Rules of Civility - Amor Towles [77]
When I had looked at Wallace’s watch it was almost two. Alley had agreed to cover me until our daily three o’clock with Mr. Tate. If I skipped dessert, I still had time to taxi back and switch into a longer skirt.
—This looks very entre nous.
Slipping into Wallace’s chair was the horse-riding, gun-toting Bitsy Houghton.
—We don’t have more than a minute, Kate, she said conspiratorially. We’d better get to it. How do you know Wally?
—I met him through Tinker Grey.
—That good-looking banker? Isn’t he the one who got in the car wreck with his girl?
—Yes. She’s an old friend of mine. Actually, we were all in it together. Bitsy looked impressed.
—I’ve never been in a car wreck.
Though from the way she said it, you got the sense she had been in other kinds of wrecks—like in an airplane or motorcycle or submarine.
—So, she continued, is your friend as ambitious as the girls claim? (As ambitious as the girls claim?)
—No more so than most, I said. But she has got spunk.
—Well, they’ll hate her for that. Anyway. I dislike meddlers more than cats. But can I give you a tip?
—Sure.
—Wally is grander than Mount Rushmore, but he’s twice as shy. Don’t wait for him to smooch you first.
And before I could speak, she was halfway across the room.
The next night, as I was doubling myself on a four-heart bid, there was a knock at my door. It was Wallace with a bottle of wine in one hand and a briefcase in the other. He said he had just had dinner with his attorney in the neighborhood—an explanation that must have required a rather generous definition of neighborhood. I closed the door and we shared one of Wallace’s unawkward silences.
—You’ve got a . . . lot of books, he said at last.
—It’s a sickness.
—Are you . . . seeing anyone for it?
—I’m afraid it’s untreatable.
He put his briefcase and the wine on my father’s easy chair and began circling the room with a tilted head.
—Is this the . . . Dewey decimal system?
—No. But it’s based on similar principles. Those are the British novelists. The French are in the kitchen. Homer, Virgil and the other epics are there by the tub.
Wallace wandered toward one of the windowsills and plucked Leaves of Grass off a teetering stack.
—I take it the . . . transcendentalists do better in sunlight.
—Exactly.
—Do they need much water?
—Not as much as you’d think. But lots of pruning.
He pointed the volume toward a pile of books under my bed.
—And the . . . mushrooms?
—The Russians.
—Ah.
Wallace carefully returned Whitman to his perch. He wandered over to the card table and circled it the way one circles an architectural model.
—Who’s winning?
—Not me.
Wallace took the chair opposite the dummy. I picked up the bottle.
—Will you stay for a drink? I asked.
—I’d . . . love to.
The wine was older than me. When I came back to the table, he had taken up the south hand and was rearranging the cards.
—Where’s the . . . bidding?
—I just bid four hearts.
—Did they double?
I plucked the cards out of his hand and swept up the deck. We sat for a minute saying nothing and he drank to the bottom of his glass. I sensed that he was about to go. I tried to think of something captivating to say.
—By any chance, he asked, do you know how to play honeymoon bridge?
It was an ingenious little game. Wallace had played it with his grandfather on rainy days in the Adirondacks. Here’s how it works: You place the shuffled deck on the table. Your opponent draws the top card and then has two options: He can keep the card, look at the second one, and discard it facedown; or he can discard the first card and keep the second one. Then it’s your turn. The two of you go back and forth in this manner until the deck is exhausted, at which point you each hold thirteen cards, having discarded thirteen—giving the game an unusually elegant balance between intention and chance.
As we played, we talked about Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, about the Dodgers