Rules of Civility - Amor Towles [46]
She gestured toward de Roscher’s box.
—You see that thirty-year-old blonde next to Jake? That’s his fiancée, Carrie Clapboard. Carrie moved all manner of heaven and earth to get into that chair. And soon she will happily oversee scullery maids and table settings and the reupholstering of antique chairs at three different houses; which is all well and good. But if I were your age, I wouldn’t be trying to figure out how to get into Carrie’s shoes—I’d be trying to figure out how to get into Jake’s.
As Jolly Tar rounded the far turn, the next horse was ushered from the stables. We both looked down at the paddock. Anne didn’t bother lifting the binoculars.
—Gentle Savage at fifty to one, she said. Now, there’s your excitement.
CHAPTER NINE
The Scimitar, the Sifter & the Wooden Leg
When I came out of work on June 9, there was a brown Bentley parked at the curb.
No matter how much you think of yourself, no matter how long you’ve lived in Hollywood or Hyde Park, a brown Bentley is going to catch your eye. There couldn’t be more than a few hundred of them in the world and every aspect is designed with envy in mind. The fenders rise over the wheels and drop to the running boards in the wide, lazy curve of an odalisque at rest, while the white walls of the tires look as improbably spotless as the spats on Fred Astaire. You can just tell that whoever is sitting in the backseat has the wherewithal to grant your wishes in threes.
This particular brown Bentley was the model in which the chauffeur rides in the open air. He looked like an Irish cop turned manservant. He was staring straight ahead and holding the wheel with big mitts stuffed into little gray gloves. The windows of the passenger compartment were tinted so that you couldn’t see who was inside. As I watched the reflection of the masses drifting by, the window rolled down.
—Shiver me timbers, I said.
—Hey, Sis. Where you headed?
—I was just thinking of going down to the Battery to throw myself off the pier.
—Can it wait?
The chauffeur was suddenly at my side. He opened the rear door with surprising grace and adopted the posture of a midshipman at the head of a gangplank. Eve skooched across the seat. I saluted and climbed aboard.
The air in the car was sweet with the smell of leather and the hint of a new perfume. There was so much legroom that I almost slipped off the seat onto the floor.
—What does this rig turn into at midnight? I asked.
—An artichoke.
—I hate artichokes.
—I used to too. But they grow on you.
Eve leaned forward to push an ivory button on a chrome panel.
—Michael.
The chauffeur didn’t turn his head. His voice crackled through the speaker as if he were a hundred miles at sea.
—Yes, Miss Ross.
—Could you take us to the Explorers Club.
—Of course, Miss Ross.
Evey sat back and I took her in. It was the first that we’d seen each other since the dinner party at the Beresford. She was wearing a silky blue dress with full-length sleeves and a low neckline. Her hair was as straight as if she’d ironed it. She pulled it behind her ears giving full visibility to the scar on her cheek. A thin white line suggestive of experiences that parlor girls only dream of, it had begun to look glamorous.
We both smiled.
—Happy birthday, Hotstuff, I said.
—Do I deserve it?
—Do you ever.
Here was the setup: For her birthday Tinker said she could rent out a ballroom. She told him that she didn’t want a party. She didn’t even want presents. All she wanted was to buy a new dress and have dinner for two at the Rainbow Room.
That should have been my first clue that something was in the works.
The car and driver weren’t Tinker’s. They were Wallace’s. When Wallace heard about Eve’s wishes, he had given her the car for the day as a present so that she could go from store to store. And she had made the most of it. In the morning, she had worked her way down Fifth