Rules of Civility - Amor Towles [31]
Eve was right, of course. Along whole avenues of the Lower East Side the sky was blotted out by elevated tracks and fire escapes and the telephone wires that had yet to be put underground. Most New Yorkers spent their lives somewhere between the fruit cart and the fifth floor. To see the city from a few hundred feet above the riffraff was pretty celestial. We gave the moment its due.
—Tinker doesn’t like me out here, she said. He’s convinced I’m going to jump.
—Would you?
I tried to put a hint of jest in the question, but it didn’t come off.
She didn’t seem particularly annoyed. She just dismissed the notion in four words.
—I’m a Catholic, Katey.
About a thousand feet off the ground three green lights entered our field of vision heading southward over the park.
—See those, Eve said pointing. I’ll bet you a good night’s sleep they circle the Empire State Building. The little planes always do. They just can’t seem to help themselves.
As on those first nights out of the hospital, when Eve was ready I helped her back to her room; I helped take off her stockings and her dress; I tucked her in; I kissed her forehead.
She reached up, took my forehead in her hands and kissed me back.
—It was good to see you, Katey.
—Do you want me to turn out the light?
She eyed the bedside table.
—Look at this, she groaned. Virginia Woolf. Edith Wharton. Emily Brontë. Tinker’s rehabilitation plan. But didn’t they all kill themselves?
—I think Woolf did.
—Well, the rest of them might as well have.
The remark caught me so off guard that I burst out laughing. Eve laughed too. She laughed so hard that her hair fell over her face. It was the first good laugh the two of us had had since the first week of the year.
When I turned out her light, Eve said that there was no point in my waiting for Tinker, that I should let myself out; and I almost did. But he had made me promise.
So I turned off the lights in the hall and most of the lights in the living room. I settled down on the couch with the white throw over my shoulders. I pulled a book from the middle of the pile and started reading. It was Pearl Buck’s Good Earth. When it bogged me down on page 2, I turned to page 104 and started again. It didn’t help.
My gaze settled on the pyramid of books. I considered the selection of titles for a moment. Then I carried the stack down the hall to the maid’s room and swapped the lot for ten of the detective novels. When I put them on the living room table, there was no need to arrange their vertical order because they were all exactly the same size. Then I went to make myself some closed-kitchen eggs.
I cracked two eggs in a bowl and whisked them with grated cheese and herbs. I poured them into a pan of heated oil and covered them with a lid. Something about heating the oil and putting on the lid makes the eggs puff upon contact. And they brown without burning. It was the way my father used to prepare eggs for me when I was a girl, though we never ate them for breakfast. They tasted best, he used to say, when the kitchen was closed.
I was eating the last off my plate when I heard Tinker calling my name in hushed tones.
—I’m in the kitchen.
He came in with that relieved look.
—There you are, he said.
—Here I am.
He dropped into a chair. His hair was combed and his tie sported a crisp Windsor knot, but his turnout couldn’t hide the fact that he was weary. With puffy eyes and depleted drive, he looked like a brand-new father who’s been shocked into working extra hours by the arrival of twins.
—How’d it go? he asked, tentatively.
—Fine, Tinker. Evey’s tougher than you think. She’s going to be okay.
I almost went on to say that he should relax a little, give Evey some space, let nature take its course—But then, I wasn’t the one who’d been driving the car.
—We have an office in Palm Beach, he said after a moment. I’m thinking of taking her down there for a few weeks. Some warm weather and new surroundings. What do you think?
—Sounds great.
—I just think she could use a change of pace.
—You