Rules of Civility

In a jazz bar on the last night of 1937, watching a quartet because she couldn’t afford to see the whole ensemble, there were certain things Katey Kontent knew:
– The location of every old church in Manhattan
– How to sneak into the cinema
– How to type eighty words a minute, five thousand an hour, and nine million a year
– and that if you can still lose yourself in the first chapter of a Dickens novel then everything is probably going to be fine.
By the end of the year she’d learned:
– How to launch a paper airplane high over Park Avenue
– How to live like a redhead
– How to insist upon the very best
– That the word ‘yes’ can be a poison
– and the Rules of Civility.

That’s how quickly New York City comes about – like a weathervane – or the head of a cobra. Time tells which.