Rules of Civility

When Katey visits Hank’s apartment, she finds that her hunch is right. Hank’s things are gone and a bag with some of Tinker’s belongings is on the floor. An old man walking up the steps tells her that Tinker is on the roof. When she goes up, she’s prepared to see a sullen, crestfallen Tinker, but she’s wrong again. Tinker seems calm and collected—happy even. He thinks that she’s going to lay into him again, but she cries instead and tells him about Wallace’s death. The two embrace and talk about Wallace for a bit. Though Katey apologizes for how she treated him at the café, Tinker says that he deserved it and it was just what he needed to hear. He points out the view from the rooftop and regales her with his desire as a kid to work on the docks and be a merchant marine. She catches him up about her life and the magazine, and Tinker thinks Gotham is exactly what people like him deserve. He again apologizes about Anne, admitting that he should have been honest from the beginning.

Tinker leaves to acquire firewood. While he’s gone, Katey looks through his things and finds the Walden book, as well as the maxim book. She stays over and they sleep on mats, keeping their distance from one another. Katey goes to work the next day, but then returns to visit Tinker. They eat at the diner that Hank painted in one of his drawings, and it’s a meal that Katey still remembers. Tinker is going to take a page from Thoreau and let his affairs be as two or three instead of a multitude. He asks if she wants to come with him, but Katey says she’d rather have everything at least once before giving it up. That night, after pulling their mats together, they sleep together again. The next day, Tinker leaves. She finds a letter from him in which he says that, though he doesn’t know where he’s going, he will start every day by saying her name. He then signs it with his name and the dates on his lighter (1910 - ?). He leaves behind the maxim book and Hank’s painting. Katey takes both to her apartment, noting that Tinker will want them when he returns. Though he’s gone, Katey feels a sort of relief.

On December 23, Katey drinks bourbon from the bottle while eating ham and looking at a mockup for the premier issue of Gotham. The cover is her idea, inspired by a Magritte painting. It features a naked woman standing behind the San Remo apartment building. Her skin is viewable through the windows, but drawn curtains hide her “finer parts (305).” Mason bet Katey her job that she wouldn’t find anyone to pose for the photo, but Katey already knew that Fran would do it. She’d received the ham and the mockup as a thank you. Mason had also informed her and Alley that he’d be keeping them both. He finally told her to thank her benefactor. Though Katey assumed he meant Nathaniel Parish, Mason informs her that she should be more mindful of who her friends are. By way of explanation, he explains that it was Anne who secured her the position in the first place.

While drinking and preparing to read Poirot’s latest—a Christmas mystery—a gift arrives from Wallace. Katey realizes that he’d also put a gift aside for her. After accepting it, she opens it and finds a gorgeous 1894 Winchester rifle that once belonged to John Moses Browning. She thinks the rifle is beautiful enough to wear to a wedding.

The end of the chapter switches to Tinker’s perspective. He’s working on a wharf as a longshoreman. An impending strike by tugboat workers is unraveling, so he and the others are working slower to try and keep their jobs before being fired if the strike starts. He works with a black man named King, and when their shift finishes, they find a busted bag of sugar. Both take some, as the sugar will just spoil anyway. Tinker asks King if he wants to get a drink, but King has a family to get home to. Tinker sees a ship leaving for Argentina, but he’s trying to save more money for a trip like that. He looks at Manhattan and the skyline and thinks of poised people like Katey, thinking that he loves the feeling of approaching Manhattan without ever actually arriving.

It’s New Year’s Eve, 1939. Katey is celebrating with a group of friends, including Bitsy. Though World War II began in 1939, Katey notes how it led to the end of the Great Depression, and America had yet to fully enter the war. The group frolic in the snow and end up at an Italian restaurant. Katey receives a strange message; when she’s told who sent it, she sees Hank Grey sitting at the bar in uniform. His question: should old time be forgot?—causes Katey to think about all those that are no longer in her life and who she hasn’t seen in over a year, but were central to her development. Dicky was sent to Texas by his father to straighten him up. He eventually went to Harvard Business School, fell in love and married, served, and has children. Eve is still in Los Angeles. She’s a friend of Olivia de Havilland and calls Katey every April Fool’s Day to say she’s passed out. Eve also maintains that she won’t ever return to New York. Though Wallace died, he left Katey a trust of $800 a year, which means that she doesn’t have to settle for the first man she sees. She imagines that Tinker is traveling the world.

Katey has a drink with Hank and the two talk about Tinker. When Hank reveals that Tinker is actually still in New York and a dockworker, Katey is genuinely surprised. She thought he’d be traveling the world. Hank tells her that Tinker is happy on the inside. For a while after this meeting, Katey looks for Tinker in the streets of New York, but eventually stops looking. She doesn’t see Tinker again until the two photos in the Walker Evans exhibit in 1966.

When she and Val leave the Evans exhibit, they go home and have a quiet dinner. He leaves her so that she can have some quiet time, and she peruses the photos on the wall, including a cover of Gotham that was the first one she got to edit. Her favorite photo, however, is one from her wedding to Val that includes Mr. Hollingsworth. Katey thinks about how life is comprised of a series of choices that come to make a path. She’s been lucky with the choices in her life. After seeing Tinker for the last time back in 1938, she’d said his name every morning, just like he’d promised to say hers. At some point, however, she’d stopped. Now, beginning again in 1966, she begins to say his name every morning.