Rules of Civility

by Amor Towles

  It was A Day at the Races. In typical Marx Brothers fashion, the stiff and sophisticated made early appearances, establishing a sense of decorum, which the audience politely abided. But at the entrance of Groucho, the crowd sat up in their seats and applauded—like he was a Shakespearean giant returning to the stage after a premature retirement.

  As the first reel ran I produced a box of Jujubes and Eve brought out a pint of rye. When it was Tinker’s turn to eat you had to shake the box to get his attention.

  The pint made one circuit and then another. When it was empty, Tinker produced a contribution of his own: a silver flask in a leather sheath. When it was in my hands, I could feel the TGR embossed on the leather.

  The three of us began to get drunk and we laughed as if it was the funniest movie we had ever seen. When Groucho gave the old lady a physical, Tinker had to wipe the tears from his eyes.

  At some point, I needed to go so badly that I couldn’t put it off. I nudged out into the aisle and skipped down the stair to the girls’ room. I peed without sitting on the seat and stiffed the matron at the door. By the time I got back I hadn’t missed more than a scene, but Tinker was sitting in the middle now. It wasn’t hard to imagine how that had happened.

  I plunked down in his seat thinking if I wasn’t careful, I was going to find a truckload of manure on my front lawn.

  But if young women are well practiced in the arts of marginal revenge, the universe has its own sense of tit for tat. For as Eve giggled in Tinker’s ear, I found myself in the embrace of his shearling coat. Its lining was as thick as on the hide of a sheep and it was still warm with the heat of his body. Snow had melted on the upturned collar and the musky smell of wet wool intermingled with a hint of shaving soap.

  When I had first seen Tinker in the coat, it struck me as a bit of a pose—a born and raised New Englander dressed like the hero in a John Ford film. But the smell of the snow-wet wool made it seem more authentic. Suddenly, I could picture Tinker on the back of a horse somewhere: at the edge of the treeline under a towering sky . . . at his college roommate’s ranch, perhaps . . . where they hunted deer with antique rifles and with dogs that were better bred than me.

  When the movie was over, we went through the front doors with all the solid citizens. Eve began doing the Lindy like the Negroes in the movie’s big dance number. I took her hand and we did it together in perfect synchronization. Tinker was clearly wowed—though he shouldn’t have been. Learning dance steps was the sorry Saturday night pursuit of every boardinghouse girl in America.

  We took Tinker’s hand and he faked a few steps. Then Eve broke rank and skipped into the street to hail a cab. We piled in behind her.

  —Where to? Tinker asked.

  Without missing a beat Eve said Essex and Delancey.

  Why, of course. She was taking us to Chernoff’s.

  Though the driver had heard Eve, Tinker repeated the directions.

  —Essex and Delancey, driver.

  The driver put the cab in gear and Broadway began slipping by the windows like a string of lights being pulled off a Christmas tree.

  Chernoff’s was a former speakeasy run by a Ukrainian Jew who emigrated shortly before the Romanovs were shot in the snow. It was located under the kitchen of a kosher restaurant, and though it was popular with Russian gangsters it was also a gathering place for Russia’s competing political émigrés. On any given night you could find the two factions encamped on either side of the club’s insufficient dance floor. On the left were the goateed Trotskyites planning the downfall of capitalism and on the right were the sideburned tsarist distaff dwelling in dreams of the Hermitage. Like all the rest of the world’s warring tribes, these two made their way to New York City and settled side by side. They dwelt in the same neighborhoods and the same narrow cafés, where they could keep a watchful eye on one another. In such close proximity, time slowly strengthened their sentiments while diluting their resolve.

  We got out of the cab and headed up Essex on foot, walking past the well-lit window of the restaurant. Then we turned down the alley that led to the kitchen door.

  —Another alley, Tinker said gamely.

  We passed a garbage bin.

  —Another bin!

  At the end of the alley there were two bearded Jews in black mulling over modern times. They ignored us. Eve opened the door to the kitchen and we walked past two Chinamen at large sinks toiling in the steam. They ignored us too. Just past the boiling pots of winter cabbage, a set of narrow steps led down to a basement where there was a walk-in freezer. The brass latch on the heavy oaken door had been pulled so many times that it was a soft, luminescent gold, like the foot of a saint on a cathedral door. Eve pulled the latch and we stepped inside among the sawdust and ice blocks. At the back, a false door opened revealing a nightclub with a copper-topped bar and red leather banquettes.

  As luck would have it, a party was just leaving and we were whisked into a small booth on the tsarist side of the dance floor. The waiters at Chernoff’s never asked for your order. They just plopped down plates of pierogies and herring and tongue. In the middle of the table, they put shot glasses and an old wine bottle filled with vodka that, despite the repeal of the Twenty-first Amendment, was still distilled in a bathtub. Tinker poured three glasses.

  —I swear I’m going to find me Jesus one of these days, Eve said, knocking hers back. Then she excused herself to the powder room.

  On the stage a lone Cossack accompanied himself ably on the balalaika . It was an old song about a horse that returns from war without its rider. As it approaches the soldier’s hometown, the horse recognizes the smell of the lindens, the brush of the daisies, the clang of the blacksmith’s hammer. Though the lyrics were poorly translated, the Cossack performed with the sort of feeling that can only be captured by an expatriate. Even Tinker suddenly looked homesick—as if the song described a country that he too had been forced to leave behind.

  When the song was over the crowd responded with heartfelt applause; but it was sober too, like the applause for a fine and unpretentious speech. The Cossack bowed once and retired from the stage.

  After looking appreciatively around the room, Tinker observed that his brother would really love this place and that we should all come back together.

  —You think we’d like him?

  —I think you would especially. I bet you two would really hit it off.

  Tinker became quiet, turning his empty shot glass in his hands. I wondered if he were lost in thoughts of his brother or still under the spell of the Cossack’s song.

  —You don’t have any siblings, do you, he said setting his glass down.

  The observation caught me off guard.

  —Why? Do I seem spoiled?

  —No! If anything the opposite. Maybe it’s that you seem like you’d be comfortable being alone.

  —Aren’t you?

  —Once I was, I think. But I’ve sort of lost the habit. Nowadays, if I’m in my apartment with nothing to do, I find myself wondering who’s in town.

  —Living in a henhouse, I’ve got the opposite problem. I’ve got to go out to be alone.

  Tinker smiled and refilled my glass. For a moment, we were both quiet.

  —Where do you go? he asked.

  —Where do I go when?

  —When you want to be alone.

  At the side of the stage, a small orchestra had begun to assemble—taking their chairs and tuning their instruments, while having emerged from the back hall, Eve was working her way through the tables.

  —Here she is, I said, standing up so that Eve could slip back into the banquette between us.

  The food at Chernoff’s was cold, the vodka medicinal and the service abrupt. But nobody came to Chernoff’s for the food or the vodka or the service. They came for the show.

  Shortly before ten, the orchestra began to play an intro with a distinctly Russian flavor. A spotlight shot through the smoke revealing a middle-aged couple stage right, she in the costume of a farm gi
rl and he a new recruit. A cappella, the recruit turned to the farm girl and sang of how she should remember him: by his tender kisses and his footsteps in the night, by the autumn apples he had stolen from her grandfather’s orchard. The recruit wore more rouge on his cheeks than the farm girl, and his jacket, which was missing a button, was a size too small.

  No, she replied, I will not remember you by those things.

  The recruit fell to his knees in despair and the farm girl pulled his head to her stomach, smearing her blouse red with his rouge. No, the girl sang, I will not remember you by those things but by the heartbeat you hear in my womb.

  Given the miscast performers and the amateurish makeup, you could almost laugh at the production—if it weren’t for the grown men crying in the front row.

  When the duet ended, the performers bowed three times to boisterous applause, and then ceded the stage to a group of young dancers in skimpy outfits and black sable hats. What commenced was a tribute to Cole Porter. It began with “Anything Goes” and then ran through a couple of refashioned hits including, “It’s Delightful, It’s Delicious, It’s Delancey.”

  Suddenly, the music stopped and the dancers froze. The lights went out. The audience held its breath.

  When the spotlight came on again, it revealed the dancers in a kick line and the two middle-aged performers at center stage, he in a top hat and she in a sequined dress. The male lead pointed his cane at the band:

  —Hyit it!

  And the whole ensemble finaléd with “I Gyet a Keek Out of You.”

  When I first dragged Eve to Chernoff’s, she hated it. She didn’t like Delancey Street or the alleyway entrance or the Chinamen at the sink. She didn’t like the clientele—all facial hair and politics. She didn’t even like the show. But boy, it grew on her. She came to love the fusion of glitter and sob stories. She loved the heartfelt has-beens who led the numbers and the toothy hope-to-bes who made up the chorus. She loved the sentimental revolutionaries and the counterrevolutionaries who shed their tears side by side. She even learned a few of the songs well enough to sing along when she’d had too much to drink. For Eve, I think an evening at Chernoff’s became a little like sending her daddy’s money home to Indiana.

  And if Eve’s intention had been to impress Tinker with a glimpse of an unfamiliar New York, it was working. For as the rootless nostalgia of the Cossack’s song was swept aside to make room for Cole Porter’s carefree lyrical wit and the long legs, short skirts and untested dreams of the dancers, Tinker looked like a kid without a ticket who’s been waved through the turnstiles on opening day.

  When we decided to call it a night, Eve and I paid. Naturally, Tinker objected, but we insisted.

  —All right, he said stowing his billfold. But Friday night’s on me.

  —You’re on, said Eve. What should we wear?

  —Whatever you like.

  —Nice, nicer or nicest?

  Tinker smiled.

  —Let’s take a stab at nicest.

  As Tinker and Eve waited at the table for our coats, I excused myself to take my turn in the powder room. It was crowded with the gangsters’ dolled-up dates. Three deep at the sink, they had as much fake fur and makeup as the girls in the chorus and just as good a chance of making it to Hollywood.

  On my way back, I bumped into old man Chernoff himself. He was standing at the end of the hallway watching the crowd.

  —Hello, Cinderella, he said in Russian. You’re looking superlative.

  —You’ve got bad lighting.

  —I’ve got good eyes.

  He nodded toward our table, where Eve appeared to be convincing Tinker to join her in a shot.

  —Who’s the young man? Yours or your friend’s?

  —A little bit of both, I guess.

  Chernoff smiled. He had two gold teeth.

  —That doesn’t work for long, my slender one.

  —Says you.

  —Says the sun, the moon and the stars.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Quick Brown Fox

  There were twenty-six red lights in the mahogany panel over Miss Markham’s door, each one identified by a letter of the alphabet. That was one light and one letter for each girl in the Quiggin & Hale secretarial pool. I was Q.

  The twenty-six of us sat in five rows of five with the lead secretary, Pamela Petus (aka G), positioned alone in front like the drum majorette in a dull parade. Under Miss Markham’s direction, the twenty-six of us did all correspondence, contract preparation, document duplication, and dictation for the firm. When Miss Markham received a request from one of the partners, she would consult her schedule (pronounced shed-ju-wul), identify the girl best suited to the task and press the corresponding button.

  To an outsider, it might seem sensible that if a partner had a good rapport with one of the girls, then he should be able to staff her on a project—whether it be the triplication of a purchase agreement or the cataloging of a wife’s indiscretions in a divorce suit. But such an arrangement did not seem sensible to Miss Markham. From her standpoint, it was essential that each task be met with optimal skill. While all the girls were capable secretaries, there were those who excelled at shorthand and those who had an unerring eye for the misuse of the comma. There was one girl who could put a hostile client at ease with the tone of her voice and another who could make the younger partners sit up straight simply by the controlled manner in which she delivered a folded note to a senior partner midmeeting. If excellence is to be expected, Miss Markham liked to observe, you can’t ask the wrestlers to throw the javelins.

  Case in point: Charlotte Sykes, the new girl who sat to my left. Nineteen years old with black hopeful eyes and alert little ears, Charlotte had made the tactical error of typing 100 words a minute her first day on the job. If you couldn’t type 75 words a minute you couldn’t work at Quiggin & Hale. But Charlotte was typing a good 15 words per minute over the mean performance of the pool. At 100 wpm, that’s 48,000 words a day, 240,000 words a week and 12 million words a year. As a new recruit, Charlotte was probably making $15 a week, or the equivalent of less than one ten-thousandth of a cent for every word she typed. That was the funny thing about typing faster than 75 words a minute at Quiggin & Hale—from there, the faster you were typing, the less per word you were being paid.

  But that’s not how Charlotte saw it. Like an adventuress trying to complete the first solo flight across the Hudson River, she hoped to type as fast as was humanly possible. And as a result, whenever a case surfaced requiring a few thousand pages of duplication, you could bet that the next light that clicked on over Miss Markham’s door would be the one under the F.

  Which is just to say, be careful when choosing what you’re proud of—because the world has every intention of using it against you.

  But on Wednesday, the fifth of January at 4:05 P.M., as I was transcribing a deposition, the light that clicked on was mine.

  Slipcovering my typewriter (as we’d been taught to do for even the briefest of interruptions), I stood, smoothed my skirt, picked up a steno pad and crossed the pool to Miss Markham’s office. It was a paneled room with the half door of a cabaret coat check. She had a small but ornate desk with a tooled leather top, the sort at which Napoleon must have sat when quilling directives from the field.

  When I entered, she looked up briefly from her work.

  —There is a call for you, Katherine. From a paralegal at Camden & Clay.

  —Thank you.

  —Keep in mind that you work for Quiggin & Hale, not for Camden & Clay. Don’t let them slough their work off on you.

  —Yes, Miss Markham.

  —Oh, and Katherine, one more thing. I understand that there was a good deal of last-minute work on the Dixon Ticonderoga merger.

  —Yes. Mr. Barnett said it was important that the transaction be completed before year-end. For tax reasons, I believe. And there were a few eleventh-hour emendations.

  —Well. I don’t like my girls working so late during Christmas week. Just t
he same, Mr. Barnett appreciated your seeing it through. As did I.

  —Thank you, Miss Markham.

  She released me with a wave of the pen.

  Stepping back into the secretarial pool, I went to the little telephone table at the front of the room. The phone was made available to the girls should a partner or a counterparty need to communicate a revision. The law firm of Camden & Clay was one of the largest litigators in the city. Though they weren’t directly involved in any of my matters, they tended to have a hand in everything.

  I picked up the receiver.

  —This is Katherine Kontent.

  —Hey Sis!

  I looked out over the pool where twenty-five of twenty-six typewriters were hard at work. They were clacking so loudly you could barely hear yourself think, which I suppose was the point. I lowered my voice anyway.

  —Your hair better be on fire, friend. I’ve got a deposition due in an hour.

  —How’s it coming?

  —I’m three misdirections and a whopper behind.

  —What’s the name of that bank where Tinker works?

  —I don’t know. Why?

  —We don’t have a plan for tomorrow night.

  —He’s taking us to some highbrow place, somewhere uptown. He’s picking us up sometime around eight.

  —Zowie. Someplace, somewhere, sometime. How’d you get all that?

  I paused.

  How did I get all that?

  It was one hell of a question.

  On the corner of Broadway and Exchange Place across the street from Trinity Church there was a little diner with a soda pop clock on the wall and a hasher named Max who even cooked his oatmeal on the griddle. Polar in winter, oppressive in July and five blocks out of my way, it was one of my favorite spots in town—because I could always get the crooked little booth-for-two by the window.