When the telephone rang, we all looked up in surprise.
-I'll get it, I said.
The phone was teetering on a stack of Tolstoy's novels.
I assumed the caller was the young accountant who'd tried so hard to make me laugh at Fanelli's. Against my better judgment, I had let him write down my number-GRamercy 1-0923, the first private line that I had ever had. But when I picked up the receiver, it was Tinker Grey.
-Hi Katey.
-Hello Tinker.
I hadn't heard from Tinker or Eve in almost two months.
-What are you up to? he asked.
Under the circumstances, it was a cowardly sort of question.
-Two games short of a rubber. What are you up to?
He didn't answer. For a moment, he didn't say anything.
-Do you think you could come by tonight?
-Tinker . . .
-Katey, I don't know what's going on between you and Eve. But the last few weeks have been a tough run. The doctors said it was going to get worse before it got better; I don't think I really believed them, but it has. I need to go to the office tonight and I don't think she should be alone.
Outside, it began to sleet. I could see gray splotches forming on the sheets. Someone should have reeled them in while they still had the chance.
-Sure, I said. I can come.
-Thanks, Katey.
-You don't need to thank me.
-All right.
I looked at my watch. At this hour the Broadway train ran intermittently.
-I'll be there in forty minutes.
-Why don't you take a cab? I'll leave the fare with the doorman.
I dropped the receiver in its cradle.
-Double, sighed the rabbi.
Pass.
Pass.
Pass.
Those first few days after the crash, while Eve was still unconscious, Tinker led the vigil. A few of the girls from the boardinghouse took turns reading magazines in the waiting room, but Tinker rarely left her side. He had the doorman in his building deliver fresh clothes and he showered in the surgeon's locker.
On the third day, Eve's father arrived from Indiana. When he was at her bedside, you could tell that he was at a loss. Neither weeping nor praying came very naturally to him. He would have been better off if they had. Instead, he stared at his little girl's ravaged face and shook his head a few thousand times.
She came to on the fifth day. By the eighth she was more or less herself-or rather, a steely version of herself. She listened to the doctors with cold unaverting eyes. She adopted whatever technical language they used like fracture and suture and ligature, and she encouraged them to adopt her more descriptive terms like hobbled and disfigured. When she was nearly ready to leave the hospital, her father announced that he was taking her home to Indiana. She refused to go. Mr. Ross tried to reason with her; then he tried to plead. He said that she would regain her strength so much quicker at home; he pointed out that given the condition of her leg she wouldn't be able to climb the boardinghouse stairs; besides, her mother was expecting her. But Eve wasn't swayed; not by a word of it.
Tentatively, Tinker suggested to Mr. Ross that if Eve intended to convalesce in New York, she could do so in his apartment where there was an elevator, kitchen service, doormen, and an extra bedroom. Eve accepted Tinker's offer without a smile. If Mr. Ross thought the setup unacceptable, he didn't say so. He was beginning to understand that he no longer had a voice in his daughter's affairs.
The day before Eve was released, Mr. Ross went home to his wife empty-handed; but after kissing his daughter good-bye he signaled that he wanted to speak with me. I walked him to the elevator and there he thrust an envelope in my hand. He said it was something for me, to cover Eve's half of the rent for the rest of the year. I could tell from the thickness of the envelope that it was a lot of money. I tried to give it back to him, explaining that the boardinghouse was just going to stick me with another roommate. But Mr. Ross insisted. And then he disappeared behind the elevator doors. I watched the needle mark his descent to the lobby. Then I opened the envelope. It was fifty ten-dollar bills. It was probably the very same tens that Eve had sent back to him two years before, ensuring once and for all that these particular bills would never have to be spent by either of them.
I took the developments as a sign it was time to strike out on my own-especially since Mrs. Martingale had already warned me twice that if I didn't get all those boxes out of her basement, she was going to throw me out. So I used half of Mr. Ross's money to front six months' rent on a five-hundred-square-foot studio. The other half I stowed in the bottom of my uncle Roscoe's footlocker.
Eve intended to go straight from the hospital to Tinker's apartment, so it was my job to move her things. I packed them as best I could, folding the shirts and sweaters into perfect squares the way that she would. At Tinker's direction, I unpacked her bags in the master bedroom where I found the drawers and closets empty. Tinker had already moved his clothes to the maid's room at the other end of the hall.
The first week that Eve was in residence at the Beresford, I joined the two of them for dinner every night. We would sit in the little dining room off the kitchen and eat three-course meals that were prepared in the building's basement and served by jacketed staff. Seafood bisque followed by tenderloin and Brussels sprouts capped off with coffee and chocolate mousse.
When dinner was over, Eve was usually exhausted and I would help her to her room.
She would sit at the end of the bed and I would undress her. I would take off her right shoe and stocking. I would unzip her dress and pull it over her head being careful not to graze the little black stitches that tracked the side of her face. She would stare straight ahead, submissively. It took me three nights to realize that what she was staring at was the large mirror over the vanity. It was a stupid oversight. I apologized and said that I'd have Tinker remove the mirror. But she wouldn't let us touch it.
Once I had tucked her in, given her a kiss, and turned out the light, I would quietly close the door and return to the living room where Tinker anxiously awaited. We didn't have a drink. We didn't even sit down. In the few minutes before I went home, the two of us would whisper like parents about her progress: She seems to be regaining her appetite. . . . Her color's coming back. . . . Her leg doesn't seem to be giving her so much discomfort.... Self-soothing phrases pattering like raindrops on a tent.
But on the seventh night after Eve's release, when I tucked her in and gave her a kiss, she stopped me.
-Katey, she said. You know I'll love you till doomsday.
I sat on the bed beside her.
-The feeling's mutual.
-I know, she said.
I took her hand and squeezed it. She squeezed back.
-I think it would be better if you didn't come for a while.
-All right.
-You understand, don't you?
-Sure, I said.
Because I did understand. At least, I understood enough.
It wasn't about who had dibs now or who was sitting next to whom in the cinema. The game had changed; or rather, it wasn't a game at all anymore. It was a matter of making it through the night, which is often harder than it sounds, and always a very individual business.
By the time the cab came to a stop on Central Park West, the sleet had turned to freezing rain. Pete, the night doorman, was there at the curb to meet me with an umbrella. He paid the cabbie two dollars for a onedollar fare and gave me cover for the five feet between the cab and the canopy. Hamilton, the youngest of the elevator attendants, was on duty. From 'Lanta, Georgia, he brought a taste of plantation civility to New York that was either going to carry him far or get him in a world of trouble.
-Have you been travelin, Miss Katherin? he asked as we began our ascent.
-Only to the grocery store, Hamilton.
He gave a sweet little laugh to show that he knew better.
I liked his illusions too much to dispel them.
-Give my regards to Miss Evelyn and Mistah Tinkah, he said, as we slowed to a stop.
The door opened on a private foyer-a perfect example of Greek revival elegance with a parquet floor and white moldings and a preimpressionist still life hanging on the wall. Tinker was sitting on a side chair with his arms on his knees and his head lowered. He looked like he was back outside the emergency room. When I stepped off the elevator he was visibly relieved, as if he had begun to worry that I wasn't going to show.
He took both my hands in his. The features of his face had softened, as if he had put on the ten pounds that Eve had lost in the hospital.
-Katey! Thanks for coming. It's good to see you.
He was talking a little under his breath. It raised my antennae.
-Tinker. Does Eve know that I'm here?
-Yes, yes. Of course, he whispered. She's excited to see you. I just wanted to explain. She's been having a tough go of it lately. Especially at night. So I try to stay in as much as I can. She's just better when she . . . has company.
I took off my coat and laid it on the other side chair. It should have told me something about Tinker's state of mind that he hadn't asked me for it.
-I'm not sure how late I'm going to be. Can you stay until eleven?
-Sure.
-Twelve?
-I can stay as late as you need me to, Tinker.
He took my hands again and then let them go.
-Come on in. Eve! Katey's here!
We walked through the door into the living room.
If Tinker's foyer was classically decorated, it was something of a sleight of hand-because it was the only room in the apartment with furnishings from before the sinking of the Titanic. The living room-a grand square with terrace windows overlooking Central Park-looked like it had been airlifted right out of the Barcelona exposition at the 1929 World's Fair. It had three white couches and two black Mies van der Rohe chairs in tight formation around a glass-topped cocktail table, which was artfully arranged with a stack of novels, a brass ashtray and a deco-era miniature of an airplane. There was no satin, no velvet, no paisley-no rough textures or rounded edges. Just interlocking rectangles that reinforced a general sense of abstraction.
The machine for living, I think the French called it, and there was Eve lounging in the middle of the works. In a new white dress, she was reclining on one of the couches with one arm behind her head and the other at her side. It was a been-here-all-my-life sort of pose. With the lights of the city draped behind her and the martini glass on the carpet, she looked like an advertisement for being in a car wreck.
It was only when you got closer that you could see the damage. On the left side of her face there were two converging scars that cut all the way from her temple to her chin. What symmetry remained was spoiled by the slight droop at the edge of her mouth, as if she was the victim of a stroke. In the manner she was sitting, her left leg looked only slightly twisted, but peeking from under the hem of her dress you could see where the grafts had left her with the skin of a plucked chicken.
-Hey Evey.
-Hey Kate.
I leaned over to give her a kiss. Without hesitation she offered her right cheek, her reflexes having already adapted to her new condition. I sat on the opposite couch.
-How're you feeling? I asked.
-Better. How've you been?
-Same.
-Good for you. Would you like a drink? Tinker, sweetie, could you?
Tinker hadn't sat down. He was behind the empty couch leaning on its back with both arms.
-Of course, he said standing upright. What would you like, Katey? We were just having martinis. I'm happy to make you a fresh one.
-I'll take what's in the shaker.
-Are you sure?
-Why not.
Tinker came around the couch with a glass and reached for the plane that was on the cocktail table. The fuselage came up out of the wings-a witty piece of deco, teetering on the edge of fashion. Tinker plucked off the nose of the plane and filled my glass. He hesitated before putting the shaker back.
-Do you want some more, Eve?
-I'm all right. But why don't you stay and have one with Katey.
Tinker looked pained at the suggestion.
-I don't mind drinking alone, I said.
Tinker put the shaker back.
-I'll try not to be too late.
-Capital, said Eve.
Tinker gave Evey a kiss on the cheek. As he walked to the door she looked out over the city. The door closed. She didn't look back.
I took a sip of my martini. It was well diluted with the melted ice. You could barely taste the gin. It wasn't going to be much help.
-You look good, I said finally.
Eve eyed me patiently.
-Katey. You know I can't stand that sort of crap. Especially from you.
-I'm just saying that you look better than when I saw you last.
-It's the boys in the basement. Every day it's bacon with breakfast and soup with lunch. Canapes with cocktails and cake with coffee.