Rules of Civility

When Katey arrives at Whileaway for the party, she enters through the front door this time. However, this doesn’t make her feel like any less of an imposter. She notes the people around her and how easy they are with their stations in life. Some of the family meets guests as they enter. Katey meets Mr. Hollingsworth, who takes an interest in her when he discovers she’s the friend Wallace invited. He offers to tell her anything she wants to know about Wallace. Looking for some quiet away from the party, Katey goes to the powder room. As she sees a naked woman who looks comfortable in her skin, Katey notices a lost earring that she imagines to be Eve’s. Eve and Tinker are home from Europe, and she knows that this is the type of party they’d attend. Katey decides to leave the party so as to not run into them, but is stopped by Bitsy. Bitsy talks about Wallace and his departure and wants to be friends with Katey. Bitsy’s husband then joins them and tells a funny story to the group about Tinker. It turns out that Tinker is indeed there. He took the Hollingsworths’ boat out to propose to Eve but ran the boat aground. The two are currently being pulled back to shore by a lobster boat. Katie feels feverish and wants to leave, though Mr. Hollingsworth tries to get her to stay over in one of their rooms. He calls over a man in a white dinner jacket. The man, named Valentine, happens to be his son. Katey saw the man earlier as he looked in disgust at the drunken partygoers. Valentine agrees to take Katey home. Though the two barely talk on the ride back, Valentine is relieved to leave the party as well.

When Katey next arrives at work, she takes the letter she’d typed up for Mason and reworks it. Mason doesn’t bite her head off; instead, he asks her to edit an article by someone else to try and make it sound more like Hemingway.  

Katey wakes up and realizes the police are knocking on her door. They take her to a police station where a drunken Eve is detained. She was found passed out wearing Katey’s flapper jacket. She had no purse or identification, but Katey’s library card was in the jacket pocket. Though Katey tells them that Eve lives uptown, the police think that both Katey and Eve are prostitutes, especially because of Eve’s scars. They lecture Katey, and then give her Eve’s possessions. Katey notes a diamond ring large enough to skate on. She then takes Eve to her apartment and pays the cab driver extra to get her up the stairs. She calls the Beresford but no one picks up. She puts Eve to bed, throws the jacket away, and sets the ring on the nightstand.

The next morning, Eve is back to her old self. Though she talks about France and how boring it was, Katey skips to the juicy stuff: the engagement. Eve admits that Tinker proposed but she turned him down and told him to run her into another lamppost. Tinker asked her to at least think about it, and in the course of things, ran the boat aground. Eve didn’t help, but felt at peace as he struggled to get the boat fixed. Katey marvels at Eve. Everyone thought Eve was playing Tinker, and that she was really trying to get him to propose, when in fact she wanted nothing of the sort. Eve admits that she and Tinker don’t really like each other, and he simply feels guilty for the accident. In truth, his proposal came about because she’d told him about her pregnancy. She’d gotten an abortion in Paris, however, but hasn’t yet told Tinker. Eve speculates that she’ll go visit her parents in Indiana, while Tinker will more than likely return to Europe.

One night, Katey gets a call from Eve’s father. Katey doesn’t want to take it because she doesn’t want to get trapped in a nostalgic rambling about Eve. As it turns out, Eve was supposed to have met her father and then return home, only she wasn’t at the station when he and his wife arrived. They later found out that she’d extended her ticket and got off in Los Angeles. Katey realizes that Eve is most likely going to sell her engagement ring and earring and make a go of it in Los Angeles. The long-awaited call from Tinker comes days later. Katey is surprised that he doesn’t sound as sullen and glum as she imagined he would. He admits to messing things up in 1938, but sounds more elated than dejected. He invites Katey to join him. He’s staying at the Wolcott’s summer camp in the Adirondacks. Katey agrees. Later, she retrieves the letter he’d written her from London, the one she balled up and threw away. It’s taped up now, and she nostalgically reads the letter.