Rules of Civility

by Amor Towles

  Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation

  Etc.

  Did I say et cetera? There were 110 of them! And over half were underlined—one adolescent sharing another’s enthusiasm for propriety across a chasm of 150 years. It was hard to decide which was sweeter—the fact that Tinker’s mother had given it to him, or the fact that he kept it at hand.

  The chair behind the desk was on a pivot. I spun around once and came to a stop. The drawers could all be locked, but none of them were. The lower drawers were empty. The upper side drawers were stuffed with the usual accessories. But sitting on top of a pile of papers in the center drawer was a letter from Eve’s father.

  Dear Mr. Gray [sic],

  I appreciate your candor in the hospital and I am prepared to take you at your word that you and Evelyn are not romantically involved. In part, that is why I must insist above your previous objections that I cover the costs of my daughter’s stay in your apartment. I have enclosed a check for $1,000 and will follow it with others. Please do me the honor of cashing them.

  An act of generosity rarely ends a man’s responsibilities toward another; it tends instead to begin them. Few understand this, but I have no doubt that you do.

  If things should develop between you and my daughter, I can only trust that you will not take advantage of her condition, her proximity or her indebtedness—that you will show the restraint that comes natural to gentlemen—until such a time as you are ready to do what is right.

  With Gratitude and Trust,

  Charles Everett Ross

  I folded the letter and returned it to the drawer with a heightened respect for Mr. Ross. In its stark factual prose, businessman to businessman, I think his letter could have stymied Don Juan. No wonder Tinker left it there—where Eve was sure to find it.

  In the master bedroom, the drapes were open and the city glittered like a diamond necklace that knows exactly whom it’s within the reach of. The bed had a blue and yellow cover that complemented a pair of upholstered chairs. If the whole apartment had been designed pitch perfect for a wealthy bachelor, here there was just enough color and comfort so that a woman who lucked into the room wouldn’t feel herself on alien ground. It was the hidden hand again.

  In the closet there were some new additions to Eve’s wardrobe. They must have been bought by Tinker because they were not inexpensive and not Evey’s style. As I ran my finger along the dresses, flitting through them like the cocktail recipes, a blue flapper’s jacket caught my eye. It was mine. For a moment, I wondered how it had gotten there, since I was the one who had unpacked Evey’s things. But then I remembered—Evey had been wearing it the night of the accident. Through a miracle of Civility & Decent Behaviour, it had been salvaged and cleaned. I hung it back in its place and closed the closet door.

  In the bathroom Eve’s medication sat on the sink. It was some sort of painkiller. I looked in the mirror wondering how I would bear up in her place.

  Not so well, I reckoned.

  When I went back to the living room, Eve was gone.

  I went to the kitchen and the maid’s room. I doubled back to the study. I began to worry that she had actually run from the apartment. But then I saw the living room curtain rise and fall and the white silhouette of her dress on the terrace. I went out and joined her.

  —Hey Katey.

  If Eve suspected me of snooping, she didn’t show it.

  The sleet had stopped and the sky was starlit. The East Side apartment buildings glimmered across the park like houses on the opposite side of a cove.

  —It’s a little cold out here, I said.

  —But worth it, right? It’s funny. The skyline at night is so breathtaking and yet you could spend a whole lifetime in Manhattan and never see it. Like a mouse in a maze.

  Eve was right, of course. Along whole avenues of the Lower East Side the sky was blotted out by elevated tracks and fire escapes and the telephone wires that had yet to be put underground. Most New Yorkers spent their lives somewhere between the fruit cart and the fifth floor. To see the city from a few hundred feet above the riffraff was pretty celestial. We gave the moment its due.

  —Tinker doesn’t like me out here, she said. He’s convinced I’m going to jump.

  —Would you?

  I tried to put a hint of jest in the question, but it didn’t come off.

  She didn’t seem particularly annoyed. She just dismissed the notion in four words.

  —I’m a Catholic, Katey.

  About a thousand feet off the ground three green lights entered our field of vision heading southward over the park.

  —See those, Eve said pointing. I’ll bet you a good night’s sleep they circle the Empire State Building. The little planes always do. They just can’t seem to help themselves.

  As on those first nights out of the hospital, when Eve was ready I helped her back to her room; I helped take off her stockings and her dress; I tucked her in; I kissed her forehead.

  She reached up, took my forehead in her hands and kissed me back.

  —It was good to see you, Katey.

  —Do you want me to turn out the light?

  She eyed the bedside table.

  —Look at this, she groaned. Virginia Woolf. Edith Wharton. Emily Brontë. Tinker’s rehabilitation plan. But didn’t they all kill themselves?

  —I think Woolf did.

  —Well, the rest of them might as well have.

  The remark caught me so off guard that I burst out laughing. Eve laughed too. She laughed so hard that her hair fell over her face. It was the first good laugh the two of us had had since the first week of the year.

  When I turned out her light, Eve said that there was no point in my waiting for Tinker, that I should let myself out; and I almost did. But he had made me promise.

  So I turned off the lights in the hall and most of the lights in the living room. I settled down on the couch with the white throw over my shoulders. I pulled a book from the middle of the pile and started reading. It was Pearl Buck’s Good Earth. When it bogged me down on page 2, I turned to page 104 and started again. It didn’t help.

  My gaze settled on the pyramid of books. I considered the selection of titles for a moment. Then I carried the stack down the hall to the maid’s room and swapped the lot for ten of the detective novels. When I put them on the living room table, there was no need to arrange their vertical order because they were all exactly the same size. Then I went to make myself some closed-kitchen eggs.

  I cracked two eggs in a bowl and whisked them with grated cheese and herbs. I poured them into a pan of heated oil and covered them with a lid. Something about heating the oil and putting on the lid makes the eggs puff upon contact. And they brown without burning. It was the way my father used to prepare eggs for me when I was a girl, though we never ate them for breakfast. They tasted best, he used to say, when the kitchen was closed.

  I was eating the last off my plate when I heard Tinker calling my name in hushed tones.

  —I’m in the kitchen.

  He came in with that relieved look.

  —There you are, he said.

  —Here I am.

  He dropped into a chair. His hair was combed and his tie sported a crisp Windsor knot, but his turnout couldn’t hide the fact that he was weary. With puffy eyes and depleted drive, he looked like a brand-new father who’s been shocked into working extra hours by the arrival of twins.

  —How’d it go? he asked, tentatively.

  —Fine, Tinker. Evey’s tougher than you think. She’s going to be okay.

  I almost went on to say that he should relax a little, give Evey some space, let nature take its course—But then, I wasn’t the one who’d been driving the car.

  —We have an office in Palm Beach, he said after a moment. I’m thinking of taking her down there for a few weeks. Some warm weather and new surroundings. What do you think?

  —Sounds great.

  —I just think she could use a change of pace.
>
  —You look like you could use one yourself.

  He offered a tired smile in response.

  When I stood to clear, he followed the empty plate with the eyes of a well-behaved dog. So, I made him his own batch of closed-kitchen eggs. I whisked them and fried them, plated and served them. Earlier, I had seen an unopened bottle of cooking sherry in one of the cabinets. I pulled the cork and poured us each a glass. We sipped the sherry and drifted from topic to topic in unnecessarily hushed tones.

  The notion of Florida brought mention of the Keys which brought memories to Tinker of reading Treasure Island as a boy and of digging with his brother for backyard doubloons; which brought memories to both of us of Robinson Crusoe and daydreams of being stranded; which got us on the track of what two belongings we’d want in our pockets when we were eventually shipwrecked alone: for Tinker (sensibly) a jackknife and a flint; for me (insensibly) a pack of cards and Walden by Thoreau—the only book in which infinity can be found on every other page.

  And for the moment, we let ourselves imagine that we were still in Max’s diner—with our knees knocking under the tabletop and seagulls circling the Trinity steeple and all the brightly colored possibilities dangled by the New Year still within our reach.

  Old times, as my father used to say: If you’re not careful, they’ll gut you like a fish.

  In the foyer, Tinker took both my hands in his again.

  —It was good to see you, Katey.

  —It was good to see you too.

  As I stepped back, he didn’t immediately let go. He looked as if he was wrestling with whether to say something. Instead, with Eve asleep at the end of the hall, he kissed me.

  It wasn’t a forceful kiss. It was an inquiry. All I had to do was lean a little forward and he would have wrapped his arms around me. But at this juncture, where would that have gotten anybody?

  I freed my hands and put a palm on the smooth skin of his cheek, taking comfort in the well-counseled patience for that which bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and, most importantly, endures them.

  —You’re a sweet one, Tinker Grey.

  The elevator cables whooshed past as the car approached. I dropped my hand before Hamilton pulled back the elevator door. Tinker nodded and put his hands in his jacket pockets.

  —Thanks for the eggs, he said.

  —Don’t make too much of it. It’s the only thing I know how to cook. Tinker smiled, showing a flash of his normal self. I got on the elevator.

  —We didn’t get a chance to talk about your new place, he said. Can I come by and see it? Maybe next week?

  —That would be great.

  Hamilton was waiting respectfully for the conversation to end.

  —Okay, Hamilton, I said.

  He closed the gate and pulled the lever, initiating our descent; and then he whistled a little tune to himself as he watched the floors pass.

  After the Civil War the names of the founding fathers like Washington and Jefferson became plenty popular with his race. But here was the first Negro I’d ever met named after the death-by-dueling proponent of the central bank. When we reached the lobby, I stepped off the elevator and turned to ask him about that. But a bell rang and he gave a shrug. The great brass doors of the elevator quietly closed.

  They were embossed with a dragon-crested shield inscribed with the motto of the Beresford: FRONTA NULLA FIDES. Place No Trust in Appearances.

  I’ll say.

  Despite the fact that the groundhog had cast no shadow, winter laid siege on New York for another three weeks. The crocuses froze in Central Park; the songbirds, reaching the only sensible conclusion, doubled back to Brazil; and as for Mistah Tinkah, why the following Monday, he took Miss Evelyn to Palm Beach without so much as a word.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Cruelest Month

  One night in April, I was standing in the Wall Street stop of the IRT waiting to hoi polloi home. It had been twenty minutes since the previous train and the platform was crowded with hats and sighs and roughly folded afternoon editions. On the ground nearby was an overstuffed valise bound with string. But for the absence of children, it could have been a way station in a time of war.

  A man who was squeezing past me knocked my elbow. He had brown hair and a cashmere coat. Like one out of keeping with the times, he turned to apologize. And for the briefest moment I thought it was Tinker.

  But I should have known better.

  Tinker Grey was nowhere near the Interborough Rapid Transit. At the end of their first week in Palm Beach, Eve had sent me a postcard from the Breakers Hotel where she and Tinker were holed up. Sis, we miss you somethin’ awful—or so she wrote—and Tinker echoed the sentiment in the margin, wrapping little block letters around my address and up toward the stamp. On the picture, Eve had drawn an arrow pointing to their balcony overlooking the beach. She drew a sign stuck in the sand that read: NO JUMPING. The postscript read: See you in a week. But two weeks later, I got a postcard from the marina at Key West.

  In the meantime, I took five thousand pages of dictation. I typed four hundred thousand words in language as gray as the weather. I sutured split infinitives and hoisted dangling modifiers and wore out the seat of my best flannel skirt. At night, alone at my kitchen table I ate peanut butter on toast, mastered the ruff and slough and waded into the novels of E. M. Forster just to see what all the fuss was about. In all, I saved fourteen dollars and fifty-seven cents.

  My father would have been proud.

  The gracious stranger maneuvered across the platform and took a position beside a mousy young woman who looked up at his approach and briefly met my gaze. It was Charlotte Sykes, the typing prodigy who sat to my left.

  Charlotte had thick black eyebrows, but she also had delicate features and beautiful skin. She could have made a favorable impression on someone if she hadn’t acted as though at any moment the city was going to step on her.

  Tonight she was sporting a pillbox hat with a funereal chrysanthemum stitched to its crown. She lived somewhere on the Lower East Side and she seemed to be taking her cue from me as to how late one should work, because she often ended up on the platform a few minutes on my heels. Charlotte took a furtive look in my direction, obviously working up the courage to approach. Lest there be any doubt, I took A Room with a View from my purse and opened to Chapter VI. It is a lovely oddity of human nature that a person is more inclined to interrupt two people in conversation than one person alone with a book, even if it is a foolish romance:

  George had turned at the sound of her arrival. For a moment he contemplated her, as one who had fallen out of heaven. He saw radiant joy in her face, he saw the flowers beat against her dress

  The beating of flowers was drowned out by the brakes of a train. The refugees on the platform gathered their possessions and readied themselves to fight for passage. I let them push their way around me. When the station was this crowded you were generally better off waiting for the next train.

  Strategically positioned across the platform, rush hour conductors in little green caps acted like cops at the scene of an accident, broadening their shoulders and preparing to push people forward or back as necessary. The doors opened and the crowd surged. The blue-black chrysanthemum on Charlotte’s hat bobbed ahead like flotsam on the sea.

  —Make room in there, shouted the conductors, shoving high and low alike.

  A moment later the train was gone, leaving a smattering of wiser folk behind. I turned the page secure in my solitude.

  —Katherine!

  —Charlotte . . .

  At the last minute, she must have doubled back, like a Cherokee scout.

  —I didn’t know you took this train, she said disingenuously.

  —Every day.

  She blushed sensing that she’d been caught in a fib. The blush brought badly needed color to her cheeks. She should have fibbed more often.

  —Where do you live? she asked.

  —On Eleventh Street.

  Her f
ace brightened.

  —We’re nearly neighbors! I live on Ludlow. A few blocks east of Bowery.

  —I know where Ludlow is.

  She smiled apologetically.

  —Of course.

  Charlotte was holding a large document with both hands in front of her waist, the way a schoolgirl holds her textbooks. From the thickness of it you could tell it was the draft of a merger agreement or an offering plan. Whatever it was, she shouldn’t have had it with her.

  I let the silence grow awkward.

  Though apparently not awkward enough.

  —Did you grow up in the neighborhood? she asked.

  —I grew up in Brighton Beach.

  —Jeepers, she said.

  She was about to ask what Brighton Beach was like or which subway ran there or if I’d ever been to Coney Island, but a train came to my rescue. There were still only a scattering of people on the platform so the conductors ignored us. They smoked cigarettes with worldly indifference like soldiers in between assaults.

  Charlotte took the seat beside me. On the bench facing us, there was a middle-aged chambermaid disinclined to raise her eyes. She wore an old burgundy coat over her black and white uniform and a pair of practical shoes. Above her head hung a poster from the Department of Health discouraging the practice of sneezing without a handkerchief.

  —How long have you worked for Miss Markham? Charlotte asked. It was to Charlotte’s credit that she said Miss Markham rather than Quiggin & Hale.