Rules of Civility

Katey accompanies Mason to an interview of a grand dame. As they sit in the back of a limousine, she notes Mason’s foul mood. He’s still upset with her for skipping work. Both of them feel like the interview will be a waste of time because the woman won’t have anything salacious to tell them. When they pass by the Beresford and Katey sees the doorman, she comes up with a plan. She suggests that they interview former doormen because they’re the ones who have all the dirt on their employers. Additionally, being no longer employed allows them to not be fearful of revenge. Mason mulls the idea over and then tells Katey that she can run an ad and go with the angle—if she stakes her job on it. Katey does. As the countdown to her deal with Mason ends (the three days of the ad in the papers), her coworkers play Taps for her. Most think she will be fired. On the day indicated on the ad, however, not only does Katey see two unemployed doormen waiting for her in the lobby, the entire stairwell is filled with doormen of all shapes, races, and sizes, and they all stand for Katey when she arrives.

On a Saturday night, Katey, Dicky, and their circle go to hear jazz at The Lean-To, a club she used to frequent with Eve. The club is fancier than before. Katey wears a choker with a diamond ring, which was given to her by Dicky for their three-week anniversary. The eight of them drink and chat, and the conversation steers to things no one else knows about the other person. One of the friends sings in a choir and regales them with a song, while Dicky admits that he makes paper planes, shocking Katey. Jazz comes on and Dicky begins dancing. Katey mentions how Dicky can’t stand still. She took him to listen to classical music and he looked like he was in pain, but he loves the improvisation of jazz.

As Katey takes in her surroundings, she sees Hank in the club. They go outside to converse, and he bums money and cigarettes off of her. She notes that he doesn’t look well. The narrative hints that he’s on drugs. He asks about Tinker, but she admits that she’s not speaking to Tinker anymore. Hank feels that everyone makes too big a deal of Tinker trying to be someone he isn’t. Tinker is genuinely smart (he knows five languages), he cares for people, and he has wonder, which is something not taught in any school. When she asks him what happened to them, Hank explains that his father lost everything and they moved to smaller and smaller homes as children. His mother had squirreled away money so that Tinker could go to a nice school. But when she was placed in a cancer ward, the father found the money and used it all. Katey goes back inside and, when the group prepares to leave, a tall black man she’s seen before approaches her and asks about Eve. She informs him that Eve moved to Los Angeles. The man is sad and admits that Eve is missed by him and his friends. He reveals that Eve had an ear for jazz, surprising Katey. When she was friends with Eve, she assumed that Eve flirted with the musicians to buck social conventions. It turns out that Eve genuinely loves and understands jazz.

One night, she and Dicky stay in at his place. They see his neighbor playing the piano in his robe with the terrace door open and want to request songs. Dicky takes paper and writes the requests on them, then folds them into remarkable paper airplanes and launches them. Some of them actually land on the man’s balcony. They’ve also seen a group of boys playing in their nursery, so Dicky sends the boys a note, indicating it’s from Peter Pan, and asks for reinforcements.

Katey receives a visit from Anne, whom she calls Mrs. Grandyn. Anne looks around Katey’s place and confesses she once lived in a similar apartment. When Katey expresses shock, Anne explains how, though she was born into a wealthy family, she was sent to live with a nanny on the Lower East Side. Her parents told her that her father was sick, but she knew it was because their marriage was failing and that it was most likely because her father was a philanderer. The last time Anne was on this side of Fourteenth Street was back then, when she was six. She also reveals that she’s since read Dickens after seeing Katey reading it the day Katey was spying on her. She can appreciate it, but she prefers more modern writers like Woolf and Hemingway. The two have tea and chat, and then Anne, as if by way of apology, offers Katey her apartment at the Beresford for a year. She leaves the key on a stack of books and asks Katey to think it over. Katey takes the key and follows Anne to the hallway. She knows Anne is up to something, but when Anne pays her a genuine compliment, Katey is at a loss for words. She also sees that Anne isn’t wearing a bra again. Anne walks over and kisses Katey, then tells Katey that she hopes she spies on her again sometime. Katey walks over to her as she leaves, as if she’s going to kiss her again, but places the apartment key in Anne’s pocket.