Rules of Civility

by Amor Towles

escape hung in the air. On the tips of her toes she hooked the end of the bra onto the bottom rung. She came back and we waited. 6:50. 7:00. 7:10. The emergency exit opened with a creak. A middle-aged usher in a red uniform stepped outside, taking refuge from the feature he’d already seen a thousand times. In the snow, he looked like a wooden soldier from the Nutcracker who’d lost his hat. While easing the door shut, he put a program in the crack so that it wouldn’t close completely. The snow fell through the fire escapes and settled on his fake epaulettes.

Which is just to say, be careful when choosing what you’re proud of—because the world has every intention of using it against you.

—Could we? —Absolutely.

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

— Judging from a distance, most people probably assumed

at ten feet you could tell she was spinning a yarn at a friend’s expense.

For the most part, in the course of our daily lives we abide the abundant evidence that no such universal justice exists. Like a cart horse, we plod along the cobblestones dragging our masters’ wares with our heads down and our blinders in place, waiting patiently for the next cube of sugar. But there are certain times when chance suddenly provides the justice that Agatha Christies promise. We look around at the characters cast in our own lives—our heiresses and gardeners, our vicars and nannies, our late-arriving guests who are not exactly what they seem—and discover that before the end of the weekend all assembled will get their just deserts. But when we do so, we rarely remember to count ourselves among their company.

St. Patrick’s on Fifth Avenue and Fiftieth Street is a pretty powerful example of early nineteenth-century American Gothic. Made of white marble quarried from upstate New York, the walls must be four feet thick. The stained-glass windows were made by craftsmen from Chartres. Tiffany designed two of the altars and a Medici designed the third. And the Pietà in the southeast corner is twice the size of Michelangelo’s. In fact, the whole place is so well made that as the Good Lord sees about His daily business, He can pass right over St. Patrick’s, confident that those inside will take pretty good care of themselves.

Suddenly, all the people of valor were gone. One by one, they had glittered and disappeared, leaving behind those who couldn’t free themselves from their wants: like Anne and Tinker and me.

—Mostly, he said, I’ve been thinking about what I’m not going to do. When I think of the last few years, I’ve been hounded by regrets for what’s already happened and fears for what might. By nostalgia for what I’ve lost and desire for what I don’t have. All this wanting and not wanting. It’s worn me out. For once, I’m going to try the present on for size.

In that sense, life is less like a journey than it is a game of honeymoon bridge. In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisions—we draw a card, and we must decide right then and there whether to keep that card and discard the next, or discard the first card and keep the second. And before we know it, the deck has been played out and the decisions we have just made will shape our lives for decades to come. — Maybe that sounds bleaker than I intended. — Life doesn’t have to provide you any options at all. It can easily define your course from the outset and keep you in check through all manner of rough and subtle mechanics. To have even one year when you’re presented with choices that can alter your circumstances, your character, your course—that’s by the grace of God alone. And it shouldn’t come without a price.