Rules of Civility - Amor Towles [98]
As I was drinking a second cup of coffee, Tinker poked at the fire with a stick dislodging sparks.
—Tell me something that no one knows about you, I said.
He laughed, as if I was kidding; but then he seemed to think about it.
—All right, he said, turning a little toward me. You know that day we bumped into each other at that diner across from Trinity Church?
—Yes . . .
—I followed you there.
I slugged him in the shoulder like Fran would have.
—You did not!
—I know, he said. It’s terrible. But it’s true! Eve had mentioned the name of your firm, so just before noon I went across from your building and hid behind a newsstand to see if I could catch you going to lunch. I was waiting for forty minutes and it was freezing.
I laughed, remembering the bright red tips of his ears.
—What prompted you to do that?
—I couldn’t stop thinking about you.
—Blah, I said.
—No, I’m serious.
He looked at me with a gentle smile.
—Right from the first, I could see a calmness in you—that sort of inner tranquility that they write about in books, but that almost no one seems to possess. I was wondering to myself: How does she do that? And I figured it could only come from having no regrets—from having made choices with . . . such poise and purpose. It stopped me in my tracks a little. And I just couldn’t wait to see it again.
By the time we went upstairs, having turned off the lights and scattered the embers, we both looked ready for a good night’s sleep. On the steps, our shadows swung back and forth with the movement of the lanterns in our hands. As we reached the landing, we bumped into each other and he apologized. We stood awkwardly for a second, then after giving me a friendly kiss, he went west and I went east. We closed our doors and undressed. We climbed into our little beds and read a few aimless pages before dousing our lights.
In the dark, as I pulled up the quilt I became conscious of the wind. Rolling down from Pinyon Peak it was shaking the trees and the windowpanes as if it too was restless for resolution.
There is an oft-quoted passage in Walden, in which Thoreau exhorts us to find our pole star and to follow it unwaveringly as would a sailor or a fugitive slave. It’s a thrilling sentiment—one so obviously worthy of our aspirations. But even if you had the discipline to maintain the true course, the real problem, it has always seemed to me, is how to know in which part of the heavens your star resides.
But there is another passage in Walden that has stayed with me as well. In it, Thoreau says that men mistakenly think of truth as being remote—behind the farthest star, before Adam and after the reckoning. When in fact, all these times and places and occasions are now and here. In a way, this celebration of the now and here seems to contradict the exhortation to follow one’s star. But it is equally persuasive. And oh so much more attainable.
I pulled Tinker’s sweater back on over my head, tiptoed down the hall, and stopped outside his room.
I listened to the creaking of the house, to the rain on the roof, to the breathing on the other side of the door. Careful not to make a sound, I put a hand on the knob. In sixty seconds it was going to be the midpoint between the beginning and the end of time. And in that moment, there would be a chance to witness, to partake in, to succumb to the now and here.
In exactly sixty seconds.
Fifty. Forty. Thirty.
On your mark
Get set
Go
On Sunday afternoon when Tinker took me to the depot, I didn’t know when I would be seeing him again. Over breakfast he said he was going to spend