Rules of Civility - Amor Towles [135]
—April fools, the man shouted.
Then the receiver was plucked away.
—Did we get you, Sis?
—Did you ever.
Evey howled with laughter.
It was good to hear. For half an hour, we back-and-forthed, bringing each other up-to-date and paying tribute to the fine times we’d had in New York City. But when I asked if she might be coming back east any time soon, she said as far as she was concerned, the Rockies weren’t high enough.
Wallace, of course, was stolen from the living.
But in one of life’s little ironies, of the four with whom I’d spent 1938, it was Wallace who maintained the greatest influence on my daily life. For in the spring of 1939, I received a second visit from the perspiring Niles Copperthwaite. This time he brought the extraordinary news that Wallace Wolcott had written me into his will. Specifically, he had directed that the dividends from a generation-skipping trust be diverted to me for the remainder of my life. This was to bring me an annual income of eight hundred dollars. Eight hundred dollars may not have been a fortune, not even in 1939, but it was enough to ensure that I could think twice before accepting the advances of any man; which, come to think of it, for a girl in Manhattan entering her late twenties, was fortune enough.
And Tinker Grey?
I didn’t know where Tinker was. But in a sense, I knew what had become of him. Having cut himself adrift, Tinker had finally found his way to unfettered terrain. Whether trekking the snows of the Yukon or sailing the seas of Polynesia, Tinker was where the view to the horizon was unimpeded, the crickets commanded the stillness, the present was paramount, and there was absolutely no need for the Rules of Civility.
Should old acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind? If so, then only at our peril. I crossed to the bar.
—Katey, right?
—Hello, Hank. You look well.
And he did. Better than anyone in their right mind would have expected. The demands of army life had filled out his features and his build. And the stripes on his crisp khaki uniform advertised the rank of sergeant.
I acknowledged his stripes with a figurative tip of the hat.
—Don’t bother, he said with an easy smile. They won’t last.
But I wasn’t so sure. He looked like the army had yet to see the best of him.
He nodded toward our table.
—I see you’ve found yourself a new circle of friends.
—Several.
—I’ll bet. I think I owe you one. Let me buy you a drink.
He ordered beer for himself and a martini for me, as if he’d known all along that that was my drink. We clinked glasses and wished each other a Happy 1941.
—Have you seen my brother around?
—No, I admitted. I haven’t seen him in two years.
—Yeah. I suppose that makes some sense.
—Have you heard from him?
—On and off. When I get leave, sometimes I come up to New York and we get together.
I wasn’t expecting that.
I took a drink of my gin.
He eyed me with a sly smile.
—You’re surprised, he said.
—I didn’t know that he was in New York.
—Where would he be?
—I don’t know. I just figured that when he quit, he’d left town.
—No. He stuck around. He got a job working on the Hell’s Kitchen docks for a while. After that, he drifted around the boroughs and we lost touch. Then last spring I ran into him on the street in Red Hook.
—Where was he living? I asked.
—I’m not sure. One of the flophouses by the Navy Yards, I suppose.
We were both silent for a moment.
—How was he? I asked.
—You know. A little scruffy. A little lean.
—No. I mean how was he?
—Oh, Hank said with a smile. You mean how was he on the inside.
Hank didn’t need to consider.
—He was happy.
The snows of the Yukon . . . the seas of Polynesia . . . the footpaths of the Mohicans . . . These were the sorts of terrain that I had imagined Tinker wandering for the last two years. And all the time, he had been right here in New York City.
Why had I assumed that Tinker was so far afield? I’d like to say it was because the unsettled landscapes of London and Stevenson and Cooper had suited his romantic sensibility since he was a boy. But as