Rules of Civility (30 page)

Waiting for my coat, I looked back toward the great room. It was emptying out as the last gawkers made for the French doors. A man a little older than me in a white dinner jacket stood in front of the bar. With his hands in his pockets, he seemed lost in sober reflection. Cutting in front of him, a celebrant grabbed a magnum by the neck and then knocked over an urn filled with hydrangea while heading back outside. The dinner-jacketed man watched with an expression of moral disappointment.

The footman returned with my coat and I said thanks, conscious a moment too late that like the college boys at the beginning of the evening, I hadn't looked him in the eye either.

—You're not leaving us so soon!

It was old Mr. Hollingsworth coming in from the driveway.

—The party's lovely, Mr. Hollingsworth. And you were so kind to invite me. But I'm afraid I'm feeling a bit under the weather.

—Oh. I'm sorry to hear that. Are you staying nearby?

—I took the train in from the city. I was just going to ask someone to call me a cab.

—My dear, that's out of the question.

He looked back toward the great room.

—Valentine!

The young man in the white dinner jacket turned. With his fair-haired good looks and serious mien, he seemed like a cross between an aviator and a judge. He took his hands out of his pockets and walked quickly across the lobby.

—Yes, father.

—You remember Miss Kontent. Wallace's friend. She's not feeling well and is headed back to the city. Can you take her to the station?

—Of course.

—Why don't you take the Spider.

Outside, the Labor Day wind was scattering leaves to the ground. You could just tell it was going to pour. The rest of the weekend would have to be cribbage and tea to the tune of a banging screen door. The casinos would be shuttered, the tennis nets lowered, and the dinghies, like the dreams of teenage girls, would be dragged ashore.

We crossed the white gravel drive to a six-bay garage. The Spider was a two-seater, fire engine red. Valentine passed it, opting for the 1936 Cadillac, bulky and black.

Along the drive there must have been a hundred cars parked on the grass. One had its lights on, its doors open, its radio playing. On the hood lay a man and woman smoking side by side. Valentine gave them the same look of moral disappointment that he had given the magnum grabber. At the end of the drive, he turned right heading toward the Post Road.

—Isn't the station in the other direction?

—I'll take you in, he said.

—You don't have to do that.

—I've got to head back anyway; I've got a meeting first thing.

I doubted he really had a meeting; but it wasn't a ploy to spend time with me. As he drove, he didn't look over or bother to make conversation. Which was just as well. To get out of that party, we both would have volunteered to walk a rabid dog.

After a few miles he asked me to check the glove compartment for a pad and pen. He balanced the pad on the dash and wrote some notes to himself. He tore the top sheet off and stuffed it in his jacket pocket.

—Thanks, he said, handing back the pad.

To stave off any chatter, he switched on the radio. It was tuned to a station playing swing. He turned the dial. He passed over a ballad, paused on a speech by Roosevelt, and then turned back to the ballad. It was Billie Holiday singing “Autumn in New York.”

Written by a Belarusian immigrant named Vernon Duke, “Autumn in New York” practically debuted as a jazz standard. Within fifteen years of its first being played, Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughn, Louis Armstrong, and Ella Fitzgerald had all explored its sentimental bounds. Within twenty-five, there would be interpretations of the interpretations by Chet Baker, Sonny Stitt, Frank Sinatra, Bud Powell, and Oscar Peterson. The very question that the song asks of us about autumn, we could ask ourselves of the song:
Why does it seem so inviting?

Presumably, one factor is that each city has its own romantic season. Once a year, a city's architectural, cultural, and horticultural variables come into alignment with the solar course in such a way that men and women passing each other on the thoroughfares feel an unusual sense of romantic promise. Like Christmastime in Vienna, or April in Paris.

That's the way we New Yorkers feel about fall. Come September, despite the waning hours, despite the leaves succumbing to the weight of gray autumnal rains, there is a certain relief to having the long days of summer behind us; and there's a paradoxical sense of rejuvenation in the air.

Yes, in the autumn of 1938 tens of thousands of New Yorkers would be falling under the spell of that song. Sitting in the jazz bars or the supper clubs, the worn and the well-to-do would be nodding their heads in smiling acknowledgment that the Belarusian immigrant had it right: that somehow, despite the coming of winter, autumn in New York promises an effervescent romance which makes one look to the Manhattan skyline with fresh eyes and feel:
It's good to live it again
.

 

But still, you have to ask yourself: If it's such an uplifting song, then why did Billie Holiday sing it so well?

When I got on the elevator early Tuesday morning, I found that like Mason Tate's desk, it was made of glass. A story below me, stainless steel gears turned like the works of a drawbridge while thirty stories overhead was a square of clear blue sky. On the panel in front of me were two silver buttons. One that said Now and one that said Never.

It was seven o'clock and the bullpen was empty. On my desk sat the letter to Bette Davis's agent, its flaws faithfully transcribed and carefully proofed. I read the letter one more time, then I put a fresh piece of stationery in the typewriter and fixed it. I left both versions on Mr. Tate's desk with a handwritten cover note indicating that given his time constraints, I had taken the liberty of preparing a second draft.

Mr. Tate didn't buzz until the end of the day. When I went in, he had the two versions of the letter sitting side by side on his desk, both of them unsigned. He didn't invite me to sit. He looked me over like a model student who's been caught slipping out of the dorm after curfew. Which in a way is just what I was.

—Tell me about your personal situation, Kontent, he said at last.

—I'm sorry, Mr. Tate. What is it you would like to know?

He leaned back in his chair.

—I can see you're unmarried. But do you like men? Do you have children stashed away? Siblings you're raising?

—Yes, no, and no.

Mr. Tate smiled coolly.

—How would you describe your ambitions?

—They're evolving.

He nodded his head. He pointed to the draft of an article that was on his desk.

—This is something of a profile by Mr. Cabot. Have you read any of his pieces?

—A few.

—How would you characterize them? Stylistically, I mean.

Despite its wordiness, I could tell that Mr. Tate generally appreciated Cabot's work. Cabot had a good instinct for the intersection of gossip and history and he seemed to be an unusually effective interviewer—charming people into answering questions that were better left unanswered.

—I think he's read too much Henry James, I said.

Tate nodded for a second. Then he handed me the draft.

—See if you can make him sound a little more like Hemingway.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Read All About It

Two nights later, an unseasonal snow fell in my dreams. Ashlike and serene, it settled over a city block lined with tenements and Coney Island amusements and the brightly colored minarets of the church where my grandparents were wed. Standing on the steps of the church, I reached out to touch the doors—so blue they could have been fashioned from planks of heaven. While somewhere on the periphery, all of twenty-two, her hair in barrettes, a safecracker's satchel in hand, my mother looked left and looked right and then turned the corner at a sprint. I reached out to knock on the door, but it knocked first.

—Police, a weary voice called. Open up.

. . .

The clock read two in the morning. I put on a robe and cracked the door. In the stairwell stood a top-heavy cop in a plain brown suit.

—Sorry to wake you, he said not sounding it. I'm Sergeant Finneran. This here's Detective Tilson.

It must have taken me a while to hear them, because Tilson was sitting on the stairs interrogating his nails.

—Do you mind if we come in?

—Yes.

—Do you know a Katherine Kontent?

—Sure, I said.

—Does she live here?

I pulled my robe tighter.

—Yes.

—Is she your roommate?

—No . . . I'm she.

Finneran looked back at Tilson and the detective looked up from his nails as if I'd finally roused his interest.

—Hey, I said. What's this all about?

 

The station house was quiet. Tilson and Finneran led me down a back stair into a narrow passage. A young cop opened a steel door that led to the holding cells where the air smelled of mold and ammonia. Eve was laid out like a rag doll on a cot without a blanket. Over a little black dress, she was wearing my flapper's jacket, the same one that she'd worn the night of the accident.

According to Tilson, she had passed out drunk in an alley off Bleecker Street. When one of the beat cops found her, she didn't have a purse or a wallet, but in the pocket of the coat they found—believe it or not—my library card.

—Is that her? Tilson asked.

—That's her.

—You said she lives uptown. What do you figure she was doing around Bleecker Street?

—She likes jazz.

—Don't we all, said Finneran.

I stood by the door waiting for Tilson to open the cell.

—Sergeant, he said, get a matron to put her in the showers. Miss Kontent, why don't you come with me.

Tilson took me back upstairs into a little room with a table, chairs, no windows. It was obviously an interrogation room. Once we both had a paper cup of coffee in front of us, he leaned back in his chair.

—So, how do you know this . . .

—Eve.

—Right. Evelyn Ross.

—We were roommates.

—Is that right. When was that?

—Until January.

Finneran came in. He nodded at Tilson and then supported the wall.

—So when Officer Mackey roused your friend in the alley, Tilson continued, she wouldn't tell him her name. Why do you think that was?

—Maybe he didn't ask nicely.

Tilson smiled.

—What does your friend do?

—She's not working right now.

—How about you?

—I'm a secretary.

Tilson put his fingers in the air and pretended to type.

—That's it.

—So what happened to her?

—Happened?

—You know. The scars.

—She was in a car accident.

—She must have been going pretty fast.

—We were hit from behind. She went through the windshield.

—You were in the accident too!

—That's right.

—What if I were to say the name Billy Bowers. Mean anything to you?

—No. Should it?

—How about Geronimo Schaffer?

—No.

—Okay, Kathy. Can I call you Kathy?

—Anything but Kathy.

—Okay then, Kate. You seem smart.

—Thanks.

—It's not the first time I've seen a girl end up like your friend.

—Drunk?

—Sometimes they get battered about. Sometimes it's a broken nose. Sometimes . . .

He let his voice drift off for emphasis. I smiled.

—You're way off the page on this one, Detective.

—Maybe. But a girl can get in over her head. I understand that. All she wants is to make a living. Like any of us. It's not how she thought she was going to end up. But then who ends up like they thought they would? They call em dreams for a reason, right?

Finneran grunted in appreciation of Tilson's turn of phrase.

 

When they brought me back to the front of the station house, Eve was there slumped on a bench. The matron stood by in full uniform. She helped me get Eve into the back of a cab while Tilson and Finneran looked on, hands in pockets. As we drove away, Eve with eyes closed began mimicking the sound of a trumpet.