Rules of Civility

by Amor Towles

  But while Mr. Parish had been right on these three accounts, he couldn’t have been more wrong about the job being a cul de sac.

  As I stood in the payroll department licking my wounds, Susie Vanderwhile asked if I wanted to join a few of the other assistants for a splash. Sure, I thought. Why not? What better reason for a drink than looming penury?

  At Quiggin & Hale when you went out with the girls, you’d hoof around the corner to the local well, snipe about your day, speculate on interoffice pinching, and then head for the elevated insufficiently soused. But when we walked out of the Pembroke Press, Susie hailed a cab. We all hopped in and headed to the St. Regis Hotel, where Susie’s brother Dicky, a floppy-banged gregarious sort freshly out of college, was waiting in the King Cole bar. In company were two of Dicky’s classmates from Princeton and a roommate from prep school.

  —Halloo Sis!

  —Hello Dicky. You know Helen. This is Jenny and Katey.

  Dicky rattled off introductions like a machine gun.

  —Jenny TJ. TJ Helen. Helen Wellie. Wellie Katey. Roberto Roberto.

  No one seemed to notice that I was the oldest person by a few years.

  Dicky slapped his hands together.

  —Right then. What’ll it be?

  G&Ts were ordered for all. Then Dicky ran off to roust up club chairs from around the bar. He pushed them up to our table, ramming them into each other like the bumper cars at Coney Island.

  Within minutes there was some story about how Roberto, under the influence of Bacchus and in the bad graces of Poseidon, had gone astray in the fog off Fisher’s Island. He had steered his father’s Bertram right into a concrete bulkhead, smashing it to smithereens.

  —I thought I was a quarter mile offshore, Roberto explained, because I could hear a bell buoy off the port bow.

  —Rather sadly, said Dicky, the bell buoy turned out to be the supper bell on the McElroys’ veranda.

  As Dicky spoke, he made animated and democratic eye contact with all the girls and he punctuated the details of his story with assurances of shared familiarity:

  You know how the fog is off Fisher’s Isle.

  You know how those Bertrams come about like a barge.

  You know dinner at the McElroys’: three grandames and twenty-two cousins gathered round a rib roast like cubs around the kill.

  Yes, Dicky, we knew.

  We knew the curmudgeonly old gent who stood behind the bar at Mory’s in New Haven. We knew how dull was the crowd at Maidstone. We knew the Dobsons and the Robsons and all the Fenimores. We knew a jib from a jibe, and Palm Beach from Palm Springs. We knew the difference between a sole fork, a salad fork, and that special fork with the bent tines used for breaking the kernels of corn when it’s served on the cob. We all knew each other so well. . . .

  And therein lay the first of two unanticipated advantages of taking a job at the Pembroke Press: presumption. For a young woman the pay at Pembroke was so bad and the professional prospects so poor, it went without saying that you took the job because you could absolutely afford to do so.

  —Who are you working with? one of the girls had asked in the cab.

  —Nathaniel Parish.

  —Oh! How terrific! How do you know him?

  How did I know him? My father and he were at Harvard? Grandma and Mrs. Parish grew up summering in Kennebunkport? I spent the semester in Florence with his niece? Honey, you can take your pick.

  Dicky was standing now. He took the imaginary steering wheel in hand. He screwed up his eyes and pointed to where the bell buoy tolled.

  —You, Aeolus—to whom the king of men

  And of the gods has lent the awesome power

  To calm the rolling waves, or with the winds

  Incite them—now stir your gales to fury;

  Upend and sink their ships; or toss them with

  their crews upon the open emerald seas!

  He gave the Virgil in perfect meter, iamb for iamb. Although, one suspected that Dicky’s ability to quote classical verse stemmed less from a love of literature than from a rote education in prep school which time had yet the time to erase.

  Jenny applauded and Dicky bowed, knocking a glass of gin into Roberto’s lap.

  —Mon Dieu, Roberto! Be a little more fleet of foot, man!

  —Fleet of foot? You’ve ruined another pair of my khaki trousers.

  —Come now. You’ve a lifetime supply.

  —Whatever the state of my supply, I demand an apology.

  —Then you shall have one!

  Dicky pointed a finger in the air. He adopted the appropriate expression of sober contrition. He opened his mouth.

  —Pencey!

  We all turned to see what a Pencey was. It was another Ivy Leaguer coming through the door with a girl on each arm.

  —Dicky Vanderwhile! Good God. What next.

  Yes, Dicky was a genuine mixer. He took relative pride and absolute joy in weaving together the strands of his life so that when he gave them a good tug all the friends of friends of friends would come tumbling through the door. He’s the sort that New York City was made for. If you latched yourself onto the likes of Dicky Vanderwhile, pretty soon you’d know everyone in New York; or at least everyone white, wealthy and under the age of twenty-five.

  When the clock struck ten, at Dicky’s instigation we trundled over to the Yale Club so that we could get a hamburger before the grill closed. Gathered around the old wooden tables, as we drank flat beer from water glasses, there were more wild-eyed anecdotes and witty exchanges. There were more familiar faces, more rapid-fire introductions, more assumptions, presumptions, resumptions.

  —Yes, yes. We’ve met before, one of the new arrivals said when Dicky introduced me. We danced a lick at Billy Ebersley’s.

  I had been wrong in thinking that no one had noticed my age. Dicky had noticed and, apparently, he found it enticing. He began to leer at me across the table conspiratorially when anyone had anything the least sophomoric to say. He clearly believed too many of the stories he’d heard from school chums about summer escapades with older sisters’ friends. While Roberto and Wellie drew straws to see which of their father’s accounts would be charged, Dicky took the opportunity to drag up a chair.

  —Tell me, Miss Kontent, where can we find you on the average Friday night?

  He gestured toward his sister and some of the other girls at the table.

  —Not with this sorority, I suspect.

  —On the average Friday night, you’d find me at home.

  —At home, eh? Please be more precise with your adverbial phrases. If you say at home with this crowd, we’ll assume that you’re living with your parents. Wellie there wears candy-striped pajamas and Roberto has model airplanes hanging from the ceiling over his bed.

  —So do I.

  —The pajamas or the airplanes?

  —Both.

  —I’d love to see them. So where is this home, precisely, where one can find you in candy stripes on a Friday night?

  —Is this where one can find you on the average Friday night, Dicky?

  —What’s that?!

  Dicky looked around the room in shock. Then he waved a dismissive hand.

  —Certainly not. It’s a bore. Geriatrics and rush chairmen.

  He looked me in the eye.

  —What do you say we get out of here? Let’s take a turn through the Village.

  —I couldn’t steal you away from your friends.

  —Oh, they’ll be all right without me.

  Dicky put a hand on my knee, discreetly.

  —. . . And I’ll be all right without them.

  —You’d better throttle back, Dicky. You’re steering straight for a bulkhead.

  Dicky took his hand off my knee with enthusiasm, nodding his head in agreement.

  —Righto! Time should be our ally, not our enemy.

  He stood up knocking over his chair. He pointed a finger in the air and proclaimed to no one in particular:

  —Let the evening
end as it began: with a sense of mystery!

  Unanticipated advantage #2?

  When I arrived at work on July 7, Mr. Parish was in his office talking to a handsome stranger in a bespoke suit. In his midfifties, he looked like a leading man a few years past his prime. From the way the two conversed, you could tell that they knew each other well but maintained a certain self-imposed distance, like high priests from different orders of the same faith.

  When the stranger left, Mr. Parish called me in.

  —Katherine, my dear. Have a seat. Do you know the gentleman with whom I was just speaking?

  —I don’t.

  —His name is Mason Tate. He actually worked for me as a younger man before he moved on to greener pastures; or rather, I should say, a series of greener pastures. At any rate, he works for Condé Nast now, where he is in the process of launching a new literary journal and he’s looking for a few assistant editors. I think you should meet with him.

  —I’m happy here, Mr. Parish.

  —Yes, I know you are. And were it fifteen years ago, this would have been just the place for you. But it isn’t any longer.

  He patted the pile of rejection letters awaiting his signature.

  —Mason is mercurial, but he is also very capable. Whether his journal succeeds or fails, a young woman with your intelligence will have the chance to learn a great deal at his side. And day to day, it is certain to be more dynamic than the offices of the Pembroke Press.

  —I’ll meet with him if you think I should.

  By way of answer, Mr. Parish held out Mr. Tate’s card.

  Mason Tate’s offices were on the twenty-fifth floor of the Condé Nast building, and from the looks of them you would have thought his forthcoming journal had been a success for years. A striking receptionist sat at a custom-made desk accented with freshly cut flowers. As I was led to Mr. Tate’s office, we passed fifteen young men talking on telephones or hacking away at brand-new Smith Coronas. It looked like the best-dressed newsroom in America. Along the walls were atmospheric photographs taken in New York: Mrs. Astor in an enormous Easter hat; Douglas Fairbanks in the chauffeur’s seat of a limousine; a well-heeled crowd kept waiting in the snow outside the Cotton Club.

  Mr. Tate had a corner office with glass walls. The top of his desk was a piece of glass too, floating on a lazy stainless steel X. In front of his desk was a small sitting area with a couch and chair.

  —Come in, he called.

  His accent was patently aristocratic—part prep school, part Brit, part prude. He pointed a commanding finger at one of the chairs, reserving the couch for himself.

  —I’ve heard good things about you, Miss Kontent.

  —Thank you.

  —What have you heard about me?

  —Not very much.

  —Excellent. Where were you raised?

  —In New York.

  —City? Or state?

  —The city.

  —Have you ever been to the Algonquin?

  —The hotel?

  —Yes.

  —I haven’t.

  —Do you know where it is?

  —West Forty-fourth Street?

  —That’s right. And Delmonico’s? Have you dined there?

  —Isn’t it closed?

  —In a manner of speaking. What did your father do?

  —Mr. Tate, what is this all about?

  —Come now. You can’t be afraid to tell me how your father earned his living.

  —I’ll tell you what he did, if you tell me why you want to know.

  —Fair enough.

  —He worked in a machine shop.

  —A proletarian.

  —I suppose.

  —Let me tell you why you’re here. On January first, I will be launching a new magazine called Gotham. Gotham will be an illustrated weekly and its purpose will be to profile those who hope to shape Manhattan and, by extension, the world. It will be a sort of Vogue of the mind. What I am looking for is an assistant who can triage my phone calls, my correspondence, and my laundry, if need be.

  —Mr. Tate, I was under the impression that you were looking for an editorial assistant for a literary journal.

  —You were under that impression because that is what I told Nathan. If I had told him I was recruiting a lackey for my glamour magazine, he would never have recommended you to me.

  —Or vice versa.

  Mr. Tate narrowed his eyes. He pointed his commanding finger at my nose.

  —Precisely. Come over here.

  We walked to a drafting table by the window overlooking Bryant Park. On it were candid photographs of Zelda Fitzgerald, John Barry-more and one of the younger Rockefellers.

  —Everyone has their virtues and vices, Miss Kontent. In rough terms, Gotham will cover the city’s lights, its lovers, its letters, and its losers.

  He gestured to the three photographs on the table.

  —Can you tell me which of those categories these people would fall under?

  —They’re all of the above.

  He gritted his teeth and smiled.

  —Well said. Relative to your life with Nathan, working for me would be quite different: Your pay would double, your hours triple and your purpose quadruple. But there is one hitch—I already have an assistant.

  —Do you really need two?

  —Hardly. My expectation is to run you both ragged until January first and then let one of you go.

  —I’ll forward my résumé.

  —For what?

  —To apply.

  —This isn’t an interview, Miss Kontent. This is an offer. You may accept it by being here tomorrow at eight.

  He went back around his desk.

  —Mr. Tate.

  —Yes?

  —You haven’t told me yet why you wanted to know my father’s profession.

  He looked up surprised.

  —Isn’t it obvious, Miss Kontent? I cannot abide debutantes.

  On the morning of Friday, July first, I had a low-paying job at a waning publisher and a dwindling circle of semi-acquaintances. On Friday, July eighth, I had one foot in the door of Condé Nast and the other in the door of the Knickerbocker Club—the professional and social circles that would define the next thirty years of my life.

  That’s how quickly New York City comes about—like a weather vane—or the head of a cobra. Time tells which.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Hurlyburly

  By the third Friday in July, this is what my life was like:

  a.)

  At 8:00 A.M., I am standing at attention in Mason Tate’s office. On his desk are a bar of chocolate, a cup of coffee and a plate of smoked salmon.

  To my right is Alley McKenna. A petite brunette with a sky-high IQ and cat’s-eye glasses, Alley is wearing black pants, a black shirt and black high-heel shoes.

  In most offices, the loosely buttoned blouse could take the ambitious girl from reasonably proficient to utterly indispensable in the turn of a calendar year, but not in Mason Tate’s. From the first, he made it clear that his affinities lay in another hemisphere. So we could save the fluttering of our eyelashes for the boys at the ballpark. He barely even looks up from his papers as he rattles off Alley’s instructions with aristocratic remove.

  —Cancel my meeting with the mayor on Tuesday. Tell him I’ve been called to Alaska. Get me all the front covers of Vogue, Vanity Fair and Time for the last two years. If you can’t find them downstairs, take a pair of scissors to the public library. My sister’s birthday is August first. Get her something timid from Bendel’s. She says she’s a five; assume she’s a six.

  He pushes a pile of blue-lined copy in my direction.

  —Kontent: Tell Mr. Morgan that he’s on the right track, but he’s a hundred sentences short and a thousand words too long. Tell Mr. Cabot yes, yes and no. Tell Mr. Spindler he’s missed the point entirely. We still don’t have a strong enough cover story for the first issue. Inform the lot of them that Saturday’s been canceled. For lunch I’ll take ha
m on seeded rye with Muenster and relish from the Greeks on Fifty-third.

  In suitable unison: Yes Sir.

  By 9:00 the phone is ringing.

  » I need to meet with Mason immediately.

  » I wouldn’t meet with Mr. Tate if he paid me.

  » My wife, who is ill, may contact Mr. Tate. I ask that he show the appropriate consideration for her well-being by encouraging her to return home to her children and the care of her physician.

  » I have some information on my husband that Mr. Tate may find interesting. It involves a harlot, a half a million dollars and a dog. I can be reached at the Carlyle under my maiden name.

  » My client, a citizen above reproach, has learned that his troubled wife is making delusional accusations. Please let Mr. Tate know that should his forthcoming periodical publish any of these sad and fantastic claims, my client is prepared to file suit not only against the publisher, but against Mr. Tate personally.

  How do you spell that? Where can you be reached? Until what hour? I’ll give him the message.

  —Ahem.

  Jacob Weiser, Condé Nast’s corporate comptroller, is standing at my desk. An honest, hardworking sort, he has one of those unfortunate mustaches made popular by the likes of Charlie Chaplin until the likes of Adolph Hitler put them out of fashion forever. You can tell from his expression that he doesn’t like Gotham, not one little bit. He probably thinks the entire venture seedy and prurient. Which, of course, it is, though no more so than Manhattan, and no less glamorous.

  —Good morning, Mr. Weiser. How can I help you?