—You’re going to let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand?
—That’s it, he said. Any interest?
—What’ll it cost me?
—According to Thoreau, nearly everything.
—It’d be nice to have everything at least once before giving it up.
He smiled.
—I’ll give you a call when you’ve got it.
When we got back to Hank’s apartment, Tinker lit a fire and we swapped stories into the night—the details of one circumstance triggering the memory of another and then another in effortless succession. Like two teenagers who’ve struck up a friendship on a cross-Atlantic steamer, we raced to trade reminiscences and insights and dreams before reaching port.
And when he laid out our bedrolls at the same respectful distance, this time I pushed mine over until there wasn’t a breath of space between us.
The next evening, when I returned to Gansevoort Street, he was already gone.
He hadn’t taken the fine leather case. It was sitting there empty beside the stack of books, its lid leaning against the wall. In the end, he had stuffed his clothes into his brother’s gunnysack. I was surprised at first that he’d left the books behind; but on closer inspection, I saw that he’d taken the little, worn edition of Walden.
The stove was cold. On top of it there was a note in Tinker’s hand, written on a torn endpaper.
Dearest Kate,
You have no idea what it has meant to me to see you these last two nights.
To have left without speaking, without telling you the truth, would have been the only regret I carried away.
I’m so glad that your life is going well. Having made a hash of mine, I know what a fine thing it is to have found your spot.
It was a rotten year of my own making. But even at its worst, you always gave me a glimpse of what might otherwise be.
I’m not sure where I’m going, he concluded. But wherever I end up, I’ll start every day by saying your name. As if by doing so, he might remain more true to himself.
Then he signed it: Tinker Grey 1910 – ?
I didn’t linger. I went down the stairs and into the street. I got as far as Eighth Avenue before turning back. I trudged all the way across Gansevoort, back over the cobblestones, up the narrow stair. And when I got into the room, I grabbed the painting of the dockworkers along with the volume of Washingtonia. One day he would regret having left them behind. I looked forward to being in a position to return them.
Some of you will think this a romantic thing to have done. But at another level, the reason I went back for Tinker’s things was to assuage a sense of guilt. For when I had walked in the room and found it empty, even as I was fending off a sense of loss, a slender, vigorous part of myself was feeling a sense of relief.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
A Ghost of Christmas Past
On Friday, the 23rd of December, I was sitting at my kitchen table cutting slices from a ten-pound ham and drinking bourbon from a bottle. Beside my plate was a proof of the premier issue of Gotham. Mason had spent a lot of time thinking about the cover. He wanted it to be Eye-Catching, Beautiful, Witty, Scandalous, and above all else, a Surprise. So only three copies of the mock-up existed: Mason’s, the art director’s, and mine.
It was a photograph of a naked woman standing behind a five-foot-high model of the San Remo apartment building. Through the windows you could see her skin, but curtains had been drawn selectively to obscure your view of her finer parts.
I had been given one of the mock-ups because the image had been my idea.
Well, sort of.
It was actually a variation on a painting by René Magritte that I had seen at the Modern. Mason had loved the idea and bet me my career that I couldn’t find a woman to pose for it. The photograph was framed so that you couldn’t see the woman’s face, but if the curtains on the fifteenth floor had been open, you would have seen a pair of eggplant-colored silver-dollar aureoles.
That afternoon Mason had called me into his office and asked me to sit—something he hadn’t done more than twice since the day he’d hired me. As it turned out, Alley had been on the money with her plan—both of us were going to be held on for another year.
When I stood to go, Mason gave me his congratulations, the proof with the mock-up and, as a bonus, he threw in the honey-baked ham that the mayor had sent him. I knew it came from the mayor because His Honor’s warm wishes were written on a golden card in the shape of a star. Lugging the ham under my arm, at the door I turned back to thank Mr. Tate.
—No thanks are necessary, he replied without looking up from his work. You’ve earned it.
—Then thank you for giving me the opportunity in the first place.
—You should thank your sponsor for that.
—I’ll give Mr. Parish a call.
Mason looked up from his desk and eyed me with curiosity.
—You’d better keep a closer eye on who your friends are, Kontent. It wasn’t Parish who recommended you. It was Anne Grandyn. She’s the one who twisted my arm.
I took another slug of bourbon.
I wasn’t much of a bourbon drinker, but I had bought the bottle on the way home thinking it would go well with the ham. And it did. I had bought a little Christmas tree too and set it up by the window. Without decorations it looked a little forlorn, so I pulled the mayor’s golden star off the ham and propped it on the highest branch. Then I got myself comfortable and opened Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, Mrs. Christie’s latest. I had bought it back in November and had been saving it for tonight. But before I could get started, there was a knock at the door.
I suppose it’s an immutable law of human nature that we sum up the events of the year as we approach its end. Among other things, 1938 had been a year of knockings at my door. There was the Western Union boy who brought Eve’s birthday wishes all the way from London; and Wallace with a bottle of wine and the rules of honeymoon bridge. Then Detective Tilson; then Bryce; then Anne.
In the moment, only some of those intrusions seemed welcome; but I guess I should have treasured them all. Because in a few years’ time, I’d be living in a doorman building myself—and once you’re in a doorman building, no one comes knocking ever again.
Tonight, the knocker at my door was a heavyset young man dressed in a Herbert Hoover suit. The walk up the stairs had winded him and his brow looked waxy with perspiration.
—Miss Kontent?
—Yes.
—Miss Katherine Kontent?
—That’s right.
He was greatly relieved.
—My name is Niles Copperthwaite. I am an attorney with Heavely & Hound.
—You’re kidding, I said with a laugh.
He looked taken aback.
—Hardly, Miss Kontent.
—I see. Well. An attorney making house calls on the Friday before Christmas. I hope I’m not in some sort of trouble.
—No, Miss Kontent! You are not in any trouble.
He said this with all the confidence of youth, but a moment later he added:
—At least no trouble of which Heavely & Hound is aware.
—A well-considered qualification, Mr. Copperthwaite. I shall bear it in mind. How can I help you?
—You have helped me already by being home at your previously listed address. I come at the behest of a client.
He reached behind the doorjamb and produced a long object wrapped in heavy white paper. It was tied with a polka-dot ribbon and had a tag that read DON’T OPEN TIL XMAS.
—This is being delivered, he said, as per the instruction of—
—One Wallace Wolcott.
—That’s right.
He hesitated.
—It’s a little out of the ordinary, as . . .
—As Mr. Wolcott is no longer with us.
We were both silent.
—If you don’t mind my saying so, Miss Kontent, I can see that you are surprised. I hope the surprise is not an unpleasant
one.
—Mr. Copperthwaite, if there were mistletoe over my door, I would kiss you.
—Well, yes. I mean . . . no.
He stole a glance at the top of the door frame, then straightened his posture and said more formally:
—A Merry Christmas to you, Miss Kontent.
—And a Merry Christmas to you, Mr. Copperthwaite.
I was never the type to wait until Christmas morning to open gifts. If I’ve got a Christmas present in my grips on the Fourth of July, I’ll open it by the light of the fireworks. So I sat down in my easy chair and opened this package that had been waiting so patiently to come knocking at my door.
It was a rifle. I didn’t know it then, but it was a Winchester 1894 from a small run overseen by John Moses Browning himself. It had a walnut stock, an ivory sight, and elaborate, floral scrolling on the polished-brass frame. It was a rifle you could have worn to your wedding.
Wallace Wolcott sure had the gift of timing. You had to grant him that.
I balanced the rifle in my palms the way that Wallace had taught me. It probably weighed no more than four pounds. I pulled back the action and looked inside the empty chamber. I closed it again and leveled the gun against my shoulder. Sighting down the barrel, I aimed at the top of my little Christmas tree and then I shot the mayor’s star right off the top.
DECEMBER 30
Twenty minutes before the whistle, the foreman circled by and told them to slow the fuck down.
In a long chain, teams of two were relaying sacks of sugar from a Caribbean freighter to a warehouse on the Hell’s Kitchen wharf. He and the Negro they called King were at the front of the chain. So when the foreman gave the order, King reset the tempo: one-one-thousand hook, two-one-thousand heft, three-one-thousand turn, four-one-thousand toss.
On the day after Christmas, the union of tugboat engineers had gone on strike without warning or the support of the longshoremen. At the edge of the Lower Bay, somewhere off Sandy Hook and Breezy Point, an armada of cargo ships were drifting, waiting to make landfall. So the word, up and down the line, was to ease it. God willing, the strike would be over before the ships in dock were empty, and they’d be able to keep the crews intact.
As the new man, well he knew that if they began cutting, he’d be the first to go.
But that was just as it should be.
The pace that King had chosen was a good one. It let him feel the strength in his arms and his legs and his back. The strength was moving through him now with every swing of the hook like an electrical charge. It was a feeling that he had lived without for a long time. Like the feeling of hunger before supper, or exhaustion before sleep.
Another good thing about the pace was that it allowed for a little more conversation :
(One-one-thousand hook.)
—So where are you from, King?
—Harlem.
(Two-one-thousand heft.)
—How long have you lived there?
—All my life.
(Three-one-thousand turn.)
—How long have you worked this wharf?
—Even longer.
(Four-one-thousand toss.)
—What’s it like?
—Just like heaven: full of fine folk who mind their own business.
He smiled at King and hooked the next sack. Because he understood what King was driving at. It was the same in Fall River. Nobody liked the new guy to begin with. For every man the company hired, there were twenty brothers or uncles or childhood pals who’d been passed over. So the less trouble you made for yourself the better. And that meant carrying your weight and keeping your mouth shut.
When the whistle sounded, King lingered as the other men headed for the Tenth Avenue bars.
He lingered too. He offered King a cigarette and they smoked with their backs against a packing crate, watching the men retreat. They smoked idly without speaking. When they were done with their cigarettes, they tossed the butts off the pier and began walking toward the gates.
Halfway between the freighter and the warehouse, there was a pile of sugar on the ground. One of the men must have torn the burlap of a sack with his hook. King paused over the sugar and shook his head. Then he knelt, took a fistful, and put it in his pocket.
—Come on, he said. You might as well take some too. If you don’t, it’s just going to the rats.
So he knelt down and took some too. It was amber and crystalline. He almost put it in his right pocket, but remembered in time that the right pocket was the one with the hole, so he put it in his left.
When they got to the gate, he asked King if he wanted to walk a bit. King gestured with his head in the general direction of the elevated. He was headed home to a wife and kids. King had never said as much, but he didn’t need to. You could just tell.
The day before, when work let out, he had walked south along the wharf. So today, he walked north.
With nightfall, the air had grown bitter cold and he wished that he had worn his sweater under his coat.
The piers above Fortieth Street reached into the deepest waters of the Hudson and were lined with the largest ships. Bound for Argentina, the one at Pier 75 looked like a fortress, impregnable and gray. He had heard that it was looking for seafaring men, and he might have angled for the job if he had only saved enough money. He was hoping to wander a bit once he’d made port. But there would be other chances on other boats heading to other places.
On Pier 77, there was a Cunard ocean liner stocked for a transatlantic crossing. On Boxing Day, it was blowing its horn and the confetti was falling from the upper decks to the docks—when word of the strike reached the helm. Cunard sent the passengers home, advising them to leave their trunks on board, as the strike was sure to be resolved within the day. Five days later, every stateroom had its share of cocktail dresses and evening gowns, of waistcoats and cummerbunds waiting in a ghostly silence—like the costumes in the attics of an opera house.
On Pier 80, the longest pier on the Hudson, there were no ships in dock. It jutted out into the river like the first leg of a new highway. He walked all the way out to the end. He took another cigarette from the pack and lit it with his lighter. Snapping the lighter shut, he turned and leaned against a piling.
From the end of the pier he could see the city’s skyline in its entirety—the whole staggered assembly of townhouses and warehouses and skyscrapers stretching from Washington Heights to the Battery. Nearly every light in every window in every building seemed to be shimmering and tenuous—as if powered by the animal spirits within—by the arguments and endeavors, the whims and elisions. But here and there, scattered across the mosaic, were also the isolated windows that seemed to burn a little brighter and more constant—the windows lit by those few who acted with poise and purpose.
He scuffed out his cigarette and decided to dwell in the cold a little while longer.
For however inhospitable the wind, from this vantage point Manhattan was simply so improbable, so wonderful, so obviously full of promise—that you wanted to approach it for the rest of your life without ever quite arriving.
EPILOGUE
Few Are Chosen
It was the last night of 1940 and the snow was blowing two knots shy of a blizzard. Within the hour there wouldn’t be a car moving in all Manhattan. They’d be buried like boulders under the snow. But for now, they crawled along with the weary determination of wayward pioneers.
Eight of us had stumbled out of a dance at the University Club that we hadn’t been invited to in the first place. The party had been on the second floor under the great palazzo ceilings. A thirty-piece orchestra dressed in white was ushering in 1941 in the brand-new and already outmoded style of Guy Lombardo. Unbeknownst to us, the party had an ulterior motive—to raise money for refugees from Estonia. When a latter-day Carry Nation stood alongside a dispossessed ambassador to rattle her tin can, we made for the door.
On the way out, Bitsy had somehow come into possession of a trumpet and, as she was making a pretty impres
sive show of the scales, the rest of us huddled under a street lamp to plan a course of action. A quick look at the roads and we could tell a taxi wouldn’t be coming to the rescue. Carter Hill said he knew of a perfect hideaway just around the corner where we could find food and drink, so under his direction we set off westward through the snow. None of the girls were dressed for the weather, but I had the good fortune of being tucked under one wing of Harrison Harcourt’s fur-collared coat.
Midway down the block, a rival party coming in the other direction pelted us with snowballs. Bitsy sounded the charge and we counterattacked. Taking cover behind a newsstand and a mailbox, we drove them off hooting like Indians, but when Jack “mistakenly” toppled Bitsy into a snowbank, the girls turned on the boys. It was as if our New Year’s resolution was to act like we were ten.
The thing of it is—1939 may have brought the beginning of the war in Europe, but in America it brought the end of the Depression. While they were annexing and appeasing, we were stoking the steel plants, reassembling the assembly lines, and readying ourselves to meet a worldwide demand for arms and ammunition. In December 1940, with France already fallen and the Luftwaffe bombarding London, back in America Irving Berlin was observing how the treetops glistened and children listened to hear those sleigh bells in the snow. That’s how far away we were from the Second World War.
Carter’s nearby hideaway ended up being a ten-block slog. As we turned onto Broadway, the wind howled down from Harlem blowing the snow against our backs. I had Harry’s coat cloaked over my head and was letting myself be steered by an elbow. So when we got to the front of the restaurant I didn’t even see what it looked like. Harry ushered me down the steps, pulled back his coat, and voila, I was in a sizable midblock joint serving Italian food, Italian wine, and Italian jazz, whatever that was.