Rules of Civility - Amor Towles [10]
Never, I’m afraid.
As we approached the center of the park, the revelry by the fountain began to take shape: A crowd of collegiates had gathered to ring in the New Year with a half-priced ragtime band. All of the boys were in black tie and tails except for four freshmen who wore maroon sweaters emblazoned with Greek letters and who scrambled through the crowd filling glasses. A young woman who was insufficiently dressed was pretending to conduct the band which, due to indifference or inexperience, played the same song over and over.
The musicians were suddenly waved silent by a young man who leapt onto a park bench with a coxswain’s megaphone in hand, looking as self-assured as the ringmaster in a circus for aristocrats.
—Ladies and gentlemen, he proclaimed. The turn of the year is nearly upon us.
With a flourish, he signaled one of his cohorts and an older man in a gray robe was foisted up onto the bench at his side. The foistee was wearing the cotton ball beard of a drama school Moses and holding a cardboard scythe. He appeared to be a little unsteady on his feet.
Unfurling a scroll that fell to the ground, the ringmaster began chastising the old man for the indignities of 1937: The recession . . . The Hindenburg . . . The Lincoln Tunnel! Then holding up his megaphone, he called on 1938 to present itself. From behind a bush an overweight fraternity brother appeared dressed in nothing but a diaper. He climbed on the bench and to the merriment of the crowd took a stab at flexing his muscles. At the same time, the beard on the old man became unhooked from an ear and you could see that he was gaunt and ill shaven. He must have been a bum that the collegiates had lured from an alley with the promise of money or wine. But whatever the enticement, its influence must have run its course, because he was suddenly looking around like a drifter in the hands of vigilantes.
With a salesman’s enthusiasm, the ringmaster began gesturing to various parts of the New Year’s physique, detailing its improvements: its flexible suspension, its streamlined chassis, its get-up-and-go.
—Come on, said Eve, skipping ahead with a laugh.
Tinker didn’t seem so eager to join in the fun.
I took a pack of cigarettes from my coat pocket and he produced his lighter.
He took a step closer in order to block the wind with his shoulders.
As I exhaled a filament of smoke, Tinker looked overhead at the snowflakes whose slow descent was marked by the halo of the street lamps. Then he turned back toward the commotion and scanned the assembly with an almost mournful gaze.
—I can’t tell whom you feel more sorry for, I said. The old year or the new.
He offered a tempered smile.
—Are those my only options?
Suddenly, one of the revelers at the edge of the crowd was hit squarely in the back by a snowball. When he and two of his fraternity brothers turned, one of them was hit in the pleats of his shirt.
Looking back, we could see that a boy no older than ten had launched the attack from behind the safety of a park bench. Wrapped in four layers of clothing, he looked like the fattest kid in the class. To his left and right were pyramids of snowballs reaching to his waist. He must have spent the whole day packing ammunition—like one who’s received word of the redcoats’ approach straight from the mouth of Paul Revere.
Dumbstruck, the three collegiates stared with open mouths. The kid took advantage of their cognitive delay by unloading three more wellaimed missiles in quick succession.
—Get that brat, one of them said without a hint of humor.
The three of them began scraping snowballs off the paving stones and