Table for Two

by Amor Towles

How could one expect to craft a novel of grace and significance when one’s greatest inconveniences had included the mowing of lawns in spring, the raking of leaves in autumn, and the shoveling of snow in winter? Why, Timothy’s parents hadn’t even bothered to succumb to alcoholism or file for divorce.

But of all the forces that are likely to influence him as he proceeds from one fork to the next, there are few more powerful than the moderate increase in income.

“I was thinking of borrowing one of your baseball caps.” “Okay,” I said, “that’s a start. You can borrow one of my jackets too. But don’t take the Mets hat. John is a Mets fan. And when one Mets fan sees another, he’s bound to come over and commiserate.” —

“It’s like my momma says: the more channels they’ve got on TV, the less people know.”

No one is born pompous. To attain that state requires a certain amount of planning and effort.

He had first seen her on the platform in New York—smoking a cigarette, with a small red valise at her feet. Somewhere in her midtwenties, fine-figured, with sandy hair, elegant and self-possessed, she was hard to miss even in a crowd. Perhaps, especially in a crowd.

They were doing long division with their hips and shaking their cans to the thirteenth power.

Over the course of a hundred and fifty years, these farm-bred charms had evolved to provide the rest of us some consolation when losing the upper hand in horse-trading,

Wendy was the sort of guy who sipped a whiskey at the bar, then guzzled half a pint of peppermint schnapps alone in his bedroom. The sort of guy who sighs so much, he has to break out a handkerchief every five minutes to clear the fog from his glasses.