Rules of Civility - Amor Towles [94]
Tinker related this as if it was somewhat embarrassing for the both of them; but I didn’t see it that way. Whatever the limitations of Tinker and Eve’s relationship, however expedient or imperfect or tenuous it had been, neither of them had reason to be humbled by that little tale. As far as I was concerned, the notion of Tinker rising alone for a sunrise that he wanted to share, and of Eve showing up at the very last minute from the other side of a night on the town, spoke to the very best in both of them.
In each of the various phone conversations that I had imagined having with Tinker, he had sounded different. In one he had sounded broken. In another confounded. In another contrite. But in all of them he had sounded unsettled, having come full speed through a ringer of his own design. Yet, now that I had him on the phone, he didn’t sound unsettled at all. Though obviously chastened, Tinker’s voice was also even and at ease. It had an ineffable almost enviable quality to it. It took me a moment to realize that it was the sound of relief. He sounded like one who is sitting on the curb in a strange city in the aftermath of a hotel fire, having nearly lost nothing but his life.
But broken, confounded, relaxed, or relieved—however his voice sounded, it wasn’t coming from across the sea. It was as clear as a radio broadcast.
—Tinker, where are you?
He was alone at the Wolcotts’ camp in the Adirondacks. He had spent the week walking in the woods and rowing on the lake thinking about the past six months, but now he was worried that if he didn’t talk to someone he might go a little crazy. So he was wondering if I’d be interested in coming up for the day. Or I could take the train on Friday after work and spend the weekend. He said the house was amazing and the lake was lovely and
—Tinker, I said. You don’t have to give me reasons.
After hanging up the phone, I stood for a while looking out my window wondering if I should have told him no. In the doleful court behind my building a patchwork of windows was all that separated me from a hundred muted lives being led without mystery or menace or magic. In point of fact, I suppose I didn’t know Tinker Grey much better than I knew any of them; and yet, somehow, I felt like I’d known him all my life.
I crossed the room.
From a pile of British authors, I pulled out Great Expectations. There, tucked among the pages of the twentieth chapter was Tinker’s letter describing the little church across the sea, with its mariner’s widow, its berry-toting wrestler, its schoolgirls laughing like seagulls—and its implicit celebration of the commonplace. I tried to smooth the wrinkles in the tissuelike paper. Then I sat down and read it for the umpteenth time.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Now and Here
The Wolcotts’ “camp” was a two-story mansion in the Arts & Crafts style. At one in the morning, it loomed from the shadows like an elegant beast come to the water’s edge to drink.
We went up the lazy wooden steps of the porch into a sprawling family room with a stone fireplace that you could stand in. The floors were knotty pine and they were covered with Navajo rugs woven in every imaginable shade of red. Sturdy wooden chairs were arranged in groups of two and four so that in high season the different generations of Wolcotts could play cards or read books or assemble jigsaw puzzles partly in private and partly in kin. All was cast in the warm yellow light of mica-shaded lamps. I remembered Wallace saying that though he spent just a few weeks a year in the Adirondacks, it always felt like home—and it wasn’t hard to see why. You could just imagine where the Christmas tree would go come December.
Tinker began giving an enthusiastic history of the place. He mentioned something about the