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.