Rules of Civility

by Amor Towles

—Katey Kontent! Wow! So are you?

  —Not by a long shot.

  Tinker raised his glass with a friendly smile.

  —Then here’s to it in 1938.

  Tinker’s brother never showed. Which worked out fine for us, because around eleven o’clock, Tinker signaled the waitress and ordered a bottle of bubbly.

  —We aint got no bubbly here, Mister, she replied—decidedly colder now that he was at our table.

  So he joined us in a round of gin.

  Eve was in terrific form. She was telling tales about two girls in her high school who’d vied to be homecoming queen the way that Vanderbilt and Rockefeller vied to be the richest man in the world. One of the girls loosed a skunk in the house of the other the night of the senior dance. Her rival responded by dumping a load of manure on her front lawn the day of her sweet sixteen. The finale was a Sunday morning hair-pulling contest on the steps of Saint Mary’s between their mothers. Father O’Connor, who should have known better, tried to intervene and got a little scripture of his own.

  Tinker was laughing so hard you got the sense that he hadn’t done it in a while. It was brightening all his God-given attributes like his smile and his eyes and the blushes on his cheeks.

  —How about you, Katey? he asked after catching his breath. Where are you from?

  —Katey grew up in Brooklyn, Eve volunteered—as if it was a bragging right.

  —Really? What was that like?

  —Well, I’m not sure we had a homecoming queen.

  —You wouldn’t have gone to homecoming if there was one, Eve said. Then she leaned toward Tinker confidentially.

  —Katey’s the hottest bookworm you’ll ever meet. If you took all the books that she’s read and piled them in a stack, you could climb to the Milky Way.

  —The Milky Way!

  —Maybe the Moon, I conceded.

  Eve offered Tinker a cigarette and he declined. But the instant her cigarette touched her lips, he had a lighter at the ready. It was solid gold and engraved with his initials.

  Eve leaned her head back, pursed her lips and shot a ray of smoke toward the ceiling.

  —Now, what about you, Theodore?

  —Well, I guess if you stacked all the books I’ve read, you could climb into a cab.

  —No, said Eve. I mean: What about you?

  Tinker answered relying on the ellipses of the elite: He was from Massachusetts; he went to college in Providence; and he worked for a small firm on Wall Street—that is, he was born in the Back Bay, attended Brown, and now worked at the bank that his grandfather founded. Usually, this sort of deflection was so transparently disingenuous it was irksome, but with Tinker it was as if he was genuinely afraid that the shadow of an Ivy League degree might spoil the fun. He concluded by saying he lived uptown.

  —Where uptown? Eve asked “innocently.”

  —Two eleven Central Park West, he said, with a hint of embarrassment.

  Two eleven Central Park West! The Beresford. Twenty-two stories of terraced apartments.

  Under the table Eve kicked me again, but she had the good sense to change the subject. She asked him about his brother. What was he like? Was he older, younger? Shorter, taller?

  Older and shorter, Henry Grey was a painter who lived in the West Village. When Eve asked what was the best word to describe him, after thinking a moment Tinker settled on unwavering—because his brother had always known who he was and what he wanted to do.

  —Sounds exhausting, I said.

  Tinker laughed.

  —I guess it does, doesn’t it.

  —And maybe a little dull? Eve suggested.

  —No. He’s definitely not dull.

  —Well, we’ll stick to wavering.

  At some point, Tinker excused himself. Five minutes went by, then ten. Eve and I both began to fidget. He didn’t seem the sort to strand us with the check, but a quarter of an hour in a public john was a long time even for a girl. Then just as panic was setting in, he reappeared. His face was flush. The cold New Year’s air emanated from the fabric of his tuxedo. He was grasping a bottle of champagne by the neck and grinning like a truant holding a fish by the tail.

  —Success!

  He popped the cork at the tin ceiling drawing discouraging stares from everyone but the bass player whose teeth peeked out from under his mustache as he nodded and gave us a boom boom boom!

  Tinker poured the champagne into our empty glasses.

  —We need some resolutions!

  —We aint got no resolutions here, Mister.

  —Better yet, said Eve. Why don’t we make resolutions for each other?

  —Capital! Tinker said. I’ll go first. In 1938, the two of you . . .

  He looked us up and down.

  —Should try to be less shy.

  We both laughed.

  —Okay, said Tinker. Your turn.

  Eve came back without hesitation.

  —You should get out of your ruts.

  She raised an eyebrow and then squinted as if she was offering him a challenge. For a moment he was taken aback. She had obviously struck a chord. He nodded his head slowly and then smiled.

  —What a wonderful wish, he said, to wish for another.

  As midnight approached, the sound of people cheering and cars honking became audible from the street, so we decided to join the party. Tinker overpaid in freshly minted bills. Eve snatched his scarf and wrapped it around her head like a turban. Then we stumbled through the tables into the night.

  Outside, it was still snowing.

  Eve and I got on either side of Tinker and took his arms. We leaned into his shoulders as if against the cold and marched him down Waverly toward the carousing in Washington Square. As we passed a stylish restaurant two middle-aged couples came out and climbed into a waiting car. When they drove away, the doorman caught Tinker’s eye.

  —Thanks again, Mr. Grey, he said.

  Here, no doubt, was the well-tipped source of our bubbly.

  —Thank you, Paul, said Tinker.

  —Happy New Year, Paul, said Eve.

  —Same to you, ma’am.

  Powdered with snow, Washington Square looked as lovely as it could. The snow had dusted every tree and gate. The once tony brownstones that on summer days now lowered their gaze in misery were lost for the moment in sentimental memories. At No. 25, a curtain on the second floor was drawn back and the ghost of Edith Wharton looked out with shy envy. Sweet, insightful, unsexed, she watched the three of us pass wondering when the love that she had so artfully imagined would work up the courage to rap on her door. When would it present itself at an inconvenient hour, insist upon being admitted, brush past the butler and rush up the Puritan staircase urgently calling her name?

  Never, I’m afraid.

  As we approached the center of the park, the revelry by the fountain began to take shape: A crowd of collegiates had gathered to ring in the New Year with a half-priced ragtime band. All of the boys were in black tie and tails except for four freshmen who wore maroon sweaters emblazoned with Greek letters and who scrambled through the crowd filling glasses. A young woman who was insufficiently dressed was pretending to conduct the band which, due to indifference or inexperience, played the same song over and over.

  The musicians were suddenly waved silent by a young man who leapt onto a park bench with a coxswain’s megaphone in hand, looking as self-assured as the ringmaster in a circus for aristocrats.

  —Ladies and gentlemen, he proclaimed. The turn of the year is nearly upon us.

  With a flourish, he signaled one of his cohorts and an older man in a gray robe was foisted up onto the bench at his side. The foistee was wearing the cotton ball beard of a drama school Moses and holding a cardboard scythe. He appeared to be a little unsteady on his feet.

  Unfurling a scroll that fell to the ground, the ringmaster began chastising the old man for the indignities of 1937: The recession . . . The Hindenburg . . . The Lincoln Tunnel! Then holding up his megaphone, he called on 1938 to present
itself. From behind a bush an overweight fraternity brother appeared dressed in nothing but a diaper. He climbed on the bench and to the merriment of the crowd took a stab at flexing his muscles. At the same time, the beard on the old man became unhooked from an ear and you could see that he was gaunt and ill shaven. He must have been a bum that the collegiates had lured from an alley with the promise of money or wine. But whatever the enticement, its influence must have run its course, because he was suddenly looking around like a drifter in the hands of vigilantes.

  With a salesman’s enthusiasm, the ringmaster began gesturing to various parts of the New Year’s physique, detailing its improvements: its flexible suspension, its streamlined chassis, its get-up-and-go.

  —Come on, said Eve, skipping ahead with a laugh.

  Tinker didn’t seem so eager to join in the fun.

  I took a pack of cigarettes from my coat pocket and he produced his lighter.

  He took a step closer in order to block the wind with his shoulders.

  As I exhaled a filament of smoke, Tinker looked overhead at the snowflakes whose slow descent was marked by the halo of the street lamps. Then he turned back toward the commotion and scanned the assembly with an almost mournful gaze.

  —I can’t tell whom you feel more sorry for, I said. The old year or the new.

  He offered a tempered smile.

  —Are those my only options?

  Suddenly, one of the revelers at the edge of the crowd was hit squarely in the back by a snowball. When he and two of his fraternity brothers turned, one of them was hit in the pleats of his shirt.

  Looking back, we could see that a boy no older than ten had launched the attack from behind the safety of a park bench. Wrapped in four layers of clothing, he looked like the fattest kid in the class. To his left and right were pyramids of snowballs reaching to his waist. He must have spent the whole day packing ammunition—like one who’s received word of the redcoats’ approach straight from the mouth of Paul Revere.

  Dumbstruck, the three collegiates stared with open mouths. The kid took advantage of their cognitive delay by unloading three more wellaimed missiles in quick succession.

  —Get that brat, one of them said without a hint of humor.

  The three of them began scraping snowballs off the paving stones and returning fire.

  I took out another cigarette, preparing to enjoy the show, but my attention was drawn back in the other direction by a rather startling development. On the bench beside the wino, the diaper-donning New Year had begun to sing “Auld Lang Syne” in a flawless falsetto. Pure and heartfelt, as disembodied as the plaint of an oboe drifting across the surface of a lake, his voice lent an eerie beauty to the night. Though one has to practically sing along with “Auld Lang Syne” by law, such was the otherworldliness of his performance that no one dared to sound a note.

  When he had tapered out the final refrain with exquisite care, there was a moment of silence, then cheers. The ringmaster put a hand on the tenor’s shoulder—recognizing a job well done. Then he took out his watch and raised his hand for silence.

  —All right everyone. All right. Quiet now. Ready . . . ? Ten! Nine! Eight!

  From the center of the crowd Eve waved excitedly in our direction.

  I turned to take Tinker’s arm—but he was gone.

  To my left the walkways of the park were empty and to my right a lone silhouette, stocky and short, passed under a street lamp. So I turned back toward Waverly—and that’s when I saw him. He was hunched behind the bench at the little boy’s side fending off the attack of the fraternity brothers. Aided by the unexpected reinforcement, the boy looked more determined than ever. And Tinker, he had a smile on his face that could have lit every lamp at the North Pole.

  When Eve and I got home it was nearly two. Normally, the boardinghouse locked its doors at midnight, but the curfew had been extended for the holiday. It was a liberty that few of the girls had made the most of. We found the living room empty and depressed. It had scatterings of virginal confetti and there were unfinished glasses of cider on every side table. Eve and I traded a self-satisfied gaze and went up to our room.

  We were both quiet, letting the aura of our good fortune linger. Eve slipped her dress over her head and went off to the bathroom. The two of us shared a bed, and Eve was in the habit of turning it down as if we were in a hotel. Though it always seemed crazy to me, that unnecessary little preparation, for once, I turned the bed down for her. Then I took the cigar box from my underwear drawer so I could stow my unspent nickels before going to bed, just like I’d been taught.

  But when I reached into my coat pocket for my change purse, I felt something heavy and smooth. A little mystified, I pulled the object out and found it was Tinker’s lighter. Then I remembered having—in a somewhat Eve-like manner—taken it from his hand to light my second cigarette. It was just around the time that the New Year had begun to sing.

  I sat down in my father’s barley-brown easy chair—the only piece of furniture I owned. I flipped open the lighter’s lid and turned the flint. The flame leapt and wavered, giving off its kerosene scent before I snapped it shut.

  The lighter had a pleasant weight and a soft, worn look, polished by a thousand gentlemanly gestures. And the engraving of Tinker’s initials, which was in a Tiffany font, was so finely done you could score your thumbnail along the stem of the letters unerringly. But it wasn’t just marked with his monogram. Under his initials had been etched a sort of coda in the amateurish fashion of a drugstore jeweler, such that it read:

  TGR

  1910 – ?

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Sun, the Moon & the Stars

  The following morning, we left Tinker an unsigned note with the doorman at the Beresford:

  If you ever want to see your lighter alive, you’ll meet us on the corner of 34th and Third at 6:42. And you’ll come alone.

  I set the likelihood of his showing up at fifty percent. Eve set it at a hundred and ten. When he climbed out of the cab, we were waiting in trench coats in the shadows of the elevated. He was wearing a denim shirt and a shearling coat.

  —Put em up, pardner, I said, and he did.

  —How’s it coming with those ruts? Eve prodded.

  —Well, I woke at the usual hour. And after my usual squash match, I had my usual lunch. . . .

  —Most people make a go of it until the second week of January.

  —Maybe I’m a slow starter?

  —Maybe you need help.

  —Oh, I definitely need help.

  Wetied a navy blue kerchief over his eyes and led him west. A good sport, he didn’t put his hands out like the newly blind. He submitted to our control and we steered him through the crowds.

  It began to snow again. They were those large individual flakes that drift slowly toward the ground and occasionally perch in your hair.

  —Is it snowing? he asked.

  —No questions.

  We crossed Park Avenue, Madison, Fifth. Our fellow New Yorkers brushed past showing seasoned indifference. When we crossed Sixth Avenue, we could see the twenty-foot-high marquee of the Capitol Theatre shining over Thirty-fourth Street. It looked like the bow of an ocean liner had crashed through the building’s façade. The crowd from the early show was filtering into the cold. They were mirthful and at ease, exhibiting something of that tired self-satisfaction that’s typical of the first night of the year. He could hear their voices.

  —Where are we going, girls?

  —Quiet, we cautioned, turning up an alley.

  Large gray rats fearful of the snow scurried among the tobacco tins. Overhead the fire escapes crawled up the sides of the buildings like spiders. The only light came from a small red lamp over the theater’s emergency exit. We passed it and took up our position behind a garbage bin.

  I untied Tinker’s blindfold holding a finger to my lips.

  Eve reached into her blouse and produced an old black brassiere. She smiled brightly and winked. Then she slinked back dow
n the alley to where the drop steps of the fire escape hung in the air. On the tips of her toes she hooked the end of the bra onto the bottom rung.

  She came back and we waited.

  6:50.

  7:00.

  7:10.

  The emergency exit opened with a creak.

  A middle-aged usher in a red uniform stepped outside, taking refuge from the feature he’d already seen a thousand times. In the snow, he looked like a wooden soldier from the Nutcracker who’d lost his hat. While easing the door shut, he put a program in the crack so that it wouldn’t close completely. The snow fell through the fire escapes and settled on his fake epaulettes. Leaning against the door, he took a cigarette from behind his ear, lit it, and exhaled smoke with the smile of a well-fed philosopher.

  It took him three drags to notice the bra. For a moment or two, he studied it from a safe distance; then he flicked his cigarette against the alley wall. He crossed over and tilted his head as if he wanted to read the label. He looked to his left and his right. He gingerly freed the garment from its snag and held it draped over his hands. Then he pressed it to his face.

  We slipped through the exit making sure that the program went back in the door.

  As usual, we ducked and crossed below the screen. We headed up the opposite aisle with the newsreel flickering behind us: Roosevelt and Hitler taking turns waving from long black convertibles. We went out into the lobby, up the stairs, back through the balcony door. In the dark, we made our way to the highest row.

  Tinker and I began to giggle.

  —Shhhh, said Eve.

  When we had come onto the balcony, Tinker held open the door and Eve charged ahead. So we ended up sitting Eve on the inside, me in the middle, and Tinker on the aisle. When our eyes met, Eve gave me an irritated smirk, as if I had planned it that way.

  —Do you do this often? Tinker whispered.

  —Whenever we get the chance, said Eve.

  —Sh! said a stranger, more emphatically, as the screen went black. Throughout the theater, lighters flickered on and off like fireflies. Then the screen lit up and the feature began.