Community Library Notes
“Rules of Civility” by Amor Towles is the story of Katey, Tinker, Eve and Wallace. But mostly it’s about Manhattan, the city where anything can happen and does.
On the last night of 1937 narrator Katey is with her friend Eve at a basement nightclub in Greenwich Village. Eve and Katey are broke when into the bar walks a man in a cashmere coat. He sits nearby. The girls invite him to their table. This is Theodore Grey, but his friends call him Tinker. When they can’t get champagne from the waitress, Tinker disappears and comes back with a bottle. They get him laughing and together, make New Year’s resolutions.
The next day, Katey goes to work. She’s a typist in a typing pool. At lunchtime, she goes to a small diner and in walks Tinker. He’s a stockbroker working nearby. He promises to take her and Eve out on Friday night.
He picks the girls up in a silver MBZ coupe. Eve demands to drive. She zig zags through traffic “like a shark through water,” and they go to a club, where the group orders martinis. The olives perch on each glass like an “oar on the hull of a rowboat.”
Tinker’s godmother Anne walks by their table. She’s wearing emerald earrings the size of gumdrops. The group decides to leave, but on their way to another club they are hit by a truck on the icy street. Eve is taken to the hospital by ambulance. She had gone through the windshield and her face is a mess. The doctor thinks she’s Tinker’s wife.
Eve’s father had arrived from Indiana but she refused to go back there. Tinker offers his apartment with an elevator, a doorman and kitchen service while she recovers. Eve goes for that. Two months later, Katey gets a phone call from Tinker. He asks her to come stay with Eve while he stays at the office for a late night. Katey undresses Eve and puts her to bed. Eve doesn’t want small talk so Katey reads to her.
On Tinker’s desk is a book of “Rules of Civility,” from 150 years ago. Tinker’s mother had given it to him. In the master bedroom, a closet holds
clothes Tinker has bought for Eve. The following Monday Tinker takes Eve to Palm Beach, Florida.
Later in the year, Katey is invited to a dinner party at Eve’s and Tinker’s apartment. Wallace Wolcott is there, whom Katey thinks was invited for her benefit. Both Eve and Tinker look tan and fit, she wearing huge diamond earrings she’d found in the bedside table. They talk about hunting and guns. Tinker tells Katey that he and Eve are “making a go of it.”
In the Spring, Fran who works at Katey’s office, invites her for a drink at an Irish bar. At a table in the back, she meets Hank, Tinker’s brother. He’s an artist and they talk about the definition of art.
In June, Eve picks Katey up at work in a brown Bentley, the whitewall tires as spotless as Fred Astaire’s spats. It’s Eve’s 25th birthday and Wallace has given her the Bentley for the day. The next day Katey goes to the office and quits. She is hired as an assistant for a writer who covers the city’s lovers, letters and losers.
Later, Katey runs into Wallace at a party with fireworks. The following Sunday they go shooting. He describes all the guns. At a pond, he shows her how to shoot clay pigeons. The next week they go the Metropolitan Museum and look at guns. Wallace sides with the Republicans in the Spanish-American war.
A few nights later, the police arrive at Katey’s apartment and take her to Eve, who is asleep in a cell. She’d been picked up in an alley, drunk and without ID. Katey puts her to bed and the next day, Eve flies to California with a diamond ring Tinker had given her. She’s refused his proposal but kept the ring.
At a bookstore, Katey buys a copy of “Rules of Civility” by Washington. The final rule is to keep alive your conscience. Tinker meets his brother Hank and gives him an envelope of cash. Hank throws it back at him and knocks Tinker to the ground. At her job, Katey has a great idea for a cover story for his first issue: interviews with ex-doormen at the top hotels in the city. Hundreds of men come to testify for her.
On a winter day, Anne Grandyn comes to Katey’s and tells her everything. Anne is at the root of this drama with Tinker. He’s poor as a church mouse in reality. The money, the apartment and the clothes are all Anne’s.
The day after Christmas, Mason Tate calls Katey into his office and congratulates her, gives her a proof of the cover and a ham from the mayor. He tells her to thank her sponsor who recommended her for the job — it was Anne Grandyn. At her apartment, she gets a package from Wallace. He’d been killed in the war, but sent a present earlier. It’s a Remington Rifle.
Does Katey ever see Tinker again? Does she come into money? What happens to Tinker and Hank? Find out in the delightful story of a year in Manhattan at your Mendocino Community Library. It opens April 1. Call the library at 707-937-5773 for more information.