Rules of Civility

“She didn’t need to find Jesus anymore, I thought to myself; he had already come looking for her.” 

Katey ruminates about Eve’s near-death experience in the car accident; Eve’s brush with death hints that Jesus was “looking for her.” After the accident, Eve defies death and her life becomes miraculous.

“Old times, my father used to say: If you’re not careful, they’ll gut you like a fish.” 

Throughout the book, Katey thinks back to particular moments in her past even as she’s crafting her future. Here, she remembers sage advice from her father. Depending on one’s station in life, memories can either make one feel better or worse.

“But if New York was a many-cogged machine, then lack of judgement was the grease that kept the gears turning smoothly for the rest of us.” 

Katey notices that her coworker Charlotte has left a document on the train. Charlotte shouldn’t have taken the document and is being manipulated by a senior employee. Katey thinks of this snafu in terms of survival of the fittest.

“One of Newton’s laws of physics is something about how bodies in motion will hew to their trajectory unless thy meet an external force.” 

Katey discovers that Eve and Tinker are now an item. Though she’s a tad shocked, she doesn’t want to be the “external force” that sends them off course. She acknowledges their relationship and wishes them the best.

“This [Belmont] was like the circles of Dante’s Inferno—populated with men of varied sins, but also with the shrewdness and devotion of the damned.” 

At Belmont, Katey observes the horses practicing the course before their big race. She loves the event and likens it to Dante: Belmont contains all levels of society, from the poor to the wealthy and the self-made. This suggests a parallel between Manhattan and hell.

“How very little imagination and courage we show in our hatreds. If we earn fifty cents an hour, we admire the rich and pity the poor, and we reserve the full force of our venom for those who make a penny more or a penny less.” 

Katey is given a sour look by another woman in a restaurant. She laments how people have to fight each other when they are closer to each other in circumstance than they realize.

“One must be prepared to fight for one’s simple pleasures and to defend them against elegance and erudition and all manner of glamorous enticements.” 

Katey takes a note from her father about simple pleasures. She realizes that simplicity and authenticity are always in danger of being diluted by extravagance and superficiality.

“For what was civilization but the intellect’s ascendency out of the doldrums of necessity (shelter, sustenance and survival) into the ether of the finely superfluous (poetry, handbags and haute cuisine)?” 

Katey prefers a good meal as a symbol of culture and advancement. To her, a good meal is a simple thing that also highlights the triumph of intellect. Though she believes this, she knows her father would disapprove of spending money on expensive food.

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

Katey reveals an accurate truth about New York: Fortune can come or go, and people can be hit hard or not at all. Her words foreshadow Tinker’s fall and reveal the truth in her rise up the social ladder.

“It seemed to give shape to the open air, or rather to reveal the hidden architecture that was there all along—the invisible cathedral that vaulted over the surface of the pond—known to sparrows and dragonflies but invisible to the human eye.” 

Though it might seem contradictory, Katey finds peace in shooting outside. She finally sees the beauty in nature and feels as if she’s a part of it. 

“It was a version invented for two friends so that they can get some practice and pass the time divertingly while they wait in the station for their train to arrive.” 

While playing honeymoon bridge, Katey and Wallace come to find that they’re better suited as friends than as lovers. 

“In our households, nostalgia played a distant fiddle to acknowledgement of the sacrifices made by forebears on your behalf.” 

Katey notes a difference in the photos in wealthy houses versus working-class houses. Photos in wealthy houses symbolize nostalgia for a time and place, while working-class photos uphold the sacrifices of forebears.

“There it was again. That slight stinging sensation of the cheeks. It’s our body’s light-speed response to the world showing us up.” 

When Wyss tells Katey that Tinker wants to propose to Eve, Wyss is doing it on purpose to get a dig in, as if putting Katey in her place.

“It’s a purposeful irony of life, I suppose, that we never get to see ourselves in that state. We can only pay witness to our waking reflection, which to one degree or another is always fretting or afraid.” 

Katey watches Eve sleep and notes how innocent she looks. She believes that people should see their true selves, like parents do when watching a sleeping child, instead of the harried version of themselves they always see upon waking.

“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.” 

Katey finally discovers that Tinker is a kept man and Anne is his lover. She realizes that the fantastical thing isn’t so much that Tinker isn’t who he says he is, but that he believed everything would work out smoothly in the end.

“We rarely know exactly where we stand in relation to someone else, and we never know where two confederates stand in relation to each other. But the sum of the angles of a triangle is always 180 degrees—isn’t it.” 

Anne and Katey finally talk about Anne’s arrangement with Tinker. Anne comments that, though they might not know who the players are or how they relate to other people, they can understand the bigger picture.

‘“Most people have more needs than wants. That’s why they live the lives they do. But the world is run by those whose wants outstrip their needs.’” 

Anne wants to befriend Katey, despite both wanting Tinker for different reasons. Anne finally tells Katey that people like her, who have more wants than needs (she’s wealthy), are the ones who rule the world and get what they want.

“As a quick aside, let me observe that in moments of high emotion—whether they’re triggered by anger or envy, humiliation or resentment—if the next thing you’re going to say makes you feel better, then it’s probably the wrong thing to say.” 

Katey makes a smart assessment about trying not to say things out of anger or to get back at people. However, directly after this assessment, Katey says that she doesn’t abide by this rule and that the reader can make use of it.

“I suppose we don’t rely on comparison enough to tell us whom it is that we are talking to. We give people the liberty of fashioning themselves in the moment—a span of time that is so much more manageable, stageable, controllable than is a lifetime.” 

Katey notes that, instead of seeing people for who they are by comparing them to what they say, and also comparing ourselves to them, people often make the mistake of giving others time to create themselves. In other words, people are allowed to create a version of themselves and then present this carefully crafted—and often inauthentic—version of themselves.

“I caught up with the others outside, giving a little prayer of thanks to no one in particular. Because when some incident sheds a favorable light on an old and absent friend, that’s about as good a gift as chance intends to offer.” 

Katey is having drinks with friends when she sees Hank at a jazz club. Later at the club, a black man laments about Eve’s move to Los Angeles because she truly had an ear for jazz. Katey realizes that chance has given her insight on two old friends: Eve and Tinker (by way of Hank).

“After meeting someone by chance and throwing off a few sparks, can there be any substance to the feeling that you’ve known each other your whole lives?” 

Katey thinks about fate and soulmates. Though Dicky is younger and viewed as immature, Katey feels connected to him. In the same breath, however, she is still connected to Tinker. Her struggle here is that she doesn’t want to hurt Dicky, but she still loves Tinker.

“Here they resided, two worldviews separated only by Fifth Avenue, facing off until the end of time or the end of Manhattan, whichever came first.” 

Katey sits on the steps of St. Patrick’s with Dicky. She astutely realizes that a statue of Atlas stands opposite the church, symbolizing the gall, passion, and punishment of the Titans, while the Pieta sits inside the church, symbolizing mercy and compassion. 

‘“If we only fell in love with people who were perfect for us,’ he said, ‘then there wouldn’t be so much fuss about love in the first place.’” 

Though everyone thinks he is immature, Dicky shows that he actually has a good head on his shoulders. Not only does he help Katey realize she’s been treating Tinker unfairly, he understands her love for Tinker, admires him, and waxes poetic about the truth of love.