Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

Author:Amor Towles [Towles, Amor]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2011-05-23T22:00:00+00:00

Tate had directed Alley to get the dictionary and had written the verse. But the singing telegram and pink ribbon, those were Alley’s personal touches.

At six o’clock, Mr. Tate left the office to catch a train to the Hamptons. At 6:15 I caught Alley’s eye. We covered our typewriters and put on our coats.

—Come on, she said as we walked toward the elevators. Let’s cake it up.

My first day at Gotham, when I went to the washroom, Alley had followed me. Leaning over the sink was a girl from graphics. Alley told her to beat it. For a second I thought she was going to cut off my bangs and toss my purse in the toilet like the welcoming committee at my old high school. Alley squinted through her cat’s-eye glasses and got right to the point.

She said that the two of us were like gladiators in a coliseum and Tate was the lion. When he came out of the cage, we could either circle him, or scatter and wait to be eaten. If we played our cards right, Tate wouldn’t be able to tell which one of us he depended upon more. So she wanted to establish a few ground rules: When Tate asked where one of us was, the answer (day or night) was the ladies’ room. When he asked us to double-check each other’s work, we were allowed to spot one mistake. When we received a compliment on a project, we answered that we couldn’t have done it without the help of the other. And when Tate left at night, we’d give him fifteen minutes to clear the building, then we’d take the elevator to the lobby arm in arm.

—If we don’t fuck this up, she said, come Christmas we’ll be running this circus. What do you say, Kate?

In a state of nature some animals, like the leopard, hunt alone; others, like hyena, hunt in packs. I wasn’t one hundred percent convinced that Alley was a hyena. But I was pretty sure that she wasn’t going to wind up as prey.

—I say all for one, and one for all.

On Friday night, some girls liked to go to the Oyster Bar in Grand Central and let the boys riding the express train to Greenwich buy them drinks. Alley liked to go to the automat, where she could sit by herself and eat two desserts and a bowl of soup—in that order. She loved the indifference of it all: the indifference of the staff; the indifference of the customers; the indifference of the food.

As Alley ate her frosting and then proceeded to eat mine, we had a good laugh over the dictionary gag, then we talked about Mason Tate and his hatred of all things purple (royalty, plums, fancy prose). When it was time to go, like an alcoholic Alley stood up and walked straight to the door without showing the slightest signs of having overdone it. In the street at 7:30, we congratulated each other on another Friday night without a date.

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