Rules of Civility - Amor Towles [40]
And yet . . .
When I was lying in bed later that night alone and alert, with the corridors of my walk-up unusually quiet, the person foremost on my mind was Eve.
For in the years preceding, if I had chanced onto the guest list of a dinner party like this one with all its temperate discord, and stayed out much too late for a school night, my one consolation would have been finding Eve, propped on her pillows, waiting to hear every last detail.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Abandon Every Hope
One night in mid-May, as I was crossing Seventh Street on my way home, a woman my age came around the corner and knocked me off my heels.
—Watch where you’re going, she said.
Then she leaned over me to get a closer look.
—Bust my bosoms. Is that you, Kontent?
It was Fran Pacelli, the plum-chested City College dropout from down the hall at Mrs. Martingale’s. I didn’t know Fran that well, but she seemed a good enough sort. She liked to unsettle the prim at the boardinghouse by wandering the halls without a shirt on and asking loudly if they had any extra booze. One night I’d caught her climbing through a second-story window wearing nothing but high-heel shoes and a Dodgers uniform. Her father was in trucking, which in those days usually meant that he had run liquor in the twenties. From Fran’s vocabulary, you might have suspected that she’d run a little liquor in the twenties too.
—What a lucky break! she said, pulling me to my feet. Bumping into you like this. You look great.
—Thanks, I said brushing off my skirt.
Fran looked around the street as if she was thinking something through.
—Uhm. . . . Where you headed? How about a drink? You look like you could use one.
—I thought you said I looked great.
—Sure.
She pointed back up Seventh Street.
—I know a cute little place right up here. I’ll buy you a beer. We’ll catch up. It’ll be a gas.
The cute little place turned out to be an old Irish bar. Over the front door a sign read: GOOD ALE, RAW ONIONS, NO LADIES.
—I think that means us.
—Cmon, Fran said. Don’t be such a Patsy.
Inside, the air was loud and smelled of spilled beer. Along the bar, the front lines of the Easter uprising sat shoulder to shoulder eating hard-boiled eggs and drinking stout. The floor was covered with sawdust and the tin ceiling was stained with the gaslight smoke of decades past. Most of the customers ignored us. The bartender gave us a sour look but didn’t throw us out.
Fran took in the crowd with a glance. There were a few tables in the front that were empty but she shoved her way through the drinkers with a couple of excuse-me-mates. In the back, there was a cluttered little room hung with grainy photos of the Tammany crews—the boys who rounded up votes with billy clubs and cash. Without a word, Fran began moving toward the opposite corner. At the table nearest the coal stove three young men sat huddled over their beer. One of them, a tall, thin redhead, was wearing a jumpsuit with the words Pacelli Trucking stitched on the breast in a perversely feminine script. I was beginning to get the picture.
As we approached you could hear the three of them arguing above the din; or rather, you could hear one of them—the belligerent one with his back to us.
—Second of all, he was saying to the redhead, he’s a fucking hack.
—A hack?
The redhead smiled, enjoying the tussle.
—That’s right. He’s got stamina. But he’s got no finesse. No discipline.
The small man in between the combatants shifted in his seat uneasily. You could tell he was congenitally unsettled by confrontation. But he looked back and forth as if he couldn’t afford to miss a word.
—Third of all, the belligerent one continued, he’s more overrated than Joe Louis.
—Right, Hank.
—Fourth of all, fuck you.
—Fuck me? the redhead asked. In what orifice?
As Hank started to clarify, the redhead noticed us and gave a toothy grin.
—Peaches! What are you doin here?
—Grubb?! Fran exclaimed in disbelief.