Rules of Civility (35 page)

—Katey . . .

—You freak.

He reached for my elbow. I yanked it away and my purse fell to the ground, spilling its contents. He said my name again. I knelt to sweep up the mess. He got down and tried to help.

—Stop!

We both stood up.

—Katey . . .

—This is what I've been waiting for? I said.

Or maybe shouted.

Something fell from my jawbone to the back of my hand. It was a teardrop of all things. So I slapped him.

That helped. It restored my composure. And unsettled his.

—Katey, he pleaded one more time without showing much imagination.

—Off with your head, I said.

 

I was halfway up the block when Bitsy caught me. She was uncharacteristically breathless.

—What was that all about?

—I'm sorry, I said. I was feeling a little light-headed.

—Tinker's the one feeling light-headed.

—Oh. Did you see that?

—No. But I saw a handprint on his face and it looked about your size. What's afoot?

—It's stupid. It was nothing. It was just a misunderstanding.

—The Civil War was a misunderstanding. That was a lovers' quarrel. Bitsy's dress was sleeveless and goose bumps were visible on her arms.

—Where's your coat? I asked.

—You ran off so fast that I had to leave it in the restaurant.

—We can go back.

—No way.

—We should get it.

—Quit worrying about the coat. It'll find
me
. That's why I leave my wallet in the pocket in the first place. Now what's the fuss?

—It's a long story.

—Leviticus long? Or Deuteronomy long?

—Old Testament long.

—Don't say another word.

She turned to the street and raised a hand. A cab materialized instantaneously, as if she had powers over their domain.

—Driver, she commanded, find Madison Avenue and start driving up it.

Bitsy sat back and was silent. I could tell that I was supposed to do the same. It was sort of like when Dr. Watson kept quiet so that Sherlock Holmes could deduct. At Fifty-second Street she told the driver to pull over.

—Don't move a muscle, she told me.

She jumped out and ran into the Chase Manhattan Bank. When she came out ten minutes later she had a sweater over her shoulders and an envelope in her hands. The envelope was filled with cash.

—Where'd you get the sweater?

—They'll do anything for me at Chase.

She leaned forward.

—Driver, take us to the Ritz.

 

Nearly empty, the dining room of the Ritz looked like a half-witted room at Versailles. So we went back across the lobby to the bar. It was darker, smaller, less Louis Quatorze. Bitsy nodded.

—That's more like it.

Bitsy sequestered us in a booth at the back, ordered hamburgers, French fries, and bourbons. Then she looked at me expectantly.

—I probably shouldn't tell you this, I said.

—Kay-Kay, those are my six favorite words in the English language.

So I told her.

I told her how Evey and I had met Tinker at The Hotspot on New Year's Eve and how the three of us had bandied about—to the Capitol Theatre and Chernoff's. I told her about Anne Grandyn and how she'd introduced herself at the 21 Club as Tinker's godmother. I told her about the car crash and Eve's recovery and the night with the closed-kitchen eggs and the star-crossed kiss at the elevator door. I told her about the steamer to Europe and the letter from Brixham. I told her how I'd talked my way into a new job and insinuated myself into the glamorous lives of Dicky Vanderwhile and Wallace Wolcott and Bitsy Houghton née Van Heuys.

And, at long last, I told her about the late night call that I'd received after Eve disappeared and how with my overnight bag in hand I'd skipped to Penn Station like a schoolgirl so that I could catch the Montrealer and take it to a hoot owl and a hearthstone and a can of pork and beans.

Bitsy emptied her glass.

—That's a Grand Canyon of a tale, she said. A mile deep and two miles wide.

The metaphor was apt. A million years of social behavior had worn away this chasm and now you had to pack a mule to get to the bottom of it.

I suppose I suspected that some display of sororal sympathy was in order; or if not that, then outrage. But Bitsy exhibited neither. Like a seasoned lecturer, she seemed satisfied that we had covered the necessary ground for the day. She signaled the waiter and paid the bill.

When we were outside, parting ways, I couldn't resist but ask:

—So . . . ?

—So, what?

—So, what do you think I should do?

She looked a little surprised.

—Do? Why, keep it up!

When I got back to my place it was after five. In the apartment next door, I could hear the Zimmers sharpening their sarcasm. Over an early dinner, they chipped away at each other like little Michelangelos, placing every stroke of the mallet with care and devotion.

I kicked my shoes at the icebox, poured a glass of gin, and dropped into a chair. The rehash with Bitsy had helped me regain some perspective, even more than the crack I'd taken at Tinker. It had left me in a scientific mood, a mood of morbid fascination—the way a pathologist must feel when looking at a viral rupture on the surface of his own skin.

There's an old parlor game called On the Road to Kent in which someone describes a walk he has taken on the road to Kent and all of the things that he witnessed along the way: the various tradesmen; the wagons and carriages; the heath and heather; the whip-poor-will; the windmill; and the gold sovereign dropped by the abbot in the ditch. When the traveler finishes, he describes the journey a second time, leaving out some items, adding others, rearranging a few, and the game is to identify as many of the changes as possible. Sitting there in my apartment, I found myself playing a version of this game in which the road was the one that I had traveled with Tinker from New Year's Eve to the present.

This is a game that is won through powers of visualization more than memory. The best player puts herself in the traveler's shoes as the journey unfolds, using her mind's eye to see exactly what the traveler has seen, so that when she walks the route a second time the differences will draw attention to themselves. So as I took a second pass at 1938, setting out from The Hotspot and proceeding through the pageant that is day-by-day Manhattan, I immersed myself in the landscape and reobserved the little details, the offhand remarks, the actions on the periphery—all through the new lens of Tinker's relationship with Anne. And many fascinating changes did I discover there. . . .

I remembered the night that Tinker called me to the Beresford—and how he had come home from the office after midnight with his hair combed and his twice-shaven cheeks and his crisp Windsor knot. But, of course, he hadn't been to the office at all. Once he had poured me that warm martini and backed apologetically out the door, he had taken a taxi to the Plaza Hotel—where after exertions of one form or another, he had freshened up in Anne's convenient little bath.

And the night at the Irish bar on Seventh Street—when I ran into Hank and he referred to
that manipulative cunt
—he wasn't referring to Eve. He probably didn't even know Eve. He was referring to Anne, the hidden hand that made all things Tinker come to life.

And you better believe I remembered how subtle a partner Tinker had been in the Adirondacks—how clever; how inventive; how he had surprised me; how he had folded me; reversed me; explored me. Sweet Jesus. I wasn't even close to being born yesterday, but not for one minute had I let myself dwell on the obvious—that he had learned all of that from someone else; someone a little more bold, a little more experienced, a little less subject to shame.

And all the time, the outward appearance so artfully maintained was that of a gentleman: well mannered, well spoken, well dressed—well honed.

I got up and went to my purse. I pulled out the little volume of Washingtonia that fate had dropped in my lap. I opened it and began skimming through young George's aspirations:

Suddenly, I could see this for what it was too. For Tinker Grey, this little book wasn't a series of moral aspirations—it was a primer on social advancement. A do-it-yourself charm school. A sort of
How to Win Friends and Influence People
150 years ahead of its time.

I shook my head like a midwestern grandma.

What a rube Katherine Kontent had been.

Teddy to Tinker, Eve to Evelyn, Katya to Kate
:
In New York City, these sorts of alterations come free of charge—
or so I had thought to myself as the year began. But what circumstances should have brought to mind were the two versions of
The Thief of Baghdad.

In the original version, an impoverished Douglas Fairbanks, enamored of the caliph's daughter, disguises himself as a prince to gain access to the palace. While in the Technicolor remake, the lead played a prince who, bored by the pomp of the throne, disguises himself as a peasant so that he can sample the splendors of the bazaar.

Masquerades such as these don't require much imagination to initiate or comprehend; they happen every day. But to assume that they will enhance one's chances at a happy ending, this requires the one suspension of disbelief that the two versions of
The Thief of Baghdad
share: that carpets can fly.

The telephone rang.

—Yeah?

—Katey.

I had to laugh.

—Guess what I have in front of me?

—Katey.

—Go ahead and guess. You'll never believe it.

. . .

—The
Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour
! Remember those? Wait. Let me find one.

I fumbled with the phone.

—Here we go!
Mock not nor Jest at any thing of Importance
. That's a good one. Or how about this? Number Sixty-six:
Be not forward but friendly and Courteous
. Why, that's you in spades!

—Katey.

I hung up. I sat back down and began reading Mr. Washington's list a little more closely. You had to give that precocious colonial kid credit. Some of them made a lot of sense.

The phone began ringing again. It rang and rang and rang and then fell silent.

As an adolescent, I had mixed feelings about my long legs. Like the legs on a newborn foal they seemed engineered for collapse. Billy Bogadoni, who lived around the corner with his eight siblings, used to call me Cricket, and he didn't mean it in the complimentary sense. But as it goes with such things, I eventually grew into my legs and ultimately prized them. I found I liked being taller than the other girls. By seventeen, I was taller than Billy Bogadoni. When I first moved into Mrs. Martingale's she used to say in her saccharine manner that I really shouldn't wear heels because boys didn't like to dance with girls who were taller than them. Perhaps because of those very remarks, my heels were half an inch higher when I left Mrs. Martingale's than when I'd arrived.

Well, here was another advantage of being long-legged. I could lean back in my father's easy chair, extend my foot with my toes pointed forward, and tip my new coffee table so that the telephone slid overboard like a deck chair on the
Titanic
.

I read on without interruption. As I have mentioned before, there were 110, which might have led you to believe the list was a little overdone. But Mr. Washington had saved the best for last: