ranch, perhaps . . . where they hunted deer with antique rifles and with dogs that were better bred than me.
When the movie was over, we went through the front doors with all the solid citizens. Eve began doing the Lindy like the Negroes in the movie’s big dance number. I took her hand and we did it together in perfect synchronization. Tinker was clearly wowed—though he shouldn’t have been. Learning dance steps was the sorry Saturday night pursuit of every boardinghouse girl in America.
We took Tinker’s hand and he faked a few steps. Then Eve broke rank and skipped into the street to hail a cab. We piled in behind her.
—Where to? Tinker asked.
Without missing a beat Eve said Essex and Delancey.
Why, of course. She was taking us to Chernoff’s.
Though the driver had heard Eve, Tinker repeated the directions.
—Essex and Delancey, driver.
The driver put the cab in gear and Broadway began slipping by the windows like a string of lights being pulled off a Christmas tree.
Chernoff’s was a former speakeasy run by a Ukrainian Jew who emigrated shortly before the Romanovs were shot in the snow. It was located under the kitchen of a kosher restaurant, and though it was popular with Russian gangsters it was also a gathering place for Russia’s competing political émigrés. On any given night you could find the two factions encamped on either side of the club’s insufficient dance floor. On the left were the goateed Trotskyites planning the downfall of capitalism and on the right were the sideburned tsarist distaff dwelling in dreams of the Hermitage. Like all the rest of the world’s warring tribes, these two made their way to New York City and settled side by side. They dwelt in the same neighborhoods and the same narrow cafés, where they could keep a watchful eye on one another. In such close proximity, time slowly strengthened their sentiments while diluting their resolve.
We got out of the cab and headed up Essex on foot, walking past the well-lit window of the restaurant. Then we turned down the alley that led to the kitchen door.
—Another alley, Tinker said gamely.
We passed a garbage bin.
—Another bin!
At the end of the alley there were two bearded Jews in black mulling over modern times. They ignored us. Eve opened the door to the kitchen and we walked