We know her inside out, or we think we do. We go up and down her stairs when her elevators are broken, looking out her triangular windows on the hottest day of summer. The ones at the top don’t have panes, because the wind up there can kick up a field goal even when it's breezeless down below, and the updrafts can grab a bird and fling it through the building like it’s nothing. The Chrysler’s officially seventy-seven floors, but she actually has eighty-four levels. They get smaller and smaller until, at eighty-three, there’s only a platform the size of a picnic table, surrounded by windows; and, above that, a trapdoor and a ladder into the spire, where the lightning rod is. The top floors are tempting. Me and The Soother take ourselves up to the very top one sultry August night, knees and ropes, and she sways beneath us, but holds steady. Inside the spire, there’s space for one guy to stand encased in metal, feeling the earth move.
The Chrysler is a devastating dame, and that’s nothing new. I could assess her for years and never be done. At night we turn her on, and she glows for miles.
I’m saying, the waiters of the Cloud Club should know what kind of doll she is. We work inside her brain.
Our members retreat to the private dining room, the one with the etched glass working class figures on the walls. There, they cower beneath the table, but the waitstaff hangs onto the velvet curtains and watches as the Chrysler walks to Thirty-fourth Street, clicking and jingling all the way.
“We shoulda predicted this, boss,” I say to Valorous.
“Ain’t that the truth,” he says, flicking a napkin over his forearm. “Dames! The Chrysler’s in love.”
For eleven months, from 1930 to 1931, the Chrysler’s the tallest doll in New York City. Then the Empire is spired to surpass her, and winds up taller still. She has a view straight at him, but he ignores her.
At last, it seems, she’s done with his silence. It’s Valentine’s Day.
I pass Victor a cigarette.
“He acts like a Potemkin village,” I say. “Like he’s got nothing inside him but empty floors. I get a chance at a doll like that, I give up everything, move to a two-bedroom. Or out of the city, even; just walk my way out. What’ve I got waiting for me at home? My mother and my sister. He’s got royalty.”
“No accounting for it,” says Valorous, and refills my coupe. “But I hear he doesn’t go in for company. He won’t even look at her.”
At Thirty-fourth and Fifth, the Chrysler stops, holds up the edge of her skirt, and taps her high heel. She waits for some time as sirens blare beneath her. Some of our fellow citizens, I am ashamed to report, don’t notice anything out of place at all. They just go around her, cussing and hissing at the traffic.
The Empire State Building stands on his corner, shaking in his boots. We can all see his spire trembling. Some of the waitstaff and members sympathize with his wobble, but not me. The Chrysler’s a class act, and he’s a shack of shamble if he doesn’t want to go out with her tonight.
At 6:03 P.M., pedestrians on Fifth Avenue shriek in terror as the Chrysler gives up and taps the Empire hard on the shoulder.
“He’s gonna move,” Valorous says. “He’s got to! Move!”
“I don’t think he is,” says The Soother, back from comforting the members in the lounge. “I think he’s scared. Look at her.”
The Soother’s an expert in both Chinese herbal medicine and psychoanalysis. He makes our life as waiters easier. He can tell what everyone at a table’s waiting for with one quick look in their direction.
“She reflects everything. Poor guy sees all his flaws, done up shiny, for years now. He feels naked. It can’t be healthy to see all that reflected.”
The kitchen starts taking bets.
“She won’t wait for him for long,” I say. I have concerns for the big guy, in spite of myself. “She knows her worth, she heads uptown to the Metropolitan.”
“Or to the Library,” says The Soother. “I go there, if I’m her. The Chrysler’s not a doll to trifle with.”
“They’re a little short,” I venture, “those two. I think she’s more interested in something with a spire. Radio City?”
The Empire’s having a difficult time. His spire’s supposedly built for zeppelin docking, but then the Hindenberg explodes, and now no zeppelin will ever moor there. His purpose is moot. He slumps slightly.
Our Chrysler taps him again, and holds out her steel glove. Beside me, Valorous pours another round of champagne. I hear money changing hands all over the club.
Slowly, slowly, the Empire edges off his corner.
The floor sixty-six waitstaff cheers for the other building, though I hear Mr. Nast commencing to groan again, this time for his lost bet.
Both buildings allow their elevators to resume operations, spilling torrents of shouters from the lobbies and into the street. By the time the Chrysler and the Empire start walking east, most of the members are gone, and I’m drinking a bottle of bourbon with Valorous and the Soother.
We’ve got no dolls on the premises, and the members still here declare formal dinner dead and done until the Chrysler decides to walk back to Lex. There is palpable relief. The citizens of the Cloud Club avoid their responsibilities for the evening.
As the Empire wades into the East River hand in hand with the Chrysler, other lovestruck structures begin to talk. We’re watching from the windows as apartment towers lean in to gossip, stretching laundry lines finger to finger. Grand Central
